by Tobias Hill
–Nothing. It’s fine, he said, and smiled back, as if it were true.
And wasn’t it? He had never felt better. The conversation on the balcony seemed insubstantial, unsubstantiated. There was only the faintest unease in him, the old feeling of having gone wrong somewhere; of having lost the thread of his life as he had lost the train of the others’ talk. Odysseus, lost at sea. He had almost grown used to that. Other feelings were fresher in him now. His passion for the country around him. The happiness of finding friends, of being among those he loved. The freedom that rose in him as they drove seawards together. They had let him come with them. That was enough. He was content.
He wondered where it came from, that new sense of freedom. He felt released from something. He wondered if it was his old life, or the gridlocked city falling behind, and then realised it was neither of those so much as it was Laconia. He had spent a month inside its mountains. He had become inured to its oppressiveness.
–Are we there yet? Jason said, and Sylvia woke up whining, as if she understood his grievance, and just then a roadsign came up to assure them that yes, they almost were.
He caught up with Eberhard just as Pylos came into sight. The Volvo fell in beside him–a glimpse of Max and Eleschen spitting like cats in the back–and then overtook again, speeding to beat oncoming traffic, one lazy hand extending from the driver’s window, regally waving Ben to follow. The town was an amphitheatre of terracotta roofs and whitewashed walls clinging to the hills below them, but they turned away from it, following the coast road north.
–Where am I going now? Natsuko?
–I’m asking, wait.
He heard her speed-dial, then stilted talk.
–He says there is a secret beach.
–Shouldn’t we get rooms first? he said, and Jason yawned and stretched, seat rolled back to the max, feet stacked one-two on the dashboard.
–Relax, will you? Why waste the day? This time of year they’ll be crying out for us.
Now the sea was beside them, black as anthracite in the harbour, bright as stained glass in the shallows. An island sheltered the bay, a long Here-be-Dragons procession of vertebral humps.
–Eberhard says the island is Sphacteria. He wants to know if anyone would like to hire a boat tomorrow.
–Not tomorrow, not in this lifetime. What’s wrong with him? Tell him there’s nothing there I want to see. Anyway, I came to prop up the beach, not bone up on more history…
The island still ran parallel with them. He watched it as Jason grumbled on. Named, it had become familiar, its rugged face resolving like that of an old friend in a crowd. It was the first place where the Spartans had ever surrendered, their hoplites starved and besieged by sea, their enemies burning the island bare. Athenian hirelings creeping along the tops with slings strimming through the smoke, like Davids going to meet their Goliaths.
–Here be dragons, he said, talking to no one so much as himself, but Jason nodded, his own gaze still lingering on the island, as if he felt the same thing too, the sense of a history so old it had almost crossed into myth.
Pylos was like Sparta in that, its modern insignificance overshadowed by a legendary past. Sandy Pylos, and Sacred Pylos, Homer had called it. And there had been something else, too, some other momentous event besides the surrender of the Spartans…what was it? Something almost modern–Not your period, Fischer at the British School would have said–though more than that he couldn’t grasp, the memory of a word cleaving to the tip of his tongue, the definition of it just out of reach.
But that was Greece. The endless cycle of vicissitudes: all of them, for better and worse, remembered, retold and recorded, not dispassionately but ardently, so that the daughters might learn from the mistakes of the mothers, and the sons avenge the fathers. Revenge after revenge, on and on, since before the invention of history itself.
A sign came up for the town beach. Eberhard kept on past it. They drove in convoy now, close enough for Eleschen to turn, gesturing like a drama queen, pointing at Max, mouthing for help in comical desperation.
A village had grown up around the turning, a ramshackle strip of convenience stores, foreigners here and there even this early in the season, women with bleached-blonde bangs and balding men in Bermudas trying on hats and sunglasses, admiring themselves in hanging mirrors, cocking their heads like parrots in cages. On the sea-side of the road Europop played on hotel verandahs. A handful of younger tourists waited at a bus stop, the men red-necked, a toddler crying or crying with laughter; it was hard to tell which before they were gone.
