Beautiful Animals

by Lawrence Osborne

  But people don’t just disappear, Naomi had been thinking all along. The enormity of this problem was as great as the problem of not concealing their bodies. She would have to make it up as she went along.

  After all, it wasn’t true that people don’t disappear. They disappear all the time. Any insurance agent could tell you that, and they often did if you asked them.

  —

  At nine Sam went back down to the port, leaving Naomi and Carissa in the house. At Kamini she stopped for a beer at Kordylenia’s, overlooking the rocks and the moonstone sea, and calmed herself in readiness for the family evening meal. They would ask her where she had been and she would say she had been with Naomi wandering the backstreets of the port. There was nothing more to it than that. She looked down at her hands and the sight of them filled her with revulsion, even though she had scrubbed them so clean that they looked whiter than usual. Yet she was now so tired that she wouldn’t be able to act suspiciously even if her nervousness betrayed her. She would eat quickly and then go to bed and see if it had been a bad dream after all. If her mother started asking questions she would cut her short: Amy was eternally suspicious of the alarming possibility of a Greek boyfriend. Sam would have to disarm her.

  She ate a plate of fried sardines and doubled down on the Mythos beers. You couldn’t resist a beer called Mythos. She held her tears back and finally they ceased pressurizing her eyes. It would be all right, she told herself. Time would smooth it over like the grass on their shoddy graves. She turned to look at the interior of the small restaurant, and she noticed that the men sitting there playing backgammon were looking her way. It was as if there was something odd about her now, a stigmata that she couldn’t see herself. She wanted to yell a “Fuck you” at them, or at least a “Skatofatsa.” But instead she raised a hand and called over a waiter.

  “May I have some bread? Toasted?”

  When it came she ate it with oil, oblivious to the gluten. Somehow she no longer cared about it. She went home afterward, suddenly quickened and emboldened. On the porch the Haldanes were at the table with John Coltrane on the stereo, and in the event she saw at once that they had suspected nothing at all. The faces were open, essentially oblivious.

  In fact, her father said as she appeared, “Chris and I spent the whole day fishing. We didn’t catch a damned thing.”

  Her mother was gentle toward her, the maternal eyes curiously empty of their normal anxiety. “How was your day, baby?”

  Sam sat wearily and helped herself to some of the feta salad which had been set on the table in a large ceramic bowl.

  “It was nice, I guess. Naomi and I explored the port up by the mountain. The Codringtons have all these friends up there.”

  “Old bohemians, eh?” her father chimed in.

  “Yeah, old bohemians. We didn’t see any, though.”

  “They all came because of Leonard Cohen, and now they’re stranded.”

  Sam turned and looked her brother in the eye. He was the only one among them with a devious turn of mind. Now his gaze was mocking and disbelieving.

  “The whole day exploring?” he said.

  “It’s better than fishing.”

  “Does Mr. Codrington know Leonard Cohen?”

  “Probably. He didn’t say.”

  “I bet Dad’s jealous,” Chris said.

  “Did you have lunch with the family up there?” Amy then asked.

  “No, her father and stepmother weren’t there. I’m not sure they’re even on the island right now.”

  “That’s funny,” Jeffrey said. “I was sure I saw them last night in the port. I didn’t go up and say hello because I had the feeling they don’t like me. But I’m sure I saw them.”

  “Maybe they left this morning, then.”

  “Maybe they did. But last night, anyway, they were living it up at the Pirate. I’m pretty sure it was them.”

  Sam went up to her room, lying with the lights off for a long time. She let the tears flow as copiously as they wanted, and eventually they dried up of their own accord as well and she became lucid again. She felt betrayed, but not in a way that she could quite explain.

  Of course, it was she herself who had insisted on coming with Naomi to her house. But Naomi had let Sam be drawn into the events, as she had all along, but without telling her why she needed her. It was because Naomi wanted an accomplice for the times ahead when things might get unpleasant. She needed a foil of some kind—it was not clear for what.

