You Are Always Safe With Me

by Merrill Joan Gerber

  From one of the doorways, Lilly heard the high cry of a stringed instrument and the rhythmic beat of drums. Izak paused and waited for his group to gather around him. Then he held back the hanging beads of the entrance to guide them into the small café.

  In the dimness, the café at first seemed empty till finally Lilly lowered her eyes and saw that a few guests were seated cross-legged at round tables only inches from the floor. The heat from candles flickering on the tables made dreamy undulations upon the features of those listening raptly to the musicians. Two men on a small stage, one thrumming on a stringed oud and one playing a drum, seemed in a trance-like state. As Lilly walked in front of the drummer, his eyes stared at her without awareness. He was looking inward, hearing only the music. Izak led his troupe to two empty tables and they all took places on the soft pillows that lay about on the floor.

  While the others ordered exotic drinks from the menu, Lilly ordered a glass of red wine. She knew it was backward of her, like the seersucker suit, but at times she had to have control over her circumstances in this foreign country. She could better tolerate the unfamiliar if a few simple things, like her drink, were without surprises.

  Behind Lilly was a roughly plastered wall; she rested her head against it and looked upward, where great billowing loops of red brocade hung down from the ceiling. The beat of the drums, the cries of the oud—these all gave Lilly a sense that she was floating in a dream. Who she was, where she was, was no longer clear to her. Could that small white-haired woman, sharing a drink with Lance from a silvery glass, really be her mother? Was her father, that strapping, hearty man, really dead and silent in his grave? Was she, Lilly, really in this dark café in the heart of Turkey, the country of fable and fairy-tale?

  She sought out the figure of Izak, who was leaning against the wall, his eyes closed as the music took on a wilder, more frenetic tone. She felt the pressure of the drums in her head, a sensation that suggested the walls of the room would burst outward at any moment.

  Suddenly Morat was at Lilly’s side, whispering to her. “Come, you dance,” he said, holding out two hands to draw her up. “You are here, in Turkey, you have your chance.” She let him pull her to her feet.

  She kept her eyes nearly closed, recalling the familiar rhythms of the belly dance from the class she had taken long ago. She began to move her body, slowly at first, since the musicians had now reverted to the slow, seductive Tcheftetelli rhythm, in which the dancer is free to play with her veil and move her body slowly, making figure-eights with her hips and allowing her arms to snake up and down the sides of her body. How amazing that she remembered how to do this! Her fingertips grazed her hip, moved up her side toward her ribcage, then along the edge of her shoulder and upward through her hair. Her own fingertips lifting her hair from her neck gave her the strangest thrill, as if someone else were caressing her. She turned her head slowly to locate the figure of Izak, still against the wall, leaning languorously against it, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes watching Lilly.

  She gave herself back to the music Now the musicians were playing the Beledi rhythm—to which she did the hip-lift, moving in a slow, sensual semi-circle, snaking between the tables till she stood directly in front of the musicians. The drummer took her presence as an invitation to play a solo for her and she let her hips move to the drum, slowly at first, then faster and faster till she was lost in a wild shimmy of music and colors and the blurred swirling faces of those sitting before her.

  When the beats slowed, finally, Morat came out of the shadows and handed Lilly a silken red veil. “Take it—” he said, insisting, “Do dance with veil.” His face was shining with approval as the Taxim rhythm began again. She took the veil and wound it about her, raised it up by two fingers like a column within which she hid herself, moved it higher to cover her face, letting only her eyes peer over the edge. Slowly, she let it fall, let it snake down, inch by inch over her shoulders, breasts, hips….till she stepped out of it and swung it around to the final ululating cries of a Turkish woman sitting in the shadows, the traditional cry that women in this part of the world make to honor the belly dance, a wild, high tremulous vibrato which guided Lilly to the climax of the dance. She let the veil fall to the floor, stepped out of it and slowly walked back to her seat.

