by Susan Swan
“Everyone dies, Luce. You will find a way to make peace with this—I know you will. Do you know what you are going to say this afternoon?”
“I think so. But I don’t have an object that symbolizes my feelings for her.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. Most of us are bringing something from Greece because Kitty loved it here. You’ll see. Things will go smoothly today.” There, Lee thought. She had said her words of maternal comfort. But now the girl was looking at her as if something more was expected.
“Lee, can I ask you something?”
“Fire away.”
“Why don’t you want to go to Zaros?”
“Who said I don’t want to go?”
“You keep finding excuses.”
“Fair enough. Well, you’re right. I don’t go in for morbid experiences. Seeing the places Kitty loved is more important to me.”
They sat for a moment in silence, Luce’s head bowed, her chest moving rapidly up and down. Finally, Lee heaved herself to her feet and lumbered off to join Christine, who stood talking to Andreas. And when she was sure the other woman wasn’t coming back, Luce opened up the guidebook to the user copy, her face stubbornly turned away from the group in the meadow.
July 23, 1797
Dear Isaac,
How sad I was yesterday, old friend. My dear companion has asked me if we should go on to Constantinople to find Aimée. I want to stay in Greece where she and I can find a home for ourselves and love each other well. There is so little time left to me.
And so this morning, I awoke from unhappy dreams. The worst were of my mother as she was when I was a boy. “Her son of the floorboards,” as she called me. Naturally, my brothers and sisters took her to mean that I was conceived in the hull of a gondola, but already I knew enough to deduce that I was the result of a lagoon rendezvous with Grimaldi and not the son of the wretched man I called Father, who died agonizingly of an ear abscess. My conception in a boat left me with my lifelong craving for crayfish.
In my first dream I was a boy hardly into breeches, standing with my grandmother on a balcony above the Piazza San Marco as a magnificent parade swept by. At the head of the parade, I saw my mother in a gold mask and a padded wig so high it stood half as tall as myself. My mother was costumed as Diana, the mistress of the hunt. In her hand, she held a golden bow as bright as the sun. I cried out to this heartless, dazzling creature who stood flirting with the masked actor beside her.
“Zanetta! Speak to your child!” my grandmother called.
My mother turned my way, smiling and parting the opening of her gown so I saw the ripe swell of her breasts. Then she began to laugh and point.
“Look at my bambino!” she shouted. “The bird has risen!”
I stared down in horror. L’uccellino si è alzato! I had burst out of my breeches. I hid my face in my grandmother’s skirt while the crowd laughed.
The second dream was so vivid, I wondered if it was a memory revisiting me. I dreamt that my mother’s lover, Michele Grimaldi, had anchored his craft in the rushes by the witch’s house in Murano so they would be well hidden from the village. She had coaxed him into bringing me along and he agreed on condition that she kept me out of sight. Of course, I disobeyed her, and from behind a curtain I watched as he removed her extravagant bonnet with the wax fruit and butterflies; skilfully unbuttoned her brocade gown and then her zenda whose black lacy pleats fluttered in the breeze. I was jealous of him in his handsome bag wig and drawers, his waistcoat open to display the fine quality of his undershirt. Tenderly, he sheltered my mother with his bulk so the sea winds wouldn’t dimple her young body. “Zanetta, why should you feel a chill?” he whispered, and when she was naked, he fed her a little crayfish and several glasses of prosecco. After she finished these delicacies, she excited him by sitting on the stern, legs akimbo, releasing water over the side of the craft …
I could not help myself. I burst out of the cabin, giggling, and the two of them stared at me in shock.
“Look, Zanetta,” Michele Grimaldi said. “The boy loves you as much as I do!”
He pointed at the tent I was making of my trousers, and I wept with shame while my mother laughed.
Why do we cry out for our mothers at the moment of our death, Isaac? Because we need her still, and while we may travel to the end of our lives before we know this truth, as a boy, I already knew it well.