  Ahead of them stretched the rest of the summer, now in ruins. As it evolved she would have to play more and more of a game to keep herself above suspicion. The only solution would be to get off the island and go home, or go anywhere away from Greece. But her parents had already paid for the house in advance, and there was no way they would let her leave by herself. She was cornered, and Naomi held the keys to her delectable open-air prison. It was a reason to wonder if she had misjudged her new friend. But she would wait and see what Naomi said to her from then on. It was possible that she was too upset to understand on the first night of a catastrophe.

  —

  As soon as Sam had gone, Naomi and Carissa went back out into the nocturnal garden and smoked some cigarettes. They stared at the uneven ground, and horror blossomed inside them silently to which words couldn’t be matched.

  “What now?” Carissa said in the end.

  “I don’t know. We’ll wait and see what happens. I don’t think they had a busy social schedule this month, did they?”

  “They told me they were going to have drinks with the Korders tomorrow night. Other than that—”

  “Damn. I’ll call them tomorrow and say they’re indisposed.”

  “Indisposed? You know how gossip works here.”

  “I’ll say they went to the mainland for a few days. The Korders won’t think twice about it.”

  Carissa nodded, half convinced, because it was lame, but it would have to do.

  “We’ll have to improvise,” Naomi went on. “What else can we do but improvise?”

  She went into the house and came back with an envelope with the money she’d promised. She asked Carissa to count it, and when she did she found that it was twenty thousand euros instead of fifteen. Naomi immediately put a hand on her arm.

  “Don’t say anything. It’s for you. I feel terrible for putting you in this situation, so just take it. It’s the least I can do.”

  The maid said nothing and accepted the gift. For her, it was a stupendous amount.

  They went inside and made sandwiches and ate them with brandy from Jimmie’s stash. They played some jazz and lay on the sofas, smoking in order to banish through a trivial defilement the onset of guilt. The somberness of their mood, however, was soon reflected by the pall of smoke that formed around the dingy old chandelier that Phaine had bought in Kifissia an age ago when Mitsotakis was still prime minister. But Naomi resolved to herself to think only of the future from then on.

  FOURTEEN

  In the following days the island withered under a heat sweeping in from Africa. Toward midday the sky had the cold fineness of powdered silver, but at twilight it was still light enough that the mainland could be clearly seen, like a brooding foreign country, magnified by the very water that separated it from the wealthier sojourners on the island. When the wind fell in the suffocating afternoons even the coastal villages were lulled and their paths were baked into a dustless hush that made sleep seem inevitable. People sat inanimately in the shade, their eyes wide open as if waiting for the relief of dark and nothing more, and the American girl had eventually, over a number of idle days, formed the strange idea that all cobwebs in the trees had fallen like herself into a suspended animation.

  Along the path to Mandraki, she and Amy made their way shortly after eight, as they had done since the first day of their arrival, mother and daughter locked in a private mental duel of their own, a duel that grew more grueling every day. Amy had come to the conclusion that her daughter was losing her focus and vi
tality; she was slipping into a special summer depression that she had never seen before. It must have to do with the Codrington girl. One day, as they passed the little restaurant above the cove, she asked Sam about Naomi’s father and stepmother. She had not seen them in the port for a while.

  “I don’t know about their movements,” the girl said sullenly. “Naomi told me that they go to parties on other islands. They do their own thing.”

  “Other islands? I didn’t know there were any other islands, socially speaking.”

  Her thwarted snobbery was roused.

  “Maybe we don’t understand the whole scene here yet.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything to understand, Mom. I’ve given up trying to understand Europeans anyway. It’s exhausting. If you don’t understand them it’s just the same. They behave just like they did before, and so do we.”

  “That’s a little defeatist, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think the Codringtons think about us for one second. Not even half of one second.”

  “I didn’t say they did. But still—it’s annoying.”

  “What’s annoying?”

  “The fact that I don’t know about these other islands. I should have done some research.”

  “Why don’t you read Tolstoy instead? It’s perfect for that, this place. Just read fucking Tolstoy.”

  Amy’s short laugh reached the boys.

