The Holy Machine

52

Lucy sat near the window in a tiny room that had been vacated for us by the owner of the local store in yet another village. She had taken off her dress because it chafed against the raw flesh at the top of her arms and legs. (I don’t think this hurt in exactly the human sense, but sensors embedded in the damaged flesh clamoured constantly to the silicon brain in her chest, and took away information-processing capacity from elsewhere.)

Through the window came faintly the mournful rise and fall of the Orthodox liturgy. It was a day dedicated to the local saint, and most villagers, having crowded round to ogle at Lucy on our arrival, were now in church, where the services continued from morning to night. The storekeeper had left his fourteen-year-old son, Spiro, in charge of the tiny store which doubled as café, restaurant and bar.

I was down there drinking steadily, but already dreading the prospect of returning to Lucy: the stale smell of her suppurating flesh, her dull blank face stooped over some book or gazing into space as it pursued its slow, dull, ponderous thoughts…

There were two shepherds in the store as well as me. They had done their praying earlier in the day. One of them – Petros – was a man in his forties. Andreas, his nephew, was about my age. Both had large moustaches and were lean wiry men with sinews hardened by the daily journey up and down from the village to the stony pastures hidden away in the mountainside above.

I fascinated them. My fair skin and strange accent seemed to them uncanny. I think they would have liked to have poked at me and undressed me just to see how I was made, though not half as much as they would like to have done it to my beautiful wife. (Both had watched her silently under heavy-lidded eyes, undressing her in their minds, imagining a soft and yielding nakedness, and never guessing that under her pretty dress there was nothing but a hard plastic shell, with broken nutrient tubes and a printed manufacturer’s code).

It being impossible to undress Lucy or me, they did the next best thing: they plied me with raki to loosen my tongue, and besieged me with questions:

‘Do you really not believe in Christ?’

‘Do you admit that Constantinople is rightfully Greek?’

‘Which is the greatest country on Earth?’

‘Is not our raki the finest spirit ever made?’

‘Is it true that your women can marry who they please?’

‘Do you not even celebrate Easter?’

‘What do your soldiers think of our brave Greek Army?’

‘You may have many machines and cars, but do you admit that our men are more virile?’

After a while they challenged me to a game of cards, darting each other little triumphant glances as they raked in my drachmas.

‘Accuse us of cheating if you dare!’ said their cruel mocking smiles, but out loud they teased me for my lack of skill:

‘So you City men are not so clever at cards then, eh? For all your wonderful machines!’

I knew they were cheating, but I was too drunk to work out how – or even to fully grasp the rules of the poker-like game which they had taught me. And anyway, I knew better than to challenge them. Both shepherds wore knives at their belts which I sensed they’d be very happy to use, if they could only lure me into a quarrel which would allow them to fight with honour, and without violating their rigid code of hospitality. I pushed away the cards, trying to make a joke about not being quick enough for them.

Spiro, the storekeeper’s son, poured more raki, put a plate of sliced pomegranates in front of us and dropped another log into the crude stove in the centre of the room. It was cold at nights up here.

The two shepherds pulled at the glistening red seeds with gnarled fingers.

‘Your wife is very beautiful,’ remarked the younger shepherd, Andreas, with an odd sideways look.

The boy Spiro paused with the raki bottle in his hand, listening. He had a wide pale face, with a flat nose and eyes that stared outwards in opposite directions, so that it was hard to tell what he was really seeing.

‘She certainly is,’ said Petros, and he slapped me heartily on the knee. ‘I just hope you know how to appreciate her, my City friend. I hope you are man enough with those soft white hands of yours. Or does she need a real Greek man to show her what love is all about?’

He roared with laughter at this, slapping my thigh repeatedly and watching my face with hard, yellow, raki-soaked eyes to ensure that I did not stint myself with the laughing. He had me either way: if I laughed at an insult, that would be amusing confirmation of my lack of manhood. But if I failed to laugh at the jokes my hosts so hospitably made, that would be a slight to their honour.

So I laughed

Andreas and Spiro both grinned.