Natsuko had gone to sleep, her cheek propped on the back of one hand, as elegant and desirable as a girl in a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Eberhard was gathering speed. The village thinned to outskirts and was gone.
A river. Fallow fields. One lonely house, a row of cacti standing guard in rusted feta cans. A chapel and a wrecker’s yard, a man walking from one to the other, shouldering a jack as long as his arm. Then they were turning onto an unmarked road, the surface reduced to dirt and dust, twisting between old acreages, the view of what lay ahead always screened by eucalyptus or calamus, laurels, olives, blossom trees, the smell through the open windows of salt and iodine: and then a cliff rising above them, dark and grim with the sun behind it, the sea strobe-lit at its feet, the beach suddenly opening out in a stupendous crescent of coral white, and Eleschen already out of the car, kicking off her shoes, running, screaming, shrieking, running.
Later, sated with sun and sea, they climbed the southern headland, Natsuko, Sylvia, Eberhard and Ben, ploughing uphill through the dunes, their ankles pricked by gorse, ponderous black carpenter bees droning around them and away through thickets of sea-thistle and thyme.
There was a cave below the heights, and they stopped in the shelter of its mouth and looked back at the beach below. The others were Lilliputian, Jason smoking in the shade, Eleschen an indolent sun goddess, Max reading the newspaper, bolt upright like a yoga master.
–Look at them, Eberhard said, Basking in their own glory. The lizard, the cat and the shark.
He was wearing a Panama, an old one, the fine weave coming apart at the brim. It made him look surprisingly different. Locking the car, then stood in the surf, trousers rolled up to his bony calves, he had seemed out of place, a hesitant young bank clerk dipping his toes at the beach. The Panama changed that. He looked less upright in it, more debonair, less trustworthy. Altogether riskier.
He was leaning on Ben’s shoulder, emptying sand out of his shoes, dusting off his hands with a flourish.
–Which is the shark? Natsuko asked, and Eberhard grinned, sharklike himself.
–I’d say they all have their moments. Shall we go on?
–Where to? Ben said, but the others were already off, all of them quicker than him, none of them much out of breath, Natsuko nimble, Eberhard wiry and loping, Sylvia cavorting through the scrub.
They skirted downwards to the south, the headland rising between them and the open sea. Inland, a freshwater lagoon cut them off from the world beyond, the sand blackened around its shores, the water baking in the sun, foetid and eerily silent, what sounds there were magnified out of all proportion, so that when a snake jackknifed out of their way Natsuko’s scream and Sylvia’s howls were deafening concatenations, thrown back at them by the cliff above, more frightening to all of them than the snake had ever been.
They emerged by the town beach. Natsuko had brought water and they sat in the shade of a tamarisk and shared a half-bottle four ways. Two old men in black swimming trunks walked up, down, up the strand, nursing prize bellies and cigars. Beyond them a pack of girls were playing beach tennis, kicking up spray alongside rows of grass-skirt parasols. Sphacteria faced them all, its northern tip looming across a narrow strait.
–We could swim that, he said, thinking they’d both jump at the idea, his high spirits sinking just a shade when neither of them did.
–My watch…
–We hide it, under a rock.
�
��It’s too far for Sylvia.
–Besides, Eberhard said, There’s plenty to see here, and no need to swim for it.
–I thought you wanted to get a boat?
–I did. And then I wondered if Jason wasn’t right after all. Why follow in the footsteps of those who surrendered?
His voice had cooled.
–But that wasn’t what he said–
–But perhaps it was what he meant. Jason is often less plainspoken than people realise, or give him credit for. He knows his own mind, and knows how to keep it to himself. Ready? The old castle is just up here.
They started off again. The path ran seawards and upwards, curving away and doubling back around the green bulk of the headland. The sun was higher and hotter now and for a second time he found himself lagging. At first both Eberhard and Natsuko kept his pace, but Sylvia was soon out of sight.
