She Wakes (14 page)

    That and dump their parents.

    It wasn’t easy being seventeen and in love despite what you saw on TV. You had to sneak around for one thing. You made it in cars and behind bushes at the country club and at friends’ houses when their parents weren’t home. And when you couldn’t make it, it killed you.

    They’d managed to fix that here.

    Neatly too. Coming away on vacation without either Linda’s parents or Will’s knowing that the other guy’s kid was going. Luckily the McRaes and the Sandlers didn’t talk. Luckily they hated one another.

    The old Romeo and Juliet routine, thought Will, had its points.

    It was a nowhere beach day because of the storm so they’d hiked to the old monastery, which was pretty boring.

    Linda killed a ladybug.

    And that was about the height of their day.

    Unless you counted the evergreen. That was kind of neat. Who’d expect to find an evergreen tree in Greece?

    Linda broke a branch off that.

    She was a big strong girl, Linda. Athletic.

    And Will guessed she just liked to break things.

    

    

    …he cursed her and cursed her. Cursed the day he’d married her, cursed the pretty oval face and bright black eyes, the slim figure, the flirtatious smile. At heart she was a village girl and would always be. When what was wanted was a city girl. Or better yet, a tourist girl. A blonde, maybe. Yes, a blonde from England or Sweden or California.

    And now of course she was pregnant. A year after now she’d be pregnant again. That was the way with village girls. And in five years or maybe less, he thought, slim lovely Daphne Mavrodopolous will be fat the way they all are fat and the eyes will not smile for me anymore but only for the children.

    Five years after that she’d have a mustache.

    
I have never seen a tourist girl,
he thought,
with a mustache.

    Kostas Mavrodopolous watched his eighteen-year-old wife clean the tables of his waterfront taverna with a damp cloth until he could not stand to watch anymore and stared out angrily over the rough dark waters.

    Today, because of the sea, there would be even fewer tourists than usual.

    He was twenty-two years old.

    He had only just learned he was about to be a father.

    So far his taverna had not caught on. Only in July and August, when everyone in Mykonos made money, did he make money.

    His wife was happy. She sang as she worked. She was going to have a baby and all the women were happy for her. For the village girl.

    Two years now he had tried and still had nothing.

    He could think of only one thing that would comfort him. Tonight after closing, after the chairs were stacked and the tables tucked away he would go to the bars, where she could not follow. Tonight and however many nights it took thereafter. It would help nothing. He would find no answer to his problems there. But it was something.

    He would find himself a tourist girl.

    

    

    Among those present on the island of Santorini when the earthquake hit was Tasos Katsimbalis.

    Koonelee Tasos, industrialist, landowner, importer and rabbit thief had arrived the day before in order to supervise the loading of crates of Santorini wine worth 2.2 million American dollars, bound for New York City on the Greek freighter Herakles. Absences due to the forthcoming Easter holiday had caused delays and half the crates remained to be loaded when the quake hit at 4:55 that morning.

    The crates survived.

    Tasos did not.

    He had chosen a hotel overlooking the bay. From the terrace it was possible to watch the Herakles far below. At 4:55, like nearly everyone else on the island, he was asleep, having sampled three glasses of the local product. Wine made Tasos sleepy. He had been reading a book- Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough. It lay open on his lap when a four-foot slab of concrete from the floor above fell sideways onto his chest, cutting him nearly in half and it plummeted down beside him when an entire quarter-section of the bedroom slid screeching down the mountain.

    

    

    

    He finally made the phone call to Elaine from his hotel room in Athens Saturday night. It was just after ten o’clock Holy Saturday. In another two hours it would be Easter.

    The line was good for a change.

    “Jordan! My god! Are you all right?”

    He could hear the concern and relief in her voice and wished he hadn’t waited so long to phone her.

    “A little head-cold. Otherwise I’m fine.”

    The cold was more like flu. He’d been gobbling aspirin and what passed for vitamin C here-a dissolvable pill like an Alka-Seltzer that tasted like some evil orange Kool-Aid. But the fever held on.

    “You’re in Athens?”

    “Yes. You have the number on the pad there by the phone.”

    “I know. I tried to call you.”

    “I got the message. I’m sorry.”

    There was a pause on her end of the line. The wire crackled.

    “Jordan, what are you doing there?”

    Good question.

    “I’m on my way to Mykonos. Soon as the holiday’s over. It’s silly trying to travel now. The whole country’s traveling. And Tasos is right-Greeks board a ship as though it were the last one going anywhere and get off as though it were sinking.”

    “You’ve seen Tasos?”

    “A couple days ago, yes. He’s well, sends you his love.”

    “So what’s going on in Mykonos?”

    “I’m meeting someone there. Business. I’ll call when I have an address for you. I'm sorry to keep you waiting like this. I really am.”

    “It’s been days, Jordan.”

    “I’m sorry, honestly. Things just got…out of hand here.”

    There was another long pause on her end. He had the feeling she was reading between the lines, gathering more than he was telling. He couldn’t help that. He wished he could read her now but he couldn’t. The ability was fickle. He didn’t suppose the fever or the overseas line helped much either.

    When she spoke again her voice was softer, more composed.

    “Your Ampcomp people are making me crazy. They call here twice a day.”

    He smiled. “Hold them off awhile, will you?”

    “I will.”

    “I miss you, Elaine.”

    “I miss you too. You know I do.”

    “I’ll phone as soon as I get to Mykonos. Promise.”

    “You’re not an easy man, Jordan, you know that.”

