by Paula Fox
Costa led them through the small rooms of the museum across stone floors smelling of damp stone. Costa had been cleaning, as he did every day. Lily saw a dented pail of water standing beside a great terra-cotta bowl. A few yards beyond the back entrance was a cleared space raised a few feet above the meadow, which had been one of the ancient city’s squares. The earth was packed down there; sections of columns lay against each other, but several were standing and the right height to serve as chairs. Behind the space ran a tangled hedge. Costa clapped his hands loudly. At once, like a good witch in a fairy tale, an elderly woman dressed in black poked her head up over the hedge. Costa spoke quickly to her, and she reappeared in a few moments with a tray; on it were two cups of Turkish coffee and for Paul and Lily tall glasses of water in which floated strips of vanilla.
Mr. Corey took his Greek-English dictionary from a pocket and pressed it into Costa’s hands. Costa’s pale skin flushed. He opened the small pages at random, spoke a few Greek words, flushed again as he tried to pronounce their English equivalents.
It was quiet there, the sounds of the village muffled. The two men spoke haltingly to each other. Conversation, though, seemed unimportant. There was a kind of tenderness between her father and Costa that Lily felt directly, just as she felt the warmth of the morning sun.
Paul was staring at his feet. Now and then he cast a quick glance at Costa. She wondered what he was thinking, wondered if he were recalling the dreadful night of the accident. And Nichos wasn’t there as he usually was, always by his father’s side. Perhaps he would not come to help out in the museum for a time; perhaps his mother wanted him close to her in the little house where there had once been two children.
Costa asked Paul and Lily if they would be happy to see their own country again. Paul only nodded, his eyes cast down.
He had turned away from his family to be with Jack. He had forsaken her. She didn’t think she was angry about that anymore. She was puzzled by it. In a way, it interested her. It made her wonder if anyone would ever take up her whole attention the way Jack had Paul’s.
In front of Paul, Jack had ignored her existence. But she and Jack had been alone together. That was her secret. She hadn’t told Paul or anyone else that it had been she who had found Jack on the islet in the middle of the night. He had talked to her then. He had even laughed. Once.
Mr. Hemmings no longer danced for the Greeks at Giorgi’s taverna or, as far as she knew, in any other place in Limena. Jack hadn’t been around since the death of Christos. Paul didn’t speak his name, nor did she. She was looking at him, vaguely aware of her father struggling to say something in Greek, Costa murmuring encouragement. Paul turned his head toward her as if aware of her scrutiny. She smiled. She hadn’t meant to; the smile had come to her lips without thought.
She kept looking at him when he’d turned away to stare at a far corner of the agora. He had smiled back at her, but his forehead had furrowed. He must be thinking all the time about everything that had happened here on Thasos. She believed he would think about her too, just as she thought about him. In some way, they would always hold each other in some corner of their minds.
“Lily, I hope you will come back to us here,” Costa said to her.
She shook his small, hard hand, which touched the museum antiquities with reverence, which had clasped the shoulders of his boys with such gentleness.
A word came to her that she had used before only at the sight of a very small baby or a young animal. Sweet. Costa was full of sweetness. He smiled down at her. The burden of her feeling for him was so heavy at that moment, she was relieved when they left him to go on to the waterfront. There they found a young fisherman who would be able to help them with their luggage. She mused about Costa all the way home, past the police station and the House of the Turk, past the shrine of Dionysus, a crumbling ruin in the brilliant sunlight.
The Coreys were standing on the wharf. Odysseus had helped Mr. Corey load their suitcases and books onto the deck of the Maria.
Lily was astonished at the number of people who had come to see them off. Even some of the store owners, usually busy at their counters at that early hour, were standing on the quay along with Efthymios-Onassis and Mr. Xenophon, Giorgi, Dimitrious, Stella, and Mr. and Mrs. Kalligas. At the outskirts of the group stood the handsome policeman in his beautifully pressed uniform, wearing his sunglasses. Mrs. Kalligas draped some crocheted doilies over Mrs. Corey’s hands, and she put them into her Greek wool bag. Then, hurrying past her, Mr. Panakos came directly to Lily and told her to hold out her hand. When she did, he placed on her palm the tiny alabaster goat.
