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  The two of them had been on the move now for more than fourteen hours, leaving the last monastery of Chilandariou at dawn and tramping all day up the spine of the mountain peninsula. They had stopped only for a lunch of bread, olives, and retsina offered by some monks in a vineyard, and to pause for regular gulps from Van Loon’s litre-bottle of ouzo.

  Neil Ingleby arrived at the head of the path, exhausted.

  The Dutchman grinned and breathed black smoke into the still air: ‘You are not so tough, Neil old fellow!’

  The Englishman unhoisted his rucksack and Olivetti 22, and sank down on the stony ground beside Van Loon, head on his knees. The Dutchman brought out the bottle of flawed green glass with no label, half-full of ouzo mixed with water. They both drank deeply, feeling the milky-white liquid spread through them with a sweet aniseed warmth, as they sat looking down the walls of the valley to the isthmus far below, where the dried-up Xerxes Canal once severed the peninsula from the Greek mainland. Beyond, they could just see the little town of Ierrissou with its jumble of white houses and the stone jetty where the girls went walking arm-in-arm in the evenings.

  ‘That would be a good place to live,’ said Van Loon, ‘you could take a pretty girl there and live quietly, and when you are fed up with her, you come over the canal to escape.’ He laughed and shook his head, enjoying his little fantasy over another gulp of ouzo.

  The valley was growing dark with a grey-green twilight that smouldered out of the dense olives and vineyards. Mists began to crawl down the foothills of the mountain, trailing like cobwebs from the tops of the pines and walnut trees; and the heat was rapidly going out of the earth.

  Van Loon stuffed the bottle back into his rucksack and said, ‘Come, we go before they close the gates.’

  Neil followed him wearily round the wall which climbed two hundred feet above them: a stone face pitted with age, its balconies and buttresses honeycombed with the nests of wild birds. The gate was sunk under a gloomy arch; Van Loon tugged at an iron lever and a bell chimed distantly behind the wall.

  They had come to the Bulgarian monastery of Zographou, built in the twelfth century. It is one of more than thirty monasteries on the Holy Mountain of Athos, which rises from a finger of land pointing down into the Aegean off the north coast of Greece. For centuries the peninsula has been the refuge of thousands of monks, hermits and holy men belonging to the Orthodox Church; but with the spread of Communism cutting off the flow of novices from the east, and with the growing agnosticism of the West, the population of Athos has now dwindled to a few hundred stooped and senile men whose memories of the outside world ended before the murder at Sarajevo. Today their ancient palaces, lying in the folds of valleys or clinging to precipices over the sea, are falling silent, into decay.

  Mount Athos is still governed by the oldest democracy in the world: an elected assembly of monks whose rule is respected by the Greek Government. No female creature, except birds and insects, and no wheeled vehicle is allowed on the peninsula; the mules and donkeys, which are the sole form of transport, have to be bred on the mainland. Only once, when a band of Communist guerrillas, including sixteen girls, attacked the monasteries to loot food in 1946, has a woman ever put foot on Athos. One of the few concessions to modern bureaucracy is a grubby office in Salonika where prospective tourists to the peninsula are issued with visas by a bearded monk in the chimney-pot hat of the Orthodox Church.

  Neil, who had first met Van Loon on the bus from Salonika five days ago, had come to see this womanless civilization before it died out altogether; but now, standing in the gathering gloom, limp with tiredness, his head throbbing with the fumes of ouzo, he had to admit to himself that he found it a dead and dispiriting place.

  There was a grinding like clockwork behind the wall and the gate creaked inwards, held open by a monk bent over a knotted stick. He raised his hand in welcome, turning to them a face swathed in a cocoon of dirty white hair hanging over his shoulders, revealing one black eye that shone at them with unnatural vigour.

  They passed under the stone arch, into a courtyard full of the sweet stench of rotting vegetation. Walls of blind windows rose round them, under a belfry where a clock had stopped at five to one. The monk led them up a spiral staircase, past four floors, out on to a wooden gallery that looked across the sagging roofs into the black valley below. Out of the stillness came the chant of evensong.

