Out of the Blue

by Belinda Jones

  ‘How did he ever have time to rule the universe?’ I marvel.

  Alekos shrugs. ‘I don’t know, but he was considered a very fair ruler.’

  ‘Any more children?’

  ‘Plenty. Including the two most beautiful Olympians of all – Apollo and Artemis.’ He looks at me. ‘You are connected to Artemis, you know?’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘She’s the virgin goddess of the hunt but also strongly associated with the moon.’

  ‘And?’ I’m missing the connection.

  ‘Selene was goddess of the moon.’ His brow furrows. ‘You know “selene” is the Greek word for the moon?’

  ‘Really?’ I can’t believe it’s taken me thirty-two years to discover my name has a Greek origin!

  ‘I’ve never told you that?’ He looks astounded that he missed such a good line. ‘Oh well.’ He smiles apologetically. ‘You are the moon.’

  Despite the inopportune daylight delivery, I can’t help but feel imbued with extra allure and practise seductively mouthing, ‘I am the moon!’ to myself before enquiring, ‘What does your name mean?’

  He mumbles something I mishear as predator.

  ‘No, protector,’ he corrects me.

  There it is again. The niggling sensation that I may have misjudged him. The truth is I do feel in safe hands with him. Or at least safe hand. Even though we are winding up and up ever more precarious cliff roads devoid of any barriers, I’m not worried.

  At least not until I notice the Low Petrol sign flashing.

  ‘Oh no,’ he starts to laugh.

  ‘You think this is funny?’ I snort, contemplating the ever-increasing gradient of the mod-con-free wilderness surrounding us. ‘Funny is me trying to push the car up these vertical slopes!’

  Still we continue on, weaving higher and higher. Every time there’s any kind of dip or downturn he switches off the engine so we can glide and conserve what little fuel remains. Though my stomach is twitching with anxiety, I find it hard to believe that something so mundane as running out of petrol could happen to Alekos, the man with a plan. The protector . . .

  ‘I thought the whole deal with a plateau is that it’s flat!’ I’m getting impatient now. ‘Why do we keep going up?!’

  He gives one of his classic ‘don’t know’ shrugs, adding, ‘I’ve never been here before.’

  I may be relieved that the birthplace of the most womanising god isn’t on Alekos’ regular pilgrimage route like St George’s monastery, but this is tempered by the greater odds of getting stranded. The mountain range is visually dramatic but excessively bleak. It doesn’t help that I spy a vulture circling us, the only car on the road.

  ‘Am I seeing things?’ I gasp, suddenly erect in my seat.

  ‘What?’ Alekos squints ahead.

  I point to a small sign over to our left. ‘Petrol eight kilometres!’ I whoop.

  ‘Hermes has saved us!’ Alekos winks.

  I watch the odometer intently but it clicks to eight and then nine and ten kilometres and there’s still no petrol pump in sight. ‘It doesn’t make any sense!’ I despair. ‘There were no turnings, no off-roads . . .’ And then I remember that Hermes was the greatest fibber of the gods.

  We trickle on, in silence now as the potential repercussions of breaking down hit home. Just when I’m about to call ‘Lunch is served!’ to the vulture, a garage appears. And not just a solitary pump but a full service station with all the bells and whistles and teeth-rotting snacks you’d find on the M25. I’m so happy I’m tempted to change the oil and rotate the tyres just for the hell of it.

  ‘You were really worried there, weren’t you?’ Alekos leans on the car as the petrol chugs into the tank.

  ‘Weren’t you?’ I ask.

  ‘I always have faith that things will work out in the end,’ he replies, holding my gaze, no jiggling of eyebrows, just steady.

  Apparently it’s not just the car shifting gears. Alekos was always so full speed ahead in his attentiveness on the ship, but perhaps because he knows we still have a week of quality time ahead of us, he knows he can ease off the accelerator, take the time to cruise a little. Or perhaps he’s simply preoccupied with finding Zeus’ cave, which continues to elude us.

  We see a sign confirming we’re on the right road but then every time the road splits there are no markings to guide us, so we have to make a choice and then, five miles or so along, we find out if it was the right one.

  ‘Is this a Greek thing?’ I wonder out loud.

