She would name them.
Jacqueline thought of the lagoon at high tide. Even if it was no longer safe then, they swam. They were alone, no cars in the sandy lot, a heavy, windless day. The two of them up to their necks in water. Their father at work, their mother at church.
She would name them. Like any city. Streets named for the dead.
Her mother stood with her arms crossed and shook her head. She added more gin to her glass. More ice. This is no place to stop.
For a while. Just for a while.
She returned to her bed, where she ate a breakfast of almonds, and watched the sun light up the island. There were towns just below and also far away. A red plastic candy wrapper blew past and floated from the cliff.
Again, the same question: What to do next?
Away from town she was safer, but there was nothing here. No water, no food, barely any shelter. Somewhere there must be a spring, she thought. Once, there must have been a well.
This is no place to stay, her mother said again, impatient. Well or no well.
Jacqueline closed her eyes. The sun was cutting the back of her neck now. She could see her mother’s fingers moving along a banister, could hear the wedding band clicking against wood. Why the fingers? She tried to see a face instead, but she could not. There was the smell of the house, her mother’s body cutting through the cold, filtered air, descending. Long body, tight skirt to her knees, heels, fingers, nails painted pink, and that ring clicking against the wood.
Where was the face?
The face was blurred and imprecise. But the voice was sharp as a blade.
There is nothing here but ghosts.
And they were back where they started. But it was true, there was nothing there. A ragged memorial. Useless beauty. She would have to leave. Soon. But for a while, she would stay. A few days to think it through.
She sat in her bed scooping dry needles into her hand and letting them fall through her fingers. She watched the black road slithering up the mountainside. If trouble were to come, it would come from this side, not from the trail. Here danger would arrive by car, not by foot, not in the dirt the way she’d come.
This vantage point reminded her of Monrovia, of their house.
“That haven of sophistication,” her mother had said, picking lint from her skirt.
Her mother had come to visit her at Cheltenham, to see Jacqueline’s boardinghouse, to wander the campus. To see what their dirty money had paid for, her daughter’s ordered and peaceful life, the pristine lawns, the immovable stone buildings, the silent library. They visited Christ Church in Lansdown, where they’d sat together in a back pew holding hands in the dim light. Jacqueline was fifteen.
“Stay here,” her mother had said. “Now. After you graduate. No matter what your father says. No matter what he offers you. No matter his promises. Never come home. Promise me, JaJa. Promise me.”
Jacqueline could smell the gin mingling with the sweetness of her mother’s perfume.
Shalimar.
“I promise,” she said.
“We’ll come to you, okay? We’ll visit. No matter how lonely you are, whatever your father says about Taylor, and his peace deal, and what he’ll do for the country and our glorious future. Whatever he says, never come home. Do you understand me? Never.”
“Yes,” Jacqueline said. “I promise.”
“Good,” her mother said, breathing hard now through her open mouth. “Good.”
THE WIND BLEW ACROSS the ruins and Jacqueline watched her father’s left hand move across the shining black lacquered top of the grand piano no one could play.
A huge hand.
Heavy and thick.
She felt its weight, the wedding band gold and immovable.
It lay in her two hands, lifeless until Saifa called “Crab” and then it danced and skittered up Jacqueline’s arm and onto her head and down her back and over her knees. It pinched her toes until she laughed all the breath from her body. Me, now, Saifa screamed, Me.
And the crab came to rest on her shoulder, heavy and still.
Jacqueline shook her head.
What could be more absurd than a piano?
HERE DANGER WOULD COME UP THE ROAD. No band of lunatic children would rise dead-eyed from the jungle.
No, the danger would come in a car. It would be civilized. It would be uniformed. It would be clean.
What was the danger? What would her father say? He had once said that danger is not the point. What do you want? That’s the only question. Danger is only the obstacle to that thing. It must be irrelevant to your desire.
In this way, her mother said, turning her back on them, your father is the worst of men.
And not only in this way, Jacqueline thought.
A long tour bus the color of dry blood turned and began to rise up the road. She could hear the stuttering downshift. She watched it come slow around the sharpest hairpin and then disappear. She stood and adjusted her pack. When the bus came back into view, she swept the needles from her skirt and, leaving the pillow behind, began to walk the streets where she would play curious tourist.
She would try to see herself in their expressions. What was she? She took a swig of water. Then she wet her hands and smoothed it over her neck, her forehead. She wiped the crust from the corners of her eyes, patted her cheeks. She drew herself up into a posture of confidence, brought her face into a smile.
She stood at the very entrance to the ruins and waited until the bus came sweeping into the parking lot. The doors opened and people spilled out, shielding their eyes, adjusting their hats, and stretching their backs. The sound of voices rose up to Jacqueline, who listened intently.
A small woman in a white polo shirt marched up from the parking lot. She was holding a pink umbrella high above her head. The tourists followed.
“Well, you’re here early.”
Jacqueline turned and brought the smile into place.
“I’m usually the first one up. My trademark.”
Jacqueline nodded. “I’ve never been.”
The woman’s pale charges began to arrive, but she ignored them.
“You came up the trail?”
“It’s a beautiful walk.”
