Fire on the Island

by Timothy Jay Smith

  As the sun pulled itself high enough to promise another blistering day, she leaned against the balcony’s rail and watched the last women walk off with their sardines. Stavros saw her, and did a little jig imitating the slippery fish before lifting a tub and offering it to her. “Do you want some?” he shouted.

  Did she want some? Yes, she wanted some of his fish and some of him, too. Lydia was perfectly content with her husband snoring away in bed; it didn’t mean that she couldn’t remember the fire the fisherman had once lit in her. She noticed that he wasn’t holding the tub as high as he used to—time had a way of showing itself at unexpected moments. But his smile was as bright as ever and she did want some. Raising an open hand, she shouted, “Five kilos!”

  From the bedroom: “I’m going to kill them both!”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  RIDI SHOOK OUT BLUE TABLECLOTHS while eavesdropping on the argument that had resumed between Lydia and her daughter in their upstairs apartment. Ridi, an Albanian youth barely in his twenties, had arrived in the country six months earlier determined to learn Greek. He wanted a real shot at making a new life, unwilling to settle, like many of his compatriots, for getting by on a few easy phrases. Now he had a second language goal—to be able to woo Athina—and challenged himself to learn five new words a day. Topping his list that morning was the word for heart. Kardia. He had looked it up before sending her a flashing one. He never expected her mother to see it, though he heard kardia enough times to assume that’s what they were arguing about, and worried Lydia might step onto the balcony and fire him on the spot.

  “Ena kafédaki?” Nick tried to get his attention by asking for coffee in Greek.

  “Five minutes!” Ridi answered, straining to understand an especially quick exchange upstairs.

  “Five minutes?”

  Denied coffee long enough, Nick looked for another option. Among the half dozen establishments scattered along the wharf, Vassoula’s was still the only one open. She had perched herself on a high stool at her front door, smoking a cigarette, and smirked when she saw him looking around for another place for coffee. He decided to wait the doubtful five minutes and stayed put.

  Besides, it gave him a chance to reconnoiter the port. From the photographs he’d seen in guidebooks, he hadn’t realized that the harbor was largely man-made. The line of restaurants, some touching each other, followed the natural curve of the land to a point where a long dock paralleled back along the shore to create a protected port. A drive separated Lydia’s Kitchen from the next building, which had a sign over its door reading Elliniki Aktofilaki. Greek Coast Guard. Nick looked for the fuel tank that he expected to be there, and it was: black, looming behind the restaurants, more menacing than pictured in the guidebooks.

  In the overhead apartment, the mother and daughter stopped arguing and a door slammed.

  Ridi stared at the corner of the building, waiting for one of them to appear. When he saw Athina, he grinned like the love-smitten kid he was, but she wasn’t smiling when she marched up to him.

  “Now you got me in real trouble!” she hissed, and stomped up some short steps to disappear in the kitchen.

  “Coffee?” Nick ventured again this time in English.

  “She sets up now,” Ridi told him.

  That morning Athina’s setting up the kitchen sounded more like a teardown as she clanged pots, ripped open drawers, and slammed cupboards. In Ridi’s estimation, no one pouted more endearingly, which was a good thing since Athina pouted frequently. When she flung a spoon into the sink, he stopped shaking out a tablecloth to admire her.

  “Those tables won’t set themselves,” Lydia said, coming up behind him, “and there’s a man over there who needs breakfast.” She went up the steps, but paused on the porch that ran the width of the building, wide enough only for two small tables. She checked her purse for something and went inside. Mother and daughter started arguing almost immediately, passing between English and Greek, and since Nick spoke both, he understood it had something to do with the fire the night before.

  Ridi interrupted his eavesdropping by asking, “You want breakfast?”

  “I’ll take the English breakfast,” Nick ordered.

  “No Greek?”

  “No, English.”

  “No English?”

  “Yes, the English breakfast, and no sardines. With coffee.”

  “What coffee you like?”

  “Caffeinated.”

