Hammond Innes: Levkas man

She stared at me, her tight little face cold and hostile. Finally, she turned without a word, and walked away towards the bridge. I watched her go, and when I went back into the house it seemed more empty than ever. I sat in the chair where Dr. Gilmore had sat, staring out over the canal and thinking about what he had told me. I had never thought of the old man as being important in the academic world. A genius, he had said-and difficult to live with. He had certainly been that; but now time and the emptiness of the house made it all seem different, the shadow of his personality touched with greatness. I was beginning to realize what I had been living with. And his loneliness-that was something even I could understand.

But his world was not mine and right now I had more immediate problems facing me. I got my raincoat and went out into the roar of the traffic, walking quickly towards the docks. Five hours and a lot of drinking later I got wind of a vacancy on an ore carrier completing repairs at a shipyard in the Maas. The third officer had been taken to hospital with suspected peritonitis and the ship was sailing next day for Seven Islands in the St. Lawrence. I went back to the house to get my case, intending to spend the night in Rotterdam and be at the yard first thing in the morning. Drinking around the dockside

taverns costs money and I had changed my last fiver by the time it was dusk.

It had been a long day and my feet seemed barely connected to my body as I stumbled back along the canal. The house-barges all had their lights on, the square, hulked shap›es warmed by the lit curtains. In some the curtains had been left drawn back in the manner of the Dutch country towns, and in these I glimpsed the comfort of families at home, the flicker of TV sets. It was cold, a touch of frost in the air, and mist was hanging like a grey veil over the waters of the canal.

In my stumbling' haste, I nearly passed the house. I checked, and focused carefully on the traffic. It was the evening rush hour and they drive fast in Amsterdam. Standing there, waiting to cross, I gradually registered the fact that there were lights on in the house, the fanlight over the door and the tall windows above. I crossed the road, fumbled the key into the lock, and hauled myself up the stairs by the rope hand-support, impatience and anger mounting in me at the unwelcome intrusion.

I found her waiting for me in the study, sitting in the swivel chair with a book in her lap and the curves of her body picked out by the Anglepoise lamp. "What the hell are you doing here?" My voice sounded thick in my ears. She had turned at my entrance and her face was in shadow, so that I could not see her expression. But I could guess what she was thinking, and that made me angrier still. "There's no point in your talking to me. I've got the chance of a ship and I'm leaving for Rotterdam right away."

"A ship?" I could almost hear her waiting for an explanation.

"I'm a ship's officer-I forgot to tell you." I was just at the stage where sarcasm sounds clever.

"Oh-then I don't quite understand. A Mynheer Borg called whilst you were out. He seemed under the impression that you were going on some sort of a yachting trip in the Mediterranean."

"Why didn't he phone?"

"He couldn't. There isn't a phone here any more. The electricity would have been cut off by now, too, if they hadn't muddled the dates."

I leaned against the bureau, my head touching the glass. It was cool, the skull right under my nose and my eyes trying to focus on the cracks between plaster and bone. "Borg shouldn't have come here," I muttered. "What did he want?"

"I've no idea," she said coldly. "He mentioned that he'd seen something he thought would interest you in an English newspaper." I could feel her working herself up into a cold fury. "I've been waiting for you all afternoon. This morning I had a letter from my brother. I'd like you to read it. Or are you too drunk?"

"You read it for me," I said, "while I go up and pack." What the hell did I care about her damned brother? What was his name? Hans? Yes-Hans. Well, to hell with him, it was Borg that worried me, and I turned to go.

She musLhave got up from the chair very quickly, for suddenly she was there, between me and the door. "You can read Dutch, can't you?"

I nodded automatically and she thrust the sheet of paper at me. "Read it then."

The light was on her face now and I could see her quite plainly. She looked pale and tired, very intense. I pushed the letter aside. "I have to hurry." I didn't know when the last train went and I wasn't going to miss it. Borg wouldn't have come here unless I'd killed the man.

"You're running away again." Her eyes flashed, colour showed suddenly in her cheeks. "You've spent your whole life running-running. ."

"Have it your own way," I said, wearily, and I lurched past her towards the door.

She hit me then. "You callous bastard!" It was an open-handed slap across the face, and I picked her up and flung her back against the wall. It knocked the breath out of her.

"Now stop making a bloody nuisance of yourself," I said.

go Levkas Man

"I've got problems enough of my own without having somebody else's troubles hung round my neck."

"It's about your father." She was sprawled slackly against the wall, breathing heavily.

"My father!" I almost laughed in her face. "My father's head was sliced from his body by a gang of native boys when I was ten." I saw her eyes widen at the shock of what I had said. It shocked me, too, for I could still see it lying there on the verandah, the moustache, the thick head of hair, the sunburned face with the teeth bared, all bright with blood, and the trunk some feet away, inert and lifeless like a rag dummy. I was suddenly almost sober. "Forget it," I muttered. "It was years ago." I was thinking of those letters in the bureau, wishing I had never seen them. "I'll go up and pack now." And I went quickly up to my room.

It didn't take me long to throw the little I had into my suitcase and she was still there when I came down. She was sitting in the chair again, her body slack, the letter on the desk beside her. "You're going now." It was a statement, not a question, her voice flat and without expression.

I nodded, hesitating, unwilling to leave her like this. "Better tell me what your brother says."

She gave a little shrug, a gesture of hopelessness. "There's no point now." She turned her head and I saw she had been crying. "I'm sorry for what I said." The toneless way she spoke, I didn't know whether she meant it or not. "I hope you get the job you want."

I thanked her, and that was that. I left her sitting there at his desk and went downstairs, out into the streets again. The mist had thickened, the lights all blurred, and it was cold. I caught the last train and spent a miserable night in a cheap hotel in Schiedam. When I went to the yard in the morning, I found tugs standing by and the ship ready to be towed out into the stream. She was sailing as soon as she had bunkered, and the third officer was back on board. He had strained a muscle, that was all.

I took a bus down-river to the Europort. I was so short of money by then that I would have taken a job on any ship. But there was nothing immediately available, and in the end I went back to Amsterdam. There at least the roof over my head was free. But by the time I had paid the fare and had had coffee and a sandwich at the railway station, I had only a few guilders left in my pocket.

My train got in just after five. I took a Number 5 tram as far as the Ruyschstraat and walked back across the Niewe Amstel bridge to Wilhelm Borg's shop. There was nothing else for me to do now, and anyway I wanted to know what he'd seen in the English papers. This time there was a young woman in charge. She was small, dark, expensively dressed, and had a diamond on her left hand that would have kept me in idleness for at least a year. I gave her my name and she asked me to wait. "Wilhelm is engaged at the moment." She spoke Dutch with what I think was a Belgian accent. But at least Borg was in. I put my suitcase down and seated myself on what she assured me was a genuine sixteenth-century Italian chair. It was high-backed, ornately carved, and the colours of the leather had faded to a soft richness. A large Buddha sat facing me, cross-legged on an ornate cabinet. The oak and the brasswork were all gone.