This Stream of Dreams (Mirella, Rashid and Adam Book 2) (22 page)

Long after their orgasm mixed their seed and glistened in the sunlight, Adam remained hard and continued to pleasure her, again and again until he quickly came once more. Withdrawing from Mirella he spun her around in his arms and pulled her to the ground. There, in the grass, under the olive tree, their bodies splattered with patterns of sunlight filtering through the leaves, Adam kissed Mirella tenderly, so softly and sweetly, as if she were a child. They dozed off, appearing on the side of the hill like two naked innocents in nature’s green embrace.

When, later, they reached the bottom of the hill, they were greeted effusively by the farmer-caretaker, an old acquaintance of Adam’s. They ate succulent purple figs and watermelon, sitting on rickety wooden chairs, at a wobbly old
wooden table on a makeshift stone patio overlooking the kouros that lay in the tall grass. There was retsina, the Greek resinated wine. Then more retsina, as others from the surrounding area arrived and word spread that the man who landed in the helicopter on top of the hill was the archaeologist Adam, and that he had brought a wife.

It was a long, dazzlingly beautiful hop in the late afternoon sun to fly low across the Aegean from the Cyclades to the Dodecanese Islands that lay close to mainland Turkey. In a beat-up Chevrolet of indeterminate age, loaded with tins of fuel, two men waited nervously, at a point on Leros designated by Adam, for sight of the copter.

Mirella and Adam landed safely. It was dark when they arrived at a deserted back street parallel to the harbor, having been driven some distance over the fertile and varied landscape to transfer into a waiting caïque on one of Leros’s numerous bays.

The hotel was up a steep flight of stairs that ran along the outside of an old building at one end of the crescent-shaped port. The ground floor was a large restaurant whose tables and chairs spilled out onto the street under a bright green canopy with yellow lettering.

The Papoulies was a shack. The small entrance served as lobby as well. There was a desk of no age, no style, no quality, stained muddy brown. Behind it, a wooden plank hung on the wall with half a dozen keys dangling from it. There were three cheap modern chairs with wooden arms and legs that shone with shellac in some places, and were dirty and dull in others. The foam-rubber cushions were covered in glossy, worn, powder blue plastic, whose gashes had been patched with adhesive tape in several places. A much-too-dim lightbulb drooped from the ceiling.

When the plump hotelier came out from the back room, Mirella understood why they had no choice but to stay at the Papoulies. They were greeted with tears of joy from Stavros, hugs, even kisses for Adam. When he rushed away to find his wife, Adam explained, “It would have been impossible to stay elsewhere, Mirella; he would have been so offended.”

“I do understand, and you’re not to worry about it,” she replied.

“I knew this man in the early days of the junta. I was staying here in 1967, doing some archaeological work inland.
It was such a dreadful time for the Greeks and Greek democracy.

“I used to sit at a long table with the local expatriate group who live here in the port, and some of the Leros Greeks. They were all antijunta, but virtually gagged by fear of prison, torture, and, worst of all, expulsion from the country.

“There were exceptions who were for the junta, and spoke of Papadopoulos as if he were the Second Coming. They praised those murderous Colonels as if they were the angel Gabriel teamed up with Gandhi. For me, those lunchtime exchanges were heavy with the reality of fascism. It felt like a hideous rebirth of something tragically known already.

“I watched and listened, day after day, to those few people distort terms like freedom, truth, and democracy into an ingenious defense of fascism, downright Hitlerism. Listening, you could learn a whole lot about what a corrupt system does to well-meaning individuals. Some of the guys who defended the regime could convince themselves by their own words that they were firmly behind it. But for all their loudmouthing for their corrupt rulers, they were two-faced enough to sicken you. They would hedge their bets when they dealt with officials — in case the fence they were so carefully sitting astride came tumbling right over on top of them and they went down along with the junta in a countercoup.

“I can frankly say I was mesmerized by their ability to hang together an acceptable case for fascism. Shades of Mussolini and Hitler. I watched with fascination and horror how the Greeks themselves whispered against the regime only out in open spaces and with close friends. Walled in, they were jumpy as cats about being overheard. They learned to trust no one, and blamed the U.S. and the CIA for everything.

“Where were the heroes? The real-life Zorbas? The old man Papandreou? Some were dead, others were alive and suffering, sometimes making an effort, but where was their support? Where were the freedom-loving Greeks that they represented? Those who would fight and die for their freedom, where were they? There were Greeks by the thousands under arrest but there were hundreds of thousands who were not.

“The coffee shops were filled with gossip of those anti and those pro the regime — the arrested and the beaten, the tortured; those who escaped the country and those who were
caught. The Colonels censored the newspapers, tried unsuccessfully to censor the tongues. Everyone waited for the change to come and wondered who would bring it about. But no change came in the days I lived here in the Papoulies and dined downstairs at Paradisos.

