‘Sometimes my Mish-mish refuses to recognize. Sometimes,’ she sighed, ‘I think my Kok-kos has a fever.’

When she could no longer bear it Maro Hajistavrou slipped out into the living-room, though without escaping what had established itself as a permanent smell of cat. Now at least she would be able to look out of the window, and on this side of the apartment Hymettus could not be seen – there was the Parthenon instead.

‘Oh,’ she now exclaimed, ‘is that your husband?’

For there on the tessellated roof was the head of a man lolling and drooping from a deck-chair.

Kikitsa Alexiou immediately rushed into the living-room as though she had neglected ritual. Laying a finger against her lips she took up the rites expertly at the point where they had been broken off.

‘Sshhh!’ she whispered.

‘Didn’t I tell you, Maro?’ Hajistavros said, and laughed. ‘My wife must always have her way.’

He sounded bitterly justified, and even Maro felt herself inwardly recoil.

‘Oh, no! Not the siesta! The siesta comes afterwards. He is thinking now!’ Kikitsa explained.

Hajistavros looked over the shoulders of the two women at this intellectual who had troubled him so sorely in advance, and who would doubtless never contribute to his ease. Hajistavros would have liked to live at peace with all men, but was continually brought to a halt on the edge of hostile country, partly obscure, partly lambent, which he would end by recognizing as the human mind. Yet here was Alexiou at once identifiable: the yellow beads of the komboloyi trailing, just, through his open fingers, the silken tassel stirring in the breeze, and beside him the little cupful of dregs, the none-too-polished copper briki. In the circumstances Alexiou looked as though he had been scooped up, intellect and all, from under the plane-tree in the village square, and dumped down on the roof in Athens.

‘At least he is a good Greek,’ Hajistavros remarked.

But Kikitsa Alexiou did not hear.

‘This is the way it is,’ she said.

She had sunk down, in a state of complete beatitude, and was explaining rapidly, though muted, to her friends.

‘One has to respect the minds of exceptional men. Sometimes he will take a sheet of paper. But that does not mean he will begin to write. No! Oh, no!’ She wagged a finger. ‘Have you ever noticed that a clean white sheet of paper is what provokes the deepest thoughts? Scribble on it, and the flow dries up.’

She sounded awful.

‘Though Aleko is a writer too.’

‘You never told us,’ Maro realized, ‘what he has written.’

‘Books,’ Hajistavros dared suppose.

‘Oh, no!’

Kikitsa Alexiou shook her head. She was scornful. She was ashen.

‘He is not yet ripe,’ she said. ‘He writes,’ she said, ‘little pieces for the newspapers. But when I say little, I do not mean little. They are so concentrated! Ach,’ Kikitsa said, and smiled, ‘they are so nice, the little articles!’

At this point there was a grating on the tessellated terrace. Something rose, something loomed.