Fire on the Island

by Timothy Jay Smith

  Neither could Nick. He recognized the red shirt and mustard pants from the ruined house, and his own purloined shoes were on the boy’s feet. He was the kid who Nick accidentally stepped on in the church. The boy couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen, with a downy black moustache auditioning on his lip, and clearly he was going to be tall; his arms and legs comically stuck out of his clothes. Nick had almost convinced himself that it was Omar living in the ruined house. What he wore made it clear that it was this strange boy instead.

  Ridi brought a menu which Koufos made a point of studying before pointing to several items. The waiter took the menu from him, turned it right-side up and handed it back, evoking snickers from nearby tables. The boy, unable to hear the remarks but only seeing their smiles, laughed back making a chirpy, high-pitched sound. When he scooted back his chair and stood up, disappointment palpably passed through the crowd. No one wanted him to fail in his effort to order dinner.

  The boy, though, wasn’t leaving, and signaled for Ridi to follow him. He wound through the tables, and when he saw something he wanted, he pointed to the person eating it; and then, like a caricature artist, exaggerated something about that person. It was his way of naming the dish: the meat the man scratching his head ordered, or the vegetables for the woman touching up her lips. Over years of scavenging food scraps, he’d come to recognize the regulars, and lampooned them beautifully: the peevish birders’ perpetual something-smells-bad wiggling of their noses, someone else’s haughty posture, Shirley’s flamboyant toss of a scarf over her shoulders. It was all good-natured, and everyone, even those less kindly portrayed, appreciated the humor in what was unexpectedly turning into a dinner show about a deaf kid ordering his first meal in a restaurant.

  Next, zeroing in on Nick’s anchovies, the guileless boy recognized him from the beach, and gave a guilty glance at Nick’s shoes on his own feet. Nick shrugged, which encouraged the boy to lift his arms and imitate Nick walking barefoot over the beach pebbles, even reenacting a couple of small stumbles. The crowd thought he was dancing, and loved it when Stavros picked up his bouzouki and played a riff from Zorba’s Dance. A few people took up clapping rhythmically, but the deaf boy, never in synch with them, stopped on his own beat.

  The harbor lights dancing on the water, the gently rocking boats, the easy chatter along the wharf all belied the threat only steps from where they sat. Nick conjured an image of the stalwart tank perched on concrete footings suddenly exploding. He knew it could happen because someone was determined to make it happen, and he guessed that Koufos might have had two chances to see the arsonist: when he lit the dud detonator that never caught fire, and when he returned with a second detonator that did catch fire. The boy had found the dud, but had he seen the arsonist? Nick needed to know even if it meant blowing his own cover. The threat to the village was too imminent.

  He unzipped his daypack and removed the dud. He put it on the table and reset a couple of cigarettes that had come loose. Koufos’s eyes widened when he recognized it and was ready to bolt. Nick motioned that everything was okay. The boy didn’t need to be afraid. Never breaking eye contact with him, he asked the people around him, “Who has a lighter? I need a lighter, please!”

  Someone slipped him one. He flicked it and touched the flame to a cigarette butt stuck in the glob of white plastic. Then he pretended to light the others, moving from one to the next as if lighting candles on a birthday cake while the boy watched him intently. Who did it? Nick silently asked with a shrug and waved the lighter at the crowd.

  He pretended to light another and pointed to a man. Did he?

  Another cigarette. Did she?

  Another cigarette. Who?

  He cupped his hands for breasts. Was it a woman?

  He stroked his beard. Or a man?

  Koufos finally shook his head. No.

  No what? No man? No woman? No what?

  Koufos plucked all the cigarettes from the Styrofoam and set them aside. Then picking one up, he put it between his lips, lit and stuck it upright in the plastic.

  He looked at Nick. Do you understand?

  Nick shook his head. He wasn’t sure.

  Koufos brought a second butt to his lips, lit it, and reset it in the Styrofoam. Now do you understand? his expression asked.

