The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay

by Andrea Gillies

  On the morning of the day that Paolo arrived from Athens, Nina had wanted to talk about the accident again. Dr. Christos knew that it was a way of preparing for Paolo coming, rehearsing what she’d say to him. She needed to have her story straight. He understood why. He’d been the first at the scene, driven there by Dr. Argyros, who’d stayed to attend to the bus passengers while Dr. Christos and Andros took Nina over the water. It was Dr. Christos who’d found the postcard, when he looked in her bag for ID. It had been convoluted but her intentions had been clear, and he’d taken her intentions seriously; he’d had to; this wasn’t something he was able to keep to himself. He’d shared his knowledge, his fears, with the hospital on Main Island and, once he’d done that, had to fight to get them to release Nina into his care. He’d had to share his anxieties with Doris, who’d be looking after her; he’d had no choice about that, either. He said to the staff and to George that he didn’t feel he could leave Nina alone in her room for long, that everyone was as covertly as possible to keep watch. He’d been anxious about her mental state, so he was relieved to find her talkative and coherent. It was more than relief. He’d found her articulate, immensely attractive, vulnerable, appreciative of him. The attraction was almost overwhelming. He’d assumed, that night on the hill, that it was transitory, his being so drawn to her, that it was just about beauty, but after many hours of conversation the uninvited thing was stronger than ever, the unfathomable, inexplicable sense of belonging. Unsuspected by all who knew him, Dr. Christos was a deeply romantic soul.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Nina went out into the corridor and saw that Paolo was standing outside her room. The horn beeped a second time. He said, “Here we go. That’s our car.”

  “I’ll just be a minute,” she told him. “Two minutes. I’ll see you out there.”

  “I’ll get your bag.” He disappeared inside, and after taking a steadying breath she went back into the office, closing the door behind her. Nurse Yannis and George looked as if they expected her return.

  “Nina,” the nurse said tolerantly.

  There wasn’t time for pussyfooting. “I’m so sorry, Nurse Yannis,” Nina said. “I didn’t know; you should’ve told me.”

  George thought she meant the diagnosis. He said, “She couldn’t tell you what it said in the file.”

  “Not that. About being Mrs. Christos. I didn’t know and I need to apologize.” She stopped herself from repeating that Nurse Yannis should have told her, because it was supposed to be an apology. She could see through the glass upper of the door that Paolo was waiting with the bag over his shoulder, and said, “I have to go but I’m sorry.” She thought, I am constantly apologizing; I have to find different words.

  Mercifully, Paolo gave no hint of having overheard anything of what had taken place. She asked him where they were going.

  “Andros has organized a boat trip,” he told her.

  “Oh no. What? I can’t.”

  “I knew you’d say that, which is why I didn’t tell you before.”

  “But I can’t. My leg. I can’t get onto and out of a boat.”

  “He’s thought of that. Come on. You can’t let them all down.”

  “All? Who’s all? Oh God, do I have to?”

  “It’s just a few people who wanted to give you a send-off. We’re going round to the back of the island. A few drinks and a send-off. People have been making cakes. You have to come.”

  “Are Dr. Christos and Doris coming?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

  “They’re on duty, but we’re invited to dinner with them later. Here in the courtyard. Christos asked if we’d like that and I said yes. Are you all right? You don’t look well. Perhaps I should cancel.”

  “Please don’t,” she said, beginning to go towards the foyer. “I can’t let everybody down.”

  The boat was decorated with strings of Greek flags, and another string of squares of white card, each one marked with a letter in blue paint that spelled out GOODBY NINA, a banner that’d been hung across the outside of the cabin. Paolo saw that Nina had noticed the missing E and forestalled her, saying “Don’t you dare.” Andros had put out a pair of sturdy boards that were used for the elderly, leaning them against the boat and using the main rope to keep the boat tight against the dock, but the angle was difficult on crutches, so he and Paolo took an elbow each and lifted Nina from the harborside. Beneath the banner, a chair awaited her and an upturned crate for resting her leg. When everything was set and she’d given the thumbs-up to say she was comfortable, Andros cast off the lines and fired the engine into a low rumble. They chugged off at a stately pace towards Blue Bay, hugging the shore and slicing through the inertness of the afternoon sea, and Nina was attentive to it all: the way the water moved, the rise and sturdiness of the hill and its colors, the shape of the village and its human bustle, the low autumn sun that cast strong shadows. Slowly they made their way round towards the rockier side of the island. Paolo was quiet, but his face suggested enjoyment, a quiet pleasure in things without need of talking, so Nina pulled her hat down closer and stood and leaned over the side, peering into the deeps. She needed time to think about Nurse Yannis, to remember talks they’d had and consider them in the light of the new reality. She searched her memory for pieces of film about Dr. Christos, finding quotations from him about his marriage, the things he’d said about Doris, the things he’d said quite separately about the nurse. Did it all fit together? She’d become afraid of things that didn’t fit.

  Perhaps he’d noticed the outward signs. Paolo said, “It’s so beautiful here.” He shifted his weight so that his arm touched hers, and nudged her lightly. “Incredibly,” she said.

