“Your books? Forget it. We’ll get you down to the village-assuming there is any village left. Although why I bother, God knows.”
“I have no intention of going to the village,” Frederick said.
“I do.” Jim stood up. “Better take him to the villa, Sandy. If he’ll go.”
“He’ll go. How about you?”
“I must see if they need any help down there.” Jim gnawed at his lip. “Unless you need me-”
“We don’t need you,” Frederick said, with a sneer that would have done credit to Erich von Stroheim on the Late Show. “Run along and play humanitarian. Perhaps you can extract Chris from under a pile of rock and win his undying gratitude.”
Jim gave me an eloquent look and a shrug. I shrugged back.
“As you can see, he’s alive and kicking. Don’t worry about us. I’ll come down later, when I see what’s happened at the villa.”
“Okay.” Jim turned away. I watched him go with an unreasonable sense of abandonment, and then turned back to my father.
“Let’s go. Unless you have any objections to seeing Keller again.”
“Why should I?” Frederick stood up, pushing my hands away as I tried to steady him. I started to say something nasty, but he looked so awful, all dusty and bloody, with his arm hanging limp, that I bit my lip and remained silent.
We started walking. After a few steps I put my arm around him and he let it remain, which was an admission of something, from Frederick. It took us forever to retrace the route that I had covered in a quarter of an hour earlier that day. The path was almost obliterated, and twice we had to detour around cracks that Frederick was too feeble to jump. The air had darkened, not to the quiet blue of evening, but to a sickly grayish shade that made all objects look corroded and rotten. The ash continued to fall. I was coughing, and Frederick ’s breath came in strained gasps. He leaned more and more heavily on me.
When the walls of the villa came into sight I could have wept with relief. They seemed to be intact. As we neared the front gate I saw some evidence of damage. Stones littered the path and the gate itself hung askew. An acrid smell of burning reached my nostrils, and with alarm I remembered the charred debris of Knossos. Fire, spreading from lamps and cooking fires, had caused as much damage as the earthquake itself.
In the courtyard many of the earthenware pots, with their green contents, had tumbled and shattered. The smell of smoke grew stronger.
As we approached the front door, Keller came out. He didn’t speak, but came quickly to relieve me of Frederick ’s weight. Frederick was drooping; he didn’t seem to realize that he had changed hands. I rubbed my aching shoulders and followed Keller into the house. It felt cool and clean after the outdoors, and I noticed that the windows were tightly shuttered.
“We keep out the ash, if possible,” Keller said. “You are unhurt? What has happened in the village?”
His hands were moving over Frederick as he spoke. When he touched the arm, Frederick ’s eyes opened and he let out a profane remark.
“It is not broken, I think,” Keller said calmly, before I could answer his first question. “The servants have gone. You will have to fetch bandages and water. Luckily our reserve tank was not damaged.”
“Where is Kore?” I asked.
Keller’s eyelids flickered. “She is safe. She rests now. We had a fire in the kitchen. It is extinguished, there is no need to fear. You will find supplies…”
He gave me directions. It took me a while to find the things he wanted. Then I held a flashlight while Keller bandaged Frederick ’s arm. The room was quite dark, but he didn’t turn on the lights. Either the wires were down, or he was afraid of risking another fire from shorted electrical circuits.
Except for swearing, Frederick didn’t say anything. I wondered about leaving these two old enemies alone together; and then decided cynically that I didn’t really care what they did to each other.
“I’m going down to the village,” I said.
“You would be better to stay,” Keller said. “This house is as safe as any structure could be; I saw to that when it was built.”
“You think there will be more quakes?”
“I cannot say. But I am not so concerned about that as about the volcano. The ash is falling thickly.”
His voice was quite matter-of-fact; his hands, arranging a sling around Frederick ’s neck, were steady. Apparently his nerves got out of hand only when his imagination tormented him. In an ordinary physical crisis he was first-rate, and I found his presence a lot more consoling than I did Frederick ’s.
“I’ll risk it,” I said. “I may not be able to help, but-”
“Why don’t you be honest?” Frederick asked. “It’s that boy you’re worried about. The whole village could go up in smoke so long as he survives.”
“What do you care?” I said. “You didn’t even ask me if I was hurt.”
“I could see you were not,” Frederick said. “Why should I ask?”
I couldn’t think of any answer that was rude enough, so I simply walked out. But when I opened the front door, it was all I could do not to slam it shut and retreat. Day had turned to night, or rather to a dismal twilight. The air stung my eyes and smelled funny. I started to cough.
Then I thought of Jim and the children and old people in the village, and I stepped out into the courtyard. I hadn’t gone far, however, before a shape loomed up out of the shadows. I knew it was Jim; I would have known him in the dark of a lightless cave. I greeted him with an exclamation of relief and joy. He didn’t reply, just caught my hand and turned me around.
“What-” I began.
“They’ve gone crazy down there. Come back to the villa.”
It was a strange feeling to be walking in and out of the house as if it were a public building. Keller glanced indifferently at us as we ran in, and went on pouring brandy into a glass that he handed to Frederick.
“Ah,” said the latter unpleasantly. “The humanitarian has given up.”
“There’s nothing I can do down there,” Jim said. He was still holding my hand, so tightly that it hurt. “I came to warn you. Better not leave the house.”
“Why?” Keller asked. “Was there much destruction?”
“Not as bad as it might have been. Some of the older houses collapsed and the hotel is pretty well demolished. It’s not that. It’s…” Jim ran his fingers through his hair; a gray cloud of dust surrounded his head, halolike, for a moment before settling. “They wouldn’t let me help. They were saying some rather ugly things. Some of the kids threw rocks.”
“Typical,” Frederick said. “When a catastrophe occurs, the primitive mind seeks a scapegoat.”
“But they’re friends of mine,” Jim said. “I don’t understand this.”
“Sit down,” Keller said, motioning toward a chair. “Leave them alone. They will quiet. This has happened before.”
Jim shook his head. “I’m going back. I just came here to warn you to stick to the house. You especially, Sandy.”
“What makes you think you’re any more impervious to rocks than I am?” I demanded. “If you’re going, so am I.”
“I’m not going to the village. I-I can’t find Chris.”
“Oh, Jim! The hotel-”
“No, he wasn’t there. They told me that much before they… I’m going to the dig. I can circlearound, above the village.”
I didn’t try to argue with him. I knew how he felt about his boss, and indeed the idea that the man might be lying injured in the increasingly foul air disturbed me too. I’d even have gone to look for Frederick under those circumstances.
I followed Jim out into the hall. He turned at the door and took me by the shoulders.
“No, Sandy, you can’t come.” His voice was very low, almost a whisper. “I want you to keep an eye on things here. There may be trouble. That crowd in the village could turn into a mob. Your father is right. They want a scapegoat.”