You Are Always Safe With Me

by Merrill Joan Gerber

  Izak came up the stairs, smiling in a new way she’d not seen before, a bolder smile, holding a tray above his head. He set a feast before her at the table. Broiled lamb, cheese crepes, melon salad, cucumber and yogurt sauce.

  “How did you make this so fast?”

  “I chef, also. For three years I work in famous restaurant in Antalya.”

  He sat beside her on the foam pad and poured her cold pear juice from a carton. They ate hungrily, not talking till they had finished the food.

  “It’s so strange, with everyone gone away,” Lilly said, finally.

  “But good, yes?”

  “Very good.”

  “Saklikent Gorge. All day walking, climbing. You must have two good feet. Another time, maybe.”

  “There won’t be another time, Izak. We all leave the boat in two days.”

  “Another year then. You can come back.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “There will never be another cruise like this.”

  “Turkey be here. I be here.”

  “Be here now,” she reminded herself, but said, “Oh, please don’t make me feel sad.” She meant to say it lightly, but something convulsed in her throat and her eyes filled with tears.

  “Oh Lilly, I hate for you to be sad,” Izak said, and put his arm around her, pulling her to his chest. She let him cradle her head against him and inhaled the smell of his salty sweat, felt his steady heartbeat next to her cheek.

  “You know, I want this the whole time,” he said. “Holding you.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I never feel this before. I work many cruises. Many women sailing. None like you. None like my soul. None like my family.”

  “I am not even Moslem,” Lilly said. “How can I be like you?”

  “Atatürk made new world. Two hearts the same—this okay for him.”

  They were sitting awkwardly at the table till Izak gently pulled her back against the bolsters of the deck pad. She rested her head on his shoulder. Both of them looked up at the sky.

  “I don’t know anything about your life,” Lilly said. “If you have a mother and father, sisters, brothers?”

  “Three brothers, younger and I am oldest. We care for our mother. She has house in Bodrum. You also care for mother, I see. So in this way we are the same.”

  “My father died a few months ago.”

  “My father dead a long time. Your mother, she has kind heart. She sleeps on bench on deck, like me.”

  “I watch you both every night,” Lilly said. “The two of you: my mother and you, the two people I…” She could not finish the sentence.

  “Yes?”

  “Love! The two people I love! Because you are also someone I love.” She heard herself say this and considered it exactly the truth, not because of too much sun or because this was one of those shipboard romances about which her mother had warned her. It was simply a fact of her existence.

  “I have love for you, also,” he said. “What we can do I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know either.”

  They stopped talking. She kissed his neck, his cheek, and turned her face upward for him to kiss her mouth.

  “Oh,” she said after he had kissed her.

  “You are afraid now. I’m sorry. I don’t want…”

  “No! No! Not afraid! Oh God, no.”

  Neither of them were children, they had lived in their bodies and understood them. The sensation she felt was not so much one of physical hunger—though she felt it strongly—but a sense of resolution, of coming home after years of wandering. Of peace.

  She invited him further by lying back on the canvas of the pad and lifting her arms to him, summoning him into them.

  “I would like,” he said. “So much to do this.”

  “But?”

  “But I am not safe.”

  She understood at once what he meant. Amazing that she hadn’t thought of this, that this kind of safety had not crossed her mind. What could she say? She was in fact not safe, either. She was mid-cycle, at her most fertile time, though how likely was she to conceive this one time? Teenagers thought this way, and after their one time, they learned—all too often—exactly how likely it was. But teenagers were teenagers and she was forty. And what if she were to conceive? The thought brought her a thunderbolt of joy! The possibility astonished her and filled her with longing.

  She was about to tell him this when he pulled himself to his feet, turned his back to her and went quickly below to the galley. His pulling away was like a vacuum sucking out her air. She felt hollow, short of breath, as if she’d been punched. She fell back against the hot green cloth and let the sun make black shapes under her eyelids.