  Nick did. The cigarettes hadn’t been lit like birthday candles. The arsonist had lit each one like the cigarette it was before sticking it into the detonator. He motioned for Koufos to light more of them. He did, and the boy’s proclivity to mimic began to change his body language. He was morphing into the arsonist, and getting to the point of revealing who it was, when Jura stepped out of the shadow behind him.

  “Ruben?” she asked hesitantly.

  Koufos was oblivious to her and lit another cigarette.

  “Ruben?”

  He inhaled.

  “Ruben!”

  Exhaled.

  She dropped a hand on his shoulder.

  Startled, he whirled around.

  She staggered back, shrieking.

  He fell back, too, making a pitiful cry. He had never seen such a madwoman. Sunken eyes, her mouth a round black cavity, arms twitching and hair flecked with phlegm. Blood spreading between her legs on a hospital gown. Koufos’s only instinct was to run. He dashed past her and sprinted down the wharf, unable to hear her screams that followed him until she crumpled in a faint. Ridi dashed to her, lifted her in his arms, and carried her off.

  The buzz in the port was instant. Electrified. Some people thought it had been a stunt, especially when Ridi ran off holding the overcome girl. A few people even applauded before they realized that the locals weren’t laughing. A couple of boys chased after him and came back to report that the doctor, fortunately, stayed at the clinic when she realized the girl had disappeared, imagining she might need her help again; and she had, she was hemorrhaging. Ridi told them that he knew the girl from his village, and Ruben, the name she’d called out, was her brother. She must have mistaken Koufos for him.

  “Oh, that poor deaf boy,” Shirley said. “When you think that he’s been left to grow up on his own.”

  “Not entirely on his own, Mum,” Lydia, standing nearby, corrected her. “We put food out for him.”

  “The cats eat better!”

  “The cats eat what he doesn’t take. They never eat better.”

  “That doesn’t mean he should be abandoned to grow up wild. There ought to be a law!”

  “There is a law,” someone replied, “and if they enforced it, he would be living in some horrible institution being sexually abused. He’s probably better off on his own.”

  “We don’t even know where he lives,” Shirley complained. “He moves around one season to the next. Oh it’s terrible!”

  “I know where he’s living,” Nick spoke up. “I went for a hike today and came across a ruined house. Inside I saw the clothes that he had on tonight. What’s his name?”

  “Koufos.”

  “Deaf?”

  Lydia shrugged. “It’s what people call him.”

  Nick touched the detonator. “I found this in the house. Who is he?”

  “A kid the Gypsies left behind.”

  “More like threw away,” Shirley griped.

  “How long ago?”

  “Four or five years ago.”

  “It’s been almost six years, Mum.”

  Nick said, “That’s pretty young to be living on your own.”

  “A couple of families tried to take him in, or at least give him a place to sleep. He wouldn’t stay. The best we could do was to give him food when he came around.”

  “He might stay now. I don’t know where he got all the clothes, but he’s been working on assembling them.” Nick described how they had been displayed in the ruined house, laid out as if being worn, the shirttail tucked into the pants and socks coming out of the cuffs. When he found them, Nick had no reason to think in terms of what was missing from it, but now he knew it had been underwear. Shoes the boy
already had, albeit the soggy ones that he traded for Nick’s, but only lacking underwear explained why that was all he took from the car. When he dressed for dinner that night, his outfit was finally complete. “I’m not a psychologist, but it wouldn’t take a very smart one to sort out that he wants to join society. Tonight he was testing it,” Nick concluded.

  Shirley snorted. “I guess that didn’t work out too well for him, did it?”

  “Do you think he started the fires?” Lydia asked. “Why else would he have a detonator?”

  “More likely, he found it,” Nick answered. “It was probably a dud.”

  “Where’s the house that’s he’s living?”

  Nick described its location the best he could without outright identifying it as the site of the tenth fire on Lydia’s map. That would be a surefire giveaway that he was more than a floundering writer out on a hike.

  “That’s the Turks’ house,” she remarked.

  “Where?” Shirley asked.

  “The Turks’ house, Mum. Above the next cove from you. Fire number ten.”

  “Koufos is living there?”

