by Paula Fox
Then she got dressed. She tied a sweater around her shoulders and wrapped up two peaches and a few biscuits in a cotton scarf. She tiptoed down the hall, out the door and through the gate, and made her way down to the village on the new stone steps.
The moonlit lanes and streets were ashen. The village slept. She kept her eyes away from the shrines, the gates and temples, the old abodes of the gods whom she did not wish to imagine; she was afraid to think about their faintly smiling, inhuman faces, the deep, distant look of their eyes. She thought instead of Paul, his arm reaching up to rest on Jack’s stiff shoulders, and the older boy turning to him, bending to whisper something in his ear.
It was a long walk. She tried not to think, not yet. It was her feet that carried her through those moments when she wanted to turn back, go home, draw the cover over her head.
She had left the sea at home—now she had reached it again. Here it made a sound, a soft hissing as the waves uncurled on the sand. In front of the dark shack the oilcloth-covered tables gleamed as though pools of water lay on them. She went past them into the kitchen. A faint smell of fried potatoes lingered in the air. There was no one there.
Lily walked back to the beach. Her heart sank. She had been so sure Jack would be there, huddled on the floor asleep, that her mouth had opened to whisper him awake.
She looked out at the Aegean. Past the beach, the lawyer’s house, beyond a point of land, was Halyke. Beyond that, to the east were Turkey and Russia, India and China and Japan, the Pacific Ocean, Australia, the western coast of the United States, the Atlantic, England and Europe, Athens, and back to the spot where she was standing. The vast world! She felt as little as Christine, alone in the center of it.
From the corner of her eye she saw a point of brightness, then it was gone. She gazed at the tiny islet. A light flared up, then another. Someone was lighting matches there in the black fuzz of scraggly pines on the islet’s crest. She had once dog-paddled around it, gripping the rocks, and found a narrow path that wound up through the trees. She had not taken it, only looked, wondering about it, kicking to keep afloat.
The light flickered, died. What if it was not Jack but a stranger who had made a refuge of the island? But she was as sure it was Jack as she was that she was standing on the beach, her sneakers filling up with sand. She could imagine how it had been, how he’d run away after the accident, how he’d recalled the shack as a place he could shelter in. He might have spent the day in a dark corner of the acropolis or in the cool depths of the olive-pressing plant, which would be empty at this time of year. Then, at nightfall, he’d made his way here, to the beach. He would have gone to the shack at first, then recalled that someone had left him bread and honey. He’d seen the island and gone out to it, not thinking about the next day, only wanting to hide after the terrible event.
Lily took off her sneakers, tied them around her neck, and rolled up her slacks. Holding the scarf above her head, she waded into the water. It was not cold. The sand scrunched delicately between her toes. She hoped no crab would pinch her feet. She was no Spartan who could keep her mouth shut tight. No, she would shriek and run for shore, and Rosa would come barking, then the lawyer!
She had to swim the last few yards. He might hear her in the still night, but that couldn’t be helped. He might think she was a dolphin—if he ever thought about such things as dolphins.
She felt her way along the rocks and came to the path. She pulled herself up, gripping the scarf, now soaked, in one hand, and made her way up the pine needle-strewn path. In a small clearing a fire of twigs was now burning, and hunkered down beside it, holding out a stick with a heel of bread stuck on the end of it, was Jack.
Lily squatted down, her clothes squishing with water.
“I figured it would be you,” Jack said quietly. He looked at her as he slowly turned the bread. “Last time—I figured it was you who left the bread and honey.”
She was too surprised to speak. That he’d ever thought about her at all was hard for her to believe.
“Everyone is looking for you,” she said. “I mean they will be in the morning. Your father, Paul …”
“And the police, I guess,” he said.
“No. I don’t think so. Unless you got lost for good.”
“I’m not lost,” he said defiantly, taking the bread off the stick. He blew on it, then wolfed it down, making a face as though it pained him. He must be awfully hungry.
