White Vespa (5 page)

 

Myles got off the Vespa at the foot of the Katarráktes, the less trafficked steps between Yialós and Chorió. The summer before, it had taken him some poking around to find where the steps started up, though the ascending ramp of the stairs is visible from most of town. Unlike the Kalí Stráta, the Katarráktes is not closed in by houses, but angles up a hillside out in the open. Myles rarely saw a tourist there; the stairs led to a quiet neighborhood of modest houses and if there were tavernas or bars or anything else a tourist was likely to walk to up there, Myles had never seen them. Of course, there were a few dedicated walkers, and occasionally Myles met one of them coming down as he was going up. But they tended to be good sorts and Myles didn't mind seeing them there. He walked up the Katarráktes often, preferring to make a loop rather than take the Kalí Stráta coming and going. Besides, the walk across Chorió, high on the hill over the harbor, was one of his favorites, and he made it often with camera in hand. He loved the startling views of the harbor below, seen between houses, through doorways, and over rooftops. The interest of the shots varied day to day, sometimes hour by hour, as the boats, looking like toys from high up, arranged and rearranged themselves, tying up and casting off.

He liked early mornings and late evenings best, when the light softened, and when the big tour boats were gone. The big boats struck him as out of scale in the small harbor. Sometimes the light had a pearly quality, a wonderful milkiness, which he tried to capture on film, his camera steadied on his walking stick. He hadn't gotten the shots he wanted, which was one of the reasons he kept going back. The shots were more difficult than they looked, but felt necessary, not only for
The Lesser Dodecanese
, but to Myles personally. He couldn't have explained exactly why, but he knew it had to do with a woman he'd seen up there the summer before. He always remembered her at the same spot on the cobbled path, just where it passed over a breezeway between two small houses, now apparently occupied by a single family. He
had been looking through the slot, at the brightness of the water behind that seemed to darken the slate walk between the two buildings, which was in shadow, visible under a flowering vine. He'd been looking very intently, when a woman, a naked woman, flew from one building to the other, from right to left. She'd been mid-leap all the way across, or so it had seemed, arms raised, one knee up before her and the other leg, propelling her, taut out behind, head up, small breasts riding up, dark hair trailing. There had been no sound, no giggle or slap of footsteps.

Swift, unexpected, and then gone. Myles knew the way it had happened had a great deal to do with how vividly he remembered the running woman. He'd noticed the pattern at other times: a deer bounding across a gap in the woods, a bird crossing a narrow window. They were like photographs, moments broken free of whatever it was that was going on. And they lodged in memory with a vividness altogether out of keeping with any reasonable explanation of their importance.

Myles stopped just there, every time he walked that path, peered under the vine that was flowering this year, too, but without any expectation of seeing the woman again. That, he was pretty sure, wouldn't happen. Some things properly happen only once. Myles didn't talk about the once that it had happened, either. He knew telling it would elicit a leer, or at least the suspicion that the moment had mattered because it was erotic. But it hadn't been erotic; the only word he could put to it was
otherworldly
, and that wasn't a word he liked to use in conversation.

After awhile he walked on. Just short of the Kalí Stráta he turned right, exploring the narrow alleys of residential Chorió, where the cries of mothers and children echoed raucously off the whitewashed stone walls. He was a little lost, lost in detail, but knew he would run onto the Kalí Stráta in the end. He crossed another alley and, looking down the narrowing perspective, saw two girls swinging badminton rackets, screeching. He recognized Váso from To Stenáki when she turned and charged toward him. Then, as suddenly, she turned around, put her racket to the ground, and lobbed something back toward the other girl: not a shuttlecock. Myles looked closely. It was a small rat. They were playing badminton with a rat they'd trapped in the alley! Then he heard it, screeching in a higher register than the girls. He shook his head, considering the possibilities: badrat and ratminton. But then the rat got by the
other girl and raced into an overgrown lot, making a getaway at last. The girls howled and then fell to giggling wildly. It was a better game than badminton, apparently. Myles waved to Váso and she came over, sputtering in Greek, her eyes shining madly in her flushed face.

 

Paul didn't smoke, but he often carried a pack of Camels around with him, just to have cigarettes to offer to smokers in distress. There were a lot of smokers among the young travelers he sometimes sought out. And a lot of them were in distress of one kind or another, traveling to forget or to keep from starting a life. Paul sympathized; he'd never started a life, never found a career path he was willing to put even one foot on. He didn't have to, that was the difference. A cigarette was all it took to get a conversation going. Sometimes he even lit one for himself in a show of extreme fellow feeling.

When Yórgos stopped by his table at Vapori and asked for a cigarette, Paul gave him one, gave him two. He smiled when Yórgos tucked them into his pocket, looking suddenly furtive. It was a bad paper day. Either the news wasn't interesting or Paul wasn't interested. He put the paper down and looked down the alley toward the water, at the slow undulations of the boats as they rose and fell on waves Paul couldn't see from his deck chair in the shade of an umbrella. He was fingering a small roll of fat that pushed over his belt at his waist, wondering once again if he ought to join the gym, to learn to sweat. He didn't think so.

