Fire on the Island

by Timothy Jay Smith

  “You are not dirty. Not at all. You’ve learned a lesson the hard way.” Lydia was relieved the girl wasn’t crying, though perhaps she was simply empty of tears. “Are you going to be okay here alone?”

  Athina sort of nodded.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay.”

  Lydia stood up.

  “Are there a lot of people tonight?” the girl asked.

  “Your grandmother has organized a crowd.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing, which is all you’ve told me.”

  “You don’t have to be mean. What did you tell Ridi?”

  “That it was all a big misunderstanding.”

  “Then he doesn’t know that anything happened?”

  “He won’t unless you tell him.” Lydia stopped in the doorway. “You don’t have to work tonight, but we could use your help if you feel like being around people.”

  “Mom?”

  “What?”

  “What if I’m pregnant?”

  Her daughter looked so stranded on the bed, a face too anxious for a young girl. Lydia thought her heart might break. “If you are, we’ll deal with it.”

  She closed the door behind her.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  ON THE TERRACE, LUKAS POURED Nick another shot of ouzo while Shirley dropped an ice cube into her wine. All that remained of the sunset was a thin red line. As it faded, the instant coolness of a Mediterranean evening enveloped them.

  “You live in a beautiful spot,” Nick remarked.

  Shirley complained, “It’s not very convenient to the village.”

  “She means she can’t drink as much wine as she would like, because she has to drive home,” her husband groused.

  “Who just poured his third ouzo?”

  Lukas ignored her, and told Nick, “It’s the land my grandparents were allocated.”

  “Allocated?”

  “During the Exchange. The government distributed what had been Turkish land to the Greeks who were returning.”

  “Rubbish!” Shirley spoke up. “You make it sound organized.”

  “It was organized.”

  “It was organized chaos! People grabbed what they could and declared it was theirs.”

  “My grandparents did not grab this land!”

  “They didn’t need to. No one else wanted it.”

  “Why not?” Nick asked.

  “The well was contaminated,” Lukas answered.

  “Because the Turkish owner had thrown himself into it!” Shirley exclaimed.

  “Why?”

  “To ruin it for the new Greek owners.”

  “We don’t know if that’s true,” Lukas disagreed.

  “There are lots of ways he could have killed himself if he didn’t want to move to Turkey. He didn’t have to ruin the well.”

  “It was a confusing time and people assumed he had left,” Lukas explained. “His body wasn’t found for weeks and so it did ruin the well. But like him, almost nobody wanted to be exchanged. It’s natural for people to like where they live. For the Greeks in Turkey, that’s where they wanted to be, the Turks living here wanted to stay here, and in both places, the people were all friends. I mean Greeks and Turkish people. It was the two governments that didn’t get along, not the people.”

  “Oh, you communists are always revising history!” Shirley responded. “It’s like a disease with you. If they were all friends, why did he ruin the well for your grandparents?”

  “He didn’t know my grandparents.”

  “You know what I mean. Whoever got the property was going to be Greek. That’s why he did it.”

  “What did they do for water?” Nick asked.

  “They dug a new well,” Lukas said.

  “He makes it sound like it happened overnight. For two years, before they could afford a well, they carried water from almost three kilometers away.”

  “It’s my story!”

  “Well then, tell it right! Shall we go to dinner?”

  “Dinner?” Nick asked.

  Shirley touched his arm. “You never come for only a drink.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  IT WAS A SHORT COMMUTE between the apartment and restaurant. Out the door, around the building, a few steps to the wharf. When she had to, Athina could make it in under an Olympic minute. That night, she wasn’t trying to set any records, and paused before coming around the corner to listen to the clatter and clink of cutlery on dishes. She didn’t entirely trust her mother that no one knew anything; it was the village, after all, and Lydia had dragged Apostolis down the hill in public view, which would have attracted its own gossipy attention. She half expected the restaurant to be filled with women pointing judgmental—or jealous—fingers at her the instant she appeared. Preparing herself, she took a deep breath, stepped around the corner, and ran smack into Ridi carrying an overloaded tray.

