That summer forever marked the moment when she swam all the way to the island and landed in a place where she could be different from whom she assumed she was. There were so many possibilities. She didn’t know what she was getting away from, but the other language was the boat she fled on.
It turned out that Jack and David longed for company too, and an Italian girl their age was probably an equally exotic novelty for them. David, the older of the two, had deep blue eyes, lighter hair and the look of a melancholic troubadour. He told her she should listen to the Rolling Stones instead of the Beatles and twisted his lips when she quoted from Blue. He asked her whether she liked Pink Floyd, the Doors, Frank Zappa or Led Zeppelin. Emma nodded but didn’t make any specific comment, not wanting to reveal what a beginner she was in terms of rock bands. Jack, the dark-haired one who had spoken to her the previous summer in Kastraki, seemed in awe of his older brother and waited for him to end the interrogation, nodding from time to time. When David was finished, Jack stepped forward and without any preamble asked her whether she’d like to follow them home for tea.
Inside the villa, things were scattered all over the place without logic, as if by a tornado. The kitchen table was covered with breakfast leftovers, potted plants, gardening utensils, masks and flippers, wet swimsuits, baskets filled with tomatoes and onions and stale bread, piles of magazines and newspapers. On the floor there were tools, the wheel of a bicycle, a huge carton concealing a mysterious appliance. An English pop song blared cheesily from a small stereo, and a diffused smell of burned garlic hovered in the air.
The boys’ mother walked into the kitchen barefoot and bra-less, wrapped in a floral tunic. She had a pyramid of frizzy hair, a shining halo of gold. She stroked Jack’s curls, introduced herself as Penny and asked Emma whether she was going to join the boys for tea.
“Peter, come meet lovely Emma!” she sang to her husband.
A balding man with a paunch and a deep tan, intent on digging a hole in the backyard, waved his hand with a musical “Hallo there!”
Emma was impressed by their ease. Nobody seemed to mind or even notice the mayhem, as if this was simply their habitual standard of life.
The boys took Emma to their room—more clothes and wet towels rolled up on the floor—and put a Frank Zappa LP on a small record player full blast, overpowering their parents’ music from the next room. They made Emma listen in religious silence, scanning her face for a reaction. David laughed when she said she wanted to learn how to play the guitar.
“Why you laugh?” she asked.
David blurted out something unintelligible.
“Because you said gheè-tahr.” Jack repeated for her, slowing down the words, his dark eyes holding hers.
“It’s ‘guitar.’ Try,” David said.
She tried a few times, wishing she had never pronounced that word. The feeling of those ungovernable sounds sliding and slushing out of control between palate, teeth and tongue embarrassed her.
“I can’t,” she pleaded.
“It’s okay,” David said. “I like your Italian accent.”
His remark displeased her, because she had no idea she had an accent, and figured it probably made her sound stupid.
“It’s very cool, actually,” Jack added with sudden fervor and smiled at her. Emma blushed, unprepared as she was to receive a compliment from him. It was such a surprise to feel that he could find her interesting.
Then Penny called from the kitchen in a soprano voice and made room on the table for a teapot, toast and butter. Emma looked at a small round jar filled with a dark brown, sticky-looking substance.
“What is this?”
“You don’t know Marmite?” Jack asked, incredulous.
Penny turned from the sink, where she was busy washing something.
“Jack darling, Marmite is a British peculiarity, mostly ignored by the rest of world.”
She came to the table and swiftly spread butter and the brown sticky stuff on a piece of burned toast. She handed it to Emma.
“Here, my love, try your first Marmite sandwich and make a wish.”
Emma bit into it with her eyes closed. The taste was so different from anything she’d ever tried before. The sticky, salty substance married the bitter taste of black tea deliciously. She made her wish. If Peter died of a sudden heart attack, then her father could marry Penny and their life would be filled with pop songs in the kitchen, colorful hippie clothes, Marmite sandwiches and more words in English.
