In Darkness and in Love

IN DARKNESS AND IN LOVE
(A short story)

PETROS HARIS
(Translated from the Greek by Agnes
Sotiracopoulou-Skina and Ann Rivers)

Darkness had absorbed them and disabled vision of the surrounding wilderness. He waited for her at the door of the office where they worked; she followed him without a moment’s hesitation. It was the hour another life commenced in the enslaved city of Athens. The bulletins giving the latest news, all of it censored from newspapers and the radio, had just come out, distributed by the city’s youth, young men and women alike, their dangerous implements dispersed in the boulevards and side streets, to be chalked up on the walls as a signal or a threat, nerving the arm no matter how particularly the force of occupa­tion manned the boulevards and patrolled the side streets, hunting down men who vanished like wraiths, playing incredible tricks on them by night which had them rubbing their eyes each morning. Shadows here, shadows there, everyone in a rush, and whenever you happened to discern two people together, a man and a woman, a young man clinging to a girl, you were hard pressed to determine whether it was love or war that brought them close together.

“Am I correct in thinking it’s very late?” said the girl drawing closer to him. “It’s past the time.”

“Are you afraid?” he asked her.

“They don’t expect me home before nine, I arranged that. But .....”

And she gazed at the wilderness around her. The street and the day, both of them shorn of meaning and significance. A quiet neighbourhood with homes not above three storeys high, with a welter of windows and wide front gates through which two could pass abreast. The girl halted as if tired out and moved to lean against the wall which rose up at her side. He was just in time. He caught her and dragged her away. Loud voices that sounded to their ears like threats and like barking, foreign voices, from the bottom of the road. A strong light which shortened the distance, and heavy, wrathful boots bearing down on them. They were two steps from the corner of the street - two critical, decisive steps away. He shoved her, propelling her into the next street. He shoved her again, more forcefully this time, into an open doorway. They found themselves in a small dark courtyard, at the of which they made out three staircases and another door.

They made for it, hammered on it, and implored:

“Open the door, for God’s sake!”
The girl’s entreaties carried more weight, a woman’s voice sounding less menacing at night, especially at night in an enslaved city.

The door opened, and therein appeared a tall, slight woman whom you wouldn’t at first have been able to call young or old. They darted inside, speechless, and breathless as if they had been running not for minutes but for hours. It was the time. The foreign voices and the heavy, wrathful boots still resounding in the street. They marched in one direction and then turned round again. They gave all appearance of leaving and then were heard again. The house was situated at street level, its windows body height above the sidewalk outside. They could hear everything, distinguish the least sound outside.

The pair looked at each other, and afterwards all three exchanged glances. Not a word was spoken. The young man doffed his bat and moved one more step inside. They dared not be late. She removed his coat, hung it up, took the girl’s coat as well, and gestured towards them to be seated. This demon­strates they were friends, or would become so.

The foreign cries continued outside the house, in the winter night, which was neither extremely cold nor windy, but which made them wild with its darkness, the dark of war. More so, their anger, their four to five trigger-happy fingers. And their search, their eternal search, to’ing and fro’ing like a dog tracing a scent it detected, one which, in the process of coming and going, takes one step forward to two steps .

“Can you bring a deck of cards, quickly?” begged the young man.

He began taking charge, putting chairs around a table in the middle of the room, clearing the other furnishings, sitting down, seating the girl opposite himself. And when the deck of cards duly arrived, the lady of the house had barely had time to seat herself before they were dealt. They all understood instantaneously. Their game was to appear to have been in process for hours, the stakes raised till losses and gains had accrued. They were to have been so absorbed in their cards that they heard nothing, neither the voices nor the threats which filled the darkness of the street. If the wrathful boots should give a kick at the garden gate or the inside door or rush in to search the premises, they would find themselves confronted with nothing more incriminating than a card game, a friendly gathering, all above board and beyond suspicion.

