by Urania Sarri
Kate had been my best friend for the last three years. We were always on the same frequency she and I, and most of the time I did not even have to talk to her for she could always read my eyes as I could read hers. She had been a sweet comfort to me ever since I’d broken up with Colin.
Kate was really enjoying her achievement that night. I watched her slim, model-like figure move around the kitchen, wondering if she would really eat anything. Over the past few months she had lost some weight as she had decided to totally exclude carbohydrates from her diet.
My roommate had big plans for that evening, as she had decided to fascinate Tony with her cooking abilities. That was why she had bought a book with traditional, Greek recipes, and had chosen three of them for a romantic candlelit dinner in the little garden in front of our studio. We had spent the last three hours in the kitchen, which now looked as if a natural disaster, a hurricane or something as violent and fast, had just come this way, spreading debris everywhere.
Tony, a cute fellow student from Italy, was Kate’s boyfriend. His apartment, which he shared with two other History students, was only a few blocks away. He and Kate had both been very excited about coming to Greece, looking forward to spending their holidays here together. It was no surprise that they had been the first to sign in for the University summer school. As for me, I was pretending to share their enthusiasm although I had known this summer would not be the same. I had been having second thoughts about this trip ever since Kate had literally dragged me to sign in. When she told me that Colin would not be here this year, however, I admit I felt much relieved. After all, he was the only reason for my inhibitions. Ever since I was a child, I had come to adore this country and its people, due to my Greek dad, and it pleased me to feel that summer holidays here had become part of my life again, the same way they used to be when my dad was alive.
I remember how Kate, overconfident about her choice of recipes, had refused to follow my advice about not blending the discrepant flavors that night.
‘Seriously, Emma. Oysters are aphrodisiac. I may not be a chef but that much I know.’ she had told me when I questioned her bizarre taste.
I had a natural aversion for seafood. It was the only part of the Greek cuisine I did not like. But from that day on, I was pretty sure that my aversion would turn to pure disgust, because the smell of seafood had blended dangerously with that of roast lamb, causing waves of nausea to my stomach.
‘Do you think this shrimp sauce is thick enough?’ Kate asked me anxiously, her face red from the hot steam coming from the pan in front of her.
It was the third time she was asking me that and she smiled apologetically when her eyes met my glowering look.
‘Sorry, but you’re the expert.’ she smiled.
I was already on my way to check the sauce anyway, when I heard the doorbell ring.
‘No! Don’t tell me Tony’s already here!’ Kate panicked.
‘Relax, if it’s Tony, I’ll send him to the store for beer.’ I reassured her, wiping my hands quickly.
I walked to the door straightening my hair, wondering about traces of the flour war I had with her a few minutes ago.
When I opened the door, I came before a vaguely familiar face. It was not Tony, but a gorgeous stranger who did not seem less surprised than I was. He was standing on the threshold, looking at me with sparkling eyes.
‘Hi. Are you Kate?’ he asked, with a wonderful, distracting smile.
‘No. But I’ll get her for you.’ I said smiling back but realizing at the same moment that I was unable move at all, as I just could not take my eyes off him.
He was tall and athletic, dressed in expensive loose, white linen pants and a light green, brand T- shirt. His hair, golden brown, enwreathed his wonderful face in a disheveled hair-do and his full lips were slightly curved downwards, in the shape of a heart.
But what was most striking on him, was the deep blue of his large, almond shaped eyes, the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. They had captured mine, subliminally influencing my thoughts, making me struggle to recollect a long lost memory aroused by the angelic visage before me.
When I realized I had been staring at him, I felt my cheeks blush with embarrassment. I turned to get Kate, but she was already behind me. ‘Hi. I’m Kate. What can I do for you?’ She pushed me softly with her elbow, placing herself in front of me. I turned to hide into the kitchen, thinking what on earth was wrong with me. How could I have made such a fool of myself in front of that stranger?
I heard him talk to Kate without paying attention because something was trying for a second time to sneak into my mind, a past memory, an obscure image I was not able to recall, like a scene of a forgotten, nostalgic dream. It had to do with those sparkling, deep blue eyes of his. But how could it be possible? He was not the kind of man you would forget you have met. But still…
‘Emma, can you come here please?’ Kate was calling me from the living room. When I got back there, he was standing with his back at me.
‘Emma, this is Christopher, Harry’s roommate. Remember Harry telling us about the new tutor the other day?’ she winked at me. Harry was Kate’s brother and member of the summer school staff.
Christopher turned towards me with an innocent smile, but his eyes were now slotted, as if he was estimating my reaction.
‘Oh! ’ I said, overtly surprised. His face had started to dazzle me again and I was at a loss for words. He certainly did not look like a tutor but rather like a model. His beautiful face, absolutely breathtaking, was blocking the function of my mind. They were both looking at me with obvious mystification now. This is really awkward, I thought. I should come up with something quickly. And I picked the wrong thing to say.
‘I just thought you would be, you know, …older.’ Oops! I regretted saying that immediately. How could I have said that? What was I thinking?
