Lycabettus, under the church of St. Paul.
Down the zigzag path from the church, the Easter procession of
worshippers unwound in a flickering stream of candle flames through the
pine forest below them, and the singing carried sweetly on the still
night air. On its far hill-top the stately columns of the Acropolis
were flood-lit so that they glowed as creamily as ancient ivory, and
beyond that again on the midnight waters of the bay the American fleet
wore gay garlands of fairy lights.
The glory that was Greece murmured the star of Italian westerns, as
though she voiced the wisdom of the ages, and placed one heavily
jewelled hand on David's thigh while with the other she raised a glass
of red Samos wine to him and cast him a look under thick eyelashes that
was fraught with significance.
Her restraint was impressive, and it was only after they had eaten the
main course of savoury meats wrapped in vine leaves and swimming in
creamy lemon sauce that she suggested that David might like to finance
her next movie.
Let's find some place where we can talk about it she murmured, and what
better place than her suite?
John Dinopoulos waved them away with a grin and a knowing wink, a
gesture that annoyed David for it made him see the whole episode for the
emptiness that it was.
The star's suite was pretentious, with thick white carpets and bulky
black leather furniture. David poured himself a drink while she went to
change into clothing more suitable for a discussion of high finance.
David tasted the drink, realized that he did not want it and left it on
the bar counter.
The star came out of the bedroom in a bedrobe of white satin which was
cut back from arm and bosom, and was so sheer that her flesh gleamed
with a pearly pink sheen through the material. Her hair was loose, a
great wild mane of swirling curls, and suddenly David was sick of the
whole business.
I'm sorry, he said. John was joking, I'm not a millionaire, and I
really prefer boys.
He heard his untouched glass shatter against the door of the suite as he
closed it behind him.
Back at his own hotel he ordered coffee from room service, and then on
an impulse he picked up the telephone again and placed a Cape Town call.
It came through with surprising speed, and the girl's voice on the other
end was thickened with sleep. Mitzi, he laughed. How's the girl?
'Where are you, warrior? Are you home? 'I'm in Athens, doll. 'Athens,
God! How's the action? 'It's a drag. Yeah! I bet, she scoffed. The
Greek girls are never going to be the same again. 'How are you, Mitzi?
I'm in love, Davey.
I mean really in love, it's far out.
We are going to be married. Isn't that just something else? David felt
a spur of anger, jealous of the happiness in her voice. That's great,
doll. Do I know him? Cecil Lawley, you know him. He's one of Daddy's
accountants. David recalled a large, pale-faced, bespectacled man with
a serious manner.
Congratulations, said David. He felt very much alone again. Far from
home, and aware that life there flowed on without his presence.
You want to talk to him? Mitzi asked. I'll wake him up There was a
murmur and mutter on the other end, then Cecil came on.
Nice work, David told him, and it really was. Mitzi's share of Morgan
Group would be considerably larger than David's. Cecil had drilled
himself an oil well in a most unconventional manner.
Thanks, Davey. Cecil's embarrassment at being caught tending his oil
well carried clearly over five thousand miles of telephone cable.
Listen, lover. You do anything to hurt that girl, I'll personally tear
out your liver and stuff it down your throat, okay?
Okay, said Cecil, and his alarm was brittle in his tone. I'll put you
back to Mitzi.
She prattled on for another fifty dollars worth before hanging up. David
lay on the bed with his hands behind his head and thought about his
dumpy soft-hearted cousin and her new happiness. Then quite suddenly he
made the decision which had been lurking at the edge of his
consciousness all these weeks since leaving Spain.
He picked up the phone again and asked for the porter's desk.
I'm sorry to trouble you at this time in the morning, he said, but I
should like to get on a flight to Israel as soon as possible, will you
please arrange that.
The sky was filled with a soft golden haze that came off the desert. The
gigantic T. W. A. 747 came down through it, and David had a glimpse
of dark green citrus orchards before the solid jolt of the touch-down.
Lad was like any other airport in the world but beyond its doors was a
land like no other he had ever known. The crowd who fought him for a
seat in one of the big black sheruts, communal taxis plastered with
stickers and hung with gewgaws, made even the Italians seem shining
towers of restrained good manners.
Once aboard, however, it was as though they were on a family outing, and
he a member of that family. on one side of him a paratrooper in beret
and blouse with his winged insignia on the breast and an Uzzi
submachine-gun slung about his neck offered him a cigarette, on the
other a big strapping lass also in khaki uniform and with the dark
gazelle eyes of an Israeli, which became even darker and more soulful
when she looked at David, which was often, shared a sandwich of unleaven
bread and balls of fried chick-peas, the ubiquitous pita and falafel,
with him and practised her English upon him.
All the occupants of the front seat turned around to join the
conversation, and this included the driver who nevertheless did not
allow his speed to diminish in the slightest and who punctuated his
remarks with fierce blasts of his horn and cries of outrage at
pedestrians and other drivers.
The perfume of orange blossom lay as heavily as sea mist upon the
coastal lowlands, and always afterwards it would be for David the smell
of Israel.
Then they climbed into the Judaean hills, and David felt a sense of
nostalgia as they followed the winding highway through pine forests and
across the pale shining slopes where the white stone gleamed like bone
in the sunlight and the silver olive trees twisted their trunks in
graceful agony upon the terraces which were the monuments to six
thousand years of man's patient labour.
It was so familiar and yet subtly different from those fair and
well-beloved hills of the southern cape he called home. There were
flowers he did not recognize, crimson blooms like spilled blood, and
bursts of sunshine-yellow blossoms upon the slopes, then suddenly a pang
that was like a physical pain as he glimpsed the bright flight of
chocolate and white wings amongst the trees, and he recognized the
crested head of an African hoopoe, a bird which was a symbol of home.
He felt a sense of excitement building within him, unformed and
undirected as yet but growing, as he drew closer to the woman he had
come to see, and to something else of which he was as yet uncertain.
There was, at last, a sense of belonging. He felt in sympathy with the
young persons who crowded close to him in the cab.
See, cried the girl, touching his arm and pointing to the wreckage of
war still strewn along the roadside, the burned-out carapaces of trucks
and armoured vehicles, preserved as a memorial to the men who died on