They played without speaking a word, drew and discarded cards in accordance with the rules of a game all three knew and all three ignored, and no mistake about it, no irregularity committed, a convincing performance they were out to make a killing. But still they ran the risk of being betrayed. What were they playing with? Where was the money, where were the gambling chips? The house was provided with nothing more than the pack of cards, European playing cards – old style –­ yellowing and limp with age. Nothing else.

“Some beans,” requested the young man, “some peas or whatever you happen to have in the house.”

She brought a shallow plate of chick-peas and the game resumed. They divided the chick-peas, each one placing three to four in the middle of the table, and a greater sense of security settled itself around them. A lot to hope for from a card game.

The street quieted down, the voices were heard a little farther off, the night proceeded on its noiseless steps. For the moment they were safe.

The young man rose from his chair, feeling the need to offer some brief explanation:
“George Raissis, medical student.”

And he started to present the girl. But the more experienced lady of the house, whose wrinkled face they now could see more clearly, prevented him from continuing.

“It’s not necessary...I understand ...” was the substance of what she said.
“Maybe you don’t understand, maybe YOU can’t imagine precisely what happened to us.”

All three had regained their composure. At this point they resembled nothing so much as a troupe of actors finishing an arduous performance.

“Out for a stroll,” continued the young man, “for which we came close to paying dearly. Helen was tired, she started to lean against the corner of a building. They assumed we were part of the faction that scribbles slogans on the walls, and they chased after us. Fortunately they didn’t run us down immediately.”

The girl glanced at her watch:

“A quarter to ten. We’ll be home in plenty of time.”

Curfew was sounded at eleven. They had time. How, all the same, to be certain the coast was clear? Who could say whether or not the dog sniffing something in the air was not still hanging around somewhere nearby?

The young man had recovered possession of himself, and remembered he was a gentleman:
“First we must thank the lady and then we shall see.”

“Please, you must excuse us, chimed in Helen, bursting in upon you so rudely, like thieves in the night or would be assassins.’,
“At least let me give you a drink of water, while you pull yourselves together.”

Helen dropped into an arm-chair, putting up no further resistance. George remained standing, or pacing, casting his eyes here and there, surveying his surroundings as if to form some opinion of what sort of household happened to be offering them shelter. The two rooms he saw seemed to comprise the whole of it, that and the kitchen. The small sitting-room, where just recently they had put in an appearance and beside it a bedroom which, with its half-open door, revealed little. Neither wealth nor poverty. Old furniture, worn out, which might have, many years ago, been the dowry and the furnishings for another home­stead, a life of happiness which altogether failed to materialize. A table, a few chairs, an arm-chair, a small divan! And two enormous photographs facing each other on opposite walls, which dated with sadistic accuracy both the house and its occupants. It was the parents in their finery, an elderly man in a stiff, starched collar and full moustache, his white-haired mate choking on the Valenciennes lace at her throat. People from the time of the Balkan wars, dignity written all over their faces, security etched in their glance, and that utter simplicity of the bourgeoisie which after a period of prosperity gradually nudges itself toward nobility.

George was unable to see more. He did, however, immediately detect the same nobility of gait and gesture in their hostess, who had just returned with a tray in her hands, offering them almonds, mastica, and water.

“No, leave them there, please,” she said as George moved in to help her, attempting to clear the table which was still covered with cards.

Helen came forward, took a handful of almonds, sipped her mastica, but had not so much as a second to find the words to thank her hostess. Again voices filtering in from the street, boots ringing on the pavement again, barking from the dog again. This time more boots than before, increasing, worth human steps running, and thereafter three to four gun shots fired.

The three people exchanged looks of anguish. The young man took one step toward the window, and raised his hand to draw the curtain aside.

“For the love of God!” their hostess grabbed him.

They stood stock still, all ears. What could it have been? Voices faded as before from the street, but no one dared come to his door, to his window, to inquire, to investigate. You’d think that nothing at all had occurred. Not so much as a shutter creaked.

When this most recent scare had passed, the girl consulted her watch again.

“And now?” she asked, her eyes dilated in and by anguish. It was a quarter to eleven.

“How can I possibly go home? How...Oh my God! Mother will be beside herself...”

