by Mike Bond
Claire was not in the café. Above the square, a chipped clock showed twenty to eleven, the side streets half-shadowed. He saw her through a pharmacy window, left hand at her waist, right holding a telephone. Her eyes widened; she turned away, nodding, and hung up. “You're late.”
“Fell asleep on the beach. Who was that?”
“Getting directions.”
She accelerated the white Peugeot through the outskirts of Heraklion, white roadside stones flicking past, bearded goats inspecting them with slanted almond eyes, into a countryside jaggedly iridescent with spring.
“You drive pretty well for a woman.”
“History has passed you by, hasn't it?”
He smiled, bare feet on the dashboard in the windshield sun, tugging last night's hash, malodorous and crumbling, from his shirt pocket.
In the grip of the hash he tumbled into the color cacophony of Crete, its flaming yellows, rubbled greens, cobalts of air and sea, its thorny earth browns, grays of granite and volcano, its limestone houses attenuated like bleak cattle round sparse alluvia, its alien and anciently evocative odors, its hazed panoramas of tilted ridge and plunging valley, its intimations of paths under the hunched, prophetic brush. I've been dead to this, too.
Knee feels better in the sun. She's right – to be here's good. Getting over this. What, though, do I hope to get over? Not the deaths; they'll never be over, nor will the fear and running, ever. It's a life sentence, that. A death sentence. He glanced at her. “Ever been married?”
She geared down into a turn. “For two weeks.” When he said nothing she added, “We met when he was on leave from Vietnam. I knew him for ten days before I married him. We had five days and then he went back – he'd already extended his tour. They sent him right up to Khe Sanh. He was killed three days after he got there, by one of our own shells.”
Cohen watched the landscape passing like the cheap backdrop of a film. “And you never let on.”
“All I have left is this necklace…and a few memories that seem more and more like fiction – though I always think about him – habit, I suppose. Recently I've realized he died for nothing. It's as if they took Tim and fifty thousand other young men, lined them up against a wall, and shot them.” She turned. “Did you go?”
“Me? Never. The whole thing filled me with hate. I refused to go; the Vietnamese weren't threatening my country. I lost my job and had to go to Canada. The whole thing made me bitter, about the States.”
“What job did you lose?”
“Playing football. I'd just signed on, out of college. I got hurt and had to sit out the season, got drafted by the Army. I was furious that we were picking on a tiny country like that, said I wouldn't go. So the team dropped me – everybody in sports was hot for the war except Muhammad Ali. I went to Canada, played a while, got hurt again, had to quit. Couple years ago I was going back, to coach, but never did.”
“I know.”
“What do you know?”
“You talked a bit, the other night; you were pretty out of it. About the girl in Paris.”
“She was from Quebec. What else did I say?”
“Nothing too specific. Enough for me to guess what you've been through.”
“She died in a plane crash with my mom and stepfather. They'd picked her up in Montreal in their plane, to bring her to Quebec City for the wedding. It was a freak storm…”
The car swerved as she reached for the pipe. “Life's a horror, Sam.”
He shrugged. “It makes its own rules. We get to watch.”
“This landscape's fitting. Something evil, terrifying, out there.” She returned the pipe. “It was here Theseus killed the bull-man, the Minotaur. In the Labyrinth.”
“More of your Classics?”
“Theseus would have died without Ariadne, the daughter of the Sun. She turned against her own people to help him slay the Minotaur and escape from the Labyrinth. Then he went off and left her.”
“You're the one who said no good deed goes unpunished.”
“You almost walked on his grave. On the Acropolis, in the shadow of the Virgin's temple – remember?” She licked her lip, smiled. “So what would you do?”
“At what?”
“Here, in the Labyrinth. Against the Minotaur? Seeking darkness at its core?” Her feline gaze crossed his, against a rushing backdrop of scrub and rock.
“You've got a crooked smile.”
“Tell me.”
“Who knows? I wouldn't approach him rationally. I learned that from football. When you think things out you expose yourself to the same options as he. I'd stick to instinct.”
