Haggopian and Other Stories

“My base and stronghold, as you put it, yes!” he harshly cut me off. “The island has been these things to me, Mr. Belton, but my home? No more! That—is my home!” He shot a slightly trembling hand abruptly out in the general direction of the Cretean Sea and the Mediterranean beyond. “When your interview is over, I shall walk to the top of the rocks and look once more at Kletnos, the closest landmass of any reasonable size. Then I will take my Echinoidea and guide her out through the Kasos Straits on a direct and deliberate course until her fuel runs out. There can be no turning back. There is a place unsuspected in the Mediterranean—where the sea is so deep and cool, and where—”

He broke off and turned his strangely shining face to me: “But there—at this rate the tale will never be told. Suffice to say, that the last trip of the Echanoidea will be to the bottom—and that I shall be with her!”

“Suicide?” I gasped, barely able to keep up with Haggopian’s rapid revelations. “You intend to—drown yourself?”

At that Haggopian laughed, a rasping cough of a laugh that somehow reminded me of a seal’s bark. “Drown myself? Can you drown these?” he opened his arms to encompass a miniature ocean of strange conches; “or these?” he waved through a door at a crystal tank of exotic fish.

For a few moments I stared at him in dumb amazement and concern, uncertain as to whether I stood in the presence of a sane man or—?

He gazed at me intently through the dark lenses of his glasses, and under the scrutiny of those unseen eyes I slowly shook my head, backing off a step.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Haggopian—I just…”

“Unpardonable,” he rasped as I struggled for words, “my behaviour is unpardonable! Come, Mr. Belton, perhaps we can be comfortable out here.” He led me through a doorway and out onto a patio surrounded by lemon and pomegranate trees. A white garden table and two cane chairs stood in the shade. Haggopian clapped his hands together once, sharply, then offered me a chair before clumsily seating himself opposite. Once again I noticed how all the man’s movements seemed oddly awkward.

An old woman, wrapped around Indian-fashion in white silk and with the lower half of her face veiled in a shawl that fell back over her shoulders, answered the Armenian’s summons. He spoke a few guttural yet remarkably gentle words to her in Greek. She went, stumbling a little with her years, to return a short while later with a tray, two glasses, and (amazingly) an English beer with the chill still on the bottle.

I saw that Haggopian’s glass was already filled, but with no drink I could readily recognize. The liquid was greenly cloudy—sediment literally swam in his glass—and yet the Armenian did not seem to notice. He touched glasses with me before lifting the stuff to his lips and drinking deeply. I too took a deep draught for I was very dry; but, when I had placed my glass back on the table, I saw that Haggopian was still drinking! He completely drained off the murky, unknown liquid, put down the glass and again clapped his hands in summons.

At this point I found myself wondering why the man did not remove his sunglasses. After all, we were in the shade, had been even more so during my tour of his wonderful aquarium. Glancing at the Armenian’s face I was reminded of his eye trouble as I again saw those thin trickles of liquid flowing down from behind the enigmatic lenses. And with the reappearance of this symptom of Haggopian’s optical affliction, the peculiar shiny film on his face also returned. For some time that—diffusion?—had seemed to be clearing; I had thought it was simply that I was becoming used to his looks. Now I saw that I had been wrong, his appearance was as odd as ever. Against my will I found myself thinking back on the man’s repulsive handshake…

“These interruptions may be frequent,” his rasp cut into my thoughts. “I am afraid that in my present phase I require a very generous intake of liquids!”

I was about to ask just what “phase” he referred to when the old woman came back with a further glass of murky fluid for her master. He spoke a few more words to her before she once more left us. I could not help but notice, though, as she bent over the table, how very dehydrated the woman’s face looked; with pinched nostrils, deeply wrinkled skin, and dull eyes sunk deep beneath the bony ridges of her eyebrows. An island peasant woman, obviously—and yet, in other circumstances, the fine bone structure of that face might almost have seemed aristocratic. She seemed, too, to find a peculiar magnetism in Haggopian; leaning forward towards him noticeably, visibly fighting to control an apparent desire to touch him whenever she came near him.

“She will leave with you when you go. Costas will take care of her.”

“Was I staring?” I guiltily started, freshly aware of an odd feeling of unreality and discontinuity. “I’m sorry, I didn’t intend to be rude!”