Forgery Page 4

  “Yes,” said Nikos, as if he had just woken up.

  “I have to take Sue home. She’s been in the bathroom for the last ten minutes.”

  “Too bad,” said Nikos.

  “Where can I get a cab around here?”

  “At the end of the street, by the kiosk.”

  I nodded and was about to return to Sue when Nikos placed his hand on my shoulder. “Can I have the key to your hotel room?”

  I looked at Nikos, feeling suddenly that I was back at Columbia and would be sleeping on someone’s couch. I gave him the key. “You owe me,” I said.

  “We are friends,” said Nikos dramatically. “We are constantly indebted to each other.”

  By the kiosk, waiting for the cab, Sue threw up on a tree. I wondered about this. I too would have chosen the tree rather than the sidewalk, but why? I held her shoulders.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. She looked as if she were about to cry.

  “Don’t be,” I said. “I shouldn’t have given you so much to drink.”

  “I can usually handle it. It must be the heat.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “The heat. Do you think you can manage a cab?”

  Sue nodded stoically. I remembered my handkerchief and gave it to her. “Something to remember me by, along with the hangover.”

  And Sue laughed.

  Her hotel should have been a five-minute drive, but with the two stops and one false alarm, it took nearly half an hour. I tipped the driver extravagantly and steered Sue up the steps. The hotel was small and neat with a hand-shaped Venetian door knocker, mailboxes, and a polished marble floor. The elevator was the size of a broom closet. “What room are you in?” I asked.

  Suddenly a woman came running out from the back room. She was wearing an apron, apparent industry at this late hour, and when she saw me with Sue her eyes ignited.

  “Ochi! Ochi!” she said.

  I stopped obediently.

  “No mans!”

  “What?”

  “No mans!”

  I patted Sue lightly on the shoulder. “Sorry, Sue, no mans. You’re on your own.”

  Sue nodded. She entered the elevator and pressed a button. She turned back to me, her face full of remorse, “I’m so—”

  But the elevator whisked her into the heavens and out of harm’s way. I faced the woman, raising my hands in surrender.

  She was still muttering at me when I went into the street.

  It was a nice night and I decided to walk home. Sue’s hotel was not far from the National Gardens, and from there Hotel Nikis was just a short distance through Syntagma Square. The air was still and barely cooler than daytime, but walking felt good after the closeness of the club, and I knew I should proceed at a leisurely pace; although I did not know Nikos well, I thought it safe to assume that he was a man who took his time with all things pleasurable. The moon was nearly full and the palace lit up. A few honking taxis circled Syntagma. Businesses were finally closing. I wondered how late it was. Two small boys, one with a bicycle, played unattended by a fountain; near them a stray dog lay passed out, apparently napping.

  “Hello, dog,” I said.

  In response to this, the dog wagged its tail.

  I stopped at a shop where the owner was busily going around shutting off lights. I stood at the counter, feeling invisible, until the man finally noticed me.

  “Kalispéra,” the man said.

  “Can I get some whiskey?” I asked.

  “Whiskey.” The man nodded and took a bottle off the shelf.

  I took a handful of money out of my pocket. I didn’t know what it was worth, so to be safe, I handed him a large bill. The man shook his head. He gave the bill back to me and went through my cash picking out a smaller bill and a couple of coins. He folded my hand around the remaining money.

  “Endaxi,” the man said.

  “Endaxi,” I replied.

  It was with some displeasure that I noted Nikos’s Vespa still parked on the sidewalk. The window to my room was closed. I was not sure how to proceed, but I found myself walking up the steps to my room. The hallway was dimly lit and mostly quiet, other than the staccato of a typewriter coming from Steve Kelly’s room. I walked quietly down the hall and listened, feeling like a pervert, at my door. Nikos’s voice was whispering sweetly in there and, although I was well within my rights to knock, I couldn’t seem to find the energy to do it. I walked back up the hallway to Steve Kelly’s room and knocked on the door. The typewriting stopped and I knocked again.

  Someone yelled out in Greek. I was quiet, and more Greek words issued forth. It was Steve and I thought that his Greek might be very good.

  “It’s Rupert, from down the hall,” I said.

  “From down the hall?” he responded. He had been deep in thought.

  “Not to be confused with that other Rupert.”

  I heard him laugh. “Come in,” he said.

  I swung open the door. Steve was in his undershorts at his typewriter.

  “Do you want a drink?” I held up the bottle of whiskey. “I know my timing’s awful, but there are extenuating circumstances.”

  Steve’s eyes lit up. “And here all this time I thought it was you.”

  “It’s my friend Nikos. I can wait downstairs. …”

  “No, no. Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll stop and have a drink now. I do have a deadline tomorrow, but you’re welcome to stay. You can nap in the armchair.”

  “Thanks very much.”

  “You must be exhausted.”

  “Yeah.” I kicked off my shoes. “How long have I been here?”

  “Not even a day.”

  “Oh my God,” I laughed. “Funny thing is, I feel like I’ve been here forever, but that I’m getting younger.”

