The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories (19 page)

Yet for a time his fears had infected her. Now, although he belonged so far in her past, she recognised his mark.

In the end she did nothing. It would be easier to plead ignorance of times, or show zealous concern for an arrival, even a late one, than to invent excuses. Her colleagues would be displeased but they would understand. Anita has ideas, they would say, but she doesn't think ahead. And Brian knew that she was good at buying lettuces and detergents but never remembered to buy theatre tickets until a show was booked out. In a situation like this he would have hoped she would do better, of course.

There were no taxis when they landed. The television interviewer took the last one. The politician had already left the airport building by the time the woman walked through and claimed the taxi. Anita ran after her, making little gasping noises to attract her attention and couldn't remember her name to call out to her. She should have paid more attention and taken note of who she was. On screen, in the den where they watched television, she would have summoned her name as easily as those of her children.

She took the bus rather than wait for the stand to fill again. In the city, Conrad, the man she was in love with now, would be gathering up his papers and books after delivering his last lecture for the morning, and
returning to his office to put them away before he set off to meet her.

She stared out the window across the flat sad waterway of Mangere. She had read in the paper, not long ago, that someone had staked a dog up in the scrub that jutted out there into the water where the tide came in. The dog was very thin when it was discovered and near to death. It was thought that the tide had covered it many times, and that each time it had survived by reaching its nose up just above the waterline until the tide receded. After it was released it died. Anita wondered what the significance of that was.
Freedom
is death. Huh. Deeply aware political statement, Ma, as Jane would have said when she first went to university, and before she met her boyfriend.

Anita and Conrad ate their meal too fast and she drank more than she had intended. He had been annoyed that in the end she had kept him waiting while she made phone calls to explain her absence from the meeting and exaggerated the difficulties (making it sound as if she had been trapped aboard a stationary aircraft on the tarmac, which was not a bad story, really quite credible, and had only occurred to her as she dialled), smoothed things over and salvaged something of the meeting by agreeing to call in and go through the rough draft minutes, which would be ready at four. This meant that she would have to catch a later plane, so that then she had to ring Brian to explain what had happened (or what by now she believed had happened), and that she would be a bit late but it didn't matter if they didn't make it to the Corbetts' until eight. He responded easily, as if she was at home and they hadn't been sharp with each other as they parted, asking her what the temperature was up there, and if it was today that he had seen a dentist appointment written up on the kitchen calendar for Simon, and if so should he ring to remind him, also had she remembered that there was an office party for Mollie Levett's retirement on Friday, and would he say that she was coming? She was standing in an open phone booth at Downtown with Conrad standing beside her; she was stretching towards some terrible point of tension, trying to match Brian's comfortable voice, yet aware of Conrad's increasing anger, and of the
appalling
, overwhelming strength of her desire for him.

‘Where will we go?' she asked Conrad. His hair was floppy and soft, but styled so that the grey fell evenly in line with his cheekbone. Anita wanted to reach out and stroke his bones with the back of her crooked finger but they were in a smart fast-moving seafood restaurant where many people knew him. The fish was freshly caught and the wine light and pleasant. They were near the waterfront, filtered light spilled through the branches of a tree that had been preserved in the midst of the city. Its branches scraped against the window.

Conrad looked at his watch. ‘What do you want to do?'

Even without replying, Anita had an unpleasant feeling that she had been caught begging.

‘Well?' He smoked too carefully. He knew she hated smoking, usually didn't when he was with her, and always cleaned his teeth before they made love. Once he had used her toothbrush. At the time she saw it as some ultimate act of love.

She leaned forward, pushing aside the unfinished plate of flounder. ‘I …' It was a whole sentence.

‘Yes?'

‘It's been five months,' she whispered.

He had been telling her gossip about the university. Some of it had been funny, some malicious. It was like a slightly more spicy summary of one of Brian's days at the office. He had brought her a book of poems as a gift. He always brought her a gift. Last time it had been the dark blue pottery vase. She had kept it filled with flowers during the summer.