  *

  When he came back, he was carrying bowls of chocolate and vanilla ice cream. His face was composed. He was offering her, instead of himself, something sweet, a consolation. He fed the ice cream to her with a delicacy and attention that was a mixture of apology and protection.

  “We think more about what we can do. Rest here with me. I hold you quietly. Then we swim,” he said.

  *

  They dozed in the warmth till they were too hot to lie any longer in the sun. Lilly, still in her swimsuit from the morning of kayaking, said she wanted to swim.

  “I carry you down,” Izak said, standing, and swinging her into his arms.

  “Oh, I am too heavy,” she said.

  “Then maybe I throw you over rail. Yes, you like that?”

  “I’m too scared,” she said, laughing.

  “You are always safe with me,” he said. “I will never let a bad thing happen to you.”

  He carried her to the edge of the boat and pretended to throw her over the side. She clutched him around the neck. They were both laughing like children, giddily, for pure joy. She felt the smile on her face as wide as the sea. “Remember this,” she instructed herself. “What it feels like to smile this way.” Then he carried her halfway down the ladder, but only halfway. “Now I throw you, yes?”

  “Yes,” she agreed. He flung her forward and she sank under the water, feeling it rush over her head and then reverse her direction so that she bobbed up, her hair in her mouth, laughing. He was still above her, on the ladder, and then dove perfectly into the sea.

  They swam beside one another easily in the buoyant water; she thought perhaps whales or dolphins might feel this way—swimming with their mates in the turquoise spaces of the sea. What freedom this was, the purest kind, pure existence: sun, water, wind, and love.

  They swam a long distance, side by side, pausing to rest in water that lifted them up and allowed them to stand almost upright without effort. Izak pointed out some ruins high on a cliff, another Roman city, another society left in rubble. So many lives, lived and ended. Lilly had the sense that all the spirits who had ever lived here were circling the cove where they swam. The richness of life was renewable, though not everlasting. Babies were the only recourse to continuation. Babies who were fresh as new flowers, precious as all of life. They began to swim back toward the boat; she was aware of fish below, birds above, and babies crying and laughing in all the little villages perched on the hillsides.

  *

  When they had rested a while on the deck, Izak said, “I would like now to give you massage,” he said. “But only that. Don’t worry, you know how I mean.”

  “Yes, I know how you mean. And I would love that—just a massage.”

  He helped her to the foredeck and settled her carefully face down on one of the single lounge cushions, then opened the little trap door to his quarters and disappeared below. He returned with a bottle of lotion that he spread on his hand and then rubbed into her back. She gave herself up to it, his fingers, the pressure of his thumbs along her spine, the sense of him kneeling first beside her on the deck, and then, when he straddled her body, the overwhelming sense of surrender to his strength, his superiority. She had known nothing like this in her life, this willingness to give herself over t
o another person, to trust absolutely.

  “You like this?” he said.

  “Oh yes, but I don’t want to talk.”

  “Then good, we are silent.” He continued to move his hands along her skin, he covered the map of her body with his markers, his touch, his smell, his control. And suddenly she was overcome with limpness, drowsiness. She wanted to hang on but she could not, she was slipping, falling into a velvet envelope, a royal blue darkness filled her, she was experiencing an ecstasy, and she felt herself slip into sleep.

  *

  When she woke, the sun had set. She sat up, faced into the breeze and let the night air cool her face. The deck lights had not been turned on as they usually were at this hour; she could see the shore clearly, the lit windows of homes on the hills and the bright signs of cafes below in the town.

  A pleasure boat had moored in the cove where the Ozymandias was anchored. Though it was some distance away, Lilly could see the forms of people moving about inside the lit salon and on the upper deck. She could hear the faint strains of music coming over the water.

  Where was Izak? She wanted to go down to her cabin to use the bathroom but she still uneasy about putting weight on her foot. She had not strapped on the ankle support after they’d been swimming.

