This Stream of Dreams (Mirella, Rashid and Adam Book 2) (23 page)

They pushed their way past the conveyor belt of waiters and food trailing in and out, and through the restaurant. It was almost bare because its tables had been set out in the street and across the road on the quay. The white neon light picked out starkly the odd chair or table left in the bare, featureless restaurant.

They dined on the lamb and the kokoretsi, which were in fact delicious. And while they ate, they were offered an endless choice of Greek dishes from the hot kitchens in the back of the restaurant. Glasses of ouzo and retsina were sent over with the compliments of many of the Greeks, who waved to them, lifted glasses, and drank their health.

By the time they had finished their meal few Greek males had missed a furtive eyeing of Mirella, their eyes lowered out of deference to Adaam, and not wanting to offend. In fantasy they actively undressed Adaam’s wife, caressed her breasts, her bare back and naked arms.

And he was not offended. Adam had a strong friendship with these men, based on shared experience of trust and loyalty, and a common perception even now in the present. There was a kind of power and magic in sharing his beautiful wife with them and their coarse fantasies.

Adam raised his glass and silently gave a toast to his wife. He knew that Mirella would understand that what these men
shared with Adam, he could never fully share with a woman. Some base, unspoken bond of sexual desire roused him. He desired his wife even as they did now.

It was camaraderie, devotion between friends. Adam always enjoyed close friendships with men: it was more selfless, more intimate. His relationships with men had always been more enduring than with women, and he knew it was the same with most men. These men were here at their table now because men seek companionship with another man, no matter how much they want and desire a woman. In an unforgiving world, and when the struggle of life is too unrelenting, men seek out men because women are just another responsibility. With other men they know freedom.

Yet he watched and listened to the conversation going on between Mirella and the men, and understood so clearly that his only real friend was his wife. It was Mirella who would give him the emotional support he needed, not these or any other male friends. Adam knew that men don’t make real friends, that the closeness he felt with men was not that of mutual interest or shared emotions, but a solidarity in the face of danger. That kind of closeness, an arbitrary and discriminating one, had little to do with real friendship. Adam had always been drawn to male friendships by common experience of loneliness or danger. Accidents of association offering no basis in personal sameness for an alliance of love. When he had sought a caring for another, there always had to be a woman.

Adam felt content, delighted with his wife and their Greek admirers. There was something else that added an exhilaration to the evening, an edge of competition.

It was late and the tables began to empty. Mirella and Adam sat looking out across the black water to the boats rocking at anchor under the moonlight and stars. There was a stillness that seemed to settle upon the port, like an invisible blanket, and sudden holes of blackness in the distance, where lights went out, all around the crescent-shaped harbor. The only sounds were the lapping of the water and the bark of a dog far off. The carousel had whirled to a halt, the people had gone home, and suddenly the magic of the island embraced them again.

Adam smiled to himself in the dark. Here was the Greece that he loved best: sensate, creative, sensual, and complex. In
the hot, sultry, and romantic night, Mirella and he walked through the dark silent port and on past the end of town to the deserted beach, where there was a soft warm wind under the moonlight. There he sat on the sand and pulled Mirella down into his lap and cradled her. She felt to him like the other side of his deepest self.

They walked back toward the Papoulies across the port. They didn’t speak. Dawn coming up over the horizon was sheer poetry and they saw another kind of magic about the place.

The sound of their shoes clicking over the cobblestones; dark forms turning into the outlines of boats or buildings. The black water was transformed to burnished silver and there was the smell of an early morning sea, and the faint scent of dew-freshened flowers … and silence. Heavy silence, on which the sounds of foot on stone or water upon shingle scarcely impinged. Yes, and there was mystery, strange and distant mystery there and in their lives. God or hell was at hand. It was like a walk on the edge of a crater.

It was a very different town that Mirella and Adam woke up to. The sun and the heat poured in through the shuttered balcony door. They bathed and dressed and went out to meet it. A morning freshness and sunshine had revitalized the old port. The caïques bobbed up and down in a luscious blue Aegean that sparkled as if sequins had been scattered on the waves. The carnival atmosphere of the night before had vanished with the dark.

By day it was a colorfully lazy port. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, even though it was a working port. They meandered through it discovering the grocer, the butcher, the postmaster, the baker. At Adam’s favorite coffee shop they sat in the sun to drink coffee and eat warm fresh bread smeared with sweet butter and honey. It was a simple enough breakfast, yet flavored in its setting with a specialness that they both acknowledged. They sat and enjoyed the laid-back atmosphere that was seeping into their bones, while a bee alighted on the rim of the cracked white saucer to share their honey.

People walked back and forth in front of their table on their way to work or daily errands and greeted the now famous
couple with “
Kalimera
.” But there was no chitchat. It was business as usual, even though it was Sunday.

