The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay

by Andrea Gillies

  “Whereabouts in America?”

  “Boston to start, and then a hospital in Baltimore. Two years in London — London in England, not London, Ohio — and then Boston again, before coming home to … somewhere I have to call home, even though it doesn’t always feel like it.” He looked out of the window, thoughtfully. “And, well, the truth is I never meant to return, other than for family events. Other than for necessary visits.” He stared at her, an intensity about him, something fearlessly direct, so that she found it hard to look back. “I should have stayed in the U.S. I came back because my father died and my mother was ill and the years have gone by. I keep saying to people that I’ve only been back a while, but the truth is, it’s been years. My mother died two years ago, and I still seem to be here.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “People get old. People die. Not a lot can be done about it. Your notes tell me you’re from Edinburgh. I haven’t been but hear it’s beautiful. You don’t sound very Scottish.”

  “My father was — is — but my mother wasn’t. She was Norwegian. My accent is kind of nowhere.”

  “And you have an Italian name.”

  She lifted her wrist with its hospital tag. “I noticed that I’m Nina Romano here.”

  “It was the name in your passport.”

  “I’m Nina Findlay, but my husband’s name is Romano.”

  “I don’t think I’ve met any Norwegians. We get a lot of Dutch and Germans who bring their tents and trailers and even their own bread and like to walk around naked.” He checked his phone for messages while speaking. “You may get visits from one or two locals. Just to warn you. I should also warn you that they’re preoccupied about how lucky it was, the accident.”

  “Lucky how?”

  Now their eyes met. “They had a narrow escape.”

  This was undoubtedly true. It was lucky, at the very least, that there was a broad ledge of flat rock jutting out beneath the road, right at that spot. It was lucky that the minibus landed there, when it disappeared over the edge of the cliff. The gradient of the hillside had been fortunate, too, supporting the vehicle’s slow rolling. The bus had tipped to the right, flipping over in a graceful full circle before coming to rest once more on its wheels, bouncing to a halt a mere seven feet from the precipice. When the realization dawned that they were saved, Andros put his head onto the steering wheel and was sick, aware that the women in the back were screaming.

  A church service of thanksgiving was held, its invitation ringing out from the chapel at the top of the hill, a white-painted blue-domed building with a panoramic outlook, sitting on the island’s highest point as if announcing its ocean governance, while at the same time conceding its powerlessness, marking its losses with bell-ringing. Dr. Christos took a note from Nina, one he translated as he was reading it out. He returned with pictures on his camera, and pointed out the faces of the bus passengers.

  “So they’re okay, they’re really all okay?”

  “Scratches only and bruises. They were brought here to be checked over; nobody had to go across the water. Four stitches was the most, and nowhere near an eye.” He went to the window, where he moved the vertical blind aside and opened the French doors, revealing a world outside that was vividly colored: a stripe of sea, a wider stripe of sky, the creams and grays of the garden, their cacti and agave and tropicals offset by flowering herbs. The hot air that drifted in smelled firstly of rosemary and thyme, and then of warmed lavender. He raised the blind from the smaller, second window, pointing out its mosquito net.

  “I have to go, but before I do, I meant it about avoiding my office. I tend to circulate around the patients and spend time working in their company, especially the ones who don’t get visitors. Whole families come through here for some of them, with bags of food and bigger televisions, but there are other people who don’t have anyone. I assume you won’t be visited, unless your husband’s on the way.”

  “My soon to be ex-husband. I disgraced myself and moved out.”

  “Disgrace. Now there’s a word.”

  “He sent a text today, wanting to escort me home when I’m ready to go, but I told him not to. We parted on bad terms.”

  “Evidently he’s forgiven you, if he wants to come and fetch you. What was it, this disgrace?”

  “He will never forgive me. He’s not the forgiving kind. No, that’s wrong. He is the forgiving kind. He’s just not the forgetting kind. And we’ve agreed that it’s over.” Dr. Christos waited. “I was an idiot. In short. For a long time quite stupid, and then for a brief time completely unhinged.”

