Cally's Way

by Jane Bow

  “Wrecks!”

  “He’s okay.” Oliver looked up at the bridge, and Cally could practically hear the hooves of black stallions clattering across its cobbles. A cross of life was set into one of the stones of the side wall, along with an inscription written in an unintelligible alphabet.

  “The Turks built it, in the late 1800s, to patrol the other side of the valley. Caves in these mountains made excellent rebel hideouts.” He whistled and the dog, who had been drinking in the river, jumped back into her lap, his paws soaking her towel and sarong. Oliver turned the bike to go back over the bridge and up the mountain road toward the sea then stopped again at the roofless remains of what looked to have been a large compound below the road.

  “The original Preveli Monastery.” The ruins commanded a view of the valley, but a chain-link fence around it was locked, and entry forbidden in five languages. “The monastery owns this whole valley. The Turks set fire to all of it in the 1820s.”

  “Why? They were monks.”

  “They were also armed rebels, then and during the Second World War. Do you know the history?”

  “Only roughly.” During the last few days in her hotel bed, Cally had been reading her guidebook history of Crete. Strategically located within easy boating distance of Egypt to the south, the Balkans and Russia to the north, and the Middle East, the island had been rebelling against bloody conquests ever since earthquakes laid waste the Minoans’ peaceful, artistic glory days thirty-five hundred years ago. The latest invaders were the Germans. Most of Crete’s men were away fighting in northern Greece, but troops from Britain, Australia, and New Zealand had been sent here to defend the island after mainland Greece fell. The British had thought the Germans would come by sea but instead, on May 20, 1941, squadron after squadron of planes flew over. Hundreds of parachutes bloomed in the sky during the Second World War’s first airborne invasion. Gliders full of guns, tanks, and equipment crash landed. The Cretan people stood up to them with pitchforks, ancient rifles, left-behind Turkish swords, but it took only ten days for the Nazis to gain control of the island.

  The Germans were unspeakably cruel, Oliver told her now, shooting anyone who stood in their way, burning down whole villages. But still the Preveli monks, who had built a new monastery at the top of the mountain, and Cretan villagers all through this area had hidden and fed and nursed fugitive soldiers who had missed the Allied evacuations.

  “The Nazis suspected it, so shortly after the invasion they decided to surround the valley. But by the time they got here the escapees were gone, up into mountain hideouts.” He laughed. “And the monks were clever. They delivered food to the guard posts the Germans set up and chatted about the weather as if they were good collaborators. Meanwhile, more and more fugitives were sneaking into the valley to wait for a British submarine to rescue them.” He pointed down into the ruin’s large, main building. “The night of the Limni Beach rescue, the Moní Préveli abbot held a dinner here, for both escaping Allied soldiers and their Cretan resistance hosts.”

  She looked through the fence. “My grandfather fought here during the invasion of Crete — that’s how he met my grandmother — but he never talks about the war. All I know is that he was imprisoned by the Germans, but then he escaped and was rescued. He came back for his daughter, my mother, when the war was over.”

  “Well, if he wasn’t evacuated right after the invasion — and if he was a prisoner of war, and had time to get to know a Cretan girl, he wasn’t — he was probably rescued from Limni.” Sixty-one years after that rescue, Oliver smiled at her in the sunshine. “Maybe your grandfather had dinner right here.”

  “Really?” She would have liked to climb out of the sidecar to look around, but Wrecks had fallen asleep in her lap.

  The afternoon sun washed the pasture on the flank of the headland across the valley, where a flock of grazing sheep’s bells tinkled. Between there and here, the land was a rumpled quilt of knolls and hillocks and dips and creases through which the river flowed. She picked out the arched bridge. The track they had seen that led south past the little tavérna rounded a bend above a ruin beside a tiny white church. Below it the land fell away to the valley floor, where three elderly women, as small as dolls from here, were moving, backs bent as they filled pouches tied to their waists.

  “What are they gathering?” Cally asked.