  Scratching his head, the young waiter went into the kitchen.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  A MINUTE LATER, ATHINA FOLLOWED her mother onto the porch. “You make it sound like I started Grandma’s fire!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Lydia replied, exasperated. “I’m just asking you to telephone her and tell her you’re sorry it happened. It’ll make her feel better.”

  “All right, I’ll call her! I still can’t do the whole shift.”

  “Why not?”

  “What about my costume?”

  “What about your costume?”

  “It’s not finished.”

  “Is that my problem?” Lydia glanced over at Nick. “Why hasn’t that man been served?”

  “His order confused Ridi and I haven’t had a chance to straighten it out because I had to talk to you.”

  “What did you order?” Lydia called to him.

  “English breakfast with coffee,” he called back.

  “English breakfast with coffee,” she repeated to her daughter. “How complicated is that?”

  “He asked for ‘kafeneion’ coffee and we don’t know what kafeneion coffee is.”

  “Caffeinated coffee,” Nick corrected her. “Even one bean will do.”

  Lydia said, “I think the man wants his coffee.”

  The girl went back inside in a huff.

  Lydia went down the short steps and approached his table. “You’re the man who saved my mother’s dog last night, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “If his name is Dingo and he’s a heavy smoker, I am.”

  “People are calling you Superman, the way you just showed up, rescued him, and then disappeared before anyone could thank you. I’m Lydia, and I thank you.”

  “I’m Nick. Nick Damigos.”

  They shook hands.

  “Damigos? Are you Greek?”

  “Greek American. Are you Greek?”

  “I know, I don’t look it.” Lydia didn’t. She had carrot hair and freckles, certainly not a Greek’s typical olive skin and black hair. “Around here it’s usually best to blame that on Alexander the Great. But in my case, I’m half English. My mother married a Greek. You seem to know something about fires.”

  “It’s bad luck having one, that’s for sure. Is Dingo okay?”

  “Mum says he won’t eat anything.”

  “That happens with dogs and fires.”

  “So, are you visiting for a few days?”

  “I’m working on a novel,” Nick lied. He had used the cover before, giving him an excuse for asking questions, and as the FBI agent posted to Athens, he asked a lot of them.

  “A novel set here?” Lydia asked.

  “It might be. I’m still looking for my story.”

  “Not very far along, are you?”

  “You sound skeptical.”

  “We get a lot of writers.”

  “Anyone famous?”

  “William Golding.”

  “You’re too young to have met him.”

  “My mother met him.”

  “He wrote Lord of the Flies here?”

  “That came later. Like you, he was still looking for his story.”

  Nick laughed. “Okay, you got me. Who knows? Maybe I’ll win a Nobel Prize, too!”

  “Write about the fires,” Lydia suggested.

  “The fires? There’s been more than one?”

  “There’ve been eleven of them. I’ll show you.” She unfolded her map and pointed to a line of numbered circles dotting both sides of a narrow canyon. “Eleven fires in eleven mon
ths. The first one was here, and last night’s here at my parents’ house. Each fire has come closer to the village.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I’m glad you can because not everybody does. They’d rather blame the fires on the refugees who sometimes cross through the hills to get to the main town.”

  “That doesn’t make sense for a lot of reasons.”

  “Try telling that to people who want to believe anything bad about other people. The only sense I can make of it is that someone is threatening to burn down the village, and if that’s true, then that’s probably his target.” Lydia pointed to the fuel tank behind the Coast Guard station.

  “A water tower?” Nick asked, playing dumb.

  “It’s for petrol—”

  A gray patrol boat interrupted her with its horn as it rounded the dock to enter the small harbor. Crammed on its deck were dozens of refugees in orange life jackets.

  “—for that boat,” Lydia continued. “Shit. A raft must have capsized. Athina!”

  Nick knew she was right. The Coast Guard only picked up refugees already in the water or at serious risk of capsizing. He’d witnessed other rescues, and the group on the patrol boat’s deck looked the norm: soaking wet, huddled together for comfort, and totally silenced by the enormity of what they were experiencing.