“I found myself in Greece at a pivotal moment in its long history. I was fascinated, vaguely concerned, and yet indolent about it, like the majority of the Western world. But my indolence passed because I also found myself under the same roof as a great patriot, a very courageous man. I helped Stavros in any little way I could. He used Leros and its many harbors as an escape route for those on the run from the junta. He is a remarkable man, the best of the Greeks. He may be a poor hotelier but I see him as a Kazantzakis, a Zorba. A giant among men, who gave his all in those days and asked for nothing in return, and is the same even now in these times of freedom and peace. That’s why we must stay the night here, and consider it a privilege to do so.”

As Adam spoke to her of Stavros, Mirella caught the echoes of a deeper comradeship in the minor epic of those times than any Adam could lay claim to. Now she understood the genuine concern displayed by the men who met them at the remote promontory where they landed, low on fuel, and why one of them slapped Adam on the back and said, “You still take big chances,
but
very carefully, my friend.” And why he insisted on guarding the copter all night until their return, with a loaded shotgun over his shoulder. The affectionate, jovial greeting they had from the men on the caïque, that, too, had been more than just Greek expansiveness. Yes, Adam had done more, much more, than help Stavros in little ways.

Mirella began to feel she might have married an unsung hero, a man to admire, who had a profound effect on everyone he came in contact with. She had glimpsed it in Turkey, she now saw it in Greece. Her sense of the potential in this man she had taken as her husband slightly overwhelmed her. It suddenly occurred to her, standing in that sad little lobby under a dim light, that she really knew very little about her husband.

15

S
habby, the ultimate in shabbiness, but clean, very clean, was what kept going through Mirella’s mind. But what could she say — “I miss my beautiful stateroom on board Rashid’s yacht?” Hardly. And the fact of the matter was she missed not the yacht, nor Rashid, only the luxury, beauty, and comfort he insisted upon.

Stavros returned with his wife, and there were kisses, hugs, and tears for Adam again. Then
oo
’s and
ah
’s over Mirella, and another round of hugs and kisses for her. Stavros took their passports so he could register them with the police, the usual procedure, and Mirella’s dress was produced for pressing from her Louis Vuitton miniduffel bag.

Mirella saw the smile on Adam’s face when Stavros’s wife, Aliki, shook it out and kept clucking away in Greek about its beauty.

“That damned Rashid. He talked me into taking that dress and my jewelry, and now I’m going to be overdressed because that’s the only dress I brought with me. That’s why you’re smiling, isn’t it?”

His smile broadened. “On the contrary, you couldn’t have chosen better. They will expect you to look glamorous. And it is Saturday night, their big night in the port.”

“Marlo Channing would have gone to dinner dressed in her rag-bag fashion, and everyone would have loved her and her clothes. A few years back I would have done the same. I think I’m becoming a frivolous fashion plate.”

Adam laughed at her. They were walking down the dingy dark corridor to their room behind Stavros, who was chattering over his shoulder at them.

“Well, you’re not Marlo, are you? And she is not my wife, is she? Now does that settle your Marlo problem?” Putting an arm around her shoulder and kissing her on the cheek, he added, “Oh, and just for the record, Marlo is a tremendous clotheshorse, mad about high fashion, much worse than you could ever be. But for her it’s all a big game, lots of fun. She loves to use it and play with it. If it had amused her, she would
have worn a ballgown for dinner in the port of a remote Greek island.”

Mirella was, for the first time, relieved that it was so dark and dim at the Papoulies. She really did not want Adam to see her embarrassment, and registered once more in her mind that Adam missed very little. She had after all not mentioned to him her concern that Marlo might be a rival in her love for Adam.

Stavros opened the door to the room. It was enormous. He set down Mirella’s duffel bag and the Purdey canvas shooting bag Adam used as an overnight case on jaunts such as this one. Stavros walked through the dark room and opened the shutter doors leading onto a small balcony. He beckoned them. It was magic.

Spread out before them was three quarters of the crescent-shaped fishing port. It was dark and the port twinkled with lights. Fishing boats bobbed up and down on the black water. Dim yellowish lights pinpointed the houses, and the restaurants and cafés were lit by white neon and masses of fluorescent tubes. The port was full of movement; it was readying itself for the town’s night life.

The exhilarating Mediterranean sight of waiters carrying tables to the water’s edge; the flash of white paper tablecloths covering worn wooden tables, held down at the corners by rubberbands or string. Shopkeepers closing up, restaurants opening for business. That short time between work and play for the hundreds of big and little ports in Greece.

