The Names

interesting, how the Americans choose strategy over principle every time and yet keep believing in their own innocence. Strategy in Cyprus, strategy in the matter of the dictatorship. The Americans learned to live with the colonels very well. Investments flourished under the dictatorship. The bases stayed open. Small arms shipments continued. Crowd control, you know?”'They were your colonels, Andreas.”'Are you sure of that? This is interesting to me, the curious connection between Greek and American intelligence agencies.”'Why curious?”'The Greek government doesn't know what goes on between them.”'What makes you think the American government knows? This is the nature of intelligence, isn't it? The final enemy is government. Only government threatens their existence.”'The nature of power. The nature of intelligence. You have studied these things. Where, in your apartment in Kolonaki?”'How do you know I live there?”'Where else would you live but there?”'The views are nice.”'The bidet of America, we call this place. Do you want to hear the history of foreign interference in this century alone?”'No.”'Good. I don't have time to recite it.”In the end he did recite it. He recited everything, interrupting his meal several times to light cigarettes, order more wine. I enjoyed myself even in the sweep of judgment and enormous accusation. He had made an occupation of these matters, he had taken pains, and I think he was eager to vent his scholarship. Diligence, comprehensiveness. He was a student of Greek things. It occurred to me that all Greeks were, both in and out of politics and war. Being small and exposed, being strategic. They had a sense of the frailty of their own works, the identifying energies and signs, and they instructed each other as a form of mutual reassurance.'Does your boss tell you that power must be blind in both eyes? You don't see us. This is the final humiliation. The occupiers fail to see the people they control.”'Come on, Andreas.”'Bloody hell, nothing happens without the approval of the Americans. And they don't even know there is a grievance. They don't know we are tired of the situation, the relationship.”'You've had five or six years of calm. Is this too long for Greeks?”'Look how deep we are involved in the comedy. To make concessions to Turks for the sake of harmony in NATO. All arranged by Americans. Americans have played the game badly in Greece.”'And your mistakes. All your mistakes are discussed in terms of acts of nature. The catastrophe in Asia Minor. The disastrous events in Cyprus. This is the language of earthquakes and floods. But Greeks caused these things to happen.”'Cyprus is problematical. I will say this only because there is no documentary evidence. But one day the facts of U.S. involvement will emerge. I am certain.”'What am I eating?”'This is the stomach, the stomach lining.”'Interesting.”'I don't know if I would call it interesting. It's a sheep's stomach, you know. Usually I come here alone. It has a certain meaning for me. Brains, intestines. I don't know if you can understand. Did you ever see a Greek when he dances alone? This is private, a private moment. I'm a little crazy, I think. I need a moment of eating sheep's brains now and then.”The owner stood over us, totaling the bill in machine-gun Greek. We went somewhere for dessert, somewhere else for drinks. At two in the morning we walked the streets looking for a cab. Andreas told me about events leading up to this and that and the other calamity. Whenever he had a point to make he stopped walking and seized my wrist. This happened four or five times on a single windy street. Talk came out of him like the product of some irreversible technology. We'd stand briefly in the dark, then start up again, heading toward a boulevard somewhere. He was full of night vigor, a common property of Athenians. Ten paces he'd stop again. Nuclear stockpiles, secret protocols. His politics were a form of wakefulness, the alerting force in a life that might otherwise pass him by.'What do you want me to do, Andreas?”'I want you to argue,' he said. 'It may be an hour before a taxi comes.”From the small balcony off my bedroom I looked into a room across the courtyard, a little below me. A bright day, shutters open, the room being aired. Self-possessed, a woman's room, a woman's shoes on the floor. I was in shadows, the room in clear light, utterly still, a cool space of objects and tones. What a mystery her absence was, full of unformed questions. There was something final in the scene, a deep calm, as though things had been arranged to be gazed on. Shouldn't a scene like this be marked by expectation? The woman will enter? She will enter drying her hair in a towel, bringing into the room so many things at once, so much affective motion, a lifetime's shattering of composed space, that it is possible to believe you know everything about her, just in that bundling of head and arms, that careless entrance, barefoot, in a loose robe. Alluring. This is what I missed. When the light changed, later, I would look again.My landlord, Hadjidakis, was standing in the lobby. He was a short heavy man who enjoyed speaking English. Almost everything he said in English struck him as funny, almost every sentence ended in a laugh. He seemed happily disconcerted, making these strange sounds. After we'd greeted each other he told me he'd just seen a group of riot policemen assembled near the center of town. Nothing seemed to be going on. They were simply there, about forty of them, in their white visored helmets, black uniforms, carrying