John Fowles - The Magus

But it was Barba Vassili. He was smiling under his white walrus moustache; and his first words made me jump from my desk.

“ Sygnomi, kyrie, ma perimeni mia thespoinis .”

“Excuse me, sir, but a young lady is waiting.”

“Where?” He indicated the gate. I was tearing on a coat. “With blonde hair?”

“A very beautiful young lady. She is English?”

But I was past him and running down the corridor. I called back to his grinning face—" To phos! "—to make him turn out the light. I leapt down the stairs, out of the building and raced along the path to the gate. There was a bare bulb there above Barba Vassili’s window; a pool of white light. I expected to see her standing in it, but there was no one. The gate was locked at that time of night, since the masters all had passkeys. I felt in my pocket and remembered that I had left mine in the old jacket I wore in class. I looked through the bars. There was no one in the road, no one on the thistly wasteland that ran down to the sea fifty yards away, no one by the sea. I called in a low voice.

But no quick shape appeared from behind the walls. I turned exasperatedly. Barba Vassili was coming slowly down through the trees.

“Isn’t she there?”

He seemed to take ages to unlock the side gate we used. We went out into the road and looked both ways. He pointed, but doubtfully, down the road away from the village.

“That way?”

“Perhaps.”

I began to smell a rat. There was something in the old man’s smile; it was ten past eleven; the thundery air, the deserted road. And yet I didn’t care what happened; as long as something happened.

“Can I have your key, Barba?”

But he wouldn’t let me have the one in his hand; had to go back inside his lodge and rummage and find another. He seemed to be delaying me; and when he at last came with another key, I snatched it out of his hand.

I went quickly down the road away from the village. To the east lightning shuddered. After seventy or eighty yards, the school wall right-angled inland. I thought she might be just round the corner of it. But she wasn’t. The road did not go much more than quarter of a mile farther; beyond the wall it looped inland a little to cross a dried-out torrent. There was a small bridge and, a hundred yards to the left of that, a chapel, which was linked to the road by a tall avenue of cypresses. The moon was completely obscured by a dense veil of high cloud, but there was a gray Palmeresque light over the landscape. I came to the bridge and called again in a low voice.

“June? Julie?”

I hesitated, torn between following the road and going back towards the village. Then there was a sound: my name. I ran up between the cypresses, black spindles against the opaque cloud. After forty yards or so there was a movement to my left. I whirled round. She was standing behind one of the largest trees: a dark dress, headscarf, a cardigan draped over her shoulders; all dark except for the white oval of the face.

“Julie?”

“It’s me. June. Thank God you’ve come.”

I went to her. She looked back, round towards the road.

“What on earth’s wrong?”

“I think I’m being followed.”

“Where’s Julie?”

“Isn’t she here?”

“Haven’t you seen her?”

“Not since Friday. Oh God.” She let her head sink; and suddenly I was intensely suspicious again; both voice and movement were overwrought.

“Where’ve you been?”

She looked up, as if surprised. “In Athens.”

“But this extraordinary hour?”

“I didn’t get here till dusk. And I… well, I was frightened.”

I searched her face, pale against the black foliage. She was playing a part; and not very well. I glanced down towards the road; the whitewashed corner of the school wall. Then back at her.

“Why didn’t you wait at the gate?”

“I panicked. He was gone such a long time.” She had the amateur liar’s habit of looking earnestly into one’s eyes.

“Who’s following you?”

“Two men. They stopped when I got to the school.”

“Where’s Julie?” My voice was curt; no nonsense.

“I thought you’d know. I had a telegram.”

“That was from me.”

“I had two.”

“Two!”

She nodded. “One said 'Anne.' She told you what we arranged? I was to stay in Athens. And then yours. They both came on Sunday night. So I knew one must be false. I didn’t trust yours, because it didn’t sound like Julie. So I stayed in Athens.” There were telltale little pauses between the sentences, as if she had to have each one accepted by me before going on. I stared at her.

“Where was this other telegram from?”

“Nauplia.” Silence; she sensed my incredulity. “What happened here at the weekend?”

I went, very quickly, through the events of the Sunday.

She said, “How horrible. Oh how I wish we’d never got involved in all this.” It sounded even more artificial. In the darkness she looked hallucinatorily likejulie and I reached down to touch her wrist. She turned away; then tensed.

There were footsteps on the road. Three men were walking slowly along it. People, villagers, masters, often strolled to the end of the road and back in the evening, for the coolness. But she gave me a scared look. I didn’t trust June one inch; I knew she was lying. Yet lying as a soubrette lies, much more out of mischief than malice.

She whispered. “Maurice said he would see me on Sunday. In Athens. But I haven’t seen a soul. And then yesterday I somehow guessed that you had sent the other telegram.”

“How did you get here? On the boat?”

But she avoided that trap. “I found a way by land. By Kranidi?”

Occasionally thalassophobic parents used that route—it meant changing at Corinth and taking a taxi from Kranidi and then hiring a boat to bring one across from the mainland; a full day’s journey; and difficult if one didn’t speak good Greek.

“But why?”

“I know I’ve been followed everywhere in Athens. And I’ve seen Joe.”

“Where?”

“On Monday. He was in a car outside the Grande Bretagne. As soon as he saw me he drove away.” I didn’t believe it; she was simply telling stories. I hesitated, nearly called her bluff, changed my mind. Crossing the avenue I peered cautiously round a cypress on that side. The three were calmly strolling on, their backs to us; the grayish strip of road, the low black scrub. In a few moments they went round the bend and out of sight. June came beside me. I turned to her.

“I’ve put the whole business in the hands of the police.”

“The police?” I could tell I had caught her off-balance; then remembered that my own lies had to be convincing.

“Only today. I expect they’ve been looking for you in Athens.” She gave a dubious sort of nod. “Well your sister’s been abducted. Hasn’t she?” She wouldn’t meet my eyes. I was smiling. I began to feel certain that Julie was safe; and perhaps not very far away.

“I was thinking of the telegram.” There was a silence. I could smell the rain; then thunder, closer. “Would you come back with me? I’m in the hotel. I’m so frightened. On my own.”

I gave her averted face a long salt look again; then grinned. I knew now that she had been sent to fetch me.

“Let’s go round the rear of the school. Come on. While the going’s good.”

I took her hand and led her silently and quickly up the cypress alley to the chapel. Beyond it a path climbed up into the trees, and a minute or two later we came on a transverse path that led round hack to the village. Now we were higher we could see the lightning, great skittering sheets of it, ominously pink, over the sea to the east. Islands ten or fifteen miles away stood palely out, then vanished. There were green wafts of wet air. We walked rapidly, in silence, though I took her arm once or twice to help her over the steeper slopes. Below us, over the massive trunk of the school, I could see the pale light outside Barba Vassili’s lodge. There were one or two lighted windows in the masters’ wing. Mine was out.