THE BATHS MURDER
To
Edwin Morrow
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 perspiring, others half covered with painted rags, gave the impression of tawdry self-indulgence.
I have tried many times to determine precisely 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 evoked by the semi-darkness, the drip of water, the lamps that flickered but did not die, the humid air, the long treacherous corridors, the dirty domes, and the soft secrecy 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 sip before and after sleep, seemed to me lewd and violently unnecessary....
In that place worked Aristides Kronothos, lean Kronothos, who, with his lack-lustre eyes, his long, dangling arms, and air of patient resignation hid, and hid well, the venom 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 lair in Salonika, sold his business and followed. He loved desperately and hated desperately. But the man of mixed blood was well protected, and seemed out of reach of all revenge, for though it is true that Kronothos, almost any day, might have slit his throat in full view of the street and its people, he had no desire to be caught and punished. He felt greatly, profoundly; but he did not feel tragically. His skin was of immeasurable value to himself.
So he used to go about his work in those cave-like baths feeling thwarted, and I am told that, on slack days, he would sit, chin in hand, brooding, his unfocused eyes looking into spaceless space, his long, lean neck jutting ostrich-like from his towel-robe, his nervy fingers twitching.
He was a good worker. Rompapas told me that. Rompapas always insisted to me that Aristides Kronothos had an almost extravagant sense of duty. For example, he would stay after hours hosing and even scrubbing the filthy corridors, trying to vanquish their musty smell; and so constant and devoted was he that in time he was entrusted with the keys of the great watery and wandering place, and would lock up two or three hours before midnight, and dismally seek his dismal room.