“You’re welcome to come along.” The woman smiled. SANTOTOUR was embroidered in red thread across her right breast. “No charge.”
“Are you sure?”
“You’re up here alone?”
She nodded and then added, “My husband’s at the pool.”
The woman smiled. “Men are so dull.”
Jacqueline forced a laugh. The speaking required such energy.
“Well, come along with us?”
“Thank you,” she said and stepped aside as the woman turned to the group.
“You are all now standing at the entrance of what was once the city of Thera,” the woman said, driving the point of her umbrella into the dirt between her feet.
The group, sluggish in the early morning, quieted.
“This is Mesa Vouno mountain, three hundred and sixty meters above the sea. And here, where we’re all standing now, began a street nearly eight hundred meters long. Up there to the right was a garrison. Across from the theater there”—she extended her arm and everyone looked—“was the residential section of the city, which included a lovely agora. And down there was a small temple. All of the buildings were constructed with the local limestone you see around you. Far below us, there to the north where the city of Kamari is today, was once a great necropolis.”
Jacqueline was close to the tour guide and could smell her perfume. She envied the silver earrings, the clean shirt, the smooth tan legs.
“We’ll walk down in this direction here.” Up went the umbrella. As they walked, Jacqueline kept close.
“The great historian Herodotus wrote about Thera and its mythical Spartan ruler, Theras, for whom, obviously, this city and the island itself were both named. Santorini, or Saint Irene, was a name given to the island by the Latin Empire, but the
official Greek name is Thera. Later, in the third century BC, there’s evidence of a whole navy stationed in what was once a great harbor down below. And until the fifth century, it was the only settlement on the entire island.”
They stopped before one of the better-preserved houses, where there was a single Doric column and a perfectly flat bench.
“The fact is, before I go on about Thera, and many of you must know this already, the real archeological magic here is Akrotiri. You should all see it. So let me talk about that a bit as well. But first, how many of you have seen the caldera?”
All of them raised their hands. Jacqueline followed suit.
“And Nea Kameni?”
Silence.
“Nea Kameni is the island in the middle of the caldera.”
Several people raised their hands.
“Well, you should all go down. Go on a calm day. Nea Kameni is a volcano. Still alive. It wasn’t even there a few hundred years ago, and then, seventeen something, up it comes right out of the water. Now you can climb to the top of it. Right in the middle of all that water, it’s like a wasteland out there.”
“You mean it could still erupt?” someone asked.
Those who were staring off at the sea returned their attention to the tour guide.
“Well, it erupted in 1950. Then there was an earthquake in 1956. Destroyed everything. People left forever, deserted their villages.”
“So, it could still erupt?”
“Sure,” the tour guide said. “And what it is now is just what was left after that first eruption.”
“Really?”
“Listen, imagine you’re Minoans. You live in Akrotiri. A real city. A famous city. Some people say that it was Plato’s Atlantis. A city with streets, squares, buildings, paintings, running water, hot and cold by the way, boats for fishing, boats for pleasure. It made this place look like a highway rest stop.”
Someone laughed.
“Go see it. It’s all preserved. Incredible. And this was before the Greeks. Thousands of years before. Medicine. The women ate saffron crocus when they had cramps. There were antelopes. Dolphins. A city in its prime. And then one day, the island explodes and everyone, every single person, is killed. The center of the island just turns to ash and vanishes into the air. Nothing of it is left. Everything gone. The eruption sets off a tsunami that rolls out and crushes Crete, the very center of Minoan culture. After thousands of years the Minoans vanish from history. Cities, palaces, naked acrobats. Gone. And it’s not just Thera or Akrotiri, the whole island is a ruin. This? What’s known to you as Santorini? It’s just what’s left of an island.”
Two young boys stared at the tour guide. They were twins, each dressed in matching clothes—red sneakers, khaki shorts, white T-shirts painted with the Greek flag, white baseball caps.
The tour guide turned to the dwelling and said, “Anyway, this is where people lived. Try to imagine it.”
Then they made their way down nearer to the edge of the cliff.
“Here,” she said, pointing with the umbrella to a knot of rock on the mountain ridge, “was a grotto dedicated to Hermes and Heracles. Hermes, god of merchants, thieves, and oratory. Heracles, or to the Romans, Hercules. And here lived the officers in peristyle houses with nothing between them and these views, whereas the rest of the people, the riffraff, they lived up the mountain there.”
She looked at Jacqueline for a moment and then went on, “Not nearly as interesting as Akrotiri, or as beautiful as the caldera, but they did discover dedications on altar stones dating all the way from the ninth to eighth centuries, which is to say the oldest known examples of the Greek alphabet. So here we are, in the very heart of human civilization—Greece. On the other hand, those same dedications make reference to pederasty. Anyway, if you’d like to venture on and wander around a bit, you’re welcome. Please be very careful with your trash, and don’t go beyond the roped-off sections. We’ll be heading back soon.”
She handed out small maps of the ruins and the people dispersed.
“It was probably nicer up here without us,” the woman said.
Jacqueline smiled. “No, it was interesting.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Jacqueline wanted to stay and talk.