  Had he gone down to sleep below deck? Could he have left her alone on the boat and taken the Zodiac to pick up the others? She knew he was to meet them on shore at a certain time, but she did not think he would leave her without waking her to tell her he was leaving. She wished she had not slept and wasted even a moment of their private time together.

  She tried to stand, testing her ankle. She thought she could walk by leaning against the rails or the walls of the salon. She could hop quite well. She hopped along the side deck, and saw Izak approaching her, holding a pair of binoculars.

  “Please, look there.” He put them in her hands and supported her as she stood on one foot. He guided the glasses in her hands. In the magnifying lenses she saw the occupants of the pleasure boat quite clearly. They were dancing on the deck, moving to the music of musicians who were playing oud and drums. At this distance their dance seemed in slow motion, an eerie ballet.

  “I remember how you dance at the café,” he said. “So beautiful. I wish that you dance for me now.”

  “Dance without moving, perhaps,” Lilly said, “…without my feet.” She handed back the binoculars and made a few tentative movements with her shoulders. She rested her weight on the heel of her foot and snaked her arms from her waist up to her shoulders, along the side of her face and through her hair.”

  “Yes,” he breathed. “This I remember, how you belly dance in the cafe. Maybe I play some Turkish music. And then I can cook dinner for you?”

  “When do you have to pick up the others?”

  “Eight o’clock I go to shore. They have long trip back from Saklikent Gorge. Many mountain roads, very narrow. Goats block sometimes the way.”

  “I’d like to take off my bathing suit and get dressed before we eat.”

  He helped her to her cabin, waited for her to change her clothes and then helped her up the few steps to sit her at the table in the salon while he prepared a dinner of broiled fish and rice. She watched him moving in the tiny space of the galley from stove to sink to refrigerated cabinets and back to the stove. He sliced lemons, he sliced bread, he sliced cucumbers—all with the speed of a magician.

  When the dinner was ready, he helped Lilly to the upper deck and plugged in a tape player. By the time he set the food on the table, Turkish music was swirling through the air. Lilly could hardly sit still, the insistent drum rhythms made her body move involuntarily.

  “You like music of Turkey?” Lilly glanced up at the Turkish flag flying from the mast—a white crescent moon and star in a red field.

  “Yes, I like Turkish music,” Lilly said. “I like Turkey.”

  “Maybe you love.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “You love your country?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s so different there. My life is so different. I am a teacher. I am very busy all the time. There is no time to think.”

  “But you are lonely,” he said. It was not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “You have no family, no child. Women want this in my country. Men, too. I wish it for me.”

  “I wish it for me, Izak. God! How I wish it.” Again, unexpectedly, tears filled her eyes. As Izak comforted her, held her, the cell phone rang. She had heard it ring many times on the boat and seen Izak answer it often, but at this moment she could have thrown the phone in the sea.

  He retrieved it from the shelf under the wheel and held it to his ear. A conversation ensued in Turkish and she understood nothing. Izak became separate, separated from her, became a stranger during the moments he spoke to an unknown person in an unknown tongue.

  When he hung up he said, “Morat is calling, he says three are lost. Harrison, Gerta and Marianne, lost in Saklikent Gorge. Police now are searching. The others wait at restaurant with Morat and Barish. Maybe too dark to find them now. Maybe they have to stay till morning in hotel nearby.”

  “My mother…?”

  “Only those three. Everyone else safe. Morat later is calling.”

  Izak shut off the tape player. “So. This bad thing.” He held his head in his hands and she saw his alarm and his worry. “Marianne, she makes them go too far. Her mind is angry. I feel angry, too—how she plays with Barish. Not in good way.”

  “I don’t think you know this, Izak. Marianne had a daughter she loved very much who died when she was seventeen. I think that’s why she’s angry and looking for some kind of peace. If she takes chances and does dangerous things, it’s because she’s daring the universe, daring God, something like that. Maybe she wants to die herself.”

  “Daring God, this is not good. There are better ways to find peace.”

