Levkas Man Read online

  Gilmore nodded, ‘It needed explanation. In toto it amounts to an indictment of Man based on a self portrait as it were.’ He hesitated. ‘This is something it may be difficult for you to understand. A practical man, you’re naturally impatient of the sort of introspective self-analysis on which Pieter Van der Voort was engaged. “Probing the ultimate depths of Man’s aggressive instincts,” he called it, and he talked of the Devil and a spiritual struggle. It’s all there, all his instinctual urges—the good and the bad. It goes back to his original thesis.’ And he added a little wistfully, ‘I should have come here before—as soon as I had read it. A man like that—alone, delving into the fundamental problems of mankind … I should have come at once.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you?’ I asked.

  ‘My dear fellow, if one did everything one ought to … But I did come here once. When was it? In 1954, I think, for a conference rather like the one that has brought me to Holland now. But there was nobody here, the house empty. He was in Russia, and of course his reputation …’ He gave a little sigh. ‘You must realize I had an official position.’

  ‘But since you retired,’ I said. ‘Surely you could have—’

  ‘My dear boy.’ He held up his hand, smiling. ‘That is just the point. Until last vac I was still teaching, still Reader in Physical Anthropology. Then all the business of handing over. I had the money to travel—a stroke of extraordinary luck—but never the time. Students are very demanding and to teach well …’ He drew a last puff from his cigarette and stubbed it out in the onyx bowl on the desk that had come from Turkey. ‘How I envy men like Teilhard de Chardin—Java Man, Pekin Man, off to Africa to check on Leakey’s discoveries. As a Jesuit he had his problems, but he wasn’t tied to generations of students. And your father—I even envy him, too, in a way. You know he was brought up in France? His family had a house at St Leon-sur-Vézère and he had the priceless advantage of coming under the influence of the Abbé Breuil at the precocious age of eleven. This was when Breuil and other French savants were digging into the limestone caves of the Vézère to reveal more and more engravings and paintings done by men fifteen to sixty thousand years ago. It was a remarkable experience for a young boy and it set him on his way at a very early age, marked him for life, you might say.’

  He leaned back, his eyes half-closed. ‘Breuil, Peyrony, Capitan, Rivière—he met them all at the most impressionable age, squirming down limestone cracks, exploring caves that no man had been in for thousands of years. It was not only the savants, you see, it was the fact that he was living and breathing the prehistory of a long dead age of Man’s evolution.’ He nodded his head slowly, opening his eyes to gaze out of the window. ‘A boy with that background …’ He sighed, I think in envy. ‘Hardly surprising that he was the most dedicated student I ever had through my hands. But the thesis he elected to work on … It was on the Weapon as the basis of Man’s development.’ He shook his head, smiling a little sadly. ‘They didn’t like it, of course. It was just after the first war and he was ahead of his time. He only just scraped through, and that annoyed him. He went off to South Africa, where his family still had relations. In fact, I think they returned there just before the Germans invaded France in 1940.’

  He looked down at his hands, frowning. ‘Pieter’s sensitivity was always his greatest weakness.’ He made a little movement of his hands, a gesture almost of helplessness. ‘And to choose a thesis like that …’ He shook his head, reaching for the packet of cigarettes I’d left on the desk, and when he had taken one, he sat staring out over the canal, his eyes half-closed, tapping it against the edge of the desk. ‘It was flying in the face of accepted thinking, and of the Church, of course. Man the Tool-maker was one thing, Man the Weapon-maker …’ He smiled and lit the cigarette. ‘Now, after a second world war, after Korea, Vietnam, Nigeria, the Middle East, the pendulum has swung—from optimism we have switched to pessimism, forgetting Man the Thinker—that we have within us the power of good as well as of evil.’ The grey eyes, turned inwards, suddenly stared directly at me. ‘Eight years—that’s a long time. Do you know what he looks like now?’