  “It looked that way to me,” Nick said. “You must leave food for him in aluminum foil.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He saves all the pieces folded up in a little pile in his room.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “By now he probably worships aluminum foil. It’s manna from heaven. It means food.”

  “Mom!” they all heard Athina shout from the porch, a plate in each hand and an exasperated expression on her face. She locked eyes with her mother. “There’s more to running a restaurant than talking to your customers. These plates need to be served to number three.”

  “She’s right, back to work. Busy night and suddenly no Ridi.” Lydia drained her wine. “I’ll rejoin you when I can.”

  Nick used her departure to leave as well. He only went next door, but stepping inside was moving from the innocent to the profane: from the wharf’s fresh air and romantic music to loud rock and a room thick with cigarette smoke. He slipped onto the only free barstool.

  “It’s on the house, whatever you want,” Takis told him.

  “You?”

  “I thought you wanted me on the rocks.”

  “There, too. It’s a busy night. Where’s your sister?”

  “Banging the Coast Guard.”

  “The whole fleet?”

  “She’s a whore, but I give her credit, she’s selective.” Takis poured him an ouzo. “Is ouzo okay, or do you want my sister to do her brandy thing again?”

  “I’ll pass on the brandy,” Nick said, and sipped his ouzo.

  Takis said, “It’s weird that kid showed up tonight. He’s never done anything like that before.”

  “He’s good at charades, that’s clear. Has he really grown up wild?”

  “Nobody even knows how old he is.”

  “He has peach fuzz on his lip,” Nick commented, “so maybe twelve or thirteen years old, which means he’s been on his own since he was six or seven.”

  “Poor kid,” Takis remarked. “Shall I top that off?”

  Nick had a sudden change of heart. He wanted Takis but not more ouzo. The all-nighter he wanted wasn’t a boozy one. “I just came to make sure you’re coming to my place when you get off.”

  “You’re not going to stay?”

  “You’ll be working until dawn, so wake me up.”

  “Any special way?”

  “Surprise me.”

  Nick didn’t know how many hills he had climbed that day, he just knew it was a lot, and the one to his room was about the steepest. He paused at the top to catch his breath. The sea stretched milky white to the horizon, as if the drowning moon had spilt cream over it. A whiff of honeysuckle, wafting over his garden wall, made the moment deliriously romantic. He desired Takis and wished their situation hadn’t become so unpredictably complicated.

  He pushed through the squeaking gate and crossed the perfumed garden to enter his room. Moments later, he reemerged with a last glass of wine and stood where the terrace jutted out over the sloped yard. Laughter drifted up from the port. At one point, he heard Takis, and recalled the flash of his smile following him out the door. He knew he’d be another couple of hours. The only “last call” Nick had ever heard in Greece was sunrise. He went inside to shower.

  He dried off, and on his way to bed, turned off the lights to look at himself in the mirror. He had a good build, with a swimmer’s strong shoulders and muscled legs. He twisted around to see his back and stood on his tiptoes to glimpse his buttocks. He hated his scars on his ass the most, and in the moonlight, he could almost convince himself that they were going away. Of course they weren’t. It was the wishful thinking of infatuation. In a crueler light his scars would still be there. But that pale light would illuminate their lovemaking that night, and in it, Nick could almost convince himself that he was sexy.

  He slipped on his boxers, considered a last nightcap, and decided he was woozy enough. There was no way he could wait up for Takis. He would have to wake Nick if he wanted to have a good time, and he was sure Takis would. He pulled back the bed covers, or tried to; they were tucked in tight. Athina must have returned to remake the bed sometime during the day. He yanked a corner loose enough to get between the sheets and jabbed his legs down to make room for his feet.

  He was asleep before his head hit the pillow. Dreaming of nothing, and then suddenly he was in the sea, diving down, bubbles caught in the hair on his legs tickling him as they rose to the surface, drifting up his belly and chest. Then, a sting on his thigh, another on his shoulder; inconsequential pricks that his dreamer’s mind dismissed as jellyfish larvae in the warm water. They were annoying, not painful. Nevertheless, he kicked his feet to swim faster, and the stinging became more intense.

