A Marker to Measure Drift

by Alexander Maksik

  The sky above the far islands turned pink and purple and red.

  Everyone was leaving down the various meandering streets, or settling in at the restaurants, or returning to their hotel rooms. She walked through town and stopped in a small market, where she spent a euro on a thick bar of white soap.

  She passed terraces where people drank and talked.

  One night, she thought, I’d like to do that. I’d like to sit and have a glass of wine and watch the sun set, or look out over the caldera.

  She continued on through the streets past the tour buses, which were leaving en masse back to Fira. The show was over.

  She walked home to her frame of a hotel. All the cars and all the scooters were gone from the parking lot.

  The sky over the water was a faded pink and high above it, that strange and luminous blue.

  Her things were as she had left them. She undressed and wrapped herself in her blanket and closed her eyes. She was so tired. She’d forgotten about the mattress again. Tomorrow.

  She saw the waitress. She saw her eyes.

  She ran her fingers over the wound on the back of her hand.

  She pressed for the pain, and then she was asleep.

  MORNING AFTER MORNING, when Jacqueline was sure there was no one, that she would not be seen, she stood and stretched and dressed and made her bed.

  She’d been lucky and had found, in the trash behind an art gallery, bags of pink packing foam. She’d built her mattress around those bags, two long pieces of cardboard, bound together with rope she made by rolling plastic bags. She tied the whole thing together tight and fit it along the wall. It was a comfortable bed, but on restless nights, the bits of Styrofoam rubbing together drove her mad with their screeching. Still, now she never woke bruised, and the precision of her knots, the geometry of the mattress, the way its corner fit snugly into a corner of the room, pleased her. As did the stone shelves she’d arranged, particularly the flat, oblong rock she used as a bedside table.

  Here she kept her squat little flashlight, lens down, and a branch of lemon thyme and a plastic cup, which she filled with water before she went to sleep.

  Propped in the far corner there was a long stick, a piece of driftwood she’d brought up from the beach. The nubs of two broken branches functioned as hooks, one for her pack, the other for her visor, whose blue lettering had begun to fade from blue to a green like weathered copper.

  There was now a piece of plywood covering most of the front window, which she’d reinforced with a row of heavy rocks along the windowsill. The only open window was at the side of the room and gave onto a scrub-covered hillside.

  There was another piece of plywood, which she used as a door when she slept, and when she was out for the day.

  Her toiletries included a small tube of lotion, which she used only on her face. There was a new toothbrush. She used olive oil for the rest of her body and kept a tall bottle of it next to the toothpaste, separate from the one she used for work.

  In another room, she’d made a larder along a cool wall—rock shelves of tomatoes, bread, and almonds in plastic bags, cheese, bottles of water. Peaches sometimes. Plums. Cucumbers.

  For a while she’d marked days by leaving white pebbles on the windowsill when she returned home in the evenings, but soon she forgot, or lost interest in the measuring. They were still there, the first fourteen of them.

  Each morning she walked along the dirt and up the asphalt, past the bus station, through the streets, along the marble walkway, past the church and its square to Anemomilos, where she entered through the arbor thick now with purple bougainvillea. And each morning she took her place at her same table, where, without being asked, the waitress brought a pot of coffee and touched Jacqueline’s shoulder and said, “Kalimera.”

  Sometimes, if she was in the mood, and if she’d done well on the beach the day before, she would order toast, or toast and eggs, but more often she’d have just the coffee. She’d take her time there in the mornings, watching other people eating their breakfasts, guests from the hotel taking their seats, families and couples and the occasional lone traveler like her.

  Later she’d return through town and stop to sit on the square and watch the boys playing soccer, the whispering girls, the men spinning their beads, the gray women on their benches.

  In the afternoons, she’d walk down to her beach and work. Sometimes she’d see the same people, but every few days there was a turnover and the faces would change. She made her money and swam and showered beneath the cold spray. Sometimes she’d buy a gyro in town and eat out on the wall of the fort. Other evenings she’d eat in her room.