  Steve, who had fetched the glasses from the bathroom, poured me a whiskey. “Younger?”

  “My friend is having sex in my room.” I massaged my forehead. “I spent the evening buying drinks for a girl wearing sandals.”

  “What kind of sandals?”

  “The kind that girls wear at school.”

  “I didn’t realize that footwear was a function of time or age.”

  I took a long drink. “It is,” I said. “Most definitely.” Steve was now seated on the end of his bed. “What are you writing about?”

  “The north. The Communists.”

  “Are they really a threat?”

  Steve shrugged. “Their threat is really a threat. The right-wingers exploit them, and they are a bunch of lunatics. Then there’s the Center Party, Papandreou’s party, which is more moderate.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Six months.”

  “And you speak Greek?”

  “I think I do. Some of the locals might disagree.” Steve sipped his drink. “I held off learning for a while. I originally came to cover the situation in Cyprus. I thought it would be over in a matter of weeks, but Cyprus is still Cyprus. And there are other things going on.”

  “Other things?”

  “Like tourism,” said Steve, and he smiled pointedly.

  Rather than keep me up, Steve’s typing lulled me to sleep. It was the Vespa, protesting on the sidewalk directly below Steve’s window, that told me my room had been vacated. Steve was now asleep, sprawled on top of his bed, snoring. I went over to the window and saw Nikos disappearing into the night. I glanced over at the typewriter, but there was no paper in it. In fact, there was no paper on the table at all except for a virginal stack of white sheets.

  4

  p

  I awoke to a knocking at my door. The room was bright and I was in my undershorts. The knocking continued.

  “What are you doing?” I called out.

  “I am knocking.”

  It was Nikos.

  I struggled out of bed and opened the door. Nikos was standing there in a sport shirt and slacks, his hair neat, his face composed.

  “There is something in you, Nikos,” I said, in quick retreat, “that wants
to separate me from my bed.” I lay back down. “I feel like hell.”

  Nikos nodded sympathetically. “We have to go register with the police.”

  “Now?”

  “You should shower.”

  “What time is it?”

  “It is eleven.”

  “I misrepresented you,” I said. “I told Sue you were a gentleman.”

  “It was Helen who wanted to leave the club,” Nikos said. “Would I have been more of a gentleman if I had said no?”

  “I suppose not.” I got up and went into the bathroom. “Are you going to see her again?”

  “I am taking Helen and Sue to Sounion to see the temple of Poseidon this afternoon. Would you like to join us?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Sue is very nice, but I’m a bit old for this.”

  I turned on the shower and the water trickled onto my head.

  “She will be disappointed,” called Nikos.

  “Well, you’ll tell her something,” I called back. “Can you get Yorgos to send up some hot water and coffee?”

  “Of course,” said Nikos.

  I sat on the back of the Vespa shaved, showered, and caffeinated. The building that housed the Police Department was not far from my hotel.

  “Did you remember your passport?” asked Nikos.

  I patted my jacket pocket.

  “The pictures?”

  “Yes.”

  We took the elevator to the fourth floor. A door opened to a large room filled with desks. A herd of confused foreigners clutching their passports stood idling in lines, sitting across from the clerks, begging for answers from various unsympathetic officials. I was not optimistic.

  “Why do I have to register?” I said. “Does everyone register?”

  “Not everyone,” said Nikos. “It is a formality, but better that you register now than try later. What if you have to extend your visit?”

  I shrugged. “What do I do?”

  Nikos gestured with his head over to the receptionist who was arguing in French with a man who was responding in German. Nikos stood beside the German, elbows on the counter, and interrupted in Greek. The woman told him something and with her palms open, in apparent disgust, indicated the man across from her. Nikos nodded sympathetically.

  “You need to go to the third floor and pay the clerk twelve drachmas,” Nikos said, addressing the German. “He will stamp your form, and then you bring it back.”

  The German man took back his form, shot an angry look at Nikos, and stomped off.

  “He could have said thank you,” I said.

  “Why?” replied Nikos, smiling. “There is nothing on the third floor. Only apartments.”

  I laughed.

  “Give me your passport,” said Nikos, “and fill this out.” He reached over the counter and picked up a form, smiling at the woman, in her forties, big black beehive, who seemed all of a sudden pleasant. While I was filling out the form—passport number, address in Athens, intended length of stay—Nikos produced an envelope from his inside jacket pocket and gave it to the woman.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Letters.”

  I finished off the form while the beehive woman and Nikos lit up cigarettes and lapsed into some pleasant-sounding conversation. I couldn’t understand a word of it, but the woman was laughing, charmed by Nikos, as everyone always was, even Nikos himself. “The form is complete,” I said.

  “Give me your pictures,” said Nikos.

  I handed them over.

  “And now we are done,” said Nikos.

  “That’s it?”

  “We go get lunch, and then come back, and she says she will have everything ready for you to sign.”

  “How?”

  Nikos shrugged. “She doesn’t like Germans,” he said.

  Nikos and I took the stairs down. The German was on the third floor talking to an old woman in an apron, who was standing in the doorway of her apartment. He was brandishing his form in her face, apparently not noticing the knife that she held tightly in her right hand.

