Greek Fire

  “That time must never come again,” said Jon Manos, but conventionally as if he didn’t believe it ever could, for him.

  “We had our troubles in Istanbul,” said Taksim, “but of course they do not compare. Were you here, George?”

  “It is always interesting to hear how a rich man became rich,” said Gallanova, turning her much photographed profile to the candle-light. “ Would it bore you to tell us how it happened to you, M. Lascou? Or have you always been wealthy?”

  “Happened is the correct word. It happened to me. After the war I borrowed money and invested it in real estate. Regrettable though it may seem, the successive inflations helped me, and I built more and more flats and offices. Then I was able to buy factories in Piraeus and Salonika. It was all very easy once the start was made.”

  Everyone murmured in polite disbelief.

  “I don’t ever quite understand,” said Taksim, “ why you have bothered to enter politics. Why grub in the gutter now you have money to live on the heights?”

  George shrugged. “After a white, when you have enough of it, money becomes unimportant. Then you seek something else—an outlet possibly for idealism.”

  “And you find it—you find idealism in politics? You must sift the dregs closely.”

  “I don’t find idealism in politicians, but I can find it in political thought. I find scope for it in the situation in Greece today. We do not lack brains in the Vouli but we lack reflective brains. Not one in twenty of my fellow deputies attempts to understand Greece outside Athens or the mission of Greece in the world today.”

  A man at the end of the table said: “ I don’t see what you personally hope to do.”

  George sipped his claret. “It is not what one personally hopes to do, it is what one must attempt if one has any vision of the future at all. A nation is not divisible. We share the common lot.”

  “We need another Metaxas,” said General Telechos. “ There was a man.”

  Everyone looked at him. Lascou said: “Metaxas tried to do too much too quickly. No one knows now whether the end would have justified his means.”

  “The end appears to be justifying Tito’s means,” said Gallanova.

  George smiled gently. “ The trouble I see with all these leaders up to now is that ruthlessness and reflectiveness seldom grow on the same stem. Whether a dictator is wholly bad, like Hitler, or partly good, like Metaxas, he is always too much a man of action to be also a man of thought. He has no background of ideas deep enough to maintain him on his way. Plato pointed the solution, but no one has yet followed it.”

  George was at his most effective in small groups. His persuasive voice did not have to be raised to betray its lack of tone.

  “Do men like to be autocratically governed?” cried Mme Telechos. “They are all too fond of equality these days.”

  “I am all for equality,” said Lascou, “but equality on different levels. There can’t be complete equality of reward where there isn’t equality of service. The intellectuals, the philosophers, the governing élite—they are the brains of a nation and should have equality among themselves; so should the black-coated workers, the heart and the viscera; so should the manual workers, the limbs of the state. But these classes are not the equal of each other. Let each man be equal with his neighbour and let every man be judged according to his service to the community.”

  “Mankind has always been rather unoriginal in his forms of government,” said Galianova yawning. “Perhaps that’s because womankind has had so little to do with it.”

  Everyone laughed. George said: “The finest example of the art of government was in this city as it existed two thousand five hundred years ago. The reward of energy, resource, intellect, reached its highest peak. I think you found there love of life, admiration for strength and beauty, the constant exercise of reason, the acceptance of responsibility … and with it went a self-governing genius never since equalled in the world.”

  There was a murmur of approval.

  “I’m not at all sure,” said Gene, “that it was quite as good as that.”

  Silence fell. Servants moved dishes discreetly in the background.

  “Oh,” said Jon Manos, “what did your night school say?”

  “No one,” said Gene ignoring him and addressing Lascou, “ is a greater admirer than I am of the city state as it existed in Athens in those days. But I think in honesty you have to admit that distance lends a certain glamour to the view. Surely the whole thing, good as it was, was rather a contradiction within itself. Wasn’t it? It was a state where one man in four lived the ideal life—at the expense of the other three. It was therefore at most 25 per cent of ideal. Then it was a military state constantly at war with one of its neighbouring states, and I’ve seen enough fighting to feel that that was not ideal. Thirdly, for all its excellence it was in a continual state of revolution within itself, and that too isn’t a particular recommendation. Given those provisos, I’d agree it was a thousand times better than anything that had gone before and a hundred times better than what came after. I’m only trying to see it in its perspective.”

  “Perfection of course isn’t possible,” said George. “ I wasn’t claiming perfection for the system but giving it as an example to be admired and studied. It’s not impossible that it could be improved upon.”

  “As Plato suggested it could be improved upon?” said Gene.

  “Athens was the practical state, in operation. Plato’s was the contemplative ideal, never properly attempted. I beheve that Greece is the one country, right as to size, malleability and temperament, where it might be possible, given the right men at the top, to fuse the ideal and the practical and set up an example of government for the world to copy.”

  Somebody spoke at the end of the table and talk broke out here and there for a moment or two, but Lascou kept his eyes on Gene and when the talk died again he said: “Isn’t that to your liking, Vanbrugh?”