  He woke up with a start. Something was stinging him! Biting him and crawling all over him! He scrambled from bed and turned on the lamp, and flicked a spider off his arm. He saw its red belly. A black widow! He felt more tramping through the hair on his chest and brushed those off, and then knocked off the ones dangling by their fangs from his ankles. He ripped back the bed covers and saw the nests that his feet had disturbed.

  Nick bolted for the bathroom, accidentally sending the bedside lamp crashing to the floor. He fished a pocketknife from his dopp kit and sat on the toilet slitting open the bites, pinching out blood and venom. He sucked on the ones he could reach and spat the foul mixture into the sink. By contorting himself in the mirror, he tried to open the bites on his back; but he couldn’t, not successfully before tremors set in. A nauseating dizziness swept over him. He slumped to the floor, closing the bathroom door with his body.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  ATHINA SAT ON THE BED staring at her cell phone as she might a crystal ball anticipating predictions for the future. Almost the totality of her information came over the device in her hand. Yet while she relied on it for so much of her life’s content, at that moment it felt especially lifeless. Certainly not something that could express the emotions churning through her. In her mind’s eye, she had replayed the scene with the priest in the harsh light of honest memory, and realized that what had happened ultimately mattered very little; it wasn’t something that would scar her for life or change her prospects. It had happened. It wasn’t rape. She would never laugh about it but she would get over it. And when she finally gave the priest his comeuppance, it would not be for his part in their encounter, but for his backpedaling on taking equal responsibility for it.

  Initially she had accused Ridi of a similar misdeed, lumping him together with every man who shirked responsibility for getting a woman pregnant. If Athina didn’t believe in the first Immaculate Conception, she wasn’t likely to be convinced about a second one; and Ridi, to his credit, had not denied his affair with Jura. The girl had tricked him, manufacturing her pregnancy against his will; though giving in to his animal needs had put him in the position where he could be trick
ed. But then, she herself might be pregnant by the priest, and without the excuse of someone having poked pinholes in a sheath of protective rubber. Who was she to criticize anyone for what they had done? Even Jura’s deceit had been an act of love, however hateful the consequences.

  All evening, Athina had ridden her emotional roller coaster. By helping in the kitchen more than usual, she had kept her distance from the young waiter, but it didn’t keep her from fretting over him. It didn’t seem possible that they had been flirting with each other— seriously flirting with each other—for fewer days than counted in a week. He had texted her a heart, and now hers was broken; and his was, too, if his heavy steps and solemnness were reliable proof. By her insistence that he help the girl, Athina knew she had compounded the weight of his troubles, and yet she was loath to retract it. Though as the evening wore on, she started to wonder if she was blaming him unfairly. Shouldn’t the girl in the clinic bear the heavier responsibility for her duplicity? It mirrored the dilemma she had in assigning blame for what happened between herself and the priest; the difference being, Ridi had taken precautions. He’d worn a condom. The priest had not. Ridi was now taking responsibility, helping the girl. When he swept her up in his arms and without breaking stride carried her up the dark hill to the clinic, Athina knew that she loved him, and in the same instant realized that she had lost him. She had pushed Ridi back to the other girl. She alone was responsible for the lonely miserable life she would suffer without him.

  Ridi had come back late from the clinic, terse, only saying that the doctor thought Jura would be okay. By then, the last diners were leaving, seduced by the promise of a livelier nightcap at Vassoula’s next door. In silence, they set about closing down the restaurant in their usual way. Sending Athina’s mother upstairs was always their first task; they were much more efficient without her telling them to do what they already knew to do. Besides, that night they wanted to be alone. They had for a long time, the girl realized; but it was not to be that evening. Lydia lingered on until they were all finished. She reminded Ridi to lock up and chaperoned her daughter upstairs.

  That’s what it had felt like—being chaperoned—leaving Athina stranded in her bedroom while Ridi, banished downstairs, glued the beach pebbles-cum-gemstones onto her Styrofoam crown. She had threatened not to wear it until he helped Jura, and certainly rescuing her twice on the same day qualified as helping her. She would wear the crown, which was hardly a relief in a day overcrowded with disappointments.