Well, well, a new day.
Noonday burned above the olive grove, in the trees among the boughs, on the ground where the little lizards stalked with their fragile and considered tread. Crazed with heat and the wild blue light, we rolled and writhed on the clay, grappling, joined at thigh and mouth, but she would not yield, and would not speak, and fought me in a savage silence. All round about us the air was singing, and through the leaves and the bitter fruits, something slowly moved. The lizards saw it and were still, transfixed by a hypnotic throbbing of the air and light, the yellow sun, the music and weird chanting high in the limitless sky. The limp leaves stirred, and the lizards watched, and the sun-drunk piping song grew loud and cried, and cried, and receded, slowly, with a dying fall, and died, into the trembling distance. I released her, and lay on my back in a silence of my own. She sat with her arms around her legs and her chin resting on her knees. With a quivering lower lip clenched in her teeth, she sifted a handful of dust through her fingers. There were leaves in her yellow hair. I got to my feet and went away, stooping under the branches and plucking the dull green buds. She took up her towel and followed me.
On the road, I turned my face away from her, whistling carelessly. The cicadas sang in the fields, and somewhere, distantly, a dog was barking. A far clear silence was abroad on the air. She said,
‘Mr White — Ben, I have something to say. If you want us to remain friends then you must never do that again.’
‘Fuck.’
‘What —’
‘Look, you can see the yacht from here.’
‘That is not what you said. I heard what you said. I think, Mr White, it would be better if we do not see each —’
‘Listen, lady.’
‘Well?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
One pace, two, three paces through a tight silence, and then,
‘I am a married woman,’ she said.
I began to laugh. I could not stop. She stood and glared at me, quivering with fury, said something which I did not hear, stamped her foot and stalked away. I galloped after her, flapping my hands.
‘Helena, listen, I’m sorry. Helena.’
I caught her arm, but she wrenched away from me and strode on down the hill, arms stiffly flying, knees bouncing, an angry little soldier. I trotted by her side.
‘I’m very bad. The lady is very good. I’m nothing but a big stiff prick.’
‘Do not think that I do not know these words.’
‘Yes yes, but listen, I love you.’
Whoops, she halted. We stood and faced each other, panting. With her head on one side, frowning as she tried to absorb what I had said, she stared at me, absently fidgeting with her hair. I shrugged, and threw out my arms, grinning helplessly.
‘How can —’ she began, but I gave her no time to finish. Spiderlike, legs and arms crook’d, I took a leap at her. We crashed into the ditch among the stones. Helena screamed. I had been a little too enthusiastic. A stab of pain shot through my leg, and then I found myself lying on my back, clutching my knee, and Helena was running headlong down into the village with a small angry cloud of dust following on her heels. Gone, gone forever. I took up a rock and gave my already wounded knee a fine new wallop. I was left with a crushed slab of chocolate and a burst bag of grapes. I laid my face into her fragrant towel and wept bitter tears of rage and pain.
Like salt-sea-washed grapes on the tongue, her first kisses, fierce through their unwillingness, stayed with me for days, a memory, a tiny desolation, tangible as the pain of a hot tear in a wound. I could not rid myself of her taste, her smell, the sound of her voice. She clung to me, a phantom of the earth and air. I crawled about the village, the island, yearning for a sight of her, and I think that had I seen her, in a distance of miles even, I would have fainted. And why, why such frenzy? She was, after all, a banal, tiresome little woman. The reasons were too devious for me to recognize then, and too devious for me to admit them yet. I must creep toward them by circuitous routes. Watch me closely.
So much happened before I was to see her again.
I climbed the steps and went down the dim corridor. The door stood open an inch. I knocked. There was no reply. Small, strange sounds came from the room. I put my toe to the door and pushed it open. Chairs were overturned, and the table on three legs leaned drunkenly against the wall. The fourth leg had been ripped off and used to smash small breakables. A tape recorder lay with its guts uncoiled all over the floor. The sheets were torn from the bed, and the mattress slashed. Papers were scattered everywhere, like a flock of slaughtered white birds. Erik stood in the midst of the carnage, gazing thoughtfully around him, while he in turn was scrutinized by the doubtful eyes of the Virgin on the wall, one of the few survivors, which was only fitting. I stepped into the room and closed the door. He glanced at me vaguely. I opened my mouth to ask a question, but thought better of it.
He set the chairs upright, and stuffed his clothes back into the disembowelled wardrobe. From its top shelf he took down a battered briefcase, and, sitting with it in the middle of the floor, he began to sort his papers into it. Silence lay around him, and, beyond the window, the day was filled with little sighs and shouts. He worked steadily, smoothing out the sheets and lining up the edges, pinning them together, weeping silently, unconsciously, lugubrious great tears falling in torrents around him. When the last papers were retrieved, and the last cutting gathered, he slipped his passport into a side pocket of the case. There was also a cheque book from a Swiss bank, an official form of some kind, and a packet of musty fruit sweets. Satisfied, he took the lot under his arm and went past me into the corridor. I followed him. He carefully closed and locked the door, and then, as an afterthought, drew back his foot and kicked a gaping hole in the flimsy panels. He limped out into the street, wiping his eyes.
‘Erik.’
He would not listen. We raced through the streets, Erik bounding along on his long legs with me trotting in his wake. People turned to stare at us. A yacht lay at anchor by the end of the pier. We made toward it. For one fearful moment, I thought that it was Julian’s, but it was smaller and grubbier than that magnificent craft. In the stern, a sailor with a peaked cap was sprawled on the deck, a bottle of beer in his paw. Erik halted at the top of the landing stage, and the sailor gave us both a look. My mouth was open. The sailor was quite calm.
‘Erik,’ I whispered frantically. ‘That’s the one, that …’
He was not listening to me. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and called,
‘Where is he?’
The sailor squinted at him, at the teeth and the grey eyes burning behind the spectacles. He transferred a cigarette stub from behind his ear to his mean mouth, and with leisurely contempt he asked,
‘Who?’
Erik sighed. The sailor’s gaze wavered, and he shouted,
‘Boss.’
The cabin door opened, and an elderly man in a loose white shirt and fisherman’s blue trousers came out on deck.
‘Erik,’ he cried, opening his arms. ‘My dear Erik.’
Thin grey hair, dark in streaks from too much oil, plastered down on a rapidly balding skull, a fine face with features sharp as a hawk’s, and a tall, once well-made frame now going to seed, with an incongruous paunch bulging from the middle of it.