Walking back on the beach toward Iorgo’s, Emma practiced saying the word guitar, repeating it again and again all the way there. Just like a fugitive in a detective story, who needed to erase any trace of his past before getting caught, it was imperative to get rid of any trace of accent for her transformation to be complete. The visit to the boys’ house, the way she’d felt at ease with their parents, understanding every word of their conversation, had made her extremely proud of herself and excited. She had stepped through a curtain into another realm, a wide, mysterious landscape that she had only begun to explore.
Her father, Luca and Monica were already sitting at their usual table under the string of tiny lightbulbs with Mirella next to her father wearing a blank canvas face and absent smile.
“Papà said we didn’t have to wait for you. We ordered our food already,” Monica said emphatically, as if this were some kind of privilege their father had just bestowed on her and Luca.
“Emma, just go and order your food in the kitchen,” her father said.
“I’m having a cheese omelette,” Emma announced when she came back.
“They don’t make omelettes for dinner,” Monica objected.
“Maria is making me one especially. I’m tired of eating Greek salad and meatballs.” After her tea and Marmite toast experience she felt her food choices should be more idiosyncratic.
“You are such a snob,” Luca said.
“Shut up and mind your own business,” she snapped back.
“Why are you saying that, Luca?” the father asked.
“Emma thinks the Greeks are all peasants.” Luca had acquired a dense cluster of blackheads on his nose. At times Emma felt she could never love her brother again because of them.
“That’s ridiculous, Luca. Don’t make assumptions about what other people think.” The father sounded annoyed.
“She thinks she is so—”
“Stop it, I said.”
The father was beginning to grow impatient with them. It had been more than a whole year now of taking nonstop care of them and of an empty bed at night. He was beginning to think he too had a right to his share of happiness. Although Mirella was not the answer—he wasn’t even attracted to her—he was beginning to appreciate her tenaciousness. Sometimes, especially in the middle of the night, during the hours when dreams and insomnia merge into a spiral of gloom and paranoia, he worried his children might end up growing into indifferent, self-centered adolescents, and he realized he had no idea how to prevent this from happening. The exteriors of their bodies were changing so rapidly—every day another bulge, a new ripeness—and soon he wouldn’t be able to look at his daughters in their underwear. How could he foresee what was to happen underneath the surface? But more than that, who—now that their mother was gone—was going to help him shape or straighten their personalities in the event they veered in the wrong direction? What if the terrible accident had forever frozen them? And what if he ended up disliking them, once they would be set in their ways? What did he need to do or learn to raise emotionally sound children, who would turn into generous, independent and confident adults? In the morning these fears dissolved and his children went back to looking like lovely normal kids. He felt guilty and blamed his angst on difficult digestion, knowing, however, that those thoughts would be waiting for him until he found some answers.
Mirella had been waiting for the tension to dissolve. When she thought it had cleared, she recited the lines she’d been preparing all evening.
“I wa
s thinking we could all go on a little trip tomorrow and visit the ancient amphitheater in Epidaurus.” She looked at the children expectantly. It felt as if this idea was part of a bigger plan that involved doing things all together—as if she were now part of the family.
Monica and Luca exchanged a look and remained silent.
“Would you like to do that, children?” she added, perhaps a bit too loudly.
Monica and Luca turned to Emma, but she kept looking at her plate.
“Mirella has asked you a question,” the father prompted them.
They kept a stubborn silence.
The father raised his voice.
“I said answer the question!”
“It’s all right, leave it … if they don’t feel like—” Mirella reached for his arm but he shook her hand away.
The kids stared at the father, mute. Emma felt his fury, like a heat wave slapping her face. It was the first time he was siding with a stranger, on the opposite side, leaving them alone.
Iorgo appeared at the table with their dinner. There was more silence while each one of them got their plate. Then the father turned to Mirella.
“Then the two of us will go. They can stay behind. I’m happier that way.”
And almost before he had finished that sentence Monica started crying.
“Stop it,” her father snapped.
