The Magus - John Fowles [247]
some years before, and the flat roof had fallen in. I looked into a garden at the rear. It was as dry and unkempt and deserted as the front. The back door gaped open. There were signs, among the fallen rafters and charred walls, that tramps or Vlach gipsies had lived there; the trace of a more recent fire on an old hearth. I waited for a minute, but I somehow sensed that there was nothing to find. It was a false trail. I returned to the waiting yellow taxi. The dust from the dry earth rose in little swirls in the day breeze and powdered the already drab leaves of the thin oleanders. Traffic ran up and down Syngrou, the leaves of a palm tree by the gate rustled. The ticket seller was talking to my taxi driver. He turned as I came out. "_Zitas kanenan?_" Looking for someone? "Whose house is that?" He was an unshaven man in a worn grey suit, a dirty white shirt without a tie; his rosary of amber patience beads in his hand. He raised them, disclaiming knowledge. "Now. I do not know. Nobody's." I looked at him from behind my dark glasses. Then said one word. "Conchis?" Immediately his face cleared, as if he understood all. "Ah. I understand. You are looking for o _kyrios_ Conchis?" "Yeah." He flung open his hands. "He is dead." "When?" "Four, five years." He held up four fingers; then cut his throat and said "_Kaput_." I looked past him to where his long stick of tickets, propped up against the chair, flapped in the wind. I smiled acidly at him, speaking in English. "Where do you come from? The National Theatre?" But he shook his head, as if he didn't understand. "A very rich man." He looked down at the driver, as if he would understand, even if I didn't. "He is buried in St. George's. A fine cemetery." And there was something so perfect in his typical Greek idler's smile, in the way he extended such unnecessary information, that I began almost to believe that he was what he seemed. "Is that all?" I asked. "_Ne, ne_. Go and see his grave. A beautiful grave." I got into the taxi. He rushed for his stick of tickets, and brandished them through the window. "You will be lucky. The English are always lucky." He picked one off, held it to me. "Eh. Just one little ticket." I spoke sharply to the driver. He did a U-turn, but after fifty yards I stopped him outside a caf�I beckoned to a waiter. The house back there, did he know who it belonged to? Yes. To a widow called Ralli, who lived in Corfu. I looked through the rear window. The ticket seller was walking quickly, much too quickly, in the opposite direction; and as I watched, he turned down a side alley out of sight. At four o'clock that afternoon, when it was cooler, I caught a bus out to the cemetery. It lay some miles outside Athens, on a wooded slope of Mount Aigaleos. When I asked the old man at the gate I half expected a blank look. But he went painfully inside his lodge, fingered through a large register, and told me I must go up the main alley; then fifth right. I walked past lines of toy Ionic temples and columned busts and fancy steles, a forest of Hellenic bad taste; but pleasantly green and shady. Fifth left. And there, between two cypresses, shaded by a mournful aspidistra-like plant, lay a simple Pentelic marble slab with, underneath a cross, the words: MORIS KOLCHIS 1896--1949 Four years dead. At the foot of the slab was a small green pot in which sat, rising from a cushion of inconspicuous white flowers, a white arum lily and a red rose. I knelt and took them out. The stems were recently cut, probably from only that morning; the water was clear and fresh. I understood; it was his way of telling me what I had already guessed, that detective work would lead me nowhere--to a false grave, to yet another joke, a smile fading into thin air. I replaced the flowers. One of the humbler background sprigs fell and I picked it up and smelt it; a sweet, honey fragrance. Since there was a rose and a lily, perhaps it had some significance. I put it in my buttonhole, and forgot about it. At the gate I asked the old man if he knew of any relatives of the deceased Maurice Conchis. He