The Officer and the Spy, page 28
‘Then?’
‘She’d never have been able to stop him. She’d have tried, and then he’d have shouted her down, and she’d have given in, because she always has with him, and I couldn’t let that happen.’ His eyes bore into hers, entreating her to understand. ‘They’re my family, Eleni. All I’ve got left.’ His voice strained on the painful truth. ‘If I’d left them, deserted the army, I don’t know what might have happened to them. How could I have done it?’
‘You couldn’t.’ She really did understand that. And how impossible it must have felt to put any of it in a letter, knowing that that letter would have been intercepted. ‘It’s all right.’
‘No,’ he said, heavily. ‘It’s not.’
‘It is,’ she insisted. Then, before he could protest again, ‘Where’s Lotte now?’
‘Still in Berlin. Krista sees her. She’s the only person she’s got now, other than Papa, who she can be honest with… ’
‘And what about Friedrich?’
‘He was killed in Poland.’
‘Good.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I thought so.’
‘I hope a bomb finds his wife.’ She said it quite coldly, quite detachedly, in much the same way as she passed the names of traitors on.
Did it shock him?
He didn’t look shocked.
He only studied her in the mellow lamplight, as though she were one of his sketches, and it had dawned on him that there was a room he’d yet to fill in.
‘I hope it does too,’ he said.
‘I’m glad you told me.’
‘I’m glad you know. It means… a lot.’
‘Have you told anyone else?’ she said. ‘Had anyone you can be honest with?’
She knew what she was really asking.
So did he.
‘I haven’t wanted anyone,’ he said.
‘Not in all this time?’
‘Not in all this time. And you?’ He continued to appraise her. ‘Have you?’
‘No one like you,’ she said, kissing him. ‘No one.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘All right,’ he said, kissing her back. ‘Selfishly, I’m happy… ’
‘You’re allowed to be.’
For a little while after that, they said no more, just lay there, their foreheads touching, his hand moving up and down her back.
‘So,’ he said, at length, ‘my questions… ’
‘Oh, your questions… ’
‘Yes.’
‘I probably won’t answer very many of them,’ she warned.
And he smiled, lifting the sadness that had descended over them, making her do it too, she wasn’t sure what at, only that it was good, so incredibly good, after all they’d spoken of, and been through, to be smiling again, with him.
She was true to her word though.
She didn’t answer many of his questions at all. Whilst she did tell him that her father was fine, no longer in the Atlantic, but sailing other seas (another thing she knew thanks to Hector), and was happy to pass on more news of Marianne and Esther – like of Marianne’s Brooklyn home, and part-time job in a local store; Hans’s kindness; Esther’s English, and funny little ways – she refused to confirm his suspicions about what she was doing on the island, or why she was hiding herself away as she was.
‘I’m not stupid, Eleni,’ he said. ‘I don’t need you to. It’s fairly obvious.’
‘I’m not saying anything,’ she said.
Nor would she about when she’d come, or how she’d found her job, or this flat. And, when he asked her who, if anyone, she still saw from their past, she was silent about that too, not because she didn’t trust him – she did, she’d never have brought him home with her otherwise; she’d probably never have left her basket behind in the rubble – but because it wasn’t her right to share anyone else’s secrets but her own.
‘You’re being very… perplexing,’ he said. ‘I’m perplexed.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Tell me at least that you know your cousin is alive?’
‘I do know that,’ she said, and it was her turn to be perplexed, that he did.
All through the winter, members of the Cretan 5th Division had trickled home from the mainland, brought at night on caiques that had evaded German naval patrols. Little Vassili had come in November, and been working as a runner ever since, carrying messages across the mountains – all the warnings, and news of incoming British parachute drops, and plans to hijack patrols. She hadn’t seen him, much as she longed to. He, like almost everyone else, had no idea she was here. Just to be safe. The British SOE operative she’d come to know had made his acquaintance though, along with Sofia’s, and Katerina’s, and the others Vassilis. Their wine cellar, he’d told her, when she’d asked if he’d ever passed through their village, was a favoured hiding place. Your aunt’s an excellent cook.
Given their hospitality, given Little Vassili’s work, she couldn’t help her growing alarm that Otto knew he was here, regardless of how much she trusted him, because it was suddenly feeling all too plausible that he’d heard his name mentioned in Nazi circles.
‘Stop panicking,’ he said.
‘I’m not panicking.’
‘Well, you are, and you don’t need to. I’ve known he’s been back five months and told no one.’
‘But who told you?’
‘Your grandfather.’
‘What?’ What? ‘You’ve seen Papou?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’ she said again, stupidly. ‘How have you waited this long to tell me that?’
He laughed. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know… ’
‘When did you see him?’
‘For the first time, months ago. My billet’s only a couple of miles from the surgery.’
‘Go back,’ she said, ‘start from the beginning.’
Which he did, saying how, when he’d first been posted to Souda, the summer before, he’d resolved to call in on Yorgos and Spiros at work, before they’d have a chance to run into him. ‘I felt it was a small respect I could pay, to not hide.’
‘That was very brave of you.’
‘That’s a generous way of putting it.’
