Everything Beautiful Began After

by Simon Van Booy

  “Did she?” George said.

  “Did she what?” Henry said.

  “I don’t know,” George said. “Did she?” And they both laughed.

  They all sat in the kitchen for some time. George drank the rest of the wine and talked with Henry about human remains.

  “Henry talks a lot about interesting things, but not much about himself,” Rebecca said to George. “Isn’t that true?”

  “My life isn’t that interesting,” Henry slurred. “I’m sorry I’m not perfect.”

  “I don’t believe him,” George said.

  “That he’s not interesting?” Rebecca said.

  “No—that he’s sorry,” George said, and then roared with laughter. “What are we talking about again?”

  By 4:00 a.m., Rebecca said she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She kissed both men on the cheek and went into Henry’s bedroom, closing the door behind her.

  Henry got up and poured himself a glass of water, then poured one for George.

  “C’mon, Georgie boy—let me make up your bed.”

  Henry went into the hall cupboard and got some sheets and a pillow, then made up his bed with the slowness of a drunk. George stood by the window and looked outside. It was raining again and there was no other sound but the falling of drops.

  Then, in the distance a taxi splashed up the street, changing to a lower gear and then disappearing too quickly to be remembered.

  “What do you think of that?” Henry said, looking down at the makeshift bed he’d made for his friend.

  “You should work in a hotel,” George said.

  “Well, it certainly feels like I do—which reminds me that I need to lend you my spare pair of swim shorts in the morning.”

  “Good night, brother,” George said quietly.

  Henry leaned awkwardly into his friend and embraced him. For a few moments they stood very still.

  “Good night, good night,” he softly said.

  Rebecca was already asleep.

  Her clothes lay on the chair, arranged in the order in which she had taken them off. Henry removed his clothes and lay them on top of hers.

  As he sank into the sheets, two hands reached around his back.

  As he closed his eyes, Rebecca’s body moved under the sheets. He lay on his back, conscious of her but in the shadow of another dream.

  Chapter Thirty

  They arrived at the port of Piraeus much later than planned. The port was empty as most of the tourist boats had already departed for the islands.

  A few deckhands skulked about smoking. A dog followed them with its tail up. The air was salty. An old man in a cigarette kiosk was asleep. His radio was loud, but no one seemed to notice.

  They stood for a few minutes and looked around.

  “I have a feeling we’ve missed the boat,” Henry said with a smirk.

  Rebecca lifted her foot to adjust the strap on her sandal.

  “What are we going to do?” she said.

  “I’m going to find the ticket office,” Henry said. “Maybe there’s another boat,”

  George nodded. “Good idea.”

  After he walked away, Rebecca said she was hungry.

  “We could all go for lunch,” George said.

  “No, I really need something now,” she said holding her stomach.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I can’t drink anymore, George, I really can’t.”

  “I’ll help you stop.”

  They both laughed at that. Rebecca pointed to a small market with wicker baskets of fruit.

  “Let’s go over there and buy something.”

  Next to the wicker baskets was a mechanical ride-on horse, stripped of color by the wind that whirled through the square off the sea.

  They bought a bag of fruit and three small bottles of water.

  As George opened a bottle for Rebecca, he saw Henry running toward them waving.

  “C’mon!” he shouted, motioning with his hand. “The captain is holding the boat for us.”

  The dog noticed people running and barked. There were only a dozen or so passengers onboard. They sat on plastic orange chairs and ate peaches.

  Then George excused himself and went to find the toilet. After locking the door and closing the window, he pulled a small hip flask of vodka from his pocket and drained it. As he climbed back on deck, the water was getting choppy. When the boat ploughed through a wake, spray flew up the hull and slopped onto the deck.

  Rebecca put her arm around Henry and kissed him slowly on the cheek.

  “I feel a bit guilty,” she said.

  Henry turned to her.

  “Why?”

  She smiled.

  “Why do you think?”

  George stood at the railing and looked out to sea. As they neared land, he felt a hand touch his.

  “What are you doing over here by yourself?” It was Rebecca.

  “Thinking.”

  Rebecca turned to Henry.

  “He’s over here thinking,” she shouted.

  “He thinks too much,” Henry shouted back. Then the boat began to slow.

  “I think you’re the artist,” she said.

  “Me?” George said sadly.

  “You’re probably some great genius and don’t even know.”

  George laughed. They were suddenly the only three people on deck.

  “When the nature of all things rational,” George said, looking over Rebecca’s shoulder, “equipped each rational being with his powers, one of the faculties we received from his hand was this: that just as he himself transmutes every obstacle or opposition, fits it into its place in destiny’s pattern, and assimilates it into himself, so a rational being has power to turn each hindrance into material for himself and use it to set forward his own endeavors.”

  “What do you mean, great speaker?” said Rebecca.

  “He means there are no mistakes,” Henry said. “Take a bow, George.”

  George bowed and they entered the small port of an unknown land.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  As the boat kissed some old truck tires nailed against the dock, Henry explained how Aegina had been a superpower in ancient times because of the island’s geographical position, but when the Aeginetans allied with Sparta, the Greeks finally had an excuse to destroy them.