The port had a daytime vitality quite distinct from its nocturnal enchantment. They sat there, husband and wife, absorbing the magic of it all but silent lest they break the spell.

Finally Adam reached out his hand to Mirella.

“The spell these Greek islands cast will always be here for us, but now we must be on our way. Just one quick look around the town, then back to the copter and Patmos.”

They wandered through the back streets, dirt lanes that twisted and turned, and briefly became cobblestone roads before reverting to mere tracks with an occasional large stone pounded into them. Old white houses bordered each street, immaculately attended by women in loose black dresses, their hair covered with black cotton scarves twisted under their chins and tied with a knot on top of their heads. The women seemed to peck away at their chores like black crows. They looked tough and brutal in what little femininity they had, and Mirella could not but think it was their men who had caged them in this hard and sexless domesticity. It depressed her.

They came upon an old white-domed church. The wooden doors were open and the thin white cotton-embroidered curtain hanging in the doorway was pulled back. A cool, incense-laden breeze wafted from the church and seemed to beckon them in from the hot, glaring sun and the dusty street.

Inside, thick walls washed in bright white lime enclosed them. There was a screen of intricately carved wood that divided the church and led to a small sanctuary. The wooden lace-work of birds, trees, flowers, even primitive-looking mermaids was well but naïvely carved. They could see candles burning behind the frieze, The two arched openings in it were hung with worn, dark velvet cloth, too short and not quite wide enough for the opening.

There were thick beeswax candles and heavy brass and copper candlesticks, ponderous with piety. The polished surfaces and the silver votives, old embossed silver dishes and intricate silver covers over the ikons, glowed mysteriously in the glimmering candlelight. The Byzantine holiness was overwhelming, so great was the power of the ancient and magnificent ikons placed reverently there. Dozens of slim
candles were burning and dried flowers disintegrated everywhere.

The church was cool and damp but the orthodoxy was rich, exotic, and all-powerful. It seemed to Mirella that the essence of this little sanctuary would imprint itself upon her senses and her being forever. She left Adam inside and stumbled out into the light and leaned against the building, tears trickling down her cheeks.

She could not understand her anxiety, the tears she was shedding, the deep loneliness that had engulfed her soul. Never had she been so close to another human being as she was to Adam, yet on this remarkably happy island voyage where she felt a strong oneness with him, she felt him drifting away from her. The islands were too powerful, too overwhelming. Now she acknowledged two serious rivals for Adam’s love: his unspoken desire to remain the solitary man on some adventurous quest she did not yet understand … and Marlo Channing.

16

T
heir world changed into something ethereal for the next two days. They were somewhere between heaven and earth, between living in the present and experiencing the past in the same moment. There was no Mirella, no Adam.

They were angels who flew in the sun, dolphins who swam and played in the sea. They were the first and the last man and woman God created. They were all the gods and goddesses of mystery and myth. They were of an earthly delicacy of substance that changed its form to fit the elements, to satisfy and be satisfied by nature — the nature God created, and their own natures. They felt they were two of the luckiest people in the world, chosen people.

They flew between the blue of the sky and the blue of the sea, so dangerously low at times that they felt the spray off the top of the waves they clipped. At other times so high as to see the chain of islands between Leros and Samos as so many beads broken from a necklace and scattered on the sea.

They dropped out of the sky onto a dot of an island
between Lipsoi and Agathonisi, uninhabited except for a few birds. A dry rocky place, with one large and luxurious tree growing from the side of a crevice that split the island nearly in half, shaping it to look from the air like a heart or a voluptuously cleft feminine bottom. The heat waves shimmied and shivered off the whole diameter of the mile-wide rock island.

Mirella and Adam left their clothes in the copter, and, naked except for sandals, scampered down the crevice where the waves rushed in six feet below the tree to form a sort of narrow lagoon. And there, to cool off, they swam and played like dolphins, and watched the huge waves roll toward them, slow down and dissolve as they were forced through the crevice.

Cool and wet, naked, they clambered back up the side of the crevice and over the rocks, one below the other, Adam occasionally helping her with a push from underneath. They dried off, spread-eagled under the sun. Adam quenched his erotic thirst for Mirella at her cunt. The taste was exquisite: he delighted in her orgasms. They were for him like an aphrodisiac on the tongue. His tastebuds came alive, and his tongue probed her constantly for more.

He watched her writhe in ecstasy on the hot stones. Her clitoris became swollen with pleasure; her outer and inner labia, luscious and pink from his lips and his nibbling mouth, glistened with her come and his saliva, and lay open and exposed under the sky and the sun and the sea breezes. She was like a glorious sacrifice to the gods, and she reveled in this stream of dreams he wrought from her, again and again.

She tried to stifle her cries of ecstasy by placing the back of her hand over her mouth and biting into it, but Adam gently moved it away and her cries traveled on the wind and dispersed with the sound of the pounding sea all around the tiny island. Her joy flowed and filled his mouth.

