John Banville - Nightspawn

‘Why did you leave the city, Erik? Are you in trouble again? You realize that I cannot —’

Erik interrupted him by throwing back his head and giving a squawk of laughter which startled all of us, Erik included. Then he frowned, and carefully took off his spectacles.

‘You’re a fat old man, Colonel, and full of shit,’ he said, with some sadness.

A sprung nerve uncoiled at the corner of Aristotle’s mouth, twisting his smile into a grimace. Through the silence came the kiss of water on the hull, kiss, and the distant yapping of a dog. Sea shadows stirred on the cabin walls. A breeze sang gaily in the traces. Erik rubbed a few flakes of dry skin from his chin. The ice clattered in the old man’s glass. We looked, all three, at his trembling hand.

‘Useless,’ Erik muttered, with muted fury. ‘Useless.’

He put his glass untouched down on the floor beside him, took the briefcase in both hands and held it aloft. Aristotle peered at it, trying to muster his attention.

‘Everything I have is here,’ Erik said between clenched teeth. ‘All my papers, my files. I have nothing to fear.’

He loosened his fingers, and the case dropped. A corner of it hit the polished planks of the cabin floor, and it sprang up, turned, and flopped down on its side. Aristotle looked at the case, at Erik, at the case, at Erik again, his eyebrows raised and head inclined in a silent question.

‘If you want to search, then search,’ Erik shouted. His voice cracked on the first search, and the squeal so produced knocked an exquisite little note of music from the glass upon the table. That little song gave us all pause, and we turned and looked in wonder at the singer standing in transparent modesty on the green baize stage. Then Aristotle made a little sound of distress and stepped forward to pick up the case, while Erik at the same time began to rise. There was a scuffle, and Erik sat down again, upon the unprepared and protesting couch. The Colonel, stooping, looked at him beseechingly.

‘Erik —’ he began, and then, whether of his own volition or by an action of Erik’s I cannot say, he suddenly pitched forward and dropped his head ( plop ) into the German’s lap. Erik shrieked, and flung him away. The old man fell on his back and wallowed on the floor like a great stranded fish. I took a step forward, and halted, my hand outstretched. Erik picked up the briefcase and slapped him with it across the face, caught him by the throat and shook him violently, ramming a knee into his chest.

‘You fat pig, I’ll kill you, ‘he shouted. ‘What did you expect to find?’

Aristotle’s face flooded with blood beneath the ashen flesh. His eyes bulged, and he croaked,

‘I wanted only —’

‘Shut your mouth.’

Erik released him, and he lay and gurgled with his hands to his bruised throat. There came a banging on the cabin door, and the sailor’s scrawny face appeared at the glass. He goggled at the scene, grinned gleefully, and disappeared. Erik stood up and hitched up his trousers. Two large tears slipped down the old man’s cheeks. His mouth began to tremble. He clawed at the couch and screamed,

‘I wanted only to know why you are here. I sent Fang. Whatever he did it was not my fault. It was nothing to do with … it was only for myself.’

Erik put a frantic hand to his forehead.

‘Please stop,’ he begged.

Aristotle grew calm. He sat with his back against the couch, his hands hanging limp in his lap. He breathed with difficulty, blowing a bubble or two. He shook his head.

‘Erik,’ I said, and was startled to hear my own voice after all this time. Erik gave a small shake of his head, as though he had felt the passage of a fly’s wing. Aristotle stared at my knees. I was invisible.

‘I loved you, Erik,’ Aristotle said. ‘A sick old man, who could blame me for wanting something to … something to love.’

Erik turned his face away. Aristotle glanced at him with one of the slyest and most calculating looks I have ever seen. He went on.

‘But it’s finished now. I can take no more risks.’

Erik went to the table and poured a drink. Kneeling beside the old man, he put an arm around his shoulders and held the glass to his lips. Aristotle drank a little, and coughed, and Erik watched him, looking at the brown sunspots on his forehead where the fine hair was receding, the deep wrinkles around the mouth.

‘But you need me,’ Erik said.

Aristotle suddenly gave a bleak little cackle of laughter.

‘You think I need you to make my death easier, is that it?’ he asked. ‘You are a fool, Erik. What is Greece with so much evil in the world? What are these stupid people that you want to die for them? They will never be willing to die for you. When you are gone they will forget you and go on playing their stupid games, pretending to be soldiers. Go back to your cripple, help him. Pah.’

Erik sat down on the floor beside him. Aristotle considered him with a smile.

‘Erik,’ he said softly. ‘Erik, if you betray me, I’ll kill you.’

‘You will send someone to do it for you.’

‘No, no, I shall do it.’

They fell silent, more from exhaustion than a lack of things to say. I saw dismay settle between them like a black and monstrous bird. They gazed through the porthole beside my left ear at the blue blind sky, two sad souls awaiting a saviour whom they knew would never come. I walked on tiptoe to the cabin door, and closed it softly behind me.

Fang was gone. An empty beer bottle stood on the deck, a somehow selfconscious relic of his presence. I stepped up to the pier, and was half-way across the quay before I discovered in my hand the whiskey glass, with the frozen heart of an ice cube melting in its amber depths. Twelve bells came down over the village, announcing noon.

I went back to my room. I had a visitor. Andreas sat coiled in my armchair, with a hand under his chin. His eyes were closed. He opened them and looked at me. I stood just inside the door. Through the window I caught a glimpse of a fat man in a bloody apron emptying a bucket of offal into a barrel down at the back of the café. Andreas coughed, cutting a little nick into the silence.

‘Have you seen Erik?’ he asked.

‘How did you get in here?’

I wonder if any answer ever really satisfies that particular question. One slender finger snaked out from under his chin and pointed past my shoulder.

‘Through the door.’

‘I don’t remember inviting you,’ I snapped.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You didn’t. I thought Erik would be here.’

I crossed the room and sat down on the bed with my legs folded under me.

‘Erik has met a friend,’ I said sweetly. ‘It was very touching to watch.’

Andreas smiled, and bowed his head.

‘So Aristotle has arrived,’ he murmured.

I was silent, grinding my teeth, and then I said,

‘You’re a clever bastard, aren’t you? Know everything, don’t you? Well tell me something, who is this Aristotle?’

‘A colonel, in the army.’

‘The guy who killed our good friend Black is working for him. You knew that too, I suppose? I’ll tell you something, I begin to wonder about you two, you and Erik. Listen to me, damn it.’

He was thinking about something else, drumming a finger on the bridge of his nose and looking through the window at the distant hills. With a corner of his mind receiving me, he asked,

‘What do you wonder?’

‘I wonder about this movement you’re supposed to be setting up. I wonder if this refusal to give me information is just a subtle way of making a fool of me. I wonder how valuable this document really is. And I wonder what you’re covering up with all this melodrama. That, for a start, is what I wonder.’