‘Yes,' he agreed, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘Pity we couldn't do something about it. Went through my mind — nice if we could. Pretty hopeless when you're not staying.'

‘I couldn't. Not this time. But I had to … I don't know when I'll get up again. It's all gone wrong. I'm sorry.' She didn't know why she apologised, only that she was profoundly tired, and she recalled how little sleep she had had.

‘Perhaps we could take a drive somewhere?' Anita said.

He gave a slight smile. ‘Not quite our style, is it? Long grass and all that sort of thing. Look, I've got a lecture at three, I'll have to be heading back soon. Can I drop you off?'

‘Thank you, Conrad.' Her voice was faint.

In the car she asked him to stop. They were on an incline in a small back street. The only place to park was between two sets of workmen. She reached out her hand so that he took it as of habit; the habit of taking a woman's hand rather than hers in particular.

‘I don't know when I'll see you again,' she said.

‘Oh we'll sort something out. Take it as it comes,' he said.

‘You do want to see me again then?'

He scratched his head with his little finger and smiled. ‘Well of course I do. You get too upset.'

‘I wanted you. I mean, I want you. Now.'

‘I know. But it's too fast, too rushed. What good will that do us?'

She wanted to tell him that it was everything but instead she said, ‘I want to tell you something. It's got nothing to do with you, but I thought
that if you heard … well, you might think it was strange if I hadn't told you.'

‘Try me.'

‘I'm thinking of leaving. Leaving home, that is. I mean, well, Brian of course.'

A workman peered into the car. In a moment he would ask Conrad to move the car on, as they shifted their drilling down the street.

‘You'll find it pretty lonely,' Conrad said. He had once left his wife for a while, before he met Anita.

‘I could bear it,' she said.

‘You don't know for sure until you try.'

‘Wouldn't you ever do it again?' She regretted asking him immediately.

‘Never,' he said, as she expected.

They were silent. A pneumatic drill started close by.

‘It's got nothing to do with you,' said Anita again. ‘I just thought you should know.'

His eyes flicked down to his watch again. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and she could see he was planning how to get out of the spot they were in without running over any of the square-cut gashes in the street's sealing.

‘Well. Thanks. Yes, I'm pleased you told me.'

‘I haven't absolutely decided yet. But, that I'm thinking of it, you see?'

‘Well you should think it through, that's right. I mean, you really should.' His voice held a touch of melancholy now. Once he had been a chorister.

‘I'd better get going, then,' Anita said.

‘Always on the move, aren't you?' he said, flattering her. He eased the car round the roped-off section of the road and down towards Queen Street.

‘That's what it's all about.' She sounded so bright and efficient that she thought it unfortunate that she had not been at the meeting after all. ‘Keeping on the move, that's what I like.' He had stopped at a set of lights and she prepared to slide out of the car.

‘Good of you to let me know you were in town. Take care,' he called, his voice expressing urgency as the traffic around them began to move.

He missed the change and she had to stand on the edge of the street waiting for a pedestrian signal while he, at the same time, sat waiting for the traffic to flow in his direction again. They exchanged small smiles and waves, and she wished that he would disappear. After a time the lights changed in his favour.

She had never had a flight quite like this before. The plane appeared to follow the sinking sun and then small clouds picked up a bright crimson
glow, a reflection from objects at the level of the earth or the sea. She saw that it was the oil rigs standing off the Taranaki coastline, flaming turrets abroad on the water.

It occurred to Anita that men had never been much attracted to her. But that was self-pitying and not true. Men had been tremendously,
overwhelmingly
attracted to her, had pursued her with great sexual ardour. It was the strength of her responses that invariably turned them away in the end. When she was much younger her mother and her aunts advised her against wearing her heart on her sleeve. That was what they called it. Your heart on your sleeve, as if a great pulsing organ could be safety-pinned to the arm of her cousin's hand-me-down dyed forest-green flannel coat that she wore in winter over her dance frock when she went out to meet boys.

