White Vespa

Forty-five



19 Sept.





I looked into the crater for a long time today, then sat on a step and looked the other way, down on the distant sea. Emborió seemed absolutely dead. The silence was intense, oppressive, broken only by the occasional car or truck on the Nikiá—Mandhráki road. I soaked that heavy silence up, like a towel with its tail left hanging in a tub, getting heavier, saturated. I began to doubt I could speak, the clapper lost out of my bell.

Yet I could remember, perfectly well, how I’ve loved the silence of photographs, how contemplative photos make the world feel. And, of course, they are silent, nothing moves there. They keep still, in both senses. It’s us lookers who move around, run our eyes over them, never asking their consent or pardon. They are always there, available, a silence we can go to. This silence didn’t feel like that; it felt like it had come for me. The air thickened, got viscous; the insects themselves sounded muffled, stifled by a silence poured thick over them.

So I thought of going. I wheeled the Vespa out onto the road and got on, letting it roll down the switchbacks until the wind roared in my ears. Then I started it, and the putter of the Vespa, rattling in its muffler on the road down, was a comfort to me, a distraction. The beauty of the day assailed me, the depth of the blue sky, the long banners, unfurled and back-lit we haplessly call clouds, the old terraces black with shadows under the olive trees, the wild eyes of goats and wise fear of feral pigs at the sight of a man. What else should they do but run? By the time I’d ridden the road down to sea level I felt restored. I buzzed by Páli with its half-built and abandoned resort hotel, out along the low coast road, an ugly road defaced by dumping, and I didn’t care! The world was full of noise and I liked it.

Soon Yialí came into view across the water, a low lying, two-humped, camel-colored islet despoiled by gypsum mines, indeed not much more than one big gypsum mine, and I wondered what god had once lived there traded in now for a big shovel, and I didn’t care! I powered down at the ferry dock and slipped slowly into town, the Vespa’s low mutter resounding off the narrow alleys of Mandhráki, off the white walls of the two story stucco houses. Then the kambá, the communal orchard the town is built around, opened on the left, and then closed again, and I was threading my way into the town square. I left the scooter there.

There were people still in the world. Stores open and not unfriendly, a bakery and the waves behind crashing against the sea wall. I walked that way, under the kastro and Panayía Spilianí up in the rocks, and finally out onto the rough cobble that stretches away to the south. I walked there, tossing surf-rolled chunks of pumice into the seething sea to watch them float. One piece, smooth and round as a ball, I put in my pocket and carried home. The beach was rough and the salt air saturated and I was tired, and felt, tired, that I might be able to stand it after all.

That night I ate at Irini’s in the old square, the tables crowded with Greek Americans with New York accents quite willing to chat with me. The old trees that dominate the square shone irrepressibly green in the flaring lights. I watched slow smiles pass from face to face, saw again how people care and find each other, if not forever, for awhile.





Forty-six



18 Aug.





Paul thought Katerina must have spent too much time in the sun before she took to big hats. She certainly had a serious collection of big ones now, which Paul was sorting through in front of the mirror in her room in the Alíki. He tried on two or three, grinning foxily into the mirror at Katerina, who lay behind him naked on the bed. She was lying on her side, her head on a pillow.

“You look better in that one,” she said.

“Next, I’ll model swimwear.”

“You could, you know, you’d make a beautiful woman, eine schöne Frau.”

Paul feigned indignation but then selected a lipstick from the rows on the dressing table.

Katerina swung her legs off the bed and walked—in a loose-gaited way she never walked in clothes—over to the dressing table.

“Stand up,” and she turned the bench lengthwise and pressed him down onto it, her palms on his shoulders. She sat down behind him, straddling the bench, the inside of her smooth thighs pressing the outside of his.

“Now,” she said, “this way,” and she smiled broadly over his shoulder, reaching around to neatly color his lips.

“Hold still!” She applied an appalling silver eye shadow, black eye liner, and touched at his already thick lashes with mascara. His eyes looked ready to leap from their sockets.

“Baby, baby,” Paul whispered, “you know what I like.”

“Liebschön, you know what I like, how I like,” she said, leading him back to the bed.