  And every morning, she went to see the waitress.

  On one of those mornings the waitress said, “So what is her name? This woman I see every day. What is her name?” And she looked at Jacqueline with those narrow eyes. Those narrow eyes, which Jacqueline saw then were green, not brown. Eyes Jacqueline found lonely and familiar.

  Jacqueline spoke her own name and before she could think, before she could stop herself, she asked, nearly laughing, “What is yours?”

  “I am Katarina,” the waitress said. Jacqueline fit the name to the woman and it was strange the way the name was applied to memory. It had been Katarina who served her breakfast that first morning in town, Katarina who brought the coffee, Katarina all along.

  When she’d left that day, she felt joyous again. She walked through town and sat on the square and had to contain her grin so as not to appear a lunatic. She nodded and closed her eyes and replayed their exchange.

  All that afternoon Jacqueline imagined the things she might ask Katarina, the ways she might begin a conversation of substance. A conversation, she thought at first, but what she wanted most of all was the two of them to sit somewhere and have a glass of wine and look out over some beautiful vista. How strange, she thought, that the only way into that kind of silence was through spoken language.

  SO SHE’D RETURNED DAY AFTER DAY. Kalimera, Katarina. But for days and days, Jacqueline never had the courage, if that was what it was, to ask the simple questions she’d begun to collect in the night.

  In the night when she’d whisper the questions aloud. The night when her mother whispered back. When she whispered, Maybe this is the reason, my heart. Maybe this is why you’ve come so far. To know this woman. Maybe this woman is the answer to all the questions. Perhaps what’s happened to us is all for you to meet this woman. A long, difficult path here to this waitress.

  When her mother whispered, Jacqueline couldn’t sleep. The mattress screamed and screamed in her ears and she went and sat on the terrace, where she watched the shadow islands and listened to her heart thudding and the blood rushing through her head.

  It was outrageous and insulting and it made her furious. Her mother’s ideas. Her convenient thinking. Her foolish, childish notions. That those delirious boys were in her kitchen with their blades, all strung and strapped with their rifles, and that man in his beard and jackal eyes and all their biting hatred. That they had been there so that Jacqueline might come here to this girl, this waitress?

  The idea was enraging. She couldn’t sleep with it rattling in her head and yet her mother whispered it the way she’d once whispered, Good night, JaJa, my love, my heart, my little girl, and now in the dark when she was collecting questions, and trying to still herself for sleep, she couldn’t ignore it and more infuriating was the possibility that her mother might be right.

  Somehow and in spite of it all.

  DAY AFTER DAY Jacqueline returned to the restaurant for her morning coffee and occasional breakfast and asked none of the questions she’d prepared.

  Some days, she left Katarina and went down the steps, along the harbor, and out to the rocks. Sometimes one of the grill men would recognize her and wave. Sometimes some of the boys would smile at her on their way up to dive.

  “Your father is impervious to beauty,” her mother once said as if it were the greatest condemnation of all. She’d said it li
ke it wasn’t his fault. As if it were a condition he had no control over.

  On good days, when she was free of the ferocious dark, of the weight and panic, she would try not to be impervious. On those days she swam with her eyes closed and lay on her warm rock and watched the sea as carefully as she could.

  But those days were few and as the little village became more and more clogged with tourists, as the days grew longer and hotter, Jacqueline began to break her routine.

  She woke later and later and even after she was awake, she lay in bed trying to ignore her mother’s admonishing voice. Once, she woke so late that by the time she arrived at Anemomilos there were no open tables and she turned around and left. Other days she missed work and spent entire days in her sweltering room, where she watched the ceiling, dreaming of Bernard. Dreamed of making love, of him pressing down on her, and she dreamed of breaking his skull with a heavy rock.

  And of the boys coming up the hill, coming up the hill, coming up the hill.