  Gene made a face of slight embarrassment and sipped his own wine. “ Expressed as you express it, it sounds wonderful. I only have one uncomfortable thought. If you put Plato’s idealism into practice, with its all-important duties to the state, its sharing of all property below a certain level, its small élite governing class, its belief that no one should be left alone to live as they choose, that children belong primarily to the state, etc—if you have all that and amend it to meet modern conditions, you’re going to produce something that will be hard to distinguish from Communism.”

  Into another silence Gallanova said: “ That word does not terrify me as it used to.”

  “It does most of us in Greece,” observed the man at the end of the table.

  “Plato in a sense was the first Communist,” Gene said. “I should have thought that was generally accepted.”

  “Communism as Plato conceived it has very little relationship with the world of Marx and Lenin,” said George quickly. “The whole conception has changed. As soon as one harks back one finds a purer doctrine.”

  The talk went on for a while. But as it went on so it became more and more a duologue, a sort of intellectual clash of arms between Gene and Lascou. Others joined in now and then but their interventions were temporary. They didn’t measure up. And Anya said nothing at all. She sat quite still, for the most part looking down at her hand on the table.

  At last a move was made. Coffee and brandy were served in the main salon. After his talk Gene was preoccupied, as if he hadn’t yet got it out of his system, and Lascou seemed to be gathering about himself the robes of the Greek classic past. Very little was said until the ladies rejoined them.

  Presently Gene found himself beside Anya. “Who is Major Kolono?” he asked.

  “He’s—a business acquaintance of George’s. I have not seen him at dinner before.”

  “I know his face but can’t place him. What is his job?”

  Before she could reply General Telechos came up and began to pay her compliments. Ignored, Gene stood his ground. Telechos looked
a man hardened out of ordinary feeling by fifty years of service in arid mountains; the sap had dried in him. One fancied that he no longer saw people primarily as people but as cadres, units, platoons, to be moved, commended, defeated, deployed on the chess-board of a political and military ethos. He was the exact opposite of Lascou, who was all flexibility, all finesse, who would never neglect the human angle in anything, and who would be far more dangerous either in victory or defeat.

  Lascou and Major Kolono were quietly conferring together, their brandy glasses like great soap bubbles nodding at each other as they talked. Then Kolono left the room and Lascou joined the trio by the window.

  He said to Gene: “I congratulate you, Mr. Vanbrugh, on your knowledge of our language and of ancient Greece. It is quite unusual.”

  “In the happy seclusion of my night school,” Gene said, “ I have long been a Graecophile.”

  Jon Manos, who was near, turned quickly and took a couple of little side-steps: “ Of course I can understand your opposition as an American to the word Communism. In the States nowadays I understand it ranks as an obscenity to use the word at all.”

  Although the room was large, the party was at present clustered round the coffee-table and within earshot. Nobody seemed to want to move away.

  “I would have said we were inclined to use it too often,” Gene replied. “ I’m dead against raising anything as a bogy, however much I may personally dislike it.”

  Lascou said: “ You know, monsieur, you say the old city states of Greece were contradictions within themselves. I wonder sometimes about the new United States of America.”

  “You do right to wonder,” said Gene, “but I wouldn’t lose any sleep about it.”

  “Surely the equality of opportunity that you boast of is really equality of opportunism— isn’t that so?—a chance to get rich quick at the expense of your neighbour? And what is this freedom of religion? Freedom to worship money as the only criterion of success? And freedom from fear? I have never yet met an American who is not afraid—afraid of not making enough money, afraid of being cheated, afraid of not being thought superior, afraid of being down-graded in a social scale as rigid as any that has ever existed in the world before. And freedom from want. No race has ever ‘wanted’ more.”

  Gene said: “Man always falls far short of his ideal. It happens everywhere. No state has ever existed on earth which has not laid itself wide open to being shot at from one quarter or another. I think if you read Thucydides you’ll find descriptions of the Athenian city state that make your criticisms of America read like the Garden of Eden before the snake got in. I might even quote you some. But why bother? One tries to see the best and not judge by the worst. One likes a country or one doesn’t like it for better reasons, I hope, than the existence of a few scabs on the surface. The only proviso is that, if one loves a country sufficiently, one may make efforts and even sacrifices to remove a few of the scabs.”

  The room became suddenly very quiet indeed. Not a coffee-spoon clinked. People’s expressions had become frozen. It was clear that the last remark had been taken in its most personal way, as a deliberate and ugly affront. Anya stretched out a hand to tap the ash off her cigarette, but she did it quietly and she did not raise her eyes. Then in the silence Major Kolono came across the room.

  “You are Mr. Eugene Robert Vanbrugh?”

  “I am.”

  “The police have been trying to trace you. They called at the address you gave, the Hotel Astoria, but you were not there.”

  “I was invited to stay with friends.”

  “They are anxious to ask you some questions about an accident that took place in Galatea Street last Tuesday morning in which a man, a Spaniard, was run over and killed.”

  Gene looked at him. It was as if the whole room was ranged against him now. “A Spaniard?”

  “Yes, a man called Tolosa. We understand that you were seen driving a car away from Galatea Street shortly afterwards.”

  “Then you understand wrong. I have not driven a car in Athens at all.”

  Kolono raised his stubby eyebrows in disbelief. “Where are you staying now?”