Yours,
Jacob Casanova
Luce noticed that some of the women were packing up their things. She knew that she should do the same. She put away the photocopy and walked over towards the women lining up to get on the bus. Only Toby and Jan were still lounging under the olive trees. Julian was shouting for them to come. Andreas had slipped into the driver’s seat and was already starting the engine.
That afternoon, the tour bus climbed a hill and stopped near the small whitewashed church of Agia Paraskevi, which had been built above a Minoan shrine. Waves of green hills rolled away from the church towards the same pointed mountains Luce had seen from the olive grove.
Her mother’s entourage filed out of the bus, talking in excited, boisterous voices. She trailed after them. She had never been inside a cave and the prospect was daunting. She had not realized until now that she was frightened of going below ground.
Around her, the women began putting on their “cave clothes”—what they called the closed-toe shoes and the pants that they pulled on over their shorts and sundresses. Yannis had politely absented himself, but Andreas stayed on to watch, playfully hiding his eyes behind his fingers as if the women were stripping to the buff.
Luce turned her back on Andreas and pulled on thick denim jeans and a sweatshirt over her light summer clothes. She had no idea how far down they were going. She’d overheard Andreas joke that it was hundreds of feet and the group would have to climb down a vertical drop, but she didn’t know whether to believe him.
“Are we all here?” Christine clapped her hands and the group stopped talking and nodded.
“Andreas and Yannis are joining us today for the tribute,” Christine said, turning to smile at the two guides. “As some of you know, Andreas has been guiding people down this cave for most of his life.”
“Yannis and me—we cave men!” Andreas said, and Christine waited politely while the group laughed.
“The guides will help any of you who need assistance,” Christine said. “Ready, Andreas?”
Andreas nodded and started down the narrow road, walking with his sloppy, shuffling gait. Yannis strode quickly after him and the group followed. The opening to the cave lay halfway down the hill, directly below the church. The two guides halted at the entrance and pointed solemnly at a formal stone staircase leading into the cave under a high, arched opening. Lee whispered to Luce that the black limestone rocks above the entrance had been darkened by bonfires built during the annual celebration of festivals for the Virgin Mary.
The line of women followed Christine down the stairs, some of them carrying little clay figures of Minoan snake goddesses they had bought in a shop near Knossos. On the fourth step, Luce stopped. Perspiration, thick, almost creamy like hand lotion, was trickling down between her shoulder blades, and there was an uncomfortable moist sensation at the back of her neck. She remembered that she had left her bottled water on the bus. She stared at the stream of women moving past her, wondering what to do. Then she spotted Lee, already far below, looking up at her.
“Keep moving, Luce,” Lee called up. “It’s a long way to the bottom.”
She began to walk slowly downward, fighting the impulse to go back. This was not what she had come to Crete for—to be enacting goddess rituals with older women. But she couldn’t run away like she did in Athens, she told herself.
On either side of the passageway, the rocks were sweating like ripe cheese. Up ahead a flashlight was illuminating a large grotto where some stragglers like herself stood gazing up at the cave wall, murmuring admiringly. Huge stalagmites rose up out of the darkness like
gigantic folds of wet drapery. When Luce looked closely, she realized they had been created by other formations growing down from the cave ceiling. The group moved on and she lurched after them, trying to keep her arms from touching the moist walls of the passageway. She felt as though she were threading her way through slick intestines.
About fifty yards ahead, Luce heard someone yelp in surprise. “Damn it, turn that thing off! Do you want to blind me?”
Julian was on his knees in front of an impenetrable rock wall, his glistening, sweaty face lit up by a flashlight. The flashlight dimmed and Julian’s back and shoulders melted into the rock. The group appeared to be crawling through an opening in the rock face. Was that what she was expected to do? She wanted to turn back, but the floor of the cave felt slippery and treacherous. She carefully bent down and touched it. Her hand came back greasy with wet clay. She took a step backwards, shuddering, and fell hard on her rear end.
“Are you all right, Luce?” Christine called. She saw the dim outline of a woman in the shadows. “Shall I send up one of the guides to help you?”
