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begged for steel weapons. We wanted murder, my friend, we wanted murder.’
    I had been laughing soundlessly, with my fist pressed to my mouth, at his excitement and growing incoherence. But soon I stopped, hearing mysterious black echoes reverberating in the distance. Erik put on his spectacles again, and sighed.
    ‘What will you do now, Ben White?’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You are afraid.’
    ‘Ha.’
    He nodded slowly, but I had the notion that he was agreeing with some secret thought of his own. For a moment I felt an enormous, inexplicable pity for him. Or perhaps it was myself that I pitied. He finished the wine in his glass, and slowly refilled it. A wave of pure weariness that was tangible came off him.
    ‘Sometimes you lose the meaning of things, and everything is just … funny.’
    He breathed the last word on a sighing fall of breath. He wasmocking us both, but there was a grain of real despair in his voice. Not knowing what I meant, I said to comfort him,
    ‘There’s magic to combat any force.’
    ‘Do you really believe in the power of magic?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Suddenly he grinned, and asked,
    ‘But then people are murdered in the street before you, and where is the magic to combat that, eh my friend?’
    My gaze shifted to the street, the dark, and my fingers sought each other in my lap, found and clasped. A little wind came in at the door, carrying with it odours out of the deadened pits of that murderous day. Something flew past in the street; dark bird or bat. I waited, hardly breathing, for the shuffle of claws, and the squeaking of bloodied mouths, the soughing of dark wings high in the air. A small child entered, and stopped before our table. Erik quickly drew in his breath. The child offered me a scrap of paper. I shifted under that impassive stare, and took the paper. Strange hieroglyphs were printed there, a message without meaning.
    ‘What do you want?’ I asked.
    The child said nothing, but held a tiny hand toward me. I filled the little palm with coins. I looked at Erik. His eyes were closed. The child turned and went slowly out into the street. I crushed the paper and dropped it to the floor, where it writhed a moment, turned over, and was still. My eyes were on the coins which lay, burning dimly, on the table. How had they come there? Erik stood up, and took up his knapsack.
    ‘Come,’ he said. ‘The last boat will leave soon.’
9
    The village was quiet, with somewhere a girl’s voice softly singing. We walked through the glimmering white-paved laneways without speaking. Odours wafted about us, of bread and baked fish, spices and resin. On the hills the faint shadows of the windmills were motionless against the great web of star-blossoms burning in the dark. It was at times like this that Iloved the island best, times when I felt it offering me something of incalculable value, a place to live, where I might be happy. A cat came from an open doorway to watch us as we passed.
    The last boat lay by the harbour wall, preparing to depart. Nightsounds crossed the quay, a clink of metal, the languid fall of a little wave, the whisper and soft hushing of sand stirring under water. A word of command punctuated the darkness with an abrupt, blunt little explosion. Out on the bar the green and red beacons winked at each other across the channel at the harbour mouth, eternally enticing.
    ‘Kal i sper a, kal i sper a.’
    The captain of the boat, a bandy little islander with a huge white moustache, greeted us with an elaborate salute. He smiled at me, and put a steadying hand under my elbow as I climbed aboard. Dim figures stood in silence about the deck, and from the air of guilt and daring which they exuded, I took them to be island people off for a mild debauch that black Friday. Down in the dark water the lights of the waterfront burned again, mysterious and sad. In silence the boat slipped away from the pier, small waves licking the hull. All eyes were turned toward the village. I had an