Aphrodite's Smile

by Stuart Harrison

  When I stepped outside into the street I paused. A few people drifted past, and across the road the owner of a kefenio chatted to an old man while he served him coffee and they both lit cigarettes. I went to the end of the street and followed whatever route appeared to lead toward the port. Now and then I caught glimpses of the sea, and within ten minutes I found a road that led all the way to the wharf where I eventually found a taxi that would accept payment by credit card. At Efimia I faced an hour-long wait for a ferry which I spent in the taverna where I had drunk a cup of coffee on the morning I had arrived from England.

  The owner didn’t remember me, but I used my credit card to buy three beers to quench my thirst and when I left I asked him to charge an extra amount so I would have some cash. I gave him a generous tip. I hadn’t eaten anything all day and the beers went straight to my head. I bought another on the ferry and when I went into the bathroom to relieve myself I was confronted with my own bleary-eyed reflection. I stared at myself in surprise, then raised my bottle in a toast.

  It was dark by the time I reached Ithaca. I drove back towards the house but I decided to stop at a bar by the waterfront on the way. As I weaved my way unsteadily from the side-street where I had parked the Jeep I was overtaken by a wave of dizzying nausea. I paused to lean against a wooden power pole that also served as a street lamp. The weak light it emitted was reflected in the dark bonnet of a car parked by the opposite kerb. I blinked and looked away, then looked back again. There was somebody behind the wheel. I could see a pale face watching me. I thought the car looked familiar, and then I realised that it was a Fiat.

  My stomach lurched. Forgetting about the car I staggered to the corner. The bar I’d intended to go to was a few yards away. I sat at a table outside and when a waiter came I ordered a beer, then changed my mind and asked for a glass of water. A dull ache had begun to take root behind my eyes.

  A man arrived and sat at a table beside the harbour wall, and though he appeared outwardly to be just another tourist, when I glanced his way our looks collided. He was tall and fair-haired, about my own age. I couldn’t tell if it was the man from the Fiat, but I was sure that it was. The waiter delivered a bottle of sweating beer to his table. After a moment he got up and came over to my table.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  He was dressed in dark-coloured trousers and a blue open-neck shirt and spoke with a north European accent. Perhaps Dutch or German. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr French?’

  I wasn’t surprised that he knew my name, and when I didn’t say anything he said, ‘Forgive me. I thought that I recognised you. I knew your father very slightly. By the way, please accept my condolences, I was saddened to hear of his death.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said automatically while my brain tried to keep up with the conversation.

  ‘It was an accident I believe?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  He looked at me with an oddly hesitant expression as if he weren’t sure what to say next. ‘May I be frank?’ he said suddenly. ‘Do you know if your father knew a man called Schmidt? Eric Schmidt?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘Actually I don’t know much about him at all.’ The harbour wavered before my eyes, the lights on the far side shimmering like a mirage.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I would like to talk to you about your father, Mr French.’

  I looked across the road to where the blue Fiat was still parked. ‘Did you follow me here?’

  ‘Of course not. I happened to see you. A coincidence.’

  I gestured to the car. ‘Is that yours? I’ve seen it before.’

  He appeared unsure how to respond, and then behind him, a hundred yards along the waterfront I saw a woman pause by the wharf as she walked from the direction of the square.

  ‘Mr French?’

  ‘What?’ I turned my attention back to the man in front of me.

  ‘Perhaps there is somewhere that we could go. Some coffee perhaps …’

  I stared at him. ‘Look, Mr …? What did you say your name was?’

  The woman was standing close to one of the lamps that lit the waterfront. I thought it was Alex. She was alone, staring out at the water with her hands thrust in her pockets. Without thinking I got up and started towards her.

  ‘Mr French?’

  I half turned. Through my alcohol-fogged brain I realised that the man I’d been speaking to was not simply some acquaintance of my dad’s looking to pass the time of day, but I didn’t care. ‘Listen, whoever you are. I don’t know anything about my father or what he was doing, OK?’

