Apartment in Athens (15 page)

Meanwhile this German said, “You have no idea, Helianos—you don't know anything about it, you don't understand anything—but listen: I am so weary of the war! When we suffer too much, we get too sensitive to the suffering of other people, even though we know that their suffering is nothing like our own. I can't fight any more. All I want in the world is to listen to music; to sit listening and remembering, remembering my martyred wife and my heroic boys; to pass the time, the rest of my time. I know, of course, after the war everyone will feel like this for a while. But I can't wait, I am in hell, hell on earth, I won't wait.”

He paused for a moment, covering his face with his hands, then uncovering it and twisting it down like a tragic mask, clenching his hands and giving little strokes in the air before him; striving either to control his feeling or to enact it physically—Helianos could not tell which.

Then he said, “Seven weeks ago; two months will have passed in less than a fortnight; it was on a Saturday. The hour coming round every afternoon, and the day of the week, and the date of the month; and it has been worse for me every minute. God, I've behaved well, I've been good, going on at headquarters, letting everything else slide, treating you so well, just trying to pass the time, talking, talking! I know the minute, sixteen minutes before three, when it comes. Always an anniversary, every hour is a year long. Always in my mind, a huge horrible clock striking!”

Having said this, he sat in absolute immobility and in silence, and shed tears again. It was a strange thing to watch; it was so imperturbable. Suddenly his face all twisted into the ugliness of grief, and not one muscle in it moved after that; only the tear-ducts were alive and active, and his tears were not drops but a little inundation down his cheeks, all the way down to his chin. It was like seeing sculpture weep, not Greek sculpture of course; Gothic sculpture. . .

He was facing the window, and the bright light caught the scar and the scar-like mouth, emphasized the asymmetry of the nose, showed up the deep lines and hollowed-out places in his cheeks, where the hand of the sculptor had slipped.

Whereupon that sculpture was moved to say something more but for a moment was unable to, with every muscle straining and straightening it into shape; then said, “Helianos, listen, the reason I have been making my will, the reason you see me in this shameful unmanly grief, like a damned Frenchman or damned Jew. . .

“Listen to me: I have decided to commit suicide. I cannot go on. It isn't that I will not, I cannot. I am good for nothing now, my nerves are broken. I can think all right, as a good German should think, I can talk as I should—I made it all clear to you, the great cause of the fatherland, didn't I?—but it's no good, the emotion is dead. I cannot bear to go on living, I loathe living. It is a psychopathic condition.”

This speech was all in a half-whisper, soft and hurried like someone in love, and singsong like a sick infant; and when he fell silent his grimacing and tears began again. The spring sunshine made the tears shine down his cheeks, streaky, greasy. He began shaking his head back and forth, back and forth.

“One night,” he murmured or mumbled softly, “one night I fell asleep without undressing, without getting into bed. That night you forgot to bring me my hot water—oh, Helianos, you're so forgetful!— and I did not wake up until the middle of the night. That night I knew that I couldn't go on, I stopped trying; and, Helianos, I can't tell you what a relief it was when I decided it. I could have done it then, only I had to wind up my affairs all in order, to hand over my responsibilities to von Roesch and the others, gradually, so they wouldn't notice it; and to re-make my will, for the musicians.”

So, so, Helianos said to himself, so one did find out the causes of things sooner or later. He wondered if his wife was in the clothes closet; if this plaint had softened now to the point where she could not hear it. Unmanly grief indeed, although not really like that of any Frenchman or Jew he happened to know. While Kalter was silent he listened for Mrs. Helianos, and could not detect the least rustle or mousy stir or creak of the floor-board. He hoped she was not there. For, as she was a creature of heart rather than head, with her own bereavement, and her own thought of suicide, this would be worse for her poor failing spirit than any amount of clever hair-raising explanation of the German purpose, the Germanized world, Germany forever. Whether it moved her to compassion or to rancor and scorn, no matter, it would upset her.

He was glad, too, that the children were not indoors, especially young Alex possessed of the devil. To know that the German was in tears, heartbroken, would excite him so; and he might make some jubilant noise or impertinent remark or gleeful grimace which would irk poor Kalter unbearably.

