A Marker to Measure Drift

by Alexander Maksik

  It was as if the entire earth were made up of these shadow islands, as if she might step from one to the other for what remained of her life.

  She leaned over the walls to look past the white buildings clinging to the cliff and down into the water. On the caldera side she could see a long series of wide steps descending steeply to a small protected bay far below.

  Then she knew that she would descend those steps, that soon she would no longer be where she was, that next she would be at the water. She’d begun to understand that this was the way her life was made. She moved from one place to another place. Perhaps this is what her mother meant by God, these sudden certainties. God, she thought, always present in retrospect.

  As she began to come down from the fort and seek out the wide steps she’d seen, she wondered if she’d already given up her own will. If these instinctual acts were somehow different from will, from decision making.

  It did feel to her then that she was being led, as if she had very little to do with where her body went.

  You are following beauty, her mother said.

  This is the beginning of madness, Jacqueline thought yet again. And then, It cannot always be the beginning of madness. Eventually it has to be madness. And perhaps you are mad. Perhaps you’ve become mad.

  That’s the element. That’s what they see. That’s why they give you food. That’s why they pat you. And that’s what you cannot see in your own eyes. If you could see it yourself, it would be the beginning. But because you can’t, it is now the middle.

  NOW SHE FOUND HERSELF descending those steep steps with the village to her back and the water below going greener and greener. She could see the tops of colored awnings stretching out from the restaurants below. Brightly painted fishing boats floating anchored in the still bay grew larger as she walked.

  The steps were so steep that there were sections where she had to lean back to avoid tumbling forward.

  This feeling of being led worried her not only because she knew that nothing led her, but also because she was seduced by the idea. She could feel herself giving in to it, succumbing to the idiotic notion.

  Jacqueline had to stop walking and stand off to the side as a train of donkeys passed. On the back of each animal was a nervous and smiling tourist. At the very end, a short man with a dark weathered face followed behind. With a short stick he whipped at the flanks of the last donkey, muttering at the animal as he walked.

  When they’d passed, she continued until she reached the bay and its small concrete harbor. Through the radiating heat, she could see a thin man standing shirtless, working a wide grill. He morphed and buckled in the refracting light. Then she was past him, the harbor ended, and she was onto a dirt path. Still she could smell the burning charcoal and the searing octopus.

  She came around a gentle turn and here was a rocky beach in a small cove and above it, huge boulders piled high. Instead of settling on the sand, she climbed.

  Why? her mother asked, painting her fingernails red with expert strokes of the brush.

  Jacqueline ignored the question.

  Because they are beautiful, my heart.

  And it was true, Jacqueline thought. That was precisely why she’d climbed them. Precisely why she rested here and not below on the sand. She pressed her sore feet to the warm dark stone. That is why she’d traveled a little farther, risked a little more. For no other reason than that the boulders were beautiful.

  Her mother said nothing, only smiled to herself.

  Jacqueline closed her eyes. And again, she waited.

  As the day grew hotter, people began to come around the curve and settle on the sand. Young boys in brightly colored shorts went by as they climbed higher.

  The first one frightened her as he plummeted past in a blur of yellow, crashing through the green surface of the water. Then one after the other they sailed by, only a few feet away from her, falling like parrots shot out of the sky—yellow, green, green, red, blue, orange, red, blue—each one rushing so close she could hear their solid bodies displacing air.

  Down on the small beach, three pale girls were stretched out in their bikinis. A squat man with a mustache smoothed lotion onto the shoulders of a bare-breasted woman, and beyond them, in the water, a couple swam with their four children.

  Jacqueline also wanted to swim. And as the day got hotter and hotter and the small beach became crowded, and the rocks around her began to fill with people, the more she wanted to join them. It felt somehow as if this was as close to the human world as she’d come for a very long time.

  She’d been here, and then they’d come.

  Those who passed on the way to find their own rocks were quiet and polite, like the boys had been. Some smiled and nodded or said hello in one language or another. The boys were now leaping in swan dives and backflips from the edge of the chapel that had been cut into the smooth southern face of the little rock island across from her. She felt that she was participating in something. As if they were all of them—swimmers and sunbathers, divers and climbers—part of a single thing, a single moment. Buoyed by this feeling, Jacqueline slipped off her long skirt, removed her tank top. She wore the black underwear and bra. Even if it had been the white, she would have gone. There was a man on the rock above her.

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  The man looked up from his book.

  “Would you mind watching my things?”

  “Okay,” he said and smiled. “No problem.”

  Jacqueline smiled back. “Thank you.”

  They were neighbors, she thought. Neighbors taking care of each other.

  Everything she owned was in that pack.

  Your passport, her mother said. The only thing left, my love.

  Jacqueline stood up.

  When that is gone …, her mother began.

  But Jacqueline walked to the edge of the rock.

  Her mother shook her head and returned to her magazine.

  And now Jacqueline was there, standing upright in her underwear.

