Decision at Delphi

“I’d like to put you on a flight for Rome, this afternoon.”

  “Rome?” Her eyes widened. “You don’t want me for the Perspective job,” she said involuntarily.

  “Of course I do,” he said sharply. “I just want you to stay in Rome for a few days. Or Paris. Or London. Anywhere you like—”

  “But Lee Preston—what is he going to say? What is anyone going to say?”

  “I don’t give one good damn.”

  “Ken,” she said softly, “what I mean is this: if I went away from Greece right now, it would seem very strange. Wouldn’t it? All last night, all this morning, you’ve been trying to keep everything looking—well, as normal as possible. We are just two visitors, with only their assignment from Perspective to worry about.”

  He looked at her. She had noticed more than he had imagined.

  “I am right, you know,” she said gently. “If you send me away, you might as well announce to the whole Grande Bretagne bar that you’ve got something more on your mind than Greek temples.”

  “You’d be safe, at least.”

  Perhaps, she thought. But he would have doubled his own danger. “Let’s bluff it out,” she said. “Let’s keep any most attractive character from confirming his suspicions, shall we?”

  Yes, she had noticed much more than Strang had imagined.

  “Besides,” she was saying, “how do you know that Rome or London would be any safer?”

  He remembered Katherini’s passing reference to her aunt’s journeys abroad. The barbarians, today, had a long reach. “You have a point mere,” he admitted. As he signed the check, he was thinking gloomily that the battle of Nauplion might have been won, but he had lost the campaign. She was staying in Greece.

  He brooded over that as she added a touch of lipstick to her lower lip without distorting her mouth or grimacing, gathered her bag and gloves together, and rose. They started the long walk to the door, in the midst of a mild clatter of plates, a polite scraping of forks, a continuous chorus in five languages or more. “Come to Sparta with me,” he said. “Visit Steve’s sister.”

  She was completely startled. Then she recovered a little. “That would seem quite normal?” she teased him.

  “Completely in line,” he assured her.

  “I—I really don’t know.” She pretended to be interested in a table banked with flowers, where a Greek-American and his family were being given a welcome-back party. Her attention was caught by two elegant saris, swaying gracefully into the room, two paces behind their Western-suited husbands. “Aren’t they divine—” she began.

  “Plenty of wild mountains,” he said, “spring flowers, blue sky, white clouds. What more does a photographer want?”

  She said nothing.

  “Shepherds and their dogs, peasants on donkeys, villages perched away among the crags. And there is Mistra to see, only a couple of miles from Sparta. What self-respecting photographer would miss Mistra?”

  Mistra... “That’s ruined Byzantine, not classical Greek,” she protested. But she was interested. What heaven, she thought, what absolute bliss! She pulled herself up, sharply. She might not have wanted to run away as far as Rome, but she had better run farther than Sparta.

  They passed through the crowded anteroom, into the crowded lobby. Strang glanced sharply back again at a neat little man, partly obscured by a group of Frenchmen. But the little man, in the unobtrusive, dark suit, had disappeared entirely. For a moment, there, Strang had imagined he was Elias. But Colonel Zafiris would hardly send Elias to watch over us, he decided. Elias had more important work to do than that. At least, he thought, I hope so.

  “Yes?” asked Cecilia.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Let’s pick up our mail and then get a cab.”

  * * *

  She had a cable from New York, a letter postmarked Athens, a hand-delivered note in a sealed envelope. She had time to notice he had two letters, both with American stamps, both addressed in blatantly female writing. More jade earrings?

  Strang stuck the letters into his pocket and helped her into the cab. He glanced around before he followed her; no, he couldn’t see Elias looking into any shop window or dodging quickly into a doorway.

