Alan Furst - Spies of the Balkans

It was just after six when Zannis got back to Santaroza Lane. As he took Melissa’s butcher scraps from his tiny refrigerator, he saw the mail he’d tossed on the table when he’d come home the night before. He fed Melissa, then, looking for anything commonplace to make him feel, if not better, at least occupied, he began to look through the pile of envelopes. A few bills, an invitation to a formal party, a letter. No return address. Inside, a single sheet of paper:

5 February

C.

We have left Salonika and gone to Athens. I have said my mother is ill and I had to come here, to Kalamaria, to take care of her. She has a telephone, 65-245. I don’t know how long I can stay here, and I don’t know where you are. I hope you read this in time.

D.

He called immediately and was out the door minutes later. Kalamaria wasn’t far away, maybe ten miles south, down the peninsula. Out on the corniche he found a taxi and paid the driver extravagantly to take him to the village, where, Demetria had told him, there was only one hotel, the Hotel Angelina. He arrived at seven-ten and took a room. The hotel was barely open, in February, but a boy led him up to Room 3-likely their finest, since Zannis was their only guest-and lit a small oil heater in the corner. It produced a loud pop and a flash, and the boy swore as he jumped aside, but the thing worked and, ten minutes later, the room began to warm up.

The Hotel Angelina was on the bay and the room had one large window that faced west, over the sea. Not so bad, the room. Whitewashed stucco walls, a narrow bed with a winter blanket, a lamp on a night table, a wooden chair, and an armoire with two hangers. Zannis hung his trench coat and jacket on one, and left the other for his guest. He tried sitting in the chair, then lay on the bed, set his glasses on the night table, and waited. There were rain squalls on the bay that night, accompanied by a gusting wind that sighed and moaned and rattled the window. Eight o’clock came and went. Eight-fifteen. Where was she? Eight-twenty.

Two light knocks on the door.

When he opened it, there she was. Beautiful, yes, but unsmiling and, he sensed, maybe a little scared. He’d planned to embrace her- finally, at last! — but something told him not to, so he rested a light hand on her shoulder and guided her into the room. “Hello, Demetria,” said the passionate lover. “May I take your coat?” She nodded. He could smell her perfume on the collar as as he hung it up in the armoire.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she wore a heavy slate-colored wool sweater and skirt, with thick black cotton stockings and lace-up shoes. “Oh lord,” she said.

“Yes, I know.”

“You can sit down,” she said.

He was standing there, hesitant, and as tense as she was. “I can go downstairs. Maybe there’s some retsina, or wine.”

She brightened. “Whatever they have. It’s cold in here.”

He went downstairs. The hotel didn’t exactly have a bar; a shelf with bottles stood above a square plank table. The door by the table was ajar, Zannis could hear a radio. “Hello?” he said. When the woman who had rented him the room came out, he bought a bottle of retsina and she gave him two cloudy glasses, then said, “Good night, sir.”

Demetria was sitting exactly where he’d left her, rubbing her hands.

“What a night,” Zannis said. He poured retsina into the glasses and gave her one. When he sat by her side, the bed sagged beneath them.

Demetria laughed. “Ah, Kalamaria.”

“Did you live here? As a child?”

“No, my mother came here after my father died. Returned. It was her home village.”

“Is she actually ill?”

“Oh no, not her. Never. Not that I can remember.”

“You told her, ah, what you’re doing?”

From Demetria, a tight smile. “She knows, Mama does. Knows her daughter.”

They clinked their glasses together and drank. The retsina was strong.

“Not so bad,” Zannis said.

“No, not bad at all. A good idea.” She put her glass on the floor and rubbed her hands, trying to get warm.

“Shall we get drunk and forget our woes?”

“Not that drunk.”

When she again picked up her glass, Zannis saw that she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. And she’d pulled her hair back with an elaborate silver clip.

“I called your house, this morning,” he said. “I came home last night but I didn’t see your letter until just before I called you.”

“I knew … I knew you would call. I mean, I knew you would call to the house in Salonika, so I telephoned, from Athens. Nobody answered….” She put her glass on the floor, rubbed her hands and said, “My hands are so cold.” You dumb ox .

“Give them to me.” He held her hands, which weren’t all that cold, and said, “You’re right. They need to be warmed up.” He took her left hand in both of his and rubbed the back, then the palm.

After a time she said, just the faintest trace of a hitch in her voice, “That’s better.” With her free hand, she drank some retsina, then put her glass back on the floor.

“Now the other. You were saying?”

“That I called, from Athens….”

He worked on her hand, his skin stroking hers. “And?”

She leaned toward him a little. “And you … weren’t home.”

“No.” He noticed that the dark shade of lipstick she wore flattered her olive skin. “No … I wasn’t.”

“So I wrote it.” She was closer now.

He took both her hands, meaning to move her toward him but she was, somehow, already there. “I did get it.”

“I know.” Her face was very close to his, so she spoke very softly. “You said.”

He pressed his lips against hers, which moved. After a time he said, “So …” They kissed again, he put a hand on her back, she put a hand on his. With his lips an inch away from her mouth he whispered, “… I telephoned.” The wool of her sweater was rough against his hand as it went up and down.

It was awkward, sitting side by side, but they managed, until he could feel her breasts against him. When she tilted her head, her lips lay across his, and she spread them apart, so that his tongue could touch hers. Involuntarily, he shivered.

He knelt on the floor and began to untie the laces of her shoes. As he worked at one of the knots, she ran her fingers through his hair, then down the side of his face. “Can you do it?”

The knot came undone.

They had set the hard pillows against the iron railing at the foot of the bed in order to see out the window, where, across the bay, a lightning storm raged over Mount Olympus. The mountain was famous for that. Almost always, in bad weather, forked white bolts lit the clouds above the summit-which meant that Zeus was angry, according to the ancient Greeks. Zannis was anything but. Demetria lay sideways against him, the silver clip cold where it rested on his shoulder.

When he’d finished with her shoes, he had returned to her side and taken the hem of her sweater in his hands but she held them still and said, her voice low and warm, “Let me do this for you.” Then she stood, turned off the lamp, and undressed. It wasn’t overly theatrical; she might have been alone, before a mirror, and took her time because she always did. Nonetheless, it was a kind of performance, for she clearly liked being watched. Carefully, she folded her clothing and laid each piece on the chair, using it as-a prop? She wore very fancy silk panties over a garter belt and, after she’d slid them down, she turned partly away from him and braced her foot on the chair in order to remove her stocking. From this perspective, her bottom was fuller, as it curved, than promised when she’d leaned against the back of a sofa. And the angled form of a woman in that position suggested a seductive painting, though it was a natural, a logical, way to go about removing a stocking.