John Banville - Nightspawn

‘Erik.’

‘Hmm?’

‘Tell me something. Tell me the truth. Are we planning a revolution?’

For the first time since I had known him, I saw Erik emerge completely from that preoccupation which sat like a barrier of frosted glass between him and the world. His head jerked up, and he stared at me in amazement. Then his long bony face softened, and he laughed. It was also the first real laugh I had heard from him, one which contained real surprise and pleasure. A day for new and bright experiences, this. He went on laughing for a while, then he jumped up, caught me by the hand and dragged me to the door.

‘Come. I shall show you the revolution, come.’

I hung back, trying to pull my arm away from his fierce grip.

‘Look, I just want a yes or no answer.’

‘Come with me. You shall have an answer.’

He was grinning, almost gay. This I did not trust at all.

‘I don’t want to go out now. It’s too hot.’

‘Come.’

‘No. I’m not going.’

We went. Erik led me through the village, and out along the road toward the beach. Now and then he glanced at me and laughed, shaking his head. When the beach was in view we left the road (a stab of grief for another lost day on that hillcrest) and took to a donkey track which ran away diagonally across the hills. The way was difficult, with thorns and stones cutting our feet. The blazing sun knocked splinters into our eyes. In the heat I began to have illusions, of strange voices high in the air, of a dark figure following behind us, but when I stopped to listen, there was only the silence and cicadas, and when I looked, there was only the empty road. The path descended into a gully, the dry bed of an ancient stream. We came upon a little oasis of bushes, the tiny leaves of which gave to the air a familiar but unidentifiable sweetness. Erik halted, and I sank down into the dust, bathed in sweat.

‘You ask a question,’ I moaned. ‘You ask a simple little question, and look what you get.’

Erik paid no attention to me. A large flat rock was set into the bank of the gulley. He put his hands to it, bracing his feet, and rolled it away. He beckoned to me. I crawled across on hands and knees and looked into the hole. No redeemer rested there, no winding-sheet and flower, but there was a brace of hand grenades, a huge awkward pistol, and a wooden crate bearing on its flank the hieroglyphs of an eastern tongue.

‘Dynamite,’ said Erik.

I nodded, saying nothing. Erik went on,

‘That is our revolution. In Athens we have perhaps this much again. The army would have no hope against us, when we are so well armed. And then, we have more than a dozen rebels with us. One of them, Apostolos, will take over this entire island. He is teaching himself to use this dynamite by blowing up rocks.’

‘All right,’ I cried. ‘I’m not entirely stupid.’

‘No,’ he murmured, but left a faint doubt in the air.

We sat down together in the shade of the bushes. Erik mopped his brow. His good humour had departed, and that vague moroseness, his most faithful mood, had laid hands on him again. The air was sweet where we sat. I lay down on my back and looked through the leaves at the fragile blue sky. Erik asked,

‘What did they tell you in Athens, what did Rabin tell you?’

‘Nothing. To meet you here.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘No.’

‘And how much do you know of our plans?’

‘Very little, I was trying to get An—’

‘I see.’

He ruminated, biting a thumbnail. I could almost hear the calculations clicking in his brain.

‘There is no need for you to know very much,’ he said at last.

The decision had gone against me. I laughed softly.

‘Why do you laugh?’

‘You still don’t trust me,’ I said.

He shrugged, and turned away from me. A bird screamed somewhere, out over the sea. Erik said,

‘I will tell you this. If you have power over a few important people, then the rest is of no importance.’

‘You astound me with revelations.’

‘What else do you need to know?’

I sat upright, and tried to brush the dust from my damp shirt. My eyelids were swollen with heat.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you publish what you know? You’re famous, you have a voice in the world. Why don’t you publish, why don’t you do that, Erik? That’s what I want to know.’

He set his mouth stubbornly.

‘I have reasons.’

‘I see. Well I’m getting out. I said it before, I know, but this time I mean it. You don’t trust me, I don’t trust you, Andreas doesn’t trust me, I don’t trust either of you, you don’t trust … let me put it this way: nobody trusts anybody, right? It’s a farce. And I’m afraid; I admit it. I’m not cut out for this kind of nonsense. So before I get really involved, I’m going. Don’t look for me in Athens, because I won’t be found. All right?’

He was watching me from the corner of his eye.

‘But you are involved,’ he said quietly.

‘Not that much, not so much that I can’t get out. There’s no blood on my hands.’

I turned to glare at him, and saw a curious little tableau. He sat bolt upright, with his hands pressed to the dust on either side of him. His eyes were wide, staring into the hole opposite us in the bank. A small gun, which is, I believe, known as a burp gun, resting in a grimy hand, protruded from the bush with the barrel laid against the back of his skull. A voice said,

‘Careful now, friends.’

The gun slowly retreated, and then the sailor, Fang, climbed carefully down the bank and stood before us with a lovely grin. He looked from one of us to the other, casually tossing the gun in his hand. But there was nothing very casual about his eyes. Imagine little chips of black glass embedded in something blue. Need I say that I was terrified?

‘What do you want?’ Erik asked.

Fang’s grin widened, and he sat down on the rock, pushing the cap to the back of his head.

‘Hot,’ he said. ‘Very hot.’

Immobility was becoming unbearable, but when I stirred my foot, the little blueblack snout of the pistol stared straight at my navel. Fang sucked his teeth. He said to Erik,

‘The Colonel sent me to follow you. I think he was worried that you might get into trouble. It’s beautiful, how he worries about you. A pity you don’t show a little loyalty in return.’

He took a quick glance at the arsenal in the bank, then shook his head at us, and clicked his tongue.

‘Very bad,’ he murmured. ‘Well now, here’s the position, friends. You see me following you, waited for me in hiding, then jumped out with guns blazing. Luckily, I managed to shoot the German in the stomach with the first shot, and the other one was very little trouble. The Colonel will be very upset, but what, I ask, could I do? It was me or them, as they say. So. Now tell me, friends, what do you think of my story. Does it ring of truth, eh?’

He looked from one of us to the other, inquiringly, humorously.

‘Erik,’ I said. ‘Erik, this is a joke, isn’t it?’

Fang waved the gun at me.

‘Keep your mouth shut, hawkeye.’

Erik began to laugh. I nearly swallowed my teeth at the sound.

‘Erik,’ I squeaked, terrified lest that gun should go off. ‘Erik, for god’s sake.’

Fang was staring at the German uncertainly. Of all the things he had expected, laughter was not one of them. Erik said,

‘Fang, you are a fool, and you see too many films. Now go away.’

Our bold seaman did not like that, not at all did he like it. He lifted the gun, two yellow teeth biting his lower lip. But Erik, like all of us, had also been a student of the cinema. A handful of dust, whoosh in the eyes, bop said the gun, and then Erik was on his feet and kicking Fang in the stomach. Poh, and the sailor’s breath and breakfast flew out of his mouth. Erik wrenched the gun away and fired one little bullet straight down into the top of Fang’s head, who breathed blood through his nose and rolled over slowly, very slowly, on to his side. The hills shook with noise as Erik sent five more bullets into the poor prone creature. Tok, said each blunt lump of lead as it landed. Silence, reverberations, wind, a bird, silence. Erik’s arm shook, and he dropped the gun, closed his eyes and gave a little squeal of grief and disgust. Fang’s jaws stopped snapping, and his fingers uncurled, and he surrendered quietly into dust and peace. I crawled across and touched the broken heap of flesh. Erik stumbled up out of the gully, and I followed him, pausing long enough to wipe my hands in the green leaves of the bushes. With mild surprise, I saw that the sun was still shining.