“Yes.”
“I wished to ask you if you would let me come with you.”
“I see. I should be …”
“But now it is too late.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Graham happily. “I should have been delighted to take you.”
She shrugged. “It is too late. Mr. Kuvetli, the little Turk, has asked me and, faut de mieux, I accepted. I do not like him but he knows Athens very well. It will be interesting.”
“Yes, I should think it would be.”
“He is a very interesting man.”
“Evidently.”
“Of course, I might be able to persuade him …”
“Unfortunately, there is a difficulty. Last night Mr. Kuvetli asked me if I minded his going with me as he had never been in Athens before.”
It gave him a great deal of pleasure to say it; but she was disconcerted only momentarily. She burst out laughing.
“You are not at all polite. Not at all. You let me say what you know to be untrue. You do not stop me. You are unkind.” She laughed again. “But it is a good joke.”
“I’m really very sorry.”
“You are too kind. I wished only to be friendly to you. I do not care whether I go to Athens or not.”
“I’m sure Mr. Kuvetli would be delighted if you came with us. So should I, of course. You probably know a great deal more about Athens than I do.”
Her eyes narrowed suddenly. “What, please, do you mean by that?”
He had not meant anything at all beyond the plain statement. He said, with a smile that he intended to be reassuring: “I mean that you have probably danced there.”
She stared at him sullenly for a moment. He felt the smile, still clinging fatuously to his lips, fading. She said slowly: “I do not think I like you as much as I thought. I do not think that you understand me at all.”
“It’s possible. I’ve known you for such a short time.”
“Because a woman is an artiste,” she said angrily, “you think that she must be of the milieu.”
“Not at all. The idea hadn’t occurred to me. Would you like to walk round the deck?”
She did not move. “I am beginning to think that I do not like you at all.”
“I’m sorry. I was looking forward to your company on the journey.”
“But you have Mr. Kuvetli,” she said viciously.
“Yes, that’s true. Unfortunately, he’s not as attractive as you are.”
She laughed sarcastically. “Oh, you have seen that I am attractive? That is very good. I am so pleased. I am honoured.”
“I seem to have offended you,” he said. “I apologise.”
She waved one hand airily. “Do not trouble. I think that it is perhaps because you are stupid. You wish to walk. Very well, we will walk.”
“Splendid.”
They had taken three steps when she stopped again and faced him. “Why do you have to take this little Turk to Athens?” she demanded. “Tell him that you cannot go. If you were polite you would do that.”
“And take you? Is that the idea?”
“If you asked me, I would go with you. I am bored with this ship and I like to speak English.”
“I’m afraid that Mr. Kuvetli might not think it so polite.”
“If you liked me it would not matter to you about Mr. Kuvetli.” She shrugged. “But I understand. It does not matter. I think that you are very unkind, but it does not matter. I am bored.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes, you are sorry. That is all right. But I am still bored. Let us walk.” And then, as they began to walk: “José thinks that you are indiscreet.”
“Does he? Why?”
“That old German you talked to. How do you know that he is not a spy?”
He laughed outright. “A spy! What an extraordinary idea!”
She glanced at him coldly. “And why is it extraordinary?”
“If you had talked to him you would know quite well that he couldn’t possibly be anything of the sort.”
“Perhaps not. José is always very suspicious of people. He always believes that they are lying about themselves.”
“Frankly, I should be inclined to accept José’s disapproval of a person as a recommendation.”
“Oh, he does not disapprove. He is just interested. He likes to find things out about people. He thinks that we are all animals. He is never shocked by anything people do.”
“He sounds very stupid.”
“You do not understand José. He does not think of good things and evil things as they do in the convent, but only of things. He says that a thing that is good for one person may be evil for another, so that it is stupid to talk of good and evil.”
“But people sometimes do good things simply because those things are good.”
“Only because they feel nice when they do them-that is what José says.”
“What about the people who stop themselves from doing evil because it is evil?”
“José says that if a person really needs to do something he will not trouble about what others may think of him. If he is really hungry, he will steal. If he is in real danger, he will kill. If he is really afraid, he will be cruel. He says that it was people who were safe and well fed who invented good and evil so that they would not have to worry about the people who were hungry and unsafe. What a man does depends on what he needs. It is simple. You are not a murderer. You say that murder is evil. José would say that you are as much a murderer as Landru or Weidmann and that it is just that fortune has not made it necessary for you to murder anyone. Someone once told him that there was a German proverb which said that a man is an ape in velvet. He always likes to repeat it.”
“And do you agree with José? I don’t mean about my being a potential murderer. I mean about why people are what they are.”
“I do not agree or disagree. I do not care. For me, some people are nice, some people are sometimes nice and others are not at all nice.” She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. “You are sometimes nice.”
“What do you think about yourself?”
She smiled. “Me? Oh, I am sometimes nice, too. When people are nice to me, I am a little angel.” She added: “José thinks that he is as clever as God.”
“Yes, I can see that he would.”
“You do not like him. I am not surprised. It is only the old women who like José.”
“Do you like him?”
“He is my partner. With us it is business.”
“Yes, you told me that before. But do you like him?”
“He makes me laugh sometimes. He says amusing things about people. You remember Serge? José said that Serge would steal straw from his mother’s kennel. It made me laugh very much.”
“It must have done. Would you like a drink now?”
She looked at a small silver watch on her wrist and said that she would.
They went down. One of the ship’s officers was leaning by the bar with a beer in his hand, talking to the steward. As Graham ordered the drinks, the officer turned his attention to Josette. He obviously counted on being successful with women: his dark eyes did not leave hers while he was talking to her. Graham, listening to the Italian with bored incomprehension, was ignored. He was content to be ignored. He got on with his drink. It was not until the gong sounded for lunch and Haller came in that he remembered that he had done nothing about changing his place at table.
The German nodded in a friendly way as Graham sat down beside him. “I did not expect to have your company to-day.”
“I completely forgot to speak to the steward. If you …”
“No, please. I take it as a compliment.”
“How is your wife?”
“Better, though she is not yet prepared to face a meal. But she took a walk this morning. I showed her the sea. This is the way Xerxes’ great ships sailed to their defeat at Salamis. For those Persians that grey mass on the horizon was the country of Themistocles and the Attic Greeks of Marathon. You will think that it is my German sentimentality but I must say that the fact that for me that grey mass is the country of Venizelos and Metaxas is as regrettable as it could be. I was at the German Institute in Athens for several years when I was young.”