What they really meant was that they would never wear their faces bare as she did, never show their true selves unadorned. They had designed reserves in which they could shelter and never be altogether found. This was
something
Anita had not learned or discovered, how to fashion a disguise for her nakedness or her greed. So much pain and foolishness in the name of love. Or what sometimes passed as love.

The politician was on the half-empty plane. The television interviewer was not. From the headlines in the evening paper Anita deduced that the Government remained intact. She opened her briefcase as if to work, but it was a gesture. The case was a beautiful burgundy leather one which Brian had bought her overseas. Inside, it contained two sheets of blank paper, a spare pair of clean panties, her toothbrush and the new book of poems. She thought about weeping but remembered in time that they were going to the Corbetts'. She hoped that Ellen would not be too late with her dishes of antipasto and pasta, aubergine, olives and sauces. She hoped that there would be a lot of wine, and then she hoped that there would not.

Bunches of stars appeared in the still not-quite-dark sky, close to the wingtip of the plane. They seemed to move. Seemed. Within the plane she felt stationary, as if it were the stars rather than her that were being propelled. Up here, above the earth, she was for a moment less sorry than usual that she behaved as she did.

At the airport Brian said, ‘So the weather did stay fine all day.' She saw that his hair needed cutting.

W
HEN IT IS
E
ASTER
S
UNDAY
somewhere in the world but not in the country where you are, a mile down into the ravine at Samaria does not seem a bad place to contemplate one's spirituality.

Or for that matter, one's mortality. The Samaria Gorge is the longest and deepest in the world, running between the White Mountains. To get to the Mountains one must go by bus, then for those who are fit enough there is a walk through the Gorge, a distance of nine miles. The traveller who makes this walk emerges on the other side of Crete to catch a boat back to Chania.

That is not possible all through the year, because of snow in the winter, or, in the spring when I was there, melting snows can cause flash floods in the Gorge. If you begin to go down and then find that the way is impassable, there is only one way to leave, and that is by the way you came, back up the rough mountain path.

The sign at the bus depot said that the Gorge was closed, but the woman who sold the tickets said that it was open. She wanted me to buy a ticket for the entire journey. I pointed to the sign and she laughed. There were young Germans with blond hair and flashing white teeth waiting in the queue. They were wearing mountain boots and they were impatient to buy their tickets. I looked at their boots and asked the woman about my shoes.

She did not understand. I took off my soft slip-on sneaker and held it up. Was it suitable? She laughed again, and took off one of her own shoes, a little high-heeled pump. She shook her head at her own shoe —
ochi,
no. She clicked her teeth with disapproval at her offending footwear. Then she nodded at mine. ‘
Endaxi.
Okay. Understand?'

The Germans were muttering to each other. I bought my ticket and boarded the bus.

In the Mountains I looked for a guide, but there was none. When you go into Samaria you are on your own. I think that that is as it should be. The
silence of the Mountains becomes your own silence. Each decision you make belongs only to you.

What you can, or cannot, or will not endure becomes something for which you are responsible.

It may be that you will make the wrong decision in the Mountains and then I believe it would be possible to die. But this would have been your mistake, an inability to judge elements and your capabilities in the face of them.

Oh well, yes, you may say, that is all very well, that is what mountaineers and white water rafters and adventurers of one kind or another do all the time.

That is so, but theirs is a calculated risk, a knowledgeable gamble; they are not tourists thrown suddenly and unexpectedly for a day into a primitive wilderness.

I do not pretend that I was anything else. ‘Dear little Ellen,' murmured the English woman in the bar, the night before, ‘do go, I'm sure you will love Samaria.' She and her husband claimed they knew I was a New Zealander the moment I opened my mouth but I did not believe them, for they did not say so until I told her from where I came. We may recognise each other's curious flat vowels but Londoners who visit the same place each year, year in and year out (even Chania), and read important literary works as they sit beside the window looking into the bay where the fisherman lifts his lines by night flares, do not know about us. I do not think they know much about anything.

