Gospel (69 page)

“Neh, Karoulia,”
the monk nodded in assent.

“Such blue water,” continued the professor. “I would like to take a swim, ha ha!” O'Hanrahan looked back to see the fisherman piloting the boat was preoccupied scraping something off his shoe with a stick.

“
Apagorevete to kolimbi,
” Nikolas said, shaking his finger.

“No swimming, huh?”

Nikolas explained that it is against the rules to swim in the Virgin's Garden, or to exhibit oneself undressed at any time.

“But you could swim with your clothes on?”

The monk looked at him oddly the second before O'Hanrahan lunged at him and pushed him over the side of the boat.
“Dio!”
cried the fisherman, not looking up until he heard the splash. O'Hanrahan leaned back and laughed heartily as if it were a joke. The fisherman, shaking his head horrified, stopped the boat, released the rudder, and stood to help the monk get back in. O'Hanrahan threw Nikolas the life preserver, though it seemed he could tread water. The monk with tears of rage fumed and called O'Hanrahan names. As the fisherman reached for the monk's hand, Nikolas watched O'Hanrahan swipe the cap off the fisherman's head; and as the fisherman tried to grab it back, O'Hanrahan pushed the older man into the Aegean as well, nearly capsizing the boat. O'Hanrahan glanced at the rocky cliffs. In one isolated cave an ancient monk looked on, cackling hysterically.

O'Hanrahan scrambled for the controls as the fisherman and the monk pawed at the underside of the boat trying to reach the gunnels. O'Hanrahan backed the boat away and waved farewell. He was free! O'Hanrahan looked at the Holy Mountain of Athos looming above the milky-blue, late-morning gleam of the Aegean. It would take hours for this to be reported. They would swim and then climb up the cliffs, where no boat could dock to get them, then walk hours back over these crags to Lavras … six hours, a day perhaps. No phones, no electricity, no walkie-talkies! God bless primitive Byzantium after all!

O'Hanrahan fixed the old man's cap on his head, put his head down in order to be inconspicuous, and motored steadily along the shore, passing the landmarks of the previous days, Dionysiou, Gregoriou, Simonopetra … and looked at his watch. Twenty, thirty minutes, he'd be back in Ouranopolis to explain to Lucy why he had missed his appointed telephone call. If the fuel held out. He might well make it back in Ouranopolis before the scheduled ferry and the possible culprit arrived—how's that for perfect!

But the fuel didn't hold out.

*   *   *

“Stavros,” Lucy began, taking a deep breath, “I don't want you to think that just because…”

Stavros, sitting on the edge of the bed, looked up at her warmly.

“… that just because what happened—”

“Ehhhhh,” he said, not letting her finish, grabbing her, tickling her, rolling with her on the bed. “I know, I know,” he said. “You love me more than all of the other of the boys, hm?”

She giggled. “Of course not.”

“You don't? You don't?” More tickling. The tortures of the Greek inquisition until she recanted and said she loved him. “See,” he said, “I knew you love me.”

“Yes, and you love me?” she said lightly, her hand poised to attack him.

“Ehhhhh … maybe—”

She attacked. But he wasn't ticklish on his hard stomach or around his neck, so she resorted to pulling chest hairs.

“
Neh!
I love you,” he said. A moment later he slipped an arm around her middle, nuzzling against her breasts, which she had shielded with the bedsheet. “I get to come visit you in USA?”

“Sure.”

“You to make me stay with your home?”

“Yes, you're welcome.”

He laughed victoriously. I'm glad everyone wants to go to America, Lucy thought serenely. “So,” she asked him, “how many girls have you … have you done this with?”

“A meelion.”

Lucy snorted in disbelief.

“
Kilia
—you have the word? Like kilometer…”

“A thousand,” Lucy reasoned aloud. “That's just as believable as a million.” But could it be true?

(Close to it.)

Lucy asked, “How many American girls?”

“One other American,” he said. “From Canada.”

“I see.”

“But, eh, not as bootiful as you.”

Now don't go and get kind on me, thought Lucy, or I really will fall in love with you. She mussed his hair that he had earlier styled in ringlets, arranged to perfection.

