The Angry Hills - Leon Uris [67]
She bent over him and her hands touched his body softly and her lips brushed his. He reached up and drew her down and he felt the wonder of her body against his. They united, gently, quietly...
He studied her body as she rolled against him with a sleepy, contented sigh. He reached up and turned off the light over the bed and they lay in each other’s arms and looked out at the city.
“I’ll come back for you some day,” he said.
She shook her head slowly. “I love you, Vassili. Let us be grateful for these few hours and not think of something a century from now.”
“It’s so fantastic that this should happen.”
“It is not fantastic. I think I loved you the moment I saw you in the cottage in Kaloghriani. I did not think I was capable of feeling this way again about anyone.”
“That’s funny,” he said. “I guess we’re two of a kind.”
Lisa left his side abruptly and sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him. “A British submarine is coming for you tomorrow night.”
Deathly silence.
The first traces of a new day showed on the hills of Athens. He took her arm and drew her down beside him. “Don’t get dressed yet.”
“All right, darling.”
“I wish I were very eloquent and could tell you...”
“Shhh—shhh... You are like a little boy when you try to speak....”
They sat in front of the garret window having dinner at daybreak. Steaks and wine. Mike loaded his pipe with the last pinch of tobacco he had.
“You know, Vassili, the Germans could soften up the rear ends of their cows a bit.”
“No excuses because you’re a bad cook.”
A feathery cloud formed outside their window and the hills faded from sight.
“This is a good day for...” but Mike cut it short.
“A good day for what, dear?”
“Nothing.”
He was about to say, “A good day for writing.” Somehow he could always write better when the weather was nasty. Just a writer’s quirk, he thought.
She cleared the dishes and they lingered over cups of ersatz coffee. He gazed at the softness which was revealed through her unbuttoned dress front.
He was blind with love for her. Lisa was an enchanted dream and he had wandered into her enchantment.
“Lisa, tell me about yourself....”
“It is not very pleasant....”
“Please...”
All her sadness seemed to return. She looked away from him and through the misted window and her mind drifted into a haunted past....
It had been a good life. Her mother, an Englishwoman of great beauty. Her father, a gentle little man who owned a small prosperous factory. Lisa and her sister had finished their studies at the university and, encouraged by her father’s love of music, she had studied piano at the conservatories in Rome and Paris. Her sister had become a doctor of literature.
A close family... A concert career coming... Just about all the fulfillment one could ask of life. Then, a foolish, heady, whirlwind romance with an ambitious young engineer which ended in marriage. Lisa learned the extent of his ambition after the German occupation. He absconded with the family money, the factory and her two sons.
Her mother, fortunately, did not live to see this happen. Lisa had not believed her gentle father to be a man of great courage, but he showed it at his death in Averof Prison.
“And your sister?”
“She lives with a German officer.”
There was more to Lisa’s story, Mike felt, but he asked no more.
She buttoned her dress and put on her trench coat and beret in front of a small stained mirror.
“There are many arrangements to be made. I will return as early as possible.”
She stopped at the door and turned to him.
“I suppose it was foolish of us to have fallen in love.”
Mike paced the room like a crazy man. It would take all the courage he had to leave her now. He was obsessed with love for her.
Maybe the Underground would let her leave Greece....
Maybe he’d turn the Stergiou list over to them and stay on....
Maybe he’d escape to the hills with her and hide out....
The day became a hell of confusion. How far would he go to keep her?
The wall of doubt closed in tighter.
If only he could accept their few hours of happiness