Skios

3

Nikki walked slowly through the green territory of the foundation, up and down the winding hilly paths, looking out at the bay and the piled summer clouds. The light was softening as the afternoon slipped into evening. There was a suggestion of gold in the air.

She loved this place. Everything was so at ease with itself, so delicately balanced, like the works of a good watch, or nature itself. The web of pipes and sprinklers that kept everything so green was discreetly concealed. So was the flow of money that kept the sprinklers sprinkling. It was a complete world, a miniature model of the European civilization that it existed to promote, and she could almost feel it sitting in the palm of her hand, its clockwork quietly humming. The only piece of the machinery that stuck a little, that threw the whole clock slightly out of true, was the bit that was concealed behind the closed shutters of Empedocles, the villa high above all the others, where the emaciated and failing director was hidden away. Though perhaps for not much longer …

From the fishermanless fishermen’s cottages along the waterfront, and from suites in villas hidden among the trees all over the headland that the foundation occupied, from Leucippus and Anaximander, from Xenocles, Theodectes, Menander, Aristophanes, and Antiphanes, more and more of the House Party guests were emerging, looking for food and drink. Two hours or more had gone by since they had last been fed and watered.

She imagined that she was seeing it all for the first time, as Dr. Wilfred would shortly be seeing it. How would he feel it compared with all the other foundations and institutes that he had spoken at around the world? She imagined him at her side, looking and listening appreciatively as she explained it all to him. He might be a more sympathetic person than she had supposed as she transcribed his CV. He was, she could feel it. He was someone you could talk to.

“Most of our guests are from the States,” she found she was telling him, her words as inaudible to anyone else as he was invisible. “All horribly rich, of course, or they wouldn’t be here. But awfully nice people, or they wouldn’t be interested in the kind of things we do here.”

She waved to an elderly couple with apple-cheeked smiles. “Hi, there!” she called. “Oh, Nikki, honey,” called the woman, “we’re having the best time! All thanks to you, of course! And we know you’ve got a treat in store for us tomorrow!”

“Mr. and Mrs. Chuck Friendly,” murmured Nikki to the disembodied treat, walking beside her. “I understand they’re the second-richest couple in the state of Rhode Island. They’ve been coming to Skios every year since the House Party started. Sweet! Most of the guests are couples, others are hoping to be, so watch out!”

Two men were strolling thoughtfully together in the shade cast by the Temple of Athena. One of them took the pipe out of his mouth and raised it to her like a glass of wine, the other salaamed.

“Alf Persson,” she explained to Dr. Wilfred, “the Swedish theologian. Quite well known, I believe, in the theological world. And V. J. D. Chaudhury, the great authority on comparative underdevelopment. Two of our embedded intellectuals! You’re not the only distinguished visitor, you see!”

They crossed the ancient agora, where men were unloading caterer’s tables, gilt chairs, carpets, and bales of linen from electric trucks. “That stone floor is three thousand years old,” she reminded the foreman. “You will make sure the carpets are down before anything metal touches it?”

To Dr. Wilfred she added modestly, “My Greek is still a bit rudimentary, even after five years here … Oh, and this is another of our embedded intellectuals.” She waved to a young man who was gazing gloomily out of the window of Epictetus. “A Brit, this one, like me. Chris Binns, writer in residence … Chris, will you do me a favor? Tomorrow, when we get to questions at the end, and no one wants to be the first, we don’t want one of those terrible silences, like last year. So will you have a question ready?”

“A question?” said Chris Binns. It seemed to be a word he hadn’t come across before.

“Anything,” said Nikki. “About his work. Prospects for international control. Whatever. You’ll dream something up. You’re a writer. Just to get the ball rolling … At the lecture. You are coming to the lecture tomorrow?”

“Sure,” said Chris. “Of course. Absolutely.”

“He’s so wrapped up in his work!” whispered Nikki to Dr. Wilfred, as they continued on their way. “He didn’t know there was a lecture tomorrow!”

“Perhaps it’s the sight of you that makes everything go out of his head,” she imagined Dr. Wilfred saying. She laughed. “Now, now!” she said. He really was more charming than she had supposed. And he had got a good deal younger and slimmer.

“Jesus, Nikki,” said an elderly lady, dabbing a little eau-de-cologne-soaked lace handkerchief to her brow as they passed her near the Aphrodite fountain, “you always look like something out of a deodorant ad. I don’t know how you do it.”

“I think cool thoughts, Mrs. Comax,” said Nikki.