“It's crude, football.”
“Sometimes it's pure feeling, the joy of doing, acting deeply, without consciousness.”
“That's romanticizing!”
“So? What's wrong with romance? There's a magical instinctive place into which you flow, playing good football, so afterward you wake up and wonder where you've been. Somebody once said if there are angels then the loss of the body is their supreme regret. Well, in the moment between a pass and its completion, time stands still. Thanks to football I know what that timeless world is like…that heaven is of the body and the body alone. Heaven has nothing to do with angels.”
Sitea appeared below, a brief valley shouldered by hills, white masts copsed along the sea. In a café by the dock they ate octopus and drank retsina. A white pelican stood beside a boy fishing from the dock. The boy unhooked a flake of wriggling silver and dropped it in the bird's gaping mouth.
She pointed her glass. “The lion lies down with the lamb.”
“No one's lying down with the fish.”
“You see only the dark side.”
“I'm with the little guy.” He drained the bottle into their glasses. “Where now?”
“An hour from Sitea, Etienne said. At the eastern tip of the island, a place called Vye.”
“Etienne?”
“An architect in Brussels. He's buying up all the land there, to build a resort.”
“Funny word, resort.”
“As in the last?”
VYE WAS ONE STREET, a clump of silent whitewashed houses. She swerved north on a cart track, thistles raking the car. The house lay in a gorse valley draining eastward to a beach fringed by palms and flanked by crumbling cliffs, waves crashing loud against the sloping sand.
It was one room, one door, and two narrow windows set in foot-thick walls, a sink, a bed, a table, a hearth of sour ashes. She slipped her arms around him. “Sanctuary!”
A FIRE of palm fronds and thorns gave the hut illusory warmth: the walls stayed dank. An east wind banged the door on its thongs and hissed through the thatch, thrashing the palm trees and snapping at the waves as they thundered on the beach.
“Make it last, last, last.” She settled beneath him, the silver chain of the diamond heart crumpled on her neck.
Once, he thought, if just once I held nothing back. No self, no awareness. He tousled her hair; it was so supple and silken he wondered is it real? He tugged.
“Ow!”
He could not stop watching her eyes, azure green pools in the half-light, translucent and opaque, tranquil and seeking, their lashes wide, without flutter. He felt her hips one with his, their flesh not a barrier but a juncture, stretched his whole long body as tightly against her as he could, touching every inch of her he could, trying almost to turn inside out in order to cover, wrap, her completely.
The inside of her thigh was lithe and satiny; he raised it and slipped against her cleft, feeling her lips open, wet and grasping. She twisted slightly to bring her downy pubis against him. He pushed and she recoiled, wincing. “You're too big,” she gasped. She slid her thigh over his, her breasts solid against his chest.
“You're so tight, so lovely.” He moved his tip inside her and began to rotate within her lips, slipping out to caress its underside against the swelling softness atop her cleft. She raised her waist, thrusting her public bone against his, her tongue inside
his throat, her mouth widespread against his.
He rolled her on her back, her other thigh now enlacing his, penetrated her as she unfolded wider and wider, felt himself endlessly slipping inside her, her lips endlessly sliding up over him. “You're so hot inside.”
“You make me.” She shivered, her waist twining to him as he drove so deeply within her it seemed she would never end. Out he pulled until she lifted up to grasp his tip and sucked him in again and they roared down her vortex together, through burning joy to a high silent meadow of pollened sun, warm and fertile.
He became conscious of her lying beside him, their shoulders, hips, and legs touching. Sweat glistened beside the pearl in her earlobe. She twisted against him. “I love your body. All muscled but slender. Gentle steel.”
Words and ideas and lovely feelings tumbled through him, uncurtailed: like two wild creatures we have stumbled on one another, yet with trust, without fear. He thought of death with peace, almost friendliness.
He rubbed the upslope of her hips, nuzzled her curls, kissed her gently, as if she could break, down the tendon of her neck, across the breasts so full and hard and yet so soft and obedient to his lips. She raised herself on one elbow, shook back her hair, her breasts jiggling tightly. He felt desire begin to throb in him again, leaned down and kissed her belly, licking between her legs. She pulled his head up. “You're going to screw me to death.”