  “There were also coins,” he added. “Apparently the first coins in Europe were minted on Aegina—they had little turtles on them—so if you find one, please give it to me.”

  At the dock, fishermen sat on upside-down buckets and sewed nets. Old women stood behind them and talked to their children on mobile phones.

  “What else?” George asked.

  Rebecca grinned. “Thirsty pistachio trees lower the water table a few feet per year.”

  Henry looked at her incredulously. “How do you know that?”

  “Nuts grow on trees?” George said.

  “From a documentary that’s on all Mediterranean Air France flights,” she replied.

  They stepped off the boat into a bustling market that lined the two main streets of Aegina. The square was packed. Small women in black with carts pushed past them.

  “Let’s buy food here and take it to the beach,” Rebecca said.

  “Perfect,” George said. “I’ll get fruit.”

  “We’ve got fruit—why don’t you get fish?” Rebecca said.

  “Fish would be good,” said Henry. “I’ll get one of those little grill things—otherwise we’re eating sushi for lunch.”

  “I’ll see about renting mopeds,” George said, pointing to a line of dilapidated motorcycles with a rental sign propped up against them.

  From the long line of motorcycles, there were only two mopeds that actually worked. Rebecca insisted on having her own, so George and Henry rode together—a little lower to the road than the owner of the rental company would have liked, but he was amused that Rebecca wanted her own and told them not to drive too fast. Henry and George took turns driving, changing over at spo
ts they thought might possess archaeological significance.

  After passing a few coves too rocky for swimming, Rebecca found what looked like a hidden beach, though the map showed no beach whatsoever, just a strip of tall cliffs. The road that led to it was not really a road, but a footpath through yellow scorched rock. They rode very slowly across the rough ground, their engines ticking. When they reached an uneven cliff path, George announced that he’d rather walk than risk being driven to his death by a British archaeologist. Rebecca agreed it was a good idea, and they hiked for half an hour down a steep slope toward a strip of beach they could now see tucked underneath the overhanging cliffs. They could also see several openings to caves, which George said he’d explore after lunch.

  “Will the bikes be okay up there?” Henry said, stopping to look back.

  “Why, did you leave a deposit?” Rebecca joked.

  “Yes, I did, actually—quite a lot as it happens.”

  “They’ll be okay then,” she laughed, waving everyone forward.

  “I hope so,” Henry said, “for your sakes.”

  The sand on the cliff was very fine and coated their feet and ankles. When they reached a ledge after twenty minutes of careful descending, the beach came into full view. The sand was so white that from a distance it resembled snow.

  When they finally reached it, George dropped his bag of food and towels and stripped down to the bathing suit he was wearing underneath his cotton slacks—one he’d borrowed from Henry. Then he ran into the sea and swam quickly into deeper water.

  As Henry entered the clear waves, he felt the urge to submerge his entire body. He waded deeper, then held his nostrils and fell backward. In the second it took for the water to swallow him up thoughts unraveled in him, long-held thoughts, thoughts of which he was conscious but could not articulate, an unceasing sentence of thought like thread from a falling spool.

  He ascended after a few seconds from the sandy bottom, breaking the surface with tremendous power—as though divinely anointed for what was soon to come.

  After swimming for a little while, the aroma of grilling octopus and sardines on the disposable barbeque lured Henry and George back to shore. Sand coated their legs. They squeezed lemon halves into the milky white contours of octopus.

  After lunch Rebecca entered the sea slowly.

  Henry sat up and looked out to sea. “Maybe happiness is just finding the right people at the right time.”

  “But how do you find them?” George said.

  “Just run them over.”

  George was then suddenly interested.

  “But say you do find the right people—how do you love without smothering them?”

  Henry looked uncertain.

  “How do you not suffocate them with all the love you’ve built up in their absence?” George said.

  Henry thought for a moment. “You don’t,” he said. “And that’s the whole point—it works in a way it just wouldn’t with other people.”

  After sleeping for a while, they woke up and saw that Rebecca was still in the sea. They strolled to the water, still chatting, and then swam to the rock upon which she was resting. George swam out a little farther and splashed around.

  “I’ve been loving you from a distance,” Henry said.

  Her mouth broke into a smile, but her eyes didn’t change—as though attached to thoughts beyond the moment. “I was thinking,” she said.

  Henry touched her cheek. “About what?”

  Then George appeared. “I’ll tell you soon,” she said.

  “I thought we could swim around there,” George said.

  They found they had swum into a cave that widened into a larger space. The sand was dark and compact. Without carrying the sun on their backs, the cave felt almost cold. Their voices were louder and more distinct. The ceiling of the cave was ridged like the inside of a mouth.

  The cave echoed with the breath of each wave, and through spaces in the rock sunlight fell in columns of yellow.