Paul sprawled on the sheets, watching Katerina’s elaborate preparations to face the world. Or to face Alexandra, who would soon be returning from her afternoon swim. Paul knew Katerina would prefer he was gone when Alexandra got back, but he preferred to be there still and a little disheveled. Alex knew, of course, but he liked reminding her, watching her burn. It was one of the little things that had kept him interested so long. His affairs, he admitted quite genially, tended to be fleeting at best. Boredom sometimes set in immediately after introductions.

Katerina rubbed at his face with make-up remover and then a warm, wet towel, “You got a little smudged.”

“In the heat of the moment,” he said, making as if to bite at one of her breasts through her slip, growling.

“Now get dressed, please?”





He left before Alexandra turned up, but she was in the lobby, drinking a Coke.

“Just get back?” Paul asked her.

“No. I’ve been back an hour, waiting for you to get out. Blue was off with her brother and Jim so I had to swim alone.”

“You should’ve knocked or come right in. You have a key,” Paul said.

“Sure, right. What do you see in her, anyway?” Alexandra said.

“In Kat? Well, there’s a lot of you in your mother, Alex, and she knows what to do with it. Some women get jaded when they get older, some get dedicated. Your mom’s one of the dedicated kind.”

Alexandra flushed, somewhere between jealous and angry. “Gee, thanks for telling me that!”

“But you asked what I see in her!” Paul said.

“Yeah, thanks, thanks again for telling me. Dedicated!” She turned on her heel, swearing in German, heading for her room. “Mach es dir selber!”

Paul had liked the lot of you in your mother better than the dedicated. Sometimes, he had to admit it, he really had a way with words. He laughed, walking toward the sun shining in the glass doors on the seaside of the lobby.





Forty-seven



18 Aug.





“What do you think he meant by dedicated?” Blue wondered out loud. “It’s bad enough he’s making it with your mom without his talking about it,” she added, trying to sound as sympathetic as possible.

Alexandra wasn’t responding.

“Maybe he has a hard time getting it up, you know, so your mom’s got to be dedicated.”

“Could you please just shut up?”

“Probably that’s not it,” Blue said.

“Please?”

“Maybe he just meant like really experienced.”

“Enough already!” Alex pushed herself up off the beach, looked at her breasts caked in sand, and groaned. “I’m going in.”

“Me too!” Blue leapt up, an athlete in a swimmer’s suit. She was in the water before Alexandra and swam like a dolphin. Back home she’d starred on the swim team and it showed. Alex waded in, cursing. What Alexandra did in the water could hardly be called swimming. But it was something other than talking about Paul. Alex could float; once in she rolled over and lay there, letting the waves run through her on their way to the beach. She liked that, how it felt.

She decided not to be angry with Blue. Who else was there to spend the long afternoons with, after all, while her mom and Paul, and Michael and Jim, disappeared from public view? She smiled blithely into the sun: she’d suggest they shop Sými’s boutiques. She was flush with guilt money and Blue never seemed to have any money to spare. She’d buy her something. But Alexandra had to admit that by the second day there hadn’t been much to shop for on Sými. At times like these she remembered the smart shops of Tübingen with a feeling close to grief.





“Dedicated?” Michael asked.

Blue shrugged, “That’s what she said.”

“Why does she care?”

“Come on! It’s her mother!” Blue exclaimed.

“Yeah, but somehow I don’t think Paul would be the first lover her mom’s carted home.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Jim put in.

They were happily launched on lunch; Jim had insisted on taking them out when Blue let on it was Michael’s thirty-sixth birthday.

“I’d think a man at the elbow pretty much goes with the outfits,” Jim added.

Blue looked back and forth between them, at their happy eating. “You two are getting older every day.”

“Well, it is my birthday,” Michael said. “But why are you complaining? For you it’s a free lunch.”

“I meant conservative,” Blue said firmly.

“Ouch!” Jim laughed, “Hope that zinger was for you, Michael.” He was cutting up a large red pepper, eating it with the hórta and the melitzanosaláta that Paniyótis had recommended as especially good.

“I meant you, too,” Blue said.

“Thanks,” Jim responded, wondering why Paul’s very name was so often the occasion for trouble.

“I mean, you two seem like you’ve been married for a long time.”

Jim and Michael exchanged fawning looks, and then Michael picked up his Coke bottle and said, “I’ll toast to that!”

Jim clicked his glass against Michael’s bottle, “To growing old together!”

“I don’t see why you’d want to rush into that,” Blue said, giggling.