  She let her arms hang to her sides. She could feel people watching. She could feel the wind on her skin. She could see the green water below. How long had it been since she’d bathed? How long since she’d been in the sea? She was euphoric. She dove and saw herself as a blur of black sailing past herself, and then she was in the water and it felt then as if nothing could be the same.

  She swam and swam and swam and it was a joy that surpassed the eating. A joy that might have surpassed everything.

  She dove down deep and expelled all her breath in a scream.

  She came out of the water at the beach and stepped between the bodies to get back to the rocks. She climbed up to hers and there was her pack, and above it, the man.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He waved it away. “Nothing.”

  She slept through the afternoon.

  It was the absent sun that woke her. She was dry, her skin drawn tight from the salt. She sat up and dressed. It felt as if months had gone by. This was nowhere to sleep. Not on the rock, not on the beach. She would need to find someplace more sheltered, less public, and without too much consideration, without any discussion, she said good-bye to the man, who was no longer there, and clambered down to the beach feeling agile and strong. She passed a group of women and wished them a good evening. They wished her the same.

  SHE WALKED AND WALKED. She found a dirt road and followed it where it split from the asphalt. It began to descend and then around a turn she could see the water again, and perched well above, a decrepit building that looked like it might one day become a hotel, or had been once.

  The dirt road flowed out into a parking lot. From here a single path ran down through a narrow valley to a beach below. The building extended perpendicular to the track.

  There was still a bit of sun left, and she could see two towels down below on the beach—one red, the other white—laid neatly side by side. And in the water beyond, there were two floating figures.

  There were n
o doors on the building. It was just the concrete frame, unfinished like the last place.

  “Hello,” she called.

  But there was no answer. She ducked inside and wandered the structure. There was one large open space in the middle, a lobby, she thought, and then a hallway that ran in both directions.

  She stood at all the windows and in the end chose the room farthest from the road. She would sleep here.

  Sleep? her mother asked.

  Live, Jacqueline said.

  Be honest about your plans, her father said.

  Jacqueline nodded.

  There are few greater crimes than the crime of self-deception.

  She listened.

  You must always tell yourself the truth. Do you understand me?

  She nodded.

  Your beliefs must not be beliefs because they are beneficial to you. Do you understand?

  She looked up at him.

  He stood from the table and brushed his suit clean of imaginary crumbs.

  The sun was so low now that Jacqueline could no longer see their colors, but she could see that the swimmers were out of the water and were wrapping themselves in the towels.

  It was true. She wasn’t thinking only of spending the night in this place. She was thinking she might stay. No nightclubs, no bars. No main road. A reason to be there during the day. Alone and safe at night. Not far from town. Yes, she was thinking, she’d live here. For a while anyway.

  You see? her mother said. Things are easy for you. Always a place to stay. Always a way to eat. What do you have to complain about? Nothing.

  Keeping an eye on the beach, she unpacked her bag and laid everything out on the floor in front of her. She arranged the blanket in a corner and put the pillow at one end. Here was her bed.

  In another corner she arranged her toothbrush, her toothpaste, her napkins, her toilet paper, and her ChapStick. Here was her bathroom.

  Along the wall, which faced the large front window, she arranged her clothes and underwear. She collected her passport, and the scraps of paper and cards she kept inside it, and her money and returned them to the zippered compartment of her pack.

  There were things to do now. She’d need to build a mattress of some kind, find stones for shelves. And there were things to do after that, of course. But for now—for now this one thing was done.

  She stood at her window and watched as the swimmers began to walk up the path. She looked forward to greeting them. Hello, she’d like to say. Beautiful evening. How was the water? But as they drew closer, she knew that she could not greet them. She’d have to hide and be silent.

  She walked to the room closest to the path, where she sat on the floor beneath the front window. And here she listened as the sound of their voices, and then their footsteps, slipped into the building.

  Jacqueline closed her eyes. They were laughing and speaking a language she didn’t understand. The noise rose and rose and when they passed, it was as if for a moment they were there in the room with her.

  She imagined they were coming to visit. That they’d all sit in chairs on the terrace. Jacqueline would have a hot shower and her skin would be warm from the sun as it was now. She’d wear her white sundress, which she could see hanging from a green plastic hanger in a closet that might no longer exist. They’d sit outside and drink together. Something stronger than wine and the three of them would look out over the darkening sea.

  She could see the red-threaded hem move, could see it turn to liquid in the breeze.

  Fabric moved over fur. Saifa turned toward her. And then there, finally, was her face, eyes flat, and somewhere beyond, somewhere below, were the sounds of yelling and laughter.

  Jacqueline walked onto the terrace. The people were gone. The islands were sharp silhouettes. The horizon was burning.

  She was alone in her new home and night was coming.

  She’d thought she would find her way into town that evening, but she no longer had the strength for it. Instead, she sat on the terrace in the dark and ate the rest of the cheese and the almonds. She drank nearly all the water and then, after peeing at the side of the building, she wrapped herself in the blanket and lay on her back.

