The Firewalkers Page 4

  ‘But you’ll miss the firewalking,’ I said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Have you seen it before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you’re not from here?’

  ‘From here!’ He gave his rumbling laugh as though I had asked some absurd question. ‘I’m from Crete. Have you been to Crete?’

  ‘No.’ I now had some difficulty in talking, as I attempted to staunch my blood with a handkerchief.

  ‘In the war I had a good English friend in Crete.’

  I guessed at once who it would be and mentioned the name.

  The gendarme thumped me on the back, delighted. ‘You know him?’ he asked.

  ‘A little.’

  ‘I helped him capture the German General.’

  I had so often been told this by Cretans that I was beginning to think that the whole island had taken part in this operation, to a man. ‘Oh, yes,’ I said with no particular surprise or enthusiasm; and no doubt it was the apathy that goaded my rescuer into telling me the story of how he had, single-handed, cut off the head of a drunken German. I must have shown my squeamishness, for he again thumped me between the shoulder-blades, giving his bass roar of laughter, as he shouted in reassurance: ‘The English and the Cretans—friends, always friends!’

  Theo arrived at the chemist’s shop, just as the little man in a grubby off-white coat had pressed some sticking plaster on to my cheek and turned to the gendarme to say jovially: ‘Now you can take him away and post him.’

  ‘Ah, there you are!’ Theo still had his willow branches in his hand, but almost all the leaves had been shed. ‘Everyone is looking for you—I have just had a word with the Chief of Police and he was about to send out some motor-cyclists.’ Theo, like most of his countrymen, had a passion for dramatising even the most trivial happenings. ‘We were quite distracted. I saw you make off after that unpleasant incident, and I even saw you fall. But of course I couldn’t get to you, try as I might. Are you badly hurt?’

  ‘No, just bruised ribs and a cut cheek, thank you.’

  ‘No stitches?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Nothing broken?’

  ‘Oh, good heavens, no.’ I began to wish I could produce at least a sprain in order to satisfy him.

  ‘Shock, I expect. It must have been an ordeal.’

  ‘I daresay I’d have fared worse if it hadn’t been for my friend here.’

  Theo had already been glancing at the gendarme, and now he made a dignified bow as he pronounced: ‘My friend and I are extremely grateful to you. I shall mention your conduct to General Stavrides when I lunch with him tomorrow. What is your name?‘

  ‘Kyrmizakis, sir.’

  ‘Ah, a Cretan, I see.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Splendid fellows, these Cretans,’ he turned to me, in English. ‘It’s the Berber strain.’

  ‘Did you see the firewalking?’

  ‘See—nothing! But … I felt it. That is the important thing. I felt it. All that shouting and agitated movement and heedless pressing onwards, as the divine wind blew through them! It was magnificent.… I doubt if you see anything like that in your over-civilised England.’

  I repressed the desire to mention Wembley, and asked: ‘And Cecil! How did he fare?’

  ‘He saw everything—every single thing!’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Of course!’ Theo chuckled, his pointed chin sinking deep into the folds of his scarf. ‘ But the poor German boy—Cecil tells me that he jumped on to the fire and then had to jump off pretty quick.’

  As Theo said this, the bell over the door of the shop tinkled and Götz himself limped in. His face was blackened with smoke, his eyes were red-rimmed. In one hand he carried his brown canvas gym-shoes and in the other he trailed a pair of soggy, khaki socks. He came towards us, performing the difficult feat of walking on his heels, and gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I was not much good at it,’ he said.

  ‘Burned?’ Theo asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Götz sank on to a chair, and raising one vast foot between both hands, peered down at it.

  ‘Badly?’

  ‘Blisters everywhere.’

  Theo and the gendarme were now also peering at the foot and I realised that I had completely forfeited both their attention and their sympathy. Cecil came in:

  ‘Oh, here you are,’ he said casually. ‘You were a fool, you missed everything. It really does happen, you know. There was one old girl who was fairly leaping about on the flames, and the extraordinary thing is that even though her skirt reached to the ground it was not even singed. I’ve just been examining it.… I got some excellent photographs—a really funny one of our German at the moment when he——’ I put out a warning hand. ‘What’s the matter? … Oh, I see.’ Cecil strolled over to the group fussing around Götz. He looked with extreme distaste at the grubby and blistered foot, and then turned away as he said: ‘ In life nowadays there’s no place for the amateur.… Who’s the friend?’

