The Firewalkers Read online

  He was talking about the pagan origins of the fire-walking ceremonies—the Anastanarides were refugees from Thrace and there were many similarities between theirs and the ancient Orphic rites—but though he spoke well, in the resonantly produced voice of an actor or trained public speaker, and the subject itself was one which interested me, yet I was tired after the unaccustomed exertion of the bicycle ride, the room was hot and airless, and the old man by my side had already set me the example of dropping off to sleep. I began by crouching forward, then I put my forehead on my clasped hands, finally I shut my eyes. I hoped that I would not grunt and snuffle like my neighbour, and that a thread of saliva would not trickle down my chin.

  I was woken by a hand squeezing my shoulder:

  ‘Frank! What are you doing here?’ a voice was whispering. I shook my head from side to side, as a dog does to get the water out of its ears. ‘Come outside for God’s sake. I’ve had enough of this. It couldn’t be more boring.’

  ‘Cecil!’

  ‘Sh! Come outside.’

  But it was impossible to get out without creating a disturbance; and though I am certain Cecil Provender was willing to do so, I myself did not have the courage.

  ‘We can’t,’ I said. ‘Look at all those people. It won’t be long now.’

  ‘You don’t know Theo.’

  ‘Theo?’

  ‘The old thing on the platform. It was he who had this mad idea of coming up here. It would be hard to think of anything less gay.’

  ‘Have you been in Greece long?’

  ‘Long enough, my dear. I think either one likes Italy or one likes Greece. Rarely both.… Can’t you move up a little? I’m practically sitting in this old boy’s lap.’ I shifted along the desk and Cecil made himself more comfortable. ‘Yes, I’ve been here about five weeks.… Now don’t be hurt that I never got in touch with you!’ So far from being hurt, I was feeling relieved. ‘You know that I don’t write letters, but only last night in Salonica I told Theo that we must find out where you were. Actually we were going along to your Consul or Council or whatever it is when something distracted this old girl.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I hoped Cecil would not begin to tell me what form the distraction took; but he was going on: ‘Yes, it was just as we were coming out of that dreary restaurant on the seafront, and all at once goose-girl saw this …’

  It would be hard to find a single adjective to describe Cecil Provender. ‘Spinsterly’ would, in many ways, be suitable, but in one, perhaps most important, respect he differed from the majority of spinsters. On the other hand he was far too vinegary, for all his generosity and protectiveness, to deserve to be called ‘motherly’. He was plump and bald, with a sad little mouth that always drooped sideways except when he gave his surprisingly bass laugh, ears that stuck out on either side of his pear-shaped face, and small eyes that glinted with something of the shrewd cunning of the Yorkshire father who had made his fortune for him. Unlike most people of his wealth and tastes, he dressed badly in clothes which, he told one with pride: ‘I had made by my little man in Empoli. It’s worth making the journey from Florence. He’s so cheap—and so good.’

  ‘Who is this Grecos?’ I whispered, when the story of the ‘distraction’ had come to its close.

  ‘Theo Grecos! But you must have heard about Theo Grecos—Madame la Maréchale? Surely you have?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What have you been doing? With the possible exception of the Colossus of Maroussi he’s the best-known figure in Athens.’

  ‘I rarely go to Athens.’

  ‘Yes, you seem to be fated to be provincial … Oh, dear, the spit from this horrible old man has begun to drip on the floor.’ Cecil edged yet closer to me. ‘Well, Theo … what shall I tell you about him? First, he was a great Air Ace—in one of those Balkan wars, against Bulgaria, or Yugoslavia, was it? Anyway he was the first—or one of the first men to fly an aeroplane in war. Then he’s a composer. And a writer. And a dress designer. And a …’

  But at this point I could no more hear what he whispered, for some soldiers were marching past the schoolroom and as they marched they sang, after the fashion of Greek soldiers. I suppose there is no nation which loves music more and yet is more unmusical, and these country youths—I remembered now that Langada was a centre for the training of recruits—were bawling out their song in the most hideous dissonance, as they passed by the windows. They looked squat and grubby, their faces streaked by the rain and dust, and their boots dragging and stumbling; and yet as their raw voices reverberated about us, there was something jolly about them, I thought, something invincible and true. ‘Cauchemar!’ Cecil said. He had put his fingers to his ears.