It was incredible, Emma thought, how she could turn her tears on without warning, just like opening a faucet.
“Monica, you can get up from the table if you are going to behave like this,” he said.
She left the table, sniffing. This was pretty bad; he had never been this angry with them. Luca looked at Emma, searching for her complicity, but she was hating him now and wouldn’t give in. Mirella motioned as if to go after Monica, but the father pinned her wrist down to the table.
“Nobody moves,” he said. “Just eat your dinner.”
So they did, and nobody said another word.
The father and Mirella left early the next morning and the kids took the first solo breakfast of their life. They were euphoric: they drank coffee instead of tea, had cake instead of bread and butter and forgot entirely the previous night’s drama. They couldn’t wait for lunch to come to repeat the experience: playing the capable and independent orphans, traveling and dining out on their own. Emma for a moment thought it was uncanny, this sudden desire she had to see both of their parents dead and out of their lives.
“What should we do now?” Monica asked, eagerly.
“You do whatever you want. I’m going to go swimming in a little while,” Luca said, looking around for a sign of Nadia, although she never emerged before eleven.
“You can read a book on the beach. Get your towel and go over there,” Emma told her, slipping away from the table. “I’m going for a walk.”
“Can I come with you?”
“No, you stay here.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You are going to be fine. Just stay here and read until I come back.”
Monica gave her a sullen look, but Emma didn’t relent.
“If you need anything just go into the kitchen and ask Maria, okay?”
When Emma turned around she saw that Luca had left as well and Monica was sitting alone, elbows on the table, holding her round face between her hands. Luca had Nadia, their father had Mirella, and Emma had the English boy as a distraction to cling to. But Monica was still too much of a child to be interested in anybody outside her own family. Emma knew her little sister was probably on the verge of tears again and she felt a pang of guilt for leaving her behind. But she didn’t turn back. She had only a few hours of freedom and knew she needed to take advantage of them.
The door to the villa was open, so Emma peeked inside. The kitchen was silent, on the big table the usual array of rusty spanners and bolts next to half-eaten plates of congealed scrambled eggs, magazines and sandy towels strewn over chairs. Then she heard footsteps and Penny appeared, a towel wrapped around her head, wearing nothing but a tiny acid green bikini bottom with two minuscule strings tied on the hip bone. Her small breasts were just as tanned as the rest of her slim body. She welcomed Emma.
“Hallo, darling!”
She didn’t bother to cover her breasts but grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the table and lit one.
“Are you looking for the boys? Sorry for the clutter, dear, we are terribly disorganized, as you can see.”
Penny sat down at the kitchen table, crossed her legs and blew out the smoke. She looked around the room and sighed.
“God only knows why, no matter how hard I try, it always looks like a pigsty in here.”
Emma wasn’t sure it was okay to keep staring at her breasts but Penny seemed fine with that because she smiled and gestured for her to sit down.
“Jack is with Peter, they went to the hardware store in town. Let me call David for you.”
She called out his name a couple of times, in a prolonged lilt, then whistled as if calling a puppy.
“He’s still asleep, I’m afraid. I’d better wake him up, he needs to get out in the sun and breathe some fresh air before he positively rots up there.”
Penny got up and left the kitchen.
Emma felt her disappointment rise into her face and settle there; she had hoped to be alone with Jack today and to seize this opportunity to try and touch him. She had envisioned their fingers brushing by accident at first and then their hands clasping. Imagining the feeling of his palm against hers had stirred something in her stomach. She didn’t dare imagine anything further although she knew the next step would have to be kissing. It was still too big a step for her, but it was inevitable they would get there. But now Jack was at the “hardware store” (Emma didn’t know yet what the word hardware meant, but it sounded important and she gathered he must be on a serious mission) and she was going to get David instead. But perhaps David, being his big brother, would at least carry a bit of Jack-ness with him while at the same time giving her the opportunity to practice her English. Then—barefoot, slightly puffy and dazed—David appeared in his swimsuit, as if he had just been dragged out of his bed.