He looked at his watch. Almost tourist time, time to do something else. He didn't know what. He wondered idly if he was bored, if this is what people meant when they said they were bored. He wasn't sure. He decided he was more likely languorous. He thought that sounded better.

He watched the people walking by down on the paraléia, the patterning, first a couple, then three friends, then a lone walker. He liked to try to see people as if they were birds, or animals, and to take an interest in how they flocked together or herded up or went off by themselves. He was a loner himself, but he wasn't thinking about that; he was just watching. Soon another loner crossed the mouth of the alley, and he forgot all about birds. It looked like Anne! A different haircut and years on her, but surely it was Anne.

He didn't call out or get up. He sat there. How odd. She wouldn't be here by chance; she'd have found out where he was and come looking for him. But why? Not for the great relief of having him to talk to, he was pretty sure about that. He was curious, and he felt a little more alive curious, so a little better. He called for his bill and considered the damage when it came. He was spending a lot of money on coffee! At least he had it to spend. Very likely Anne wouldn't. He shook his head, poor Anne. She'd kissed off her inheritance a long time ago.

Paul stood up, brushed the wrinkles out of his khaki shorts, dropped his newspaper in a basket, and started to walk. His room was close by, on the hillside more or less above Vapori
.
He occupied the lower story of a restored old house, down an alley off the main steps and then sharply up two flights of stairs. The hill was steep enough that he could see water out the windows that faced the harbor, though he wouldn't call it a view. But his rooms were quiet and private; the upstairs flat was occupied only on the occasional weekend. Rooms is to exaggerate. There was a bathroom in the back, but the entire rest of the apartment was a single room. There was a sink and a gas ring, but no kitchen. Paul didn't care: except for the odd piece of fruit, he preferred to eat out. The furniture was outsize, an enormous bed occupied one wall, and there was a large wardrobe on the wall across from it. There was also a full-length mirror on a stand, an antique, and Paul kept it turned so he could see himself in bed or turned slightly away, so he could see out the window on the same wall as the bed. That way there seemed to be a window on the far wall, where there was none. There were only two chairs. A table. The room was bare of ornament, but perhaps because of that it had a stagey look that Paul liked very much.

He worked the key in the door and went in, went directly to the bed and sprawled out on his back, still wondering about Anne. He was amused. He could imagine any number of dramatic scenes she might create for him. He was looking forward to what was coming, whatever it might be.

It was past noon and the room was very hot when he woke up. He rinsed his face at the sink and then pulled his suitcases out of the bottom of the wardrobe. It didn't take him long to locate the envelope of old photographs. He shuffled through them quickly until he found the one he was looking for: a little girl bouncing on the back of her horse, heading for the barn. Even in
the picture you could see she wasn't riding well, wasn't maintaining contact with the trotting horse, but she looked happy, such a little princess. The horse had been called Pie, short for Shoofly Pie, a name Anne had picked out of a favorite children's book.

 

It was Yórgos who arranged for the boat. Myles met Jim on the old stone bridge at the end of the harbor and they shopped for a picnic, bread and wine, féta and olives, a round of dried figs and a few bananas, a small box of Greek sweets. They knew they were buying too much but bought it anyway: too much is good for a picnic, creates that feeling that comes from plenty. Benevolence. They were not counting on fish, though Yórgos had promised he'd catch some, so they could have it fresh.

The boat was small but bright, a lipstick red with turquoise detailing. The captain greeted them dourly and started the engine as they stowed their groceries and day packs. The engine sparked to life in a small cloud of blue smoke and began its rhythmic thudding, the deep bass sound of an old inboard. Yórgos untied the boat and scurried to the prow to pull up the small anchor. The boat turned sharply toward the mouth of the harbor and the captain powered up the engine enough to raise a wake. From the water, the town loomed all around them.

Yórgos and the captain looked out, where they were going, but Jim and Myles looked back.

“God this town is theatrical!” Jim exclaimed. “I still ain't over it. It feels like we're on stage, like the whole town is looking at us.”

“The town is, the people don't notice,” Myles said, but he was fiddling with the Nikon on his lap, twisting on a wide-angle lens. “The houses with a view are oriented toward the water, look to us.” He glanced up, then lifted the camera and looked through the viewfinder.

“Surely someone sees us?” Jim said, and he tried waving his hat, but no hat was waved in response.

“Well, maybe, maybe not. But whether they're looking or not, the real center of Sými town is out here, on the water. No matter where you are when you're in town, you're at the edge of things.”

“Eccentric?” Jim asked.

“And aren't we?” Myles said.

“I think you more than me!”

“Aha. Well, okay, I won't take offense. But maybe that's why I like this place so much; everybody's got to be eccentric, walk around the center of things.”