The Immortal (6 page)

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It moved with amazing speed and precision. We were barely back down to the water when it plowed into the north side of the harbor, sending out powerful waves that rocked the pleasure boats docked on the other side of the bay. For a moment the ferry seemed to stand still, before suddenly pivoting on its axis and neatly sliding into the wide slot allotted for it. The entire docking procedure took only minutes.

The end of the vessel split open, a garage door several stories tall descending onto the shore. Soon a horde of cars was pouring from the bowels of the vessel. Half the drivers looked as if they had already been drinking on neighboring islands.

"Boats like this run night and day between all the main Greek islands," Tom said.

"Have you been to many of the others?" I asked.

"Yeah," Tom said. "Corfu, Santorini—there are a lot of them. But I'm always happy to get back to Mykonos."

"Why's that?" I asked.

"There's just something here," he said. "A good feeling."

I nodded. "I know what you mean."

"It comes from Delos," Helen said suddenly. We glanced at her. "You'll see tomorrow, Josie."

"I'm intrigued," I said.

Pascal's truck was on the boat. Apparently a Greek associate of his had helped bring it over from Athens. Pascal hailed him as he rolled off the massive ramp. The guy did not stay with us, though, not after he got his money from Pascal, an envelope with God only 52

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knew how many drachmas in it. He disappeared into the night.

The truck was a sad affair. It looked as if it had been driven underwater and taken a few years to arrive.

The paint was peeling, the front bumper was ready to kiss the ground, and the tires could have been balloons painted with tread to pass for Michelins. But Pascal was delighted to see it, shaking his keys with excitement. He pointed to his back before he climbed inside the two-seater front compartment.

"Bags of
legumes
—heavy," he said. "Need
le camion
—truck."

So we lost Pascal then. He wanted to drive his
camion,
and no one wanted to go with him. As he sped away, Helen gave me a glance like it might not be a bad time for me to get lost as well. But the subtlety of it was deliberately lost on me, Tom being fair game and all. I was having too much fun, but maybe ll

wouldn't have been such a bitch about it if the wine hadn't loosened my stride and my mouth. I knew I would pay for it the next day with a hangover and Helen's bad humor, but sometimes a little pain was a good investment. In fact, I felt like another bottle of wine. Tom looked at both of us, as if he was about to get in double trouble.

"What would you ladies like to do now?" he asked.

I think both of us would have liked to have sex with him, but we were too proper to say so. Helen continued to stare at me as if I might dematerialize under the power of her gaze. But I was a happy-go-lucky California babe.

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"Let's go get drunk," I said.

"You never get drunk," Helen protested. "You hate drunks. You hate Silk."

"I am a young lithe female jam-filled with contradictions," I said.

Tom laughed. "We're all going to hate ourselves in the morning, but I know a great bar buried in the center of the city. It's off the main alleyways, located a few stories up. You have to know exactly where it is and follow a winding route to find it. But the atmosphere is brilliant."

"I think you use the word
brilliant
different from us," I said. "It's not
smart,
is it? It's more like
bitchin',
isn't it? I want to go there."

"You should rest after that attack you had today," Helen said.

I gave her a look. "I was not 'attacked.' I was 'rescued.' They are completely opposite things."

We went to the bar. Tom had been right. It was buried deep in the city, off the beaten paths. The atmosphere was more subdued, the music low. We took a booth by the window, the north wind a caress on our sleeves. Helen was definitely not happy with me. While Tom and I ordered more wine, she asked for a Scotch and soda. She was going to try to drink me under the table. Did she think Tom would be impressed? I didn't know. I honestly didn't understand Helen at all, and I had grown up with her. Lately I had begun to think we weren't even friends. The fault wasn't with her alone, I realized, but with both of
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us. We didn't look out for each other. I was always stealing her boys and she was always competing with me on issues of sheer stupidity. Oh well, I thought, if she won in the hangover department, she was welcome to it.

I knew I hadn't been looking out for Helen the previous summer, that was for sure. It was good her parents had taken her to Greece, to get away from it all—whatever had caused her to do what she had to herself. To this day I still don't know all the details. Maybe I hadn't wanted to know. I got sick right after that. Helen had only returned from Greece the day I was released from the hospital.

When we met that day, it was as if we were seeing each other for the first time. We both looked like hell.

Our conversation started well enough in the bar with no name. It was more balanced, for a while. Helen even told a couple of obscene jokes, and Tom described what Oxford was like for a poor undergraduate on a scholarship. But Helen quickly had three Scotch and sodas in a row, then she was just blubbering.

She started to talk about how awesome Tom's body was, how
brilliant
his ass was in his shorts, especially when they were wet. Tom tried to act as if nothing was amiss, he was so polite, but when Helen suddenly whipped her head to the side, and opened her mouth, and let out a loud gagging sound, followed by a half gallon of—yuck. Helen
vomited
on the floor. It was a tragedy of Greek proportions.