  The woman had gone. I began to run after her. The man called my name but I didn’t look back. My heart was thudding in my chest, sweat broke out on my brow. I stumbled and almost fell headlong, then found my footing and ran on. When I reached the corner I was out of breath and a dull ache ground at my temples. There was no sign of the woman. I went to the next corner, looking in the shops and bars along the way but I couldn’t find her. A set of steps led up the hillside, vanishing into darkness, but they were deserted. And then I saw her turning a corner down a lane. I called out and ran after her and when I caught up I grabbed her arm.

  ‘Alex!’

  The woman turned, startled to find a drunken foreigner accosting her. It wasn’t Alex. She didn’t even look like her.

  Suddenly all that jostling of my stomach contents got the better of me. I turned away and threw up. The woman made a sound of disgust and walked off while I vomited again. Even when I had nothing left inside me the sour taste of beer and vomit made me retch until my stomach cramped in spasms. Eventually I straightened up, sweating and weak and managed to make my way back to where I’d left the Jeep.

  The man who’d approached me was gone and so was the Fiat. I dug in my pocket for my keys and when I found them, I got in the Jeep and stabbed at the ignition until finally I got it started. Then I jammed it into gear and drove off to look for Alex.

  FIFTEEN

  The house where Alex was staying was dark and quiet. I pulled over in the street outside. When I had seen her I’d reacted without thinking, but now I’d had a chance to think. I knew I couldn’t just forget her. I couldn’t let her vanish from my life the way Alicia had, though at the same time I didn’t know if I could let her back in either. A thin line divides extremes of emotion. I didn’t know if I loved her or hated her or whether I vacillated between the two. I just knew that I had to see her again.

  I gave up trying to rationalise my actions and went to the door of her room and hammered with my fist. The windows were shuttered and there was no light inside. Eventually the noise I made brought someone from the house. A man appeared, his face slack with sleep and shadowed blue-black. When he saw me a flicker of annoyance furrowed his brow.

  ‘I need to see the English girl, Alex,’ I told him and was met with blank incomprehension. ‘Alex,’ I repeated loudly and pointed at the door behind me. The woman I’d talked to that morning, though it seemed much longer ago, appeared on the step behind him clutching a heavy robe around her thick body. When she saw me a quick exchange took place in Greek and then the man scowled at me and barked something unintelligible.

  ‘No Alex,’ the woman said. ‘No here.’

  There was only one other place I thought she might be. I went back to the Jeep and drove back towards town. I stopped at the first bar I came to and asked for a phone book. I had to ask a waiter to look up the name I wanted.

  ‘Ramanda,’ I told him. When he found it he wrote the address down in English then pointed in the direction of the street. It was somewhere on the hill near where I’d met Alex that morning so I guessed it was the right one.

  Many of the narrow streets and alleys above the town had no signs to identify them and I soon lost my way. After twenty minutes or so of fruitlessly driving back and forth I found myself at the bottom of the steps where I’d met Alex that morning, so I left the Jeep and went on foot. Half-way up a lamp cast its
dim light on the waxy leaves of a magnolia. White flowers dripped to the ground and formed a fragrant pool. The steps divided. An alley ran to the left, but I followed another flight of steps further up the hill. Garden walls hemmed in the narrowing stairway and the houses above blocked out the sky so that I had to feel my way in shadowed darkness. The scent of herbs sweetened the air. A man’s laughter, low and intimate came from some dark window nearby and then the low murmur of voices.

  At the top I emerged onto another narrow street. A light fixed to a telephone pole illuminated a rare sign which matched the address I’d been given and I began searching the houses for numbers. When I found the one I was looking for I stood in the thick shadow of a wall. Opposite me was a terrace which during the day would be shaded by a grapevine, and beneath it was the street door leading into the house. I could hear voices, but they were muffled. At first I couldn’t see anybody, then the voices became clearer and the next moment Alex appeared at the edge of the terrace. She looked out towards the harbour. We were no more than a dozen steps apart. If she had glanced down she would have seen me.