  The night was windless, the building made no noise, so she heard nothing but the sounds of her body. She had been waiting for sleep to come, but what came in the end was anger, so she began to walk barefoot down the path. The valley was dark, but far out on the water was a brushstroke of moonlight and all the silhouetted islands were hulking unlit ships.

  She felt Bernard’s warm back against her bare chest.

  Soon she could hear the small waves falling onto the sand and then dragging back. The sound grew louder and louder and then she was down with the beach beneath her feet and the foam flaring white, and she was close enough to hear the rocks being pulled by the water, which crashed and rose to encircle her ankles.

  She walked the beach now. When she came to one end she stopped for a while to hurl stone after stone as far out as she could, and then she walked in the other direction.

  She found a long smooth piece of driftwood and carried it to the other end like a staff.

  Then it was a club.

  Then a machete.

  And then a rifle, which she leveled at the moon.

  The sand ended and jagged hunks of lava rock rose up to begin the headland. Beyond was the gentle bay, and its harbor and all the glassy-eyed tourists drinking wine.

  She stopped here and standing in shadow, hidden from the moonlight, she was very still. Still, but the anger pulsed in her, vibrated throughout her body. She could feel its clarity, could feel herself alert with it. She waited, and then she could no longer contain it, could no longer be still, and with all her fury turned and swung her stick.

  She beat the rock with a wild violence. The first blows hurt her hands, but soon she was numb to that pain. She swung and swung and with each strike let out a quiet groan. She kept her eyes open and swung hard. She swung hard enough to break Bernard’s teeth, to shatter his jaw, to crack his skull, to break his fine nose. She swung until he was senseless and bloodied on the beach. She swung hard enough to crush the windpipe of the bearded man. Hard enough to render every one of his dead-eyed boys sterile, hard enough to leave them all in a bloody pile, half-alive, moaning in pain.

  She swung and swung and swung until the stick broke in half and she stumbled and fell to the sand, where she lay panting. She could feel the damp rocks hard beneath her and where there was no clothing, points of cold against her bare skin. Her calves, her heels, the backs of her arms, her hands, and more than anywhere, like cubes of ice, the back of her neck.

  She closed her eyes and doused the house with the gasoline reserved for the generator and watched the kitchen and that pile of men burning in a brilliant, smokeless fire.

  She watched from below, from between the blue tarps, the open sewers, the clapboard shacks of the filthy beach at West Point, as high above it all burned and burned and burned.

  IN THE MORNING she woke rested and sore. Her hands hurt, her back was stiff, her right hip was bruised from the concrete floor, and there was a long gash across the back of her left hand. Still, she’d slept deeply and had no recollection of ever waking in the night, nor of any of her dreams.

  For a moment she could not remember where she was, and for that moment she took pleasure in not knowing, floating there in half-sleep, absent from the earth. She tried not to find the ground, she tried to put off the imminent conclusion, but quickly and again, her mind betrayed her and she remembered.

  Jacqueline stayed crouched low as she looked out the windows. She saw no one, but there were two scooters—one red, the other blue—side by side in the parking lot. It frightened her to have slept through the noise of their arrival.

  She considered packing the bag, leaving no evidence, but the prospect of once again erasing herself from a place exhausted her. So she left her blanket folded neatly on the floor, left her toiletries where they were, her clothes where they were,
and with a breath stood up and walked onto the terrace with her pack slung casually over her shoulder.

  Down on the beach there were four people arranging towels beneath an umbrella. Otherwise, she saw no one. She walked up the dirt road until it came to the asphalt. She continued on to the lower end of the village where there was a small bus station. Here, the shops were less elegant, the buildings a bit rougher. Tour buses had begun to arrive. Jacqueline stopped to catch her breath on a bench in the shade of an olive tree. She watched as people climbed down out of the buses and stood in the sunshine, trying to get their bearings.

  She picked at the bloodied cut on the back of her hand.

  Nostalgia, her father said, is from the Greek. Nostos, to return home. Algos, pain.

  Nostalgia, her father had once told her at lunch, is homesickness.

  She crossed the parking lot and walked up a side street past gyro shops, past T-shirts hanging from wooden rods, past cheap jewelry hooked to boards covered in velvet, and soon she was up on the main walkway and in the middle of the village, where everything was polished and clean, where sound was dampened by the vast caldera.

  She imagined that everyone here was humbled by its mass, its beauty, its obvious magic, and so spoke in whispers. Perhaps it wasn’t so, but it was certain that the sound was different. And the streets. And the buildings. Everything was kept cleaner, whiter, more humble, as if in deference to beauty.

  Or it is out of fear, she thought as she walked along the marble street.

  Fear that again they will be destroyed. That they will all be blasted away by the volcano, or that another earthquake will send them tumbling down the cliffs, all those white teeth falling to the water, all those glass beads destroyed, drained of their color.

  At the square, the church doors were closed. Two boys were kicking a ball back and forth.

  And maybe that was the way to live. Always in fear of ruin.