He swallowed, and as her nectar trickled down his throat, it threw him into a licentious, untamed passion. It was the taste of her combined with the sexual power he possessed that enabled him to wring so much joy from this beautiful, proud, and independent wife of his. In desire he wanted to reach in further, where his tongue could not go, to caress her womb, fill his cupped hand with her delectable juices — to him an elixir of life — and drink her from his own palm.

Soon. Soon. Before nightfall, in the little white house covered in magenta bougainvillea, on his private island, not very far from where they were, he would do just that.

Adam knew when he scooped her up in his arms, kissed her deeply, and filled her mouth with her own delicious elixir, that she could not stop, she was not sated. He could feel it in her body as she tensed and then shivered with the release of another orgasm, while he carried her to the copter. They never bothered with their clothing, just covered their nakedness, he with his white cotton shirt, she with the silk one she had been wearing. He could see it in her eyes, how she wanted to stay in his arms, how she wanted him, and he said, “Soon, on another island not far from here. I know a place.” And they climbed into the helicopter, and he swung off the rock at a sharp right angle and into the sun.

But if Mirella wanted more, Adam outreached even her desire. He could not keep his hands off her. He piloted the copter to his Aegean hideaway, yet continued to fondle her, to bury his hand between her legs and play with her cunt until it was wet with her pleasure. He stole glimpses of her where she slumped back in the chair, her cream silk shirt flung open, her head thrown back, erotic violet eyes searching the heavens and the seas, hands placed over her mouth, as if sealing her lips so as not to break the spell. She was beautiful in her lust.

Finally dazzled and dazed with sexual delight, swooping over the mythical playground of the Greek gods and goddesses like some licentious winged lady from Hades, Mirella dissolved into this magical place that was part world, part heaven. She reached down, removed Adam’s hand, and covered it with her mouth and licked it clean. Then, placing his arm around her shoulder, she leaned over and collapsed on him.

Neither of them spoke. There was no need. Words were for mere mortal communication. What need had they for words? They were saying it all with their bodies, and their souls, in this mysterious, magical place.

Adam caught at the dream within the real. It was part of the excitement, the unreality of it all. But he found it was the real that almost eluded him. It was so difficult to step out of the dreamworld he was sharing with Mirella.

This island, like the other, was uninhabited rock, except for a hidden, horseshoe-shaped cave. He carried Mirella from the
copter, kissing her face, her breasts, down a sweep of steps carved in the rock to the house below.

It had been made ready for them. All the faded blue shutters that dotted the stark white of the villa protruding romantically from the rock on the water’s edge were flung open. It was baking hot, but a strong breeze blew through the one-room house so that the diaphanous white curtains of the enormous four-poster Indian ivory bed in the middle of the room danced voluptuously.

Mirella was aware of nothing but Adam. Not the outstanding beauty of the white marble floors, not the collection of Hellenic marbles standing in pools of sunshine from the skylights set in the series of domes on the roof. Not the walls of rare books, the garnet-colored porphyry chairs and chaise longue. Not even the ten-feet square sunken bath whose white marble steps, leading down into it on all four sides, formed bases for the occasional Minoan amphora excavated from the sea. The Byzantine mosaic of dolphins and mermaids that formed the floor of the bath was covered with cool-scented waters, and an enormous bowl of jasper was filled with fresh white rose petals, whose perfume hardly affected Mirella.

Adam pushed the bed curtains away with his elbow, and laid Mirella on the silky, white, lynx furs among the huge, soft feather cushions covered in white antique Persian embroidery. He slipped the silk shirt from her shoulders and dropped it with his to the floor. He kissed and licked and fondled her. He searched out her lips, her mouth, caressed and sucked her breasts until she squirmed with the sharpness of ecstasy. He buried his face between her legs and sucked her passion-swollen genitals into his mouth until she came. Then he left her, only to return with a small ivory table which he placed next to the bed. On it were objects of art: a baroque silver Italian ewer filled with fresh peach nectar, two golden Grecian cups of great antiquity, and boxes and covered jars beautifully carved from blocks of semiprecious stones — malachite, jade, jasper, and rock crystal.

He lay down next to Mirella among the cushions and together they drank from one cup. And with one passion they made love. From a covered box of malachite he smoothed and kneaded her body with an ointment of musk and honeysuckle. Her breasts assumed the sheen of marble, and before
he was done with her she gleamed all over, silk to his touch. Her swollen nipples and her genitals he colored with an ointment of henna, alum, and honey that made them feel suddenly tight and soft, and inflamed her lust beyond passion. When he entered her with his caressing fingers and massaged the ointment round and round, deeper, always deeper into her cunt, she cried out helplessly as the ointment and his fondling sensitized her into an untamable pleasure.