She lost her composure and began taking little agitated steps across the room. She moved towards the exit, halted, dropped the formality of pretence and, clutching George’s hand in hers, consulted his watch as well, and despaired all the more.

“Ten till!”

The young man uttered not a word, initially, but shortly came to a decision and circumventing Helen’s reservations, inquired:

“Is there a telephone nearby, on the floor above, or next door?”

The response increased the weight of desperation, but it brought decision to a head. The young man gazed into their hostess’s eyes, begging her without so much as a word passing between them, without requiring one, staring at her unflinchingly and he waited. One minute more and Helen would be succumbing to her panicked senses. She swooped up everything she had deposited in the arm-chair and asserted:

“I can still make it!”

Her involuntary hostess grabbed her by the arm and fore­ stalled her:
“You can’t leave now. Sit down and calm yourself. You can spend the night here.”

And she rested her hand on the girl’s shoulder, caressing her almost maternally, like an older – and wiser – sister. And her voice, not in the least spinsterly, carried the dual tone of counsel and solicitude.

The young man implored her. He didn’t know what to say, or dare enunciate it. He was the one who got her into taking a stroll tonight, he was wholly responsible.

There arose, that moment, one voice to toll the hour of crisis. A wall clock, from the floor overhead, began to strike the hours clearly and deliberately, one by one. Eleven o’clock. All doors were firmly locked, everyone in his fold. And the city – its boulevards, squares, centers, railway stations, every­thing – empty.

Still, a long time had to pass before it dawned on Helen. She was a prisoner in this stranger’s house. She had to bide her time, summon all her patience to her in short order. Tomorrow morning at six when the door reopened she would be able to race home, throw herself into her mother’s arms, with no recriminations forthcoming. Rather, they would be relieved at her return to the bosom of the family. All else would follow: their tears and her mother’s fond embrace would take precedence. But how would her mother bear up till morning? The watch at home would have been kept since nine, advanced at 9-30, till ten. What would happen at six the next day? Would their old hearts be palpitating with anxiety? Would there be tears and sighs the entire time, the whole night long?

“Perhaps you’d care to freshen up,” said the lady of the house, taking her into the adjoining room.

George fell into pacing the tiny sitting-room, recounting his error, thinking of his own home. But he kept coming to his responsibility for Helen. Her welfare overshadowed his own mother’s sighs. Presently his head cleared. Ultimately others, this trying time, were suffering a great deal more, some of them grievously, with loss of life. It was one singly night to get through.

Almost certainly the night would pass. But how were they to pass it? The house comprised two rooms and there were three of them. There was only one bed in the whole of it. Furthermore, with whom were they constrained to pass the night? Who was the lady of the house? Wife, widow, divorcee, maid? He kept trying to guess.

She was tall, thin, with few dark hairs left on her head and manifold wrinkles on her face. At the moment of anguish he had looked her straight in the eye. Yes, yes, those eyes, those steady but jaded eyes with heavy pouches under the lower lid, might once have been beautiful. Her nose, however, was prominent, and would have been so ten, twenty or even fifty years ago. Her mouth too was large, virtually lipless, two smart rosy lines. What you could hardly term a warm, womanly mouth. Considering all that, he arrived at a hasty conclusion, setting all his observations before him like a painter who sees the first faint outlines of a portrait;          and he trembled. You think it could be so? He didn’t dare pronounce the word but he couldn’t banish the thought. Oh, my God! Whose hands had they two fallen into! And how were they to spend the night there, together, near that woman who ...

Helen re-entered the room alone; calmer now. And her eyes indicated she had some revelation to make, some intelligence to impart. Anticipating it, he said:

“I understand.”

“What do you understand?”

“She is a spinster.”

“She is, poor thing. But how did you know?”

She had remained a spinster, but neither a perverse nor an implacable one. She lived, however, on her father’s pension and would be hide-bound by tradition. Therefore she must have understood the sense of emergency all too distinctly to have reached the decision to spend a night under the same roof with a man. True, there was the girl as well. But her presence increased the problematical nature of the night. Where was the girl to sleep? With her or with him? In her boudoir or in the sitting room? And, furthermore, how were the two young people, two young people in love, to spend the whole night in her sitting-room, alone together?

