‘Did you have a bad crossing?’ I asked.
Erik merely groaned, and shook his head in despair. Andreas said,
‘There was a storm, yes.’
I nodded.
‘Ah.’
The food arrived. I sipped the bitter seedy coffee and watched the others eat. Erik wolfed the mushy concoction of eggs, his little eyes fixed on a point of empty space, while Andreas wielded his fork with dainty and precise economy. A cloud shadow swept abruptly across the quay, engulfing us, but the shade seemed to bring only a deeper intensity of damp heat. Erik leaned back in his chair, cast a wistful eye at my untouched plate, belched, and then looked at me with a frown.
‘They told me your name was … Turbine, or something,’ he said.
I shook my head.
‘No, it’s White.’
The German fumbled in his pocket and brought out a fat worn wallet, from which he fished a tattered scrap of paper, and peered at it myopically.
‘Twinbein,’ he read. ‘James H. Twinbein, yes?’
‘No.’
‘But they said —’
I explained everything to him, in detail, speaking slowly and carefully, as to a child. He listened to the first couple of sentences. To see his concentration waver and slowly crumble was like witnessing the gradual collapse of an intricate, finely wrought mast. He seemed ill, or drunk, or both. My voice faded, and in the ensuing silence, Andreas suddenly laughed.
‘Erik drank too much last night,’ he said. ‘First brandy, and then ouzo, and … well, you know.’
I looked at the cripple, at his handsome impassive face. There was something about him, a quality of his calm perhaps, which filled me with a vague disquiet. He folded his hands on his breast and lapsed again into silence.
‘Is it clear now?’ I asked of Erik.
He scowled at us both, and buried his nose in his coffee cup.
‘Pah,’ he grunted.
The passengers from the liner were still struggling on the quay, vainly trying, under the harassment of the widows, to sort out their belongings. Something moved behind the pier, and a yacht, a gorgeous thing composed of sleek spare lines, came slipping between the beacons, into the harbour. The rattle and crack of stiff cloth sounded peremptorily across the water, and the tall sail crumpled and slowly fluttered to the deck, leaving the needle-slim mast splendidly alone to pierce the sky. The babble of voices on the quayside faded, and all turned, captivated by the glimmering white presence of the craft. An anchor plopped into the water, and the upturned pointed prow turned its disdainful gaze all along the length of the quay, seemed profoundly repelled by the vulgarity it saw, and went on to contemplate the ocean from whence it had come. And a fat black cloud, lying low in the middle distance, sent a livid shaft of lightning plunging down into the sea. Oh yes, indeed yes, only the trumpets were missing.
Erik was singularly unimpressed by this arrival. I do not think he even noticed it. He rubbed his spectacles with a dirty handkerchief, clipped them back on his nose, and, having sucked a tasty morsel from his tooth, he asked of me,
‘Is there somewhere for me to stay?’
‘Yes. I have a room for you.’
I glanced uncertainly at Andreas, and, seeing my glance, Erik’s gloom lifted for the first time. A wicked grin contorted his face, and he snickered and said,
‘Andreas will be all right, he will dig a hole in the ground, it will be all right.’
The cripple calmly smiled, and his claws stirred in anticipation on his breast. They gazed at each other for a moment, during which I had the distinct, uncomfortable sensation of becoming transparent. Then Erik’s laugh rang out, a high-pitched squawk falling abruptly to a frantic snigger. He stood up, and picked up their bags, the straps of which were being devoured by growths of green mould. He said,
‘All right.’
I was left to pay the bill.
A skiff bobbed by the landing stage, a daughter to the great yacht out on the water turning slowly around the axis of its anchor chain. Three passengers disembarked on the quay. There was a short, fat man with a club foot. Yes, a club foot. The other two looked like his son and daughter. The boy was perhaps thirteen, with a mass of wild black curls and the delicate pale face of a sullen angel. The girl I thought to be four or five years older than her brother. All three of them had large, strangely beautiful blue eyes, the blue of crystals in the sea. They advanced across the quay, the father in front, supported by a heavy stick, the children some paces behind him, each staggering under the weight of a heavy, brown leather trunk. I felt the ghosts of caliphs smiling upon the procession with nostalgia and approval. I hurried in the wake of Erik and the cripple, trying to force my wallet into a pocket which, I discovered, I had forgotten to unbutton. I paused for a moment, a fatal moment, and wherever that button is now, and that wallet, I fervently hope that they have souls with which to suffer the unmitigated agony of an eternity of thoughtfully assorted hells. The father limped past me without a glance, puffing and snorting, but the girl, as she drew near me, began to totter, clawing wildly at the straps of the trunk. Being a gentleman and an idiot, I sprang to her aid. She saw me coming, and with a great gasp of relief she let go her hold of the thing. It toppled slowly into my waiting arms, and I was thrown back a pace, hearing, as I went, an ominous creak from one of my thumbs. The girl and I started into a little dance, weaving our way back and forth on the flagstones and affording some amusement to the onlookers. The boy set down his trunk, with an ease for which I could have bitten him, and watched us with a faint smile. At last she was loaded again with her pack. I heard a Strange noise behind me, and glanced over my shoulder to find the father leaning on his stick, chortling in high amusement. He bowed to me, and turned, and stamped off on his way. The girl gave me a brilliant, false smile and said in a slightly accented English,
‘Thank you, thank you so much, you are very kind, thank you.’
I simpered, and turned away to follow my two loyal friends, who by now had reached the other end of the quay, where they lounged in wait for me with their hands in their pockets. I cannot now say how I knew, but I did know, and was distinctly conscious of somewhere a strut tightening, a wheel squeaking, and the great fragile contraption, like an antediluvian bicycle, beginning to wheeze and whir.
The room was large, with four high white walls and a ceiling above them of bare polished beams slanting down to the window, open now, the grey gauze curtains stirring with a tiny noise, like the dry voice of an insect. Beneath the window a narrow bed stood draped in a blanket of bright island weave. There was a table and two straight-backed chairs which matched neither each other nor the table. The walls were bare but for a small square ikon of a cross-eyed Virgin which hung above the bed. Erik stood in the middle of the floor and peered about him vacantly. Andreas was touching things with his fingertips, verifying them. He opened the windows and stepped out on to what was the black roof of the kitchen below. A bitter breath of tar invaded the room. I leaned in the open doorway with my arms and ankles crossed. Erik gave a grunt and heaved his bag up on the bed, then sat beside it and passed a weary hand over his mouth, his forehead. From the landlord’s quarters below us came the muted sounds of an argument, then the click of a well-placed slap, silence. Erik lifted his eyes to mine.
‘Well,’ he began, and paused to cough uproariously into his fist. ‘How long have you been here, on the island?’
‘Quite a while.’
‘Ah, I see. And you say we met once, somewhere, yes?’