Greek Fire Read Online Free Page A

convenient.”
    Mme Lindos got up. Arthritis made her moving ungainly, but once up she was as erect as he was. “You must come into the drawing-room for tea, and then I want to know what you are here for.”
    â€œI believe you don’t trust me.”
    â€œNot very far.”
    The maid came in and opened double doors into a very large airy drawing-room. The old crimson wallpaper had faded rectangles on it of varying shapes and sizes. One handsome mirror still hung over the Louis Seize fireplace. Tea was set on a small table, a fine tea-pot in a silver cradle, cups as thin as egg-shells, spoons with the Lindos crest.
    She said: “And do you really love your publishing now?”
    â€œIt enables me to live in Paris.”
    â€œIt’s the longest you have ever stayed anywhere, isn’t it? Always before you have been wandering, restless—homeless, perhaps? It’s the faculty of your type. You moved too much, saw too much when you were young.”
    â€œI still get around, but on my job—to Germany, England, Italy …”
    â€œAnd sometimes to Greece. Does anybody here know you have come?”
    â€œWho is there to know or care? Tell me, Sophia, what do you know about a woman called Anya Stonaris?”
    â€œGeorge Lascou’s mistress?”
    Gene stirred his tea. “ Is that what she is?”
    â€œYou have met her?”
    â€œWhat’s her history?”
    â€œI know very little. She is still very young but they have been together a long time. She gets photographed often because she is beautiful and smart. A hard brilliant person, and a thoroughly bad influence on him, I’m told. He of course has a wife and two children, and he poses to the electorate as a family man. But most people in Athens know of the connection.”
    Gene said: “I’ve heard of Lascou for a good many years, but until he entered politics I wasn’t interested in him.”
    â€œAnd now?”
    Their voices, though not raised, had been echoing in the sparsely furnished room. The maid came in with hot buttered toast, and the conversation lapsed till she left them.
    Gene said: “One gets different opinions. Some say he’ll soon be the most powerful figure in Greece.”
    While they talked the clouds had broken, and the room brightened and darkened as the sun intermittently came through. The Venetian blinds had not been lowered, and Mme Lindos looked at her visitor whose face was lit with a reflection from the mirror on the wall. She thought again how young he looked in spite of his hollow cheeks: his was the youth which sometimes comes to people with singleness of mind. She remembered her first meeting with him twelve years ago, in the middle of the civil war; he had appeared on her doorstep in rags speaking Greek then with an accent she had thought Anatolian, had warned her to go into the cellar and stay there: the fighting was coming up this street. Sten gun under arm he had said this apologetically, like someone calling about the gas, and then, as it seemed summing her up in a glance, had asked her if she could care for a woman who was dying and needed attention and water. After that she had not seen him for nearly two weeks, when, during the worst famines and the worst massacres, he had come suddenly again with a few tins of food he had stolen from somewhere and left them in her hall.
    Gene said: “Things are still bad here?”
    â€œYou do not need to listen to the politicians to discover the problems of Greece, Gene. Under the surface prosperity we have a food shortage, except for the rich, and the old, old bogy of inflation—and unemployment, or underemployment, everywhere. Many of our people—perhaps two million, perhaps more than a quarter of us all—have to live on less than two thousand drachmae a year. What is that in your currency? Seventy dollars? That is what we have to face and have to cure.”
    Silence fell for a while.