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She even
splashed Tom's sandals.

No way to impress a guy, I thought.

"Damn," Helen kept whispering as she wiped at her face. "Damn, damn, damn." She looked at us miserably, and she was tranquilized. She would feel much worse in the morning. "I'm sorry, Tom."

I can't believe what he said next. "It happens to the best of us."

Our waitress arrived and saw the mess on the floor. She looked like she was going to be sick next. I raised my bottle to my lips and finished my wine. Definitely an interesting evening, I thought. I must have been drunk as well. I couldn't even smell the puke. Thank God the waitress didn't speak English. She turned and fled. Helen watched her leave, perplexed.

"I think I should go home," she mumbled.

Tom stood up. He wouldn't be returning to this bar soon. He took Helen by the arm and helped her to her feet. "We'll all go home now," he said.

Tom helped her outside, but I took Helen after that. Tom gave me a quick pat on the back as he said goodbye. I wished it had been on my butt, his hand, I was feeling like such a loose woman. I burst into giggles and tried to kiss him. Helen fell on the ground and started crying. Tom fairly ran away. Wonderful fun.

I howled at the moon. "I love Greece!" I shouted.

Helen crawled at my feet. "I hate it," she grumbled.

I don't know how we made it back to the hotel. There must have been a special Greek god who 56

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watched over drunks. It was the only logical explanation.

Sometime during the night I dreamed. I walked in a garden of light. There were grass meadows, populated by flowers of fragrance, branches of shade hanging like gentle arms from trees of antiquity, streams of water flowing with honey—paradise, and everything was suffused with a soft blue light. The glow penetrated my skin, warming my blood, making it tingle as it flowed through my veins. For I too shone with the light, a radiant being. My white robe was long, cast over only one shoulder, the left, the right one bare, free to hold a bow and arrow.

This paradise was tranquil. My steps took me beside a pool of liquid, and I knelt and caught my reflection and for a moment lost my breath. Because, truly, I was beautiful beyond human measure, and even though the face did not belong to Josie, I recognized the nose, the mouth, the eyes, especially the eyes—blue jewels of the heavens, stolen from the rays of the sun as they burst off the lip of a crashing wave.

The face of the goddess was familiar to me.

I awoke with a start in the depth of night, surrounded by black. Helen slept peacefully beside me on the adjoining bed. My stomach was settled. There was no pain in my head. It was as if the alcohol had entered my bloodstream and exited by a way that

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bypassed my liver. I remembered my dream with startling clarity.

"Maybe the blue light saved me from the drink," I whispered.

It was a pleasant thought.

I lay down and went back to sleep.

58

The next morning found Helen, Silk, my dad, and me on a rather large boat heading for Delos. We were on the nine o'clock, not the eight, and we were lucky to have made it. We were all wearing sunglasses, but I was the only one not hiding bloodshot eyes. I had awakened completely free of a hangover. Such could not be said for the others. Silk and my dad sat huddled close together, as if they could protect each other from the rocking of the boat. Helen was a little apart from them, closer to me, with her head bent over so far it was practically between her knees. She groaned as we cleared the harbor area and entered the open sea. Here there were waves, churning four footers, rocking the boat from side to side.

"How long does it take to get there?" I asked Helen.

"Twenty-five minutes," she replied.

"That isn't bad."

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"Speak for yourself."

"You'd feel even worse if you hadn't vomited most of it up before you went to bed," I said, trying to sound cheerful.

Helen raised her head wearily. "Gimme a break."

"Tom was pretty drunk himself. He won't even remember that you heaved all over the floor."

Helen put a hand to her head. "Please don't use the word
heave
right now."

"I'm sorry."

"He won't have to remember," Helen said with a sigh. "He'll just have to put his sandals on and it'll all be there for him." She eyed me suspiciously. "I guess we know who made the better impression."

"It's not a contest."

Helen put her head back down. "All of life is a contest."

Delos was located about one nautical mile from Mykonos, but because the port of Hora was located more on the north side of Mykonos, while Delos lay to the west, the boat had to travel approximately four miles to reach the sacred island. I had purchased a small pamphlet about Delos and sat down beside Helen to read about where I would be spending my morning.

Delos

Uninhabited today, Delos was one of the most revered religious centers of the Greek world. Legend connects it with the birth of Apollo, god of light and prophesy.

