The Stranglers Honeymoon

48

The hotel was called Ormos and was in an alley leading out into Syntagma Square.

Only a stone’s throw from the Grande Bretagne, where he had stayed once in the distant past. So many years had passed since then, so much water and life and pain had flowed under the dark bridges. There wasn’t much left now.

Not much at all.

He had started telephoning Vasilis before he left Maardam, without receiving an answer, and he continued doing so all the first afternoon and evening.

In the end, shortly after ten o’clock, the phone was answered by a woman called Dea — presumably his new wife. As far as he could understand, that is — she spoke only Greek, so he restricted himself to basic information. Vasilis was in Thessaloniki and wasn’t expected back for another three or four days. No, it wasn’t a conference: his mother was ill. But it wasn’t all that bad — she wasn’t on her deathbed.

Yes, he had said, Wednesday or Thursday.

He asked for his telephone number and was given two: one to his mobile, and the other to his mother’s house, where he was staying. The mobile was apparently dodgy, she hadn’t got through to it earlier in the day, despite several attempts. Dea.

Or Thea.

He thanked her and hung up. He suddenly remembered that Vasilis had said she had red hair. Could Greeks have red hair? Odd, he thought. Damned odd. He smiled at the thought, and began rubbing the wound on his throat. It wasn’t irritating him any longer, but rubbing it had become a habit. He still had the sticking plaster on his hand — he could probably do without it now, but it could stay where it was. He didn’t fancy the idea of having to stare at a wound every time he looked at his hands.

He smoked a few cigarettes after the phone call. Sat on the wicker chair on the tiny balcony and breathed in petrol fumes from the road below together with the tobacco smoke. He recalled the smell from the first time he was here, in July twenty years ago, a few years before the stay at the Grande Bretagne. It had been hard, almost impossible to breathe during the unbearably hot afternoons.

It was rather better now. The temperature was probably around twelve to fifteen degrees: his lungs would no doubt adjust to the atmosphere, and he wouldn’t even notice the fumes. Everything becomes a habit sooner or later, he thought.

Everything.

Anyway, he was going to have to stay in Athens for a week. More or less. That was an unforeseen snag, but he had no desire to change his plans on that account. Everything would have to go ahead as he had planned, and as soon as he made contact with Vasilis he was bound receive the assistance he needed: they had that sort of relationship, and there was no reason to doubt that.

He went indoors and tried the mobile number. Despite what Dea had said, he had an answer after only three rings. Vasilis’s husky voice, restaurant noises in the background, somebody playing a bouzouki.

‘My friend! A voice from the past! Where are you?’

‘In Athens, and in deep shit. I need help with something.’

‘No problem, my friend! What do you want?’

‘A gun.’

Silence at the other end. Only the background noise of the restaurant and the bouzouki for five seconds.

‘A gun? What the fuck happened, my friend?’

‘We can talk about that when you come back home. When?’

More silence.

‘Wednesday. I promise you Wednesday, my friend! But what the hell. .?’

He gave Vasilis his own mobile number, but not that of the hotel.

‘Take care!’

‘I will.’

Now his throat really was itching.

To be on the safe side, he changed his hotel on the Monday. You never knew. That damned bookseller and that woman. He moved into a third-class boarding house out at Lykabettos, paid in advance and didn’t need to show his passport. Lay on his bed for hours, thinking about Mersault in Camus’s The Outsider. Felt neither hungry nor thirsty.

He had no desire to get up and sit by the window, looking at passing girls. Like Mersault. Even if there had been any in the narrow alley. Even if it had been overflowing with pussy.

He thought about his mother instead.

Thought about a Greek saying. A Greek man loves himself and his mother all his life. His wife for six months.

Anger had begun to boil up inside him; and disgust. He kept it hidden, but it bubbled away inexorably and made the room rotate slowly whenever he closed his eyes. The noise from the street and the rest of the building was also distorted when his eyes were closed, sounds became oppressive and insistent, seemed to join forces with the movement of the room and forced themselves inside him. Even so, he found it difficult not to keep his eyes closed. It was somehow alluring.

A sort of battle. A wrestling match with his mother, his anger and his disgust. Eyes closed. It was a blind struggle, with the noise and the rotation of the room its way of expressing itself. His mobile was switched off. At one point as darkness began to fall with incredible speed, he went out to the bathroom in the corridor and tried to be sick. But he failed. He lay on the bed again, ripped the sticking plaster off the back of his hand and contemplated the ravaged skin.

He waited until it was completely dark, then went out into the town.