“It's immortality, screwing.”
She kissed him sleepily. “It is lovely.”
“It's life's deepest good – because it contributes most to life's continuance.”
“I don't care what it does. I just like it.”
“But even without procreation it's life's greatest good because it gives spiritual continuance, it…”
She ran her tongue down his sternum and over his belly, took his upraised penis fully in her lips and swallowed the tip till it lodged deep in her throat, her fingertips lightly teasing. He reached down but she pushed his hand away and knelt between his thighs, her hair tumbling over his waist, sliding her lips up and down, wrapping his tip within the underside of her tongue, nibbling, nipping, licking, and sucking him to a spurting burning joy that left him aching and empty.
She lay next to him, kissed his shoulder. “I want to tell you everything, but there isn't time. There never will be.”
“We'll make time.”
“We can't. Only the gods can make time.”
BEFORE SUNSET the wind died and he followed a deep-cut trail to the beach. The earth was punctured by goat prints and peppered with droppings. On the beach, palm stalks crunched underfoot. The palm crowns overhead burst outward like green suns against the cooling sky. The sand was still warm; he sat against a rippled dune, feeling incomprehensibly at a loss. Water rushed up, white, to his feet. Removing shoes and socks, he watched it run between his toes.
How many times each day have I tried to fathom it? The deaths, the bomb, the lethal Australian with his lemur skin and motorcycle – none of it makes sense. She can't make sense of it either. At least she believes. Sand ran between his fingers.
Stones rattled upslope. A goat, bell clinking, trotted down the path. Others followed, kids hopping behind, and began to nose among dry fronds on the beach.
A white-haired man punched a knobby stick down the trail. He wore a loose goatskin cape that fell to the tops of worn wool leggings. His calves were gaunt, his ankles bony. Without words he crossed the beach and squatted beside Cohen, staring seaward. A breeze tufted his yellowed beard. He pointed at the sky. “Vroxi.”
Cohen shrugged uncomprehendingly.
The goatherd stared whimsically, as if Cohen had misunderstood a simple joke. From the goatskin cape he withdrew a lump of bread wrapped in linen, broke away a chunk and offered it. The bread had a flaky, soda tang. He split a fragment of goat cheese, dry and tasting of olives. “Tedesco?” he said.
Cohen shook his head.
The goatherd grinned tobaccoed, stump teeth. “Bambino, Benghazi.” He pointed to himself, then held a hand out, waist-high. He tipped his head, pointed at Cohen. “Americano, bene?”
Cohen shook his head. The goatherd shrugged one shoulder. A shark-like cloud cruised the metallic, white-tipped horizon. The goats were nibbling their way up the northern cliffs. The goatherd stood, jabbing the sand with his stick. His yellow toenails protruded from his rope sandals like claws.
“La pioggia, stasera,” he said, and trotted after the goats, stick over one shoulder.
Cohen returned his gaze to the sea. Why didn't the monkey man kill me? Was he hoping I'd lead him to Paul? But why kill Kim, or Phu Dorje, or Seral? To silence them? As punishment? Punishment for what?
He climbed the path. Late afternoon silence saturated the heath. The gleaming scrub rolled upward, breaking on rocky serrate heights. To the north a vulture wheeled, minute, above a stunted ridgetop pine. Nineteen days.
THE PEUGEOT WAS GONE. Inside was smoky and warm, red coals in the hearth, the floor swept, but she was not there. Her clothes hung on pegs beside the bed; he fingered a flesh-colored camisole faintly fragrant of her, broke a handful of grapes from a clump on the table, glanced out the window.
He took the Tibetan's pipe and followed the cart track northward. Greasy clouds were collecting over bare, barbed ridges. The track split into tributary goat trails sharded with stones and droppings. Two ravens played, diving on each other, in thermals over an outcrop. He walked until the knee raged with pain but found no solace.