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Homer in his "Hymn to Apollo" recounts how Leto, in desperation, searched everywhere for a place to give birth to the child of her secret affair with Zeus, king of the gods. Everywhere she went, she was turned away, because no spirit dared risk the wrath of Hera, the wife of Zeus. But when Leto finally reached Delos, she said to the island, "So poor is your earth, what man could be induced to set foot here? Neither cow nor sheep can graze here, neither grapevines nor any form of tree will ever prosper on you, such is the dryness that scourges you. But if my son were born here, then you could nurture your people, because the beasts that men would bring here to be sacrificed would be beyond counting." Leto swore on the holy water of the Styx that the god about to be born would never forget the barren island and that he would found his foremost sanctuary there.

In addition to this myth, the lyric poet Pindar mentioned that Delos was an island that floated in the Aegean, traveling here and there with no fixed location. The mortals called it Ortygia, the gods Asteria, because from afar it shone like a star. As soon as Leto set foot on Delos, four columns rose out of the deep, fixing the island in place so that it never moved again. . . .

I enjoyed the myth very much. A goddess searching for a place to have her child, the son of the king of the gods, and an island that floated through the night and 61

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shone like a star. The name Delos came from the Greek word
A-delos,
which means the invisible one.

How perfectly wonderful, I thought, if such things were really true.

Of course, I knew they were only stories. Still...

The pamphlet went on to describe the island's history in detail. The Ionians first made Delos their religious headquarters in about 1000 b.c. Regular festivals were held in honor of Apollo and his sister Artemis.

After a few hundred years the Athenians came and took over Delos, but the worship of Apollo continued. Near the turn of the millennium, the Romans ransacked the island, pillaging and murdering, and destroying. Raids by pirates completed the destruction, and Delos was all but forgotten, once more

"invisible." In 1872 the French School of Archaeology at Athens began its systematic excavations of the island, which were still underway.

I set aside the pamphlet. Helen wanted to know if I had an aspirin. I searched in my purse, finding a bottle of Tylenol. I handed her two.

"Should I get you a glass of water?" I asked.

Helen popped the pills into her mouth and swallowed. "It doesn't matter."

"We could have gone to Delos tomorrow," I said. "We have all week." It was Helen, even with a hangover, who had awakened us all that morning and insisted we make the nine o'clock boat.

"Our vacation will be gone before you know it," Helen said. "We're only allowed on the island till
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one. Then they kick everyone off. I can rest all afternoon."

"Will we be able to see most of the island in that time?"

"Yes. It's not very big."

Immediately across from tiny Delos was another island, Rheneia, which was about four times the size of Delos. Our boat plowed through the channel between the two islands and docked at a small harbor on the west side of Delos, close to the ruins of the ancient city. There was only one other boat in the area: the eight o'clock tourist cruiser, for less-than-heavy drinkers.

I was excited. The pictures of Delos in my pamphlet had not fully conveyed the scope of the ruins. Here was a genuine city from the past. I hurried down the gangplank, practically pulling Helen. I wouldn't explore the island in the company of my father and Silk. Dad was out of shape and Silk had as much feel for history as a dog.

As a group we were funneled through a gate. Incredibly, on top of the boat fare, we had to spring for another five hundred drachmas to get in. It wasn't a lot of money, but it annoyed me. I mean, what if I hadn't brought extra? What would I do then, sit on the boat for a few hours? They gave us one-page maps and advised us to team up with a guide, but Helen steered me away from them.

"They spit on you if you take too many pictures," she whispered. "Especially if you're a filthy American."

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I laughed. "At least they don't vomit on you like some of us."

"Your time will come," Helen promised me.

We got on an ancient stone path, made of dusty white marble slabs, and veered to the left, walking north.

First, according to our little map, we passed the Stoa of Philip, built in 210 b.c. by Philip V of Macedon as an offering to Apollo, and on the right was the South Stoa, a third century B.C. building probably paid for by a king of Pergamon.

"What's a stoa?" I asked Helen.

"Beats me."

Next came the Temple of Apollo, his sanctuary. It was actually three temples grouped together. The oldest, Porinos Naos, was constructed of sandstone; the middle one was made of marble; and the last, the most impressive, was the Temple of the Delians. It was the only temple on the island with a colonnade on all sides, and it dominated the sanctuary. As I stepped inside it and placed my hand on one of the standing marble pillars, I felt an odd sensation shoot up my arm, almost as if an electrical current had been released through my nerves. I quickly withdrew my hand and stared at it.

"You're not supposed to touch the pillars," Helen said, but her voice was not disapproving. Rather, she was watching to see if I would do it again. I obliged her—the stone felt cool, even in the direct sun. Yet I noticed no current this time.

"That was odd," I whispered.

64

THE IMMORTAL "What happened?" Helen asked. "For a moment I felt as if. . ." I shrugged, removing my hand. I did not have words for the experience, because what I had felt was that the stone had greeted me, which was, of course, absurd.

We continued on. Next came the Terrace of the Lions. I had seen pictures of these guys in the pamphlet, and I was happy to meet them—a row of stone lions, each on his own stone block. Helen and I cornered another tourist and had him take our picture —using my new expensive camera—standing beside one of the beasts.