It did not occur to Helianos that the threat of suicide was to be taken seriously; nevertheless the effect of it was to make the threatener more sympathetic to him. Perhaps any invocation of death or even mention of death does that. It is so universal and exalted a thing in itself. . .

But intermixed with his sympathy was also a certain uneasiness; as it were a slight revival of the way he used to feel in the old days, Kalter's unregenerate days. Now that the secret of his changed character was out, now that he had acknowledged and in fact dramatized his bereavement, might he not suddenly turn to some other aspect of himself, or turn back? The instant weakening of so powerful a creature, shameless avowal of a state of mind so shameful, and supererogation of death in the talk of killing himself—as if the deaths of a wife and two sons were not enough, to say nothing of the rest of the world delivered to death by German ambition!—it was all too strange for comfort; too sudden and incoherent for a Greek mind.

Still he could not think what to say. He thought himself stupid; the contemplation of grief always makes one stupid. And physical creature that he was, he still felt his rebellion against odious fate, everyone's fate, death, war; his tremor of knee and hindrance of speech. But at last he found his voice and said a very simple thing, “I am sorry, sir.”

To which the major did not reply or respond even by a glance.

Then Helianos felt a stubbornness about it, and protested, determined to convince this self-absorbed sufferer that it really was so, he did pity him.

“May I tell you, Major Kalter,” he went on, “I lost my son, two years ago on Mount Olympos. I can understand your unhappiness. My elder son; he was worth more than little Alex and little Leda. But I admit that it was not a great loss, compared with what you have lost.”

It occurred to him with some bitter irony that he could scarcely say more than that! But in spite of bitterness his pity suddenly became quite real to him. It was as if he had tried not to feel it, not to mean it, but then did. Once more he was struck by the realization that Kalter was sincere, sincere at least in his suffering, sincere at last; therefore so was he.

Still, Kalter did not answer. Only his wet eyes seemed to dry up enough to focus on him; and they appeared to be ordinary humane grief-stricken eyes, like anyone else's, Helianos thought, not fierce or unfriendly; and he hung his head, he shook his hanging head as if in an effort to listen; and he began hunting in his uniform for a handkerchief. Helianos felt that his sympathy had been accepted.

“Oh, Major Kalter,” he exclaimed, really meaning no harm, thinking out loud, “is it not intolerable? To think that two men, two men with too much power, fatal tragic men, should have brought all this tragedy upon us other men?”

Major Kalter's head jerked up to attention. “Two men? What do you mean?” he demanded. “What two men?”

“I mean the Fuehrer and the Duce,” Helianos answered, without stopping to think.

That was his undoing. Major Kalter sprang to his feet and stumbled over to him, in a worse rage than ever before. Helianos too sprang to his feet and tried to get away but he was not quick enough.

“How dare you, you vile Greek,” the major shouted, “how dare you say a word against the Fuehrer!” And he struck the vile Greek in the face, first one side, then the other side; resounding slaps.

“You stupid subnormal brute, filthy Slav! Defy the Fuehrer, will you? Sneer at the Italians, will you?”

And this time the look of shock and mortification, the Greek mouth gaping open, the Greek eyes puckered out of sight, did not satisfy him. This time he followed him, drove him stumbling back step by step across the room, and knocked him hard against the wall, and kicked him, with imprecations—damned coward, treacherous animal, cheating bootlicking old sick thing, sickening old fool—and all the while Helianos kept trying to apologize and he continued shouting, damning him, and accusing him of things.

“We'll pound it out of you, the nonsense! Damn you, damn you! You'll not speak of the Fuehrer again, we'll fix you,” he threatened, with untranslatable curse-words, at the top of his voice; his voice breaking on the top-notes, in the worst insults and worst threats.

Away in the kitchen, meanwhile, Mrs. Helianos had heard the first shout and come scurrying to her post in the clothes closet; and there beneath the clothes and amid the shoes, when the slaps and kicks began, she began to weep, reaching up and drawing the hem of one of her dresses and the cuff of a pair of Helianos' trousers over her face, to muffle the sound of her weeping. Thus she heard all the major's insults, from which she gathered that Helianos had said something insulting about the German chief of state; the major alluded to it in every other shout.

“Whatever possessed Helianos, oh, whatever possessed him!” she cried, as softly as she could. “I warned him, what madness, whatever shall I do!” she lamented, stuffing the hem of a dress into her mouth to hush her cries, in order to hear more.

Then the major somewhat relaxed his angry effort, and the woman in the clothes closet heard her husband's softer voice apologizing, in unutterable regret and confusion; her husband sobbing softly and hiccoughing, stumbling away and sinking into a chair and still apologizing, which was heartbreaking for her to hear, shameful to hear.

And from what Helianos said—still, by way of apology, offering his vain condolences—she gathered that the major's wife and two sons were dead. It explained the German sadness and gentleness all month, which Helianos, poor accursed mortal, had so tormented himself to understand; it made the German violence of the moment more beastly. The major himself alluded to it in his diminishing shouts; his very natural sorrow for himself resuming at the end of his anger. . .

His shouts and his blows abated suddenly. His voice sounded normal, perhaps even quieter than usual, but still clear and with a little regular official martial rhythm, saying, “You poor rascally old Greek, I thought you were more intelligent than the others. I thought you knew better than this. You know what comes next, I presume. I now telephone the military police to come here and take you in custody.”

He paused a while, to let that sink in, then said, quieter still, “I am sorry for you, you fool, but it cannot be helped. It is what has to be done in such a case.”

Mrs. Helianos, in the clothes closet, hearing this, trembled so that it seemed impossible to get to her feet. She crawled out into the children's room on her hands and knees, and there quickly gathered strength, and hastened down the corridor, in despair but in hope; hope of preventing Helianos' arrest somehow, by protesting, arguing, imploring.

But when she reached the sitting-room door it opened, and there stood the major with his pistol drawn, pointed not at her but sideways at Helianos; and he snapped at her, “You unfortunate woman, your husband is under arrest. Go away!”

He slammed the door and locked it. There she stood a moment twisting the doorknob, pressing against the door, and through it she heard him repeat, still in the calm but percussive voice, the marching little rhythm, “Sorry, it must be, you're a fool, it's my duty. . .”

Then she hastened back to the clothes closet, knelt again and heard him quietly and concisely telephoning, and could not endure it. She stood up, and got her head entangled in the coats and skirts, which came down with a clatter of a couple of coat-hangers; and as she came through the children's room she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror in that accidental, incongruous garb, like a madwoman, veiled with a petticoat, cloaked with trousers. She felt faint, and as fast as possible crept to her bed in the kitchen, shedding the old clothes behind her, and in her impatience, afraid of fainting away before she got there, tearing the bodice of her dress down off one shoulder as well.

She did not faint away; but her heart was so sick that she could only lie still, helpless, a long time—sweating and salivating, wringing her hands, biting her fingertips, listening to her blood ceasing, and starting again with a little thunder, and ceasing again—until after the soldiers had come and gone with Helianos, until Alex and Leda returned from wherever they had been all this time.

They came up the stairway from the street just as Helianos went down, between two soldiers—young, impassive, even good-natured fellows, for whom this was all in the day's work—followed half a flight up by Major Kalter, formal and portentous. The children saw their father before he saw them; instantly sensed what the escort of Germans meant; and turned and fled back down to the street.

Thus the last Helianos saw of them was their springing, skipping, fleeing away two steps at a time, as if they were afraid of him. He called after them, “Wait, your mother is ill! Alex, Leda, your mother has had a heart attack. Go and get the doctor for your mother!”

T
HOUGH ALEX HAD NOT DARED TO TURN AND ACKNOWLEDGE
his father's last instruction, he had heard it. To be quick about it, to run all the way to the doctor's and back, his problem was what to do with Leda in the meantime, where to leave Leda. The street-corner would not do, the vacant lot where they played would not do. She shrank from passers-by, and when by herself, was apt to be panic-stricken if she had any sort of open space around her or distance stretching away before her. She preferred enclosures and hiding-places and shadows.