They thought I would not go to Samaria. They had smiled at each other in the way of people who know better. I nearly didn't go, because of them.

Two miles or more down into the Gorge, there is a tiny monastery. If I get as far as that, I said to myself, I will have done well.

For, although it is good to be alone in the Mountains, there was also a confusion in the air that day. Certainly there is an aloneness of spirit there, but it would be untrue to suggest that I didn't encounter any other human beings. I had not gone very far along the path when I began to meet people who were coming back up it. They had begun earlier in the day. Nobody seemed to be certain whether the Gorge was open or not, and while some (people who, like the Germans, were wearing heavy boots) had gone on and not returned, others who were already tired just from going down were
beginning
to understand the enormity of their peril, the distance, the sheer climb back that would be entailed if they kept going and then found the Gorge impassable. Some had gone too far, and quite young people were coming back, their faces contorted with distress. It seemed impossible that some of the old ones would ever get back.

I said to a young woman, who was crawling back — this is true, the heat of the day had come upon the mountain, and she would walk a few feet forward then fall on her knees on the jagged path and crawl a short painful way — ‘How far did you go?'

She looked at me with glazed eyes, and said, ‘Don't go any further, for God's sake, don't go on.'

So that when she and her companions had gone, I sat down in the White Mountains, and I looked at the way that I had come and the way that there was to go, and I thought that I could die in the Mountains if I carried on to the monastery. Sometimes on this journey I had wondered if I would ever reach home again, sometimes I had been afraid. I had left home believing that I was a self-contained person. I was not certain any more. I was often lonely. Other days I felt ill. I am forty-five and my health is no better and no worse than that of many women of my age whose bones are beginning to feel the edge of change.

In the White Mountains I was not afraid, or lonely, or sick. I did not feel that I had to challenge myself to some limit beyond my endurance. The choice was simple which is not to say that the route back was. The heat was pouring between the rocks and midday came and passed and still I climbed back the way I had come. But I would not die in the mountains, I would return from them, and go on.

At two o'clock in the afternoon, at the top of the ravine, there are not too many places to turn. A canteen, and a rest house where a considerable crowd of tourists milled around knowing each other, and that was all.

And no transport until six o'clock that night.

I knew the way we had come, across the Plain of Omalos. It stretched away before me, a plateau about five miles across in the middle of the
Mountains
, and on the far side of it, a mountain village.

If I were to test myself, this was how I would do it. I would cross the plain on foot. I would move close to the Greek earth, yet surrounded by clear ground. I would put myself in the middle of that wide space where I would not be touched. I am not afraid of space.

The sun had dropped more than I realised when I set out, or perhaps there was cloud descending on the Mountains. It was much colder than it had been in the ravine. I told myself it was bracing.

I would not have seen the things I did that afternoon if I had not walked across the plain.

At ground level, and obscured by the dead winter foliage from the bus where we had passed before, I could see whole carpets of blue and red
anemones. I took out my camera and aimed it in the general direction of the flowers. I felt ridiculous at first, thinking that the flowers would see how inept I was at using a camera, and then laughed at myself, at the silliness of shooting off picture after picture at such crazy angles and without
consideration
for the way the light fell. I had not used the camera before. It had been my father's and it had been insisted by my family that I carry a camera. I had not wanted to take it because I cannot take photographs. I have resisted learning because I am afraid I will not take the very best of
photographs
. Oh, that is quite true. That is how I am.

What I did not think of then, but do now, is that my father had used the camera to take pictures of flowers which he would later paint. Subtle little watercolours. He was old when he began to paint but even then, he was not bad. No, better than that, he was good, but he left it too late to be the best. I think he might have been if he had begun when he was young. That was his tragedy you see, to have failed at so many things, when he might have been the best at this one thing. The very best I mean. I do not exaggerate.

Anyway, that was what I photographed on my travels, that and nothing else. Flowers hidden under dead branches. Months have passed and I have still not had the film developed. Perhaps there will be nothing there. Maybe I won't have it developed.