  “Hórta, wild greens.” Oliver pointed at the ditch beside them. “There are about twenty different kinds, growing everywhere. Very good for you.”

  Where Cally saw weeds, these women saw dinner. Sixty-one years ago they would have been children, a little older than her mother. What, she wondered, were their memories?

  Her nose had cleared enough to catch the scents of the oregano, savoury, sage, and thyme flowering on the mountainside, and it occurred to her that she had hardly coughed since leaving her hotel. She tipped her face up to the sun.

  “I wish I could stay here.”

  There was a pause, a single beat.

  “Why don’t you, then?”

  She kept her eyes closed. His voice was light, but was there an edge, mocking her? He knew nothing about her, had not bothered to ask. Not that she would tell him if he did. It was not hard to guess what a sandalled nomad would think of a multinational petrochemical company. Never mind that every minute of his every day involved the use of plastic, which was made from oil, that plastic syringes, thermometers, latex gloves and safes, and a million other products had been saving lives all over the world for two generations.

  Oliver kicked the motorcycle’s engine into life. “I promised you a beach, but first we’ll honour your grandfather.” He turned the bike around.

  They crossed the pavement bridge a second time and turned right up the dirt track that followed the river past the tavérna then crossed a second little bridge before veering east. Directly ahead of them the land to the right opened out onto a small plateau overlooking the valley floor, wildflowers rioting around the little ruin she had seen from the Preveli Monastery. Oliver parked beside the smallest church she had ever seen.

  “Agías Paraskevís, it’s called. Bet that’s a saint you’ve never heard of.” The building’s whitewash was stained and crumbling in spots, revealing rubble-stone walls. One of its corners had sunk into the ground. “It’s at least five hundred years old.”

  The door was not locked. Inside, the air was chilly, stale. A tarnished shrine lamp and a tray of dead votive-candle stubs sat on a dust-covered wooden table under the gaze of two saints who faced each other across the church’s one tiny room. Oliver gestured toward an elderly bald saint with a beard.

  “Meet St. John the Theologian, patron saint of Moní Préveli.” His voice echoed even in the tiny room. A stern-faced woman watched from the opposite wall. “And you must be St. Paraskevi.” Oliver pretended to back away. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Cally laughed. “You’re not supposed to lie in here.”

  Beside the church, all that remained were stone walls: limestone, sandstone, quartz built into graceful arches between what must have been central rooms. Wrecks sniffed at the metre-high purple thistles, daisies, buttercups, and blood red poppies that populated them now. Clumps of wild thyme watched from thick windowsills while above them hand-hewn wooden ceiling beams supported only the sky. In the corner of one room, hawthorn bushes and stinging nettles guarded a built-in stone hearth with a pile of sand on the ground beside it. Oliver ran a hand over the charred wooden beam above it.

  “The Preveli monks were cloistered, but they hired farm labourers to work all this land. This must have been a place to house them and their livestock. Come on, I want to show you something.”

  At the back of the ruin, behind the church, what looked like a storage room still had its flat roof. She had not seen it from the road on the way up the Preveli mountain because of the grass growing on it. Open at this the seaward end, the room was otherwise surrounded by overgrown bushes. Stalks of bearded barley guarded the entrance.

  S
he peered into its darkness. Stone benches were built into each side wall. A place for the farm workers to sit and eat?

  “Look at this.” Just inside the entrance, Oliver pointed up to where the wall curved toward the ceiling. Scratched into a patch of leftover plaster was a date: 1941. The year of the Nazi invasion and subsequent rescues. “This would have been a perfect hideout for the escapees waiting for the submarine on that moonless night.”

  She moved deeper into the room’s darkness, pictured ragged soldiers sitting crowded together in silence. Had her Grampa MacIntyre been one of them? He must have known her grandmother, Callisto, by then. So was she from around here? Had she walked these same paths? Cally went back to look up at the date: 1941. The scrawl was thin, the numbers wiggly. The past, the men’s excitement and thankfulness and terror were so near to her here, just out of reach.

