Tender at the Bone (27 page)

We were not far behind. We took the ferry to Xania, trudged up the hill from the port, and pushed the gate on the cobbled courtyard Milton had described in his letters. Milton was sitting in front of a pale green door with a pile of lemons in front of him. Sunlight filtered gently across his face, dappled by the leaves of a small tree. He held up a copper pot, one side black, the other gleaming. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said, stretching his arms so the pot hit the light. “I just found it down in the market. The woman said I should shine it with lemon juice and sand.”

He jumped up to hug me and his beard tickled my face. “Put down your things,” he said. “Don’t bother to unpack.” He smelled like clean sheets and lemon juice and the rosemary that is in the air, everywhere, in Crete. “We’re going out for lunch. I’ve been in the grove, beating the olives off the trees, and I’m trading some of my oil for our food. Ephrosike is a famous cook; this is going to be the best meal you’ve ever eaten.”

It was. But then, all the best meals of my life were with Milton. And I was about to find out why.

MILTON’S PÂTÉ

½ small onion, minced

½ clove garlic, minced

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 anchovies, cut up

½ pound chicken livers, cleaned

¼ cup white wine (or any leftover wine)

2 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Small piece lemon peel, chopped

1 tablespoon chopped capers

Salt

Pepper

1 teaspoon lemon juice

Sauté onion and garlic in olive oil in small skillet until soft, about 10 minutes. Add anchovies and stir. Add chicken livers, mashing with fork, and cook until they lose their reddish color. Add wine, parsley, and chopped lemon peel, and keep stirring and mashing until liquid has evaporated and livers are the consistency of a coarse pâté
.

Add capers and cook 1 minute more. Add salt and pepper to taste. Stir in lemon juice. Serve on plain crackers or toasted bread that has been brushed with olive oil and garlic
.

Serves 4 to 6 as an appetizer
.

“My second wife used to tie a bandanna around her eyes and walk around like that for days at a time,” said Milton. We were walking up a mountain. His tiny Fiat, which we had left at the bottom, got smaller and smaller as we climbed. “She was practicing in case she went blind.”

From the bottom Milton had pointed to a pile of rocks high up, outlined against the deep sapphire sky. It looked no different from any other pile of rocks, and I was not quite certain that I was seeing what he wanted me to. But when I squinted I thought I could maybe make out a thin wisp of smoke emerging from what might have been a chimney. On one side of us was gorse and thin scrub and on the other, when I dared to look, a deep drop down to the sea. Birds wheeled and called, white against the sky, and the boat below us was so far away it looked like a duck floating on the water.

I would never pretend to be blind, I thought, and then wondered if this demonstrated some sort of deficiency in me. I could see why a man like Milton might worry about losing his sight. “We’re almost there,” he said and now I could see the cottage at the top and smell charcoal and frying onions mingled with the scent of rosemary. A small mountain of onions sat next to the stone cottage, dwarfing it. “The government told them to grow onions,” Milton whispered as an old woman came flying out of the cottage calling “Milto! Milto!”

Her hair was jet black, but her face was deeply lined, with little ravines running right across it. She said something in harsh, guttural Greek and Milton pulled a liter of golden olive oil out of his knapsack. Hugging it to her as if it were a precious child she led us to a small lean-to on the side of the cottage. The sea was just below us.

She brought out small glasses and a bottle of wine that looked almost black in the light. She set a huge round loaf of bread on the table. She cut up some onions and poured a little olive oil into a dish. Then she picked up a stick and headed down the side of the mountain.

“Where is she going?” I asked.

“Fishing,” said Milton, pouring the wine. In his moss-colored corduroys and faded blue shirt he looked as if he had grown there. “It might take awhile.”

We waited, eating resilient, deeply satisfying bread dipped in spicy oil that tasted exactly like fresh olives. Doug reached out and stroked my knee and I had a sudden conscious thought that I was happy.

Ephrosike returned with a string of small parrot fish. She stirred the fire and grilled them, making a quick salad of tomatoes, cucumber, and onions as the flames snapped and crackled. She picked some oregano from the hillside and scattered it across the charred fish, sprinkled vinegar and olive oil over the vegetables, and set it all on the table. She watched, wordlessly, as we ate.