riot shields, guns and clubs. As he told the story Hadjidakis kept laughing. All the facts in the story were separated by the sound of his laughter. It was an odd juxtaposition, of course, the riot police and the laughter. The story in English had an eerie dimension it wouldn't have had in Greek. And the sight of those shields and clubs had made an impact on him.'It gave me an emotion,' he said, and we both laughed.When I came down the next day with a suitcase, the concierge stood in the dimness, his right hand twisted in the air, the gesture of destinations.China, I told him, Kina, not knowing the word for Kuwait.I rode out to the airport with Charles Maitland, who was going to Beirut to see about a job as security officer with the British embassy there.'I was saying to Ann. They keep changing the names.”'What names?”'The names we grew up with. The countries, the images. Persia for one. We grew up with Persia. What a vast picture that name evoked. A vast carpet of sand, a thousand turquoise mosques. A vastness, a cruel glory extending back centuries. All the names. A dozen or more and now Rhodesia of course. Rhodesia said something. For better or worse it was a name that said something. What do they offer in its place? Linguistic arrogance, I suggested to her. She called me a comedian. She has no personal memory of Persia as a name. But then she's younger, isn't she?”We floated past the Olympic Stadium.'There's something to it, you know. This sweeping arrogance. Overthrow, re-speak. What do they leave us with? Ethnic designations. Sets of initials. The work of bureaucrats, narrow minds. I find I take these changes quite personally. They're a rescinding of memory. Every time another people's republic emerges from the dust, I have the feeling someone has tampered with my childhood.”'You can't prefer Leopoldville to Kinshasa.”'The Ministry of Slogans. The Ministry of Obscure Dialects.”'Zimbabwe,' I said. 'A drumbeat.”'A drumbeat. That's just it, you see.”'That's just what?”'A drumbeat, a drumbeat.”Our driver eased into a gray line of taxis stretching down the thoroughfare. A woman and maimed child walked along the divide from car to car, begging. The light changed. We were almost to the airport when Charles spoke again.'I heard about the belly dancing.”'Yes.”'An interesting night, was it?”'Do you know her?”'I know her husband,' he said, and when he looked at me his jaw was tight and strong and I wondered if we were fixed in some near symmetry of friendships and adulteries. We walked through the doors into the towering noise of the terminal.Two phone calls.The first came the night I got back from Kuwait. The phone rang twice, then stopped. A little later it rang again. I hadn't been able to sleep. It was two in the morning, shutters banging in the wind.Ann's voice.'This will seem strange, I know.”'Are you all right?”'Well, yes, but I've been putting this off and putting it off.”'Is Charles still in Beirut?”'He stayed on. We have friends there. He's fine. It isn't Charles, it isn't me exactly.”For a moment I thought she wanted to invite herself over. I studied the wooden surface of the table the phone was on. In the stillness before she spoke again I concentrated intently.'It's about this man I've been seeing. It's about him actually.”I waited, then said, 'Andreas. This is the man you're talking about.”She waited. 'How interesting, James. Then you know.' Waited. 'Yes, it's about him I've been wanting to speak to you. Did I wake you? How stupid to call at this hour. But it's been absolutely pressing in on me. I couldn't sleep. I had to tell you, I finally decided. It may be pure imagination but what if it isn't, I thought.' Waited. 'How interesting, that you know.”The voice was rough-edged and faint. She would be sitting beneath the African mask, a drink at her right hand.'We've talked about you,' she said. 'Every so often he asks. A question about your job one day. A question about your friends, your background, small things, falling more or less naturally into the conversation. At first I barely noticed. It was one subject among many. But lately I've begun to think his interest in you may be special. Something enters the conversation. A suspense, I think I'll call it. There's a curious silence in his waiting for my responses. And he watches me. I've begun to notice how he watches. He's a watchful man, isn't he?”'I like Andreas.”'He keeps bringing up your job. I've told him I haven't the foggiest idea what you do. All right, he changes the subject. But eventually it comes up again, perhaps a bit more directly the second time, a bit clumsily even. 'Why is his main office in Washington?' 'Andreas, I've no idea. Why don't you ask him?' Clearly he thinks you're someone who merits attention.”'He also thought I was David Keller, didn't he, at dinner that night. You were right there. He had us mixed up, remember? I was the unscrupulous banker.”'He mentions something called the Northeast Group.”'That's the firm I work for. It's part of a monster corporation. A wholly owned subsidiary, I think is the phrase.”'If I might ask, James, what exactly do you do? Not your company but you. When you travel.”'Generally I do reviews. I examine figures, make decisions.”'Well, see, that's so vague.”'The higher the post, the vaguer the job. The people with specific duties need someone to send their telexes to. I'm a presence.”'He mentions all the travel you do. He mentions the tiny staff you have in Athens. Just a secretary, is this correct? He wonders why your main office is in Washington and not New York. He does his best