Ivoria by Tanith Lee (uplifting novels .txt) 📕

face. He had no phobias about, or allergies to any animal that he knew of. He did not dream of entering the Acropolis again, nor of his father, Joss.

Nick nevertheless slept a great deal in Athens. Being initially alone again and in another spot, seemed conducive to this. He would rise quite early, shower, dress, and go out for some yoghurt or a Turkish pastry, with thick Greek coffee. After that he would buy a few provisions. His Greek was rudimentary and from a phrase book, but in the city they were tolerant, or seemed or pretended to be. He knew he was often over-charged, but he could afford to be. He gave generous tips. A bribe, why not? And was not everything always that?

Excursion done, he would sleep again, lying back on the bed. He did not attempt to look at any of the notebooks he had brought with him. Nor to write a word. The only things he read were the five second-hand books picked up in London. They were thrillers, or ordinary short stories, written by people he had never heard of and would never bother to read again.

Despite the light, it often clouded over. It rained a lot. A worrisome wind blew. Then came intermittent days of tranquillity, crystalline pauses, which grew longer. Flowers opened on balconies, hardy foreign geraniums, and large purple blooms, and a kind of iris, all shut in pots. Conversely the mauve tangle of wisteria began to fade on the courtyard wall.

He dreamed one afternoon that he was wandering along a shore-line, where tall crags rose and the virtually tideless sea crashed with green breakers between single rocks like fangs. He could not remember his name, and was desperately trying to do so. But every burst of the aqua-violet sea into green robbed him of any clues he had amassed. When he woke, a Hoover was busy in the apartment above. He tried for his own name. Nicolas. Nick. There.

At night, after a dinner in some small nearby restaurant, he returned, drank bottled water, slept again. Always until the morning.

One day he was eating lunch, when some tourists entered the taverna. After a lot of undiluted ouzo an argument broke out among two of the men, which roiled away outside, became a fight, and vanished round a corner taking the other man, and one of the girls, with it. The Scandinavian-blonde girl left behind turned out to be an American.

“Oh for Christ’s sake!” she had exclaimed, then turned to Nick to apologise in good Greek for her blasphemy.

“It’s OK,” he said.

“You’re English,” said the girl.

They had a drink together - she had not been party to the ouzo. Instead of sleeping Nick employed the afternoon in walking about the streets with her, listening to music, and drinking coffee. She said she and he must go up on the finicula to see the temples and the Parthenon, the Virgin House of Athene. But in the end they went back to the flat and had sex.

Her hair was natural, up to a point, and she was already tanned from a sun-lamp, but quite nicely. Her American teeth were scorching white, of course. They had split all the bills, and he knew, though he had treated her with the same courteous attentiveness he applied to his clientele, that payment had no part in their dealings.

Sexually, she liked what he did. She seemed less intrigued by Athens than by the geography of Nick’s body, or at least her own response to it. As he had thought, at no point was money broached. But they did not spend too much of it anyway, never actually going to the top of the Acropolis, let alone on the island-hopping boat trip she had once or twice suggested. There was no talk of sentiment. They were ‘friends’. No strings.

On no other level did their short liaison operate. But then, no liaison ever had, for him. He had felt nothing intense for any of his clients either, only a potential genuine wish to please and satisfy them, a sort of faint fondness when he did. Where they had charm he always appreciated it. But anything in proximity was improved by charm. One could be fond of a painting or glad to use a particular type of notebook. He did not analyse, any of this. He had been aware already, and if sometimes he felt he had not suspected all of it, he was unsurprised, unimpelled to view himself more clearly now.

When she left he did not accompany her to the airport. Nick was then slightly mystified by the sensation which lifted in him and also flew away. He watched as a fresh torrent of rain cascaded past the spider’s cages of balconies above, and he drew in several slow breaths. Relishing his renewed aloneness.

That night he stayed in the flat.

He turned out the lights and did not mind the flit of neons along the street, strobing the blinds. Falling asleep he dreamed the cat was in the room, but only lying, also asleep, on the rug.

He knew better than to stroke it.

But then he sensed it was about to open its eyes, and in doing that it would let loose some power, some malign wish.

There was, even in Athens, superstition of the Evil Eye. In the islands this would be worse. The guide book and the travel agent had warned him. It was undoubtedly this - his dream of the cat’s eyes which, when undone, as he had foretold in the dream, would be a clear frozen blue.

Epsilon

Nick had found the pin (the Roman pin) during the couple of days at the old flat in London. He was sluggishly packing up anything he wanted to take with him. He had already arranged for larger items to go into storage. The men would arrive after he had gone. He did not want to meet anyone else calling on him there.

These arrangements made, he put various things into another bag. He