  Cecilia looked back at the sidewalk, between the pleated silk curtains draped across the rear window. “The sponge sellers have gone,” she said. She touched the curtains’ bobbed fringe. Was this really a cab? Two-tone Plymouths, at home, were never like this: lace mats for heads and arms, a rug on the floor, a pink paper rose in a little vase fastened above the dashboard, three small framed photographs of wife and child, a three-inch doll dangling above them. Let’s hope our man can drive, she thought, what with all these curtains and swaying charms and polite head turnings to talk to Ken. Nothing seemed to fascinate a Greek more than a foreigner’s attempt to speak his language. But she relaxed a little as she saw the man could drive, even at high speed with his profile presented to the street ahead.

  She opened the cable. It was brief: DID YOU ARRIVE? LEE PRESTON.

  The letter was from Robert Pringle’s wife, first name either Affie or Iffie or Effie, suggesting they all drive out to Sunium for dinner next Wednesday. Nice, she thought regretfully, but dinner parties and work don’t always mix. Perhaps the Pringles would give her a rain check on Wednesday.

  Now for the note... It was from Katherini. She read it with relief and delight. “It’s from—” she began, and then looked at the driver (now telling Ken about the new cement works down toward the Piraeus, which were well worth seeing), and slipped the note into her handbag. That news would be better kept for the Acropolis.

  Strang finished explaining, regretfully, that they would have to visit the cement works some other time; also Daphni, also Eleusis, also Marathon. Today—yes, all afternoon—would be spent at the Acropolis. Then he sat back, exhausted with his battle, and returned thankfully to English. “From whom?”

  Cecilia handed him the cable.

  One glance and, “Very poignant,” he observed. “Tell him we’ve been busy.”

  “We ought to cable, though.”

  “And what do we tell him about Steve?”

  “Yes, there’s that,” she said, frowning.

  “Especially as Preston is probably reading about his death right now. He’ll be on the telephone to us, any hour. Perhaps we better not answer any long-distance calls for the next few days. Not until we can tell him something definite.”

  “He’s going to start fretting.”

  “When you have got to tell a lie, keep silent.” Strang crumpled up the cable and tossed it out of the window.

  “Oh!—”

  “Don’t worry, Cecilia. Soon we’ll be able to talk to Uncle Preston without any faking.”

  “Soon?” she asked hopefully.

  “We’ll have definite news soon,” he said. One way or another, he thought angrily. “I could use some good news, right now.”

  She looked down at her handbag and hesitated. Then she couldn’t keep the secret any longer. She took Katherini’s note out of her handbag. “Here is one good piece of news to go on with.” Delightedly, she watched the astonishment that flickered over his face. She looked out of the window while he read the note. The shops and business houses were barred and locked. The streets were strangely quiet. Even the tables in the coffee shops were almost empty, except for a few die-hard philosophers. “What has happened? Everything has shut down.”

  Strang looked up from the note, abstractedly. For once, he was slow to catch her meaning. “Until four o’clock,” he said at last. He said nothing at all about the note. Suddenly, he reached out and grasped her hand. He stared out of the window, seeing nothing.

  Cecilia watched him, anxiously. Perhaps he didn’t like the idea of her going to meet Katherini alone, this evening. But it was to be such a simple, quick meeting at the corner of Constitution Square. What could be more open? Or easier? It was only a few steps from the hotel And all Katherini needed was a little help—money for the bus fare back to her village
: two single tickets, one for Maria, one for herself. That was all.

  Strang’s grip on her hand tightened. He was seeing a busy corner, filled with the movement of people at the end of a work day. Darkness falling. Everyone hurrying home. Cecilia arriving at half past seven. A cab starting forward from the hotel rank, stopping beside her. A door opening, and a woman’s friendly voice calling, “Here! Here!” And Cecilia going over to the car (for so many cabs looked like private cars in Athens); the woman’s hand grasping hers, the voice saying urgently, “I am Maria. It was not safe for Katherini to come. Let us drive around this block, while I tell you what has happened. There is much news to give you.” That was all that was needed. That was all.

  Cecilia was saying, “Ken!”

  He released her hand. He folded the note. “Do you mind if I keep this?” He hoped he sounded casual enough. But she still looked puzzled. So he adopted a jocular kind of tone. “One thing is definite, my girl. No Athens for you. Not alone. Not for the next few days. You’re coming with me.”