  “In Benaki Street. Number six.”

  “Perhaps if I called to see you tomorrow morning at nine?”

  “You’re connected with the police?”

  “I am.”

  “You don’t know yet who ran this man down?”

  “I think we have a very good idea.”

  “Have you questioned Mandraki?”

  Kolono stopped rubbing his moustache. “ Who?”

  “A gunman. You must know him.”

  “I know a man of that name. A silversmith. He has not a very good record, but he has nothing to do with this. He was in his shop at the time.”

  “He always is in his shop at the time. One wonders what protection he has.”

  “That doesn’t happen in Greece,” said Manos. “You’re thinking of America.”

  “Shady politicians are not peculiar to any one country.”

  “Who was talking of politicians?” said George Lascou. “It was an association of ideas.”

  Kolono said: “ May I ask you, Vanbrugh, what you were doing in a hired car on Tuesday morning last?”

  Gene glanced at the hostile faces of the men around him. “ Your dinner-party, M. Lascou, seems to be turning into a court of inquiry.”

  “I assure you it is none of my seeking. Perhaps——”

  “May I ask—” Kolono began but Gene cut him short. There was a sudden glint in his uneven grey eyes.

  “We’re meeting tomorrow. I suggest you keep the muzzle on till then. The world won’t end if you wait a few hours.” He turned his back on Kolono and Manos and said to Lascou: “ I’m sorry if I’ve said anything to give you offence. I was talking in general terms as I imagined you were. However, I think probably your dinner-party will be a greater success without me.”

  Lascou’s pince-nez gave off equivocal glints as he looked at Anya. But she was sipping her coffee and made no sign.

  “The matter’s of absolutely no importance to me, M. Vanbrugh, and I’m sure my friends will be willing to accept your assurances if I am. But one thing I would certainly advise—and that is, get in touch with your embassy tomorrow morning. It’s a common-sense precaution if you have charges to answer.”

  “I didn’t know I had any charges to answer, but no doubt Major Kolono has an inventive brain.”

  Lascou shrugged. “I only wished to advise you, to help you. I think it would be your advice to me if our positions were reversed. Wouldn’t it? But no matter; let’s forget it; let’s change the subject; it is all very boring anyway…”

  Anya stayed behind after the others had left. Gene had gone early, and the rest went away in ones and twos during the next hour. A certain constraint had remained till the end; impoliteness from whatever source is not popular with the cultured Greek.

  Last to go were General and Mme. Telechos, and while George wanted with them to the door Anya strolled back into the great salon and took a cigarette from an ebony box. She found a lighter and stood a moment, head forward until the smoke came. Then she walked across to a big gilt mirror and began to smooth one of her eyebrows with a middle finger. She heard George come into the room but she didn’t turn.

  He said: “I shall not see Telechos again publicly before the election. It would not take long for some scurrilous sheet to link our names and smell out a plot.”

  “And privately?”

  “Privately I must. He’s not an old campaigner for nothing.”

  She said: “George, why did you ask me to ask Gene Vanbrugh here tonight?”

  He paused to pour himself a brandy. “ I wanted to look at him for myself and see what there was about him. One has heard enough.”

  “And now you have seen him, what do you think of him?”

  He warmed the brandy glass with his hands, gently swilling the liquid round. “ He has a brain.”

  “It amused me that you had in
vited Kolono here so that Gene Vanbrugh could be practically arrested in your own drawing-room.”

  He considered her. “That was an afterthought. Kolono, the fool, had been looking for Vanbrugh for four days. He traced him to a house in the Plaka and then lost him again. It amused me to face him up with his man tonight.”

  “Sometimes, George, it is as if you were two people. One minute you argue with Gene Vanbrugh as a guest and an intellectual equal—that is a raising of the level of life. Then the next you show you have planned to trick him and cheat him because he is a political opponent—that is where one comes down to earth with a bump.”

  He caught an unfamiliar inflexion in her voice. He said: “The conflict between theory and expediency can’t be a new one even to you.”

  She began to touch her hair here and there with a comb, but he could not see her eyes in the mirror. “ How seriously do you intend to try to involve him in this street accident?”

  “That’s Kolono’s business. It’s nothing to do with me.”

  “Oh, come. Kolono, like John Manos, jumps when you pull the string.”

  “Well, then, I imagine we shall all be guided by the amount of difficulty Vanbrugh gives. The chief thing is to make him feel when he leaves Greece that he was lucky to get out.”

  She turned now, but her eyes were not to be fathomed. They smiled at him without apparent emotion.

  He said: “You’re not seriously interested in him?”

  “Interested? My dear, what do you think?”

  He shrugged. “ One never knows. Men like that with their rather hungry looks and modest-arrogant manners—they can have their peculiar appeal.”

  “You underrrate yourself.”

  “Anyway,” he said, “ you’ll not be troubled again. Kolono will see to that.”

  “If he finds him. I very much doubt if Gene Vanbrugh will be waiting for him when he calls in the morning.”

  “Oh, we attended to that,” said Lascou. “After dinner Kolono telephoned across the square for a couple of his men. They would be waiting for Vanbrugh when he left.”