  Breathless, gaining again the boundaries of her body, Lilly lowered herself to her cushion and collapsed upon it. Hot and thirsty, she gulped the rest of her wine and wished for more. She could not raise her eyes to meet her mother’s—or anyone else’s. She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. When she opened them again, Izak was beside her, offering her a drink from his glass, a tall iced drink which swirled with cream. Gratefully she drank half of it. Gratefully she accepted his smile of admiration.

  “You dance with much beauty,” he said. “But sorry for my English. “You have a great beauty.”

  “Thank you,” she said, handing back his glass to him. He immediately drank from it, drained it in front of her.

  *

  After a break, when the musicians came back on stage, Lilly kept her seat. This time, Marianne got up and gyrated to the music, awkwardly but with determination. Then Jane and Jack, and Harrison and Gerta, full of enough drink, stood and stumbled, laughing all the while, shaking their hips, shimmying, making happy fools of themselves. Even Lance tried to pull Lilly’s mother to her feet, but Harriet said “Oh no, not me, not at my age.”

  “Age won’t stop me,” said Fiona O’Hara, and she got up and danced something, surely not a belly dance, but steps perhaps from a tango of the past, something weird and exotic.

  Even Morat stood and danced by himself, unselfconsciously, eyes closed, his feet moving with the heartbeat of the music. Only Izak remained still and silent, back in his place against the wall, from time to time looking slowly over at Lilly, while, from time to time, she looked slowly over at him and met his gaze.

  *

  When they boarded the Ozymandias again, it was well after midnight. Lilly made her way to the cabin below and changed from her dress to her tee-shirt and sweatpants, put on the jacket she slept in, and dragged her pillows and blanket to the upper deck. Her mother silently did the same, they did not speak, perhaps because Lilly made it clear she preferred not to. She took her usual place on the foam pad, and pulled the blanket up to her chin.

  Above her the night sky was alight with a thousand stars and the glow of moonlight. She could feel the wine still coursing through her veins, swirling and moving with each beat of her heart. After a time one of the crew turned off the deck lights. Her mother was already curled on the narrow bench and perhaps was asleep. Izak came up from below and quietly laid himself on the bench opposite her mother—Lilly could see him turn on his side and push the pillow under his head till it satisfied him. But then he raised himself on his elbow and looked toward where she lay. He looked at her till she had to acknowledge him without speech, say goodnight without words.

  She lifted the edge of her blanket and tipped it toward him. Then, shy as a schoolgirl, she buried her head under it, and prayed for sleep.

  CREPES

  In the morning, wasps flew in from shore to hover over the breakfast table—over the bowls of honey and yogurt, over the platters of cheeses and tomatoes, buzzing and settling on the rims of coffee cups and even on the knuckles of those who were about to drink from them.

  The couples who had been most inebriated the night before, Jack and Jane Cotton, and Harrison O’Hara and Gerta, were still asleep in the cabins below. Fiona O’Hara was spreading sun block and insect repellent on her face and arms at the same time. Lance was studying a book of maps, and Harriet had brought up her paints from below to sketch the cove into which Izak had moved the boat in the dawn hours.

  There were no buses hired to take the guests to ruins on this day. Barish had lowered the ladder on the side of the boat to facilitate an easy climb to the water for those who wanted to swim. Not everyone was interested in diving from the deck of the boat into th
e sea as Marianne did. The ladder seemed a reasonable challenge: there was a small wooden platform at the top and silver rungs descending to a foot above the water.

  Lilly had not yet gone swimming in the turquoise-blue waters of the Mediterranean sea. Though fearless at home about swimming at the Y in her plain blue Speedo swimsuit, here she was a bit daunted by the bikini clad Gerta, the glamorous Jane, and even by Fiona, who in her late seventies still had the figure of a younger woman, sinewy and tough, with muscles in her calves like a dancer. Lilly knew her own strengths, and a bathing beauty she was not. She had decent proportions, sturdy thighs, adequate breasts, but she was thickly designed, like a good work horse who had to sacrifice delicacy for utility.

