Greek Fire by Winston Graham Page A

a moment or two, but Lascou kept his eyes on Gene and when the talk died again he said: “Isn’t that to your liking, Vanbrugh?”
    Gene made a face of slight embarrassment and sipped his own wine. “ Expressed as you express it, it sounds wonderful. I only have one uncomfortable thought. If you put Plato’s idealism into practice, with its all-important duties to the state, its sharing of all property below a certain level, its small élite governing class, its belief that no one should be left alone to live as they choose, that children belong primarily to the state, etc—if you have all that and amend it to meet modern conditions, you’re going to produce something that will be hard to distinguish from Communism.”
    Into another silence Gallanova said: “ That word does not terrify me as it used to.”
    â€œIt does most of us in Greece,” observed the man at the end of the table.
    â€œPlato in a sense was the first Communist,” Gene said. “I should have thought that was generally accepted.”
    â€œCommunism as Plato conceived it has very little relationship with the world of Marx and Lenin,” said George quickly. “The whole conception has changed. As soon as one harks back one finds a purer doctrine.”
    The talk went on for a while. But as it went on so it became more and more a duologue, a sort of intellectual clash of arms between Gene and Lascou. Others joined in now and then but their interventions were temporary. They didn’t measure up. And Anya said nothing at all. She sat quite still, for the most part looking down at her hand on the table.
    At last a move was made. Coffee and brandy were served in the main salon. After his talk Gene was preoccupied, as if he hadn’t yet got it out of his system, and Lascou seemed to be gathering about himself the robes of the Greek classic past. Very little was said until the ladies rejoined them.
    Presently Gene found himself beside Anya. “Who is Major Kolono?” he asked.
    â€œHe’s—a business acquaintance of George’s. I have not seen him at dinner before.”
    â€œI know his face but can’t place him. What is his job?”
    Before she could reply General Telechos came up and began to pay her compliments. Ignored, Gene stood his ground. Telechos looked a man hardened out of ordinary feeling by fifty years of service in arid mountains; the sap had dried in him. One fancied that he no longer saw people primarily as people but as cadres, units, platoons, to be moved, commended, defeated, deployed on the chess-board of a political and military ethos. He was the exact opposite of Lascou, who was all flexibility, all finesse, who would never neglect the human angle in anything, and who would be far more dangerous either in victory or defeat.
    Lascou and Major Kolono were quietly conferring together, their brandy glasses like great soap bubbles nodding at each other as they talked. Then Kolono left the room and Lascou joined the trio by the window.
    He said to Gene: “I congratulate you, Mr. Vanbrugh, on your knowledge of our language and of ancient Greece. It is quite unusual.”
    â€œIn the happy seclusion of my night school,” Gene said, “ I have long been a Graecophile.”
    Jon Manos, who was near, turned quickly and took a couple of little side-steps: “ Of course I can understand your opposition as an American to the word Communism. In the States nowadays I understand it ranks as an obscenity to use the word at all.”
    Although the room was large, the party was at present clustered round the coffee-table and within earshot. Nobody seemed to want to move away.
    â€œI would have said we were inclined to use it too often,” Gene replied. “ I’m dead against raising anything as a bogy, however much I may personally dislike it.”
    Lascou said: “ You know, monsieur, you say the old city states of Greece were