  By misfortune Neil and Van Loon had arrived on Athos during one of the fasting periods, so — as travellers, enjoying the traditional hospitality of the monasteries — they had to make do with a diet of bread, dried fish and olives. But local wine, and the fierce spirits ouzo and arak, had flowed without stint, and after the gruelling marches uphill, drinking freely on an almost empty stomach, Neil was feeling in poor physical condition.

  Back in London, where he was a successful political journalist, he had grown slack on a routine of well-ordered luxury. He had come out here on a three-month leave of absence from his newspaper, ostensibly in order to write a book about Greece. But the book was unimportant: after two weeks all he had to show were a few scrappy notes. He had really come away to prove to himself that he could resist the comforts and creeping sloth of his London life.

  On Mount Athos he had been attracted by the legendary virtues of solitude and enforced chastity; but unfortunately, Neil Ingleby did not have the mental resilience of a religious man. While he liked to think of himself as an enlightened liberal, able to reject the vulgarities of materialism, he was also the victim of habit: he depended too much on a fat salary, good restaurants and fashionable friends. On Mount Athos he felt exhausted and depressed, while Van Loon seemed to thrive, dark with the sun and tough as whipcord.

  The monk had reached a wooden door down the gallery and stood bowing them inside. The cell was cramped and dark; there were two beds laid with straw under blankets of sackcloth, and a tiny window, shut and caked with dirt. Everywhere was the same sweet smell of decay. The monk shuffled in after them and picked up a rusted oil lamp from under one of the beds. After a lot of grunting and fumbling, he lit it with a box of matches from beneath his habit. The flame gave off a ribbon of black smoke, and Neil saw with distaste that the ceiling was hung with a canopy of cobwebs.

  The old man put the lamp down between the beds, then straightened up and swept the hair from his face, giving them a totally toothless grin. The one black eye glinted mischievously, while the other was closed up, weeping down the hairy cheek. He looked like a shrunken miniature of Rasputin. He stood to attention and muttered a blessing in Bulgarian, then went out, closing the door. Neil stretched himself out on the bed, wondering if it wouldn’t be better to give in and go back to Salonika or down to Athens.

  Van Loon sat down and smoked his meerschaum; and soon the black shag began to overcome the smell of rot and burning oil. For some moments they said nothing. Neil found this one of the most restful things about their relationship. They talked to each other without effort, often in monosyllables, and there was no compulsion to impress or score over the other in intellectual combat.

  Van Loon was a simple man: enormously strong, with a pleasant bovine face, blue eyes and a spiky blond beard. His hands were the size of spades and he had a great capacity for alcohol. He was a sailor by profession, but had done many jobs, never sticking to one for more than a few months. When they had met each other on the bus from Salonika he had been on the first leg of his journey round the world; and during the past five days the whole of Van Loon’s sad saga had been unfolded to Neil, as they tramped side by side from monastery to monastery.

  He was travelling on a bounty of sixty pounds — all the money he had in the world — saved up while tree felling in Finland during the summer. For four years he had been in love with a Norwegian girl who worked as a secretary in Amsterdam. (‘A little black-haired girl, not like a Norwegian girl at all,’ he had told Neil, ‘with cat’s eyes and a thin white body.’) They were always making plans to get married, when Van Loon would become restle
ss and set off on some trek. The last one had been to the forests of Finland where he had chopped logs for ten hours a day and spent the nights drinking wood spirit, collapsing to sleep it off in the snow. When he returned to Amsterdam three months later he learnt without warning that his girl had married a Dutch civil servant, and that the two of them had already left to live in a trading station in Borneo.

  At first he had been stunned, incapable of belief; then had turned to rage and drink. (‘She goes with a stupid little government dog!’ he had roared at Neil. ‘Bald with spectacles! I would have killed them both!’) But unable to get his hands on either of them he had instead revenged himself on the bridegroom’s father whom he had thrown into one of the canals, followed by a passing policeman. Two more policemen had arrived to restrain him, and they had gone into the canal too, dragging him with them; but he had managed to clamber out and escape through the back of a warehouse where he had tripped and fallen into a vat of sugar. (‘I came running out into the square, white like a snowman!’ he told Neil, grinning.) Covered in sugar, he had been chased across half Amsterdam; then at the police station he had run amok, putting three men in hospital before they had been able to get him into the cells.

