The Magus - John Fowles [170]
at this exhibition of village logic. "_Ne, Barba. Xenoi. Ma ti ekanon?_" "Music. Singing. Dancing." Once again Georgiou didn't believe him; he winked at me, as if to say, the old man is soft in the head. But I knew he wasn't; and that Georgiou had not come to the island till 1946. "What kind of singing and dancing?" He didn't know; his rheumy eyes seemed to search for the past, and lose it. But he said, "And other things. They acted in plays." Georgiou laughed out loud, but the old man shrugged and said indifferently, "It is true." Georgiou leant forward with a grin. "And what were you, Barba Dimitraki? Karayozis?" He was talking about the Greek shadowplay Punch. I made the old man see I believed him. "What kind of plays?" But his face said he didn't know. "There was a theatre in the garden." "Where in the garden?" "Behind the house. With curtains. A real theatre." "You know Maria?" But it seemed that before the war it had been another housekeeper, called Soula, now dead. "When were you last there?" "Many years. Before the war." "Do you still like Mr. Conchis?" The old man nodded, but it was a brief, qualified nod. Georgiou chipped in. "His eldest son was killed in the execution." "Ah. I am very sorry. Very sorry." The old man shrugged; kismet. He said, "He is not a bad man." "Did he work with the Germans in the Occupation?" The old man raised his head, a firm no. Georgiou made a hawk of violent disagreement. They began to argue, talking so fast that I couldn't follow them. But I heard the old man say, "I was here. You were not here." Georgiou turned to me and whispered, "He has given the old man a house. And money every year. The old man cannot say what he really thinks." "Does he do that for the other relatives?" "Bah. One or two. The old ones. Why not. He has millions." He made the corruption gesture, meaning conscience money. Suddenly the old man said to me, "_Mia phora_... once there was a big _pane yiri_ with many lights and music and fireworks. Many fireworks and many guests." I had an absurd vision of a garden party; hundreds of elegant women, and men in morning dress. "When was that?" "Three, five years before the war." "Why was this celebration?" But he didn't know. "Were you there?" "I was with my son. We were fishing. We saw it up in Bourani. Many lights, many voices. _Kai ta pyrotechnimata_." And the fireworks. Georgiou said, "Yah. You were drunk, Barba." "No. I was not drunk." Try as I did, I could get nothing more out of the old man. I was on lunch-and-afternoon duty; so in the end I shook them both by the hand, paid the small bill, tipped Georgiou heavily, and walked back to the school. One thing was clear. There had been Leverrier, Mitford and myself; but then others whose names I did not yet know back in the thirties; a long line. It gave me the courage to face whatever new was being prepared in that now uncurtained theatre over on the far side. I returned to the village that evening, and climbed up the narrow cobbled streets that led to the back of the village; past warrens of whitewashed walls, peasant interiors, tiny squares shaded by almond trees. Great magenta sprays of bougainvillaea flamed in the sun or glowed in the pale evening shadows. It was a sort of kasbah area of the village, a very pretty kasbah, with its cross glimpses of the plunibago-blue six-o'clock sea below, and the gold-green pinecovered hills above. People sitting outside their cottages greeted me, and I collected the inevitable small Pied Piper chain of children, who subsided into giggles if I looked at them and waved them away. When I came to the church I went in. I wanted to justify my presence in the quarter. It was densely gloomy, with a miasma of incense over everything; a row of ikons, sombre silhouettes set in smoky gold, stared down at me, as if they knew what an alien I was in their cryptlike Byzantine world. After five minutes I came out. The children had mercifully disappeared, and I could take the alley to the right of the church. On one side there were the round cylinders of the church apses, on the other a wall eight