  “Really? That’s a story I’d like to hear. We’re going through a tedious patch here; dull diseases and endless bureaucracy. Usually the patients don’t have anything interesting to tell. Or they’ve broken their necks diving off the rocks, and aren’t up to much. Or they have Alzheimer’s and accuse me of being the cousin who ruined their dry-cleaning business. Sometimes I’m even driven to working in my office.” He gathered up his things. “I have to go. But I’ll be back, that is, if you don’t mind my spending some time here.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  On the flight to Greece Nina found herself sitting beside an insurance broker, a man dressed in a suit and tie in unsummery shades of brown. Before they strapped themselves in he gave everyone within reaching distance his business card, piles of more than one, asking people to pass them on, and made an announcement to the wider vicinity. “Anybody want to talk about Life? Instant quotes and cover given!”

  Nina inserted hers into her book. “Alternatively it makes a good bookmark,” her neighbor said, introducing himself as Keith. He took two pills with a whisky miniature, applied a bean-bag neck rest, and fell deeply asleep with his mouth open.

  Nina’s book remained unread on her lap. Over and over she ran through the conversation she’d had with Paolo at the airport. She’d had to text Luca afterwards to warn him that Paolo knew, and what it was that Paolo knew, because how could Paolo not steam round there and bang on the door? She couldn’t help visualizing it, the standoff on the doorstep and what might be said in her absence. But perhaps nothing very much would be said. Perhaps the men would each decide never to mention it again. It was as likely an outcome as any other.

  Just told Paolo about us, the basic fact, in rush at departures, and am now on plane. Also, important detail. I said it was April and after I moved out. Nothing said about February, nor about our conversations. Please stick to story for my sake. For both our sakes. Sorry.

  Why had she written “for both our sakes”? She shouldn’t have written that. He might interpret it as some kind of a hinted threat. She’d expected him to respond straightaway — Luca’s phone was always kept in view — and that they’d talk more, but his reply hadn’t arrived until the following day. The island signal was dodgy, but even so. Even so. Sixteen hours later. It took him sixteen hours, and even then it was just an OK without even a full stop to follow it.

  OK

  The journey to Greece had suffered a dispiriting start. The taxi driver arrived ten minutes early and became irritable about Nina keeping him waiting, when the fact was that he was early. He hadn’t helped with her suitcase, even though she struggled with it; nor had he thanked her when she gave him a generous and undeserved tip. Once she was inside the airport, the cashier at the coffee counter had reacted badly to a £20 note (“Seriously?” he’d said, holding it as if it were poisonous), the man at security had spoken sharply when it took time to find the plastic bag of toiletries for the scanner, and the staff at the gate had made a fuss about a sandwich, like it was an undeclared second piece of luggage.

  In the middle of the flight they’d hit an alarming pod of turbulence, in which the plane sank abruptly, causing gasps and shouts of fright, before bouncing along the floor of nothingness and rising steadily again. The captain made one of his smooth, chocolaty announcements, reassuring everyone that all was well and that this kind of thing was just a fact of life and perfectly safe, alth
ough perhaps unpleasant. He didn’t say anything about being flirted with by extinction, but everyone else knew that’s what had happened, right there in the middle of the drinks service. When the flight hit a second bout of what he referred to as lumps and bumps, one that threw the plane for several minutes from side to side, a deeper silence descended while people made bargains to enjoy life more, to go freelance and buy boats. The air in the cabin became dense with resolve, while Keith slept peacefully on.

  “No one ever survives a plunge into the ocean in a jet plane,” Luca had said the year before at a family party, interrupting his wife’s account of an onboard spat. He’d been chided for reading during the safety demonstration. “It’s a total joke,” he’d said to the crew member, “all this rigmarole about life jackets under your seat.”

  “Brother, your optimism is one of the best things about you,” Paolo told him. Nina laughed because that was Nina’s role. She had been the glue that bound them. Her interceding had always been crucial, reminding each of them that they loved one another.