  He had gone to prison for four months. As soon as he came out, just three weeks ago, he had left on his journey round the world. Through endurance and a good deal of guile, he had managed to exist on seven pounds since leaving Amsterdam, impelled by a wild hope that one day he would reach Borneo and get his girl back. (‘She might come away with me,’ he told Neil. ‘Perhaps the little husband is already a drunkard and she will divorce him. All the Dutch officials out there become drunkards. Rain and snakes and nothing to do but drink.’)

  He sat on his bed now in silence, sucking his pipe and listening to the chanting of the monks outside. A bell clanked dismally — a short cracked sound that made Neil shudder. It was growing cold in the cell and he wrapped the sackcloth round him, feeling the straw prick through his drill trousers.

  ‘This is a pretty poor place,’ said Van Loon, staring into the flame of the oil lamp. ‘These old monks here can’t have such good vineyards. Or maybe they drink all their wine. I wonder if we get any food tonight.’

  ‘Let’s have some ouzo,’ said Neil. ‘We might as well enjoy ourselves. It’s too dark to read.’

  As Van Loon was taking the bottle from his rucksack, there was a slow tread along the gallery and the monk appeared with a tray laid with fish, olives, a jug of wine and two tumblers of arak. He put it on the floor and Van Loon offered him some ouzo. He grinned coyly, taking the bottle and swallowing at least an inch in one draught; then dribbled into his beard and chuckled, his one black eye shining fiercely. Van Loon clapped him on the shoulder. ‘That’s a good old man, that!’ he said to Neil, when the monk had gone.

  Neil was tasting the fish. It was so dry that it crumbled in his fingers like biscuit. ‘He might have brought us something better than this,’ he muttered.

  Van Loon was trying the arak. ‘The trouble with you, old fellow,’ he said, with a sudden insight that rather jarred Neil, ‘you have too good a life. Look at that old man. He lives to be perhaps a hundred years old. He says his prayers, he eats this food, he drinks a bloody lot and he is happy!’ He took another gulp of arak and added, ‘This stuff he gives us is much stronger than my ouzo. After this, you eat anything!’

  Neil picked up his glass, frowning, and sipped the transparent spirit. It burned his mouth raw, and his fingertips felt hot and dry. He bit into a lump of fish, chewed a couple of shrivelled olives, and lay back on the bed and thought of London, and of long-legged, small-breasted Miss Caroline Tucker: going to L.C.C. Russian classes and being whisked out of taxis through dim foyers to eat snails and listen to Hutch.

  He finished the arak and Van Loon passed him the jug of wine. It was sweet and strong, washing out the salt taste of the fish, and together they drank in peace: Van Loon talking about how he would change his ways when he got back to Amsterdam — he would marry and buy a Vespa and drink only one beer in the evening before going back to his wife.

  They finished the wine and returned to the ouzo. The Dutchman rambled on, and Neil lay in thought. Compared with Van Loon’s griefs, his own problems were somewhat academic. He worked for one of Britain’s most respected middlebrow Sunday newspapers. In twelve years spent in journalism, since graduating from Cambridge with a History First, he had established an enviable reputation. His political column each Sunday was well-informed and occasionally witty. He was a bachelor; made more than £3,000 a year, including television appearances; ran a Mini Cooper; lived in a spacious flat overlooking Battersea Park; and enjoyed the attentions and flattery of famous people: luncheon with Tory MP’s on the borders of Westminster, dinner parties with young Labour MP’s in the Boltons. He was a success. He had begun to drink too much, grow weary of his work, get up late in the morning and feel stale and morose.

  His main affliction was a hopeless, lingering affair with a girl nearly ten years younger than himself. Caroline Tucker, pretty and penniless, was secretary to the editor of a fortnightly fashion magazine. He had met her at a cocktail party given by a junior Cabinet Minister, had invited her to dinner afterwards at Wheeler’s and taken her to bed the same night. She was gay and shallow and affectionate in spasms, and he loved her with a passion that was neither dignified nor enjoyable. They had nothing in common; she was grossly unfaithful to him but always came back, smiling and unashamed, curling up beside him with the curtains drawn against the park and a bottle of wine by the bed.