She unwrapped the scarf. “I brought this,” she said, holding out a damp peach to him. He looked at it for a moment, then back at the fire. There was a crumb on his lip from the bread. He was handsome, she saw for the first time. His eyes and brows were much like his father’s, and he had the same fierce look. But his chin was different, softer. He took the peach from her, without looking, and put it somewhere behind him. He moved restlessly and began to pluck at the root of a pine tree as though he wanted to tear it from the ground.
“You can stay with us tonight,” she said. “In the morning you can go to your father.”
He wasn’t listening to her. “It happened so fast,” he said in a low, brooding voice. “There must have been something slippery on the embankment. The bike went right out of my hands. I tried to catch him. Christos. But his leg was caught somehow. He was lying all crumpled down below. I went and hid in one of the places they’ve excavated until I saw the people come and get him. I knew he was dead. The men were all talking. They didn’t know how to lift him up. His father came.”
He let out a sudden gasp as though someone had struck him a terrible blow across his back. For a second Lily thought he would fall into the fire. Then he reared back.
“I wish—” he began. He shut his mouth tightly. Then he seemed to feel the crumb because he brushed at his lips again and again.
She wanted to say, it isn’t your fault. But she couldn’t say that. He had been the cause of the accident. There was no way around that.
“God! God!” he exclaimed.
Oh—he was lost! Had she come to find him to win a prize for finding a lost boy? She couldn’t think why she had come. She didn’t know what to do. She felt her sodden clothes on her skin and shivered. It would be hard going back into the water, then starting the long walk home. And what was she to say to him?
“Why did you come looking for me?” he burst out.
She answered without thinking. “Because I was sorry for you,” she said. Then, because that wasn’t all of the truth, she added, “At least, that was one of the reasons.”
He jumped back from the fire as though it had grown too hot. “I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me,” he said flatly.
“I can’t help it,” she said.
He laughed at that. It was a clear, free laugh as though something in him had eased. “Okay,” he said. “If you can’t help it …”
He began to put handfuls of earth on the fire. She saw how carefully he smothered it, making sure there wasn’t an ember left.
“Don’t you want the peach?” she asked. “I brought two, but the other is mushy and the biscuits are all wet.”
He searched for the peach among the leaves, found it and began to eat it as they stood there, the fire dead now, a breeze stirring the pines. When he’d finished, he bent and dug a hole with his hand, pushed the peach pit into it and covered it up. “Not enough soil here,” he said. “But maybe it will grow.”
They scrambled down the path to the water and slipped into it. Lily’s clothes weighed on her, and she was relieved to feel the sand beneath her feet. Silently they walked along the road until they came to the crossroads at the stone farmhouse.
“Well—I go up there,” he said, pointing at the mountain.
“But you can stay with us,” she protested, then remembered. “Your father didn’t go to Panagia. He said he was staying at Giorgi’s.”
He seemed to hesitate, still facing the mountain road.
“He’s going to see Costa tomorrow,” Lily said, feeling a current of fear, remembering eve
rything at once as though the last half hour of swimming and walking had been time out of trouble.
“I have to go, too,” Jack said. “Maybe Christos’ father will kill me.”
“He won’t,” Lily said quickly. “Nobody will kill you. Paul went. Costa hugged him.”
“He won’t hug me,” Jack said in a cold voice. Lily thought, what if they did do something to Jack?
“But I’m going there,” he said. “I’ll go to Giorgi’s now.”
They began to walk toward the village. She could imagine Jack walking into Costa’s house, head down, his hands in his pockets, scared and determined not to show it. But it was hard to imagine Mr. Hemmings going even though he had said he would. People like Mr. Hemmings, Lily was thinking, if they ever said they were sorry for one single thing, they’d have to be sorry for their whole lives.
She would have liked to ask Jack why his mother paid his father to stay away, to keep him away from her. She would have liked to know everything about his life. She had the feeling that all she would ever know was what she knew at that moment.