  “It’s absolutely safe, flying, as long as nothing goes wrong, and then you’re well and truly fucked,” Luca said.

  He and his wife had flown to Italy on business more often than Nina and Paolo, though that had been a social trip, to go to the party that marked the end of the wine harvest in Francesca’s parents’ home village. While he was gone Luca e-mailed Nina every day, morning and night. Additionally there were frequent text messages. Think I just ate horse, but have had better. Think it was the saddle. Missing you.

  It’d been her doctor’s idea that Nina go on holiday. It was mid-September, and blustery and gray at home, definitively autumn, the Christmas puddings already stacked high in supermarkets, though it remained late summer on the island. Nina hadn’t visited for twenty-five years, but there hadn’t been much change in the interim, not in its look and layout, nor really in its culture, either. It was surprising that nothing had changed, and yet what could change? Motorways and superstores were irrelevant, and the mood too conservative for other, more optional sorts of progress. As they’d approached in the late afternoon on the little ferry, its small dominion had looked like an arid hill rising out of the sea. It was only when you grew closer that the softer, intermediate slopes became visible, the flatter sections thick with olive groves, the terracing cut for the growing of wine, and the modest houses among them. Those who weren’t involved in fishing or tourism made a subsistence living, in homes perched on contrary angles of the hill, on smallholdings that worked tiny parcels of land. Most of the shoreline was pebbly, though there were small stretches of sand at intervals, and a bigger one, a golden hundred-yard beach known as Blue Bay, a short walk from the main village, which ran alongside the harbor in a T-shaped arrangement. There, a single joined-together row of houses faced out to sea, along with a couple of shops, a café, and two tavernas, and then between those two hotels a road went back at a right angle, a no-through road lined on both sides with more simple houses. A narrow band of tarmac encircled the island, most of it adjoining the shore, and a dirt road, hard and pale and loose with grit, stretched up the hill to the top village, which was really only a hamlet and wasn’t quite at the top. This was the winding and precipitous route on which Nina had met the minibus and broken her leg.

  She could see the shore road from the furthest corner of the hospital grounds, and saw, in the early mornings, the women waiting at the bus stop on their way up to the allotments. They were the people whose lives she’d imperiled, though they seemed to be fine; nobody was limping and they were in their usual high spirits. She’d walked past them often, these same six women, in the week before the accident; they were always together and always talking nineteen to the dozen. They were the first islanders she’d seen on day one, on leaving the hotel. It’d been a morning full of promise and she’d breakfasted early, alone on the terrace, under a roof made of wooden poles and the grapevine that bound them, the sunlight dappling and shifting through the leaves. Afterwards she’d packed a towel, sun cream, biscuits, a bottle of water, two books, and her journal into a bag, putting her swimsuit on under her dress. When she came out onto the street the women were standing at the bench, a rudimentary one that Andros had installed and painted yellow. Unofficially he was the transport convener, the owner not only of the minibus, but also of a car and bicycle hire shack, and the only available taxi. There were more yellow benches at Blue Bay, at intervals along the road, and round the back of the island on its wilder, rockier side. Nina had preferred to walk, to see things unfold at ambling speed; she’d wanted to slow everything down: her thoughts, her heart rate, her experience of hours passing. She’d used the bus only once, sitting on the otherwise empty seat that had its back to the driver, under the silent scrutiny of six pairs of very dark eyes. There was something almost tribal there, in the gardening group, something about blood and belonging that made Nina envious. All the women wore floral dresses with aprons over them, and ankle-height Wellingtons; all were small and sturdy, with soft, lined faces of a similar shape, wide at the brow but with pointed chins, deep-set eyes, and teeth that looked older than they did. When Nina got closer, on the first morning, the conversation loosened just enough to allow for a good look at her, and her call of “kalimera” had been tonelessly returned. She’d taken a photograph and was seen doing so and was scowled at, a finger wagged in her direction. Strolling on past the harbor, Nina sat on the wall to watch the boats, which were already pulling in and tying up. The men offered her something from the catch, and she got her phrase book out and made a hash of explaining that she had no kitchen.