  Alekos doesn’t reply and the mythology lesson is suspended as he’s now spending more time leaning out the window asking directions than he is in the car. He asks the man riding side-saddle on a donkey, the woman on the olive oil stall, and a youth, so eager to help us that he literally runs to our aid. They babble feverishly back and forth, but when I ask Alekos to translate he simply says, ‘They said we’re going the right way.’

  We’re buzzing through villages now, every one with a wizened couple squatting by the roadside, seemingly with the express purpose of staring glassy-eyed at us as we pass.

  ‘You know, I forgot to mention that Zeus had an affair with Selene,’ Alekos remarks as we pass for the third time through a narrow passage between two buildings layered with embroidered tablecloths, price tags wafting in the breeze.

  ‘The womaniser and the moon?’ I ponder, significantly. ‘How did that end?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t ideal . . .’

  ‘I suppose he ran off with another goddess?’ I predict. ‘Perhaps a niece this time?’

  ‘Actually she was in love with someone else.’

  ‘Really?’ I wasn’t expecting that. ‘Who?’

  ‘Endymion – a king or a shepherd depending on the version of the story. Left or right?’

  ‘Left,’ I pick randomly; it doesn’t seem to make much difference.

  ‘Either way he was an extremely handsome mortal, but vain – when Zeus offered him the chance to determine his own fate he chose to preserve his looks by sleeping for all eternity without ageing. They say Selene visited him every night and kissed him with her moon rays but, in essence, she was alone from then on.’

  I sigh. How frustrating lying next to someone, able to feel their breath and their skin but unable to interact or even look in their eyes. ‘I don’t suppose the insatiable Mr Zeus mooned over Selene for too long, pardon the pun . . .’

  He shakes his head. ‘For him the list goes on and on. What about you, have you had many sexual partners?’

  ‘What?’ I laugh. Did he really just ask me that? Surely that’s my question for him!

  ‘You heard me,’ he persists.

  I think for a moment, pretending to be counting. ‘Well, more than Artemis but less than Zeus,’ I say, giving him a figure between nought and about a billion. ‘What about you?’

  It’s the million-euro question, neatly avoided as we unexpectedly arrive at the cave car park, along with coachloads of tourists. Where did they all come from?

  Alekos goes to step out of the car but I put my hand on his good arm. ‘You didn’t answer.’

  ‘Neither did you, not really.’ He shrugs. ‘Anyway, does it matter?’

  I can’t help but feel it does. If he was wired to a lie detector right now and the truth was twenty women I would have a whole different take on him. My current perception of him lies more around the two hundred mark. I tell him someone’s past doesn’t matter to me as much as how they’re planning to behave in the future but I have to be realistic: ‘As Dr Phil says, the past is the best predictor of future behaviour.’

  ‘And every day is a new beginning,’ Alekos counters. ‘A chance to start afresh, to reinvent yourself.’

  ‘I think you’ve been reading too many stories of shape-shifters,’ I tell him.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he concedes. ‘But watch me become a Cretan goat as I climb this hill!’

  The metamorphosis is convincing. He is sure-footed and steady as he progresses up the flagstone pathway. Meanwhile, I mor
e closely resemble a waddling sea lion. I haven’t been going more than five minutes but already my back is streaming with sweat, my heart is yammering and my tendons are twanging audibly. A total workout in this heat is just too much.

  ‘Aleko!’ I wheeze ahead to him in anguish. He trots back down towards me. ‘I hate to be a bore,’ I pant, ‘but the leaflet says there’s a gentler path to the cave. Do you think we could take that?’

  ‘This is the gentler one,’ a middle-aged Brit tells me, on her way down.

  ‘Really?’ I gulp, horrified.

  ‘I know!’ she sympathises, flush-faced even from the descent.

  ‘Is it worth it?’ I cut to the chase.

  She pauses to reply. ‘Well, put it this way, I’m glad I did it but I wouldn’t do it again.’

  We have a brief confab and then I turn to Alekos. ‘Listen, I don’t mean to be ungrateful and I’ve loved the drive but—’

  His brow furrows. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I don’t think I can make it. This certainly isn’t something I’d put my cruise groups through. I’d have to grade it strenuous—’

  ‘Come on,’ he says, turning back up the path.