  When they were settled, and had drunk their first coffee of the morning, Amy asked her if Naomi was really going to be what she called a long-term investment.

  “You mean as a friend?” her daughter asked.

  “Even as a summer friend. Maybe you’re spending too much time with her. It’s worse than a Greek boy. Now I wish you had a Greek boy. A Greek boy wouldn’t be so mysterious.”

  “What’s mysterious?”

  “I don’t know. The two of you. You’re not sleeping with her, are you? If you are, you can tell me. I won’t tell your father.”

  “Of course I’m not sleeping with her.”

  “I’ve got nothing against this girl, Sam. But you’re not yourself lately. Why don’t you go to a few parties on your own? It seems to me you could just hang out at Pirate Cove by yourself and make some American friends.”

  “But I don’t want any American friends.”

  “You know what I mean. Just go out without Naomi. Maybe she’s a little too English for you. It makes her too overbearing—”

  “Not at all.”

  But really Sam just wanted to be alone. At midday she left her mother at the hotel and walked around the headland by herself. She passed the rock where Naomi and she had lain that first day and continued on into the wilderness where the thistles grew. She was suddenly sobbing to herself without knowing why, and below her the dark and churning sea offered a tempting annihilation. It would be an act of pure hatred, not self-hatred, and it would destroy everyone she knew because—it was just possible—they deserved to be destroyed. When she was far from Mandraki, in a place where no one passed, she stripped naked and clambered down to the sea. The water there was much colder and she endured it for ten minutes before climbing back up into the rocks. Naomi used to tell her how much she swam there alone. Now she had told her to lie low for a while and avoid contact with her. They had to wait and see what happened.

  As Sam lay in the sun and dried off, her rage subsided. When she went back to Mandraki she found that her mother had left and she walked back to Hydra town as slowly as she could, lost in unpleasant thought. She sat morosely at the Pirate, and soon enough, as her mother had predicted, the young Americans materialized all around her and within a few hectic minutes she was swept up in their windup toy momentum. It was not entirely unwelcome. By then she had spent four days alone with her family and she was beginning to feel the mortifying effects. Like her, the boys were on the island for the summer, for the long haul so to speak. Like her they were finding it charmingly claustrophobic. Why didn’t she come with them to another party at another house? There was the promise of dope and ouzo and people who spoke the same slang as herself. Most of all, she wouldn’t have to spend the whole evening playing Scrabble with her father.

  They went up as a group through the angled lanes, a boy with his arm around her. She had knocked back four shots of ouzo, but her legs were still steady. There was a house belonging to one of their fathers. A wide sea-captain terrace with the panorama of Hydra around it and low Turkish tables where the boys cut lines of coke. The boy who had sweet-talked her on the way up told her that they had met before, at the painter’s house, and that he knew the English girl she had been with that night. Their parents were friends.

  “I kind of thought you two were together. It’s cool if you are.”

  “That’s the second time today someone has said that. I’m not with her. I’m not with anyone. I don’t need to be with anyone. I haven’t seen her in days.”

  “I have. I saw her at a bar three nights ago. She was totally wasted.”

  “Naomi?”

  “She was sitting there alone.”

  “She’s a free woman, isn’t she?”

  “Didn’t say she wasn’t. There’s a lot of gossip about her on the island.”

  “I don’t want to hear it. If people don’t like her, that’s their problem, not mine.”

  “Well, obviously. I didn’t say I agreed with it or believed it.”

  But you want to say it anyway, she thought.

  “The old people say she’s daimonizetai.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Possessed. It’s because of stuff she did when she was a child.”

  “They can remember what she did twenty years ago? It’s better for us that no one can remember what we did twenty years ago.”

  “Twenty years ago…I was one.”

  “So was I. But you know what I mean.”

  “Some of them can remember the children of the 1950s, let alone the 1990s. My parents say she was a little wild but not possessed.”

  “I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean, possessed.”

  “I guess they mean it in a Greek way.”

  “What is the Greek way?”

  “I think they believe in spirits in a different way.”