Her cool thoughts were that she herself was as discreetly necessary to the workings of the foundation as the water in the buried pipes and the mysterious flow of funds through the balance sheet. She didn’t like to say this to Dr. Wilfred, but probably he could see it for himself. Particularly when she took him on a slight diversion backstage. Screened by dense shrubs was a world not of traditional stone cottages or villas with the names of philosophers and poets, but of prefabricated sheds with no designation at all.

“This is where the staff live,” she explained. “Will you wait here a moment? I’ve just got to put my head into the kitchens.”

“Now what?” shouted Yannis Voskopoulos, the chef de cuisine, over the clatter of stainless steel on stainless steel and the roar of the air extractors, and the endlessly Levantine pop wailing of the woman on the radio. “I don’t know what you gonna tell me but you told me already! Twice! And we done it! Twice over!”

Some of the white-robed ghosts looked up from ovens and worktops and waved amiable ladles and cleavers at her. Some looked up and didn’t recognize her.

“But these new guys, Yannis,” she said, not in Greek but in American English, because Yannis had worked in America and liked to keep the language up. “The agency guys. You’ve got your eye on them?”

“Got my eye on everyone, Nikki. Everyone and everything. The same like you.”

“Last year you forgot kosher.”

“Nikki, you wanna see kosher? Look — kosher. Halal. Diabetic. Vegetarian. Gluten-free, nut-free, salt-free. Vegetarian kosher. Diabetic halal. Gluten-free diabetic. Salt-free nut-free vegetarian. Get outta here, Nikki!”

“And onion-free?”

“Onion-free?”

“Salt-free onion-free! For the guest speaker! I told you!”

Yannis looked at the ceiling, then wiped his face on the oven cloth he was carrying. He sighed.

“When I was a kid in Piraeus,” he said, “was only two sorts of food. Was food, and was no food.”

“You see why I check everything?” said Nikki.

She rejoined the imaginary Dr. Wilfred and walked on with him towards Parmenides, the quietly luxurious guest quarters where he would be staying. He was already impressed, she could see, as they climbed the hillside towards it. When they got inside and she opened the shutters to let in the great sweep of bay below, the piled cumulus above the horizon, and the rocking caïques along the waterfront, she thought she could hear him catch his breath. Just as well he was seeing it now — it would probably be dark by the time he actually arrived.

She checked the air-conditioning, topped up the water in the vases of yellow lilies and white roses, and put a recirculating disc on the CD player. A quiet murmur of plainsong softened the air.

“The monks of the local monastery,” she explained.

She took the whisky out of the sideboard and put it by the tumblers on top. “A rather rare straight malt,” she said. “Is that all right?”

She went into the bedroom, turned down the cover, and laid out the white bathrobe and slippers, as richly fluffy as the hide of a subtropical polar bear. Moved on to the study: stationery on the desk, yes, directory of services, history of the foundation. The kitchen: champagne in the refrigerator, together with two flutes, a good local white wine, and two liters of chilled water.

“From the foundation’s own spring,” she told him. “It’s famously pure.”

She took grapes out of the refrigerator and a bowl from the sideboard to arrange them in. “Thrown in the foundation’s pottery room,” she explained. “It shows that bit in Homer when Odysseus landed on Skios disguised as an itinerant knife grinder.”

She took a last look round before she left … The lilies … Oh my God! Better double-check that too …

She touched “Vicki” on her phone. She’d had the number stored for the last six months.

“Vicki…? It’s me yet again, I’m afraid — Nikki. So sorry … PA to PA — the well-worn back channel once more! He’s on the plane…? Yes, well, I think we’re all ready for him, only I had a last-minute panic … Lilies! I’ve put lilies in his room! And I’ve just thought, Wait a minute, if he’s allergic to onions…! Onions — bulbs … Bulbs — lilies…! No? Oh, wonderful … Bless you … So sorry to bother you. We’re all so excited!”

Far too excited in her case, she thought as she put the phone back in her bag. Dr. Wilfred had suddenly slipped back to being the overweight, self-important figure she had originally expected. Though you never knew. He was only sixteen years older than she was, after all, according to his CV. She remembered a discreet but lyrical episode three years before with “The Challenge of Post-Modernist Topology.” The laughter in the warm darkness — his lips coming close to hers — the softly invading hands … So there were surprises in life. She also remembered driving him back to the airport the following morning to return to his wife …

There was nothing in Dr. Wilfred’s CV, so far as she could remember, about being married. Not that she herself had any ambitions in that direction. She loved it here, she loved her work. All the same …

All the same, it was time to go to the airport.