Thomas Greanias - The 34th Degree

“So that’s why you’re here.” She was angry at him because she was scared for him, scared at what the Baron might do to him, like he did to Karl or any man who came near her. She had to get rid of him, get him out of Athens. “I haven’t seen any text. I see none of his papers. He keeps them locked away.”

“But, of course, your father’s safe is in the library. The Baron’s study now, I presume.”

Dear God, Chris, she thought, please stop. “Don’t, Christos.”

“Still hidden in the bookcase?”

She felt faint, and her knees seemed to buckle, but Chris held her up.

“Any spare keys?” he asked, relentlessly moving forward with his questions.

“He changed the lock,” she found herself saying. “It’s a combination. Only he knows. The locksmith who installed it…he died. Ludwig trusts nobody. Please, Christos, leave now while you can. Already you’re in danger.”

“Am I?” he asked in an almost mocking tone. “What about you?”

“I tell you, he doesn’t want to involve me.”

“How kind of him. You seem involved enough to me already. Are you sleeping with him tonight?”

The question, coming from Chris’s lips, shocked and enraged her. “How dare you!” She slapped him in the face, tears streaking down her own. “How dare you throw this shame at me after you went to America and left me to this!”

Suddenly, she realized the music had stopped and she was in the middle of a sea of staring faces. She looked up at Chris and saw his surprise even as Ludwig emerged on the terrace to complete the picture of humiliation. Unable to stand there any longer, she fled the gardens and ran inside the house.

F ifteen minutes later, Aphrodite’s mother watched Andros’s car leave the drive from the window of her daughter’s bedroom upstairs. She let the curtain fall and turned to her daughter, who was sobbing on the bed.

“What am I going to do?” cried Aphrodite.

“You stay with the Baron and forget Christos,” her mother said firmly. “Shall we all die because this young fool returns to Greece?”

“But I love him,” Aphrodite insisted.

“And your family? Shall we lose all we own? Our home? Our business? Everything your father has worked for? All for love? You’re too young to understand, Aphrodite.”

Her father came in and closed the door. “I heard them say goodbye in the hall while a footman fetched the car,” he said. “Von Berg invited him over here for lunch tomorrow during siesta, to discuss business. I can only wonder what sort of business that would be.” He began to pace the floor, thinking out loud. “You, young lady, will not be here when young Andros calls on the Baron. In fact, you’re not to lay eyes on him while he’s in Athens.”

“What?”

Her mother said, “Don’t throw your life away for some young fool! If he were smart, he would have waited until after the war to return.”

“Oh, young Andros is no fool,” said her father. “Mark my words, he’s struck a deal with the Germans. I’ve heard as much, and now I believe it. Why else is he here? There’s a real collaborator for you, Aphrodite. Don’t let him trick you.”

Her mother fixed herself in front of Aphrodite’s vanity. “Come, we must see our guests and show ourselves. You can stay up here, child. And stay away from that boy tomorrow at the memorial service.”

They turned off the light and left her to cry herself to sleep. But she could not sleep, distraught with all that had happened. Why did Chris have to return now, of all times? What was this document he was looking for? What would happen to them all? Her heart, ever since childhood, had belonged to Chris. But it belonged to her family, too, whatever their faults. That meant appeasing Ludwig. To help Chris would be to betray Ludwig and jeopardize her family. To betray Chris, however, would be to betray her heart. Who would deliver her from this inhuman suffering?

She began to pray to God but stopped herself when she realized her prayers had already been answered. Indeed, the lover she so desperately wanted to rescue her had arrived. But like the proverbial demon who returns to his place with seven more, so her original condition seemed mild compared to her present agony.

Before, she had lived in two separate worlds. One was the dream of her future with Chris, the other her existence with Ludwig. Those two worlds had collided, shattering the illusion that she could somehow survive in both. There was only one world now, and she trembled at the thought of what kind of world it would turn out to be.

M any of the same Athenians who had attended Baron von Berg’s party the night before now packed the cathedral for the Saturday-morning memorial service. It marked the anniversary of General Nicholas Andros’s death, two years since he had fallen defending Crete from the invading Germans. To pay their respects to the war hero was to prove their patriotism.

Chris Andros watched the spectacle in smoldering silence while altar boys swung their censers to the chants of the towering figure of Archbishop Damaskinos. A few pews ahead, seated with her parents, was an uncomfortable-looking Aphrodite, dressed in fashionable black.

Andros had never felt lower in his life. Last night’s nightmare with Aphrodite had been bad enough. But to wake up to his father’s memorial service and the harsh light of his own failures seemed unusually cruel. It was worse than death.

Since he knew no man could escape death, death never scared Andros. How a man died, on the other hand, was paramount, the ultimate epitaph on one’s life. To die like his father, in battle, defending country, family, and friends, was the ultimate honor. It was just as good to live a long life like his grandfather, raise a large family, and die surrounded by people with whom one had left a positive legacy. Neither fate looked likely for him.

Life seemed so unfair in regard to his measure as a man, Andros thought. He would never be as revered as General Nicholas Andros, and yet he would never escape the sins of his father either. Furthermore, he had hoped to return to Greece a conquering hero, having proved his valor with the U.S. Army. But here he was, in the middle of the war, having proved nothing to anybody. Not to his uncle Mitchell, not to Aphrodite, and not to the Allies or himself. He had failed.

After last night’s disaster, Andros felt more helpless than ever in his bid to save Aphrodite. Indeed, she seemed to have been managing for herself as well as one could expect before he showed up with an accusing finger. For him to inform her that she was no longer a pure, untainted virgin seemed cruel to him now, and he was sorry he had ever held that expectation over her head. He was also sorry he’d ever let an issue as frivolous as the role of a Danish king in Greece get between him and his father.

“Truly, all things are vanity, and life is but a shadow and a dream,” boomed the archbishop. “For in vain doth everyone born of earth disquiet himself, as saith the Scripture. When we have acquired the world, then do we take up our dwelling in the grave, where kings and beggars are the same. Wherefore, O Christ our God, give rest to Thy servant departed this life, forasmuch as Thou lovest mankind.”

Andros never understood the practice of praying for the dead. If man was appointed to die once and then the Judgment, then Andros failed to see how his prayers could alter the departed’s eternal destiny if it had been determined. Moreover, how could this expression of love and remembrance after his father’s death make up for what Chris had failed to express to him during his life?

He looked up at the domed ceiling, at Christ the Almighty gazing down from heaven. The Son of God seemed so distant up there in the celestial bodies, Andros thought, while here on earth, mortal men killed one another. Where was God now that the world was at war, now that lovers like him and Aphrodite stood so close to each other and yet so far apart, now that he was about to stare at the grave of a father whose side he had abandoned at the most crucial hour? Could God return what now seemed lost forever?