Came back after midnight, slightly drunk on ouzo and cheap retsina. No food — there was no space inside him for food. Apart from a few olives and a lump of feta cheese one of the taverna owners had offered him without charge. He smoked another ten or twelve cigarettes while lying on the bed, and fell asleep, feeling sweaty and rather sick, at turned three.

There was a sort of emptiness that he soon felt unable to fill any longer.

He dreamed about the fire, and his mother. About how he sucked her nipples for the last time on the day of his twelfth birthday. I have no milk any more, and you’re a man now. Never forget that you are a man, and that no woman shall deny you anything you want — not even your mother. Believe me when I say this.

Believe me.

Tuesday was an exact repetition of Monday.

Wednesday evening, Plakas. He wanted to sit outside, but Vasilis insisted they should go indoors. It was hardly spring yet, after all.

As if that mattered. They found a table that was more or less half-and-half, by a window looking out over Tripodon Street. The restaurant was called Oikanas. Vasilis had put on fifteen kilos since they had last met. Was that seven years ago, or was it eight?

He was already drunk, which was a damned nuisance; but his disgust had been nagging at him all afternoon, and he had forced himself to drink quite a lot. Vasilis kept on saying My Friend, My Friend, My Friend — and soon he no longer had the strength to listen to it. He urged Vasilis to Cut the Crap, commented Bullshit, and asked when he was going to deliver that damned gun? That was what all this was about, and nothing else.

When? My Friend.

It took time to convince Vasilis, but in doing so he didn’t reveal an iota of his plan and intentions. Nor the story behind it all. He realized (and recalled) that basically, he was much brighter and more strong-minded than Vasilis, and had the Greek at his mercy even though he was drunk. As time passed, Vasilis had drunk more and more and become hesitant and sluggish, and eventually he gave up. Mediterranean apathy.

‘Fuck you, My Friend. All right.’

‘When? Where?’

Vasilis took another drink of the expensive Boutari wine, and ran his fingers through the Communist beard he had worn since the Junta era. More grey than black nowadays. More bourgeois pig than revolutionary.

‘Friday evening. Here. Same place. All right, My Friend?’

‘All right.’

Thursday was a repetition of Tuesday.

He bought a boat ticket at a little travel agent’s. It was low season, and he would have to wait until Sunday. There was an Olympic Airways flight, but that was only in theory: the Saturday flight was fully booked. They asked him if he wanted to turn up on stand-by.

Ochi. No thank you. He sat in the National Park instead and watched the women. Imagined them naked. Imagined them naked and dead.

The naked and the dead. Disgust bubbled up inside him once more. And he had an erection. The only thing that could fill the emptiness. Everything else was finished and done with. His fingers were seismographs again. He masturbated in some bushes. Shouted out loud when he came, but nobody took any notice. The park was almost deserted. It was an ordinary weekday, people were at work of course; it was cloudy, but quite warm.

Then he lay on his bed for five or six hours, smoking. Ate next to nothing, tried to masturbate again but couldn’t even get an erection. His throat was itching.

He went to the bathroom and tried to be sick, but his stomach was empty. He went out and bought some sesame biscuits, a bottle of water and two packets of local cigarettes.

He drank quite a lot, and dreamed about his mother’s pubic hair. It became quite sparse as the years passed by.

Friday was a repetition of Thursday.

Slightly drunk again. Short meeting with Vasilis in the same taverna in Plakas. He had cut off most of his Communist beard for some reason or other, and maintained that he was worried — but nevertheless handed over without more ado a pistol in a shoe box inside a plastic carrier bag. A Markarov, he said. Russian, nine mil. A bit awkward, but reliable. It should be loaded with eight bullets, and a whole carton was part of the deal. Thirty thousand drachma — that was cheap, he stressed several times. Damned cheap: what was he intending to use it for?

He didn’t answer, paid up and left. He knew they would never meet again.

My Friend.

He didn’t have many memories of Saturday. He lay on his bed. Smoked and drank several glasses of ouzo, but mixed with quite a lot of water. Masturbated occasionally, managed an erection but not an orgasm. Evidently empty there as well. On Sunday morning he was unable to dredge up any memories of the night’s dreams. He took a taxi out to Piraeus and boarded the boat.

It was called Ariadne and wasn’t very big. There was rather a strong wind blowing, and the departure was delayed as the sea was too rough: but he stayed on board rather than going back on land.

They set off in the end at two o’clock. He was quite grateful for the delay, having felt ill all morning. He went straight to the bar and ordered a beer, then started reading Isaac Norton’s Byron biography — he had taken it with him as travel reading, but hadn’t got round to looking at it until now.

Byron? he thought. I’ve waited too long before making this journey. People have suffered unnecessarily.

But he was in no hurry now.