We explored farther north, walking in and out of ruins with names I was never going to remember.

Slowly, steadily, I began to soak up the atmosphere of the island and began to understand what had captivated Helen about the place. There was something magical, a sense of enchantment. I felt somehow
cleansed
by the island, as if there were gods standing above us in the sky, smiling down.

Walking in the bright sun, we were struck with a sudden thirst. Helen led me back the way we had come, then east, in the direction of a long modern building, which was nestled at the foot of low hills, behind the ruins.

"It's a museum," Helen explained. "I don't care much for it myself, but there are some beautiful mosaics inside if you want to have a peek. There's a snack bar next to it. We can get sodas there." "I could drink a six-pack right now," I said.

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We went to the snack bar first. I downed two Cokes quickly and accidentally let out a horrendous belch.

Others, sophisticated European types, scowled— filthy Americans. I laughed and ordered another drink and a sandwich. Helen's hangover must have been easing up because she ate half my food without even asking permission.

Helen really didn't want to go inside the museum, which she had expanded upon until it became the bore of the millennium. I was easy. Helen pointed to the south end of the island where the ground rose steadily, until it suddenly shot up into a towering pinnacle.

"We want to go there," she said.

I consulted our map. "What's it called?"

Helen pulled away the map before I could get the name. "It's where Apollo was born," she said. She had removed her sunglasses. Her brown eyes were suddenly excited, although rimmed with red. The sun was hard on her. She was already low on sunscreen.

"Cool," I said. "Where he was conceived?"

Helen nodded, serious. "Some say so. It's a power spot. You'll feel it, like you did when you touched the pillar."

I froze for a moment. "How do you know I felt anything when I touched the pillar?" I asked softly.

"I saw it on your face," Helen said.

I didn't know what to make of that.

We finished our drinks and sandwich and set out for the pinnacle. Along the way we passed a number of
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other fascinating ruins, but now that we had a goal, they didn't hold my attention.

The incline sharpened. Then we were on a row of steps that wound up to the top. It was a natural hill, I could see that with my eyes, yet it somehow gave the impression of having been thrust up from the grounds, forced out, suddenly, by titanic forces. From a distance its height was deceptive, but plowing up the steps, panting, a hint of a cramp in the center of my chest, I realized how high it was. It seemed to take forever to reach the top.

Finally, though, we were at the summit, which we had to ourselves for the moment. The tourists hardy enough to make the climb had come here first and were already departing. The wind was strong, whistling in our ears, but the silence seemed to ring as well. Helen had been right. There was something undeniably powerful about the spot, a presence so palpable I would have felt I was being observed if it hadn't been so comforting.

The day was spectacularly clear. We could see for over a hundred miles in every direction. A number of the Cyclades, the circle of islands of which Delos and Mykonos were a part, were visible on the blue horizon. There was a mount upon the top of the hill itself, an inner circle of short, toppled marble pillars that would make better seats than supports. Helen led me to the center and told me to sit. I was still trying to catch my breath and was happy for the rest. "You like it here," Helen said, not asking.

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I nodded, shielding my eyes to gaze at the sky. The sun had never seemed so bright, even with my sunglasses on. It was as if it were pouring through a hole in the heavens that had been cut directly above us so that the sun's full glory could be appreciated. How wonderful the heat felt on my skin right then. For a moment I was reminded of my dream, the blue radiance soaking into my blood, setting it to song. Like that, the golden rays blazing down from the sky were a soothing balm for all my complaints, emotional as well as physical. And perhaps spiritual as well. Yes, I felt as if I were sitting in a place of holiness, where an act of divine origin had occurred in the distant past, but with effects still reverberating to the present. I felt this in my heart, even though I wasn't a religious person.

I never wanted to leave the spot.

"I like it," I told Helen, and I closed my eyes and lay back against a stone. Helen came and sat beside me. I sensed her without looking.

"When I got out of the hospital last summer," she said, "I knew I had to come here to get well. I pestered my parents until they agreed. Then I did just what you're doing. I lay down and soaked up the sun and let the gods talk to me."

"Did you have your sunblock on during this conversation?" I mumbled, feeling suddenly sleepy. The sun could do that.

"Yes." Helen was silent for a time. "Afterward I didn't feel like a nut case who had tried to take her life. I felt strong. I felt alive."

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I opened my eyes. We had never directly spoken of her suicide attempt. I didn't even know
hovr
she had tried to end her life, except that her parents had thought I was partly to blame for the attempt. Silly them—I did wonder if it had something to do with the whole Ralph thing.

"I hope this place does as much for you now," I said sincerely.

Helen touched my hand. She seldom touched me. "I am more curious about what it does for you. You were sick as well last summer."