Curiosity accounts for much of this, and contra-suggestiveness. But the influence I presently began to feel, that I cannot account for exactly. Maybe it was only the writer's desire to fantasize rather than to work. But every time I reached for the manuscript 1 would experience a sort of distraction, a son of calling, uncanny, poignant, like nostalgia, though for a place I had never visited.
I am very bad at recollecting my dreams, but once or twice, just before sunrise, I had a suspicion I had dreamed of the island. Of walking there, hearing its inner waters, the leaves brushing my hands and face.
Two weeks went by, and precious little had been done in the line of work. And I had come to Daphaeu with the sole intention of working. The year before. I had accomplished so much in a month of similar islands-or had they been similar? -that I had looked for results of some magnitude- In all of fourteen days I must have squeezed out two thousand words, and most of those dreary enough that the only covers they would ever get between would be those of the trash can- And yet, it was not that I could not produce work, it was mat I knew. with blind and damnable certainty, that the work I needed to be doing sprang from that spoonful of island.
The first day of the third week I had been swimming in the calm stretch of sea west of the harbour, and had emerged to sun myself and smoke on the parched hot shore. Presently Pilos appeared, having scented cigarettes. Surgical and govemment health warnings have not yet penetrated to spots like Daphaeu, where filtered tobacco continues to symbolize Hollywood, or some other amorphous, anachronistic surrealism stiil hankered after and long vanished from the world beyond.
Once Pitos had acquired his cigarette, he sprawled down on the dry grass, grinned, indicated the Borgia ring, and mentioned a beautiful cousin of his, whether male or female I cannot be sure. After this had been cleared out of the way, I said to him,
"You know how the currents run. I was thinking of a slightly more adventurous swim. But I'd like your advice."
Pitos glanced at me warily. I had had the plan as I lazed in the velvet water. Pitos was already starting to guess it.
"Currents are very dangerous. Not to be trusted, except by harbour."
"How about between Daphaeu and the other island? it can't be more than a quarter mile. The sea looks smooth enough, once you break away from the shoreline here."
"No," said Pitos. I waited for him to say there were no fish, or a lot of fish, or that his brother had got a broken thumb, or something of the sort. But Pitos did not resort to this. Troubled and angry, he stabbed my cigarette into the turf half-smoked. "Why do you want to go to the island so much?"
"Why does nobody else want me to go there?"
He looked up then, and into my eyes. His own were very black, sensuous, carnal, earthbound eyes, full of orthodox sins, and extremely young in a sense that had nothing to do with physical age. but with race. I suppose, the youngness of ancient things, like Pan himself, quite possibly.
"Well," I said at last, "are you going to tell me, or not?
Because believe me, I intend to swim over there, today or tomorrow."
"No," he said again. And then; "You should not go. On me island there is a-" and he said a word in some tongue neither Greek nor Turkish, not even the corrupt Spanish that sometimes peregrinates from Malta.
"A what?"
Pitos shrugged helplessly. He gazed out to sea, safe sea without islands. He seemed to be putting something together in his mind, and! let him do it, very curious now, pleasantly unnerved by this waft of the occult I had already suspected to be the root cause of the ban.
Eventually he turned back to me, treated me once more to the primordial innocence of his stare, and announced:
"The cunning one."
"Ah," I said. Both irked and amused, 1 found myself smiling. At this, Pitos' face grew savage with pure rage, an expression I had never witnessed before-the facade kept for foreigners had wel! and truly come down.
"Pitos," I said, "I don't understand."
"Meda," he said then. the Greek word, old Greek.
"Wait," I said. I caught at the name, which was wrong, trying to fit it to a memory. Then the list came back to me, actually from Graves, the names which meant "the cunning" -Meda, Medea, Medusa.
"Oh," I said. I hardly wanted to offend him further by bursting into loud mirth. At the same time, even while I was trying not to laugh, I was aware of the hair standing up on my scalp and neck. "You're telling me there is a gorgon on the island."
Pitos grumbled unintelligibly, stabbing the dead cigarette over and over into the ground.
"I'm sorry, Pitos, but it can't be Medusa. Someone cut her head off quite a few years ago. A guy called Perseus."
His face erupted into the awful expression again, mouth in a rictus, tongue starting to protrude, eyes flaring at me-quite abruptly I realized he wasn't raging, but imitating the visual panic-contortions of a man turning inexorably to stone. Since that is what the gorgon is credited with, literally petrifying men by the sheer horror of her countenance, it now seemed almost pragmatic of Pitos to be demonstrating. It was, too, a creditable facsimile of the sculpted gorgon's face sometimes used to seal ovens and jars. I wondered where he had seen one to copy it so well.
"All right," 1 said. "O.K.. Pitos, fine." I fished in my shirt, which was lying on the ground, and took out some money to give him, but he recoiled. "I'm sorry," I said, "I don't think it merits the ring. Unless you'd care to row me over there after all."
The boy rose. He looked at me with utter contempt, and without another word, before striding off up the shore. The mashed cigarette protruded from the grass, and I lay and watched it, the tiny strands of tobacco slowly crisping in the heat of the sun, as I plotted my route from Daphaeu.
Dawn seemed an amiable hour. No one in particular about on that side of the island, the water chill but flushing quickly with warmth as the sun reached over it. And the tide in the right place to navigate the rocks…
Yes, dawn would be an excellent time to swim out to the gorgon's island.
The gods were on my side, I concluded, as I eased myself out into the open sea the following morning. Getting clear of the rocks was no problem, their channels only half filled by the returning tide. While just beyond Daphaeu's coast I picked up one of those contrary currents that lace the island's edges and which, tide or no, would funnel me away from shore.
The swim was ideal, the sea limpid and no longer any more than cool. Sunlight filled in the waves and touched Daphaeu's retreating face with gold. Barely altered in a thousand years, either rock or sea or sun. And yet one knew that against all the claims of romantic fiction, this place did not look now as once it had. Some element in the air, or in time itself, changes things. A young man of the Bronze Age, falling asleep at sunset in his own era, waking at sunrise in mine, looking about him, would not have known where he was. I would swear to that.
Some thoughts I had leisure for in my facile swim across to the wooded island moored off Daphaeu.
As I had detected, the approach was smooth, virtually inviting. I cruised in as if sliding on butter. A rowboat would have had no more difficulty. The shallows were clear, empty of rocks, and if anything greener than the water off Daphaeu. I had not looked much at Medusa's Island (I had begun jokingly to call it this), as I crossed, knowing I would have all the space on my arrival. So I found myself wading in on a seamless beach of rare glycerine sand, and looking up, saw the mass of trees spilling from the skyThe effect was incredibly lush, so much heavy green, and seemingly quite impenetrable, although the sun struck in glistening shafts, lodging like arrows in the foliage, which reminded me very intensely of huge clusters of grapes on a vine- Anything might lie behind such a barricade.