  “You’re worrying too much.” She sounded fretful, she knew, but she couldn’t help that.

  “You still won’t think of Rome?”

  She shook her head.

  “Stubborn, aren’t you?”

  “So are you.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly, “I guess I am.” He slipped the note into his pocket.

  The cab made the last twist and turn in the road and drew up at an open stretch of high ground, well-paved, landscaped with trees and shrubs, lying at the foot of a broad, steep slope of hard-packed earth and outcropping rock. Above the slope, the rock began to dominate and then, abruptly, flowed upward into a precipice, a vast encircling arm thrown around the high island of the Acropolis. The giant columns, rising from the rampart of precipices with a grace that turned solid stone into delicate movement, caught the sun’s warmth and glowed, a golden white, above the cold grey rock. Everything flowed up, carrying man’s eye from earth to heaven.

  “I’ll wait for you,” the cabdriver told them, breaking the spell. He pointed to a parking space near some young trees and a booth where terra-cotta ash-trays and black-figure vases were for sale. There were some tourists, some loiterers—other drivers, guides, the eternal post-card sellers.

  Strang said, “It will be a long wait.” Two hours, at least. Another cab was driving up now. But no one got out. That’s odd, Strang thought.

  “I’ll wait,” their driver said. He knew best. He flashed a bright Greek smile, white teeth against olive skin.

  I doubt that, thought Strang. I must have overtipped again. He took Cecilia’s arm and started back toward the other cab. “This way, this way!” his own driver called quickly, and pointed up to a wandering path which led to the admission gate.

  Strang turned and retraced his steps, “Stupid of me,” he said. But he had had a glimpse of the man who sat in the back of the other cab. If it had been Christophorou, he thought, I’d have smashed his bloody jaw right here and now. But it had been Elias. Colonel Zafiris was taking no chances, seemingly.

  Cecilia said quietly, “The man in that cab—I saw him, back at the Grande Bretagne. He took the cab after ours. Is he following us?”

  “You’d break his heart if he could hear you.”

  “You aren’t worried?”

  “Not this time.” In fact, it was pleasant to feel he could relax a little and leave it all to the experts. “He is one of the Colonel’s young men.”

  “Are we as important as that?”

  “I hope not.” Then he drew her around to face the Acropolis. “Let’s begin again. Forget everything else.” And forget that I just had the desire to smash the face of the man who once brought me here. Oh, forget all that, forget it! He took a deep breath. They began to climb a dusty path toward a wire fence and an admission gate.

  “Forget this part, too,” he told her, “and the tourists, and the guards, and the guides. Once we’re through here—”

  He was right. Once they were through, still following the path, they reached the end of the new, the beginning of the old. In front of them lay a series of giant steps, climbing steeply in a double staircase, up to the massive colonnade of the ancient gateway. By its side, high on its own precipice, was the Temple of the Wingless Victory, the first to be seen, always to be remembered. It was the perfect size. Everyone who approached had to look up; everyone who climbed had to walk slowly; everyone waited for the moment of seeing what lay beyond.

  The whole Acropolis opened up to their eyes, a high plateau of solid rock, a vast bare sweep of sloping grey stone, uneven yet worn smooth. Once, there had been many statues and altars and sanctuaries, a multitude of offerings and memorials, a forest of marble richly decorated in colour and with gold. Now, except for a few rejected fragments lying scattered around, a pathetic remembrance of things past, there were only the remains of three temples left standing—with their rows of fluted columns rising, heavy drum on heavy drum of marble, the gold and sculpture and treasures looted, the dark-red and blue painted decorations washed and faded into whiteness. The houses of the gods, the Greeks had called them.

  They had been placed in no symmetrical design, but in a seemingly thoughtless imbalance. Thoughtless? It was powerfully effective, even now in this bare stretch of looted ground, spreading the temples apart, each to the edge of its own precipice, each to be studied by itself, each so different in size and arrangement, each with its own effect. The Parthenon, the largest temple, had been raised not in the middle of the Acropolis, as a methodical mind would have placed it, but to one side, on the highest slope of rock-covered ground. The rows of enormous marble columns seemed straight perfection, yet again there was imbalance to help man’s eye, a careful calculation to add grace to solid strength.

