In the morning Naomi went alone to Vlychos and took a room at the Four Seasons there, then walked up to Palamidas. There was no one in Episkopi, but she could feel mineral eyes watching her, the old men with their dogs and their silver stubble, which was never shaved or allowed to grow. She went up to the hut in a high sea wind to fetch Faoud, and there she explained everything to him. He was to come down with her to the resort and take the key to the room, which was paid for under her name and with her passport. No one would ask any questions there. Faoud didn’t believe her, but she calmed him down. He was to just walk at her side calmly, as if he was her friend. They set off immediately. It was good to get away from the claustrophobic suspicion of the place, to walk down through the summer flowers with the sea burning their senses as they came closer to it. Faoud was lighthearted and playful. He must have slept well. He said that all night he had heard the bells strung around the necks of donkeys and goats and had dreamt of Beirut.
“I went to the American University there,” he explained in his soft and careless way. “A few years ago. But I dream about it a lot. Did you go to university?”
“In London. I wasn’t very good.”
“I don’t believe you at all. You have a nice way of speaking.”
Before they arrived at the dock and the path that turned toward Molos she had divulged more about her family background. A fuller picture of her father, the houses, the stepmother, the disagreements, the miseries. She rarely spoke frankly to others about these things, but she suddenly felt quite at ease confessing everything to him, if it was even a confession. He took it mildly as she presented herself as the heroine of her family dramas. It was selfish of her, but once she had started she couldn’t stop. She wanted him to know how ashamed she was of being rich. That was the important thing, though she forgot that he himself was from a wealthy family.
“I can’t thank you enough,” he said eventually, but not turning to her. “For everything. The food, the hotel. I don’t know why you are doing it. You must be a pure person.”
“That’s the last thing I am.”
“No, I think you are. It makes no sense otherwise. Very few people are like that—”
“I’m the most impure person, actually. But you can think what you want.”
“I’d do that anyway,” he said.
They came to the resort. In the shade of the hotel restaurant the Russians were at their lunches. No one noticed them making their way up to the room. The corridors were hushed in midday stupor. They went into the room, where the windows had been left open to the sea air and where it was surprisingly fresh. She locked the door behind them and, slightly stunned, they lay on the bed to recover from the hot walk. The two fans blew them dry. Then he slept and she made sandwiches from the groceries she had brought, serving them with pickles on the hotel plates. She lay back down next to him and waited for him to awaken, but he slept on. She couldn’t imagine how exhausted he must be. It was a vast fatigue that was integral to persecution, to being hunted and loathed. It was curious that their proximity and their slight physical distance in a hotel room didn’t feel awkward. She supposed that, speaking for herself, she had been mentally preparing for it for days and it was, she imagined, the way people evolved: they gravitated toward the most pleasing and dangerous idea.
The afternoon dragged on. She could hear the annoying commotion of people milling around the beach and the growl of motors put at sea. The waves beating on the shore were like small detonations, with a dread-filled lull between each explosion. The light declined and eventually she slept as well. When she woke there were flies circling the overhead lamp. He had moved onto his side and thrown a casual arm around her. If she had wanted to remove it, that was her moment to do so, but she left it in place. He woke in turn and they were entwined. She wanted them to be. They found each other’s sleepy eyes, and there was already the certainty and the resignation. So it’s just like that, she thought. She took off his shirt and then hers and they lay very peacefully as the walls turned orange from the sunset. Then she turned toward him more fully and began to kiss him. It happened slowly, and while they were sinking into their confusion, her usual train of thought, which never seemed to stop even in her sleep, finally ground to a halt and she was aware only of the onset of night and the resurrected shrilling of the cicadas from the trees nearby.
Later, as he slept on, she woke and took a shower, wrapped herself in a hotel dressing gown, and went onto the balcony. The resort was so remote that an ancient darkness suffocated it. Only the lights from the open-air restaurant and the main house glowed weakly against the cliffs. She recovered her senses and let her hair dry out. Then she stole back into the room, dressed quietly, and went down alone to the restaurant. She took a table by herself and ordered an extravagant amount of food and a glass of retsina. She ate a few skewers of kebab, downed the wine, and then asked the waitress to wrap the rest to take back to her room. While this was being done, she smoked and steadied herself. Her fingers twitched. It was excitement and aggression within herself, not fear or anxiety. She couldn’t even say why she had made love to him; it had been an impulsion, and one that would repeat itself. Such acts never disturbed her. But she also liked him. His misfortunes made him charismatic, and therefore arousing. It seemed foolish that she could feel this way when she thought it over.
Meanwhile, the Russian men looked over at her and their mouths were turned up in credulous half-smiles. She avoided their gaze and went back up to the room, tapping softly at the door to let him know that she was entering. He had just woken up and was lying in the dark smoking one of her cigarettes. His face was blank, as incredulous as the Russians had seemed credulous. Without turning on the light she laid out the remnants of her restaurant meal on the bed with the sandwiches and let him eat as he wanted. She put a practical tone in her voice.
“I’m going to give you some money. With it you can leave. You can go to the mainland without a problem.”
“Money?”
“It’s the one thing I can give you.”
“It’s a tricky thing, money.”
“Not in an emergency. This is life or death.”
She sounded melodramatic, but melodrama was built into the moment.
“Who said it was life or death?” he said.
“You’re being polite. But you know it is.”
“What if it is? It’s not your life and your death.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, now you are just being polite. I need the money, but I don’t want it.”
Need, she insisted, always trumped want.
“So you’ll go to an ATM?” he protested.
“No. I have another idea. An ATM wouldn’t be enough. And my father would notice.”