Believe me.
Tuesday was an exact repetition of Monday.
Wednesday evening, Plakas. He wanted to sit outside, but Vasilis insisted they should go indoors. It was hardly spring yet, after all.
As if that mattered. They found a table that was more or less half-and-half, by a window looking out over Tripodon Street. The restaurant was called Oikanas. Vasilis had put on fifteen kilos since they had last met. Was that seven years ago, or was it eight?
He was already drunk, which was a damned nuisance; but his disgust had been nagging at him all afternoon, and he had forced himself to drink quite a lot. Vasilis kept on saying My Friend, My Friend, My Friend — and soon he no longer had the strength to listen to it. He urged Vasilis to Cut the Crap, commented Bullshit, and asked when he was going to deliver that damned gun? That was what all this was about, and nothing else.
When? My Friend.
It took time to convince Vasilis, but in doing so he didn’t reveal an iota of his plan and intentions. Nor the story behind it all. He realized (and recalled) that basically, he was much brighter and more strong-minded than Vasilis, and had the Greek at his mercy even though he was drunk. As time passed, Vasilis had drunk more and more and become hesitant and sluggish, and eventually he gave up. Mediterranean apathy.
‘Fuck you, My Friend. All right.’
‘When? Where?’
Vasilis took another drink of the expensive Boutari wine, and ran his fingers through the Communist beard he had worn since the Junta era. More grey than black nowadays. More bourgeois pig than revolutionary.
‘Friday evening. Here. Same place. All right, My Friend?’
‘All right.’
Thursday was a repetition of Tuesday.
He bought a boat ticket at a little travel agent’s. It was low season, and he would have to wait until Sunday. There was an Olympic Airways flight, but that was only in theory: the Saturday flight was fully booked. They asked him if he wanted to turn up on stand-by.
Ochi. No thank you. He sat in the National Park instead and watched the women. Imagined them naked. Imagined them naked and dead.
The naked and the dead. Disgust bubbled up inside him once more. And he had an erection. The only thing that could fill the emptiness. Everything else was finished and done with. His fingers were seismographs again. He masturbated in some bushes. Shouted out loud when he came, but nobody took any notice. The park was almost deserted. It was an ordinary weekday, people were at work of course; it was cloudy, but quite warm.
Then he lay on his bed for five or six hours, smoking. Ate next to nothing, tried to masturbate again but couldn’t even get an erection. His throat was itching.
He went to the bathroom and tried to be sick, but his stomach was empty. He went out and bought some sesame biscuits, a bottle of water and two packets of local cigarettes.
He drank quite a lot, and dreamed about his mother’s pubic hair. It became quite sparse as the years passed by.
Friday was a repetition of Thursday.
Slightly drunk again. Short meeting with Vasilis in the same taverna in Plakas. He had cut off most of his Communist beard for some reason or other, and maintained that he was worried — but nevertheless handed over without more ado a pistol in a shoe box inside a plastic carrier bag. A Markarov, he said. Russian, nine mil. A bit awkward, but reliable. It should be loaded with eight bullets, and a whole carton was part of the deal. Thirty thousand drachma — that was cheap, he stressed several times. Damned cheap: what was he intending to use it for?
He didn’t answer, paid up and left. He knew they would never meet again.
My Friend.
He didn’t have many memories of Saturday. He lay on his bed. Smoked and drank several glasses of ouzo, but mixed with quite a lot of water. Masturbated occasionally, managed an erection but not an orgasm. Evidently empty there as well. On Sunday morning he was unable to dredge up any memories of the night’s dreams. He took a taxi out to Piraeus and boarded the boat.
It was called Ariadne and wasn’t very big. There was rather a strong wind blowing, and the departure was delayed as the sea was too rough: but he stayed on board rather than going back on land.
They set off in the end at two o’clock. He was quite grateful for the delay, having felt ill all morning. He went straight to the bar and ordered a beer, then started reading Isaac Norton’s Byron biography — he had taken it with him as travel reading, but hadn’t got round to looking at it until now.
Byron? he thought. I’ve waited too long before making this journey. People have suffered unnecessarily.
But he was in no hurry now.
49
When MS Aegina set off from the harbour in Piraeus at nine o’clock in the morning of Tuesday, 5 March, the sky was as blue as a faultless sapphire. The temperature was about twenty degrees in the shade, and there was no wind to speak of in B-deck’s open after-saloon. Only a slowly rising morning sun. No blankets were needed over their legs, they didn’t really need long trousers. Van Veeteren had even acquired a straw hat.
‘Not too bad,’ said Münster, turning to look at the sun.
‘You ought to have been an astronaut,’ muttered Van Veeteren.
‘An astronaut?’ said Münster.
‘Yes, one of those Americans who flew to the moon. I heard how the first man on the moon tried to express his rapture to the dumbfounded masses back here on earth — do you know what he said?’
‘No.’
‘It’s great up here.’
‘It’s great up here?’
‘Yes. A bit on the inadequate side, you might think.’
‘I see,’ said Münster, looking out over the rail. ‘And how would an antiquarian bookseller express his feelings on seeing this panorama?’
Van Veeteren thought for five seconds, also gazing out over the sea, the sky and the coastline. Then he closed his eyes and took a sip of beer.
‘O bliss to be young in the light of morning on the sea,’ he said.
‘Not too bad,’ said Münster.
‘Maybe we should exchange a few thoughts about our mission,’ suggested Van Veeteren when Münster arrived back at the deckchairs with two bottles of lemon squash (a sort of primitive beer substitute: it was only half past nine in the morning, and their fluid balance needed some attention in view of the hot sun). ‘So that we know where we stand.’
‘By all means,’ said Münster. ‘Personally I’m not even sure we’re on the way to the right island. But then, I’m only the one in charge of the investigation.’
Van Veeteren eased off his shoes and socks and splayed out his toes with an air of satisfaction.
‘Of course we are,’ he said. ‘DeFraan is trying to complete a circle — I don’t know exactly how, but we shall find out in due course.’
‘Do you mean that he’s returning to the place where his wife died?’
‘Have you any other suggestion?’
Münster did not. They had not discussed the case properly for two days, even though they had spent nearly all the time in each other’s company. On the flight Van Veeteren had slept from start to finish, and the previous evening he had resorted to his old, familiar weakness for smokescreens and general mystification, Münster had unfortunately been forced to conclude.
But that’s the way he was. The intendent had seen it all before. And now it seemed at last to be time to hint at an apology. Better late than never. Münster drank some water, and waited.
‘We have no chance of proving any of this,’ said Van Veeteren to begin with. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘I agree,’ said Münster. ‘But surely it’s deplorable that the prosecutor wouldn’t allow us to search deFraan’s flat, don’t you think?’