The Greeks Have a Word for It by Barry Unsworth

Author:Barry Unsworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2019-05-19T16:00:00+00:00

6

Mitsos waited near the statue of Kolokotronis on a square whose name he could not now recall, while the man he was following had coffee with the proprietor of a radio accessories shop. In the time since he had been dogging George about the city Mitsos had encountered many such threads, little filaments of the other’s life. George’s existence in its external aspects was being slowly revealed to him, the routes he took through the city, his hours of rest and work, the cafés he frequented, the people he knew. Mitsos had developed an intense, a consuming, interest in the smallest details of this life. He was insatiably curious about George. He wanted to know everything. Somewhere in this accumulation of habit and taste a vital link would shine suddenly, associating their two lives; ignorance on his part, even in the smallest things, might enable the other not to escape but to disown him, repudiate the connection between them.

So he was content to wait patiently, full in the sun, beside the statue, keeping the entrance to the shop in view. He had been standing there quite still for a long time now. The shadows of pigeons wavered over his feet. In the middle of the square the proprietor of a flower stall slept under his awning, among carnations, roses, gladioli. There was no one else on the square.

Mitsos declined his head. His temples throbbed with pain. He could look nowhere without hurting his eyes. The white paving dazzled him, the tall white buildings round the square reflected the sunlight achingly. He was exhausted with walking and standing and with the oppression of the sun. But he could not leave this place, to sit somewhere, or even seek the shade, because lately he had grown superstitious about small observances, as though everything hung on particular patterns of behaviour, not necessarily logical, compelling him to impose on himself quite arbitrary rules. He had stationed himself here. He would not move now until George came out of the shop.

He had eaten little that day, but he felt no hunger. He wanted only to have the man in his sight again. Prolonged periods without visual experience of him filled Mitsos with anxiety as though his own existence had somehow come into doubt. Beneath the pain in his head however, and combating this uncertainty, he was aware of his heart beating, the quietly enduring pulse of his blood. With these days of early June Athens had sprung into full summer, a summer for Mitsos of glaring days, aching reflections, spent evenings; and a curious readiness of the senses. Sounds carried to him flatly, without resonance, in clear detonations. The city was basined in its hills, brought closer by the hardening horizons of summer. The sea when it was glimpsed was bright and flat, not taking the mind to further distances; continuing merely the enclosing line of the hills. Mitsos felt contained in the city as though in a white bowl; and within the bowl this extraordinary clarity in which the senses reluctantly and painfully lingered on things.

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