  “Oh, I am so sorry!” she cried.

  Ridi managed not to drop anything. “It’s okay. Nothing broke, and look how much could broke. It’s an aberration.”

  “Let me guess. ‘Aberration’ is one of your vocabulary words today?”

  “It is not a good word?”

  “It’s a very smart word. That’s the aberration. Are you still talking to me?”

  “I always talk to you!”

  “Why haven’t you sent me another heart?”

  “You want that I send it now?”

  “No, not now! I shouldn’t even be talking to you. My mother probably has spies watching us. Ridi?”

  “What?”

  “You never said what you will do when the restaurant closes. Will you stay for the winter?”

  “I stay where you stay.”

  “My mom wants me to go to Australia.”

  “Australia?”

  “Or Germany. I have relatives in both places. I haven’t said if I will go or not. Uh oh, she’s watching us. She claims she can read lips.”

  “She can’t read my lips.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I speak with an accent.”

  “You’re funny, Ridi, but I don’t think it matters if you have an accent. I actually think she can read a person’s mind. She’s spooky that way. I better go inside.”

  “Wait.”

  “What?”

  “I rape you.”

  “You rape me?”

  “If you need a father, I rape you.”

  It took Athina a moment to realize what he meant. “You mean, if I’m pregnant? You will be the father? I can’t believe you said that. That is the most incredibly beautiful thing anyone has ever offered to do for me.”

  “I don’t know what he’s offered to do,” Lydia said, approaching them, “but at least three tables haven’t been served, and—”

  “I brought Superman!”

  Shirley’s shout interrupted her.

  “And Mum needs her wine,” Lydia added, watching her mother, with Nick in tow, join a table where a small party was already underway. The bright chatter paused as Shirley bussed checks. “Everybody introduce themselves. Nick is a writer.”

  “Published?” someone asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Another one,” a man grumped.

  Lydia went up to their table. “I’ve already told Ridi to bring your wine, Mum, so you don’t have to shout at him.” She turned to Nick. “What will you have?”

  “An ouzo.”

  “Ice and water?”

  “One ice, no water.”

  “Ridi,” she said when he appeared with Shirley’s wine, “an ouzo for Superman. And bring some ice.”

  He told her, “My name is Nick.”

  “Not Superman?”

  “Definitely Nick.”

  “Got it. Are you going to eat something, Definitely Nick?”

  “Of course he’s going to eat something,” said Shirley, “but he needs his ouzo first.”

  “It’s on its way. Are you ready to order?”
>
  “You haven’t given me a chance to look at the menu,” her mother complained.

  “It hasn’t changed in two years, Mum.”

  “Well, maybe I have!”

  Lydia sighed. “I’ll be back to take your order.”

  The others at the table—all expatriates who had recast themselves as artists, photographers, authors, whatever they weren’t before— returned to their lively conversation while carafes of wine and platters of food were passed around for everyone to share. From her end of the table, Shirley recounted in larger-than-life details the fire that nearly destroyed their house, and received mumbled condolences for the lost trees. “Oh, well, there’s no use crying over them!” she said, though everyone knew that she had shed ample tears.

  On his boat, Stavros finished tuning his bouzouki, and lifted a glass. “Styn eyeia mas!” he toasted everyone in earshot. To our health! He knocked back his ouzo and set his glass aside.