  For a while the lecturer attempted to speak against the noise outside; then he gave up. I was sorry, for there had been something oddly moving in the imposition of the one sound on the other—the single, civilised voice quoting Vergil (‘Orpheaque in medio posuit, silvasque sequentes …’) with the artistry of an actor, while those many, crude voices outside yelled out their rhythmical chant to the clatter of boots on cobbles. Theo Grecos stood, legs wide apart and his lean hands on his hips, and waited, not with impatience or exasperation, but a kind of dreamy pleasure. His head was slightly on one side, as he too looked out of the window, and his mouth had formed itself into a gentle half-smile. Slowly, slowly the young voices faded across the marshes …

  When the lecture at last ended Cecil said: ‘Come and meet Theo.’

  ‘I should like to.’

  ‘At any rate he’s enjoying himself.’ A large crowd had gathered about the old man as he began to climb from the platform. ‘Now I believe we have to go and watch a calf being slaughtered. I’m not awfully good at blood. I think I shall go and sleep in the car.’ But I knew both that Cecil would be at the sacrifice and that he would manage to get himself the best place. He was a person of the liveliest curiosity, even though he liked to give the impression that little in life either pleased him or interested him. ‘Ah, Theo! If we’re going to this sacrifice, oughtn’t we to go now? There are sure to be enormous crowds.’

  ‘Now don’t fuss. Everything has been arranged.’ The old man tightened the knot of his scarf, as he looked at me with his pale green eyes. ‘A compatriot of yours, Cecil?’

  ‘Oh yes—I’m sorry. This is Frank Cauldwell. We were both up at Balliol.’

  ‘Not at the same time surely?’

  The question sounded innocent; but now, as I look back, I am certain that its intention was malicious: Cecil was sensitive about looking older than his years.

  ‘Yes, at the same time.’

  ‘Have you been long in Greece?’

  ‘Two years.’

  ‘Then why have I never met you? I know every Englishman who ever visits Greece. Why has no one mentioned you to me?’ He spoke querulously, as though there had been a conspiracy to keep me away from him. ‘Never mind.’ He put a hand on my shoulder and looked down at me with his gentle half-smile. ‘I am delighted to meet you, sir.’

  ‘Come along, Theo!’ Cecil cried impatiently.

  ‘But I’ve told you—everything is arranged. There’s no hurry at all.’

  ‘Oh, I know your arrangements,’ Cecil retorted rudely, in the tone I had so often heard him use to distracted officials from Cook’s or American Express.

  ‘Cecil is so impatient, isn’t he?’ the old man said in a mild tone: but I noticed that the gruyère cheese of his cheeks had flushed into two bright red spots.

  In fact, Theo had made no arrangements and when we reached the courtyard we found it surrounded by dusty charabancs and lorries from which an impenetrable crowd of trippers from Salonica were pouring to view the spectacle. ‘As I expected,’ Cecil said grimly, when Theo had twice been told not to push by a woman with a solemn and shrivelled-looking child in her arms. ‘We shall never get through.’

  ‘I am afraid the Greeks are not very courteous on such occasions. But please wait a moment.’

  Theo went over
to a police officer whom I assumed to be of high rank both from the number of medals on his uniform and from his complete apathy at the spectacle of so many screaming, milling people. ‘Good morning, sir,’ I heard Theo say in Greek. He then introduced himself: ‘Colonel Grecos, late of the Royal Greek Air Force’, and explained that it was he who had both been lecturing on the Anastanarides at the village school and had written an article on them in Kathimerini.

  ‘Ah,’ said the police officer with a sour smile, ‘so it is you we have to thank for all these crowds.’ He glanced for a moment at the woman with whom Theo had had his altercation; she had been pushed on to her hands and knees and her child was squealing beneath her. ‘You and the Bishop,’ he said.

  Unperturbed Theo went on to explain I was a correspondent from the London Times and Life magazine, and that Cecil was a member of the British Parliamentary Delegation then visiting Greece. For good measure he added that General Stavrides, the Chief of Police, had told us to rely on his force at any time of need.