  He had asked her to marry him many times, but she always laughed and said she didn’t want to marry anyone. He had taken her to Italy in the summer, motoring down the fast straight roads of France, and she had told him then that she loved him and that whatever happened between them she never wanted to lose him.

  A few months later she had begun going out with a racing motorist called Tommy Drummond who drove Lotuses and was said to be on the way up. Neil had decided to withdraw nobly; he knew that she would come back to him eventually, as she always did. He had taken £250, packed a rucksack and left for Athos.

  He was now feeling drunk enough not to care anymore. Van Loon rolled over and was asleep. Neil turned out the oil lamp, hunched himself under the sackcloth and thought of how, in a few weeks’ time, he would go back to London and take Caroline out to an expensive meal, fill her up with wine and begin all over again.

  Sometime later in the night the bell clanked twice from the courtyard. He woke suddenly. At first he thought it was the wind: a low whining sound that rose and fell for several seconds, before giving a high-pitched whistle and dying out altogether. There was a pause. He looked at his watch: it was nearly half past two. He could now hear a voice muttering somewhere behind the wall. It went on for a long time and he guessed that one of the monks was praying in a nearby cell.

  He dropped back to sleep, but woke again in less than ten minutes. The voice had stopped. There were footsteps moving up and down the gallery outside. They passed the cell twice with a steady creaking, turned and started back, reached his door and halted.

  He was wide awake now, sitting up, waiting for the next step. But the only sound was Van Loon’s breathing. Then, very gently, he heard a number of clicks, each followed by a ringing sound. He counted eight before they stopped. There was silence: the footsteps did not go away. He lay still, listening; then got up, felt his way across the cell and opened the door.

  There was a moon outside and the walls shone stone-white across the courtyard. A man was standing opposite him, his back turned, staring over the balustrade into the yard. He swung round at the sound of the door and for a moment they faced each other in silence. Neil could not see his face against the moonlight: all he could make out was a tall spare figure with arms gripping the balustrade behind him. Neil took a step forward and the man snapped, ‘Qui êtes-vous?’

  Neil stopped. He still felt muzzy with wine and arak. He squinted at the man and slurred i
n his competent French, ‘J’suis anglais — j’m’appelle Ingleby.’

  The man seemed to relax; his arms slipped from the balustrade and he murmured, ‘Ah, an Englishman!’ He stared at Neil, then added, speaking French, ‘My name is Martel. Pierre Martel.’ He held out a hand that was dry and cold like a doctor’s then turned and took a coin from his pocket, which he held over the balustrade and dropped into the yard below. It landed with the clicking sound that Neil had just heard from the cell. Without turning, the man took out another coin. Neil moved closer and saw that it was a ten-drachma piece, worth about half-a-crown. Monsieur Martel leant out again and dropped it carefully over, at exactly the same spot as before. Neil wondered if it was some kind of game. The man was looking down into the yard and said absently: ‘I dropped something. I was just taking a walk and I dropped it over the edge.’

  For a moment the two of them stood side by side, peering into the darkness.

  ‘What was it?’ said Neil.

  ‘A coin. A gold coin.’ The man had taken out another ten-drachma piece and dropped it over after the others.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Neil.

  Monsieur Martel straightened up suddenly and faced him. It was a gaunt grey face; the hair was the colour of white pepper, cropped over a round scalp, and his eyes were a sunken slate-grey with a curious shallow glare in them. Neil had a feeling that he had seen him somewhere before.

  ‘It’s an old trick,’ the man said, ‘didn’t you ever play it as a boy? You lose something, and you send something else after it.’ He jerked his head towards the yard: ‘There, in the morning, I shall find that all the coins have fallen in a limited area. The gold one will be somewhere among them.’

  Neil suddenly wanted to laugh; he said, ‘I’ve got a lamp in my room. We could go down and look for the coin now.’

  The Frenchman shook his head: ‘Thank you, I’ll go myself. Goodnight.’ He nodded, unsmiling, and walked away down the gallery.