Edwin Morrow

{35}

BEFORE you had crossed the threshold you felt the humid air as it stealthily assaulted your flesh, and the dank stone couches, some bare and perspiring¹, others half covered with painted rags, gave the impression of tawdry self-indulgence.

I have tried many times to determine precisely² what it was about those cavernous baths that gave me the impression of wickedness, and because my attempts have always been unsuccessful I have been driven to entertain the possibility that the wickedness lay in myself, and was evoked³ by the semi-darkness, the drip of water, the lamps that flickered⁴ but did not die, the humid air, the long treacherous⁵ corridors, the dirty domes⁶, and the soft secrecy⁸ of scandals stealing up the stair. But why should these things, either separately or collectively, suggest evil? I do not know. But they did. They do. And the little poisoned glasses of cognac which, one by one, used to be placed at one’s side so that one might sip⁹ before and after sleep, seemed to me lewd¹⁰ and violently unnecessary....

In that place worked Aristides Kronothos, lean Kronothos, who, with his lack-lustre eyes, his long, dangling¹¹ arms, and air of patient resignation hid, and hid well, the venom¹² in his breast. A year ago he lived in Soho with his wife and worshipped child. To their little restaurant came a man of mixed blood—some Armenian, some Montenegrin—who, with money and promises, stole Aristides’ wife and left England for Greece. Kronothos, having knowledge of his

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