Jim called Váso over to the table and asked for sheep’s milk yogurt with honey, three servings.

“Okay,” she said, “in a minute.”

Jim watched her carry the dishes she’d cleared off their table into the kitchen, bending under the load, then re-emerge at a run, heading down the alley. For the sheep’s milk yogurt, he realized, feeling a twinge of guilt that he’d been so particular.

Michael couldn’t help bringing up Paul again. “You watch, Katerina’s going to repent getting so thick with Paul.”

“Why?” Blue said.

“Because he’s the kind of guy nobody likes for long.”

Jim groaned. “Maybe it won’t turn out that way. She seems to have him in hand. Hell, maybe she’s using him, a summer lover.”

“And why not?” Blue put in.

Michael fiddled with his spoon. “Maybe,” he conceded, “but for all that attitude I think she’s still got plenty of girl in her. She’s a romantic, apparently an incurable romantic. Which makes a person stupid.”

“You’re getting old again.” Blue said, pretending to be stern. “You’re about the oldest thirty-six I ever heard of.”





Forty-eight



19 Aug.





“What’s the story with this photograph?”

“Do you like it?” Myles asked.

“Sure,” Jim said.

“Recognize it?”

Jim looked at it again. “What do you mean? It’s still the same photograph. I recognize it; I saw it last time I was here. In fact, I’ve seen it every time I’ve been here.”

“That’s all?” Myles persisted.

Jim looked again. “Some guy on a white Vespa, same kind you ride.”

“You don’t recognize the place?”

Jim shook his head.

“That’s the little bakery up the alley from To Stenáki,” Myles said. “You’ve probably bought bread there yourself.”

“Not baguettes,” Jim said in mock self-defense.

“I took that photo last summer. And when I got back to D.C. I started thinking that guy looked like he had it pretty good. So I came back.”

“Just like that?”

“More or less,” Myles said. “Then, when I got here, I wanted a motorbike. I found the white Vespa and I bought it. It’s not just the same kind of Vespa; it’s the very same Vespa. I didn’t know when I bought it, but it is.”

“Ha!” Jim laughed.

“The thing that really attracted me to the photo was the sense of purpose,” Myles pointed at the man in the photo, “this guy just seemed to radiate.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, here I am. Am I radiating a sense of purpose?”

Jim looked at Myles slyly, “Actually, you seem totally at sea.”

“Yeah? Well, there’s a reason for that,” Myles said.

“How do you say it? Aha!”

“Very funny.”

Myles took a bottle of oúzo, from Lésvos, out of the freezer. “Lesbian,” he said.

“Can you taste it?” Jim asked.

“Well, it’s reputed to be the best oúzo going,” Myles said. “It’s a little acrid, maybe, got some of the smell of the body in it.”

“In that case, I’ll have me a big glass.”

Myles poured out two fingers each in tall water glasses; flecks of ice rolled in the thick liquid.

Jim lifted his glass, “Sappho,” he said roundly, “the smell of her.”

They each took a long, reflective pull.





Myles worked at the sink, preparing a plate of food to eat with the oúzo, cucumber spears, quartered Italian tomatoes, chunks of cheese, wrinkled black olives.

“So Michael’s doing the guide thing again with Blue?”

“Well, there is that,” Jim said, “Kos and crossing from there to Turkey, Bodrum, I think.”

“And?”

“And I think he’s also getting her out of Paul’s way.”

Myles glanced up, then carried the plate over and set it on the table between their chairs. “Is that necessary?” he asked, sitting back down.

“Maybe. She’s showing the inclination.”

“Aha. Not good.”

“We’re gonna need that bottle, don’t you think?” Jim said.

They seemed to have tacitly agreed to drink too much. Myles retrieved the bottle from the freezer and poured out two more shots while standing.

“Why didn’t you go along?”

“Thought I’d see how it felt not to.”

“And?” Myles asked.

“It hurts.”

“Is that bad?”

“No, not bad, but hard. I can feel my life getting complicated.” Jim paused, eyed Myles, and, looking a little abashed, asked Myles why they were drinking.

“Anne told me.”

“Oh?”

“She told me what happened,” Myles said. “Where the darkness comes from.”

“And?”

“And she asked me to keep it private.” Myles drank. “I’d rather not.” He controlled his voice with difficulty, then added huskily, “That bastard.”