  Athina stepped onto the restaurant’s small porch. Ridi followed her. They watched as the boat edged up to the dock. A guardsman jumped from its bow to tie it up. He secured a second line at the stern. The two guardsmen still on board stopped the refugees from standing up all at once, then pointed to people when it was their turn to disembark. Infants were passed over heads to hands reaching back for them. Slowly they formed a line along the dock. The only sound was a baby’s plaintive cry that carried over the water.

  “I’ll make sandwiches,” Athina said.

  “I’ll help,” offered Ridi.

  “We’ll all help,” Lydia said, and called next door to Vassoula, “Is your brother awake yet?”

  “I’m awake,” Takis said, and appeared in the doorway running his fingers through his thick black curls. “I heard the horn. How many?”

  “Fifty or sixty. Looks like a lot of kids.”

  “Good thing I restocked yesterday.” He ducked back inside, but not before exchanging a glance with Nick, who noticed his eyes were bluer than the sea.

  Nick volunteered to help and joined the others inside Lydia’s Kitchen, which he discovered was only a kitchen with no inside tables. He’d grown up in a Greek restaurant, and pondered the extra challenge of having only outdoor seating while slicing tomatoes for their assembly-line sandwiches: slices of white bread slapped together with a square of yellow cheese, a round of unidentifiable processed meat, and a piece of tomato until he ran out. As they worked, they watched the guardsmen go down the line of refugees, checking their IDs and writing down their names.

  “Are there more tomatoes?” Nick asked.

  Lydia shook her head. “I bought all the grocery had. So only women and children get sandwiches with tomatoes. But you can take that box of apples outside.”

  He did, and saw that Takis had readied bottled water, small cartons of juice, sesame bars, and a stack of blue plastic bags. Lydia came out with a tray of sandwiches.

  “Everybody gets a sandwich and an apple,” Lydia instructed Nick. “Anyone pregnant gets two of each.”

  Athina and Ridi brought out two more trays.

  “And everybody gets a bottle of water from Takis,” Athina said. “Yeia sou, Takis!”

  “Yeia sou, Athina!”

  “They’re coming,” Lydia told them.

  Everybody glanced around to watch the boat’s commander lead the refugees off the dock. His white uniform was a sharp contrast to their drab clothes; and he was taller than all of them, who, burdened with kids and belongings, struggled to keep up with him. At the bottom of the dock’s narrow steps, another guardsman instructed them to toss their life jackets into a garbage bin. The captain brought them to where they waited behind tables with the trays of sandwiches.

  “Good morning, Captain Tsounis,” Lydia greeted him.

  “Good morning, Lydia,” he said. “Fifty-three adults plus ten kids.”

  “Anyone injured?”

  “No injuries, and no drownings either, but we fished a few out of the water. The captain shook his head in disbelief. “Putting sixty-three people on a raft made for thirty. How can someone do that?”

  The captain’s chestnut brown eyes filled with sadness at the injustice of the refugees’ plight before he turned back to enter the Coast Guard station. Then the miserable lot, encouraged by guardsmen, shuffled forward—soaked, somber, and suspicious when offered the sandwiches. One man rubbed his thumb and forefinger together to ask how much. “Nothing. You pay nothing,” Lydia made them understand. “Free. No money.” Their initial suspicion over, the refugees had a second one: what was in the sandwiches? They peeled back the spongy bread and looked unhappily at the unidentifiable meat. Lydia was ready for that question, and held up two photos: a picture of a pig with a big X through it and a picture of a chicken inside a green circle, which prompted her to cluck and flap her elbows like chicken wings. Some of the children laughed, which was why Lydia always did it, and the word spread: free food, chicken, no pork. Then everyone started shoving to get to it. “Make a line! A line!” Lydia motioned them into one. “There’s plenty for everyone!”