Already they were high above the sea. The hillside below was steep, shapeless wild olives and cypress giving way to a boulder beach, monstrous eggs and domes worn smooth by the Ionian; and high above them, to the north, the broken outline of a fortress, crenellations white in the noon sun.
–Is that where we’re going?
–That’s it.
–It’s not exactly round the corner.
–You sound like Jason when you whinge.
–I’m not whingeing, I’m just saying…
They climbed a set of ruined stairs, the last of the flight more handholds than footsteps, stone pegs wedged in sheer dry earth, Natsuko offering a hand he ignored first and then refused rudely, tetchy with sun and failure. Overhead, between cypresses, spiders had laid web after web, great dusty grey labyrinths.
–What was it happened here? he said, and she glanced back at him, her expression anxious, as if he had asked what year it was. –Not the Spartans, I mean something else.
–Navarino, Eberhard said. He was well ahead of them now, his voice coming and going between the trees. –Nineteenth century. The last great battle between ships of the line. It happened just by Sphacteria. For all intents and purposes it marked the end of Ottoman sea power. The armada of Ibrahim Pasha was annihilated. Three thousand died by fire and water. A good day for Greece. A fine day for Europe, you might say. English, Russians and French watching Musselman ships burn through the night. The admirals understood what so many have since forgotten; that this is the last frontier of Christendom. There are some paintings of it, none of them terribly good, although the ships make a pretty show. The Kastor and the Konstandin, the Sirène and the Scipion, the Asia and the Albion…
He was out of sight before his voice faded. The two of them climbed on together. Two lizards flickered out of their way, slim as blades of grass. Sylvia barked a question somewhere downhill; uphill Eberhard whistled back.
–It is nice to think of, Natsuko said, and he gritted his teeth, more annoyed than ever by her sure-footedness, and more than that by her strangeness, by all of their strangenesses.
–What is?
–Navarino.
–Is it?
She smiled at him over her shoulder. –Of course! You don’t think so?
–I think water is nice to think of. And lunch. I don’t think Navarino–
–It is the beginning of the new Greek freedom. The end of tyranny.
–Tyranny’s a strong word for it. I doubt the Ottomans saw it that way.
–There is no Europe without Greece.
–Yes, but–
He took another step towards her, blinking sweat out of his eyes, shaping up for an argument, and felt scree shift under his feet. The breath went out of him before he realised he had fallen, the pain hard on the heels of the impact, his ribs creaking under pressure; and then he really was falling, not all at once but sliding backwards and downwards in ludicrous slow motion.
His hands were clawing for purchase. The heat of limestone was against his cheek. He was spread-eagled on a sunlit rockface. The whole thing was almost funny until he felt one foot swing loose, and looking down he saw the way the rock to which he clung ran out, morning glory trailing from the overhang in breathtaking blue festoons, and cypresses far too far below, one terrifying funnel web spun between them, as if waiting to catch him.
–Don’t look down.
He looked up. Natsuko was an arm’s length away, cheeks flushed, voice hushed, as if she might blow him away. He swore between his teeth.
–Shh. Can you climb?
–Of course not! If I could–
–I can reach you. I think so. Wait…
–Don’t be stupid. Get Eberhard–
–He’s too far. I won’t leave you. Take my hand.
He reached for it, slipped, felt her catch his wrist. Her fingers thin as wishbones.
–Will you help? I can’t do it by myself, she said, out of breath at last, and he put his head back and roared another oath. Eberhard’s voice came back, somewhere far-off and questioning; and then Natsuko was laughing, lovely audible bubbles of pleasure that made him want to shake her or kiss her.
–Ben!
–What?
–Do you want to fall?
–What bloody kind of question–
–Don’t you trust me?
He met her eyes. Not black, he saw again; blood-red. The sun entered deeply into them, the darkness of the irises suffused with faint ochre crypts.
–Alright.
–You believe in me?
–Yes! Yes, I believe in you.