  Along the wharf, the crowd grew attentive. Two of Lydia’s customers scooted over to Vassoula’s to be closer to the music. Stavros launched into familiar crowd pleasers—Zorba’s Dance and Never on Sunday—which always inspired a few tourists to leap up, form a line, and snake their way through the tables, aspiring to an unfamiliar sensuality. Stavros knew that he had to satisfy that expectation before playing his preferred songs with their discordant riffs and irregular rhythms that traveled with such clarity over the water that they might have been heard on the close shores of Turkey. Certainly some of the music had originated there. Most conversations fell silent under his spell, and those that didn’t sounded like squawking seagulls—an appropriate chorus for the fisherman’s plaintive ballads. During an especially romantic song, Nick glanced next door into Vassoula’s Bar, and saw Takis looking back at him. They would definitely hook up that night.

  Shirley’s table lowered its collective voice but it hardly fell silent. Political, traveled, and confident, their conversation hummed with the adventures—and the self-satisfaction—of their far-flung lives. All were repeat visitors to Vourvoulos. Some had discovered it decades earlier and happily continued eons-old rants. Nick, largely ignored, observed the port’s goings-on. Anyone coming for dinner had to pass a gauntlet of touts boasting their restaurant’s specialties before reaching Lydia’s, if they made it that far. She fumed every time Vassoula suckered couples, saying in her throaty voice, “I have a romantic spot for you” while pulling out chairs in a welcoming move that was really a trap. If looks could kill, Lydia would have been a serial killer with one repeat victim. Meanwhile the young waiter who didn’t know caffeine from café couldn’t stop mooning over Athina, yet she couldn’t decide if she wanted to be near him or keep her distance.

  Eventually Lukas, who had preferred eating with his fishermen friends over his wife’s international collection, came to peel Shirley away. He apologized that he was tired and looked it. He had lost what he had been certain would outlive him. That lesson in mortality’s fickleness weighed on him as heavy as Sisyphus’s stone. As they retreated along the port, Shirley pulled his arm over her shoulders, encouraging him to let her share the stone’s heft.

  They had been lucky, it was agreed, while someone muttered it wasn’t much luck to lose their prized trees—he had been there to witness the first one planted over forty years ago. Had they been a target or was the fire happenstance? Or was their property simply on the path to the fuel tank? The inevitable questions mulled over earlier still couldn’t be answered. “Well, talking about fires, it makes me nervous to be so close to that damn fuel tank!” one man remarked, and that was the cue for everyone to leave.

  Diners all along the wharf had already started bidding their kali niktas and efharistos, wandering off to find their rooms in the maze of relentlessly uphill streets. Only Vassoula’s Bar had customers who stayed on. It was clear that Takis wouldn’t get away any time soon. Not keen on a smoky bar scene, Nick decided to stay put and finish his wine. He opened his phone, logged on, and went into encryption mode. He had wanted to ask more about Father Alexis at some point in the evening, but it would have been awkward. So he wrote:

  SUBJ: ALEXIS, first name unknown. Vourvoulos village priest. Request any background info.

  Lydia stepped onto the porch and surveyed her empty tables. There was only Nick sending a message on his phone. The moon, perched behind the fuel tank, stretched its shadow almost across the harbor. She sighed at the impotency of her situation. Captain Tsounis’s assessment of the tank’s state of repair made it risky on its own, and only made things easier for an arsonist to succeed; yet with the collapsed economy, the solution—a new tank—was a non-starter until the old tank failed catastrophically. She wouldn’t give up the fight but had to reassess the battlefield.

  Athina stuck her head out the door. “Why don’t you go to bed, Mom?”

  “Someone might still come.”

  “I know that hope springs eternal, but I don’t think so tonight.”

  “Then I’ll help you finish up.”

  “You look more tired than I feel. Go to bed.”

  Lydia was tired, and bed sounded so nice. She wanted to call it quits: quits to that distressing day, and quits to the restaurant, too. The returns had never been worth the exhausting effort. “Do you promise to come directly home when you’re finished?” she asked.

  “I think I am home. I still live upstairs, right?”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go out tonight.”

  “I’m planning on washing dishes, Mom, not going out.”