“No. Please go ahead.” She sat on the damp clay, looking apprehensively at the place where Julian had vanished. Now one of the white-haired women disappeared into the rock and then another followed. She didn’t want to follow them into the bowels of the earth; she would wait until the last one went through and then she would crawl back up to the cave opening. Without warning, someone extinguished the last flashlight and now the world of the cave lay in darkness. She could no longer see the tendrils of sunshine floating down from the cave’s mouth. She had no flashlight, not even a book of matches to light her way back.
Someone shouted from below. A woman had made it to the bottom of the cave. Luce heard another shout and a volley of chattering voices rose up from the depths of the cave. She closed her eyes, and a series of images appeared—as if on a film loop—of angry Greek villagers sealing off the mouth of their cave. Left without light for the rest of time. The goddess women.
“Psst! Look there! The gods knew how to laugh, eh?”
A torch lit up a small owl carved in a niche on the cave wall barely an arm’s length away, and Andreas loomed in front of Luce, the light spilling ghoulishly across his bearded face. “You fear, eh, kopela?”
Luce bowed her head. She felt as if the moist air of the cave was choking her. When she looked up, Andreas was farther down the path, and Yannis stood before her.
“I help you!” He grasped her arm and she staggered to her feet. Her head was throbbing.
“I’m all right.” She pulled herself free and started down a few more steps, nearly slipping again on the mud. She felt a weird numbness around her mouth. She ignored the sensation and barely glanced at Andreas waiting by the hole in the cave wall. Closing her eyes, she hunkered down and crawled through. What else could she do? It was too late to go back now.
She was through to the other side. Andreas and Yannis were close behind; Luce could smell male sweat and the rich scent of cologne. Somewhere below, the weaving shafts of flashlights lit up the glistening stalactites dripping down from the limestone cave overhead. It was a sobering vision, she thought wonderingly. The voices of the women sounded far away, as if they were lost somewhere in the basement of a derelict building.
A beam from a flashlight picked up her Nikes and one of Yannis’s Kodiak boots; they were standing on a ledge hardly wide enough for their feet.
“I take care of you, don’t worry,” he whispered.
Luce couldn’t help herself. “I want to go back!”
“Luce!” Christine called up from below. “Let the guides help you. You’re not in a good position to turn around.”
“If you don’t move, I kiss you!” Andreas said.
She heard Yannis speaking angrily to his uncle in Greek. She ignored the two men and began to edge cautiously across the ledge. “I can’t get enough air!” she croaked. She cowered against the wall rising up behind the ledge, breathing in panicky gulps.
Nearby, she heard Yannis and Andreas shouting in Greek, and then Christine’s voice reverberated again in the darkness. “Luce, put your head in Yannis’s jacket and breathe slowly. You’re hyperventilating. It’s not dangerous.”
Yannis handed her his jacket, and she did as she was told, burying her face in the coarse-grained fabric. Slowly, her breath began returning to normal. “I’m all right now,” she said in a small voice.
Yannis took back the jacket and stood at the edge of the ledge, his arms touching the cave wall to form a protective bridge separating Luce from the open space beyond the ledge.
“Ela, Luce,” he called to her. “Come.”
Shivering with fear and humiliation, she inched forward, ducking her head under his arms and trying not to look down.
“That’s it, Luce—one step at a time,” Lee called up.
“You okay,” Yannis said. He tapped her backside with his flashlight and made a shooing gesture towards the passageway sloping down to the floor of the cave where the rest of the group sat waiting. Her breath coming again in regular bursts, she began to crawl down the path on her hands and knees. Her mother’s friends clapped as she reached the bottom of the cave.
“Good for you, Luce,” Christine called out.
She was in a large oval space, perhaps fifty feet wide, with a high ceiling. A cluster of pumpkin-coloured fairy lights had been placed near a huge white stalagmite, ringed like a giant icicle with dripping calcite. The group were seated in a circle around the natural formation, and Luce guessed from their serious faces that it was meant to be a representation of the Great Minoan Earth Mother.