Adam loved this time of day, the simplicity and purity of it, along with its sheer vitality.

Stavros knew what he had in his small, simple hotel. He placed his hand on Mirella’s shoulder and said, “
Orea, poli orea, eh?
Beautiful, very beautiful, no?”

“Oh, yes, extremely,” she replied.

Stavros switched on the light. The small naked bulb hung on a long black wire from the ceiling. Then he left them alone for a siesta.

For what must have been half an hour, Mirella and Adam watched the port come slowly to life, saying barely a word to each other, simply allowing themselves to be absorbed by it. They turned away finally from the magic and leaned against the rusted wrought-iron rail to look into the room.

It was large, clean, and white, but bare. There was a double
bed with a thin, too-soft mattress that sagged in the middle. It was made up with sparkling clean, rough cotton sheets and what looked like a khaki army blanket. There was a table of dark wood next to the bed and a minute table lamp on it, probably useless for reading. Across from the bed was a small square wooden table, and two chairs with worn rush seats. There was a large and particularly ugly chest of drawers with a white crocheted scarf on it. Above it, a small mirror with a wavy surface. On one of the otherwise bare walls was a large black and white photograph, a badly tinted family portrait of a man, a woman, and a child. From their dress and hairstyles, the picture might be eighty years old. They were really ugly, all three, and very stiff and formal, desperately serious looking. Tucked behind the picture frame was an arrangement of dried flowers, proudly portraying itself as a cartouche of some sort. There was something awfully sad, even ghoulish about the people in the portrait. They did not even look proud-poor.

The floorboards were wide planks, dark with age and polish. The only rug — handwoven, diminutive — was placed next to the bed. Mirella looked up at the ceiling and was surprised. It was wooden, carved and painted. The room was not otherwise pretty or interesting. Just a large space in an old port house with a view that was everything magical: a scene like a carousel, with its movement, colors and lights, which whirls one round and into its enchantment, a kind of make-believe sorcery.

There was something so sad and pitiful: the bare room, yet, outside the window, the crazy carousel. It was schizophrenic; the carousel juxtaposed with the loneliness.

Then Adam put his arm around her, as if he knew what she was thinking. His warmth and love led them to the bed, where they undressed and lay down in that lonely room, and naked they fell asleep as one in each other’s arms.

At ten o’clock in the evening the port was in full swing. It was bright now, with its tables and chairs set out along the waterfront. People were eating and drinking, talking and laughing. Greek music was carried across the harbor from the far side. Waiters dashed back and forth from the tables to the kitchens of the dozen restaurants all along the crescent.

The delicious aroma of lamb and rosemary, roasting pig and grilled fish, floated up to fill the room. Greek perfume.
The happy, hospitable sights and smells drove Mirella and Adam to bathe and dress as quickly as possible, so that they might lose no time in joining this waterside carousel.

Every eye was drawn to Mirella when she and Adam appeared at the restaurant, even those of Aliki and Stavros from a balcony above. Adam waved to the owners of Paradisos, Manos and Despina, who were overseeing from in front of the restaurant’s entrance, arms folded across chests, serious looks on their faces. Seeing Adam wiped away their intensity.

Manos threaded his way through the crowded tables to fling yet another welcoming arm around Adam, and pointed to where he had a table reserved for them.

The Coreys wove their way among the diners and were stopped half a dozen times by old acquaintances of Adam’s who asked the couple to join them.

Mirella was wearing a cream silk dress with a halter top that bared her back to the waist and plunged as far down in the front in a V-neckline. It had a cream silk-ribbon knit jacket, but that was draped over Adam’s arm. Her hair was swept back and pinned in several places with fresh, cream-colored flowers that were waxy-looking, brought to her by Aliki as a welcoming gift.

She wore the diamond earrings and bracelets that Rashid had given her, and her diamond engagement and wedding rings, so that she sparkled with luscious elegance. Yet she worried that she looked bold and vulgar.

The men, young and old alike, were devouring her with their eyes as she walked past them, her breasts moving freely under the silk. She had the half-flattering impression the men were willing one of them to slip free from her halter top. The gossipy women were stunned into silence: they had never seen anything like her outside magazines and the movies.

“God,” she whispered to Adam, “you would think I was a piece of meat they want to sink their teeth into.”

“You are a tempting morsel, my dear. Watching you from the back, I can feel my own teeth start to grind a little.”

She shook her head, surprised that he teased her, misunderstanding how she felt. Finally they made it to their table. Its position allowed them to see and hear the water lapping on the stones of the beach. A barefooted boy of eight stood sentry at the table, fighting off anyone who tried to grab it.
Adam gave him fifty drachmas and the child danced away happily. The table the boy had guarded for them was filled with dirty dishes, piled two and three high.

