The Revolt of Aphrodite Read Online Free PDF Page B

Iolanthe? Throats parched in the dry air we drink thirstily from the sacred spring. She washes the sugar from her lips, washes her privates in the icy water, drying them on my old silk scarf. No, Athens was not like other places; and the complicated language, with its archaic thought-forms, shielded its strangeness from foreign eyes. Afterwards to sit at a tin table in a tavern, utterly replete and silent, staring at each other, fingers touching , before two glasses of colourless raki and a plate of olives. Everything should have ended there, among the tombs, by the light of a paraffin lamp. Perhaps it did?
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    T he news of Caradoc’s coming was conveyed to me by Hippolyta one fine Sunday afternoon; once more bidden to tea, I found her in a corner of the Bretagne where she kept a suite permanently available, playing patience among the palms. She looked a little less forbidding this time I thought, though she was fashionably turned out in the styles of the day. Bejewelled, yes, but this time without much warpaint. Moreover she was short-sighted I noticed; raising a lorgnon briefly towards me as I advanced, she smiled. The optic changed her clever aquiline face, giving it a juvenile and somewhat innocent expression . The eyes were noble, despite their arrogance of slant. She was immediately likeable, though less beautiful this time than last. I compared her mentally to her reputation for extravagant gesture and detected something which seemed at variance with the public portraits , so to speak. Somewhere inside she was a naif—always a bad sign in a woman connected with politics and public life.
    “You remember we spoke? He is coming—you may have heard of Caradoc, the architect? No? Well….” She suddenly burst out laughing, as if the very mention of his name had touched off an absurd memory. She laughed as far back as a tiny gold stopping on amolar and then became serious, conspiratorial. “The lecture will be on the Acropolis—will your machine be able …?” I was doubtful. “If there is wind it won’t be very clear. But I can make some tests in the open air? Sometimes very small things like dentures clicking, for example, ruin the quality of the sound and make the text difficult to recover on playback. I’ll do what I can, naturally.”
    “If you come to Naos, my country house, in the garden…. You could practise with your instrument. He will come there. I’ll send you the car next Friday.” I reached for a pencil to give her my address, but she laughed and waved away my intention. “I know where you live. You see, I have been making enquiries about you. I did not know what your work was or I would have offered my help. Folk-songs I can get you two a penny.” She snapped white fingers as one does to summon a waiter in the Orient. “On my country properties I have singers and musicians among the villagers…. Perhaps this would interest you later?”
    “Of course.”
    “Then first make this speech for us.” She laughed once more. “I would ask you to stay and dine but I have to go to the palace this evening. So goodbye.”
    That evening the fleet came in and Iolanthe was summoned back to the naval brothel in Piraeus leaving me alone to pursue my studies with Said. Three of my little orient pearls had been manufactured now, and I was mad keen to find a deaf man to try them out on. Koepgen had said that he knew a deaf deacon who would be glad of a mechanical cure so that he would not flounder among the responses! But where was Koepgen? I left messages for him at the theological school and at the tavern he frequented.
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    N aos, the country house of Hippolyta in Attica, was large enough to suggest at first sight a small monastery skilfully sited within an oasis of green. By contrast, that is, to the razed and bony hills which frame the Attic plain. Here were luxuriant gardens rich with trees and shrubs within a quarter of a mile of the sea. Its secret was that it had been set