  Nikos chose an open-air taverna by a church not far from the Pláka. Black-clad priests walked back and forth, their feet obscured by their long robes, which made them look as if they were skating. An older man in seersucker sat across from us with a young Greek, who was perhaps eighteen years old. And there was a Frenchwoman, who was arguing with her two overdressed children, insisting that they had liked the pastitsio the night before. I had left the ordering to Nikos again, and he’d gotten us some roasted chicken and an eggplant thing stewed in tomato.

  Nikos tapped his cigarette on the table. He was not happy with me. “Why won’t you go to Sounion?”

  “I would like to see the temple, but today is not the day for that. There’s something I want to check out in Athens.” I pulled out my Fodor’s and opened it to the marked page. “Look. What do you think of this Monastiráki shopping district for antiques?”

  “They’re all fakes.”

  “Studying the fakes is part of my work.”

  I took some more eggplant, which was putting out fires in my stomach. Nikos was done eating. He fixed me with a contemplative look.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You will not want to tell me.” He lit his cigarette.

  “What?”

  Smoke floated around his face, and he had his legs crossed. “You are still in love with your ex-wife.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not. For a marriage that only lasted four years, it seemed quite long.”

  “What is her name?”

  “Whose name?” I said, but this ingenuousness did not fool Nikos. “Why?”

  He looked at me with mild surprise.

  “Her name is Hester,” I said.

  “Why did you divorce? Did she do something?” He thought for moment. “Did you do something?”

  “It’s nothing like that at all,” I said wearily. “The Greeks don’t divorce, do they?”

  “No, not really.”

  “So how could I explain it to you?”

  After lunch, Nikos and I headed back to pick up my forms, which, as promised, were in order. He dropped me off somewhere in the Monastiráki area. The Acropolis stood up against the sky like a Hollywood backdrop.

  “See the mosque?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go there. After that you go to the left. It’s Pandróssou. There are also shoes for sale here.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t buy anything,” said Nikos. “And there are pickpockets, so be careful.”

  I’m really not sure why I still wanted to go to Pandróssou. I suppose I felt that I should at least see what was being reproduced and how the people were hoping to pass it off.

  The first store I went into was full of reproductions on a par with the jug that Yorgos sent up with my hot water for shaving. The man was very eager for me to purchase something, which had the effect of hurrying me back into the street. After that, I did my observations from a distance over the haze of my cigarette. I picked up a sandal from a display of leather goods, but was really interested in the neighboring store—clay knick knacks, bronze fragments—but something in these items didn’t seem quite right. I was beginning to feel profoundly self-conscious and absurd when a small sign posted in the corner of a shop caught my eye. It said clearance certificate potteries. I did not know what this meant, but the plainness of this unassuming sign made me feel that it was pitched at someone in the know. I set down my sandal, much to the disappointment—or perhaps relief, it was much too small for me—of the attending shopkeeper and made my way across the narrow alley.

  The door swung open noiselessly and I entered. It was dark inside and cluttered with things, some swords and helmets from Turkey, icons, silverwork, maybe a couple of hundred years old, and a glass case of coins. I was startled then by a man sitting completely still on a chair in a shadowy corner. I had not noticed him at first—then, for a half-second, mistook him for a statue—but I caught his eyes foll
owing me. My heart missed a beat.

  “Evkaristó,” I said.

  “That means thank you,” said the man. “Why are you thanking me?”

  I shrugged. “Because you have scared me but not killed me?”

  The man laughed and stood up, and I was surprised at his height. He must have been six feet tall. “It is very dark in here,” he said. “And bright outside. You like old things?”

  I picked up an icon. It seemed genuinely old, the wood soft and worm-eaten in places. The painting—virgin and child—had a life to it, as if it were a photograph developing into detail only to immediately begin the return to nothing. I put it down.

  “We have better ones in the back,” he said. “Are you interested in icons?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m interested in,” I said.

  “You are American,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I have many American clients. They come here year after year. I have a good reputation,” he said, then raised his eyebrows as if a reputation were not worth that much.

  “I’d be interested in any classical coins.”

  The man gestured for me to sit down at a wooden table. He pushed a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray towards me. “Help yourself,” he said.

  I nodded and when he returned with a case of coins, was happily smoking.

  “Some of these are very old. Look.” He opened up the case.

  “May I?” I said, gesturing at the coins. He nodded. I picked up a small silver coin with a man’s head on one side and, on the other, a drunken Silenus with folded legs, leaning on one muscled arm, drinking wine from a shallow bowl. “This is charming,” I said.

  “It is from Náxos, 460 B.C.”

  I nodded, impressed, but I had detected a tiny line around the perimeter of the coin. The coin was a good replica of the sort that filled the cases of eager collectors throughout the West. I set it down and picked up a different coin, this one small and bronze but with a striking crack, a split, that happened beneath the hammer a few thousand years earlier. “I like this one more,” I said.

  The man leaned back and laughed. “Bronze over silver. I feel that I am in a fairy tale. What is the fairy tale?”