On the flat fields, shepherds minded flocks of rangy sheep. And hundreds of people collected wild vegetables and herbs, tiny plants which emerge in the spring and have to be burrowed for in the earth. The vegetable gatherers sought the tiny
stawyagathi,
each one no longer than a finger, yet they carried bulging sacks. As I passed, their glances would flick across me but their expressions changed little.

So I arrived at Omalos, a little after four, and sat outside the
taverna
to watch the people of the village. I watched discreetly and from a distance, I did not cast bold glances in their direction. They filled the centre of the village and it appeared as if a celebration was in progress. On the tables stood bowls of freesias and irises. Slanting-eyed girls were learning to flirt. I wondered how long this would last, for I had observed that women in Greece were grave and industrious and worked while their men sat in the sun and looked at women tourists.

A tractor hauled a trailer load of young men backwards and forwards through the village past the girls. The girls peeked and giggled.

At length, a man approached me, and offered food and a glass of
retsina.
He said that the food was special — it was a dish of something that looked like curious little batter pancakes with proved to be filled with a mixture of very strong herbs and a cheese-like substance. They were quite delicious. I
accepted this food with modesty and downcast eyes, not looking at him — or not very much, although I did see that he had blue eyes, which in itself was exceptional. But I was careful, for I did not wish to antagonise the women. That care was to no avail.

The party folded, the air grew colder with mountain chill, and I moved inside the
taverna
which was run by a very strong-looking though quiet young woman. Many people came and went as the afternoon wore on and she entertained them, offered hospitality, but not one inch would she give to me. I asked for, and paid for food, I asked for the use of the toilets and she pretended not to understand me. I showed her my phrase book — ‘
Ghinekon,
ghinekon parakalo
.'
She tossed her head. ‘Lavatory please, please your lavatory,' I said.

She pointed over her shoulder and looked the other way. If she looked at me at all that afternoon, her look was always cold.

The man came back with more food. I refused him. I smiled, but I sat very still, not accepting him at all by movement or gesture.

No one else spoke to me.

A young French couple, dressed as in the time of hippies, came in. They had hitched up from the town. They hired a room for the night above the
taverna
for three hundred drachmas. I asked them if they spoke English. A little, they said, and we talked but not for long. They had not come to talk to strangers, only to each other. The villagers welcomed them. I could see that it was because they were a man and a woman together, a couple. No matter how they looked or dressed, it was this togetherness that was understood.

The cold began to frighten me. This was deep biting mountain cold. My kidneys ached.

New Zealanders who fought in the war are buried in Crete. They fought on the beaches alongside the Greek people. At school, a girl in my class was called Crete, and her little brother, Maleme. I asked the woman for a brandy and she told her son to fetch it for me. I said to her, ‘
Eema
Naya
Zeelandya
.' I am a New Zealander. A special kind of pleading. She appeared not to have heard me and I did not say it again.

Her legs were perfectly clad in dark stockings and she wore neat laceup shoes but her feet danced when she moved and she never missed her step no matter how much she was carrying from table to table. She continued this dancing unfaltering step as she walked away from me.

The bus came at last, sounding its high fluting horn as it crossed the plain which led to Omalos. The bus was full of vegetable pickers from the plain, and we descended from the mountains, moving into hairpin bends as if to
pass over the edge of each cliff, and then as we came to the valleys the strong heavy scent of the orange groves came up to meet us, and the temperature rose again.

I ate, as I did every night, at one of the waterfront restaurants, surrounded by the hordes of tiny half crazed and mangy cats which hunt in packs on the Chania waterfront, and I waited for the scarlet sun to fall into the sea.

But I chose a different kind of restaurant that evening, one which sold bland Americanised food. I liked to eat Greek but my stomach was in rebellion. I asked for a half bottle of wine such as I had every evening on the waterfront, but this restaurant did not have half bottles, only a large carafe-shaped jar. For those who travelled alone, the choices were to be dry or drunk or out of pocket. As I was about to refuse the jar, a woman at the next table spoke to me.