  Back outside, swallows were dipping and diving in the sun-warm air. White butterflies cruised among the flowers. She could hear the river in the valley below, but all she could see was grass and bushes and trees, some of them laden with oranges and lemons. The line of bamboo weaving between them must be where the water flowed.

  Ahead of them on the road up the Preveli mountain, a tourist bus ground into low gear. Oliver pulled out to pass it, and she clung to Wrecks. There was no guardrail.

  “Don’t worry.” Oliver turned his head to shout, “If we go over the edge we’ll die instantly.” He laughed into the wind.

  A side road just below the mountain’s summit took them out onto a ridge above the sea. The bus was the only other vehicle in the parking lot at the top of the cliff. The late afternoon sun beat down on a Libyan Sea, hundreds of feet below them, that was too still and blue to be real. The river they had seen at the stone bridge came out of the fold between the mountains to flow, green and peaceful between this headland and a slightly lower one on the other side of the cove that. Tumbling down through a series of craggy steps to a cliff above the beach, the far side of the cove shielded the river from the coastline to the east. Breezes off the sea were frisking a line of palm trees along the river banks and the frothy green tamarisks at the top of the beach. The river left them to carve a shallow channel through the sand to the sea.

  “Limni Beach,” said Oliver, “now called Palm Beach or Preveli Beach.”

  The path they were on led to a rough stone staircase built into the cliffside.

  “This is where the submarine came in to rescue the soldiers?”

  “The British sent it from Egypt.” He pointed southeast. “Four hundred miles away. On a moonless night. The men filed along this cliff. These stairs would have been little more than a near-vertical goat path then.”

  “Where were the Germans?”

  “I guess they didn’t know about this cove yet. And early the next morning, a local shepherd brought his flock down the headland to drink from the river, erasing the footprints of eighty men.” Oliver laughed then stopped. “The monks up at the monastery paid a high price though. After the rescue the Nazis raided the monastery, destroyed all kinds of priceless stuff, arrested the monks. All except the abbot, who had already been taken off the island by boat. Then they built that.” Camouflaged among the stony outcroppings right on the edge of the cliff, a circular machine gun nest made of piled stones had never been dismantled. “And that.” Behind them, a concrete pillbox was a cancer in the middle of the meadow.

  Neither of them spoke until, gazing out to sea, Oliver smiled.

  “Aphrodite was born over there. Did you know that?” He gestured to the east. “On the shore of Cyprus. She rose out of the sea foam. Have you seen the Botticelli painting of her on the seashell?”

  He knew Botticelli? Luckily she had visited the painting in an art history book at school.

  The stairs zigzagged down the cliff to the beach, where tourists from the bus were spreading like ants across the sand. The dog scampered ahead of them, but beach thongs were not the right footwear for nearly-vertical, uneven flagstone steps. She stopped to rest at a lookout about a third of the way down. A middle-aged tourist couple, wearing canvas sun hats and walking shoes, high socks and camera vests, also stopped to rest on their way back up to the bus.

  “Grüss Gott.” The bus tour must be German.

  Oliver nodded, smiling.

  She looked away. Stupid Germans, how dare they come back here? She went on down the stairs.

  Oliver caught up.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What do you think is wrong? Who committed the atrocities we’ve just been talking about?” She turned back to the steps. One of her sandals tilted into a crack.

  Oliver reached for her arm as she overbalanced. Then, removing her sunglasses, he prevented any further discourse with his lips. Not forcing or pushing, just playing, lips to lips.

  When they stopped for breath, she smoothed her sarong, wondering what had just happened. This man obviously had thoughts, emotions — remember how he had kibitzed with Yannis in the fish restaurant, how he had rolled around in the sand? — so why, having brought her all the way out here, were his only words a history lesson? She held onto the railing, leaned down to take off her thongs.

  When they reached the beach, Oliver took her hand to cross the river. Knee-deep and flowing quickly, the water felt cool. The bus tourists were strolling, taking pictures, stripping down to skimpy European bathing suits, splashing into the waves. Oliver led her past them, into the tamarisk grove on the far side of the cove. Behind them a great cave was carved into the headland cliff. Gold and grey layers of rock curved like a portal around it.