  ‘Wait! I’m serious! It’s at least another twenty minutes’ trek and I honestly would expire before we got there.’

  ‘You just need some water. There’s a spring right here.’

  ‘Where?’

  He points ahead.

  ‘I can’t see it.’

  It’s then he produces a bottle of water from his side pocket. And refuses to give me a sip until I’ve taken another ten paces. And then another ten. It’s pure torture – the chasm between our physical ability has never been greater. I try to imagine a situation in which I’d have the upper hand and he’d be struggling as I am now but I can’t come up with one. Already he’s on the next loop. It’s then I decide to cut barefoot through the brambles and the rocks to the next level. Any injuries I sustain in the process will heal, but if my heart explodes that’s it, I’m done.

  ‘Well, hello!’ he greets me with a grin, seemingly impressed by my ingenuity. ‘Who’s the mountain goat now?’

  We continue on, him snaking up the path, me clawing up the short cuts. He is now carrying my bag for me, and looks most fetching accessorised with pistachio-green leather.

  ‘You can do it!’ he encourages as I make my last undignified stagger to the cave mouth.

  Though I’m barely able to hear myself over the throbbing in my head, I thank him for persuading me to see it through.

  ‘You haven’t seen the cave yet!’

  ‘That’s irrelevant. I would have been annoyed with myself for giving up,’ I tell him. ‘Besides, look at all this!’ I use my last scrap of energy to make a grand sweep at the vista. Finally I get to see the plateau!

  Extending for miles in every direction, the fields of gold, tan and textured amber – bobbled intermittently with green – are the perfect match for that sunrise feeling. It’s just so expansive here. I take it Alekos is feeling the same way because he climbs up on the wall and throws his good arm wide – lord of all he surveys! Look at him! There’s arrogance you despise and arrogance that makes you smile. Or maybe it’s not arrogance at all, just a wholehearted lust for life.

  ‘Take a picture!’ he demands, gleeful as a child.

  As I raise my camera to capture his pose, I have an unexpected thought – namely, what a good father Alekos would make. He’s clearly an effective disciplinarian – Supernanny could rent him out as a role model for all those fathers who give in to infant demands and protestations. Look at the trip up here – without him I certainly would have caved. And that would have meant forgoing this tawny majesty, all because I got a bit hot and bothered. So not only does he see things through, he believes you can too. He eggs you on to have a go – like driving the speedboat and making me try taramasalata for the first time in Plaka. Maybe it’s not just kids he’d be good to have around. Maybe he’s good for adults too. Maybe he’s good for me!

  I catch myself feeling quite giddy and decide it must be the altitude – the sooner I lower myself into the dank depths of the cave the better.

  The stone steps are slicked with moss so I keep my feet bare as I descend, wobbly-legged, into the craggy green-lit hollow. Ridged and layered with stalactites, it strikes me more as a place of goblins and ghouls than gods.

  ‘So this is where Zeus got born?’

  Alekos nods, edging me to our own private nook, out of the path of the tour groups. ‘There’s a story behind it.’

  ‘Of course there is.’ I smile receptively at him.

  ‘First you need to know that prior to the conception of Zeus, his father Cronus had eaten all five of Zeus’ brothers and sisters—’

  ‘Eaten them?’ I interrupt, thinking the quirky acoustics must surely have distorted his words.

  ‘Yes, eaten them – Cronus had been warned that he would one day be overthrown by his own son and he didn’t want this to happen so every time his wife Rhea gave birth, he would swallow the baby whole.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I say, as if this makes perfect sense now.

  ‘But by the time Rhea was pregnant with child number six she’d had enough and implored her all-powerful parents to find a way to conceal him, so they sent her to Crete to give birth in secret in a cave . . .’

  ‘Oh my god!’ I exclaim. ‘They made her walk all the way up here pregnant?’

  Alekos disregards my outrage and continues, ‘She left baby Zeus to be raised by Gaia, Mother Earth in essence, and then returned to Cronus with a rock wrapped in swaddling clothes. Without checking first, he swallowed the rock whole!’

  And to think I have a problem with pips in grapes.

  ‘Years later Zeus met his father for the first time, taking employment as his cupbearer so that he could serve him a potion to make him vomit.’

  ‘I suppose he drank that down in one?’

