The Magus

The mysteries begin after Nick spots smoke rising from the chimney of one of the expensive beach-front villas and goes off to explore. On the way to the villa, Nick finds on the beach an anthology of modern poetry, with several passages from the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound underlined. The villa itself bears the signboard “Salle d’Attente,” which means “the waiting-room.” Nick remembers Mitford’s parting warning. He wonders if the villa belongs to the German collaborator of whom Mitford spoke.

The next day, Nick asks Demetriades, whose nickname is “Meli,” about the German collaborator said to live in Bourani, the headland of the island on which the Salle d’Attente is located. Meli tells Nick the man’s name is Conchis, but he hardly ever visits Phraxos, which means Mitford, or his predecessor John Leverrier, could not have met him.

When Nick asks around the island about Conchis, he runs into Hermes, Conchis’s former handyman or agogiati (donkeyman, a term referencing the days when handymen transferred goods by horse or donkey). Nick learns that the tale of Conchis being a German collaborator is false. The truth is that during the German occupation of Phraxos, Conchis refused to execute a group of Greek resistance fighters.