From the wall glared down the angry eyes of Archbishop Christophilos.

‘I have heard,’ said Andreas, ‘that in your City, the women are shared in common between the men. Is that not so?’

Again Petros burst out laughing, again he slapped my thigh and leaned into my face breathing garlic and meat and raki.

‘Well then, share her with Andreas and I, my friend. She’ll be satisfied, I guarantee. And if she wants more, well, I’m sure that young Spiro here would be glad to oblige. He is ugly, I grant you, but all of his family are hung like horses.’

Spiro grinned.

Clumsily attempting levity, I thanked them for their solicitude to my wife, but said that the stories they had heard were untrue and that Illyrian men were every bit as jealous as Greeks.

‘Ah,’ said Petros with a chuckle, ‘but can you fight for your women like us Greek men? Can you fight with your fists? Can you use a knife or a gun? Or have your cars and machines made you soft?’

He pulled out his long sheath knife. Its blade shone, jagged and indented by much honing.

‘Do you know how many throats I have slit with this blade?’ said Petros with a laugh, reaching out and pointing the tip of the blade at my own neck.

I tried not to flinch.

‘Hundreds!’ he said with a wink at his nephew, ‘though I admit that a few of them were the throats of sheep.’

He used the knife to cut open another pomegranate.

‘More raki, Spiro, for our Illyrian friend! We’ll make a Greek of him yet.’

His nephew, Andreas, took out a tin of tobacco, and when I’d declined it, the two shepherds rolled themselves fat cigarettes with their brown horny fingers. Then Petros glanced up at me.

‘Don’t sip your raki! Are you a man or a girl? Down it in one!’

Shuddering I poured the burning liquid down my throat. The shepherds laughed, their faces red and swimming.

‘That’s better!’ said Petros. ‘Now, some more!’

I said I’d had enough.

‘Oh no, my friend, you mustn’t refuse our hospitality.’

I drained another glass. The room swayed around me. The glowing stove and the paraffin lamp were lurching blotches of light. The head of the moon-faced boy behind the counter drifted upwards, as if it really was a moon.

‘You must become a man, my City friend,’ said Petros. ‘You must become a real man like us Greeks.’

At this point, a fat policeman came into the shop. Petros and Andreas called out greetings.

‘This is the foreigner with the beautiful wife,’ said Petros.

‘I have heard,’ said the policeman in a deep voice, ‘I’ve heard that no one has seen the like of her.’

‘What you’ve heard is true,’ said Petros, laughing. ‘You can’t look at her without wanting to undress her.’

‘You can’t look at her without getting horny as a ram at rutting time!’ said his nephew.

‘Bring her down!’ exclaimed Petros. ‘Bring her down so we can all admire her!’

‘She’s resting,’ I muttered. ‘She doesn’t want to come down tonight.’

‘Doesn’t she do what you tell her then? Does she not accept your authority?’

‘You should beat her more often,’ growled the policeman.

And they started to talk again about Lucy’s charms: her blonde hair, her long legs, her beautiful eyes…

‘But what is she really like, our City man?’ asked Petros, turning back to me. ‘What is it like to get up in between those pretty legs?’

Andreas and the policeman laughed.

‘I bet she goes like a bitch in heat,’ said the policeman. ‘I can remember the foreigners when they used to lie naked on the beaches. Their breasts bare, even their legs spread open for all to see! Whores, all of them.’

‘It’s because their men don’t know how to control them,’ said Petros, ‘isn’t that so, our little City ram?’

They all laughed.

‘Go on,’ said the younger shepherd, leaning forward to touch me on the knee. ‘We are all men of the world here. Tell us what she is like in bed!’

‘Yes,’ said the policeman. ‘Tell us, or Andreas here may be tempted to try and find out!’

The room swayed. Sweat poured down my face. Nausea coiled in my belly. I was sick of their endless mockery.

‘You don’t know what you are talking about,’ I suddenly heard myself mumbling. ‘You don’t know the half of what we City people get up to. You don’t know the half. She only looks like a woman on the outside. Really she’s a robot, a machine dressed up in human flesh…’