‘What did they say?’ she asked, at once dreading, but somehow not dreading, the answer.
Kindness, Eleni-mou, Yorgos had told her, in the hospital.
She didn’t think that he, or Spiros, would have had it in them to have been cruel to Otto. Especially not when he’d gone to the effort of seeking them out. Not like she’d been cruel to him, earlier.
Sure enough…
‘They made it easier than I expected them to,’ he said, shifting his weight, trailing his hand around her waist. ‘They thanked me, actually, for coming. Said it meant something.’
‘I expect it did.’
‘I’ve been taking them medical supplies. Antiseptics, sulphonamides, morphia… ’
‘You steal them?’
‘Yes,’ he said, carelessly, like it was nothing. ‘It helps, I think.’ He frowned. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it does.’
‘It must,’ she said, moved, deeply moved, that he’d been doing that.
The smallest acts, Mr Skoulas had said to her, only a few hours before, when he’d given her that safehouse address to pass on, can change the course of lives. She’d been unhappy about being excluded from the planned meeting. Only male attendees, naturally. Be proud of the risks you take, Eleni. I am.
She hadn’t been especially proud. She wasn’t now.
She still wanted to be doing a lot, lot more.
She didn’t tell Otto that he should be proud either. She realized it would be pointless.
‘You’ll have made people better,’ she simply said, ‘taken away their pain.’
‘You sound like your grandfather. And Spiros.’
‘Good,’ she said. Then, acclimatising, slowly, to the shock of him having been with them, asked, ‘How are they?’ She’d never got close enough to Yorgos to be able to tell. ‘Please say they’re well.’
To her relief, Otto did. ‘Older than I remember… ’
‘I know… ’
‘But they seem fine.’
‘I hope they’re sleeping. They weren’t sleeping at all when I was last with them.’
‘Don’t worry about that. They have plenty of energy.’
It was the dry way he said it.
It made her laugh.
He did too, properly laughed, low and warm, and, remembering how much she’d always loved that sound, loving that she was hearing it again, she kissed him, loving too how he pulled her onto him, kissing her back.
‘Have you seen Maria?’ she asked, when they broke away.
‘No.’
‘That’s disappointing.’
‘I apologise.’
‘Did you tell Papou and Spiros about your mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘They must have been very sad.’
‘They were,’ he said, and spoke of the letter his father had sent for him to pass on to Spiros, thanking him for the care he’d given to Brigit, saying he hoped there’d come a day when they could meet as friends again.
‘That’s a very big hope,’ said Eleni.
‘That’s exactly what I told him,’ Otto replied.
They didn’t have much longer, after that.
They talked for a few minutes more, no longer of the present, but reliving their past: that first night they’d seen one another in the water; the chances they’d taken, staying out so late; how he’d swam home from her villa to avoid her papou (‘We didn’t fool him,’ she said. ‘I know,’ he said, in the same dry tone as he’d spoken of his energy, making her laugh more, ‘he’s made that clear’), then of the café, and Dimitri’s music, but very little of Dimitri, because they’d run out of time.
‘You’ll come back though,’ she said, as he climbed from the bed and it dawned on her how much lonelier, how much more silent, her weekend would now feel, without him in it.
‘I’ll come back,’ he said. ‘You’ll be here tomorrow night?’
‘I’m always here at night.’
He pulled on his trousers, sat on the edge of her bed to shrug his shirt back on. She got up too, fetching her robe.
It was as she was tying it, that he mentioned Nikos Kalantis. ‘Did you know they use him as a translator at HQ?’
She paused, still holding her tie, taken aback at hearing that name, from him. ‘You’ve seen him?’
‘I have.’
‘You work at HQ?’
‘I’m there enough. Briefings, reports on my men. Sometimes, I translate too.’ He gave her a long look, reading her face. ‘You knew about him then?’
‘Yes,’ she said, realizing it made sense that he did too. She just hadn’t expected it. ‘His name comes up a fair bit.’ He wasn’t widely trusted. The women she worked with especially talked about his fluent German – such an exception, on the island – and how he made the most of it to earn a Nazi wage, making up for all the money he’d lost since trade for his clothing business had dried up. ‘He’s come to a couple of meetings at the Town Hall as well.’
‘Christ, Eleni… ’
‘It’s fine. He’s never looked at me.’ He hadn’t. ‘It wouldn’t matter if he did… ’
‘What do you mean, wouldn’t matter?’
‘Stop panicking,’ she said, just as he had to her, about Little Vassili.
He didn’t pretend he wasn’t panicking though, like she had.
‘This is insane,’ he said.
‘No, it’s not,’ she said, moving back to him, placing herself between his legs, taking his face in her hands, intent on reassuring him. ‘He’d never know me… ’
‘I knew you.’
‘You’ve seen a lot more of me than he has.’ She smiled. ‘A lot more… ’
‘He was watching you, Eleni, remember? That Sunday we met, at Dimitri’s.’
‘You think he was watching me.’
‘I know he was watching you.’
‘And what if he was? I was an eighteen-year-old girl in white shorts, with blonde hair. Look at me now… ’
‘I am,’ he said, the lamp throwing golden shapes on his face. ‘I’m looking.’ He placed his hands to her hips. ‘I’m terrified for you.’ It was then that he said it. ‘Why are you here? Why are you still here?’