  “Look up there,” he told her, and she looked up, holding on to her sunhat with one hand across its crown. A herd of goats had reacted to their passing by running for safety in an untidy group, bleating, their bells jingling. Nina lifted her camera to her eye. The faded sands and ochres of the hillside were dotted with blue greens that were themselves peppered with flowers, and striped with the khaki, the mint-green and metallic-leaf glint of olive groves; beyond were the vineyards, whose terracing was like something to do with ancient gods, like carved-out steps leading up to a temple. The boat went on further, until the island was end-on and narrowed. It was a perfect merging point, offering a view to one side of a pink- and toffee-colored pebble beach, and to the other, as Blue Bay receded, of its final strip of pale-yellow sand, the white houses looking down like sentries from the slopes above. The boat rounded the corner, which was dramatically rocky, a jumble of fallen boulders, the sea eddying as it was pulled in all directions, and then they were past the furthest point, the sea calm again. The shoreline was only intermittently accessible here, through the wall of rocks, and few people visited other than to swim from their yachts in its privacy. The boat chugged on past two small coves, through a patch of turquoise water that was undisturbed by weed, and then into navy blue, over a deeper section, before cruising over a shallower jewel green. Now that Nina had decided never to return, this was paradise again.

  Finally they sailed into the shelter of a deeply cut bay and into the shade of the hill, and put down anchor. Cake was brought out, and coffee; Olympia, immaculate as ever in a cream dress and jacket, her hair swept back into a pleat, produced floral tea plates and small silver forks.

  George pointed to a screening row of tall cypresses, dense and darkly green, that had been planted in a rectangle on a lower, flatter part of the hill two hundred yards or so further along. “That’s Ithika’s property,” he said. “He owns the next bay and he’s built a big modern villa there. He’s made a swimming lagoon, with ladders down into it from the rocks, and he’s installed a pontoon to swim out to, for sunbathing on.”

  “Can we go and see?” she asked him.

  “No, there’s an agreement not to. There’s a security guard in the cottage. He keeps watch, and we keep our word.”

  “But doesn’t the road go in between, in front of the h
ouse?”

  “It used to. He had the road moved.”

  Vasilios put a small folding table beside Nina’s chair, and two tiny white cups on it. When Nina took up her crutches so as to return to her seat, Paolo brought his face closer to her ear and said, “I hear you and Christos are going out for dinner, when you come back in November.”

  She’d forgotten that she’d agreed to this; the conversation felt as if it’d happened long ago. Even the house visit earlier that afternoon felt mysteriously distant. Paolo didn’t know — how could he know — what momentousness the day had brought. Nina went to her chair feeling utterly depleted and spent. She wanted to lie down on the deck and curl up and be lulled into sleep. She wanted a mattress on the floor of the boat and a night full of stars. What could she say to Paolo about this projected future dinner date? It was hard to know, particularly as Andros was standing beside her, pouring coffee for both of them from the pot, the dark liquid arcing.

  “It’s all right,” Paolo said. “He knows all about it. Everybody knows all about it. Doris made sure of that.”

  Vasilios, standing to one side with his wife, laughed and waggled a finger. “That is true, my friend,” he said. His wife smiled widely. She reminded Nina of Maria, except for the generous, wide smile.

  “He asked me if it was okay to ask you, and I said that of course it was.” Paolo looked out over the sea, frowning at it, the cup in his hands. “Then he confessed that he’d asked already.”

  “You know that you two are having dinner with the two of them tonight,” George said. “Andros and I are helping out. Personally, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “She fights hard,” Vasilios said. “That is what I must say about Doris. She fights.”

  “I admire that in her,” Paolo said.

  Love can’t be said to be an event. Things that happen quickly can unhappen just as fast; falling can be offset by unfalling, by getting up and carrying on as if falling never happened. But even though all this is true, and wariness natural, and even though Nina had known Paolo all of her life, something occurred as he said these five words — I admire that in her — while looking earnestly at Vasilios; it was something that seemed to happen as if it were an event. Nina looked at him, at the cup in his hand, at the hand itself, at his wrist, at the set of his shoulder, at the set of his jaw, at his eyes, crinkled and dark with amiability, and found she was having a physical reaction to him, one that felt new. It was something beyond the reckoning: the good memories, the many things she could have quoted as good in him. She was aware of the force of his mind, and his kindness, and saw them illustrated in his face. She was aware of his physical self, the outline and musculature, the gently rounded belly, the hint of a second chin: she could take possession of them and felt as if she was beginning to. In her mind, there was something she was being asked permission to allow to happen. It would happen if she gave consent. It was a sort of release, as if in slow-motion through a trapdoor. She let go and was aware of it, the falling, as a soft descent from somewhere to somewhere else. She gave the falling permission to fall further. She said yes to it and her heart swelled with incomprehensible non-thoughts, with warmth. Ideas were feelings and vice versa. She looked at his face — he was still talking to Vasilios — and looked away again. What to do? She thought about going over the side of the boat and swimming for land. She couldn’t stay here: the geography of this gathering was all wrong, its past context of heartbreak, its convivial impending divorce, its apparent emergent relationship with the wrong man. She wanted to stand up and make a speech. “You’ve got it all wrong,” she’d tell them. “I was stupid for a long time, and then for a brief time unhinged.”

