My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart Page B

would not. He helped us to bury my son Nikolaos, and then he went.’ He nodded towards the intent youth on the bed. ‘There was that one, you understand, and his sister Maria, who is since married to Georgios who has a shop in the village. When the Germans came the children were out in the fields with their mother, or who knows? They, too, might have been killed.
Kyrie
Michael’ – he pronounced it as a trisyllable, Mi-ha-eel – ‘would not stay, because of them. He went up into the mountain.’
    ‘Yes. A few days later he was killed. You found his body somewhere over between here and Delphi, and you took it down to be buried.’
    ‘That is so. What I found on his body I gave after three weeks to Perikles Grivas, and he took it to an Englishman who was going by night from Galaxidion. But this you know.’
    ‘This I know. I want you to show me where he was killed, Stephanos.’
    There was a short silence. The boy Niko watched Simon unwinkingly. I noticed that he had taken out a cigarette of his own and was smoking it.
    The old man said heavily: ‘I will do that, of course. Tomorrow?’
    ‘If it’s convenient.’
    ‘For you, it is convenient.’
    ‘You’re very good.’
    ‘You are the brother of Michael.’
    Simon said gently: ‘He was here a long time, wasn’t he?’
    Beside me the woman moved suddenly and said in a clear soft voice: ‘He was my son.’ I saw with a wrench of discomfort that there were tears on her cheeks. ‘He should have stayed,’ she said, and then repeated it almost desperately: ‘He should have stayed.’
    Simon said: ‘But he had to go. How could he stay and put you and your family in that danger again? When the Germans came back—’
    ‘They didn’t come back.’ It was Niko who spoke, clearly, from the bed.
    ‘No.’ Simon turned his head. ‘Because they caught Michael in the mountains. But if they hadn’t caught him – if he had still been hiding here – they might have come back to the village, and then—’
    ‘They did not catch him,’ said the old man.
    Simon turned back sharply. Stephanos was sitting still on the bench, knees apart, hands clasped between them, his heavy body bent slightly forward. His eyes looked fathoms dark under the white brows. The two men stared at one another. I found myself stirring onmy hard chair. It was as if the scene were taking place in slow-motion, silent and incomprehensible, yet powered with emotions that plucked uncomfortably at the nerves.
    Simon said slowly: ‘What are you trying to tell me?’
    ‘Only,’ said Stephanos, ‘that Michael was not killed by the Germans. He was killed by a Greek.’
    ‘By a Greek?’ Simon echoed it almost blankly.
    The old man made a gesture that might have come straight from
Oedipus Rex
. To me, still not understanding anything except that the men’s talk had an overtone of tragedy, it conveyed a curiously powerful impression of resignation and shame.
    ‘By a man from Arachova,’ he said.
    It was at this moment that the light chose to go out.
    The Greeks were obviously accustomed to the whims of the electric system. With scarcely a moment’s delay the old woman had found and lit an oil-lamp, and placed it on the table in the middle of the room. It was a frightful-looking lamp of some cheap bright metal, but it burned with a soft apricot light and the sweet smell of olive-oil. With the heavy shadows cast on his face, Stephanos looked more than ever like a tragic actor. Niko had rolled over on his stomach and was watching the two other men bright-eyed, as if it were indeed a play. I supposed that for him his father’s death was so remote that this talk of it was no more than a breath from an exciting past.
    Simon was saying: ‘I … see. That makes a lot ofthings a lot plainer. And of course you don’t know who it was.’
    ‘Indeed we do.’
    Simon’s brows shot up. The old man smiled sourly. ‘You are wondering why we have not killed him,
kyrie
, when we called Michael our