  ‘Which friend?’

  ‘The policeman.’

  I explained how I had been rescued. ‘ What fun!’ Cecil said, in the toneless voice which he used both when he felt no interest and when he wished to conceal his interest.

  After Götz’s feet had been bandaged up, we all went into a taverna to drink some ouzo. The gendarme, having swallowed four or five glasses in rapid succession, once again began to guffaw and thump me between the shoulder-blades as he resumed the blood-curdling narrative of his exploits against the Germans. Holding out his massive hairy hands he demonstrated how he had strangled a man who had violated one of his cousins; then he tossed back some more of the fiery, opalescent spirit. Cecil began to whisper in Theo’s ear.

  Theo turned to me. ‘You will of course come back in our car with us? We can arrange for your bicycle to be brought in by a lorry—perhaps we can even strap it on the car.… And you, Herr Joachim—how are you planning to return to Salonica?’

  ‘I think hitch-hike.’

  ‘With your feet in that condition? … No, you had far better come with us.’ I suddenly received a sharp kick on the ankle which, I suspect, Cecil had intended for Theo. ‘We have a large car, with plenty of room.’ Now Theo turned to the gendarme and asked in Greek: ‘And how do you return?’

  ‘There’s a lorry for us, leaving at seven.’

  ‘Can we give you a lift—if you don’t want to wait about, that is? You were so kind to our friend here.’ He indicated me. ‘Have you more duty this evening?’

  The gendarme shook his head.

  ‘Ah. Good.’

  The car was an American one and as the driver opened the back door, Theo said: ‘Will you get in, Herr Joachim? Then I shall place myself between you and Mr Cauldwell.… Our host and the excellent Kyrmizakis can sit in front. All right?’

  As we began to race back to Salonica through the gathering twilight, Theo put one bony hand on Götz’s knee and another on mine: ‘ Well, this seems a most satisfactory end to a day of alarms and excursions.… Eh, Cecil?’

  ‘Most satisfactory, Theo.’

  Chapter Two

  THE next day Cecil asked me to join him and Theo on an expedition to Michaniona, a small fishing village some twelve miles from Salonica. ‘People tell me that it’s fruitful,’ he explained. Wherever he travelled, Cecil always had such tips about places; and nearly always such tips proved reliable. I had often wondered how he came by them.

  When I arrived, five minutes late, outside the cinema where we had arranged to meet, Cecil alone was there. ‘Theo has disappeared,’ he greeted me, without even answering my ‘Good morning’.

  ‘Disappeared?’ I was alarmed by the dramatic announcement.

  ‘A moment ago he was looking at these photographs’—he pointed to some cinema stills of Alan Ladd’s torso, yellow and curling at the edges, fixed with drawing-pins to a board by the door—‘ and then, when I looked round for him, I couldn’t find him anywhere. He’s maddening, absolutely ma
ddening. It’s been like this the whole trip. If he disappeared for good I wouldn’t mind so much, but of course I can always be certain that he’ll pop back for the next meal. He hasn’t got a penny.’

  Even at such moments I had the impression, when I was talking to Cecil, that he was giving me only half his attention. He was exasperated with Theo, that of course was plain; yet as he grumbled about him to me, I became aware that his gaze was moving away over my shoulder and that his voice had taken on the mechanical tone with which one repeats a well-learned lesson while thinking of something else. It was rarely that one felt one was in complete contact with Cecil for more than five minutes at a stretch; he had the restlessness of a person waiting for a train that never comes, and his restlessness used to transmit itself to others so that when one stayed with him in his luxurious villa in Florence one found oneself switching the radiogram off and on, picking up and putting down a number of books which one never finished reading, and standing for long, vacant intervals on the balcony overlooking the Fiesole road as if in expectation of a guest more amusing than those already gathered around one.

  ‘Oh, there he is!’ Theo was on the opposite side of the road, nervously stepping out into the gutter and then drawing back on to the pavement as, far off, a vehicle could be seen approaching. ‘Theo!’ Cecil shouted. ‘ Come here at once! Come here!’