  A wasp was buzzing around her head and she waved it away, getting up to escape the breakfast table and stand at the boat’s railing. The sea was a shimmering blue-green just below where she stood but faded, by inches and wavelets, to a purer aquamarine until at the very edge of the cliffs it seemed almost gray.

  A pleasure boat was anchored perhaps two hundred feet away, and Lilly could hear the holiday-goers laughing and making merry. From time to time there was a cannonball burst from the deck, and a child or a man splashed into the water.

  Marianne materialized at Lilly’s side, tucking her hair into her white rubber cap.

  “Why don’t you come in, Lilly?” she said. “The water holds you up out there like God’s hands.”

  “I will, very soon,” Lilly said.

  “Harrison says there are ruins of a castle high on that cliff. I’m going to climb up there.”

  Without another word, she was gone in a head-first dive over the teak rail of the boat, and was swimming strongly toward the cliffs. It was then that Lilly noticed Izak pulling himself up on a cable coming off the anchor and attached to the forward point of the boat. He was reaching up from the water and pulling himself upward on the diagonal steel coil. He climbed, monkey-like, hand over hand, then hung there, poised in the air, looking out at the cliffs. Lilly observed his animal strength, his confidence, his power, and his beauty. This was a man like no man she had ever known. As he hung there on the cable, she could count his individual ribs in the gleam of the sun. His morning beard stubble was as dark as his shaved skull. His skin was deeply tanned, his features even and strikingly beautiful.

  Though she had not meant to spy on him, she saw he was startled to find her watching him. He suddenly let go of the cable, dropping into the sea below.

  She turned away quickly, before he surfaced, and hurried below to the cabin where she pulled her on bathing suit, found her goggles, her towel, and ascended to the deck. Without discussing her intentions with anyone and before she lost her nerve, she climbed backward down the ladder toward the sea. On the ladder’s last step, she let herself fall, without hesitation, bottom first, into the water. The shock of the cold made her gasp, but then she was buoyed upward as if a spring had pushed through the ooze of the sea floor and guided her back up to the surface. She had to exert no effort at all to stay afloat. When she caught her breath, she saw Izak holding onto the base of the ladder and wiping water out of his eyes with the back of his hand.

  All the others were invisible in the boat above them. In the distance, the pleasure boat passengers were making sounds of glee and jollity. Her head and Izak’s floated above water like bodiless creatures.

  She gripped the lower step of the ladder and held steady there, feeling the blue water swirl between her legs and up her back.

  He smiled at her. “Good water, is it not?”

  “Very good. Very restful to be in it.”

  “Holiday is for rest,” Izak said.

  “You never rest,” she said.

  “Not my time for holiday now. Time for work.”

  “What’s odd,” she said suddenly to him, “is that we live here all together on this boat like a family and when the trip is over we’ll never see one another again.”

  She didn’t know if he understood that much English, or could grasp what she meant. The words came forth as if they were waiting to spill out of her mouth.

  Izak said, “I know this truth. “Here we together”—he patted the water—“and then no more.” He flung a handful of water out toward the horizon.

  She nodded, treading water.

  “Like family,” he said. “Then no more family.”

  He hovered there, watching her, and she felt the ocean currents churning beneath them. “Very sad,” he said to Lilly. “I sometimes feel this.”

  A head came over the railing of the deck above them. Fiona called out, “Can you help us get the kayaks into the water, Izak? Harrison and Gerta want to take them along the edge of the cliffs.”

  *

  After Izak had dispersed the two green kayaks into the sea, and Harrison and Gerta had paddled away around the bend and into another cove, Lilly remained alone in the water.

  She took in the vista of cliffs and sky, the bowl of water in which she floated; she considered the amazing thought that she was here, in Turkey, in the sea in which Ulysses had sailed on his great adventure.

  She could stand upright without moving to stay afloat; the water lifted her easily above the surface, held her like silken wrappings, but in no way confined her. She felt as close to a sense of flight as she ever had—a sense of swimming and flying, an absence of gravity, giving the illusion of weightless freedom.