    “I know.”

    “So promise me something else then.”

    “What.”

    “Promise me you won’t do anything…that isn’t business…without telling me.”

    He laughed. “Like what? Take a lover?”

    “Don’t play games, Jordan. I’m serious.”

    “I know. I promise. I love you.”

    “I love you too. You take care of that cold. You sound terrible.”

    “I will.”

    “I love you.”

    He hung up and leaned back upon the bed. His head pounded.

    He sat up and took two more aspirin and skimmed through yesterday’s
International Herald Tribune
.

    His stocks were mostly up in a generally lousy market. That was nice.

    Mount St. Helens seemed set to erupt again and geologists were pulling their study teams out of there.

    In France they were still stalling after nine full months on the execution of a major Iranian terrorist whose photo stared out at Chase bale-fully. The government was fearful of reprisals. An editorial accused them of cowardice.

    And the Italians seemed to have found themselves a brand-new miracle. In Porto Ercole the figure of a Madonna kept appearing in the bole of a cypress tree.

    He folded the paper and put it aside. Maybe a walk, he thought, to clear my head. Fresh air.

    

    

    He walked slowly up to the plaka, the old town. It was nearly deserted. Normally this time of night it would be churning with hustlers, vendors, bouzouki players, tourists. But with most of the tavernas and shops closed up for the holiday the American kid on the comer, with the guitar and the rotten nose-to Chase it looked like skin cancer-was getting no action at all and sat there in his dirty jeans strumming intro-spectively.

    He headed for the little church at Kadathineaon and Sotiros streets.

    A line of Greeks-families-moved slowly ahead of him.

    He passed through the wrought-iron gates. There were twenty people or so in the courtyard outside the church, waiting. He stood beneath the trees and could see inside through the open door to where they were lighting votive candles and talking, a small cheerful little crowd, the icons and altar behind them.

    Candlelight threw a glow into the courtyard. Beside him a woman fingered her rosary. Men held firecrackers and sparklers. A teenage girl came around and handed each of them a long thin candle.

    It was nearly twelve.

    The crowd began to file out of the church.

    They filled the courtyard. There was quiet conversation and laughter. Most everyone was smiling. To Chase it looked more like a picnic or the Fourth of July than a religious occasion. It was hard to remember that this was the most important day on the Orthodox Calendar, but that was the way with the Church in Greece. It was never somber. Even the priests drank and sinned.

    He knew that the early Church Fathers had grafted their holy day onto the pagan Festival of Adonis, who had died for the love of a goddess and was reborn again each spring. In ancient times, a very cheerful occasion. Here, at least, it still was.

    The priest took the dais now. He was singing. The crowd grew quieter.

    The candlelight in the trees, the soft Eastern-sounding music-it was very pleasant here. Even his headache had relented some. He was glad he’d come.

    The priest raised his arms and shouted, “Hristos Anesti!"
Christ is Risen!

    Church bells began to peal from near and far away throughout the city. From balconies of homes above him sparklers and skyrockets flared. Beyond the gate fireworks exploded.

    In the courtyard they lit their candles, passing the flame candle to candle. The man beside him lit Chase’s for him and then embraced him, kissed him on the cheek. Chase kissed him back. A little woman with a gold front tooth turned from her family and kissed him too, warm and welcoming. He found himself smiling, stooping to return the kisses of her little boy and girl as well.

    After a while people began to drift away-many of them, Chase knew, to break' their fast with the blood-red eggs that symbolized the resurrection and rebirth and to drink some wine. Others returned to the church. Another service would begin soon now.

    He stood beneath the trees. He could smell incense thick on the night air, and gunpowder.

    On impulse he went inside.

    He walked to where the votive candles were burning and placed his own, burning low, among them.

    As he took his hand away it guttered out.

    
And,
he thought,
Tasos.

    He saw a crumbling mountainside. A harbor. A man falling amidst a shower of debris.

    He knew there was no help for it. It had happened already.

    He felt a moment of warning, of terrible design.

    Then emptiness.

    He began to cry.

    Faces turned to him in sympathy, even concern-but no one moved to interfere with him. His grief was his own. He stood watching the others place their candles next to his through a growing film of tears. Then suddenly felt like a stranger there and walked away.

    In the morning he had the details from Tasos’ wife. It had been swift anyway. There was that much.

    He told her on the phone why he would not be able to make the funeral, heard the silence at the other end of the line and knew she did not understand.

    For the second time in twenty-four hours he called Elaine.

    

    

    

    The box in which she lay felt thin as paper.

    She sat up slowly, felt a soft fleshy rending from the cold gray shell beneath her like the petals of a flower blossoming outward from the bud.

    She gazed across the room at the altar and the icons. They were poor and worn with age.

    The flowers had no scent

    She looked down at the vault of flesh.

    She waited.

    

    

    “You knew, of course, that she was pregnant?”

    “What?”

    The police lieutenant nodded, tapping the desk with his pencil. Even at noon the station was dingy, airless and dark.

    “Three months pregnant. It is long before you knew her though, correct?”

    He thought of her as he’d seen her the day before, lying in a plain wooden coffin in the tiny church, a lily in her hand. Someone had placed a fifty-drachma piece over her lips.
For Charon,
Xenia said. It is the custom.

    The mortician’s art had failed him. The face did not look peaceful. Even in death she frightened him.

    It was impossible to believe she’d been carrying a baby.

    Something gentle in all that violence.

    “Yes. That’s correct.”