They parted in front of the museum. A ray of moonlight fell on the face of the stone youth who had been gazing out to sea ever since he’d been dug up out of the ground.
She started toward home.
“Thanks,” Jack said in a low voice after her, “for the peach.”
TEN
“Yogurti! Yogurti!” cried the boy, banging the wooden box strapped to his handlebars as he cycled slowly down the street. It was startling to realize that in less than a week, Lily might be in the supermarket in Williamstown and she would stop to choose one of the small cups of yogurt displayed on a shelf. She could imagine herself opening it in the kitchen at home, the refrigerator humming, then taking a spoon from a drawer and eating the yogurt, which would be stiff and cold, not like the soft custard of Limena, and she would be staring at the big basket of kitchen gadgets her mother kept on the counter, gadgets she had loved to play with when she was little.
She had been sent to Mr. Xenophon to buy the last can of Swiss milk they would probably need. She lingered by his little table beneath the baobob tree, thinking about what had happened there the night before.
The Coreys had supper at Efthymios-Onassis’. “I’ve come to the end of what I know how to do with eggplant,” Mrs. Corey had said. “So I guess it is time we were going home.”
As they left the restaurant and walked down the street, it seemed to Lily that more people than ever spoke to them—strolling families, men in tavernas, people who called out greetings from their gardens. She had wondered if she would ever again live in a village where every single person knew her name.
As they went past the grocery, Costa had called out to them. Her parents had halted, standing motionless as though turned to stone. Costa was sitting at Mr. Xenophon’s table, a tall glass of water and a small glass of brandy before him. He stood up and bowed formally to them. All at once, both Mr. and Mrs. Corey had rushed to him and put their arms around him.
It had been eight days since Christos had been buried. Lily felt tears spring to her eyes. She kept her head down. In his low, courteous voice Costa called her name twice as though she were running away from him. She looked up at him, conscious of the tears on her cheeks. He was smiling. He had grown so thin that his shoulders looked like bones without flesh. The pockmarks on his face were like the pale craters on the moon. His eyes had sunk deep into their sockets. But his shirt was neat and ironed, and the hand with which he touched her head was firm and warm. There was hardly any conversation. He asked them if they were well; he’d heard they were to leave Limena very soon. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Corey asked him how he was. That would have been a cruel and meaningless question, her mother had said later. They only murmured and held his arms briefly, and then they went on home.
As she glanced at the table where their meeting had taken place, Lily felt as though she had already left Thasos, that she was recalling an event from a great distance away.
She walked on, thinking now of home, of her room in the old house in Williamstown. She was going to change it, give away the stuffed animals she had had for as long as she could remember and take down the frilled green curtains from the windows so that the light could shine through, moonlight and sunlight and the gray light of rain.
Paul was sitting beneath the mulberry tree when she came through the gates, reading an English detective story they had gotten in Kavalla. He must have read it ten times by now, Lily thought. He looked up at her, lifted his hand, and bent his fingers slightly. Not much of a wave. He didn’t smile, didn’t shout some familiar insult at her. He hadn’t done anything like that for some time. It wasn’t that he had grown silent—he talked to her, and they played cards together—it was more that he had become quiet. He took walks by himself in the village, stopping to visit his former employer, the cobbler, or walking down to the quay to watch the fishermen mending their nets. Lily had followed him several times. She hadn’t tried to keep hidden. He had seen her, but he seemed not to have minded.
She knew he hadn’t seen Jack or Mr. Hemmings. As far as she knew, no one in Limena had seen them.
Mr. Kalligas had told Lily about Jack’s going to Costa’s house the morning after she had discovered him on the islet. He had gone with his father. But Mr. Hemmings had not gone in; he had waited outside in the street.
“That boy, he stood in the doorway,” Mr. Kalligas reported. “Costa got up from the chair and brought him to the table with the food. He wouldn’t eat nothing. Then Nichos run to him and lean against him. I see the boy’s face. He looked wild! Pretty soon he left Costa’s house. Then he went up to Panagia with his father. They been staying in their rooms. The father go out to buy food. No more dancing.”