Miracle of miracles, a waiter appeared immediately and swept them away with a symphony of chat and clatter. He crumpled up the stained paper tablecloth and pitched it above Mirella’s head and over the seawall onto the stones below.

With an elaborate flourish, he shook out a clean one, slammed it on the table, and snapped its corners under the rubber bands. Then, like a conjuror, he produced the inevitable lime-green plastic salt and pepper shakers, the thin, hard-pressed, three-cornered, shiny paper napkins that absorbed nothing, the green and yellow plastic woven basket stacked with thick slices of white doughy bread, and a handful of bendable knives and forks, all slightly out of shape. Mirella and Adam watched his performance. No matter how many times they had seen it, the Greek waiter provided a mesmerizing sight.

He disappeared, to return in a moment and slam down a copper measuring cup full of retsina, which slopped onto the paper cloth and melted it before Mirella’s eyes. From his pockets he produced two small squat glasses as thick as jelly jars and about as attractive, which he crashed down on the table before them. Then he rushed away before they had a chance to order their food.

From then on, it was all go. The Greeks were quite used to tourists and foreign residents. Liking especially a pretty one who did not look or act like a hippie, and a tall handsome man straight out of a Marlboro ad, they were open and gregarious with Adam and Mirella.

A young man from the table next to theirs politely invited himself over to talk with them in rather good English. Where were they from? What were they doing there? How long would they be in Leros? Where were they staying? On and on, and all questions — most of them personal — that were very typical of the extroverted, inquisitive Greek. He left them only when his food arrived at his table and his friends called him.

Mirella was amused at how much Adam enjoyed himself with the young man, the gusto with which he answered all the young man’s questions. They looked at each other across the table, and smiled lovingly and affectionately.

“Come on, darling, we will have to run the gauntlet again and go choose our meal ourselves, or we’ll never dine tonight.”

And so they did. At every other table they passed, someone stood up and called, “
Adaam, ela
, come,” asking Adam and Mirella to join them. They sat at one table for a few minutes, then another, and another. Morsels of food were fed to them on forks as glasses clinked sharply, as ouzos were downed. Only Adam’s charm allowed them to get away without offense.

At last after crossing the road between the quay and the pavement cluttered with people dining at tables close together in front of Paradisos, they pushed their way through to the huge, ugly aluminum charcoal-fed rotisserie, with its clanking chains and revolving spits. Huge skewers were arranged one above the other. Row upon row of roasting animal. The top skewer had half a dozen sheep’s heads, skeletons with eyes sizzling in their sockets, slowly going round and round. Then came the
kokoretsi
, the sheep’s innards seasoned and stuffed in a casing of the animal’s intestine, looking like one long, fat sausage. Under that, turning slowly, along with the other skewers, a whole lamb partially cut away. As it turned and roasted, slowly dripping fat onto the hot glowing coals, waiters hacked at it. Fresh rosemary and cooking meat made a heady perfume that billowed over them in puffs of cooking smoke.

The skulls turning round and round had Mirella hypnotized. She wondered, when they looked as barbaric as this on the spit, what they would look like on the plate. Later, returning to her table after selecting their food, she would be shocked to see several on a platter: the skulls split down the center, and half a dozen diners digging around, gobbling up the delicacy. Adam would see the look of horror on Mirella’s face and say, “The cheeks are the best part.”

Manos and Despina pulled them away from the rotisserie on the pavement under the canopy and into the back of the restaurant.

They stood in the middle of the busy kitchen where again Adam was received ebulliently. Two men in filthy aprons, shirt sleeves rolled up, were cooking over the cast-iron woodburning stove. On a large wooden table there were a number of round aluminum pans filled with different Greek specialties:
stuffed peppers, and fried eggplant, a red-colored stew of rabbit and onions, rich and succulent. The fried zucchini, and
pastichio
, a kind of a noodle pudding, the
moussaka
, and fried potatoes, a bowl as large as any Mirella had ever seen, filled with red tomatoes, quartered and dressed with olive oil and fresh oregano, tempted the palate.

Two women, again in soiled aprons, their hair under white scarves, beads of sweat on their foreheads, dished out large portions on small white shopworn porcelain plates, quickly handing them to busy waiters. There was shouting back and forth across the kitchen, and spurts of temper, and more than the necessary clanking of pots and pans.

The waiters hovered around Mirella and Adam as they looked into the bubbling saucepans and skillets to see what else was on offer, a custom of the restaurant that replaced a menu. Amid the kitchen clatter, cooking chips, frying fish and squid, the smoke and heat, and the smells, they selected their dinner.