  SHE FOUGHT AS BEST SHE COULD. She tried always to wake early, to always leave her room, to get to the restaurant, to sit in the square, to swim, to work, to bathe, to brush her teeth, to keep things tidy, to follow her routine, to keep her life. But sometimes she could not.

  Sometimes she betrayed herself. Or her mind betrayed her. Or her body.

  Sometimes her mind was brutal, was vicious, was unrelenting.

  Sometimes the flashing behind her closed eyes was dizzying.

  Sometimes she wanted to drive a knife into her brain.

  Sometimes the sound of it all, the flashing images, her mother’s voice, the voice of her father, the sight of Saifa’s feet, the feeling of them in her hands, the conflation of present life and memory, of what existed and did not, sometimes the pressure of it, the noise, the volume and weight, was too much to sleep, to eat, to breathe and, she began to wonder, if it wasn’t too much to live.

  But she fought.

  Even if she felt she was losing, she fought.

  And then after days of not leaving her room, of not eating, of surviving on sips of water from a tall plastic bottle, of sweating in her bed, of pissing in another room, of defecating in yet another, two days of horrific dreams she could never remember, days of crushing weight, of her mother’s eyes, her father’s weeping, her sister’s silent bleeding, days of madness and muttering to herself and scratching at her wrists, and incessant noise, there was a crash of silence and Jacqueline fell finally to sleep.

  WHEN SHE WOKE very early the next morning, she was alert and she was still and the only noise she heard was the soft sound of wind rushing off the water and up the valley. She dressed and walked the road into town and arrived at the restaurant weak and dizzy.

  The terrace was empty when Jacqueline found her table.

  “Kalimera, Jacqueline.”

  “Kalimera, Katarina.”

  She was holding a tray of silverware sets rolled in white napkins.

  “Early today.”

  She nodded and looked away. Katarina put her tray on the table and sat down and covered Jacqueline’s hand with hers.

  “You are well?”

  “A little tired,” she said, the admission feeling like some tremendous revelation.

  “Yes, I can see.”

  There was a moment of quiet, Katarina’s hand on Jacqueline’s.

  “Well, I’ll bring you your coffee, yes?”

  Jacqueline nodded. She was afraid to speak, afraid her voice would betray her.

  Katarina returned with the coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs and a basket of toast and a glass of orange juice. She put the food in front of Jacqueline and then sat down. There were two cups and Katarina poured coffee for them both.

  “Eat,” Katarina said. “Please.”

  Jacqueline smiled. She shook her head. She’d begun to cry and could not look up.

  “Please,” Katarina said, returning her soft hand to Jacqueline’s, covering the dry scab.

  “Please,” Katarina said.

  Jacqueline unrolled the silverware and unfolded the napkin and spread it across her lap.

  “Please.”

  She could not look up, but she began to eat the eggs.

  Katarina spread butter across a piece of toast and laid it gently on the edge of the plate. She added cream and sugar to Jacqueline’s coffee.

  “Enough?” she asked, and Jacqueline nodded.

  She fought them as hard as she could, but tears were running down her cheeks and dripping into her eggs and soon she gave up. She put her fork down, and raised the sheer paper napkin from her lap, and pressed it to her face. All of her control was gone. She cried with a violence that made it difficult for her to breathe or swallow. She could feel Katarina’s hand tighten around her own.

  “Breathe, please,” she said. “Breathe.”

  And slowly she was able to get a breath. Slowly she stopped crying.

  “Here,” Katarina said. “Here,” and Jacqueline opened her eyes.

  Katarina was holding a fresh napkin out to her. She took it.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No. Please,” Katarina said, pushing Jacqueline’s hand toward the plate. “Please. Please, you must eat. It is getting cold.”

  Jacqueline nodded and raised her fork and ate some of the eggs. She could feel the hunger returning and would have eaten faster had it not been for Katarina, whose eyes she was still ashamed to meet.

  “Some toast, please,” Katarina said.