  From her position below, their little boat, only 80 feet long, seemed as high and huge as an ocean liner. The gulet, as they called this kind of boat, was built locally; she had seen many sailing by, all with people happily clustered on the aft deck, sunning on the cushions, or reading, or waving from the rails. The world as it could be seen from the deck of a gulet was a world of peace and friendship. Why not live on such a boat forever?

  After a while, Lilly saw a bobbing presence, a white sphere coming through the water toward the Ozymandias. Lilly watched it till it took on the outlines of Marianne as she cut her way—with strong breast strokes—toward the boat.

  With each rise of her head, water streamed down her face. As she came close to Lilly, it seemed a waterfall of tears was coming from her eyes.

  At first she didn’t notice Lilly, but paused in the water, looking around to get her bearings. She pulled off her rubber cap and her short blonde hair sprang out in ringlets. She did look as if she truly could be crying, her brow was furrowed and her mouth quivered slightly.

  “Are you alright?” Lilly called.

  “Oh! Sorry, I didn’t see you there…. I’m okay.”

  She swam up to the ladder. “I found some kind of temple ruins up there on the cliff. There was an altar. There were some cliff tombs. You know why they put them up so high? So animals couldn’t get to their dead. And robbers couldn’t rob the graves and take away objects they had buried, so their dead could have precious things with them in their next life.”

  “Did you go inside them?” Lilly asked.

  “Yes, but of course they’re empty now. You can see where fires have been burned, the walls are all charred. The tombs may have served as shelter for shepherds who kept their goats on the mountain.”

  Marianne hung onto the ladder, making no move to climb it.

  “I’ll tell you something, Lilly. I buried my daughter with her oboe. I wish we had cliff tombs in the US. I would have buried her high on a mountain and not underground.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know,” Lilly said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “How could you know? No one on this boat knows.”

  “How old was your daughter…when she died?”

  “Seventeen. And let me clear it up right away, she wasn’t on drugs, and she didn’t drive her car into a tree. She had some kind of overwhelming infection. She died in three days time, and nothing could help her.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “It’s five years now. I know it’s going to get better someday. After all, I tell my patients that grief always gets better with time.” She stared down
into the water. “Lilly, it’s a crock of shit. It doesn’t get better. The pain never goes away.”

  “My father died three months ago,” Lilly offered. It seemed a paltry thing to say, a trade when no trade was required.

  “I know, your mother told me. She manages to keep a very stiff upper lip.”

  “That’s her nature,” Lilly said… “or her Southern upbringing.”

  “She doesn’t seem unhappy,” Marianne said. “Lance is paying her a lot of attention. It’s kind of sweet.”

  “I guess…”

  “But Izak…” Marianne said suddenly. “Now that’s a man to look at. That’s a man who could make you forget your troubles.”

  “I really hadn’t considered him in that light,” Lilly said.

  “Well, you should,” Marianne said. “He’s worth considering…if anything is.”

  She began to climb up the ladder. “I’m famished already. I eat like a pig here, and then I have to swim it off. It’s the only way I can allow myself to eat Morat’s cooking.”

  *

  For a long while, Lilly floated on her back under the canopy of cloudless sky. When she finally ascended the ladder, she came upon a scene that caused her heart to skip a beat. Marianne, still in her bathing suit, was lying prone on a foam cushion of the foredeck and Izak was straddling her, his knees on either side of her thighs. Her face was turned to the side in such a way that she could see Lilly as she came up the ladder.

  “Look at me, Lilly! I learned Izak used to be a professional masseur, so I pressed him into action.”

  “I see that,” Lilly said.

  Izak glanced up at her, but then went back to work, pouring oil on Marianne’s back, pressing his fingers up and down the length of her spine, rolling his thumbs along the muscles of her back. His face was without expression; he looked as he looked each morning when he set out the plates for breakfast or hosed the wooden deck to keep the tar sealant moist and to prevent the wood from drying out.