It was already beginning to be hot. Dry, I put on the loose cotton shirt, and ate breakfast packed in the same waterproof wrapper, standing on the beach impatient to get on.
As I moved forward, a bird shrilled somewhere in its cage of boughs, sounding an alarm of invasion. But surely the birds, too, would be stone, on Medusa's Island, if the legends were correct? And when I stumbled across the remarkable stone carving of a man in the forest, I would pause in shocked amazement at its verisimilitude to the life…
Five minutes into the thickets of the wood, I did indeed stumble on a carving, but it was of a moss-grown little faun.
My pleasure in the discovery was considerably lessened, however, when investigation told me it was scarcely classical in origin. Circa 1920 would be nearer the mark.
A further minute and I had put the faun from my mind.
The riot of waterfalling plants through which I had been picking my way broke open suddenly on an inner vista much wider than 1 had anticipated, while the focal point of the vista threw me completely. 1 cannot say what I had really been expecting. The grey-white stalks of pillars, some temple shrine, the spring with its votary of greenish rotted bronze, none of these would have surprised me. On the other hand, to find a house before me took me completely by surprise. I stood and looked at it in abject dismay, cursing its wretched normalcy, until I gradually began to see the house was not normal, in the accepted sense.
It had been erected probably at the turn of the century, when such things were done. An eccentric two-storeyed building, intransigently European, that is, the Europe of the North, with its dark walls and arched roofing. Long windows, smothered by the proximity of the wood, received and refracted no light. The one unique and startling feature-startling because of its beauty-was the parade of columns that ran along the terrace, in form and choreography for all the world like the columns of Knossos, differing only in colour. For these stems of the gloomy house were of a luminous sea-green marble, and shone as the windows did not.
Before the house was a stretch of rough-cut lawn, tamarisk. and one lost dying olive free. As I was staring, an apparition seemed to manifest out of me centre of the tree.
For a second we peered at each other, before he came from the bushes with a clashing of gnarled brown forearms. He might have been an elderly satyr; I. patently, was only a swimmer, with my pale foreigner's tan, my bathing trunks, the loose shirt. It occurred to me at last that I was conceivably trespassing. 1 wished my Greek were better.
He planted himself before me and shouted intolerantly, and anyone's Greek was good enough to get his drift. "Go! Go!"
He was ranting, and he began to wave a knife with which, presumably, he had been pruning or mutilating something.
"Go, you go!"
I said 1 had been unaware anybody lived on the island. He took no notice. He went on waving the knife, and his attitude provoked me. I told him sternly to put the knife down, that I would leave when I was ready, that I had seen no notice to the effect that the island was private property. Generally I would never take a chance like this with someone so obviously qualified to be a lunatic, but my position was so vulnerable, so ludicrous, so entirely indefensible, that 1 fell bound to act firmly. Besides which, having reached the magic grotto and found it was not as I had visualized, I was still very reluctant to abscond with only a memory of dark windows and sea-green columns to brood upon.
The maniac was by now quite literally foaming, due most likely to a shortage of teeth, but the effect was alarming, not to mention unaesthetic. As I was deciding which fresh course to take and if there might be one, a woman's figure came out on to the terrace. I had the impression of a white frock, before an odd, muffled voice called out a rapid-too rapid for my translation-stream of peculiarly accented Greek. The old 1^6 swung around, gazed at the figure, raised his arms, and baited another foaming torrent to the effect that I was a bandit, or some other kind of malcontent. While he did so, agitated as I was becoming, I nevertheless took in what I could of the woman standing between the columns. She was mostly in shadow, just the faded white dress, with a white scarf at the neck, marking her position. And then there was an abrupt flash of warmer pallor that was her hair. A blonde Greek, or maybe just a peroxided Greek. At any rate, no snakes.
The drama went on, from his side, from hers. I finally got tired of it, went by him and walked toward the terrace, pondering, rather too late, if 1 might not be awarded the knife in my back. But almost as soon as I started to move, she leaned toward a little, and she called another phrase to him, which this time I made out, telling him to let me come on.
When 1 reached the foot of the terrace steps, I halted, really involuntarily, struck by something strange about her.
Just as the strangeness of the house had begun to strike me, -^ibt its evident strangeness, the ill-marriage to location, the green pillars, but a strangeness of atmosphere, items the unconscious eye notices, where the physical eye is blind, and " will not explain. And so with her. What was it? Still in shadow, I had the impression she might be in her early thirties, from her figure, her movements, but she had turned \ away as 1 approached, adjusting some papers on a wicker ' table.
"Excuse me," I said. I stopped, and spoke in English. For some reason I guessed she would be familiar with the language, perhaps only since it was current on Daphaeu. "Excuse me. I had no idea the island was private. No one gave me the slightest hint-'' "You are English," she broke in, in the vernacular, proving the guess to be correct.
"Near enough. I find it easier to handle than Greek, I confess."
"Your Greek is very good," she said, with the indifferent patronage of one who is multi-lingual. I stood there under the steps, already fascinated. Her voice was the weirdest I had ever heard, muffled, almost unattractive, and with the most incredible accent, not Greek at all. The nearest approXima^n 1 could come up with was Russian, but I could not be sure.
"Well," I said. I glanced over my shoulder and registered that the frothy satyr had retired into his shrubbery; the knife glinted as it slashed tamarisk in lieu of me. "Well, I suppose I should retreat to Daphaeu. Or am I permitted to stay?"
"Go, stay," she said. "I do not care at all."
She turned then, abruptly, and my heart slammed into the base of my throat. A childish silly reaction, yet I was quite unnverved, for now I saw what it was that had seemed vaguely peculiar from a distance. The lady on Medusa's island was masked.
She remained totally still, and let me have my reaction, neither helping nor hindering me.
It was an unusual mask, or usual-I am unfamiliar with the norm of such things. It was made of some matte light substance that toned well with the skin of her arms and hands, possibly not so well with that of her neck, where the scari^ provided camouflage. Besides which,.the chin of the mask, this certainly an extra to any mask I had ever seen, continued under her own. The mask's physiognomy was bland, nondescriptly pretty in a way that was somehow grossly insulting to her. Before confronting the mask, if I had tried to judge the sort of face she would have. I would have suspected a coarse, rather heavy beauty, probably redeemed by one chiseled feature, a small slender nose, perhaps. The mask. however, was vacuous- It did not suit her, was not true to her. Even after three minutes I could tell as much, or thought I could, which amounts to the same thing.
The blonde hair, seeming natural as the mask was not, cascaded down, lush as the foliage of the island. A blonde Greek, then. like the golden Greeks of Homer's time. when gods walked the earth in disguise.
In the end, without any help or hindrance from her, as I have said. I pulled myself together. As she had mentioned no aspect of her state, neither did I. I simply repeated what I had said before: "Am 1 permitted to stay?" The mask went on looking at me. The astonishing voice said: