Apartment in Athens (12 page)

Presently, at a moment when the work (whatever it was) seemed to vex the military man especially, Helianos plucked up his courage and said, “Sir, if this thing you have to do is nothing confidential, nothing military, perhaps I could help you. I was the accountant in our publishing business when I was young, when my father was alive. I know bookkeeping and my handwriting is neat.”

Somewhat in his former rough way the major looked up, perhaps inclined to regard this as impertinent or too prying. But the peaceful face of Helianos reassured him. He replied a little stiffly, “Thank you, no. I am making my will, that is, re-making my will. I must do it myself. I have property, and in time of war it is hard to handle such things. There are many new laws, but I have informed myself. That is all. Do not concern yourself with it.”

But an hour later he asked Helianos to prepare him a glass of hot wine, and as he sipped it, volunteered a little more information. “You see, I have no family,” he began.

Helianos glanced up to the top of the desk where the three photographs used to stand in a row; they were not there now.

“I have no family,” the major repeated, “and it might interest you to know how I am disposing of my modest fortune. You foreigners think of us as men of action only: as statesmen, as political leaders, in world politics too, and as soldiers. Which we are; but it is only the half-truth. You forget what we have done for civilization: philosophy, science, music.”

Helianos assured him that he personally had not forgotten it.

It was a somewhat mumbled interruption and the major took no notice of it. “Music is what I love best,” he went on. “Now, as I am a good patriot and a National Socialist, naturally I considered leaving my property to the party, or to a welfare organization, war widows, or something of that kind.

“But no, I reminded myself, no! If things were to go badly in the next few years and our German musicians suffered great hardship, it would be disastrous. Some of our new young men in the government—their lives have been so laborious and exciting—are perhaps a bit shortsighted about such things.

“It would be the end of music all over the world; dead silence everywhere, am I not right? You Balkans have no music, have you? Neither have the Anglo-Saxons, and French music, what foolishness! Therefore the bulk of the proceeds of my estate is to go to a music school in Leipzig, for scholarships and for a pension-fund.”

In so far as Kalter's purpose in telling Helianos this had been to impress him, he succeeded, although of course as an Athenian Greek he did not like to be sneeringly called a Balkan. What mistakes one kept making about Germans, Helianos sighed. It never would have crossed his mind that this one had any great cultural enthusiasm—the future of music, of all things!—or that he was a man of property either.

Mrs. Helianos, when he reported it to her, was not impressed. “But, my dear gullible husband, we know for a fact that he has a family. Have you forgotten the photographs: the elegant mother-in-law and the sourfaced boys in uniform?

“If he is telling you the truth about his new will, which I very much doubt, then it must be in typical German heartlessness and spite,” she concluded, “to disinherit someone.”

Of course she intensely disapproved of her husband's new sociability with the major, and expressed it or at least implied it every hour, every day, every hour, either in a scolding way or with strange pathos. Once or twice Helianos replied to her about it indignantly. “Is it not natural for two men living under the same roof to talk things over,” he wanted to know, “whether or not they like one another, with or without real agreement? You do not think that I always agree with him, do you?”

No, she did not think that. Little by little he got her to speak her mind about it, her divided mind. On the one hand, her dear husband was the most charming man in the world, in her opinion. Even a foreigner, even an enemy, even terrible Kalter, might yield to his charm, and some advantage to them all might ensue; she hoped so.

On the other hand, she had decided, he was unwise and indiscreet. One of these days, with a slip of his tongue, absent-mindedly, he might say the wrong thing; her dread of that was inexpressible. Then as a warning she gave a series of past examples of his indiscretion, which bored him, and nagged at him about it off and on until he grew resentful; and when she saw his resentment, relapsed into her pathetic brooding.

It was flattering to him on the one hand, exasperating on the other; but it was hard for him to argue with her about any such thing now, because he was worried about her. She had always had a mind of her own, but of late, he thought, it had gone too far. Agitatedly over and over she would harp on certain subjects all the day long, then suddenly shift, and fall into a kind of heavy daydream in which she would not express herself at all for hours. Sometimes she went from the one extreme to the other with a rapidity and apparent lack of sequence that startled him: up and up with her fiery spirit, in some conceited opinion, vain anger, even unexpected mirth; then in an instant down, as it were visibly into a pit, a soft hopelessness. Often when her spirits fell Helianos could see where Leda got her little scowling self-absorption, her apathy and loss of herself in emotion.

There were days when she talked to herself rather than to him. He would hear her, sometimes quite loud, in the kitchen or the children's bedroom, and at first he would think that the children were with her; then find her alone. She had never done that before, and what he heard alarmed him: little exclamatory phrases, as it were bits of some obscure poem or play, little retorts arising out of some inner argument.

In his presence of course it was never more than a tiny whisper, or soundless pantomime of her poor pale mouth. But long ago, when the major was still a captain, they had learned to read each other's lips, and he read hers now, when they were not addressing themselves to him. For the most part it was familiar subject-matter—her sorrow for Cimon, her dread of what Alex might do next, her mistrust of Kalter, her anxieties about Helianos himself—but there was an increase of the phrases he could not understand; and sometimes the soundless utterance turned to mere grimacing. Of course as soon as she noticed his anxious eyes fixed on her lips, she ceased. She talked wildly in her sleep as well, and she had never done that before.

Poor weak weary woman! Helianos had less and less confidence in her, as to her future, as she grew old. Sometimes with a desperate compassion he said to himself that if the war went on much longer she might lose her mind little by little. Or if she were to be overtaken once more by grief—his death, for example, or the death of another of their children—or by extreme hardship, as it had been before the major changed, or even by great anger, she might suddenly go mad.

His friendliness with the major of course was one of the subjects she harped on, even to herself, even in sleep; but in Helianos' opinion that was not a serious matter. Certainly it was too foolish to affect her very deeply. It was nothing but her excess of imagination and lack of good judgment.

As he was a Greek, it was not in his nature to condemn a woman very severely for a mere error or shortcoming of intellect; and as he was a good man he wanted not to wound her self-esteem if he could help it. He did not reply to her nagging about his evenings in the sitting room as sharply as he knew how. Instead, in the major's absence or in their midnight hours, to flatter her and reassure her, he told her more and more of the subjects of their manly conversations, encouraging her to protest openly and to argue with him upon every point all she liked.

Still it did not satisfy her, she did not trust him. As she lay by herself on the folding cot in the kitchen, her ears were as sharp as some old watch-dog's dozing by the hearth. Through the thin partitions she heard Helianos' voice and the dread German voice the minute they began any important conversation; then arose and tiptoed into the children's bedroom, and opened the clothes closet and shut herself in, and there among the outworn family shoes and under the ragged family garments, crouched or knelt where there was a crevice along the baseboard, and hearkened to all they said night after night.

It was young Alex who, with a flash of his love of melodrama in his dark eyes, informed his father of this. For two or three evenings Helianos was made exceedingly nervous by it, sitting with the major, but forewarned of her coming; listening, then hearing her characteristic tripping step, the opening and closing of the closet door, the creak of the floor boards. The major too might have heard it; but if he did, he must have presumed that it was only Alex and Leda. Helianos accustomed himself to it and sometimes it gave him an absurd sweet satisfaction. Dear comforting though exasperating presence; love in the wainscoting, scratching softly like a mouse, knocking softly like a ghost! The secret of a good old marriage like theirs, symbolized, he said to himself, in his fanciful humor.

Then he decided that her spying on them probably had no harmful spirit or morbid motivation; it was because she was bored and lonely. In the great days before the war she had been a most sociable little Athenian, back and forth with the neighbors in Psyhiko, and with the family, his kin as well as her own. Also she might be a little jealous; the time he spent in the sitting room was, after all, subtracted from the twenty-four hours of their dear wedlock.

Furthermore, the fond, vain husband said to himself, a good deal of the talk in the sitting room was well worth listening to; and if the major continued in his present civility, it would get better and better: revelation of the foreign mentality, and deep and prophetic historic principle. Surely it was a good thing for Greeks to learn what manner of world these world-conquerors intended! He took some credit to himself for all this. Was it not his tact and his dialectic which little by little drew the major out? The previous year, with a chip on his shoulder, he must not have been good company; whereas now he had relaxed, and recovered some of his social graces of before the war.

One evening Kalter brought home a bottle of German brandy; and after dinner gave Helianos a small amount, and drank a large amount himself, and discoursed upon the subject of the heroic aims of his great nation, so misinterpreted in all those nations pretending to have united against it. He himself brought it up, a bit irritably, and succinctly at first, merely exclaiming against the united international error. Perhaps as he had gone about Athens that day, someone had said something challenging to him or provoked him by some silliness.

Then, as he sat and relaxed with Helianos, Helianos expressing an interest, he began expounding his views at greater length in a more mellow, sententious way.

There was no excuse, as it seemed to him, for anyone's not knowing the German purpose by this time. “For it is a platitude among ourselves,” he said, “and again and again our statesmen and writers have explained it, with the wonderful German frankness. Only, the rest of the world has never paid attention. That is how wars start!”

As Helianos rephrased this to himself, with his humor, it was as if the Germans felt obliged to wage war now and then in order to prove that they meant what they said.

“The incredulity of the foreign nations is fantastic!” Kalter exclaimed. “It is one of their worst weaknesses.”

Helianos detected in his enunciation some slight influence of the brandy; and he remembered that all during 1942, in so far as they could tell, he had never drunk a drop.

Now he lit a strong-smelling cigar, with sensitive motions of his fingers and his lips showing his pleasure in it; and gave Helianos a benevolent look, as if he saw in him and was pleased to see in him a less weak, less incredulous foreigner than most; and proceeded to explain something of the German purpose, in his fashion.

“Naturally the German nation is superior in actually waging a war, all other things being equal; that is, unless it has been betrayed by the internationally-minded Jews or something of that sort. In fact,” he pointed out, “the nations opposed to Germany are all more or less agreed about this. Even the way they deplore it is a kind of admiration.”

As he went on talking the effect of the brandy wore off, although he still took a sip now and then; the intensity of his conviction of what he was saying counteracted it. He grew extremely earnest and impressive.

“But,” he said, “superiority in warfare itself is not everything. It is only one side of the greatness of the nation, one aspect of the problem of rising above other nations. It is not always possible to win a war; there are overwhelming odds, there are circumstances, turns of the tide. . .

“But for us losing a war, a given war, makes no difference, do you see? It made no difference in 1918. Now suppose we were to lose the present war; what of it?”

Helianos looked at him sharply, with a little heart-beat, never having been asked by anyone to suppose any such thing. So perhaps, that night when he had watched over him in his uneasy sleep like a common soldier with his uniform and his boots on—the dream of German defeat, the notion that on leave in Germany he might have seen signs of it—had not been all foolishness!

But Kalter went on loudly, as if in answer, “We will not lose it, never fear! But let us suppose that we were to, just for the argument's sake. What would be the result? It would only strengthen us in the long run. The bitterness of defeat intensifies the spirit of the nation, increases the national aptitude for war. By the loss of old manpower, with virility of the young men and fecundity of the young women, the nation is rejuvenated. And defeat teaches us so much! We grow more and more capable, especially in propaganda. . .”

His next point was almost mystical, but none the less arresting for that, Helianos thought. It was that if a nation is to wage war really well, it must not be simply for victory's sake, but with a longer view and a higher ideal, for its own sake.

“Do you know,” he said, “I honestly believe that most Germans, that is, the aristocracy and the new aristocracy, the leaders and governing classes, do not care whether they win or not. It is worthwhile anyway, it is the best part of life, and the ideal way to die. It is a force of nature in them, as, for example, motherhood is in women; not caring for the pain, not counting the cost.