“Ehh ehh ehh!” he cried, jumping up and retrieving his flung-aside bathing suit. It was cold and damp now and Stavros made a great show of shivering as he pulled it up his legs. Lucy looked at his nakedness desperately, sensing that this sight she must not forget; soon it would all be gone and she would spend much of her lifetime longing to retrieve this proximate beauty—

“I go get food,” he announced, checking the mirror for his hair.

Lucy wished she could get one more hug out of him, but no, she wasn't going to act … you know, the least bit needing or overly fond. She had to be as cool as he was or … or she just might get hooked on him and that would be the von Hindenburg, Krakatoa, the
Titanic,
the Johnstown Flood, the Chicago Fire.

“Ieeah soo,”
he said, closing the door behind him.

“Bye-bye.”

Lucy lay on her back and looked up at the ceiling. I suppose, objectively, he's no Casanova, or whatever the Greek equivalent is—come on, stupid, you've studied this stuff for ten years: Adonis, Apollo, Hyacinthus … though that was sort of a gay myth, Lucy remembered. Anyway, lovemaking with Stavros, their initial act, lasted five minutes tops with her pretending not to be scared, nervous that he would see how inexperienced she was … or maybe that was what got him so excited suddenly. Anyway. It's done. That was it. And when he got up to take a shower and pulled her along behind him, that was great too, even better. She relived it. Lucy's impulse was to reach for a towel, cover herself up … He ridiculed her modesty—so American, he laughed. Anyway, in the shower he was so tender and funny and as soon as they got out, Stavros was not sure whether he should leave or stay and that's when Lucy said stay, reaching over and, well, persuading him. Then they made love again on the bed, a bit more properly and leisurely. Lucy lay there contemplating the shameless, wanton things she had done without a moment's guilt or hesitation.

It was midafternoon now.

I'm alone again, she sighed, running her hands over the sheets. But this alone and the alone-before-Stavros have different textures. I am not
quite
as alone as I was when I was by myself before. Where's all the guilt I thought I'd be feeling by now? Yes, Lucy decided, somewhere deep down, there is a sense of regret—for
not getting here sooner!

But, Lucy told herself, I couldn't have done it any sooner, not the way I was; it had to happen along my own scale of time. And yesterday I was ready and today I am ready again and forever, for love, for sex, for more travel and new faces, new sights, new thrills, and this brimming, overfull new person named Lucy who seems to have erased so much of what she was before in a single instant, who is born again with one unreasoned thought in her head:
MORE.
More of everything! More of this deep, boundless love I feel for … well, not for Stavros, but for the world of love he represents, the wondrous universe I have been admitted into at last!

Lucy lifted her hand which had the scent of Stavros on it and placed it on her cheek, breathing in the aroma of salvation from the dreary path she would have traveled. Tears came to her eyes and she hugged herself, sweet giddy sensations: Thank God this happened. Forgive me, Lord, because I know it was all wrong and against what's in the Bible but I did not know what God's gift to Humankind was or the range of human feelings or this most common human moment—none of it until my travels, which You have been a part of, Lord, led me here. Forgive me for this, but thank You for my
fallenness,
my error, my sin … Suddenly, I think it would be quite the worst thing imaginable to die, and I am panicked that it might happen so soon as to deprive me of other nights of yes, other sins.

(You have discovered the World, Lucy.)

Let me risk suggesting that You, Holy Spirit, maybe don't even disapprove so much …

(You want to watch what you make a habit of.)

Lucy Dantan is bodily alive as she never was!

(But that must fade and tarnish.)

I am trying to dredge up some Catholic guilt but I swear I can't feel a hint of it! Oh, but think of the regret I would have felt if I had let this opportunity pass me by! It was now or never! My life was poised on a single fulcrum and that was it. Now my life will be different in some very sophisticated ways …

(You have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge.)

… and I'm not going to be such a moron about things from now on. No more shyness, no more false humility and insulting myself into failing. Imagine the emptiness and regret had I not seized that moment, had I sent him away from the balcony—how perilous it seems in retrospect! How he could have run away or how I could have thrown him off and protected my … my former, empty, dried-up life. Without him I would have been eternally wondering, bitter, joyless, and alone.