“Oh!” she exclaimed with delight. Mr. Panakos grinned. He didn’t need a translation.
“You looked for so many months at him,” he said, “that you must take him home with you.” He stared at the goat, and for a second Lily thought she detected a faint regret on his face. Then he shrugged. “Good journey,” he said, and walked rapidly across the quay to his shop.
Lily and Paul stood on the forward deck. She had been hugged flat, she felt. She looked up at the mountain that rose toward Panagia, at the house where they had lived, nearly hidden by trees except for its tiled roof, at the theater, and beyond it, the crest where the acropolis stood.
“I am glad we’re going home,” she said to Paul. “Are you?”
“Yes,” he replied.
If she lived a lifetime on Thasos, she wondered if she would have been able to know it all—the mountains, the villages, Theologos, Kastro, Prinos, the ports they had not visited: Limenaria and Stavros and Skala Potamia. There were trees she did not know the names of, and flowers and birds. There were ghostly places where the ancients had left their cities and their temples, still buried, but which would be gradually brought into the light of day by the archaeologists.
“Will you miss it?” she asked.
Paul didn’t answer. She turned to him and saw he was staring fixedly at something. She looked in the same direction. On the car ferry pier, a few hundred yards away, stood Mr. Hemmings, his hand resting on the handgrip of his motorcycle, two small suitcases by his side. Behind him stood Jack. No one had come to see them off. They looked solitary, hardly even together. Perhaps a fly lighted on his ear; something made Jack turn his head slightly. She saw his face as he recognized Paul. He didn’t smile. He was as unmoving as a statue. Yet some emotion so troubled his face, he looked as if he were about to shout or cry. Abruptly, he turned his back.
She felt a rush of anger. Paul had shut her out for so long! Now Jack had done it to him. Good! She turned to her brother, meaning to say something—to tell him what an awful person he had chosen to be his friend. He was still staring at Jack Hemmings. His mouth was tightly closed. On his cheek there trembled a large tear. It caught the light as it hung there; it seemed to hold the colors of the clothes worn by the people waving to them on the wharf, the bright storefronts, the flowers in their pots and boxes; and in that second before it slid down his cheek and disappeared, she glimpsed, too, a world of feeling and of loss.
“Paul,” she said softly, “let’s go in now and get seats by the window.”
He snuffled and swallowed loudly.
“All right,” he said. “That’s a good idea, Lily.”
About the Author
Paula Fox is a notable figure in contemporary American literature. She has earned wide acclaim for her children’s books, as well as for her novels and memoirs for adults. Born in New York City on April 22, 1923, her early years were turbulent. She moved from upstate New York to Cuba to California, and from one school to another. An avid reader at a young age, her love of literature sustained her through the difficulties of an unsettled childhood. At first, Fox taught high school, writing only when occasion permitted. Soon, however, she was able to devote herself to writing full-time, but kept a foot in the classroom by teaching creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and the State University of New York.
In her novels for you
ng readers, Fox fearlessly tackles difficult topics such as death, race, and illness. She has received many distinguished literary awards including a Newbery Medal for The Slave Dancer (1974), a National Book Award for A Place Apart (1983), and a Newbery Honor for One-Eyed Cat (1984). Worldwide recognition for Fox’s contribution to literature for children came with the presentation of the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1978.
Fox’s novels for adults have also been highly praised. Her 2002 memoir, Borrowed Finery, received the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir, and in 2013 the Paris Review presented her with the Hadada Award, honoring her contribution to literature and the writing community. In 2011, Fox was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
Fox lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, the writer Martin Greenberg.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1987 by Paula Fox
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3748-8
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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