  Our officer looked peevish; but he clapped his small, dimpled hands together and explained to two gendarmes that we were to be escorted to the front. ‘Quite simple,’ Theo said, evidently not realising that I could speak Greek. ‘ I had only to mention my name and these excellent fellows were put at our disposal.’

  A way had been cleared for us, not without noisy resistance from our fellow spectators, to what looked like an ordinary kitchen table laid with nothing but circular loaves of bread, stamped with wheat-sheaves. Everyone was staring either at the loaves of bread or at each other, since there was nothing else to do. I found myself standing next to the blond foreigner. Theo kept glancing at him over my head and at last he said in a loud voice: ‘These crowds are really furchtbar.’ But the German still continued to glower morosely at the loaf of bread before him, gnawing at his nails as he did so. Theo hissed in my ear: ‘Qui est ce garçon-là?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said in Greek.

  ‘Sembra molto interessante.’

  ‘Theo, please tell this hag behind me not to swing on the strap of my camera,’ Cecil put in crossly. The ‘hag’ looked like a girl of seventeen or eighteen.

  All at once we heard a rhythmical thud of drums and squeal of pipes, accompanied by a tinkle and clatter from a tambourine, as everyone began saying: ‘They’re coming! They’re corning!’

  ‘Theo, for heaven’s sake, she’s going to break this——’

  ‘Oh, do be quiet!’

  Slowly the Anastanarides pushed their way through the crowd: first an old man with the face of a sleepy pig, who danced as he shook an ikon from side to side over his head; then a boy with a drum, who hopped, crouching, from one leg to another as though he were playing hopscotch; then an old woman, also brandishing an ikon, whose dance was a kind of rhythmic shuffle and glide; then a plump, girlish youth, vaguely self-conscious as he blew on a clarinet; and finally a jumble of people who capered, jogged and shook their hips with a trance-like kind of solemnity. ‘The Orphic Rose!’ Theo hissed. ‘ Look at the Orphic Rose!’ Pinned to the ikon held aloft in the hands of the first old man was a faded pink artificial rose that looked as if it might have been cut off some old evening dress. As the Anastanarides continued to circle the table before us, I was aware that the German’s whole vast body was shaking in time to their music; he was even clicking his fingers and his tongue.

  ‘Theo, I told you that she would go and break this strap.… You stupid woman! Look what you’ve done!’

  Two boys now appeared, one tugging at a calf by its tether while the other pushed from behind. They were enjoying this, and instead of having the blankly somnolent expression of the other Anastanarides, their skinny faces under their over-large caps were contorted with laughter. From time to time the boy behind would twist the animal’s tail, as though it were the starter of a car, and it would leap into the air, while the whole crowd roared its amusement. Slowly this calf was led to the table, and innumerable hands held it down while the man with the sleepy pig-face brandished his ikon (smoke had so obscured its surface that it was impossible to see what it represented) before the animal’s terrified eyes. He was muttering something unintelligible as he swayed from side to side, and it seemed to me then, though it may have been imagination, that in doing so he induced in the wretched creature a state of hypnosis. Certainly it hardly moved when he took two lighted candles which an old woman handed him, and stuck one in each of its ears; when he cut off a lock of hair from its forehead and burned it at a third candle; or when he made the sign of the cross over it with a sprinkling of holy water. There was a silence now except for his hoarsely muttering voice; the dancers were still.

  ‘Quick!’ said Theo. ‘Get over to that pit over there. That’s where they’ll make the sacrifice. Where’s Cecil?’

  But Cecil, as I had expected, was already at the pit. No one had told him that the sacrifice would be there, but he had known it by the same unerring instinct that always told him where to find a seat in a crowded train.

  Once again the German was beside me; and once again he stared away with that same brooding sullenness, this time at the straw with which the pit had been filled, while Theo murmured to me in German for his benefit:

  ‘Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten,

  Dass ich so traurig bin …’

  I could not see the relevance of the quotation, but perhaps these were the only words of German that Theo knew.

  ‘I hope I shan’t faint,’ Cecil said. He was busily adjusting the stops of his Leica; he had never looked better.

