[9]
Krustev felt a little duped because instead of watching the boat arrive, instead of seeing the island dust off its dress uniform to meet the new arrivals, he had to go down to the car and get ready to leave. But he left the kids up on deck to watch the palace of the Grand Master rise above the dappled coast, stern and supercilious, and at least that was some consolation, as if some part of him would stay there, too, watching. Without noticing it and without meaning to, he had already slipped into their net of key words and tacit agreements, and he was forced to admit that this made him feel good. When he stopped on that Rhodope road and picked them up, he had simply wanted company, people to chat with, to distract him, and to have some immediate goal, in order to drive them to it. But from then on everything had developed so quickly and simply, and the mutual discomfort they had felt, he with them and they with him, was actually more helpful than not, for example on the beach on Thasos he had tried to look aside so as not to stare at Sirma’s brazenly displayed breasts, this had, in fact, brought him closer to them, some quiet thread of shame gleamed in the sunlight for an instant, weaving yet another tie between them. Alone in his car, in the garage, winded from the gas fumes, Krustev told himself that whatever the three teenagers’ secret was, he didn’t want to know it, he wasn’t enticed by the possibility of muscling his way between them, of digging through the strange space enclosed by their triangle, and he was thankful that they returned the gesture, not asking him why he had taken off on his own and what had happened, and if they had guessed, they didn’t pursue their conjectures with the doggedness of a blind hunter, something he remembered so well from his own youth, back then he had probed every patch of earth, digging down to reach a spring, and once he had drunk from the precious water, he lost interest, just as when he had played his solo and had to return to the familiar and steady rhythm of the song and somehow hold out until the end of it.
Rhodes didn’t seem to have changed since he had been there with Irina and Elena; while driving along the narrow, cobblestone streets of the old town, once again astonished that they were open to cars, Krustev tried to remember when exactly it had been, maybe seven years ago, or eight, yes, because Elena had certainly been, say, twelve, a girl, in whose body a woman’s figure was hesitantly emerging and this woman who was furtively sneaking into her confused her reactions, imperceptibly casting her shadows, doing with his daughter as she wished. If it had been possible to be jealous of his daughter’s relationship with her own self, perhaps that was what he had felt during that vacation, especially one day on the beach, when he emerged from the sea, heading towards their umbrella and she didn’t look at him at all, she had turned her head the other direction, and he turned, following her gaze, and his eyes collided with the muscular body of the lifeguard, and this staggered him more than if he had caught his own wife ogling the lifeguard with the little gold cross on his chest, and that was also the first vacation when he didn’t feel like sleeping with Irina, even though they had rented a suite at the hotel and Elena slept in a separate room, they simply fell asleep every night and neither one of them was particularly struck by this lack of desire, there was something here to fill the gaping empty space with, ice cream and cocktails, and walks through the old town, and coarse brown sand, as if for construction, you could fill bags with sand and easily soar through the air knowing you had something to unload if you started plunging downward.
They found a room at the end of the old city, on one of those streets that was so narrow that even pedestrians, especially the tubbier ones, could hardly pass, and at a reasonably good price so that the three of them were not taken aback by the size of the gift being given them; after they brought their luggage inside, Sirma went outside with Krustev and stood in front of the entrance, her mouth gaping open, looking at the crooked outline of the house, the flaking green façade and the window frames warped by the salty moisture, wow, she said, my whole life I’ve dreamed of living in a place like this, and Krustev smiled, the four-person room was narrow and dark, the windows actually looked out onto the wall across the way, but he understood Sirma very well, it was so interesting to live in such a house, for a few days, of course, and he was glad that he had overcome his own habit of comfort in order to go up the creaking stairs ducking his head and to breathe in the scent of old wood and the mossy stone wall, there was something very real about this house and the others like it nearby, a scrap of real life amid the whole touristic bacchanalia with its flip-flops, brand-name handbags and ridiculous souvenirs, there was life, which created the illusion that it was more real than your own, but still Krustev did not give himself over completely to sentimental ecstasy and carefully checked the bathroom and the water heater before paying. He left the car in a parking lot beyond the fortress walls, they wouldn’t need it inside, the three of them could hardly stay in one place, they wanted to wander everywhere, peek into every passageway, to touch every stone, he smiled in satisfaction and from time to time wondered why the hell he couldn’t go somewhere with his daughter in the same way, what were these barriers that arose between you and those closest to you, making impossible the things you were free to do with people you met by chance along the way, and in that case how had these three toppled all the barriers between them, or perhaps the more precise question was how had they prevented the barriers from arising? He looked at them and couldn’t imagine them separately, even though now Maya, now Sirma, now Spartacus hung back from the others and walked with him to talk, in the beginning on Thasos he had felt a certain forcedness in how suddenly one of the three of them would remember his presence and sheepishly come keep him company, now that feeling was gone, and at times he could even tell himself that he wasn’t twenty-odd years older than them, for example, when they were teaching him to swim with laughter and enthusiasm, encouraging him and he was catching on quickly, he could already keep himself floating on the surface and now the most important part was to coordinate his arms and legs, he thought that would be easy, he was a musician after all, with a sense of rhythm and timing, but he still hadn’t quite managed it.