“You mean Paul?”

Myles nodded.

“If you want to talk it’ll stop with me.”

“I want to, but I promised,” Myles said. “I wish I hadn’t. I can feel the paralysis passing from her to me.”

They sat there, not talking, looking forlorn.

“So what’s she going to do,” Jim asked at last.

“That’s the big question, what is she going to do? I don’t know. She’s not saying much. I’m starting to regret I ever encouraged her to talk to me. It’s between us all the time now. I thought talking would bring us closer, but she’s pulled back, into some bluer distance.” Myles shook his head and took a ragged breath. “It’s as if she woke up only to realize she’s already dead.”

They sat in silence.

“And what are you going to do?” Jim spoke gently. “Are you sticking with her?”

“What can I do? It happened.” Myles fell silent, then started in again. “Of course I’m sticking with her, but . . .”

“But?”

“She’s wasting her time with Paul. She should let him go,” Myles grimaced.

“Just let him go?”

“What else?”





Myles picked at the food and emptied out the last of the oúzo, dribbling it into Jim’s glass. He looked at the photo of the man on the Vespa and felt mocked. When he got up, the earth seemed to shift under his feet. So that’s it, stewed, he thought. He looked out the window, and it was evening out there, a purple stain draining away in the last of the light. He poured two glasses half full of bottled water and broke some ice out of the trays in the freezer. Jim watched him, looking owlish.

“More Sappho?”

“No more Sappho.”

“No more smell of her body?” Jim said mournfully.

“No.”

“Too bad.” They seemed to consider the sad fact. “Smelled kind of good once you got used to it.”

Myles didn’t answer, rummaging in a cupboard.

“What are you doing?”

“Aha!” Myles almost shouted. He carried over the two glasses of ice water, two spoons, and a suspicious container of white goo.

“What’s that?”

“Dessert.”

“Have we drunk enough for reckless experimentation?” Jim asked, dolefully.

“Mastic. From Híos,” Myles rapped out.

“Not Lesbian?”

“No. From Híos. The best mastic is from Híos.” Myles was twirling a spoon in the mastic and when he had the spoon well wrapped he dropped it into Jim’s glass.

“Thanks. I guess.”

While he was preparing a second spoon, Myles said, “Swirl it around in there.”

“Is this perverted in any way?” Jim said.

“It’s from Híos!”

“No perverts on Híos?”

“Must be some.”

“To the perverts of Híos,” Jim said, with emphasis, raising his glass.

“Jim, settle down. I don’t think you make toasts to suck on a spoon of mastic.”





Forty-nine



20 Aug.





“Where’s your mother?” Paul asked, before she’d seen him. He was coming down, and Alex was looking the other way, toward town, looking for him.

“Do you have to?”

“Have to what?”

“Ask about my mother.”

“Don’t get flustered,” he said, and when he saw she didn’t get it, he added, “You know, embarrassed.”

“She’s getting her hair done at the Alíki, getting a whole new face. She needs one, haven’t you noticed?” Alex had her chin out, a picture of petulance.

“And here you are at my door. I’m flattered, I want you to know that.”

Alex put her shoulder on the door and pretended to push. “So let me in.”

Paul made a great show of putting the key in the lock, holding it up and then slipping it in. The door swung open and he bowed, sweeping his arm across his body as he straightened back up. “Just like a gentleman,” he said, winking. “You really ought to find one, a young one. A boy. Don’t you think?” He raised his eyebrows quizzically. “Miss, little miss,” he hissed, as she walked stiffly past him into the room, “really, little miss, it’s not too late to run, not too late.”

“Would I be here if I wanted to run? Do you think I would?” Alex said, her hands shaking.

“You might. And you might change your mind.”

Alex looked stubborn now. “I’m not a virgin, you know.”

“Oh, I hear you’re a tough one,” Paul said, backing her toward the bed. “You’re mother told me how she worries about you. You and your dirty little ways.”

“Like she should talk!”

“But she’s an adult, Alex. Adults get to be just as dirty as they want. Don’t they?”

Alex knelt down on the bed, her head pressed sideways against the bedspread, looking back at Paul over her shoulder. “You tell me,” she said.

Paul took the hem of her short dress in his fingers and flipped it up, over her back. “Okay,” he said, “I will.”