  I, too, am not ‘good at blood’, and my memory of the actual sacrifice is blurred even as the faces of the eager spectators opposite me were blurred when I gazed across at them, with a nauseous buzzing in my ears, after the animal had slowly folded itself up on to its bed of wet straw. I have a recollection of the large freckled hand of the old man swinging a knife as he gazed skywards, his tawny eyelashes flickering over his pale blue, watery eyes as he murmured an invocation; I can hear again the curious tinkling noise, as of falling coins, when the blood first began to trickle into the basin held by one of the two boys who had brought the calf in; and I can remember, most clearly of all, the extraordinary long-drawn ‘Ah-h-h!’ from the whole crowd as the knife had plunged deep. To me it was a messy and savage end to what had been a ceremony so far beautiful in its simplicity; there is a cruelty in the Greeks which can be found in no other European nation except perhaps the Spanish. But when, afterwards, I told Theo this, he said loftily: ‘Ah, I see that for all your two years in this country, you still have not learned really to appreciate us.’

  The faces before me were still advancing and receding on wave after wave of nausea when I felt myself being pushed violently to one side. It was Götz Joachim who was butting, rather than thrusting, his way through the crowd, his head lowered while his hands flung people to one side or the other. He had reached a tree, and he leaned against it, his pink hair glinting in the sunlight.

  ‘He is going to vomit,’ Theo said. ‘ Poor boy.’

  Having been told that the actual firewalking would not take place until the afternoon, we decided to have lunch and the driver of the hired car in which Theo and Cecil had travelled from Salonica to Langada began to carry innumerable cardboard boxes, paper bags and tins into the taverna where we had already seated ourselves. There were some young lieutenants from the Camp devouring plates of roast lamb that was probably roast goat, and they all gazed at us with a kind of solemn astonishment as Cecil unpacked one delicacy after another: brique and foie gras sandwiches, Scotch eggs, cold chicken and ham, russian salad, chocolate mousse, and Alpine strawberries and cream. ‘You’d think they’d never seen any food in their lives,’ Cecil grunted. ‘ What manners!’ But then, in one of his unaccountable fits of generosity, he passed over to them a whole carton of sandwiches with nothing but a shrug and his small, bitter smile. In return we were sent a carafe of Naoussa wine, excellent in its raw astringency, which Cecil sipped and then pr
oclaimed to be: ‘ Vinegar, my dear—just vinegar.’

  Theo was fond of food: and when, later, I discovered how poor he was, I understood better his mounting excitement as each new delicacy was revealed and laid on the table before him. He kept smiling and rubbing his lean hands together between his knees as he murmured: ‘Foie gras, foie gras! … Chicken! … Mousse! … Petits fours! … A meal for Lucullus! … You have done us proud, Cecil! You have really done us proud!’ He ate in silence and must have consumed more than Cecil and I together.

  Suddenly, as he was wiping the remainder of the russian salad off his plate with a piece of bread on the end of a fork, he looked up and said: ‘There he is again. Now who do you think he is?’

  We followed his gaze out through the door of the taverna into the square where the German was stooping over a tap, apparently brushing his teeth with the forefinger of his right hand while with his left he clutched to himself some kind of painted pot. He had rolled his blue jeans up to his knees to reveal a pair of legs that had a curiously peeled, white appearance until they terminated in the grubbiness of his ankles. ‘ He’s obviously German,’ Theo said. ‘But why have I never seen him before?’

  ‘You ought to be thankful that you haven’t,’ Cecil replied.

  ‘He must be quite six foot six.’ Theo stretched an arm across the table: ‘These Scotch eggs are delicious.’

  The German had begun to shamble over the baked ruts of the square, muttering to himself with lowered head, while his right hand beat a tattoo on the pot held in his left.

  ‘He’s coming in here,’ Theo said.

  Again the young officers all looked up, as the extraordinary tousled figure stood in the doorway, blinking in through the murk. The pot, I now saw, was shaped as a rotund evzone with Langada painted in yellow letters across the swelling belly. Theo had also noticed this, and he whispered to me. ‘Where do you think he got the pot? I’ve been trying to get one of those for years.’