She Wakes (9 page)

    But Chase was wary of involving him. He was as much the captive of this thing now as he had been kneeling humbly at the entrance to the dromos. Something told him he was supposed to be going this alone. That others might be endangered. That, more then anything, was why he hadn’t phoned Elaine.

    What could he tell her that wasn’t a lie? What could he say that wouldn’t involve her somehow?

    The warm, intelligent eyes were waiting.

    He made his decision.

    “All right. Let me order something. Have you got about an hour or so?”

    “I have a lifetime, my friend.”

    He called the waiter over and started talking.

    When he was finished Tasos looked at him and said, “It reminds me of a story they tell here.

    "Two fishermen met a priest along the path to the sea in the middle of the night. Naturally they were surprised to see him there, alone, at such a late hour. So they asked him, where are you going, papas?

    "I am looking for a light," the priest answered. And the fishermen, they don’t know what to think. Perhaps the priest is crazy-it happens. Because he was carrying a lantern, and it was lit, and the light was bright.

    “You see? I think you already have the answers to your questions, Chase. Like the priest, you carry your own light.”

    “I don’t know, Tasos.”

    

    

    It was late now. The wine they’d ordered was nearly gone.

    “Listen to me, my friend. You say you hear a voice that tells you you may die here. If that is to be so, then it will be so. There are many worse places to die. We Greeks are fatalists. But we are pragmatists too. You cannot undo this thing that has happened to you. You say that something commands you-then you must listen. And do what it tells you to do. And save your life if you can.”

    “And if I can’t?”

    “Then you must give it up.”

    “You believe that?”

    “I do.”

    He sighed. “I just keep wishing I were drunk or dreaming or some damn thing.”

    Tasos smiled. “Were you drunk or dreaming those times you told me of in Mexico or in England or when you were a child in…where was it? Maine? You were not.

    “You remind me of Our Lord, Chase-at Gethsemane. ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.’ But the cup never passes. You were born with this gift and it has been good to you. It has made you a rich and-am I wrong?-a not unhappy man. But now perhaps you must pay it back. And it may ask much of you.”

    There was a silence. They watched the gulls in the harbor.

    When at last Chase spoke, his voice was thick with emotion, surprising him.

    “What is it, Tasos? Who is it? Do you believe in God?’

    Tasos shook his head. “I don’t know,
feelo mu
. Since our talks so many years ago I have made a little study, I confess. I have read all the books about people like you but I still don’t know. I have feelings, and my feelings tell me that you are very special, that sometimes you hear the voices of others coming from deep inside themselves and sometimes you hear the past and future happening. And sometimes, maybe, you hear the earth itself-which we call gods, or the voices of gods. Perhaps it is the earth, speaking to you.”

    They drank the wine in silence. It was not as good as the Santorini wine but it would do.

    “I’m supposed to go to Delos,” he said. “I don’t know why I know that but I do.”

    “Delos?”

    “Yes.”

    Tasos frowned and thought a moment. “Like Mykene, Delos is a place of great power in the ancient world. Pilgrims went there for healing. In our legend it is the birthplace of Apollo and his sister Artemis. Once it was the holiest place in all of Greece.”

    “I know. I’ve done a little homework. I get there by ferry from Mykonos.”

    “Yes. Boats run each morning if the weather is good.”

    “And Mykonos?”

    “Ships leave each day from Piraeus, or you can fly there from Athens. You mean all these times you’ve come to Greece, you’ve never been to Mykonos?”

    Chase shook his head. “I’d never been to Mykene, either, up to now.”

    “Ah, but that’s different. Mykonos! It is our jewel!”

    “You have many jewels I think, Tasos. Some of them slightly tarnished lately. But many. Much to protect.”

    He smiled. “Chase. We are good friends, no?”

    “Of course we are.”

    “Then let me come with you. I would like to.”

    “No.”

    “I think I should, Chase. For one thing I am very good company.”

    “No. You take care of business for us, and of Anna and the boy. As you say, this cup’s mine.”

    “Any cup can be shared, Chase.”

    “Not this one.”

    And he thought,
Nothing speaks to you.
But there was no bitterness to it now.

    
Mykonos,
he thought.
Our jewel.

    
All right. Whoever you are.

    He drained the wine.

    
I’m coming.

    

    

    

    She was sitting at a cafe by the harbor only two hours off the plane, barely showered and changed, when the Frenchman walked by, saw her, stopped and turned and headed for her table.

    
Oh, no,
she thought.
This I can do without.

    His hair was long, blonde and none too clean, the teeth very white and oddly pointed. I wonder if he files them? she thought. It was not a delightful smile.

    He was tall and built to scale. His tan was a deep nut brown. His shoulders were absolutely massive, the arms long and simian. His hands were big too and there were tiny scars along the ridge of the knuckles.

    A brawler. Wonderful.

    She felt the queasiness again. It happened a lot these days when a man approached her. She rallied against it.

    
All right,
she thought,
let’s make this as fast as possible.

    He stood there grinning at her and the grin tugged at the too-sharp nose and sharpened it further, squinted the small gray eyes.

    “You speak French?”

    “No.”

    “English, eh?”

    “Yes.”

    He looks like a monkey, she thought. A very large monkey. With a pointed nose. A dangerous monkey. He shifted from one foot to the other and the long threadbare silk shirt swayed back and forth over the dusty jeans. Stop smiling, she thought. For god’s sake go away and leave me in peace.

    “I’ve just come back from India,” he said. “Is very good there, I think. Very spiritual.”

    “That’s nice.”

    “We learned many things, my friends and I. You would like to hear? I think you should.”

    The smile was an open leer now.

    “I don’t think so.”