  Strang had become completely absorbed. Cecilia could watch him now without even risking the embarrassment of being noticed. At this moment, she thought, here is a completely happy man. Then she looked out over the precipices; down at the patchwork of houses, seamed by twisting streets, spreading over the little hills below her, scattering even around the larger hills farther away. To the southwest was the sea, shimmering in the afternoon sun around its dark islands. But this is an island, too. An island in the sky, she thought, looking back around the Acropolis, stripped of all its riches down to the essentials—the mysticism that had first built it, the vision of greatness.

  She opened her bag and drew out her case of filters and her light meter. Plenty of everyday problems, though, before she could start her imaginings. These widely scattered temples, for instance. The only way to get them grouped together for the exact camera eye would be to climb that little hill opposite, to the south, a hill with green trees and a monument on the top. Here, on the Acropolis. I’ll have to work with each unit complete in itself. I’ll have to find the best angles for each building, the best time of day; try to give a feeling of height, of soaring. There’s plenty of drama, strong light and deep shade; plenty of texture, variation in colour from the cold grey rock to the blended whites and golden tones of the columns; plenty of wonderful, marvellous, magnificent lines.

  The canopy of blue sky was enormous, intense in colour, smooth as silk. She would have to be careful of this clear air and bright sun, of the reflected light from the pillars. Very careful, too, of the human beings, moving so capriciously around, their heads tilted back, their eyes swung upward. Tourists, bless their poor tired feet, seldom looked natural. Or elegant. It was a pity they did not wear the same kind of clothes they wore back home in their own cities. “We are going travelling,” people said, and started thinking of vacations, pushing lederhosen and shorts and sandals and beach skirts into their suitcases, as if cities abroad were places for picnics or hikes or barbecues. The Greeks, on their home ground, dressed in everyday clothes, looked real, and strangely enough, more comfortable. If she had to have some figures in the foreground, let them be the quiet, brooding Greeks, sitting still, self-contained within their own individual islands.
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  Strang sat on the top step of the western end of the Parthenon, and watched her moving slowly away, circling around, standing in reflection, moving on again. For one moment, he thought she was drifting too far out of sight, and rose. Then he noticed a man, farther down the slope, rise quietly from his seat on a broken fragment of pediment—Elias it was—and follow quietly, not at all obviously. So many people were moving slowly around at random that Elias’s little manoeuvre seemed absolutely natural. Strang relaxed, sat back on the step. At least, he thought, as he looked out once more over the Acropolis, I have had almost an hour of complete forgetfulness. And he was grateful. It was with a new decision, the bright sun pouring its warm energy over him generously, the cool spring breeze fanning away his exhaustion, that he reached in his pocket and took out the letter signed “Katherini.” He rose as he saw Cecilia emerging from behind a corner of the Erechtheum portico. Quickly, he walked down the slope toward her, taking out a cigarette. Elias, he hoped, would not be far away, and this would be the closest Strang could get to him, this afternoon.

  “Hallo,” he said to Cecilia, “how is it coming?”

  “Only playing around, feeling my way, testing the film, mostly. The light is too yellow at this time of day, I think.”

  “I need a match,” he said, and turned toward the man who had wandered into sight and was now standing quite still at the corner of the portico, admiring the procession of maidens, marble carved magically into girls’ strong bodies covered by a transparent flow of silk.

  “May I borrow a match?” he asked Elias politely.

  It didn’t take long. Within a minute, he was back with Cecilia, lighting a cigarette for her with his. “Let’s go and look at the olive tree,” he said. “Do you know its story?” He led her to the other side of the portico, to a stretch of sunken ground guarded by a broken wall.

  “What did you give him?” she asked softly.

  “Was it noticeable?”

  “Not at all. But why else did you go up to him? Oh, don’t worry, Ken—no one else knew that your lighter was working, and that I had matches.”