  At the sound of the imperious voice the old man looked right and left with a kind of fumbling panic, then lowered his head on which, I noticed, he was wearing a small green beret, and charged towards us, narrowly missing one of the mustard-coloured coffins on wheels which pass for trams in Salonica.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Cecil demanded.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Cauldwell.’ Theo bowed to me with ceremonious dignity.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Cecil repeated.

  ‘I remembered that the Cosmopolite Hotel was just round that corner, so I thought I would go and see our friend,’ Theo explained gently. ‘He was in bed.’

  ‘What friend?’

  ‘Our German friend. You must really visit that hotel, Cecil—I’m sure you would find it—er—interesting. The poor boy was in a dormitory for six—at this hour the other occupants were not, of course, there. Such a curious collection of belongings,’ he went on dreamily, ‘all mixed up together: dirty socks, and a piano-accordion, and a soldier’s belt and a copy of the Readers Digest——’

  ‘Oh, let’s go!’ Cecil put in rudely.

  ‘But we’ll have to wait for the German.’

  ‘The German? Why should we wait for the German?’

  ‘Well, he looked so pathetically lonely there in that narrow bed in that enormous cellar—and he said he had nothing to do and nowhere to go——’

  ‘Oh, Theo, really! So I suppose you’ve asked him to join us?’

  Theo nodded,

  ‘No, really, Theo!’

  ‘He won’t keep us a moment. Fortunately he appeared to be in bed with all his clothes on, and he tells me that he only shaves once a week.… You don’t mind, do you?’ He now turned to me. ‘I think he’s a good sort.’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind.’

  Götz now appeared, looking exactly as he had looked the previous day except that he was wearing sandals instead of the brown canvas gym-shoes and that his eyes seemed to be still half gummed together with sleep. He was carrying under one arm a bulging brown paper envelope stuffed with his photographs, which turned out to be of a quite unusual excellence when he showed them to us at lunch. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Good morning.’ Cecil did not reply but Theo said: ‘Ah, but how quick you have been!’

  Götz, who was now standing opposite me, replied with a massive yawn and stretch, not bothering to turn away or even to raise one of his paws to his gaping mouth. I was reminded of how on Sunday mornings in Greece one passes the open doors of the cinemas that are being ‘aired’ for the next week; the odour that escaped from the cavern of his mouth was not, at that moment, unlike the odour of that seven days’ ‘ fug’.

  ‘Have you found a taxi, Theo?’ Cecil demanded.

  ‘No, not yet. There’s a rank in the square.’

  Cecil made an exclamation of annoyance and shot off, pursued by Theo and then by Götz and myself, Götz still limping from his burns of the previous day.

  In the square there followed an involved argument between Theo and Cecil which I had difficulty in understanding, since it was carried on almost entirely in mumbled asides and whispers; it seemed to be about the taxi we should choose, but as there was one large, comfortably modern Buick gleaming in the middle of the line of otherwise battered pre-war vehicles, I wondered how there could possibly be any dispute. Theo was going to one car after another, peering in and saying a few words to the driver; after which Cecil would also peer in, and they would again begin arguing. From time to time I would catch some fragment of what they whispered:

  ‘… We’d better take that one there.’

  ‘That one?’

  ‘No, that one, you fool!’

  ‘But he wants a hundred and fifty thousand. It’s preposterous.’

  ‘I’ve told you I don’t care how much he wants.’

  ‘I think the Citroen would be a better investment.’

  ‘Which is the Citroen?’

  ‘That one.’

  ‘No, certainly not!’

  A minute later I heard:

  ‘… But where is he from?’

  ‘Tripolis.’

  ‘Ah, Tripolis. One can usually rely on Tripolis.’

  ‘Only Patras is better.’

  ‘And Heracleion.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Epaminondas.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Epaminondas.’

  ‘But I’ve never heard that name before! Tell him that we’ll take him.’