    
Enough,
she thought.
You’re probably what? Twenty-five? And all very latter-day hippie. I bet you’ve got a stash of pot in your backpack. Beyond that, barely a shilling. In 1967 you weren’t even born yet. You’re ridiculous. And threatening. Please go away.

    “You’re a very pretty woman.”

    “Thank you. Goodbye. Have a nice day.”

    He looked at her.

    “You have a cigarette for me?”

    She couldn’t help it. He infuriated her. Threat and swagger and now he wanted handouts. She drew hard on her cigarette and blew the smoke out away from him.

    “I haven’t any.”

    The smile disappeared. But the man said nothing.

    “Nor do I have any money for you. So goodbye.”

    “No money.”

    “No. And no cigarettes.”

    “So, give me that one.”

    “No.”

    “Why not? You don’t need it."

    “How is your English?”

    “Eh?”

    “I said how is your English. I said goodbye to you. Twice. Do you understand the word ‘goodbye?’”

    Bug eyes, she thought. Dead bug eyes. There’s nothing in them. “You’re a bitch, you know that?”

    “Yes, I know that.”

    He turned abruptly and stalked away. He made a fist and jerked his arm into the air. He did not look back. She could feel his anger, his violence, pass over her, rippling away from him like waves off a stone dropped into quiet water.

    
Very spiritual,
she thought.
I have fears for the spirit these days.

    She stubbed out the cigarette and called the waiter for another ouzo.

    

    

    The Frenchman, whose name was Gerard Sadlier, was very cross with her.

    Once before, in Pakistan over a year ago, a man had made him cross in a different sort of matter-a problem over hashish and money. So he had filled a flight bag with ice which was very rare and expensive there and tied the man to the flyblown four-poster bed in his cheap hotel and smothered him with the bag of ice while Dulac and Ruth walked across his ribs.

    It would be overreacting to do that here.

    
Still,
he thought, he might be seeing her again.

    Everyone deserved a second chance.

    

    

    

    He’d said goodbye to his landlord Andreas and they’d shaken hands and Andreas had said, “Well, do you think you will be back this way again, my friend?”

    And Dodgson said, “I don't know, Andreas. Matala has changed."

    And the handsome old man nodded sadly. “I know,” he said. “There is a saying. The earth is only sleeping. And you will have to pray for us when she rises.”

    
Lelia,
he thought,
had taken it very well.

    They’d breakfasted alone. He talked and she listened and then when it was over she said, “You want me to leave?” and he said, "No," it wasn’t necessary, because he and Danny and Michelle had had enough of Matala anyway.

    She nodded.

    He was shocked. He’d expected a scene. What he got was understatement.

    “I’m not too easy to get along with sometimes,” she said. “I know that. I’m sorry. I’m really very sorry about last night. Sometimes I get…out of hand, you know?”

    He knew.

    But she seemed so sincere and looked so unhappy that despite himself he started feeling sorry for her and tried to make light of it, make it easier for her. joking and drinking lemonada with her until first Danny and Michelle and then the bus arrived. When they boarded he’d kissed her on the cheek and it was as though they were a pair of friends parting and he had that strange feeling of unreality again, the same as he’d felt when he awoke on the beach to find her gone. As though his perceptions were out of whack somehow.

    All told, he figured he’d got off easy.

    He knew he had when Danny leaned back in the seat and said, “Whew! Goodbye Matalar!"

    And then he knew what this was.

    This was escape.

    There was one flight to Mykonos tonight. They'd be on it.

    Meantime they sat in the square nursing Amstel beers, waiting for the eight o’clock Olympic shuttlebus to come and take them to the airport and watching the beginnings of the volta-a sort of nightly fashion show-cum-meat-market, as people paraded by in their evening best, on the lookout for friends, lovers and pickups. Heraklion was a big sprawling town by Greek standards and it was refreshing after Matala to be somewhere so cosmopolitan. Girls in white strolled arm in arm together, smiling into the rows upon rows of cafe tables. Boys cruised by in threes and pairs, denims crisply pressed, arms draped over one another’s shoulders in macho solidarity. Young mothers wheeled along pretty wide-eyed babies in carriages.

    They sipped their beers and nibbled their
mezes
.

    “You know,” said Danny, “I’ve always hated this town more than any town in Greece next to Athens. But right now it doesn’t look too bad at all, old buddy.”

    Dodgson translated. No mad women.

    He nodded.

    It was amazing how little thought he’d given her once they’d pulled away. Past was past, right? Of course it was. Yet it bothered him. Because this was a pattern of his. You screwed up. Then you forgot about it, buried it. You drank too much, wrote too little and before long you chose the wrong woman again. Always the wrong woman. Sure the world was full of neurotics but it was a special talent of his to keep finding them. He’d met lesser versions of Lelia before, less fierce certainly, far less extreme, but a little unhinged just the same. Passive/aggressive types. Drinkers. Cokeheads. Paranoids.

    And then there was Margot.

    That had lasted three long years.

    
And who was to say that Margot, who had taken her own life for god’s sake, was any less crazy than Lelia.?

    
You got what you looked for in life, didn’t you? What you were ready for? So where was his own mental health in all this?

    
Gone fishing,
he thought.
Looking for a line out of that bloody bathtub maybe.

    To strain a metaphor.

    The volta flowed on by. The girls in white paraded.

    His mind did what it damn well was inclined to do and slipped Lelia Narkisos away for a while, maybe a good long while.

    Maybe forever.

    Tonight he’d be in Mykonos and a tiny toothless woman dressed in black would rent him a room. He knew the woman and he knew the rooms. The woman was in permanent mourning for somebody. The rooms were good and clean and cheap. He knew just where to find her.