Yes. It was Georgie’s boyfriend who had taken his suitcase, his taxi, his room, his life. And who was now taking the place he should have had at dinner — who was sitting there in his skateboarding trousers, surrounded by admiring faces and attentive microphones, stuffing his bulging stomach with one specially prepared onion-free course after another.
While poor trusting Georgie waited up there in her lonely mountain retreat, abandoned and forgotten.
And, if her boyfriend was here, then she still had nothing to eat. Dr. Wilfred could feel the nagging emptiness inside her, the uneasy lassitude, almost as painfully as Georgie would be feeling them herself. The sheer wrenching injustice of it overwhelmed him.
The more Dr. Wilfred thought about it, the more serious Georgie’s situation appeared to him. Not only was she hungry now — she had no prospect of ever eating again. Or any way of communicating her plight to the outside world. By the time she realized that no one was ever going to come she could conceivably be too weak to struggle to some other settlement for help. It wasn’t possible that a fit young woman could actually starve to death at the height of summer on a Mediterranean island. Or was it?
Anything was possible. In the last twenty-four hours that horrible bulging impostor in the skateboarding trousers had proved it over and over again.
He jumped to his feet and walked back to the now deserted Temple of Athena. Among the empty glasses and overturned bottles were platters still scattered with uneaten canapés. On one of the platters he assembled a reasonably representative selection: soft-poached ortolans’ eggs, anchovies in absinthe, and tiny baskets, woven out of sea-grass, filled with lobster tartare and fouetté of shark fin. He covered the platter with a tablecloth, clamped the lecture under his arm, and hurried back towards the outside world.
If he’s me, he thought, then I’ll be him. He lives my life — I live his.
* * *
In the sky above the agora lingered a frescoed ceiling of pink and golden cirrus. On the tables the flames of the candles swayed languidly as the diners moved about, finding their places, and then stood behind their chairs, waiting for the bishop to say grace. There was a bright murmur of people introducing themselves to the neighbors on either side. “Hi!” the wealthy and socially adept guests of the foundation were saying to one another, extending welcoming hands and smiling welcoming smiles. The wealthy and socially wary business associates of Mr. Papadopoulou unsmilingly inspected the outstretched hands, and nodded, and gave nothing away.
In the center of the top table, at the focus of everyone’s attention, stood Dr. Wilfred. He had surrendered to public opinion. Dr. Wilfred he would have to remain.
On his left stood Mrs. Fred Toppler, the candlelight flashing points of fire back from her hair, her neck, her bosom, her fingers; on his right Mrs. Skorbatova, with richly tanned full breasts struggling to be free of her décolletage, and a construction of brass-colored hair on her head that would have been proof against small-arms fire. In front of Mrs. Toppler were a table lectern and various microphones. Before these would be moved to stand in front of Dr. Wilfred, though, there were four courses of dinner, four fine wines, and surely also time for some idea to come to him about what he would do when the moment arrived.
Mrs. Toppler picked up a gavel made from local olive wood, and struck its olive-wood base three times. The murmur of conversation died away. The candle flames settled and stood as still as the diners themselves behind their chairs. From the farther end of the table came a mumble of Greek, incomprehensible but recognizably liturgical. “Amen,” agreed all but the most committed atheists and the most taciturn businessmen, and there was a slithering of rented gilt chairs being drawn back from the tables over rented oriental carpets as everyone sat down.
The dinner that marked the triumphal finale of the Fred Toppler Foundation’s annual Great European House Party had begun.
40
Nikki stood on the steps at the edge of the agora, in the darkness of the gathering night, looking out over the world she had created. Candlelit eyes sparkled. Candlelit lips talked and smiled. Candlelit heads bent forward to listen, were thrown back to laugh. Candlelit hands lifted soup spoons, broke bread, made charming gestures. More faces emerged from the shadows as waiters leaned into the light to serve and pour, to lay plates and clear them. A reassuring music of incomprehensible social noise rose into the night. Everything was going well.
All Nikki could see, though, was Dr. Norman Wilfred, as she still couldn’t help thinking of him, smiling his lopsided smile at Mrs. Toppler as she talked to him — talked and talked to him, leaning close to him, her hand resting on his arm. He couldn’t tell a lie, he had told Nikki at the airport, but he could smile a lie and he could listen a lie. He could look a lie as he brushed the lying rumpled blond hair out of his soft brown lying eyes.
Who was he, this Oliver Fox?
Why had he done it?
What was he going to do next?
And, most important of all, what was she going to do about it?
She knew what she was going to do about it. She was going to stop it. She was going to tell Mrs. Toppler. She was going to tell her now.
How, though? She would have to approach her on her right side, away from Dr. Wilfred, and interrupt her even as she spoke to him. Then do her best to whisper over the noise of the dinner …
But what whispered words could she find that could possibly make Mrs. Toppler understand something so incomprehensible? And even if she could find the words, how could she ever make Mrs. Toppler believe them?
All around Nikki the world continued on its allotted course. The forks went back and forth between plates and mouths. The first faint stars overhead moved westward. She was alone with her problem in the midst of it all.
She was going to do it, though, and do it precisely now. The decision was made. Somehow, though, the decision failed to reach the appropriate muscles. Still she stood watching.
* * *
“I must stop monopolizing you!” said Mrs. Fred Toppler to Dr. Wilfred. “I get so nervous, though! Every year it’s the same! Dance, yes, no trouble at all. I could get up on the table right now and dance my heart out, and I’d love every second of it! I have to make a speech, though, and all I want to do is get under the table and die! So of course I just keep talking! It’s terrible! I should be listening to you!
“So where was I? Oh, yes. Christian. I shouldn’t be criticizing our own director to you. But why isn’t he here? Why is he never anywhere? What does he do all day? We don’t know! We never see him! OK, he’s an elf, like Dieter. But even an elf has to come out of elfland sometimes!”
Dr. Wilfred gazed at her, nodding and smiling his soft sympathetic smile as she went on and on about whatever it was she was going on about. But he was thinking uneasy thoughts. He had succeeded in climbing the impossible climb. Only now he couldn’t get down again. He was stuck on the mountaintop. He had made himself Dr. Wilfred by his own individual act of will. He remained Dr. Wilfred by the will of others.
“So,” said Mrs. Toppler, “Christian’s days here are numbered. Only he doesn’t know it yet. How are we going to do it? Mr. Papadopoulou’s going to fix it. Cut off his supply of lentils. Underage boys on his computer. Concrete boots. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Tell me after it’s all over.
“I shouldn’t be saying all this to someone I only met this afternoon. But I feel I know you really well! I feel I can talk to you!”