  I began to wonder whether we had been choosing a car or a driver; and for some reason, I all at once remembered the last time I had seen Cecil, when both of us were leaving England, he for his Florence villa and I for my job in Salonica. Since I was to travel as far as Florence as a passenger in his Jaguar, he had asked me to spend the night before our departure at his mother’s country house near Folkestone. Lady Provender was a small, vital and sharp-tongued woman who, it was obvious, adored her only son and was adored in turn by him. When the time came to say goodbye Cecil embraced her with the words: ‘It’s sad that we should see so little of each other, Mother—you here, and I in Florence.’

  ‘Yes, my dear, it is sad.’ Lady Provender patted his hand which she held in both of hers. Then she looked up at him and smiled: ‘But I’m quite sure that you did right when you decided to settle abroad.’

  I was beginning to see now what she must have meant.

  That morning Theo was wearing an extraordinary ring which covered almost the whole of his right forefinger. He had, he explained, made it himself from three sea-shells and it represented the Marriage of Heaven and Hell—a piece of symbolism which, I must confess, eluded me as much as the driver who had been the first to comment on it. On Theo’s knobbly, wax-coloured finger the shells, of the same colour and texture as his skin, seemed to grow together like some monstrous excrescence. ‘I make shell jewellery for Mrs Rhys, for the Queen, and for the wife of the British Ambassador,’ Theo said complacently. ‘All my jewellery is, of course, fantasiometric.’ It was the first time I had heard this word; it was not to be the last.

  ‘It’s vonderful!’ Götz exclaimed.

  The young man, Epaminondas from Tripolis, who was driving the car, shrugged his well-padded shoulders and smiled superciliously as he said in Greek: ‘I wouldn’t give a cigarette for that ring.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you would,’ Theo retorted coldly. ‘I don’t expect you to understand its significance.’

  The young man laughed; he had a face that was ‘fresh’ in both senses of the word, the colour agreeably high and the expression disagreeably insolent. The nails of his little fingers were grown to mandarin-like le
ngths. ‘There’s no accounting for taste,’ he now replied airily. ‘I certainly wouldn’t want to be seen with three sea-shells dangling from one finger.’

  ‘This young man is extremely impertinent,’ Theo said in English. ‘The advantage of coming from Tripolis is usually outweighed by that disadvantage, I find: the people are all ill-bred.’

  ‘I can understand English,’ Epaminondas said in Greek. I did not believe him; but one usually realises when uncomplimentary things are being said about one in a language one does not know.

  ‘Get on with your driving,’ Theo said, ‘and mind your own business.’

  ‘What are you saying to him?’ Cecil demanded. He turned to me: ‘Theo always succeeds in rubbing up everyone the wrong way.’

  Simultaneously the young man had said something to Theo which must have been unusually insulting as Theo went bright red and shouted: ‘ Get on with your driving and shut up! Shut up!’

  ‘Theo, I forbid you to behave like that to the driver. What are you doing to the poor boy? Can’t you leave him alone? What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘I will not be insulted,’ Theo said doggedly. ‘Not for anyone. Not even for you.’

  There was silence until we reached Michaniona.

  The proximity of this small fishing village had been for me one of the few consolations of living in a city which Edmond About seems to me aptly to have described as ‘an ante-room to Hell’. At all seasons Michaniona was equally beautiful. In winter, I would take a ’bus out to it and would walk along the shore deserted except for a few solitary fishermen mending their boats; the air would be icy and clear, the sky and sea dizzying in their candour, there would be no sound but the lapping of waves, the screams of sea-birds, and, far off, the steady plock-plock-plock of an axe pruning olive trees. On a spring day such as this the beach-side tavernas and cafés, closed during the winter, would once more be open, though their owners would still be re-thatching with bamboo the concrete platforms on which the tables were set and re-painting, olive-green or red, the bathing-huts which looked like rows of narrow horse-boxes; a few people, usually American or English, would venture into the sea which they would screamingly proclaim to be ‘freezing’ although, already, it would be warmer than the sea in England in June. In summer, I would come here at night on the crowded, lurching steamer which had a loudspeaker so noisy that even when it was five miles from shore I could hear its music across the water from my flat. I would arrive sticky and dusty and cross, fling off my clothes and race into the moonlit waves, so charged with phosphorus that when one raised an arm the flesh glowed as if one had dipped it in luminous paint.