“We are here today to honour Kitty Adams,” Christine began. “There will be some moments when the flashlights are turned off. If anyone becomes frightened, don’t hesitate to ask me to bring back the light.”
“Blessed be,” someone murmured, and several voices answered, “Blessed be.”
“Lee, why don’t you start?” Christine said.
A flashlight illuminated the face of her mother’s companion standing directly across the circle from Luce. Lee looked foreign and strange—a handsome figure whose head might have been carved from the limestone of the cave.
“I’m offering water to The Great Earth Mother of Crete in honour of my companion. If I’d been more generous, she might still be here,” Lee said in an unfamiliar, remorseful tone. Luce heard the noise of liquid hitting the earth. The little jewellery-draped icons on the altar gleamed wetly. “Without water, the human race would perish. Without Kitty, I am without water.”
Luce was taken aback by the pain in Lee’s voice, and by her admission that she was not faring well without Kitty. Across from her, she heard Lee blow her nose, and stared sympathetically in the other woman’s direction, but she could no longer see Lee in the gloomy flickers of light.
“Blessed be,” a chorus of voices said. Luce thought of the Anglican services her aunt Beatrice had taken her to as a child. She remembered people standing up and sitting down again, murmuring repetitive refrains, just like her mother’s friends today. For a moment, she felt comforted.
Christine said, “Julian? Can we hear from you?”
“I am leaving a Cretan jar of honey because I found Kitty’s company sweet,” Julian said, his voice ragged. “I’m not a Minoan sister, but a chap like me can still appreciate Kitty’s work …” His words trailed off and Luce realized he was deeply affected. After a moment, he resumed: “So I have chosen to say the words of the American poet Walt Whitman … ‘I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love. If you want me again, look for me under your boot soles.’”
“Thank you, Julian,” Christine said.
In the wavering light of the candles, Luce glimpsed Julian rise to his feet and place a jar by the plump Neolithic goddesses on the altar. When he was back in his seat, Christine rose and poured wine over the small figures. “First water and then wine to the goddess Vritomartis and to Skoteini, the dark one who lives in the cave. And n
ow, in honour of Kitty, I am going to call out the names of my female ancestors. And I want each of you to do the same. Start with your own mothers and grandmothers and then go back as far as you can.
“I am Christine, daughter of Jane, daughter of Martha,” Christine began.
Through a trance of sadness, Luce heard voices calling out in Greek and English, and the women’s names seemed to float above her in the damp air of the cave. “I am Luce,” she whispered, “… daughter of Kitty, granddaughter of Pauline.” Around her, the voices were melting into the rock walls of the cave in quavering echoes.
As the last voice faded away, Christine spoke:
“Luce, do you want to say something about your mother?”
She began to cough. Her body shook in chest-rattling bursts. In the gloom, someone slipped an arm around her shoulders and she heard a voice whisper, “Luce, drink this.” An object, warm and rubbery, was thrust into her hands.
“Do you want to say something?” Lee whispered.
“Yes.” Luce drank gratefully from the bottled water and she brought out the scrap of paper on which she had written down the words of Jacob Casanova. She balled up the paper in her fist. She couldn’t read in the dim light.
“I … I am trying to remember a quote from a journal that belonged to my great-great-great aunt—well, I don’t know how many greats she was.” Luce heard gentle laughter. She waited a moment, then continued. “‘Why do we cry out for our mothers at the moment of our death?’” she said softly. “‘Because we need them still, and we may travel to the end of our lives before we know this truth.’”
There was silence. Austere and total. Then Christine whispered, “Light and darkness.”
“Light and darkness,” the group whispered back. Someone lit a candle and slowly, one by one, the flashlights were turned on again, their beams glowing like amber wands in the still air of the cave.
As Luce stumbled out of the cave, leaning on the shoulder of Lee Pronski, she stared in awe at the billowing folds of green foothills around the little church of Agia Paraskevi. The afternoon sun was still spilling its honeyed light on the Aegean landscape that seemed to bear no relationship to the strange, forgotten Minoan landscape underground. My God, she thought, it’s beautiful, the earth is beautiful.