  Some gobbled down their sandwiches on the spot, while others saved them. Mostly Syrians, the women were predictably wary and shy, but the men touched their hearts and thanked them profusely. The four of them working together dispatched the refugees quickly, but they backed up at Takis’s table where he handed out water and sesame bars while also helping put all the things they were trying to juggle into the plastic bags. Again people started to get pushy, and Nick said, “I’ll help him.”

  In a few steps he was next to Takis and grabbed one of the bags. “My first job was bagging groceries.”

  “Everybody gets a sesame bar and water. Kids get the juice.”

  “How many children do you have?” Nick asked a woman.

  “Three,” her husband answered for her.

  Nick put three cartons of juice in the bag.

  “Please, one for my husband,” she asked. “He is so very sick.”

  The man did look ill: gaunt, pale, and drooping with exhaustion.

  “It’s okay, give him one,” Takis said. “Give one to anybody who asks. They aren’t used to asking for anything, so if they want juice, they really need it. I have more inside.”

  They worked with a sense of urgency. The refugees were hungry and traumatized. Later, Nick would think of them as a tsunami that swept in and washed as quickly back out. In ten minutes, they had come and gone, carrying away something to eat and water to wash it down. Most thanked them profusely, as if they had been given a feast. “How often does that happen?” he asked.

  “Almost every day,” Lydia said. “We feed them here in the port when they arrive. If they spend the night, there’s a volunteer committee that makes more sandwiches for dinner.”

  “A lot more land on the beaches and walk to town,” Takis added. “There are lots of them, really, but they’re not really here. They’re almost not around. It’s weird.”

  “So where are they going?” Nick asked, referring to the refugees the guardsmen were leading away.

  “To a field up behind an old police station. There are some blankets and a couple of plastic tarps they can crawl under if it rains.”

  “Sounds pretty basic.”

  “For this village, it’s pretty good,” Takis replied.

  “It’s more than pretty good,” Lydia retorted. “A lot of people would prefer they drown than be rescued. Well, I’m off to see the mayor. Ridi, make sure Superman gets his breakfast and he’s not to pay for it.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “Of course it’s not, but that’s how we’re going to do it. Wish
me luck finally convincing him to relocate the tank.”

  “Good luck, and thanks for the idea for a story. About the fires.”

  “You better write it fast. Unless that tank is moved by the end of next month, we might not be here.”

  “Why next month?”

  “We’ve had eleven fires in eleven months. To some people, twelve months sounds like a round number, or an anniversary, or simply a compelling date. Enjoy your breakfast.”

  She walked off, and Takis said, “Thanks for helping.”

  “No problem.” Nick stuck out his hand. “We didn’t really meet. I’m Nick Damigos.”

  “Takis Vatis.”

  They shook hands.

  “This is your sister’s bar?”

  “I live in Melbourne. I’m helping her for a while.”

  “That’s a long ways to commute.”

  “Her husband died. I promised her a year.”

  “I’m sorry for the bad joke.”

  “That’s okay. What about you?”

  “I’m here a few days working on a book. I’m a writer.”

  “Are you famous?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Come by later and tell me anyway,” Takis suggested. “We open for sunset. The first drink is on the house.”

  “Every night, or just the first night?”

  “I could make it happen every night.”

  Nick grinned.

  Athina appeared with his breakfast.

  “I guess I’m finally eating,” Nick said, and took a seat at one of Lydia’s blue tables. “So it is a proper English breakfast.”

  The girl scowled at Vassoula, who had returned to her stool by her bar’s door once the refugees had passed. “I suppose she said my mom’s not really English, too. She’s always saying stupid things like that. Just because my grandma grew up in Australia doesn’t mean we’re not English if my grandma was English to start with. My mom is so ready to kill her!”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t tell her. I don’t want my breakfast to be implicated in a murder.”

  “Are you Superman? I bet Ridi that you are, so I hope you are.”

  “What did you bet him?”

  “A kiss.”

  “A kiss?”

  “We each bet a kiss.”

  “So who loses?”