‘Well, may be I am older than you think. Let me introduce myself properly. Christopher Auburn.’ He seemed amused by my bewildered attitude.
But …again… His voice; how could it be so familiar? And his smile. Once again, the same dream-like memory was creeping into my mind. Kate was giggling now and I realized he had his arm outstretched towards me, still waiting for a handshake.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Foolish! A mocking voice shouted in my head.
‘Nice to meet you, Emma.’ He looked obviously amused by my childish reaction as he was still grinning broadly when I touched his hand. It was warm and his grasp felt firm and familiarly inviting to me.
‘Have we… met before?’ I asked sheepishly.
His expression changed instantly. He looked straight into my eyes, meditatively and with some concern for a long moment. Then he went on, smiling knowingly.
‘I doubt it. I’m sure I would have remembered that.’
He held my hand a little longer than he should in a normal handshake. Or was I holding his? Kate was giggling again. He turned to her releasing my hand as his face became more serious.
‘Thank you for the keys, Kate. I should be going. I don’t want you to destroy your dinner over me.’
‘Oh, no!’ she shouted running to the kitchen, alarmed by the smell of burnt food coming from it.
‘I’ll see you two tomorrow then.’ he said, going for the door.
‘Just let us know if you need anything else!’ Kate shouted from the kitchen.
The door closed behind him and I was left in a daze, staring into vacancy.
When I got back to the kitchen, I found Kate pouring some water in the pan with roast lamp, which now looked a little darker than the one in the picture of the cookery book.
‘I KNOW!’ she shouted. ‘He looks like a Greek god, doesn’t he? You had me worried for a minute, you know. What’s wrong with you?’ she asked, rolling over the meat before putting it back into the oven.
‘I’m not sure. I felt like…like I’ve seen him before. Something about him is very familiar to me.’ She took off her cooking gloves and looked at me musingly, le
aning against the kitchen table.
‘That’s impossible. He comes from a university in Canada, Harry told me. It’s his first time in Greece and he’s never been to Brantel either.’
‘What did he come here for?’ I asked.
‘He needed the keys to the apartment. Harry’s not back from Athens yet.’ She paused for a moment. ‘He asked about you, you know.’ she grinned. ‘That’s why I called you. He wanted to know your name.’ she said, checking me with the corner of her eyes.
‘Really?’ I was mystified.
‘Extremely handsome though, don’t you think? And he was so flirting you!’ she added teasingly, scrutinizing my expression.
I did not say anything because I knew where she meant to lead this conversation. I decided to ignore her last comment and started cleaning up the mess, but not before throwing a wet towel at her. She chuckled as she got it.
‘Tony will be here in less than half an hour. You’d better be fast.’ I reminded her. I knew Kate had been so preoccupied with her cooking that I could easily forecast her last minute frustration when she would realize that the kitchen was not in a condition to receive guests, let alone Tony who would always tease her for being the “messiest girl he’d ever met”. So, I started cleaning up the mess to avoid this last minute crisis.
When Tony came, I withdrew in my bedroom with a full dish and a glass of wine, although he and Kate had both insisted that I should stay with them.
I knew it was their night and Kate had been looking forward to it for so long, so I had decided to stay in my room and watch one of my favorite thrillers. Besides, I needed a good sleep.
I took a bite of the surprisingly delicious roast lamb. I have always considered myself as quite experienced when it comes to Greek cuisine. My dad used to insist that we should stick to the Mediterranean diet even for the months we stayed in London, and my mother did her best to please him. She never gave up on those cooking habits even after she got married to her second husband, another extinguished member of Brantel alumni, Daugh. By the way, when I mention my dad I do not mean my stepfather but my real father, Dr Dimitris Ioannou. And this is the next strange thing I vividly remember about that evening; somehow I had become overwhelmed with the memory of my father, provoked by something I was not able to identify exactly, although deep inside it felt like I knew the reason for the sudden recollection of my father’s memory.
My late father was the only child of a Greek rural family from southern Peloponnese, who made their living on farming. His father had spent his whole fortune so that his son, Dimitris, would get proper education, enough to put him in a position to lead a better life than his.
Dimitris got his BA in History with excellent marks and won a scholarship to continue his studies abroad. It was then that he met Virginia, my mother, a wealthy young woman born with a silver spoon in her mouth. He was a postgraduate student in Brantel University where she was also studying History. They became inseparable since then, but they did not get married until my mother was pregnant.
My dad was a committed researcher in the field of history. The most vivid memories I have from him come from the moments he used to spend with me in his large study room. At nights, shortly after dinner, I would always find him hidden behind piles of books, often having lost track of time as he would spend hours in there. Short before his death, he had become obsessed with Project-Em”, which was something I have always been proud of, as he had named it after me. This was his last project and I’d always thought it was related to his previous research on Sanctuaries of Ancient Greece.
Trying to spend as much time with him as possible, I would intrude the privacy of his office expressing genuine interest in what he was doing. He was amused by my naive questions but he would always answer them as explicitly as possible. Despite my age, I had realized that whatever he was working on had been worrying him a lot and that his friends were trying to persuade him to drop it. And so did my mum.
