The returning family suddenly came into view. They were sunburned and brimming with energy, carrying bundles of wild flowers and knapsacks, the Swiss Family Robinson crackling with chatter and unconscious satisfactions. When they saw that Naomi would be joining them for dinner Amy appeared a little cool at the idea, but Jeffrey took the lead in stirring up some enthusiasm. The maid had already made her famous moussaka and the wine had been opened. They were, in reality, too hungry and too happy to care either way.
They showered with extraordinary efficiency and were seated at table within fifteen minutes. Night had fallen now and donkeys in heat brayed in the darkness, aroused by something new. Sam ate in silence while the others bantered, a fact that did not escape the notice of her mother. Amy, in fact, had become vaguely and almost unconsciously suspicious—but of what she wasn’t yet sure. Something in Naomi’s body language, something in the taciturn silence of her daughter. But there was nothing to be said. Before desserts were served, she caught Sam alone for a moment in the kitchen as they made coffee. Amy touched her arm for a moment and said, “Everything all right, sweetheart?” The girl shuddered away from the touch and then collected herself.
“I’m fine,” she said tersely. “I just have a headache.”
“Where did you go last night?”
“I did what you told me to. I went to a party and met some Americans.”
“That’s great, sweetheart. I hope you had fun.” Amy was hugely relieved.
“It was cool,” the girl replied.
At the table, Naomi told stories about Hydra life—from days gone by, as she said—and the Haldanes listened until Jeffrey took out his pompous pipe and lit up, signaling a change in the conversation. He and Christopher had been reading The Odyssey every night before bed. They had come to Book 5, and Christopher kept asking him if the island of Ogygia, home of Calypso, was Hydra.
Of course it was not. But when Homer described the island rising up “like a shield,” well, it was suggestive of this island too. Jeffrey puffed on his pipe and turned a vacant tobacco eye on his guest.
“Then Christopher said the most beautiful thing to me. He said, isn’t Odysseus just like the refugees today? How does he put it?—tossed on the stormy waves, destroying himself on the barren sea. The foiled journey home, the current bore him there, or something like that? Scudding across the—scudding across the sea’s broad back—scudding somewhere—how did it go with the scudding, Chris?”
The boy looked up sheepishly. “Left to pine on an island in the nymph’s house?”
“Yes, that too. That’s how he ended up. Pining and weeping for home, nowhere to go. It makes you think, doesn’t it?”
“About what?” Naomi said.
“About how it’s all the same. Nothing ever changes.”
“That’s a stretch, to put it mildly.”
But the look of self-satisfaction on his face was disarming, and she left it at that. After all, she should be the last person to disagree when she thought about it. But even if she did disagree, what difference would it make to either herself or the bore?
“Everyone knows the island was Gozo,” Christopher then said. “Not here.”
“That’s right,” his father said. “But who knows if it even existed?”
“It didn’t exist,” the boy said.
“Did you know that Calypso means ‘she who hides herself’?”
He turned to Naomi, but without knowledge of the ironies he was unconsciously manipulating.
“Forgive us, Naomi, my son and I are the most tremendous pedants when the mood takes us. Once we get going only wild horses can stop us, and there usually aren’t any wild horses around—are there, Sam?”
“Only goats, if you’re lucky,” she said.
SIXTEEN
Faoud stopped in Fasano. The town was dominated by a long rectangular piazza filled with old men taking in the sun in their shirtsleeves and with crowds of tired pigeons. He went through both men and birds anonymously, aware that now he could pass for Italian without much difficulty. He came upon a shoe store in a street nearby and tried on a few pairs of fine Italian shoes until he found two that fit.
Five hundred euros seemed obscenely steep to him, but shabby shoes could give a man away, even to an idle eye. It was a question of the economics of appearances. There was no price to be put on the vital element of concealment and the ability to blend in. He was also, he admitted to himself, desperate to step away from the persona of a refugee and step into a different one altogether. Shoes: so banal and yet so magnificently significant. He paid with one of the credit cards, and there was no incident. He wore one pair out of the shop and back into the sunlight, where the tan leather shone handsomely and gave a lift to his self-confidence. Whatever happened now, life or death or prison, he would go into it finely shod. There was an enchantment in the metamorphosis.
From Fasano a road swung south toward Marina Franca. He decided to follow it, because the Codringtons had marked it on their map and he didn’t want to go onto the autostrada. The smaller roads were safer, less policed. He drove until midafternoon, when he came to Marina di Ginosa, the whole length of it a shambolic and hideous carnival of seaside campsites, pizzerias, clubs, sugarcane fields, and roadside bars filled with people in swimwear. In a quiet way, he was shocked. Where were the superbly dressed and imperious Italians he had seen so many times in films, the Sophia Lorens his father had so admired once upon a time? He went into a cafe and got a spremuta at the bar, and soon he heard a few tones of Arabic coming from the men huddled with him around the zinc bar. They had not fingered him as one of their own, and he was content not to be counted among their ranks.
By the road the wind swept through the high cane, and along the verges men walked in single file, men from the south in nylon jackets and cheap scarves even in the rising heat. He drove on in the direction of Matera. On the way he passed a roadblock that had just been dismantled. The carabinieri were taking away the cones and loading them into two police vans, some of them standing now by the verge with their weapons cocked. There, in the sour dust, two men sat in handcuffs, their heads drooped and despondent. Ten minutes earlier and he, too, would have been stopped.
God, once again, had watched over him and saved him among the Unbelievers. But next time he would have to be more prudent. He drove past the policemen slowly, and for a moment their eyes locked and disengaged without incident. It was a shame that he was alone; a couple had a far better chance of not calling attention to themselves. Soon, however, he was in Matera, the modern part of which was like any other Italian provincial town, defiantly morose. He parked the Peugeot on a wide street, took a shoulder bag, and walked down into the ancient labyrinth that lay below it. It seemed to him that there, where few cars ventured, would be a safer place to lie low for a night.