“Hallo, Emma,” he said and smiled so sweetly that Emma felt instantly much happier than she expected. Penny reentered the room, still topless and still perfectly at ease. She ran her fingers through David’s blond, matted hair.
“Darling, do you want to have a piece of toast before you go? Otherwise get a cheese pie at the bakery on your way, that’s much easier, here’s some change, luv. Get one for Emma as well. Now off you go, you two, it’s such a glorious day, I don’t want you hanging around the house!”
Penny kissed David on the cheek and puffed out the smoke of her cigarette from the other side of her mouth. David grunted something inaudible and Emma followed him outside into the bright midmorning light.
They walked along the main road, nibbling their fragrant cheese pies without exchanging a word. It was very hot, there was no wind. Nobody was around at that time of day. David took a turn toward the beach, and stopped in front of the jetty.
“Should we go to the island?” he asked her.
Emma had feared this moment all summer long, though she had prepared for it. Yet when the time had finally come, the task seemed colossal. She looked at the island in the shimmering light. It had never looked so far away.
“I don’t have my flippers,” she said, hoping that David might change his mind and come up with a different plan. But he pulled his hair behind his ear and smiled at her again.
“Okay, we’ll take it slow getting there, then.”
Emma prayed as she slowly advanced in her imperfect crawl. She prayed for her breath not to run out, for her legs not to get a cramp, for the water to keep still, for the wind not to rise, for the panic not to overwhelm her. There were so many elements—natural, physical and psychological—that had to be controlled and synchronized in order to avoid her drowning. The island loomed in the distance, looking hopelessly far, each time
she opened her eyes. She prayed and prayed to an unknown God to keep her afloat and breathing. David was always slightly ahead of her; every now and then he turned to check that she was still behind him and raised an arm from the water to signal his presence. Emma tried to wave back, but the movement caused her to drop down, lose her rhythm and drink. The bitter taste of the sea in her mouth felt like the taste of her death and she decided to spare any extra movement. Her heart rate was speeding and her breath was shortening. Just past what seemed the midpoint, she felt a mix of desperation and rage building inside her chest. This would be the end of her, she knew. Just then she opened her eyes again and suddenly the island seemed much closer, almost reachable. She could see David, this time on terra firma, on top of a rock he had just climbed. She could hear him whistling a tune. Then, after only a few more strokes, her feet touched the rocky bottom.
It was done; she had made it. A gust of wind and the drone of the cicadas’ chorus welcomed her to safety. She emerged from the water, her chest still heaving, rivulets of water streaming down to her feet, elated from the exertion like an athlete who has just won a race.
David whistled again, this time to signal his position. He was crouched on a slightly higher rock, looking out. His legs were long and thin like a stork’s, so that his chin came to rest on top of his knees without having to bend. Scrambling up a couple of flat rocks she came up and sat next to him. David remained silent, as if he didn’t want to be disturbed in his contemplation of the stretch of sea between them and the beach. She wondered whether it was up to her to start a conversation but decided it was more grownup to be quiet. She was catching her breath, and anyway it still required an effort on her part to speak English. She had to pay a lot of attention to the sounds; often it felt like guesswork, pasting an unknown word to one she knew, and figuring out the meaning of the phrase that way. In order to keep pace her brain had to quiz and buzz at maximum speed. This was nice, to be quiet in this light breeze, the only sound being the bells of the goats. David lay flat on the rock and closed his eyes. Emma, still sitting upright, gazed at the white strip beneath his belly button, where his skin had not been exposed to the sun and his hip bones jutted forward; there was a thin shadow of fuzzy hair pointing down toward his crotch. Emma took her eyes away guiltily. She looked toward the beach opposite, toward the blue chairs of the taverna, where she could just about make out Monica’s tiny shape sitting on the sand all by herself. She was a good girl, she’d stayed put, as she’d been told to do.
The Other Language Page 3