Adam had done it for love of her, for his erotic desire to both give and take pleasure in her, and he was rewarded tenfold. The musk had done its work on both their senses. And now the sight and scent and feel of unimpeded sexuality enveloped him, and focused all his desires in one: to take her, bury himself inside her, fill her full of himself and his seed, and to dissolve her in their orgasms.

And he did. The ointments made her perform as a wanton, and yet at the same time made her cunt feel like that of an untouched virgin. When Adam entered her with his erect and throbbing penis, he experienced anew the joy of slowly methodically deflowering that tight and mysterious place.

Again and again he pressed deeper, and fucked Mirella until at last she could take him into herself entirely. And then the rhythm changed. Her orgasms began to come in rapid succession, until he moved in and out of her with ease, assisted by the silky smoothness of these copious orgasms. He left nothing inside her untouched by his thrusts and caresses, and after he burst forth and filled her with his seed, he entered her again with almond cream as smooth and cooling as a shaded grove, its scent as heavy as the trees in blossom.

He soothed her with it and created more sensuous sensations, added another handful and fondled her with fingers that entered deeper, deeper, till with one final, painful thrust he was inside her up to his wrist. The pain was short and sharp, but nothing to the pleasures eased from her with the almond cream and his caressing of even the tiny opening at the neck of her womb. He used his hand and his fist as he had his penis, again and again. The sight of his arm sinking into her brought their mutual lust to a kind of madness, so untamed and out of control was their passion.

They had lost their identities, and now their separateness. They were sexually as one, and Mirella’s orgasms were his, just as his were hers. His hand and her womb were of the
same body. They shared one mouth, one heart. And only after Mirella had lost all control over her orgasms and had come until she had actually swooned from exhaustion, was Adam able to harness again his violent passion to tenderness and love.

They gave each other everything there was to give, and never had demand been made for such giving, for such rewards. Adam had planned this voyage carefully, wanting Mirella to understand that they were solid, with no bonds to hold them either in some unreal and dreamlike world or in the real world. They were as one, and yet individuals, their own true selves, and nothing could ever change that.

At midnight, they bathed together by candlelight and oil lamp, in the soothing, scented water, washing each other with oil of lemon and mint until their skin tingled with a cool revitalized freshness. As they walked together up the steps out of the water, Adam flung handfuls of white rose petals from the jasper bowl and dried her with them by rubbing them against her skin until they absorbed all the water and left her blooming with the perfume of a rose garden.

They dined by the romantic light of the candles and oil lamps on huge fresh peaches and glorious black grapes, and cold roasted quail stuffed with apricots. They drank a bottle of Bonnes Mares 1966, a Burgundy the color of garnets and rubies, while reclining on the bed, surrounded by its thin misty curtains, with only the soft sound of ivory curtain rings dancing on the ivory rod and the far crashing of the waves outside in the blackness and otherwise utter silence of the night. And then they slept.

It was very strange. There seemed no explanation for it, but from the moment Mirella saw the luscious green island of Samos rising out of the sea, she knew she was leaving one world for another. As they whirled over the island thick with lemon and orange trees scattered among all the other trees, leafy and laden with fruit, she touched Adam’s knee affectionately. He turned for a moment and their smiles merged.

Adam put the copter down at the end of a dock where the caïque boat builders worked. As Mirella’s feet touched the ground, a moment of sadness passed through her. She thought she sensed that feeling she had heard about, but never understood — as if someone had walked on her grave.

She watched Adam as he shook hands with two men who were to stand watch over the copter, protecting it from inquisitive hands. When he walked back to her their eyes met and the silence between them was understood immediately by both. They broke it together, trying to speak at the same moment. They laughed and he placed his arm around her shoulder and together they started their walk into town.

Their happiness with each other vibrated, like a perfect burst of song from the best tenor and the best contralto. And they began to talk to each other, something they had not done in days. As they chattered on, Adam was acutely aware that they had made a heavenly journey together with nothing but their bodies and their souls. On earth it was good, great even, but being earthbound had to be inferior. Such was the nature of things.

“And what about Patmos? I loved Patmos — even if it is where the apostle John wrote the Apocalypse. I want to go back one day when we have time to stay. But even from the air I knew how special it was,” she said.

“I have a marvelous house there at the top, Khora, with a panoramic view across the Bay of Grikos. It’s magic. It’s our house now, and we’ll go to it one day.”

“There has been so much. Remember the valley of the butterflies, and Anti-Paros, and that view when we flew from Leros to —” She stopped in mid-sentence. That part of the journey was too personal, too ethereal, to attach words to.

Adam stopped and pulled her up to him by her arm, and looked into her eyes. They seemed more beautiful, more violet. Then he abruptly let go of her arm and put a hand in his pocket. When he withdrew it, he had something in his clenched fist. He dropped her duffel bag on the ground, and taking her other hand by her wrist, he held it in front of her and opened her palm.