  “Even now,” she said, nodding.

  “They know what they mean, though. It’s very specific.”

  His name was Toby. Suddenly he had grown more sympathetic. He too was on summer vacation, but from Princeton. He was in his first year there. She asked him if he had grown up on Hydra. His family, he said, had spent their summers there since before he could remember. He didn’t speak very good Greek. His father had bought their house at the same time that Jimmie Codrington bought his. They knew each other through the art market.

  “Or the local chapter of alcoholics,” she said.

  “Or that. It’s a possibility. They all know each other. They’re in London now, though. I have the house to myself.”

  “Where is it?”

  He pointed to the jumble of houses tucked on top of each other. It was there among hundreds of others now forming a maze of lights in the gathering dusk.

  “I’ll come visit if you invite me,” she said.

  “You’re invited for sure, Miss Haldane. You really ought to change your last name, by the way. It sucks. You could keep your first name and then change the second one. Sam Smith?”

  “I like it.”

  “Samantha Smithereens?”

  They each did a line of the coke, but she remembered why she had always disliked this particular drug. It did nothing for her. It left her irritated and overactive. One didn’t always want to be too awake. The boys were playing guitars and drinking heavily. She thought that most of them were insidiously boring, tanned but fleshless. Toby was the exception; she had his attention. His eyes were quick and active, there was no toxicity in them. Besides, he knew about the Codringtons, which was useful. It was disconcerting to think how little she herself knew about them. She knew more about
their death than about their life, but maybe Toby could fill her in a little. They were growing rapidly closer, and the idea of sex was becoming more likely. It would, in fact, make everything easier.

  Her mother would even like Toby. A nice young Princeton man, backed by a good family and a fair amount of willpower. He was a bit more than that, but it was doubtful whether Amy would see his potential. They left shortly after midnight and she called home briefly as they clambered up the opposing hillside to the house he had pointed out two hours earlier. On the way they stopped at a late-night taverna and ate some souvlaki and downed a couple of bottles of Mythos. He too was by now addicted to Mythos. In this intervening period the drug sank into her and she felt delirious. They talked about college. Seen from the perspective of Greece and a slow hot summer, however, it seemed disturbingly trivial. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with the rest of his time at Princeton; she was already waiting for college to end and something else to begin. He wanted to know what it would be.

  “My father says I should go into journalism. He doesn’t understand that journalism is over—long over.”

  “Mine thinks I should be a lawyer. He has a point. But he knows I won’t.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “I’ll drift for a bit afterward. Maybe I’ll come back here and get a job in a hotel.” Her voice trailed off, she couldn’t help it.

  He said, “Are you sure you want to come up? You don’t seem sure.”

  “I have anemia sometimes. That’s why I look pale.”

  “I didn’t say you looked pale. I said you looked unsure.”

  “But I’m sure.”

  They climbed up to the empty house and let themselves in. It was so hot that it was more comfortable to lie on the terrace, where Toby had dragged his mattress for the previous few nights. It was there they began kissing.

  It was a relief. The tension that had been building up inside her suddenly unwound and she let herself go with an anarchic mood. But they had drunk so much that they soon fell asleep. Before slipping into unconsciousness she looked up and saw a half-moon gloating over the port, both a portent and a warning. She slept for four hours without dreams. But she was aware within that sleep of seabirds wheeling above them and crying into the dark. What woke her in the end was the sound of her own voice. She was sitting upright and a loud scream—her own—had shaken Toby awake as well. His arm was extended across her shoulders in order to calm her down. “What is it?” he was saying, as if talking to a child, and as she opened her eyes she saw someone walk away from the terrace and melt into the darkness. Drenched in sweat, she could see that it was almost dawn. The chorus had begun. They decided to get up and go back down to the port. “Did you have a nightmare?” he asked her. She shook her head and said it was the coke. She shouldn’t have done it. “Yes, but you did,” he said slyly, and he took her hand for the downward return journey. It was an unnecessary thing to say, a slightly cruel thing. Out of character, she thought.