‘Because I need to be.’
‘You want to die, Eleni? Is that it?’
‘No,’ she said. Then, thinking of his words, I am drowning in my shame, ‘Do you?’
‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Not with you.’
‘Don’t ever want it,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t.’
‘You shouldn’t be here.’ He sounded like Hector. ‘If you’re caught, they will torture you, and then they will kill you. They will kill you,’ he snapped his fingers, ‘like that.’
‘No one’s going to kill me,’ she said. ‘I have cyanide.’
‘Don’t joke.’
‘I wasn’t… ’
‘Please, promise me you’ll think about going.’
‘No,’ she said, abruptly tired, so tired, of lying. A terrible way to live, really. ‘I’m not going anywhere, and we’re going to fall out if you keep telling me I should.’
‘Then we’ll fall out… ’
‘I’d rather we didn’t. I’d rather we focused on surviving this. We need to survive.’ She leant down, kissing him, feeling him resist, for a moment, then relent. ‘We need to get to the other side.’
‘You think there’ll be one?’
‘I do,’ she said. ‘I have to. And I want you there, with me, because it won’t be as nice if you’re not.’
‘Don’t… ’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Make me believe it could happen.’
‘Believe it,’ she said. ‘Please… ’
He made no promise.
But he kissed her again, making her tumble forwards as he pulled her with him, back onto the bed, and she decided that that was promise enough.
Chapter Twenty
He did return the following night, bringing food – tomatoes, bread, jam – which he refused to share with her, saying she must keep it for herself. ‘I hate thinking of you hungry.’
It was certainly a theme among the men in her life.
She waited for him, perched on the steps by her back door, reading a novel by torchlight, her ear tuned for the click of her crooked blue gate.
She hadn’t been there long, when he came.
The day, gusty and rainy, had been a busy one.
In the morning, she’d called by on Socrates.
Not at his old flat, that he and Dimitri had decorated with such care; no, that had been cruelly flattened in the raid, and he’d moved to an apartment much closer by, not far from his school. He was the headmaster there now, the previous head – who’d been so determined to make his mark that summer of 1936 – having returned to his family in Heliopolis after the mainland had fallen. (A fortuitous move, it transpired. Heliopolis, along with the rest of the east, had been placed under Italian jurisdiction, their bakers POWs no more; it was kept entirely separate, an island now in itself, but, if the rumours were to be believed, existed under an occupation that was managed a deal more leniently than theirs in the German zone.) Socrates was, much like his old head, gone from Chania almost every weekend. Eleni had known he probably wouldn’t be home.
She’d needed to try him though, desperate to talk to him about Otto, and her guilt at what they’d done – which had returned as soon as he’d left her, gnawing at her all night – trusting, instinctively, that Socrates would understand. He, after all, had spent years loving someone the law, and his family, and any number of others, would condemn him for.
‘It’s painful,’ he’d confided, the better they’d grown to know one another over the winter just gone, ‘but I made a choice, long ago, not to let the idea of anyone’s judgement taint what, for me, is good and true. I hide to be safe, not because I’m doing anything wrong.’
She realized her and Otto’s situation was different, but she supposed, as she rapped on Socrates’ door, that what she really wanted was for him to tell her she wasn’t doing anything wrong either. He’d known Otto. Drank coffee with him. Taken her shifts so that the two of them could run off together.
Surely, he wouldn’t think she was doing anything wrong?
She wasn’t able to find out.
On Eleni’s second rap, the woman from upstairs stuck her head from her window, calling down that he’d left the night before. Up to the mountains, Eleni guessed.
Deflated, she trailed home through the drizzle, only to find a note pushed under her door, which on any other day would certainly have lifted her spirits, but the wind was picking up, the sky darkening, and the hut this note had requested her to present herself at would take her a good couple of hours to reach – or, as the runners tended to talk about distances, twelve cigarettes. They never used traditional measurements; they said it was pointless when a mile on a road took a quarter of the time as a mile scrambling through a ravine, and a tenth of one climbing a steep rockface – which was what they most often found themselves doing.
Eleni at least had no rockfaces to climb that afternoon. She didn’t smoke any cigarettes either. Pulling on her worn-through boots (there was no leather left on the island; she’d had to repair them with old car tyres), she reached for her basket, hid Pendlebury’s gun beneath a blanket, and set off, west out of town. At each checkpoint, she showed her papers to the damp, disinterested guards, appearing, she had every confidence, as though she was on nothing more sinister than a snail-hunt.
She did collect some snails as she walked, for show, swallowing her bile as they suckered from the ground. She wouldn’t cook them, she decided. She’d liberate them, just as she had their sisters the night before, once she was back in her yard. Turn them from country-snails to town-snails.
‘Lucky snails,’ said Stephen, the same SOE operative who’d praised Sofia’s cooking, pulling her into the windowless hut she’d first met him in, back in October. Then, he’d sent a runner to fetch her, and had been all seriousness. Now, he wore a lopsided grin. ‘Hello, Hector’s rogue.’