One night, after an awful argument between them, to which I had been a silent witness, my mother had accused him of being a dreamer who wasted his time and talent on chimeras and witch-hunt. She had left his office without noticing me hiding next to the door, but I could see the tears flowing from her eyes. My dad was sitting behind his huge oak desk with his head hidden behind his hands. I ran to him and sat on his lap to comfort him. My heart aches to the present day when I recall the bitter expression on his face, revealing pure disillusionment and despair.
‘Don’t worry daddy. I believe you.’ I told him. He did not say anything, just stroked my hair and kissed my forehead. He smiled to me and carried me back to my room to tuck me into bed.
Two days after this, my dad was murdered. I was only ten by then. The police never caught his killer and no one could find a possible motive for killing a respectable university professor. There had been a lot of rumors, of course, but the police finally decided to close his file as one of the numerous unsolved homicides.
I have always considered myself as lucky because I had been the last person who had seen him alive. He was supposed to be taking care of me as I had come down with a cold at the last minute, changing my mother’s plans.
That night we had been invited to my godfather’s for a birthday dinner. My dad had decided not to go, as he and Don, my godfather, did not get on well for the past few weeks. My mother had finally decided to go by herself, as my dad reassured her that he would take care of me.
When my mother came home, she found me alone in my bed, but there was no sign of my dad. She had waited up for him all night but he did not show up.
The next morning, little after nine, the doorbell rang. Feeling better, I had just joined my mother for breakfast in the kitchen and I knew she had been crying while she was making my milk. Listening to the doorbell, she turned so fast that she dropped the glass of milk on the floor. I remember running behind her and watching the policeman on the doorstep who nodded to her. He did not need to say anything. My mother just mumbled. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’
She married Daugh seven years later. He was reasonable enough not to pretend to be a father to me. Looking back, I never really liked him. I just put up with him for my mum’s sake, as it was obvious that he was a comfort to her. Since my dad’s death, I felt like I had lost my mum too, for she was always depressed, silent and constantly abstracted, decided for years to lead a sequestered life. She would refuse to leave the house and she stayed away from her friends and relatives. Thankfully, we never faced any financial problems, so she had hired a governess, Alice, who took care of me.
After my father’s death, we never thought of coming back to Greece. But this changed after my eighteenth birthday, when I received a letter from my father’s lawyer, Mr. Jackson, who requested that I paid him a visit as soon as possible for a very important matter. We met on the following morning to present me with a sealed envelope that my father had entrusted him with. My father’s instructions to Mr. Jackson had been to hand over the envelope to me when I would be at the right age. I remember opening the red wax seal my father had so often used, with trembling hands. In it there was a brief note:
Use it wisely.
There was something more in the envelope: a key to a safe deposit lock of the National Bank of Greece. I was so curious about what my father had in store for me that I left for Greece on the next day.
‘I wish you didn’t have to go there, Emma. It’s probably about some family heirloom.’ my mother had told me, but I could see how worried she was.
‘You know I can’t let go just like that, mum. It’s something I just have to do.’ I had insisted. She knew me well enough to understand that any effort to talk me out of this would be vain.
In the bank lock I had found the most unexpected things: files, which I recognized to belong to my dad’s archives, as I had seen them on his desk years ago. They had been labeled with strange names that made me instantly recall the circumstances under which my father had named them. Actually, my dad and I used to pl
ay the “baptism” game, where I got to decide the title for each of the files he was working on.
I was instantly deluged by an overflow of the sweet memories of my childhood, of the happy years when my dad’s smile would seal every day as he held me safely in his wide embrace, when he explained to me the ancient Greek myths, when he tucked me into bed kissing my forehead. Inside the cold walls of the bank, I could almost feel him; I sensed his presence more intensely than ever. I cried myself out until my eyes became swollen and my head felt awfully heavy. Eventually, I picked up the thickest file, the one he had named after me.
I had spent endless, tearful nights studying ‘Project-Em’ before I decided to fulfil my dad’s dream. He had planned an excavation in a specific area in Greece that belonged to him, aiming to bring out another ancient sanctuary, at least that was what I thought at that time. This one seemed to be really important to him, like some kind of an obsession, as I saw numerous notes and maps where he had tried to locate the exact point where the sanctuary probably lay, covered by layers of history throughout the ages. He had labeled this spot as Point-X, the landmark of his Project. The excavation was scheduled for a week after his death. I found that he had recently bought this piece of land in the district of Mesinia, of which my mum was ignorant, and had made all the necessary arrangements with the Greek authorities.
Mr. Jackson helped me with the legal details, as I became the only legal heiress of my dad’s archives. With my stepfather’s help, the university “adopted” Project-Em in terms of funding, as a tribute to my dad’s memory.
Unfortunately, I had not yet achieved to resuscitate the project due to unanticipated exigencies of Greek bureaucracy for the last three years. This summer, however, I was pretty optimistic about it, as I had received a letter from Demetra, the supervising archeologist, informing me about the latest developments.