  ‘He can’t have changed all that much,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps not.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. ‘To me, of course, he has aged a great deal—beyond his years. And that in itself is disturbing. But it is the loneliness, the absorption …’ He pulled two photographs from the envelope and passed them across to me. ‘They were taken in Greece last year by John Cassellis, a young American who studied under me. Pieter had written to me that, after investigating a possible site in the Jannina area, he had worked his way down to the coast and found nothing, but that he was now engaged on a dig that might prove of considerable importance. He didn’t say where it was, but his letter was postmarked Levkas. It’s one of the Ionian islands on the west coast of Greece and I suggested to Cassellis, who was doing a tour of the Aegean and Asia Minor, that he try and locate him. I thought he might be of some use to Pieter since the boy had time to spare.’

  They were colour prints enlarged to postcard size. The first showed the curve of a cliff overhang, dark in shadow, with a glimpse of blue sea beyond. A figure was seated cross-legged in the foreground, bare to the waist, his thin body burned almost black by the sun. He had a piece of stone in his hand and he was examining it, his head bent, his face in shadow and half obscured by his white hair.

  ‘Now look at the second,’ Gilmore said. ‘Cassellis was using a ciné-camera and it’s a frame from a shot taken at the moment when Pieter looked up to find a stranger intruding on his territory.’

  He had zoomed in on the figure itself. The old man was staring straight at the camera, his hands hovering protectively over the stone. ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘He’s trying to conceal it.’

  ‘A stone lamp, I think.’

  But I barely heard him. I was staring at the face, so lined and aged, and the expression secretive, almost hostile, like a dog guarding a bone. ‘Is that stone important?’ I asked.

  ‘Perhaps—I don’t know. And Cassellis didn’t comment, or even say where he’d found him—only that he was on his own. A very lonely figure was the way he put it in the letter he wrote me, and that’s not good. Not at his age and with his background.’

  I handed the photographs back to him. ‘What are you suggesting—that he’s in danger of going mad?’ It seemed the only conclusion to be drawn from what he was saying, and it didn’t altogether surprise me.

  ‘Mad?’ His eyes flicked open, staring at me, grey and direct. ‘You tell me what madness is. A man who is mad is only somebody who has moved on to a different mental plane. However …’ He gave a little shrug. ‘My thoughts are of no concern to you. You’re young, full of life, and I’m old enough to dwell, a little unhealthily perhaps, on the final frontiers of the mind.’ He paused, still staring at me. ‘You’re different. I can see that. You will be very good for him.’ He cocked an eyebrow at me, waiting.

  I didn’t say anything, and after a moment he went on, ‘Miss Winters has told me about a book he is writing. The self-analysis of his Journal forms the basis, and this has so coloured his view of world events, of the urges that produce mob violence in a world where man has proliferated to the limits of natural tolerance, that it is leading him inevitably to the conclusion that modern man is a rogue species and doomed. This gloomy view ignores the fact that man’s aggressive instincts are the mainspring of all his achievements.’

  I thought of my own aggressive instincts, the way my fist, my whole body had moved, and the man going backwards over the edge of the oil pier, that last, thin, high-pitched cry, and the way the other man had closed in, his features distorted by the need to attack. ‘I can’t help him,’ I said. ‘I’ve told you, we don’t get on together. We’ve nothing in common.’

  ‘He’s your father.’

  ‘By adoption.’

  He looked at me for a while, not saying anything, and the directness of his gaze gave me an uneasy feeling
, as though there were something he hadn’t told me. ‘I’m almost eighty,’ he said finally. ‘Too old to go out myself. Miss Winters has offered to go. But it would be difficult for a girl. Anyway, that isn’t the answer. He needs your sort of strength. Particularly now, when he has made what may prove to be an important discovery. He will have great difficulty in convincing the academic world.’

  ‘Why, if he’s as brilliant as you say?’ I was thinking of the books on the shelf behind me. ‘He’s published in Russia. If they recognize him …’

  But he shook his head. ‘The Russians backed him because his writing was helpful to the Soviet image. With their money he was able to lead expeditions to the Caucasian mountains, to Turkey and up through Georgia into Kazak, one I believe as far as Tashkent, and the books he wrote as a result both supported the view that homo sapiens sapiens came from the east; in other words, that civilized man stemmed from the Soviet Union. But now he certainly hasn’t the support of the Russians, for he’s changed his line of thinking. As a result, he’s had to go it alone, using his own resources.’