  “Give to Vasilios,” one of them said, trying to push a pink fish, one that looked like a child’s drawing of a fish, into her hands. “Vasilios cook it.”

  She shook her head shyly, though Vasilios would have done so happily, there was no question; he’d think nothing of it. Favors were nothings here. One of the other men dangled a tiny live squid in front of her. “Here: pet for you.” As she walked onwards she saw him beating the thing in swift reprisal against the harbor wall.

  Now the road began to bend gently to the right, until soon (aside from the tarmac) Nina was in an ancient landscape, a biblical one of shepherds and sheep. She walked at a faster pace, trying not to have city instincts, and then there it was, Blue Bay, shaped like a mouth turned up at the corners, and high above it the cluster of white-painted houses that marked the edge of the upper village. The beach was backed by Mediterranean pines, and the aromas released here in the evening were sumptuous: it was worth the walk to experience the scent, though when she and Paolo had been here together, the weather had been too chilly for the effect to be dramatic. When they’d stayed here they’d been the only Britons at the hotel. Most of the visitors, even now, were day-trippers who came from Main Island to swim, to stroll the quaint streets, buying shell necklaces and postcards, and venturing up the hill to buy honey from a smallholding, stopping to marvel at the view, before heading back on the late-afternoon boat, quietly across the sound in failing light.

  Taverna Vasilios had much better accommodation at twice the cost of the other, more basic hotel, and at the time Nina was staying there, half of the six rooms were taken by British people. Vasilios had put them together on the first floor, for company: to one side of her there were elderly sisters, Iris and June, who wore shin-length dresses and long strings of beads, their gray hair gathered identically at the napes of long necks, and to the other, Cathy and Gareth, a professional bodybuilder and his athletic wife, their muscles a deeper shade of walnut every day. Up on the top floor, along with a morose Belgian family and a retired couple from the mainland, was a solitary German man called Kurt, who’d come for the scuba diving. It was Kurt who’d joined Nina in the afternoons at the island’s best bathing spot, a small, deep swimming hole, greenish turquoise, accessed from an incomplete circle of flat rocks. On her first day Kurt had nodded his greeting to Nina before lighting a driftwood fire, stripping off unself-consciously, and d
isappearing into the sea clad only in mask and flippers. Nina watched him surreptitiously over the top of her novel. He floated facedown for a few minutes, scrutinizing the seabed, before going into a sudden dive, his large pink buttocks rising abruptly upwards. A muffled thud followed and then Kurt reappeared, rising up like Titan, his sturdy thighs glistening, before emerging out of the water with a small octopus attached to a speargun. He dismembered and cooked it, crouching by the fire, and, seeing Nina watching, offered her a flame-curled tentacle on the end of a skewer.

  Nina had hoped that the holiday would put an end to her over-thinking. There wasn’t any doubt that she’d over-thought herself into a corner. She craved a meditative narrowing of her life, a shrunken world of small things, its smallness fully lived in and with joy. Who used the word joy anymore? She knew that joy was what she needed; joy would do what drugs couldn’t. In practice, though, the ideal of freedom and spontaneity proved illusory; she came up with an itinerary and stuck to it. Following breakfast there was a morning at Blue Bay, and lunch in the café on the harborside: tepid broad beans in tomato sauce, a couscous feta salad and a small carafe of rough wine that sent her groggily into siesta. After a nap, the air-conditioning roaring, she swam at Octopus Beach, keeping out of Kurt’s way, and then returned to the hotel, reading on her bed and clock-watching. At 5:00 p.m. she went out and strolled around in the coolness of the late afternoon, browsing at the gift shop, looking once again at the same few things. A book went with her to dinner on the terrace, though she chatted a bit to the other residents, romanticizing her life at home into something interesting and honorable, before retiring early and lying sleepless till the small hours. This went on for seven days.