On the evening of the seventh, Vangelis threw him a welcome-home party. Almost all were people Zannis knew, if, in some cases, only distantly. Gabi Saltiel, grayer and wearier than ever, was still driving an ambulance at night but traded shifts with another driver and brought his wife to the party. Sibylla, her helmet of hair highly lacquered for the occasion, was accompanied by her husband, who worked as a bookkeeper at one of the hotels. There were a couple of detectives, a shipping broker, a criminal lawyer, a prosecutor, two ballet teachers he’d met through Roxanne, an economics professor from the university, even a former girlfriend, Tasia Loukas, who worked at the Salonika city hall.
Tasia-for Anastasia-showed up late and held both his hands while he got a good strong whiff of some very sultry perfume. She was small and lively, dressed exclusively in black, had thick black hair, strong black eyebrows, and dark eyes-fierce dark eyes-that challenged the world from behind eyeglasses with gray-tinted lenses. Did Vangelis have something in mind for him when he invited Tasia? Zannis wondered. He’d had two brief, fiery love affairs with her, the first six years earlier, the second a few months before he’d met Roxanne. Very free, Tasia, and determined to remain so. “I’ll never marry,” she’d once told him. “For the truth is, I like to go with a woman from time to time-I get something from a woman I can never get with a man.” She’d meant that to be provocative, he thought, but he wasn’t especially provoked and had let her know that he didn’t particularly care. And he truly didn’t. “It’s exciting,” she’d said. “Especially when it must be kept a secret.” A flicker of remembrance had lit her face as she spoke, accompanied by a most deliciously wicked smile, as though she were smiling, once again, at the first moment of the remembered conquest.
Vangelis gave famously good parties-excellent red wine, bottles and bottles of it-and had stacks of Duke Ellington records. As the party swirled around them, Zannis and Tasia had two conversations. The spoken one was nothing special-how was he, fine, how was she-the unspoken one much more interesting. “I better go say hello to Vangelis,” she said, and reluctantly, he could tell, let go of his hands.
“Don’t leave without telling me, Tasia.”
“I won’t.”
She was replaced by the economics professor and his lady friend, who Zannis recollected was a niece or cousin to the poet Elias. They’d been hovering, waiting their turn to greet the returning hero. Asked about his war, Zannis offered a brief and highly edited version of the weeks in Trikkala, which ended, “Anyhow, at least we’re winning.”
The professor looked up from his wineglass. “Do you really believe that?”
“I saw it,” Zannis said. “And the newspapers aren’t telling lies.”
From the professor, a low grumbling sound that meant yes, but. “On the battlefield, it’s true, we are winning. And if we don’t chase them back into Italy, we’ll have a stalemate, which is just as good. But winning, maybe not.”
“Such a cynic,” his lady friend said gently. She had a long intelligent face. Turning to the table at her side, she speared a dolma, an oily, stuffed grape leaf, put it on a plate and worked at cutting it with the side of her fork.
“How do you mean?” Zannis said.
“The longer this goes on,” the professor said, “the more Hitler has to stop it. The Axis can’t be seen to be weak.”
“I’ve heard that,” Zannis said. “It’s one theory. There are others.”
The professor sipped his wine; his friend chewed away at her dolma.
Zannis felt dismissed from the conversation. “Maybe you’re right. Well then, what can we do about it?” he said. “Retreat?”
“Can’t do that either.”
“So, damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”
“Yes,” the professor said.
“Don’t listen to him,” the professor’s friend said. “He always finds the gloomy side.”
The warrior in Zannis wanted to argue-what about the British army? Because if Germany attacked them, their British ally would arrive in full force from across the Mediterranean. To date, Britain and Germany were bombing each other’s cities, but their armies, after the debacle that ended in Dunkirk, had not engaged. Hitler, the theory went, had been taught a lesson the previous autumn, when his plans to invade Britain had been thwarted by the RAF.
But the professor was bored with politics and addressed the buffet-“The eggplant spread is very tasty,” he said, by way of a parting shot. Then gave way to one of Zannis’s former colleagues from his days as a detective-insider jokes and nostalgic anecdotes-who in turn was replaced by a woman who taught at the Mount Olympus School of Ballet. Had Zannis heard anything from Roxanne? No, had she? Not a word, very troubling, she hoped Roxanne wasn’t in difficulties.
Minutes later, Zannis knew she wasn’t. Francis Escovil, the English travel writer and, Zannis suspected, British spy, appeared magically at his side. “Oh, she’s perfectly all right,” Escovil said. “I had a postal card, two weeks ago. Back in Blighty, she is. Dodging bombs but happy to be home.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Yes, no doubt busy as a bee. Likely that’s why you haven’t heard from her.”
“Of course,” Zannis said. He started to say give her my best but thought better of it. That could, in a certain context, be taken the wrong way. Instead, he asked, “How do you come to know Vangelis?”
“Never met him. I’m here with Sophia, who teaches at the school.”
“Oh.” That raised more questions than it answered, but Zannis knew he’d never hear anything useful from the infinitely deflective Englishman. In fact, Zannis didn’t like Escovil, and Escovil knew it.
“Say, could we have lunch sometime?” Escovil said, trying to be casual, not succeeding.
What do you want? “We might, I’m pretty busy myself. Try me at the office-you have the number?”
“I think I might …”
I’ll bet you do.
“… somewhere. Roxanne put it on a scrap of paper.”
Escovil stood there, smiling at him, not going away.
“Are you writing articles?” Zannis asked, seeking safe ground.
“Trying to. I’ve been to all sorts of monasteries, got monks coming out of my ears. Went to one where they haul you up the side of a cliff; that’s the only way to get there. Just a basket and a frayed old rope. I asked the priest, ‘When do you replace the rope?’ Know what he said?”
“What?”
“When it breaks!” Escovil laughed, a loud haw-haw with teeth showing.
“Well, that’s a good story,” Zannis said, “as long as you’re not the one in the basket.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Tasia was headed toward him. “We’ll talk later,” he said to Escovil, and turned to meet her.
“I’m going home,” she said.
“Could you stay a while?”
“I guess I could. Why?”
“I’m the guest of honor, I can’t leave yet.”
“True,” she said. She met his eyes, no smile to be seen but it was playing with the corners of her mouth. “Then I’ll stay. But not too long, Costa. I don’t really know these people.”