Skios

47

Everywhere beyond the agora a soft nocturnal peace descended upon the grounds of the foundation, as upon a little town where everyone was indoors celebrating Christmas or watching the football. The warm darkness of the night was made more profound by the flecks of silver floodlight glimpsed through the branches of the trees, the quietness made more palpable by the scribbling of the cicadas and the faint amplified echoes of Mrs. Toppler’s voice off the ancient stonework.

Outside the kitchens little collapsed white heaps began to become visible in the darkness, as Yannis and the kitchen crew emerged from their stainless-steel hell and sank down onto the ground, too tired even to eat the leftovers.

In the harbor the dark water slapped tenderly at the moored yachts. The landward-facing windsock by the helicopter pad sank as the light daytime breeze off the sea died away, then lifted again to face seawards.

Chris Binns, the writer in residence, gazed out of the window of Epictetus, murmuring to himself over and over again the first stanza of his poem—The goddess, looking wise, / Whisky sour in hand, / Nibbling the excellent local cocktail olives / And pushing the stones down the back of the sofa / In the most civilized manner. What he hoped was that if he repeated it often enough, it would prove to be the run-up to an effortless leap into the still undecided-upon main verb and the still unwritten second stanza. No leap had so far occurred.

He was, however, becoming slowly conscious that the silence was not quite the usual silence, or the darkness the usual darkness. Some of the trees had a faint silvering of light among their branches. Someone somewhere was speaking. He couldn’t distinguish the words, only an occasional North American vowel, and an electronic timbre. Yes, something was certainly going on out there. He had forgotten what it was, but at least he now remembered that he had forgotten.

“The goddess,” he murmured, “looking wise…”

* * *

Back on the agora Mrs. Toppler’s voice came and went, came and went, according to the varying closeness of her acquaintance with the microphone.

“… public bodies far too numerous to list here…” she said, very audibly, and then somehow let the relationship lapse again. “… mention only the Board of Governors … the Joint Standing Committee … the Council for the Preservation … for the Abolition … the Expansion … the Limitation…”

It all came back to Dr. Wilfred, sitting modestly beside her as she spoke. The boards, the committees, the councils. The books and papers. The prizes and fellowships. What an astonishing amount he had packed into his life.

“… and last but by no means least … his keen interest … his lifelong devotion … never spared himself … somehow found time for … an avid follower…”

The shadowy faces in front of Mrs. Toppler gazed respectfully up at her out of the half-darkness. Here and there eyelids and heads sank in sympathy with her sinking voice, but often rose again as the voice returned. Behind the faces thoughts were thought: memories and regrets, plans and hopes, reasonings and computations.

V. J. D. Chaudhury, for example, was regretting that he had not taken the opportunity to relieve himself when it had been offered. Davina Smokey was worrying about her grandchildren’s table manners. His Excellency Sheikh Abdul hilal bin-Taimour bin-Hamud bin-Ali al-Said was trying to calculate the proceeds from a rise of 0.073 percent in the royalty on 4.833 billion barrels of light crude. K. D. Clopper was absorbed in the Yankees-Orioles game on his phone behind the tablecloth. The bishop of the Hesperides Archipelago was reexamining the Orthodox Church’s position on original sin in the light of recent advances in neurology. Wellesley Luft was fast asleep, deep in yet another dream about Jackie Kennedy. Mr. Papadopoulou’s personal bodyguard was checking the safety catch on his gun. Norbert Ditmuss was waiting patiently for a chance to ask his question.

And at the back of the audience more shadowy new faces were still arriving.

* * *

The moon put its head cautiously above the hills to the east of the foundation, was evidently reassured by the peacefulness of the scene, and emerged completely from hiding.

On the hillside to the west, from behind the screens around the site where the new swimming pool was being built, something else no less cautiously began to emerge to face the moon. Something not gracefully round, but obstinately rectangular.

Evidently reassured, like the moon, it slowly, slowly rose into the whiteness of the moonlight beneath the sheltering arm of the contractors’ crane. More and more of it, vaster and vaster. Not two feet high, like the moon. A crate. Not five feet high, though, like the crate of marine diesel spares. Seven feet, eight feet. And still, inch by inch, it came. More and more of it. Nine feet, ten feet. Now a stencil, just legible in the moonlight. Not marine diesel spares this time. Refrigeration plant.

“Come on, come on!” whispered Reg Bolt urgently into his walkie-talkie as he watched. “They’ll have finished the lecture before she’s halfway down the hill!”

* * *

Dr. Wilfred became aware that Mrs. Toppler had turned towards him, and heard in retrospect the recently spoken words that were still hanging in the air around her: “… not come here to listen to me … without further ado…”

There was the sound of applause, and of people coming back to life. Someone was leaning over and moving the microphones to stand in front of him.

He rose. He smiled and brushed the hair away from his eyes. He nodded his acknowledgment to Mrs. Toppler, then to the audience. He waited for the applause to die away, and then raked the agora with his soft brown eyes, from left to right, from front to back. He suddenly felt not like Dr. Wilfred at all, but like the old Oliver as he had been so many times before, with the familiar abyss opening in front of him, now deeper and darker than ever. The earth’s gravitational field reached out to him from the depths, dragging him down, pulling on the nerves of his legs, of his stomach, of his whole body.

He took two good lungfuls of air and opened his mouth.