  ‘He’s nothing left now,’ the girl said. ‘This is the third expedition he’s financed. He’s operating on a shoe-string and in such a hurry he’s gone out into the mountains of Macedonia before the winter is over. He’s killing himself.’

  ‘To prove what?’ I asked.

  ‘That modern man came north, from Africa.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Not to you,’ she said tartly.

  Dr Gilmore sighed. ‘I appreciate that it’s difficult for you to understand, but Good God! If I were your age and gifted with a brilliant father …’

  ‘He’s not my father,’ I said curtly. ‘He adopted me. That’s all.’

  His eyebrows lifted and then he stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette. ‘Very well. But at least I have told you what I felt you should know. What you do about it is your own affair. I can only repeat that in my view he needs you very badly indeed.’ He glanced at his watch and turned to the girl. ‘I have to go now. Professor Hecht is expecting me at noon.’ He got to his feet.

  I opened the door for him and he paused momentarily, taking in the room again with that alert, bird-like glance of his. ‘A pity,’ he murmured. ‘If I could only have talked with him myself …’ He gave me a long, searching look, and I thought for a moment he was going to appeal to me again. But then he turned and went down the stairs with astonishing agility.

  I was lucky enough to find a taxi for him and as he stepped into it, he touched me on the arm. Think about what I have told you. Pieter Van der Voort is a very remarkable man, but he should not be too much alone.’ He got in then and the taxi drove off, leaving me standing there with the girl. It was a perfect spring morning, the canal a bright gleam under the arches of the bridge, the sky a cloudless blue. It was an awkward moment, the silence stretching between us like a gulf.

  Finally she said, ‘You don’t intend to do anything, do you—about your father?’

  ‘No.’

  She stared at me, her tight little face cold and hostile Finally, she turned without a word, and walked away towards the bridge. I watched her go, and when I went back into the house it seemed more empty than ever. I sat in the chair where Dr Gilmore had sat, staring out over the canal and thinking about what he had told me. I had never thought of the old man as being important in the academic world. A genius, he had said—and difficult to live with. He had certainly been that; but now time and the emptiness of the house made it all seem different, the shadow of his personality touched with greatness. I was beginning to realize what I had been living with. And his loneliness—that was something even I could understand.

  But his world was not mine and right now I had more immediate problems facing me. I got my raincoat and went out into the roar of the traffic, walking quickly towards the docks. Five hours and a lot of drinking later I got wind of a vacancy on an ore carrier completing repairs at a shipyard in the Maas. The third officer had been taken to hospital with suspected peritonitis and the ship was sailing next day for Seven Islands in the St Lawrence. I went back to the house to get my case, intending to spend the night in Rotterdam and be at the yard first thing in the morning. Drinking around the dockside taverns costs money and I had changed my last fiver by the time it was dusk.

  It had been a long day and my feet seemed barely connected to my body as I stumbled back along the canal. The house barges all had their lights on, the square, hulked shapes warmed by the lit curtains. In some the curtains had been left drawn back in the manner of the Dutch country towns, and in these I glimpsed the comfort of families at home, the flicker of TV sets. It was cold, a touch of frost in the air, and mist was hanging like a grey veil over the waters of the canal.

  In my stumbling haste, I nearly passed the house. I checked, and focused carefully on the traffic. It was the evening rush hour and they drive fast in Amsterdam. Standing there, waiting to cross, I gradually registered the fact that there were lights on in the house, the fanlight over the door and the tall windows above. I crossed the road, fumbled the key into the lock, and hauled myself up the stairs by the rope hand-support, impatience and anger mounting in me at the unwelcome intrusion.

  I found her waiting for me in the study, sitting in the swivel chair with a book in her lap and the curves of her body picked out by the Anglepoise lamp. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ My voice sounded thick in my ears. She had turned at my entrance and her face was in shadow, so that I could not see her expression. But I could guess what she was thinking, and that made me angrier still. ‘There’s no point in your talking to me. I’ve got the chance of a ship and I’m leaving for Rotterdam right away.’

