Free Apartment in Athens by Glenway Wescott

that sort, something he had always done; Kalter would interrupt him, saying, “No, it’s not necessary, let it go, I don’t want it done.”
    Perhaps, Mrs. Helianos suggested, it was because Helianos was not good at this work. It was her way now, pointing out every obscurity and dubiety.
    No, it was to make things easier for him, or to show him due respect; Major Kalter made that clear. “After all, you’re a man of the world, aren’t you?” he said, “a man of some distinction, as things went in your little backwater of Athens. . .”
    Pausing and fixing Helianos with a look of some cordiality he added, “It must be hard to be reduced to domestic service.”
    He seemed to have no sense of how all this contradicted his attitude and his remarks of the previous fourteen months, fifteen months. Apparently he had forgotten the martinet, the humiliator, that he had been. Somehow he had grown indifferent to the little domestic comforts, servitudes of man to man. Something had disabused him of that pride and thrill of petty overlordship which had meant more to him than comfort.
    One morning, when Helianos brought in his breakfast, out of practice, he overturned the coffee-pot, and a few drops fell on the major’s parade-uniform, on the sleeve just below the new insignia. That same afternoon, certain of his papers having fallen on the floor, Mrs. Helianos thoughtlessly gathered them up and put them in the waste-basket. But, dread histrionic fellow that he was—that is to say, had been—he did not clench his fists or stride up and down. Nothing happened: a mere grunt about the coffee-stains, a sigh for the crumpled papers.
    Somehow his bad temper, petty tyranny, bitter fuss about everything, had shifted away like a season of the year, like a scene in a cloud. When he wanted anything at all out of the ordinary he would explain it to them, patiently and clearly. In case he did not get it he complained, to be sure, but very softly, as if they were friends, or in the sympathetic patronizing way, as if they were children. Whatever happened—a noise when he was napping, or something inedible included by mischance in his evening meal, or a bad smell exhaling from the kitchen all the way down the corridor to his room, or a button torn off a badly laundered shirt—still he was correct, calm, sometimes almost sympathetic.
    That night of his going to bed early he came to the kitchen-door and asked politely for his kettle of warm water. An hour or two later Helianos forgot and walked with a heavy tread in the corridor, which woke him; and the next morning, complaining of his insomnia, he mildly mentioned it and requested Helianos to be more careful in the future. And on subsequent nights, tiptoeing extremely carefully past his door, they heard how restlessly he slept; but he never rang for them to wait on him. Finished, that little indecent chore and midnight humiliation. . .
    He smiled less than ever, but they did not mind that. His smile was a disquieting thing anyway, with more tooth than lip about it; too suddenly and sharply drawn in. They had never especially enjoyed being smiled at. On the whole he seemed more amiable-looking and in a way handsomer with his present long face, the slight squint and frown softening his gimlet eyes; the dead calm and the rigid strength gone from his mouth.
    His voice was still rough, rapid and peremptory, even when the sense of his remarks was benign. Still upon occasion a sharp focus of his Prussian eyes, small and blue, would discourage one from presuming upon his friendship or fellow-humanity beyond a certain point. But who cared, when of his own accord every day he deigned to be a little more friendly?
    Now he never bothered to inspect their cupboardful of provisions and the day’s shopping. No more quartermastery in the kitchen! Although it made things easier, and also enabled them to eat a little more freely, Mrs.