  They talked for an hour and then swam into the darker, deeper hollows of the cave, which were teeming with so much life that things brushed up against their legs. For a while they lay on their backs on the cool wet sand. Then the tide swept in and washed over them. They swam against the current and out toward the beach—to their jumble of possessions in the glow of early evening. They packed up without saying much.

  When they reached the top of the cliff, George and Henry found the scooters and wheeled them quietly toward the road. Just as they were about to mount them, Rebecca stopped.

  “I want one more look at the place where I was so happy,” she said.

  They turned around and walked back to the edge of the cliff.

  Rebecca found George’s hand. “I’m so glad we’re working it out,” she said.

  The sun was beginning to fall behind distant rocks. It was very quiet and they stood for some time before anyone spoke.

  “My whole life,” Henry said, “I’ve felt as though I were missing something, that the happiness assigned to me existed always at a distance, somewhere, in some place that was somehow beyond me—and when I moved, it too moved, always away but never so far as not to haunt me with the feeling of what it might be like to be happy.”

  “But with you,” he said, turning to George and Rebecca, “I feel as though I am leading the charge toward death. Happiness and I have swapped places, and now it’s pursuing me for its very existence.”

  “No matter what happens from this moment on,” Henry announced. “Here, in this place, I will always have my defining moment of victory against sadness.”

  “I wonder if we’ll ever come back here,” Rebecca said.

  “I think we will,” George said.

  Waves broke against the cliffs.

  Rebecca fell into a deep, dreamless sleep on the boat back to Athens.

  George and Henry chatted about the coming day, hypnotized by the lights that grew nearer and brighter as their boat skimmed home in the quiet dusk.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Henry’s apartment was warm and dark. It was not late, but they were all very tired and had nothing to say. Rebecca fell asleep again on the metro from Piraeus. George agreed to stay over if he could borrow some clothes. The professor was expected early the next morning.

  Henry brewed some tea, but Rebecca and George were already asleep by the time it was ready. The smell of peppermint filled the kitchen. Henry drank a cup and thought about their day together. He checked on George and then went into his bedroom, where he shed his clothes silently and slipped into bed with Rebecca.

  A scooter went past.

  Light from the hall fell upon their bed like a spine.

  Henry turned to kiss Rebecca and saw that she was awake.

  She looked at him and stroked his face with her hand.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you too.”

  Then he asked what she had been thinking about when he swam out to meet her.

  She hesitated for a moment. “Can I tell you tomorrow?”

  Henry smiled. “Is it something about George?”

  “No, it’s about you and me.”

  Henry blinked quickly.

  “But not tonight, Henry, maybe tomorrow when we’re alone.”

  “I think we should talk tonight,” Henry said. “Otherwise I’ll worry about it tomorrow.”

  Rebecca touched his arm. “Can we please wait?”

  “George is dead asleep—I checked.”

  Rebecca closed her eyes. Henry turned abruptly to face the shutters.

  “Are you mad at me?” she said.

  “A little,” Henry said. “If there’s something you need to say—say it.”

  “I’m afraid to.”

  Henry turned to face her. “I’ve spent my whole childhood with people too afraid to speak—so if there’s something you need to say, say it, Rebecca.”

  Rebecca sat up.

  “So?” Henry said.

  “George is really a
sleep?”

  “He’s dead asleep.”

  Rebecca covered her face with her hands. “It’s serious.”

  “Whatever it is—I’m yours,” he said. “I love you now.”

  “I’m afraid that if I tell you, you’ll leave me and I’ll turn out just like my mother and sister.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m pregnant.”

  Henry’s face dropped.

  “At least, I think I am.”

  “How?”

  “I missed my period and then took a test,” she said. “And the test was positive.”

  “Jesus. Jesus,” Henry said.

  Rebecca reached for him, but he pulled away into some private world.

  “Henry,” she said softly, but he seemed not to hear her. “Henry,” she said again.

  “It’s awful,” he said, “so awful, you’ll hate me.”

  Rebecca threw back the covers and went over to the window, where she stood, a shadowy outline against the starlight.

  “There’s something I have to tell you that’s awful,” he said.

  “Tell me then,” she replied coldly.

  His instinct at that moment was to hold her, but Henry found himself suddenly pinned by the sight of his baby brother, not asleep but dead. His parents screaming. They pulled at his body with scissors.

  The only baby Henry had ever held was no longer living.

  Rebecca watched him cry. When she finally came near, he escaped into the bathroom and vomited. Then he sat quietly on the tiles.

  By the time he went back into the bedroom, determined to admit everything, Rebecca was asleep and it was nearing dawn.

  Henry got into bed and held her so tightly that she opened her eyes and smiled.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The professor kept his word and pulled up to the apartment at six o’clock sharp. The car was very loud. Henry heard it coming down the street while it was still far away and quickly dressed. He had spent most of the morning awake, staring at the window, watching the ghostly arc of passing headlights lessen against the glow of dawn.

  George was fully dressed when Henry emerged from his bedroom.

  Henry combed his hair in the mirror then went to find his briefcase of notes.

  Rebecca was still sleeping. Only half her body was covered by the sheet.