The Angry Hills - Leon Uris [60]
Sinister-looking Nazis and comic-opera carabinieri replaced the happy-go-lucky khaki-clad British Expeditionary Force. Young girls, now condemned to whoredom, stood back in the shadows.
As the crowd thickened near Concord Square, Lisa suddenly stopped, then changed their direction to a quieter side street.
They seemed to be strolling aimlessly. Lisa checked her watch. It was after nine.
The street was empty.
They could hear the click of their heels as they walked through the Kolonaki section past the Church of Agioi Theodoroi.
Another block brought them to an intersection of Æolou Street. They stopped.
Mike figured that they had bypassed Concord Square and were directly below it. He looked up Æolou Street and in the distance could make out the Cable Office which he had used several times on his arrival in Athens. A bit above that stood the National Bank.
“Where do we go from here?” he asked.
Lisa took her arm from his. “Up Æolou Street,” she whispered.
Mike lit his pipe. The glow illuminated her face. Her eyes betrayed her.
“Wait,” she said. “There is time yet. Come, I want to show you something.”
They crossed Æolou Street and headed in the opposite direction.
“We get a full moon here so seldom,” Lisa said.
“One must never leave Greece without seeing the Acropolis by moonlight.”
Mike looked down in hushed awe on the sullen city below. The moonlight shed a silver light down the hill to the flickering lights of Athens and to the sea on the west.
He gazed down the south wall and the moonlight appeared eerie on the yellow marble of the Parthenon at his side.
Once Mike had asked himself what was the power that had brought him to Greece. He had asked in the midst of the turmoil and confusion of a retreating army. He knew, even in the chaos, that a reason was to be found somewhere. In large measure the question had been answered. But here, now, was another answer and another meaning. The very soul of his own country was born on this hill.
Mike turned and faced Lisa. As he stared into her sad black eyes he knew that Lisa was an integral part of the tragedy of Greece.
“There isn’t any contact and there isn’t any boat, is there, Lisa?” he asked softly.
She pressed her slender body to his, clutched his arms and buried her head on his chest as she trembled and wept.
“Hold me, Vassili—hold me—hold me!” she cried, her voice filled with anguish and desperation.
“What is it? Tell me!”
“Just hold me, tightly—please!”
Mike’s arms were around her and she sobbed as they crushed against one another. Then she turned and walked away and slumped down on a marble boulder. Her eyes were as lifeless at the city below. “Come, Vassili,” she said softly, “I will take you back to Chalandri.”
Lisa was drained and wordless on the trip back to Lazarus’ farm. Every ounce of spirit seemed gone from her now—as though she had nothing left to fight what was torturing her mind.
Mike’s head was dizzy with questions now. The choice of bolting again to the hills? The odds of trying to make his own contact for an escape boat? Each seemed futile. Whatever it was, Mike thought, she alone could solve it and he made his decision to remain.
They entered the pump house.
Lisa sat on the cot, drawn and weary.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“Here, have some wine.”
“Thank you.”
She sipped the wine and a little color returned to her cheeks. She got up to leave. Mike looked at his watch.
“It is past curfew,” he said.
She was silent.
“Go on,” he said, “stretch out.... I’ll—uh cover you with my jacket. Gets nippy during the night.”
She took off her trench coat. Mike watched her delicate fingers loosen the bobby pins from her beret. He remembered how he used to love to watch Ellie undress. Lisa sat on the edge of the cot and kicked off her shoes. There was an awkward period.
“Seems—seems like we’re always on cots,” he mumbled. “Well, go on, stretch out... I’ll cover you up.”
He pulled the heavy blanket from his cot and placed it over her gently as she curled up.
He knelt beside the cot and gazed at her.