  ‘Yes, and he promptly threw up all five of Zeus’ brothers and sisters – each emerging unharmed. Naturally they teamed up with Zeus to overthrow Cronus and his Titans and, with a little help from the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handed Giants, they were victorious!’

  ‘Oh, I do like a happy ending!’ I deadpan. ‘Let’s take another picture!’

  This time I try for an end-of-the-arm shot of us both but all I get is an eerie blur.

  ‘Let me see that.’ Alekos tinkers with the camera, finding some hitherto undiscovered setting that solves the lighting issues. I can’t bear it – he’s good at everything. The only thing he can’t do is extend his arm the extra foot needed to capture our faces and the other misshapen formations that surround us.

  ‘Would you like me to take a picture of the two of you?’ an elderly gentleman with a German accent offers.

  It’s such a simple enquiry but it prompts an involuntary shiver in me. All morning I’ve been studying Alekos as a separate entity, periodically wondering what it might be like to merge with him, yet as far as everyone else is concerned we’re already together. And they don’t seem shocked by the match – I don’t hear any mutterings, ‘But he’s a total playboy! Can’t she see?’

  Mind you, he’s wearing a bumbag, maybe that’s what’s throwing them off.

  Our great pilgrimage completed and the nourishment from our morning pastry long gone, we head for the mid-mountain taverna we spotted on the way up and sit on the shady terrace and eat papery-thin courgette blossoms stuffed with juicy rice and thick wedges of potato in a tangy tomato sauce.

  I hate to sound like a broken record but this might be the best meal I’ve ever eaten.

  ‘You do realise we’re going to be really late opening up today?’ I say as I mop up the last of the sauce with a hunk of bread. ‘I hope we don’t piss off any watersporters.’

  Alekos shrugs, cowing to no man. ‘Who are they going to complain to?’

  ‘Poseidon?’ I suggest.

  ‘Oh yes, he’s going to be so angered by the lack of pedalos smacking at his s
urface!’

  We sit there for a further ten minutes, finishing up with fresh fruit and a lesson in how to write my name in Greek and then, as if to underline his lack of haste, Alekos insists upon making two further stops.

  The first is at a roadside stall – initially we pass it, then he screeches to a halt and sets the car in reverse. Full action-movie drama, all for a jar of honey.

  As I step out of the passenger side, my skirt tangles in the bushes and I get into a tussle with the cat’s-claw prickles, much to the amusement of the lady stallholder. Normally I’d be embarrassed, but she’s laughing in the most sympathetic way and as I approach she holds out a wooden toothpick with a shiny bead of dark honey on its end. I taste it – so rich and earthy; sold to the lady in the shredded skirt! Next comes the raki sample. It’s a bit early for cocktails but when I see Alekos accept, I do too. And immediately get a buzz.

  ‘Epharisto!’ I sing my thank-you as I squeeze back into the car.

  ‘This is what I love most about Greece,’ Alekos sighs contentedly as we pass a man hand-whittling wooden sticks into salad servers. ‘Its simplicity. The world is changing so fast but you will always find villagers living this way. They will never change.’

  I inhale contentedly. I love that he loves that! He’s such a modern, forward-looking fellow and yet . . .

  Twenty minutes on we stop again, this time at a wondrous edge-of-forever viewpoint set with the dinkiest little whitewashed church, offset with three dark green poplars. I immediately reach for my camera but Alekos has something else in mind, having spied some tempting-looking grapes in the vines up a chalky verge. The average man impeded by a bound arm wouldn’t consider scrabbling up and grappling with the branches to grab a bunch of tiny dusty-purple baubles, but Alekos, clearly, is not an average man.

  ‘Careful!’ I call, somewhat redundantly as he disappears into the undergrowth.

  I wait a moment in case he tumbles straight back out but when the rustlings and manly strainings grow faint, I decide to take a proper look around and gingerly edge out into the road – it snakes a little here and I don’t want to be surprised and flattened by a coach, our bodies discovered months from now – me as roadkill, him suspended with a withered bunch of grapes in his hand. But I do want to stand where I can see for miles and take a breath. There are no sounds at all now. All is silent. All is still. Perfect peace. This is one of those moments where you feel obliged to have a profound thought.