“The island just blew up?” she asked.
They’d begun to walk and now the tour guide climbed up onto a boulder, and Jacqueline followed her. They sat. The woman dug around in her purse and withdrew a pack of gum. She offered a piece. Jacqueline put it in her mouth and chewed. The sweetness was dizzying.
“Can you imagine?”
“I was thinking of the sound.”
The woman glanced at her and then back to the coastline.
Jacqueline didn’t continue. She wasn’t sure if she’d spoken the sentence aloud.
“I’d never thought about the sound,” the woman said. “But you’re right, it would have been awful. The world tearing up from beneath your feet. It’s always the buildup that’s worse. Imagine how frightening to hear that. Whatever the sound, it would have been coming from the ground. Like some kind of monster. It’s always the suspense that kills you.”
Jacqueline nodded and kept her eyes on the water.
“I’m Callie,” the tour guide said, offering her hand.
“Jacqueline.”
It was a strong handshake. Solid. And she felt a start, the body’s impulse to cry, which surprised her, and which she tamped down and put away.
They were sitting side by side, with their feet drawn up. The tour guide leaned back on her palms. Jacqueline remained forward, her arms draped around her knees. She knew that the woman had seen her feet—the dead skin, the calluses rough and thick, the broken nails. The feet of a vagrant.
“So, where are you staying Jacqueline?”
This question again.
“In Oìa,” she said, looking at the discolored nail of her right big toe.
“Ah, the most beautiful.”
So she’d heard. Jacqueline smiled and then to change the subject, she asked, “Are you Greek?”
“American. My husband is Greek. From Thessaloniki, but we live in Athens.”
“Are you a tour guide in Athens too?”
“Yes,” the woman said, as if disappointed by her answer.
Jacqueline felt safe there talking to this woman, having a conversation just the two of them, looking out over the towns below. She had the impulse then to explain her feet, to make clear that she was not a vagrant.
Is that not what you are? Are you not exactly that? And so what if you are? There is no shame in that. There is no shame in seeking the kindness of strangers, my heart. No, the shame lies elsewhere.
Jacqueline shook her head and saw the tour guide look at her from behind her sunglasses.
Graceless coward. Prideful coward, there is no room for it. We are not concerned with your dignity, we are concerned with your survival, with your progress, and then, perhaps, with your peace.
Jacqueline leaned back to match the posture of the tour guide.
As to whether or not we trust this woman, her mother said, drying her hands on a red-and-white-checked dish towel, one isn’t to be reckless. One isn’t to be reckless, she said and walked from the kitchen toward the bedroom, where she would undress, slip a clear plastic cap over her head, and step beneath the shower. There were parties that evening.
“Where are you from?”
“Liberia.”
“East Africa?”
“West.”
“West, right. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. We’re very small.”
“Charles Taylor?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry,” the tour guide said. “I know so little about it.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jacqueline said, waving her hand as if she were batting away a moth.
The woman kicked her sandals off and stretched her feet out in front of her. Each nail neatly painted the palest pink.
A man’s pride shall bring him lo
w: but honor shall uphold the humble in spirit. Proverbs, her mother said, standing before her wide closet. We were a civilized family. But we were never prideful.
Jacqueline knew this to be a barefaced lie, but held her tongue. Hypocrite, she wanted to say. Liar. Coward yourself.
My heart, her mother said. Love. What’s important now is to determine who to trust, what to eat, where to sleep, how to live. To work out the problem of what is next.
Jacqueline thought of the two small egrets that wandered the lawn behind the house. She saw them stepping cautiously through the grass, their long necks curling and straightening like snakes. So careful that Saifa called them the tiptoe birds.
It was becoming more and more difficult to distinguish between what was happening and what had happened. What was memory and what was not.
The tour guide was speaking.
“Sorry?” Jacqueline said.
“I just wondered where you were staying.”
“Oh, we rented a little place. An apartment.”
“That’s great. Which one? I know so many people on the island.”
“I can’t remember the woman’s name. My husband took care of it.”
“I see, and you’re here from Liberia? Vacationing?”
There was a touch of accusation, of mistrust, Jacqueline thought.
“We live in New York. You know, we’re of the lucky classes.”
“Sorry to ask so many questions.”
“I don’t mind.”
But she had begun to mind. With every answer she was putting herself further into danger. She could already tell the woman didn’t trust her, was investigating, making assessments. She was angry. Both because of what she perceived as this woman’s arrogance and because of her own weakness—to respond the way she had, to let that irritation show, that acid. It was undisciplined of her, weak, and it would only make her more vulnerable. You must be graceful and kind. You must be elegant and demure. You must be confident without ever being haughty. You must always, always be deferential. As if everyone you meet is holding a rifle to your throat.
She sat up, stepped from the boulder, and stretched her arms above her head. She was weak with hunger, but didn’t want to reveal her strange picnic—the feta might have gone off from the heat, the bread crushed, the tomatoes bruised. She wanted to be alone, to assemble her lunch, to sit in the shade of her cypress trees. She did not want to have to answer any further questions, or see this woman’s toes, or her oiled knees.
A Marker to Measure Drift Page 7