  Washing dishes has never stopped you before, Lydia wanted to say, but restrained herself, realizing that her daughter wasn’t being her usual rebellious self. “I don’t want him spending the night here again,” she said about Ridi, who had started collecting the tablecloths.

  “He only stayed last night because of the storm. Now go to bed. And please don’t leave my light on. It’s a waste of money and I’m not a little girl anymore.”

  “You’re my little girl.”

  “Can we please stop arguing?”

  “We’re not arguing. If I stay up, it won’t be to wait for you. I’m tired but not sleepy.”

  “Put your head on the pillow and see what happens.”

  Lydia laughed softly. “How many times have I said that to you?”

  “At least a zillion.”

  “You’re right. I should try the pillow trick. Goodnight.”

  Lydia, pecking her daughter’s cheek, noticed Nick waving his glass to get someone’s attention. “I’ll be right there!” she called to him.

  She went into the kitchen, and reemerged with a bottle of wine and a second glass.

  Athina frowned at her. “I thought you were going to bed.”

  “A glass of wine will help me fall asleep faster than a pillow.”

  “You never give me that advice.”

  “I wouldn’t be a very good mother if I did.”

  Lydia slipped into a chair at Nick’s table. “Do you mind if I join you?”

  “Of course not.”

  She filled their glasses. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.”

  They clinked glasses.

  “How is your book coming along?”

  “I’m still getting ideas.”

  “I’m sure you heard some colorful stories tonight.”

  “It was a lively crowd, that’s for sure.”

  “Mum’s been collecting her friends for years. I couldn’t have stayed open without them. Not with the crisis, and not after she moved in next door.” Lydia nodded in Vassoula’s direction, who was laughing it up at her bar with a group of rowdy drinkers.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Usually she stands out front and no one can get past her. It’s like she drags them in with a big fish net.”

  “Or fishnet stockings.”

  “So you’ve noticed?”

  “She’s hard to miss.”

  “If I were sexy in her way, maybe I’d flaunt it, too, especially
if it made the difference between staying in business or not, but I’m not.”

  “Everybody is sexy in their own way.”

  “Thanks if that was a compliment, but I meant I’m not staying in business. I’m closing the restaurant.”

  “Permanently?”

  “Yes, permanently. Some weeks, if I add up all my customers, I barely have a full house.”

  “You barely have a house at all,” Nick remarked. “At least no tables inside. Could you expand the porch to create a real room?”

  “You can’t build anything new in the port,” she answered. “You can renovate but you can’t construct.”

  A burst of Vassoula’s throaty laughter came from next door.

  “If I had her place, I could make it really something,” Lydia said. “Not just a bar with a deep fryer.”

  Nick’s expression froze. It had been a deep fryer that scarred his back, and the mention of one was unexpected.

  “Did I say something?” Lydia asked.

  Nick shook off his thoughts. “No. I was thinking about something. Why isn’t she as worried about a fire as you are? She’ll be burned out, too.”

  “Maybe for the same reason I sometimes wish this place would burn down. Insurance money. Who buys used kitchen equipment in this economy?”

  “Sounds like you have a motive to start a fire yourself.”

  “A lot of people are in the same bad situation. Except her. When the weather knocks the power out, she can rely on her generator to stay open. With free fuel, she can afford to.”

  “I can guess why it’s free,” Nick said, recalling the bare-chested captain closing the door behind Vassoula two nights earlier.

  “If your guess is tall, dark, and handsome, you’re right, and you should put that in your book. Meanwhile, I’m putting myself in bed. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Lydia disappeared around the back of the building. Moments later a light came on upstairs. Next door, the crowd had thinned, but not enough to suit Nick’s mood. He decided to stay put and check the news on his phone.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  RIDI STACKED THE LAST TABLECLOTHS in the cupboard and locked it. Nothing else needed to be done outside. Wiping down the stove, Athina had her back to the door when he came into the kitchen. “Can I help?”

  “Ah!” she cried out, startled.

  “I’m sorry to scare you.”