  All that could be done about this embryonic and unstable complexity was to keep it uncontaminated by explanations. She said, “Could I have some more coffee?” and rubbed at her upper arms as if she was cold. Still talking to Vasilios and without breaking off, Paolo reached down and picked up Nina’s jacket and put it around her shoulders. They were talking about business, the two of them, about long hours and thankless tasks and low rewards and whether it was all worth it. It was almost as if she was with Paolo for the first time; with him and not just in his company. An old, adopted context had fallen away. What would life be like if it was genuinely one to one? She looked at Paolo’s mouth as he spoke, at the strong lines of his top lip, his hand on the cup, at the way his chin tilted up when he laughed. She wanted to touch him, to run her hand down his spine to where the flesh became convex and muscly. Did he still sleep on his front, now that he lived alone? She wanted to see his face on the next pillow, the half face turned towards her in sleep, and to see his eye open and to see its delight in her. When had she last seen it, that unclouded confidence? The truth was that she hadn’t ever seen it. She wanted to move under his arm and put it diagonally across her body and to adhere, to find and enforce points of physical adhesion. If there was a moment, this was the moment. It would stay with her always.

  Paolo noticed the change in her expression. “What is it?”

  “Nothing, really.” She couldn’t look at him while having these thoughts, afraid he’d read them and even more afraid of witnessing his feeling otherwise. A sudden, sweeping grief came over her and she thought she’d cry out with the melancholy of it. Twenty-five years, and so much of it had been lived as if life had been postponed. Why hadn’t she understood what it was that she had let go by so unmemorialized? She could have had a genius for living and done everything and been diverse and fulfilled: she could have cooked well and painted and been a better friend and done all the million things. Why hadn’t she done the million things?

  You mustn’t become ill again, her mother’s voice said in her mind.

  I know, I know, she answered.

  It’s all still waiting for you, her mother’s voice said. It was okay. It wasn’t really Anna’s voice, but her own.

  “Nina? Are you all right?” Paolo put his hand in hers and she gripped it tightly and he squeezed hers in return. She forced herself to pay attention to what was being talked about.

  “Of course Doris must be there,” Vasilios was saying to George. “She knows that she must stop them being alone on this last night.”

  “There is danger of madness on a last night on a Greek island,” George said, taking the stopper out of a bottle of beer and swigging from it. “And believe me, I know. I fell for it myself. Became emotional about leaving, went to look at a house … and there wasn’t even a woman involved.”

  “Olympia’s sister still waits for you,” Vasilios said, roaring with laughter. “You better do it soon, George, or she will die a virgin.” Olympia was not amused.

  “I am, as ever, only too glad to entertain you,” George said.

  Andros produced a bottle of ouzo. “Perhaps this?”

  Vasilios went and got a crate of tall glasses from the cabin, ready filled with crushed ice, and added the ouzo to each, the liquid filling milky white in its contact with the meltwater. Nina stood up, returning to the boat rail, and drank hers down in three long gulps.

  “Steady there, Tiger,” Paolo told her. “Are you okay?” He looped his arm around her shoulder from behind and she put her hand onto it; he put his mouth to her ear so that only she could hear and said, “I know you didn’t know about Doris.” All she could do was squeeze his arm. “I hope it wasn’t too shocking. I hope it doesn’t spoil your plans.”

  “I don’t have plans.”

  “But you’re still coming back here to spend the winter.”

  “No.”

  “Ah … I wondered.”

  “I’m not coming back.”

  “Well, I have to say I’m relieved.”

  “You are?”

  “You might find yourself in the middle of something.”

  “I’m still reeling. About Doris. All that time … Why didn’t he tell me, why didn’t she tell me?”

  “I imagine they have their reasons.”

  Vasilios had been listening, none
too subtly, and stepped forward now. “It’s not a good idea to stay here, Nina,” he said. “It’s not over, Christos and Doris.”

  “Isn’t it?” Paolo looked surprised. “He gives the impression that they’re about to divorce.”

  “This is the third time,” Vasilios told him.

  “That’s true,” George said. “The third time she has left him. She went back twice. Generally they reunite in the winter when the tourists are gone. But I don’t know about this winter.”

  “I’m not coming back,” Nina said, addressing them all. “I love it here but I won’t be back.”

  “That’s a good decision,” George said. “As for Doris, I think that she is learning finally that it’s hopeless.”

  “But Vasilios said” — Nina turned to look at him — “Vasilios, you said that Doris fights hard.”

  “She tries to keep women away from him,” George said. “He has flings, but they never last. He’s in love with her, you see, although he’d deny it if you asked him. The last one was the Irishwoman. She lasted a week and a half at the villa.”