(No. I would have been with you.)

Such confusion, Lucy sighed, feeling all things at once. Lucy rolled about the cool white sheet and pressed the pillow closer to herself. God bless ridiculous, improbable Stavros, wretched me, and the man who led me here as Paul led Silas, dear, terrifying Dr. O'Hanrahan.

*   *   *

“Why, God, why?” O'Hanrahan yelled to the heavens as the boat muttered to a stop. He pulled, yanked, manipulated, kicked, and hammered at the motor but, here, a few yards offshore, miles from Ouranopolis, he was out of gas. “Is this Your idea of a joke?” he cried aloud. “How long, O Lord, how long? Damn You!” he added, kicking the motor.

(That's no way to talk to the Almighty.)

It's all those Virgin Mary jokes, O'Hanrahan thought, the years of blasphemy. Mister Smart-ass, had to tell Lucy the spurting-breast stories in Athens, and now the Old Bag has delivered you up for this! For God's sake, he lectured himself, think clearly, think clearly:

I am a wanted man. They'll soon find the boat … unless I pull it ashore and hide it. Then what? I better start walking the length of the peninsula and back into Ouranopolis. They hardly are going to comb the whole of Mt. Athos looking for me. Greek police don't care that much. He squinted at the shore behind him. I've just passed—what the hell was it?—Dochiarou Monastery. From there, I recall, I can get to the trail that runs the length of the peninsula. Ten, twenty miles? In this sun? And I can't stop in any monastery because there'll be some damn monastic equivalent of an all-points bulletin out for me. No water, no food. The rugged climbs.

He put his head in his hands. While he looked down he saw the fisherman's paddle. He took it up and began to paddle to the shore, the way the slight current was moving him anyway.

Of course, he thought, I could walk along the shore. No mountain climbing, but I'd be in plain sight of anyone looking for me … no, the original plan was better: take the high road, in the trees, among the hills. Who knows? I might be able to find some remote skete or
kathisma
that would feed me, that hadn't heard about the desecrations—

And at that moment, far on the horizon, a military-gray Greek Coast Guard boat, flashing lights and sirens, passed by, speeding farther down the peninsula.

O'Hanrahan felt himself shudder: Could they be after me?

Surely not yet … But what if another fishing boat saw the men in the water and went to retrieve them and then radioed Ouranopolis—

Or worse.

Oh, Jesus God Mary and the All the Saints, worse, much worse.

O'Hanrahan felt a chill pass over him from his head down his arms where his hair stood on end: what if for some reason one of the men drowned? What if the old man had a heart attack? The young monk sank in his heavy, waterlogged robes? Desecrating ikons and stealing a boat and assault and battery and fleeing knowing a policeman was waiting to see me—O'Hanrahan swallowed though no saliva was in his mouth—and what if
murder
is now the charge? Oh Lord, why couldn't I have just gone along to the police, explained it and had it done with in a few minutes? Why has my life gone this way? Why do you bring me here in this wasteland to finish my life of error and pain?

(Get on with it, and stop whining. And when you talk to Us, Patrick, a bit more respect, please.)

He paddled again hurriedly, breathing quickly. Here I am trying to do something for God, having devoted my life to words about God and God can't do me one little goddam favor—

(You're not searching for Matthias for Us and don't pretend you are. You're doing it for yourself, some last bit of earthly glory. Money, fame, rubbing their noses in it, We've heard all your reasons. You've never once thought how We might feel about it.)

“Voices,” he mumbled, now short of breath, sweat pouring down his brow, this whole Athos adventure being his first physical exercise in years. “Greece and all the voices. You always hear voices…”

The shore approached. His thoughts again deteriorated: I'll never make it. After a few hours in this sun my heart will stop. That's how it will end, one big folly, O'Hanrahan's biggest and stupidest yet. Oh they'll enjoy this one back in Chicago! He died
how?
On Mt. Athos? After doing what? And what a shame about that young monk, drowning like that … Oh God, please don't let that have happened! Don't make me an accidental murderer!

(Selfish motivations, always. Not even a thought for young Nikolas, poor thing. Though he is a bit of a prig.)