“Here’s the milk,” Lily said, putting the can down on the kitchen table. Her father, who was drinking coffee and staring out the window at Paul, asked, “Did your brother speak to you?”
“He waved,” she replied.
“I’m always telling him to think,” Mr. Corey said, “and now that he seems to be thinking, it worries me.” He sighed and put his arm around Lily. “Well, we’ll be home soon. Paul will put all of this behind him.”
Lily didn’t say it, but she didn’t think that would happen. How could she and Paul recall only the joyful days? How could there be light without the dark?
Mr. Kalligas visited the Coreys in the afternoon. As usual, he was bringing news. A huge German company had sent representatives and products—kitchen equipment, all electric—to Limena. They had arrived on the early boat from Kavalla, and that evening the products were to be exhibited in Mr. Panakos’ shop. Mr. Panakos had cleared away all of his goods to make room for these extraordinary objects, and everyone in the village would be going there to see how they worked.
“This isn’t electric, but it works on batteries,” said Mr. Corey, holding out to Mr. Kalligas their transistor radio. “We would like you to have this.”
Mr. Kalligas clapped his hands together once. “Bloody wonderful!” he exclaimed. Lily knew he had always admired the radio. He was so plainly delighted that she felt delighted herself. He would take it home to play for Mrs. Kalligas, he said, and then he would come back. He had a gift for Lily.
When he returned a half hour later, he wasn’t carrying anything Lily could see. He stood in front of her, smiling, gradually opening his hand. A small piece of terra-cotta lay on his palm. He held it up to the light from the kitchen window. Lily saw it was a carving of a woman’s head. Her nose was arrowy, her forehead noble, and her bound and braided hair was so beautiful that Lily gasped.
“Artemis,” said Mr. Kalligas. “I give it to you because you like our old gods so much. You see—her ear is missing and a piece of her chin. But she is still there. I found her in my garden. I was planting a tree, digging, digging, and there she was!”
Lily held the little carving in her hand. It seemed to grow warm. Mr. Kalligas was watching her. “I see you like,” he said, grinn
ing. She could only nod.
In her room she examined the head. Artemis-Hecate, goddess of the crossroads. She thought of the crossroads that she had passed six times at night. She thought of Jack and herself on the islet when he had put out the last ember of the fire. She thought of the silence and the darkness through which they swam to the beach.
“Lily,” called her mother. “Put on your dress. We’re going to the Haslevs for supper.”
“It doesn’t fit anymore,” Lily called back.
“Just don’t breathe deeply,” her mother said, coming to the door and grinning.
After they had eaten beneath the thick green arbor from which grapes now hung as they hung over the face of the satyr at the Silenus Gate, the two families went for their last stroll together.
“I’ve never seen so many people on the streets,” commented Hanne Haslev.
“It’s because of the German exhibit,” said Mr. Corey.
“Let’s go see,” Mr. Haslev said.
There were lines in front of Mr. Panakos’ store. Lily peeped through the window. The alabaster goat and the wool bags were gone. In their place were machines, beaters and knife sharpeners and can openers, all whirring and circling madly as people looked at them with intent curiosity.
“How strange,” Mr. Haslev remarked as they went on to the pastry shop where they were to have dessert. “Many of the houses have no electricity. Yet the people were so eager … did you see how they looked at those things and touched them?”
“They’ll all get electricity. They have to. And everything will change,” said Mr. Corey, adding pensively, “because it has to.”
The next morning, which was the day before the Coreys were to leave, Paul and Lily and their father went down to the village to find some young man they could hire to help them get their bags to the wharf. It would be simple to pack; there weren’t any cupboards and chests of drawers to empty. As they went by the museum, Costa came out and called to them. He would like to give Mr. Corey a coffee, he said, and the children something sweet to drink.