  “People used to camp here,” said Oliver. “Police patrol it now though. Can’t have scruffy, bearded pot heads scaring away the tourists.” Out in the water someone shrieked, someone else laughed. “Come on, I’ll take you away from all this.”

  Grandfather palm trees guarded both sides of a path that followed the river back into the gorge, their heavy grey, needle-pointed fronds drooping. The new-green, prickly-sharp limbs of their adolescent grandchildren poked straight out while the full crowns of the adults lifted high overhead, swaying and hushing in a gathering breeze.

  The path came out of the palms into scree fallen from the cliff to their right, where purple, violet, and yellow flowers found footings between the fallen rocks. Poppies nodded. Sunlight touched the clumps of oleander flowering pink on the river banks. Such beauty. The gorge narrowed, cliffs towering on both sides. Gulls, hawks, and crows circled above while down here their tiny cousins chirped and flitted in the bushes. Ahead of her, Oliver’s long brown limbs moved with a litheness she liked — a lot. The path ended at a sandbar in the river. Huge boulders lying across its path just up the river had forced the water into a chute on the other side.

  Wrecks drank from the river then flopped down in a long triangle of sunlight on the sand.

  “Good idea.” Oliver followed, stripping off his t-shirt and shorts. His body in daylight looked brown, hard, strong. Both his biceps were tattooed, one with some kind of insignia, the other with the ancient meander pattern found on Cretan artifacts.

  “Come and relax.” He patted the sand beside him.

  She spread her beach towel, took off her shirt and sarong and lay down. The sound of the chute was a curtain, closing off any other world.

  “I wonder who decreed that non-religious women have to wear bathing suits?” said Oliver after awhile.

  “It’s armour.” But she raised her head, scanning the path from the beach.

  “Don’t worry, none of those overstuffed tourists will come back this far. The only spectators you’re likely to run into are Wrecks, me, and him.” He pointed up. Outlined against the sky, the wind ruffling his scraggly skirts on the lip of the cliff, a billy goat stood like a messenger from the gods. “And we promise not to look, don’t we, Wrecks?” He lay back, eyes closed.

  Her bikini brassiere began to feel burdensome, unnecessary. Unless he was a psychopathic rapist who had lured her here—

  Fat lot
of good a bathing suit would do her if that was the case. And did she really want to stay trussed up inside her inhibitions, to miss this second chance for a few minutes of freedom? Turning onto her stomach, she reached up to untie the strings at the back of her neck. Oliver’s fingers arrived to take care of the clasp in the middle of her back.

  What about her bottoms? Oliver was back lying in the sun. She pulled them off and, lying spread-eagled on her stomach, felt the sun’s caress on her bottom. The sea breeze, finding its way up through the oleanders, stroked the length of her back.

  Oliver did not move, did not speak, so after awhile she turned over. Could not remember ever baring her breasts to the sun before. Turning her head, she peeked at Oliver. He had an erection.

  Caught out, he laughed.

  “Time for a cold shower, I guess.” So free of wanting, asking, taking. Of any kind of communion, it seemed. She watched him splash into the river to sit gasping under the cascading water. The strip of sunlight was narrowing and there was sand stuck all over her now in spite of her towel.

  “Join me,” he called, “I dare you!”

  She sat up, arms folded. Wrecks, barking, splashed the water with his front paws then jumped in. Climbing out again, he shook himself all over her. Oliver laughed again.

  “You won’t regret it!”

  He stood up to take her hand, guiding her toward the chute. Icy sheets of water expelled her breath, puckered her nipples, clutched at her stomach.

  On the way back to the beach, Oliver stopped between two palm trees to show her a goat path that wound up through the boulders and shrubs to a hole in the cliff.

  “Another cave?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  The cave angled down into the cliff. Near its entrance the floor was fairly flat, the walls smooth. The air inside was cool, smelling of minerals.