  Then the cell phone rang again. This time, Izak spoke briefly and handed the phone to Lilly.

  “Lilly? This is Fiona. Listen, darling, I am terrified. My son and Gerta didn’t come back, and neither did Marianne, and we waited and waited and then Morat and Barish went to look for them, and couldn’t find them. The water rushing through the gorge is ice cold and they are out there somewhere, the three of them, daring each other, I’m sure that’s what they did, you know that song, ‘Anything you can do, I can do better.’ They could all be dead by now.”

  “Oh Fiona, that’s not likely.”

  “But if something terrible did happen—I was just talking to your mother about this—if they were climbing too high up the gorge and they fell, or if they drowned, I asked your mother if you might want to take…if she thought you might…I know, it’s a crazy idea, I know, but maybe you would be the ideal one…”

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to say, Fiona.”

  “It’s the baby, darling. The little baby, my grandchild. I don’t know who will raise her if Harrison and Gerta are dead. She’s going to be born very soon and if they’re dead, there’s no one to raise the baby. I’m too old … I’m really too old to raise a baby, darling, but you aren’t! You have a good job and a nice home and many women your age are single mothers!”

  Lilly’s heart began palpitating. She felt her skin grow clammy.

  “Fiona! Don’t be silly. They’ll be fine, all of them will be fine. They just went too far, there’s that competition between Marianne and Harrison, they’re always needling one another about who is tougher.”

  “But if worst comes to worst, say you’d do it for me, darling… I know if you were raising my granddaughter, you’d be happy to let me visit her, see her grow up.”

  “They’ll all be fine, Fiona. Just wait a while and you’ll see.”

  “But you must tell me if you’d take the baby. I have plenty of money to help you raise her, you know.”

  “I don’t know what to say to you.”

  “Just tell me—would you consider it?”

&
nbsp; “Please, Fiona, it won’t come to that!”

  “But would you consider it, please?”

  “I’d have to think about it, of course.”

  “But maybe?”

  “Maybe,” Lilly said. “Yes, maybe I would consider it, Fiona. Yes! Maybe I would! Goodbye. Call me later when you know more.”

  She handed the phone back to Izak and felt herself reeling.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “They come back, hard to get lost in Saklikent Gorge, too narrow. Too high. Nowhere to go except too far.”

  “It isn’t that,” Lilly said. “It’s what Harrison’s mother wants me to do if they never come back.” She thought she could almost feel the tiny weight of the baby girl in her arms. Now she hoped, to her amazement, that the infant’s parents were never to be found.

  “Then what is it?”

  “Fiona wants me to take the baby. You know about the baby? That Harrison and Gerta are having a baby, but another woman is bearing it? So Gerta’s body would not be spoiled, stretched out?”

  “I heard this, I know,” Izak said. “Never any woman do this in my country.”

  “But Fiona offered me their baby, Izak. Oh God”…and again Lilly began to cry. “She wants me to raise it.”

  “And—you don’t want?”

  “Oh, but I do! I would love to have a baby, Izak. This is my dream. I want a child more than anything. Women in my country do this even if they’re not married, even if they’re…as old as me. Sometimes they adopt a little girl from China, or they have in vitro fertilization by a donor—they get the baby from a stranger’s sperm—or they just get pregnant by some friend—they can’t wait for the ideal moment, a husband, babies, in that order. Izak, I would die to have a baby.”

  “If you want a baby this much,” Izak whispered to her, “…maybe—please understand what I say now—maybe I try to give you one.” He put his arms around her. “I am serious, Lilly. If you want,” Izak said, with every consideration in his voice, “…and if you let me, I do the best I know to give you my baby.”

  COMING TOGETHER

  While the stars were high above them and the sea rocked gently under them and the wind sighed against the mast and fluttered the silken cloth of the Turkish flag, Izak moved slowly above Lilly’s body till she cried out once and then again. With one last, long movement he delivered to her the hope of life.