Everyone got to their feet. The prefects shouted for order. The gym master rushed behind me and seized my arm, but I snapped at him that it was all right, it was all over. Demetriades stood like a parody of Oedipus with his hands over his eyes. Then without warning he whirled forwards at me, kicking and clawing like an old woman. The gym master, who despised him, stepped past me and easily and roughly pinned his arms.

I turned and walked out. Demetriades started to shout petulant curses I didn’t understand. A steward was standing in the door and I told him to bring coffee to my room. Then I sat there and waited.

Sure enough, as soon as second school began, I was summoned to the headmaster’s office. Besides the old man there was the deputy headmaster, the senior housemaster, and the gym master; the latter, I presumed, in case I should cut up rough again. The senior housemaster, Androutsos, spoke French fluently and he was evidently there to be the translator at this court-martial.

As soon as I sat down I was handed a letter. I saw by the heading that it was from the School Board in Athens. It was in French officialese; dated two days before.

The Board of Governors of the Lord Byron School having considered the report submitted by the headmaster has regretfully decided that the said Board must terminate the contract with you under Clause 7 of the said contract: Unsatisfactory conduct as teacher.

As per the said clause your salary will be paid until the end of September and your fare home will be paid.

There was to be no trying; only sentencing. I looked up at the four faces. If they showed anything it was embarrassment, and I could even detect a hint of regret on Androutsos’s; but no sign of complicity.

I said, “I didn’t know the headmaster was in Mr. Conchis’s pay.”

Androutsos was obviously puzzled. “A la solde de qui?” He translated what I angrily repeated; but the headmaster too seemed nonplussed. He was in fact far too dignified a figurehead, more like an American college president than a real headmaster, to make it likely that he would connive in an unjust dismissal. Demetriades had deserved his black eye even more than I suspected. Demetriades, Conchis, some influential third person on the Board. A secret report…

There was a swift conversation in Greek between the headmaster and his deputy. I heard the name Conchis twice, but I couldn’t follow what they said. Androutsos was told to translate.

“The headmaster does not understand your remark.”

“No?”

I grimaced menacingly at the old man, but I was already more than half persuaded that his incomprehension was genuine.

At a sign from the vicemaster Androutsos raised a sheet of paper and read from it. “The following complaints were made against you. One: you have failed to enter the life of the school, absenting yourself almost every weekend during this last term.” I began to grin. “Two: you have twice bribed prefects to take your supervision periods.” This was true, though the bribery had been no worse than a letting them off compositions they owed me. Demetriades had suggested it; and only he could have reported it. “Three: you failed to mark your examination papers, a most serious scholastic duty. Four: you—”

But I had had enough of the farce. I stood up. The headmaster spoke; a pursed mouth in a grave old face.

“The headmaster also says,” translated Androutsos, “that your insane assault on a colleague at breakfast this morning has done irreparable harm to the respect he has always entertained for the land of Byron and Shakespeare.”

“Jesus.” I laughed out loud, then I wagged my finger at Androutsos. The gym master got ready to spring at me. “Now listen. Tell him this. I am going to Athens. I am going to the British Embassy, I am going to the Ministry of Education, I am going to the newspapers, I am going to make such trouble that…”

I didn’t finish. I raked them with a broadside of contempt, and walked out.

I was not allowed to get very far with my packing, back in my room. Not five minutes afterwards there was a knock on the door. I smiled grimly, and opened it violently. But the member of the tribunal I had least expected was standing there: the deputy headmaster.

His name was Mavromichalis. He ran the school administratively, and was the disciplinary dean also; a kind of camp adjutant, a lean, tense, balding man in his late forties, withdrawn even with other Greeks. I had had very little to do with him. The senior teacher of demotic, he was, in the historical tradition of his kind, a fanatical lover of his own country. He had run a famous underground newssheet in Athens during the Occupation; and the classical pseudonym he had used then, o Bouplix, the oxgoad, had stuck. Though he always deferred to the headmaster in public, in many ways it was his spirit that most informed the school; he hated the Byzantine accidie that lingers in the Greek soul far more intensely than any foreigner could.

He stood there, closely watching me, and I stood in the door, surprised out of my anger by something in his eyes. He managed to suggest that if matters had allowed he might have been smiling. He spoke quietly.

“Je veux vous parler, Monsieur Urfe.”

I had another surprise then, because he had never spoken to me before in anything but Greek; I had always assumed that he knew no other language. I let him come in. He glanced quickly at the suitcases open on my bed, then invited me to sit behind the desk. He took a seat himself by the window and folded his arms: shrewd, incisive eyes. He very deliberately let the silence speak for him. I knew then. For the headmaster, I was simply a bad teacher; for this man, something else besides.

I said coldly, “Eh bien?”

“I regret these circumstances.”

“You didn’t come here to tell me that.”

He stared at me. “Do you think our school is a good school?”

“My dear Mr. Mavromichalis, if you imagine—”

He raised his hands sharply but pacifyingly. “I am here simply as a colleague. My question is serious.”

His French was ponderous, rusty, but far from elementary.

“Colleague… or emissary?”

He lanced a look at me. The boys had a joke about him: how even the cicadas stopped talking when he passed.

“Please to answer my question. Is our school good?”

I shrugged impatiently. “Academically. Yes. Obviously.”

He watched me a moment more, then came to the point. “For our school’s sake, I do not want scandals.”

I noted the implication of that first person singular.

“You should have thought of that before.”

Another silence. He said, “We have in Greece an old folk song that says, He who steals for bread is innocent, He who steals for gold is guilty.” His eyes watched to see if I understood. “If you wish to resign… I can assure you that Monsieur le Directeur will accept. The other letter will be forgotten.”

“Which monsieur le directeur?”

He smiled very faintly, but said nothing; and would, I knew, never say anything. I remembered those eyes that had watched me during the finale of the trial scene; eyes that took risks. In an odd way, perhaps because I was behind the desk, I felt like the tyrannical interrogator. He was the brave patriot. Finally, he looked out of the window and said, as if irrelevantly, “We have an excellent science laboratory.”

I knew that; I knew the equipment in it had been given by an anonymous donor when the school was reopened after the war and I knew the staifroom “legend” was that the money had been wrung out of some rich collaborationist.

I said, “I see.”

“I have come to invite you to resign.”

“As my predecessors did?”

He didn’t answer. I shook my head.