Afterward there were dried figs and almonds and yogurt from the milk of her own sheep, with honey drizzled on top. And finally little nut cookies she had baked in a covered pan set in the fire. They crumbled gently in our fingers.

The sun was setting. Milton sighed, started to say something, stopped. Finally he spread his arms, taking in the table, the cottage, the hills around us, and said simply, “She’s quite an artist!”

Ephrosike came out as we were leaving, and handed me a skein of yarn. It was nubby, off-white, and very soft. “She spins the wool from her own sheep,” said Milton. “She says it is to remember her by.” Ephrosike looked at me and made big scooping knitting motions with her hands. Then she hugged Milton again and watched as we wound our way down the mountain. It was late,
but it was still light and we could see her for a long time, still waving.

Milton said wistfully that Hilly had settled in Spain but was planning to visit. Doug and I decided to stay until she arrived. We spent our days visiting the ruins at Knossos and Heraklion, leaving Milton to his work. We walked miles out into the country and sat in the fields, talking as Doug sketched and I tried to knit a pair of socks out of the yarn Ephrosike had given me; there was not enough for a sweater.

At night I cooked while Doug and Milton sat in the kitchen talking about art. They were an appreciative audience; Doug looked at me proudly after each meal and Milton said, almost every night, “Cook this when Hilly comes.”

I had learned enough Greek to bargain in the market, but one day Milton decided to come with me when I shopped. As we passed Nylon, the restaurant near the port, the owner called out to us. Pantelis motioned us inside and as we walked through the kitchen with its pots of lamb stew and pans of fried eggplant, Milton explained the name: “It was the classiest word he could think of.”

Pantelis wanted to tell us the secret of his famous moussaka. I was not surprised: people were always offering recipes to Milton and he collected them the way he collected any other object of beauty. He didn’t cook, but he was a true connoisseur.

As Pantelis explained the secret—chicken stock instead of milk in the béchamel—Milton nodded. Then he asked where Pantelis bought his lamb, which grove had the best olive oil, and whose cheese he preferred. Pantelis talked for a long time with great animation. He made a few rude gestures, drew a diagram, and poked Milton in the ribs as he handed it over.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“Wait,” said Milton. When we got to the market he pointed out
the cheesemaker, who was a woman, beautiful in that severe Greek way, and dressed entirely in black. “Pantelis says her yogurt is the best because she puts the bowl under her bed at night,” he said. I thought of the rude gestures and bought some.

Pantelis had also recommended the one-eyed butcher. The man charged a flat price for his Argentine beef, no matter which part of the steer he happened to be carving, but he was very particular about his lamb. What was it going to be used for, he wanted to know, before he chose the cut.

When Milton said the magic words “Pantelis” and “moussaka” the man chopped the meat by hand, with care and concentration. Then we went home and while I constructed the dish Milton and Doug played chess. When Doug took too long making a move Milton would get up to peer into the pots or stick his finger into the sauce.

“I shouldn’t have bothered doing all those projects for your class,” I teased. “I should have just cooked.”

He didn’t laugh. “I should have encouraged you to do that,” he said seriously.

“Oh, food can’t be art,” I said.

“Can’t it?” asked Milton, giving me a long look.

The next day he had a letter from Hilly. Milton carried it up the narrow stairs to his third-floor bedroom. When he came down his face was somber. “She’s not coming,” he said. “I was afraid she wouldn’t.” I wondered if she had perhaps met a man, but he didn’t say and I didn’t ask. “She says she will try to come to Rome at Christmas,” he said. “Why don’t we all meet there?”

Clearly it was time to go.

“When you get to Rome,” he promised, “I’m going to buy you the best cup of coffee in the world.”

It was cold that year and we kept going south, trying to get warm. This was a mistake; the rooms we rented in Spain and Portugal did not have heat and one morning we woke up in Seville to find that the water in the basin by the bed had frozen.

“How much?” we demanded in every little pensione, shaking our heads and going back out into the cold, convinced that we could find something cheaper. We had to make the money last until Christmas. We drank a lot of thin, cheap wine, talked about art, and snuggled into bed early at night, cuddling together for the warmth. We were happy. Once, in Madrid, I went to American Express and found a letter Doug had written me from Portugal. “Hello, wonderful Ruth,” it said, “lying here asleep next to me.”