  As I watched her I wondered what I was doing there. I was sweaty and probably didn’t smell very good and I was still more than a little drunk. I told myself I should leave. She had made her choice. Why else was she with Dimitri now? And yet I couldn’t move. I remembered the woman who’d taken me to her apartment. Even as I’d tried somehow to get even, take some kind of petty revenge, I had thought of Alex.

  Suddenly I heard a man’s voice from the terrace.

  ‘Look at this.’ A moment later Dimitri appeared behind Alex and placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘Don’t you think that it is beautiful?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do,’ Alex replied quietly.

  ‘Then how can you think of leaving?’

  She didn’t answer. The silence was fraught with subtle tension.

  ‘I was an idiot,’ Dimitri said at last. ‘I do not know what came over me.’

  Alex replied without looking at him, her tone sorrowful. ‘You had plenty of time to think about it, Dim. It was what you decided you wanted.’

  ‘People make mistakes, Alex.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He paused, as if wondering what precisely her agreement conveyed. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘You know that I love you.’ He put his arms around her.

  ‘Don’t. Please.’ She moved away from him, turning and slipping from his embrace and, as she did, both regret and frustration flashed in his face. At the same time Alex glanced down to where I was standing and she froze in shocked surprise. Hurriedly she turned back to Dimitri and took his arm.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ she said, her tone suddenly coaxing.

  She started to lead him away but it was too late. Puzzled by the sudden change in her manner he glanced down to the street and at the same time I stepped from the shadows. Ignoring him I spoke directly to Alex.

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  Before she could respond, Dimitri stepped past her to the rail and glared down at me angrily. ‘Get the hell away from here! She doesn’t want to see you.’

  ‘You owe me that much,’ I said, holding Alex’s look.

  ‘I told you she doesn’t want you here!’ Dimitri said. ‘You should go back to England.’

  ‘If that’s true she can tell me herself,’ I said, still looking at Alex. She wore a trapped expression as Dimitri turned to face her as well, waiting for her to say something.

  When she finally spoke it was in a quiet voice. ‘What do you want?’

  The brief scene I’d just witnessed between Alex and Dimitri made me wonder if I had made a mistake. I thought back to what had happened that morning. Had I overreacted? Had I made the wrong assumption? ‘I want to talk,’ I repeated.

  She glanced at Dimitri then said to me, ‘Wait there.’

  I thought for a second that Dimitri was going to leap down on me from where he stood. Then furiously he turned to follow her. A few moments later the street door opened and Alex came outside, but as I took a step towards her she shook her head in warning.

  ‘No! Listen to me. I want you to leave me alone.’

  Dimitri appeared behind her and, when he heard what she said, he put his arm protectively around her shoulders. ‘You heard what she said. You should leave now.’

  But to his surprise Alex shrugged him off. ‘I mean both of you. I want both of you to leave me alone.’

  He took a step towards her. ‘Alex. You are upset. Come back inside. Everything will be all right. I promise.’

  ‘He dumped you once already, Alex,’ I warned. ‘So what’s changed suddenly? Let me guess, you told him you met somebody and miraculously he wanted you back, is that it?’

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ Dimitri said.

  ‘It’s the Greek male psyche,’ I continued regardless.

  He took a step towards me, but Alex held his arm. ‘Dim, don’t.’

  ‘What it is,’ I said goading him, ‘is he didn’t want you, but he couldn’t stand the thought of you fucking anybody else.’

  I sensed rather than saw a blur of movement as he lashed out. I took a step backwards but alcohol had dulled my reactions and the blow caught me on the side of my head. I staggered, but though drinking had made me slow it had also numbed my senses. I bunched a fist and swung a punch that glanced off his cheek with a satisfying thud. Pain and surprise registered on his face as blood sprang from a cut.

  Alex yelled at us. ‘Stop it! Both of you!’

