I stepped away from the doorway where, just inside the hanging, I’d been leaning against the jamb. I’d put all my clothes on, including my shoes. For all the dawn sunlight, the house was still nippy.
“But when that boy struck me — who’d been just as sweet as he could be, an hour ago — the chunky one…?” Pouring little cups of coffee like liquid night from the brass pot, John took up his apologia again. “A perfectly dreadful child, he turned out to be. The other, I thought — the tall one — was quite nice, though. Basically. I don’t think he would have done anything, if his friend hadn’t put him up to it. But I was as scared as I’ve ever been before in my life! I’m awfully glad somebody else was here. Not that it did much good.”
IV
This vast irregular sheet of water, which rushes by without respite, rolls all colors toward nothingness. See how dim it all is.
I got my ticket for London that morning. When the man behind the brass bars said I’d be taking the Orient Express, it was kind of exciting. There’d be no problem, he explained, my stopping off in Munich.
Back up in Anaphiotika, I came in to find an ecstatic John: “Really, I don’t carry on like this when I’m at home. But you know, in ’Stamboul, because, I guess, it’s part of the culture — every father of a teenaged son is busy negotiating which of his wealthiest friends is going to get his boy’s bum — you just don’t find it running around in the street, the way you do here. You’d think, after last night, I wouldn’t be back in business for at least a fortnight. But it’s like getting up on the horse as soon as you fall off: here, it’s not even one o’clock in the afternoon, and I’ve already had three — and three very nice ones, at that!”
I laughed. “Once, about six or seven weeks ago, John, I had three before nine o’clock in the morning.”
“With your looks and at your age — ? I just bet you’ve had a bloody dozen since you left here!”
Actually, it had only been two. But I thought I’d better not say anything to John, in case his own conquests were more imaginary than real — to make him feel better about last night. “Are you doing anything this evening?” I asked. “Some friends of mine and I are going to go out.”
“Out to do what sort of thing?”
“Go to a concert — sort of.”
John shook his head and his hands. “I’m afraid every free moment I have is booked. I’ve got half a dozen moviehouses to explore. I need to make an official inspection of at least eight public loos. There are parts of several parks, here and up town, I haven’t come anywhere near examining. No — I’m afraid my social calendar is filled to overflowing. But it was sweet of you to ask.”
I laughed, relieved. Five minutes before, I’d decided not to invite him. He was so flamboyant, I could see him causing something of a problem with the others.
I’d agreed to meet Trevor at sunset behind the wire-mesh fence along the top of the Theater of Dionysus — the big outdoor theater on the side of the Acropolis hill. Stravinsky was conducting his farewell concert that night. Lots of students and poor foreigners would gather there. You couldn’t see very well, but the famous acoustics of the Greek amphitheater easily lived up to their reputation.
Earlier that month, I’d gone from being twenty-three to twenty-four; which meant Trevor had gone from being a towheaded English guitar player three years younger than I to a towheaded English guitar player four years younger. It seemed to make a difference.
The sky out toward Piraeus was purple, flooded through near the horizon with layered orange. On good days you’re supposed to be able to see the sea from the Acropolis’s rim. But here, half a dozen yards below it, the waters beyond Piraeus were only a pervading memory.
The white lights down on the stage told me for the first time that the platform there was gray-painted wood. During full daylight, just glancing at it when I’d passed, I’d always assumed it was rock. About ten of the orchestra had come out to take their chairs. Sloping down from the fence, the tiers of stone seats were filling. In silhouette, scattered before me, were hundreds of Athenian heads.
Trevor let go of the hatched wire and glanced back. In its canvas case beside him, his guitar leaned against the metal web. Trevor wore two denim jackets, one over the other — though it was a pleasantly warm evening. In the quarter light, his cornsilk mop made his face look smaller, his gray eyes larger. “Hello,” he said. “It’s his last concert, tonight. I didn’t know that.”
“Whose?” I asked. “Stravinsky’s?”
“That’s right. He’s retiring. I knew he was conducting, but I didn’t know that this was it.”
“I think I read something about it.”
“The Swiss Bitch is supposed to come by, too. I hope she gets here before they start. I mean, you either hear him tonight or you don’t. It’s really quite special.”
The Swiss Bitch was Trevor’s nickname for Cosima; I never saw anything particularly bitchy about her. I don’t think Trevor did either, but something about the euphony had caught him. And the first time he’d referred to her as that, Heidi, who was Cosima’s best friend, had burst out laughing at the kafeneon table, so that it almost sounded as if she approved. Trevor had kept it up. “Cosima told me you were staying up at DeLys’s with some English poofter.”
“John?” I asked. “I don’t know anything for sure about his sexual preferences — but he’s really quite a nice guy.” Although Trevor knew perfectly well I was queer, I liked generating ambiguity about anyone else who came up.
“God,” Trevor said, “almost all DeLys’s friends are faggots! I can’t stand them — most of them — ” which I guess was for my benefit — “myself. I wonder why that is, with some women?”
Then, behind me, Cosima said: “Hello, you lot.”
We moved aside, and Cosima stepped up between us to gaze through the wire. “I think they’re about to start. Is that the whole orchestra? — my, there’re a lot of them tonight.” Cosima was twenty-six and had black hair. She wore a gray jacket with a black fur collar. And a gray skirt. Now she said: “Well, how have you been, Trevor?”
“All right.” He pretended to pay attention to something down on the platform.
A few feet away from us, two Greek boys wore short-sleeved shirts. One, with his fingers hooked in the wire above his head, swung now this way, now that, his shirt wholly open and out of his slacks, blowing back from his stomach.
I had on my once-white wool island jacket — too warm for the evening. But we internationals — like the Paris clochards, in their two and three overcoats even in summer — seemed to wear as much of our clothing as we could tolerate, always ready to be asked over, to stay for a few days, or at least to spend the night. That way, I suppose, we’d have to go back for as few remaining things as possible.
On the other side of us, half a dozen schoolgirls in plaid uniforms kept close together, to giggle and whisper when another arrived.