  ‘A ship?’ I could almost hear her waiting for an explanation.

  ‘I’m a ship’s officer—I forgot to tell you.’ I was just at the stage where sarcasm sounds clever.

  ‘Oh—then I don’t quite understand. A Mynheer Borg called while you were out. He seemed under the impression that you were going on some sort of a yachting trip in the Mediterranean.’

  ‘Why didn’t he phone?’

  ‘He couldn’t. There isn’t a phone here any more. The electricity would have been cut off by now, too, if they hadn’t muddled the dates.’

  I leaned against the bureau, my head touching the glass. It was cool, the skull right under my nose and my eyes trying to focus on the cracks between plaster and bone. ‘Borg shouldn’t have come here,’ I muttered. ‘What did he want?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said coldly. ‘He mentioned that he’d seen something he thought would interest you in an English newspaper.’ I could feel her working herself up into a cold fury. ‘I’ve been waiting for you all afternoon. This morning I had a letter from my brother. I’d like you to read it. Or are you too drunk?’

  ‘You read it for me,’ I said, ‘while I go up and pack.’ What the hell did I care about her damned brother? What was his name? Hans? Yes—Hans. Well, to hell with him, it was Borg that worried me, and I turned to go.

  She must have got up from the chair very quickly, for suddenly she was there, between me and the door. ‘You can read Dutch, can’t you?’

  I nodded automatically and she thrust the sheet of paper at me. ‘Read it then.’

  The light was on her face now and I could see her quite plainly. She looked pale and tired, very intense. I pushed the letter aside. ‘I have to hurry.’ I didn’t know when the last train went and I wasn’t going to miss it. Borg wouldn’t have come here unless I’d killed the man.

  ‘You’re running away again.’ Her eyes flashed, colour showed suddenly in her cheeks. ‘You’ve spent your whole life running—running …’

  ‘Have it your own way,’ I said wearily, and I lurched past her towards the door.

  She hit me then. ‘You callous bastard!’ It was an open-handed slap across the face, and I picked her up and flung her back against the wall. It knocked the breath out of her.

  ‘Now stop making a bloody nuisance of y
ourself,’ I said. ‘I’ve got problems enough of my own without having somebody else’s troubles hung round my neck.’

  ‘It’s about your father.’ She was sprawled slackly against the wall, breathing heavily.

  ‘My father!’ I almost laughed in her face. ‘My father’s head was sliced from his body by a gang of native boys when I was ten.’ I saw her eyes widen at the shock of what I had said. It shocked me, too, for I could still see it lying there on the verandah, the moustache, the thick head of hair, the sunburned face with the teeth bared, all bright with blood, and the trunk some feet away, inert and lifeless like a rag dummy. I was suddenly almost sober. ‘Forget it,’ I muttered. ‘It was years ago.’ I was thinking of those letters in the bureau, wishing I had never seen them. ‘I’ll go up and pack now.’ And I went quickly up to my room.

  It didn’t take me long to throw the little I had into my suitcase and she was still there when I came down. She was sitting in the chair again, her body slack, the letter on the desk beside her. ‘You’re going now.’ It was a statement, not a question, her voice flat and without expression.

  I nodded, hesitating, unwilling to leave her like this. ‘Better tell me what your brother says.’

  She gave a little shrug, a gesture of hopelessness. ‘There’s no point now. She turned her head and I saw she had been crying. ‘I’m sorry for what I said.’ The toneless way she spoke, I didn’t know whether she meant it or not. ‘I hope you get the job you want.’

  I thanked her, and that was that. I left her sitting there at his desk and went downstairs; out into the street again. The mist had thickened, the lights all blurred, and it was cold. I caught the last train and spent a miserable night in a cheap hotel in Schiedam. When I went to the yard in the morning, I found tugs standing by and the ship ready to be towed out into the stream. She was sailing as soon as she had bunkered, and the third officer was back on board. He had strained a muscle, that was all.