  Jacqueline laughed then and nearly spit her eggs out of her mouth. She shook her head and finally, finally, she looked up.

  Katarina nodded and pushed the coffee toward her and said, “Now, please.”

  Jacqueline drank some of the coffee.

  Katarina drank some of hers.

  “What is it?” Katarina asked.

  Jacqueline wanted to answer. She wanted to say what it was. She wanted to tell her everything that it was. Instead she shook her head and took a bite of toast. Her hunger came and went, came and went.

  “You are American?”

  “No.” Jacqueline shook her head.

  “No? I thought you were American.”

  “No. Liberian.”

  Katarina nodded. “I don’t know this country.”

  “In Africa.”

  “And your name? It is like Mrs. Kennedy.”

  Jacqueline smiled. “Yes. My namesake.”

  “Yes. I think you are elegant like her.”

  Jacqueline smiled and shook her head. “My father’s idea. He was a great admirer of America, and of the Kennedys.”

  Katarina nodded. “My mother was the same. She loved her very much.”

  Jacqueline could feel her heart slowing. She took a first full breath.

  “I was born at JFK Hospital,” Jacqueline said.

  “In Liberia?”

  “Yes.”

  Katarina nodded. “And your friends call you Jackie?”

  Jacqueline looked away. “No.”

  “Nobody calls you Jackie?”

  “Nobody,” Jacqueline said.

  Katarina nodded.

  “I will leave you to finish.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be short.”

  “Short?”

  “Rude.”

  “No. I ask many questions. You should eat. You should finish everything.” She stood up from the table. “And I should work. Please, you should finish everything.”

  Jacqueline smiled. “Yes, I will.”

  Katarina tapped the table once with the four fingers of her left hand, crossed the terrace, and disappeared into the building.

  Everything had cooled—the eggs, the coffee, the toast—but she finished it all. And then she drank the orange juice and afterward sat slumped in her chair, exhausted and embarrassed and disappointed.

  She watched Katarina finish laying the tables. She watched the terrace become crowded with people and still she didn’t move, didn’t signal for the bill, nothing. Eventually Katarina came over and sat
down again, this time sideways, half at the table and half gone. Just like the tall man in his restaurant all that time ago.

  “Jacqueline,” she said softly, as if she were coaxing a stubborn child. “Jacqueline, is there anything more you need?”

  She sat up and came back to herself then, and smiled and said, “No. No. Nothing. I’m fine. Just the check. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She wanted to go on, and explain one thing and make another clear, but nothing more came to her, so she finished by shaking her head and reaching for her pack, which lay beneath the table at her feet.

  “There’s no charge today. Today there’s no charge.”

  “No, no,” Jacqueline said, bringing the pack up to her lap and unzipping the top pocket.

  “Please,” Katarina said, reaching out and squeezing Jacqueline’s wrist, stilling her.

  “No,” Jacqueline said again, this time more sharply. And pulled her wrist away. She felt a sense of panic then, the very panic she’d felt as a girl after slapping Saifa harder than she’d meant to. Again she said, “I’m sorry.”

  Katarina leaned forward and said very quietly, but with force, “Today there is no charge, but you will make it up tonight. This evening you can buy me a glass of something. This evening, okay. Okay?”

  Jacqueline looked up and said yes, she would do that. “Yes, okay.”

  “Good. Now I am going to work.”

  “What time?” Jacqueline said.

  “Six. Here at six.”

  She nodded and collected her things, and when Katarina had gone to serve another table, she left the restaurant and walked out onto the street, feeling bewildered and dazed and distant from herself, from the world around her.

  She came to the square and found her place and sat watching the same two teenage girls. They were smoking cigarettes with exaggerated, theatrical gestures, like cartoons, like little cartoon women, Jacqueline thought, waving their hands around and throwing their heads back to exhale smoke into the air.

  She watched and felt such a strong affection for them, she worried she would cry again.