When he returned the Peugeot was parked in the scrub; smoke trailed inland from the chimney. “I feared you'd turned into a goat,” she said, twirling from the hand pump by the sink to the table with a handful of spinach.
“Where'd you go?”
“Vye, but there's no food. Back to Sitea.”
“We have food.”
“I forgot greens – for salads.”
“I've been watching the ocean…”
“Oh? What's it doing?”
“…and trying to figure out why we're here.”
“Haven't we been through this?” She took his hands, her fingers cold and slippery. “It's so short, what we have.”
“Why did you come here?”
She sat beside him on the bed. Water gathered beneath the spinach on the table. She retrieved it and began tearing the leaves. “I wish you could see how pointless your questions…”
“Why do you think I'm here?”
“To get away, get laid.”
“Away from what?”
“From them.” She came and put her arms around his neck, palms outward. “I'd rather be with you than do anything else right now. That's why I'm here. Not for a story. Not even because you're afraid and that makes me want to be with you.” She wiped her hands. “There are things going on with me you couldn't dream of.”
“Such as?”
“My life's changing all around me – I'm losing everything I used to want.” She tossed black glistening olives from a white paper sack into the salad. “Purpose without substance, all these years since…” She let out a breath. “Since Tim died. Things've happened, in Africa, Thailand. I've been a fool; now I feel bad.” She went out, closing the door.
He picked an olive from the salad, bit it away from the pit, went outside and sat beside her on a stone wall. Her face was angled away. The reddish aftersun on the hard straight line of her jaw made him think of her dead, of her face rotting in the ground. “What about Africa?”
“It taught me despair.”
Why?”
“I was tricked. Someone died.” She rubbed her chin on his shoulder. “Afterward I found out who he was, as opposed to what I'd been told. Now I can't dismiss it. His face bothers me. Last month I spent a night with a man – one of those lonely interludes. In the middle of the night he woke me – I'd been crying out the dead one's name.” She snickered. “The guy was jealous.” She lifted the back of her wrist to show him a tiny lens of water between amber hairs. “Rain.”
“I think t
he goat man said it would.”
“You think?”
“Couldn't understand him, but a word or two of Italian. He learned it in Libya, as a bambino.”
“Bambino. A nice thought. Beyond having.”
“It's all beyond having, Claire.”
AFTER MIDNIGHT the rain came in earnest to shatter the palms and tear the thatch. Candle shadows stumbled wildly on the walls. He awoke and wanted her and she came to him readily, groaning in the depths of her throat, her hair lacing over his shoulders, her tongue full of saliva and licking his mouth and throat and teeth and lips, sucking him down into her gorgeous tight vastness, her other lips licking and kissing at him as he sank more quickly and heatedly, harder and harder into her, yet seeming gentle for she was so ready, so accepting, and it never ended, he driving harder and harder always, wrapped in total consciousness of her sexual magnificence, her lovely hair twined everywhere, her breasts stabbing him with pleasure, their rounded contours silky on his chest, her belly rippling, quivering, her navel pooled with sweat, her blonde curls meshing with his darker coils each exquisite time they came together.
Again as she slept beside him he had no sense of boundary. Her cheek in the candlelight was luminous as bone china, her breathing light and steady as a child's, her lashes shadowy as forest. He snuffed the candle. Why does loving her leave me so free of fear? How is it I forget, even for a moment? Where does the pain go? Where do the dead go? Where did my own death go? Soon I'll leave her, start for Paris. She and this will be memory. Like Kim, like Seral, never to return. Eighteen days to go. Paul, where are you now? Will you be there? Stretching beside her warm nakedness in the narrow lumpy bed, he listened as the rain hungered for them in the vastness of the night.
IN GARNET FIRST LIGHT they walked the sea edge strewn with kelp, torn rope, a splintered board with blue Arabic letters, a cormorant drowned tangled in fish net. In the hearth he boiled water for Bravo coffee and goat milk to go with bread and sticky fresh dates from Egypt. On the rickety table he shaved fresh chunks of hash into the pipe.