When, presently, she appeared in the doorway laden, it was in a pensive mood. Helen helped her spread the table-cloth, set out the cutlery for three and prepare an impromptu meal.

“Whatever you happen to have,” was as much as she was able to say.

On hand there happened to be a bit of bread, two dishes of chickpeas, and one smoked herring. Nothing else, not so much as two olives to garnish the pulses. They divided up the provender, such as it was, and served it up in the silent thought and hesitation that encompassed all three of them.

Soon finished, they rose all at once from their places at the table.

George could bear the freight of silence but felt constrained to say:

“Pardon us for disturbing you so.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” said the lady of the house dryly. “We’re all human…”

Shortly thereafter George again found his voice to ask, in a tone denoting respect, respect for one’s elders, for the elderly:

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

The request cut her deeply. Her eyes stared out at him almost as a stricture that was, or might have been unbearable pain, proving that she understood the request he made as one addressing the spinsterish part of her. And she murmured:

“No, you may.”

From that moment on the night waxed more awkward still. They shared the house, it’s true, but as one divides up household chores. She bade them good night, strode into her bedroom, shut the door behind her, but left it unlatched. She had under­stood it was impossible to separate them and she left them in the sitting-room with a little show of discretion. She had placed a pillow and a blanket on the divan and another pillow and blanket on the arm-chair. Her hands were tied to do anything else.

Whereon began the hours that small room normally passed in quiet, but which this night converted into a love song. Thus the beginning of the night which banished slavery and the two households writhing in anguish and lament, and with the woman who was a stranger to love, who all the same kept hearing, murmuring, sighing, contempt for danger; fear and death beside her.

The two young people noted the arrangement of pillows and blankets but were unable to respect the suggestion. They squeezed in together on the divan. And only after one or two o’clock did Helen think to inquire:

“Do you suppose she, can hear?”

She strained her ears to detect, in the silence, any noise or movement.

That effort failing, she whispered again:

“She may be able to hear us.”

George concurred.

“She may…”

All the same he failed to relax his iron grip, refused to release Helen from his embrace.

Presently Helen stirred again:

“It’s not right.”

“It isn’t,” he whispered in his turn.

But neither one made a move or the least show of repentance. They remained there, together, until they heard from the floor above six strokes of the wall clock. And all the while beside them the woman was listening in exasperation to their song of love, hearing and burying her head under the covers, hearing and not wishing the song to end, hearing and conceivably weeping...

Daylight was advancing on the world outside. But owing to the black-out no light could penetrate the interior.

They rose, straightened the divan, rumpled one blanket and tossed it on the arm-chair, began talking and walking about.

It was not long before the lady of the house put in an appear­ance. She found them in a hurry and had no wish to detain them longer than necessary, fearful to look them straight in the eye. Her sole concern was that they shouldn’t be seen exiting together.

“Splash a little water on your face and afterwards leave the house one at a time. You can’t tell whether or not someone might not be hanging around outside.”

She dared not tell the truth, utter the real reason. The neighbours knew perfectly well she spent her nights alone. She had no wish, therefore, for them to observe the two young people exiting from her front door together.

George was the first to leave. He kindly thanked the lady of the house, but he too could not look her straight in the eye.

“I’ll wait for you at the first stop,” he said to Helen.

And when, presently Helen too departed, she paused to embrace the lady of the house, to give her a kiss, and to tell her she could hardly imagine the wound she had opened up in her:

“I shall never forget this room and this night ...”

Outside, day was advancing quietly, normally like every other day of slavery, without a trace of evidence of what had passed during the night, in the darkness, in the wildness of the manhunt. As Helen reached George’s side they took the first morning tram. One quick bound landed them on board, on earth again, in the world.

“What an experience!” said George, breaking into convulsions of laughter.

“Truly, what an experience!” echoed Helen, but some­what saddened in appearance, and not a little saddened at that.

And shortly she whispered, more mournful still:

“She didn’t so much as tell us her name ...”