  By then Dimitri had recovered his balance and he stepped in and jabbed me hard below the sternum, forcing the air out of my lungs in a tortured gasp. My vision swam red. For a second I thought my heart had stopped and then I was on my knees coughing and struggling for breath. He came in again, but I pushed myself to my feet and propelled my head into his stomach like a battering ram, then, wrapping my arms around his waist, I drove him backwards into the wall. He grunted and then started aiming short hard jabs at my kidneys. I kept my head down and punched him repeatedly in the ribs. I was hardly aware of his blows. I heard Alex shouting at us to stop, but she may as well have yelled at the wind.

  We stopped when Dimitri finally managed to push me away. I sucked air into my lungs. Long slivers of sharp pain raced up and down my back where he’d pummelled me. Dimitri held his side, wincing with each laboured breath. The fight couldn’t have lasted much more than a minute, but already the adrenalin in my system was all used up and I felt completely drained. My mouth was swollen and when I touched my lip I felt blood, though I didn’t know when he had hit me there.

  It was only then that either of us noticed that Alex had vanished. The street was empty. We stared at one another.

  ‘Go back to England,’ Dimitri said wearily and then he turned and slammed the door in my face.

  Across the street I saw an old man watching with curiosity from an open window. He murmured something quietly and with a shrug went back to his bed.

  SIXTEEN

  In the morning I felt as if I’d gone ten rounds in the ring. Every joint ached and my torso was a patchwork of bruising. As I examined myself in the bathroom mirror, I wondered how I’d managed to sustain such damage in what I was sure had been a very short space of time. I hadn’t been in a physical fight since I was at school. It amazed me how punishing it could be.

  When I eventually went downstairs, Irene’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘Robert, what happened?’

  ‘It’s nothing. I got up in the night and walked into something.’

  She frowned and, though she obviously didn’t believe my feeble story, she didn’t make any other comment. I hadn’t spoken to her since I’d been to the museum, and now she asked me if I had found the journal. When I said that I hadn’t I thought she looked relieved.

  ‘Perhaps it does not exist,’ she suggested, wanting to believe it just as she wanted to believe that my dad had not betrayed the trust of the people of Ithaca.

  I didn’t tell her that I was sure somebody else had searched the muse
um. It was only then that I recalled the man who had approached me the night before. ‘Do you know of anyone called Eric Schmidt?’ I asked.

  ‘I do not think so. Who is he?’

  I shook my head. ‘Nobody. It isn’t important.’

  Irene made coffee and while we drank it on the terrace I made the decision to go back to England. There didn’t seem any point in staying any longer. My father was dead and buried, and whatever the truth about him, perhaps it was better for everyone that at least Irene’s memories of him remained intact. When I told Irene, she asked if Alex was leaving too.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think we’ll be seeing each other again.’

  She looked at my battered face but didn’t comment. ‘When will you leave?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘I’ll go into town and see when I can get a flight.’

  ‘I hope that you will come back one day, Robert.’

  I told her that I hoped so too, though we both knew that it was unlikely.

  I borrowed the Jeep later, and drove into Vathy. Fortunately Dimitri’s wasn’t the only travel agency in the town. I stood at the counter while the travel agent tapped at her computer keyboard.

  ‘There is a flight this evening to London Gatwick,’ she told me. ‘It is a charter flight, but there are one or two seats available.’

  I hesitated. I asked myself if this was really what I wanted. The woman regarded me questioningly. ‘I’ll take it,’ I told her. I got out my credit card and handed it over, and within ten minutes she had printed a confirmation.

  ‘Checkin is two hours before the flight, Mr French. Your ticket will be at the airline desk when you arrive. Enjoy your flight.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I stepped outside into the heat of the morning and went to the ferry ticket office to check the timetable. There was an afternoon ferry to Sami at four o’clock which allowed me enough time to catch a taxi to the airport. I had half a day to fill. I wandered to the square and sat down at a kefenio where I ordered coffee. As I considered how to spend my remaining time on the island, I was plagued by the unsettling sense that I was making a mistake. A young woman in blue shorts and a white top climbed down to the wharf from a yacht. She had her back to me but in the glimpse of her long tanned legs and the toss of thick blonde hair I was reminded of Alex. When she turned to head towards the bakery I saw that in fact she barely resembled her at all.