Some great weight lifted away from him. He pushed and kicked at the face of the rock as Natsuko began to pull. She was much stronger than he would have guessed, even knowing her so well. It was as if he hardly knew her at all. Her face was relentless, contorted, and still grinning as she reeled him in, into the circle of her arms.
For a few hours afterwards–lovely hours, to him, though he would not have confessed it to anyone–he was the sole centre of their world, a cherished child. Eleschen and Natsuko made him an invalid’s bed in the dunes above the beach, a smooth nest of sand and towels, while Jason recounted accident disaster stories, even Max squatting beside him with a first aid kit from Eberhard’s car, curing his grazes with Savlon, probing his ribs for breakages: but there was no real damage done, and at some point he fell asleep, and when he woke no one was there but Natsuko, warm beside him.
–Yashashii, ne.
Her voice made her sound as if she was smiling.
–What does that mean?
–You should be sleeping.
–You woke me up.
–I thought you were going to fall.
–I didn’t. You caught me. What does it mean?
–It means you have a soft heart.
–Don’t you?
Her head was on his chest. He felt her face move against him, eyelashes tickling him, the sand still warm under him.
–No.
–No? What kind of heart do you have, then?
But he was almost asleep again, and if there was an answer he never heard it.
Evening found them in the square in Pylos, drinking Camparis and orange under cyclopean oriental planes. Eleschen and Max were bickering over backgammon, the Georgian watching every move, staring out the dice, Eleschen on a winning streak, all insincere innocence. Sylvia was hunting cockroaches between the maze of legs and tables, trees and vending booths and fountains. Eberhard and Natsuko were picking through the Saturday newspapers, reading them cover to cover, as if starved of real life. Jason was watching the sun go down, the island half-eclipsing its incendium.
–Look at that.
–It’s pretty.
–Pretty! It’s beautiful. Like the end of the bloody world.
–Or the beginning. It looks so ancient.
–Take from the altars of the ancients not the ashes but the fire.
Eberhard stirred, mantis-thin, propped on his elbows over a broadsheet. –Blake, isn’t it?
Jason nodded, sucking on ice, eking out the dregs of his drink.
–Never liked him that mu
ch.
–I didn’t know you were on close terms.
–Hardly ever says what he means.
–But he always means what he says.
–That’s what I mean, Eb; what does that mean? Blake’s so New Age. These days he’d be right into all that crystal dolphin tribal bonding bollocks.
They ran out of conversation again for a while. Jason was thoughtful, for once, cracking the last of his ice in his teeth. –Funny, all this being Spartan once. All that way we came.
–All this and more. Not that most Messenians realise how lucky they were.
–Lucky? Ben said, and Eberhard closed the newspaper.
–I’d say so. Fortunate to serve greatness.
–Unfortunate kind of servitude.
–Oh, no doubt some would disagree, but service can be its own reward.
–Is there news? Max said, and Eberhard shook his head as Jason pushed his chair back and stood, Eleschen crooking a grin at him.
–Where are you sneaking off to?
–Wherever the fancy takes me. Goodnight, sweet ladies. Don’t wait up.
–There he goes, out on the prowl, Eleschen said. Max frowned.
–Go too. No one’s stopping you.
–No, I’ll just cramp his moves. Anyway, it’s not my style.
Her gaze was still on Jason, ducking away between tables and trees, and she shrugged and began to pack away her books and sunglasses and lotion.
–Off to bed?
–Yup, I’m beat. Max, walk me back?
He brushed himself down as he stood. There was an ineptitude to it that was so unlike him that Natsuko turned away, towards Ben, smothering a smile.
–What just happened? he said, once they were gone, and she giggled while Eberhard sighed impatiently.
–Nothing new. I find it all unnecessarily intense. I know opposites are meant to attract, but they seem to find each other so very repellent, when they’re sober.
Natsuko was gathering herself, taking Sylvia’s lead, leaning down to kiss him goodnight. He watched her follow in the others’ wake. Just as Jason had promised, they’d had no trouble finding rooms, four rundown rear-window doubles that Eleschen had wrangled for less than half the summer rate, even with the dog in tow.