Metro Winds (24 page)

‘You looked at me,' he whispered, and somehow the words were not absurd.

‘I had to be sure,' she said. ‘You would not have known I looked at you, unless you were the one. You would have been blind to me, like all the rest.'

‘Who are you?' he asked, feeling this dream was too real to be a dream.

The dream changed again and he was moving towards the white church with its strangely wide door, slightly ajar. It was not day now, but deep night, and when he touched the gate, instead of being locked, it swung open. A stinging joy rose up in him as he pushed the heavy door. It opened, and a wave of darkness flowed out at him.

He woke to his alarm, the smell of eucalyptus in his nostrils.

On his first full day on Santorini, he went for a long walk. He had decided to allow himself three days of being a tourist, not wanting to begin work when he was jetlagged. He also wanted some of the place to seep into him. All the research in the world could not tell you how it felt to be in a place, after all. But instead of unwinding or thinking about his work, he spent the whole day looking for the woman. He walked to most of the tourist destinations and even took a trip to Ancient Thera. Every wide-brimmed hat or tall woman or woman in a suit or woman with short dark hair jolted his pulse. He could not sit more than a short time in a restaurant without feeling that this was the moment when, if he were walking the streets, he would encounter her.

That night, again he dreamed of her, turning to look at him, but now they were somewhere dark and cold, and the smell of earth and stone was strong about them. She held a candle, and instead of a white suit she wore a black robe.

‘You looked at me,' he said again.

‘I had to be sure before I could tell the others,' she said.

‘Others?'

‘We are the Undimmed,' she said. ‘Come to us.'

He woke again to the alarm and the scent of eucalyptus, determined to find the woman and speak to her. He told himself it was the only way to defuse his growing obsession, but as he walked through the day, the dream still whispered,
Come to us
.

He did not see her, and that night, he dreamed of the church facing the caldera.

The third and fourth days were the same as the first and second, but although the weather continued bright and hot the wind grew stronger, and at night in the restaurants, the blue and white tablecloths had to be pegged to prevent them flying away. There was a chill in the air which reminded him that summer had ended.

It was the seventh day before common sense forced him to accept that the woman had probably left the island. Few people would stay on a place like Santorini as long as he intended to remain. Even in the week he had been there, the number of people in restaurants in the evenings had dropped steadily, with a corresponding rise in friendliness on the part of waiters. No longer run off their feet by the tourist hordes of mid-season, they were pleased to stop and talk, happy to answer questions, especially after he bought them a Metaxa or two.

He played his usual role in these moments, asking them about themselves and their lives, listening intently, because he was genuinely interested, so that they failed to notice he had told them nothing about himself. But no one had seen the woman in white, and no matter how circuitously he brought up the question, Case got the same response: a frown, a slight look of confusion and then a shrug or shake of the head. Some would suggest she must have left on a tour ship. That did occasionally happen when a person was rich enough to pay the exorbitant price of a ticket and set off on such a journey on a whim. It was possible, for each day new tour ships came, and the town would fill up from midmorning till evening, then the liner would sound its mournful call, and gradually the shops and restaurants and streets would empty out as the visitors returned to their ship.

It was the second day of the second week, and late afternoon when he was returning from an early meal through the empty streets to the villa. He was walking across the open ground before the church and there was a strong wind. He was so busy leaning into it that he was almost on top of an old woman in black before he noticed her, standing in the centre of the stony square and looking at the church. He glanced at the church, too, and found it was stained red by the sunset. Its gate was closed, and the heavy timber door behind it as well, as on every occasion he had passed by since that first morning. He felt the eyes of the old woman on him and on impulse he turned to speak to her. She watched him come closer with black eyes set in a nest of wrinkles so thick that they hid the whites of her eyes. Her knotty fingers were working a rosary and the cross swinging from it was polished gilt and flashed sharply when it moved from her shadow into the bloody blaze of light from the dusky sky. Case asked her in a mixture of Greek and English, pointing to the church and himself, when it was open, but he might have been a stone for all she reacted. She simply went on watching him with her shiny black eyes, her sunken mouth moving slightly as if she were chewing something.

He found himself looking down at the swinging cross, flinching at the stab of red light flaring from it. Backing away from the old woman, who shook her head slightly at him, he continued to the villa on unsteady legs. That night, he drank a bottle of Boutári wine someone had left, and slept very heavily, not waking until midday the following day. He felt weary. He had dreamed all night, and yet he could remember none of it save a fleeting image of the woman in black, only instead of a swinging cross flashing with reflected sunlight, there had been a small golden knife.

He had planned to begin work that day, but having wasted part of the morning anyway, he decided to take a boat tour to the larger of the volcanic islands in the caldera, telling himself the opportunity would not exist once the weather turned. He had bought an open ticket the first day and so he had only to take the funicular straight down to the pier, and wander along it until he found the right boat. Case did not admit to himself his hope that he would see the woman, until he saw the boat and the family group who were the only other passengers. Then he realised he had been a fool. A woman who could wait like that and look at a man like that was not the sort to take cheap daytrips.

This has to be the end of it, he told himself sternly, and as a punishment, he climbed aboard the boat after handing over his ticket to the swarthy man at the little gangway, and sat down heavily on a pitted bench.

The boat had not long cast off when the matron in the group, a plump, pleasant-faced woman with abundant freckles, leaned over to speak to him. He assumed she was asking his name, or where he was from. Or maybe she was merely asking how long the tour would take, but he did not understand her. She was speaking English and he recognised the individual words she was saying, yet he could not make out what she was saying. This was so peculiar that he simply stared at her stupidly, wondering if he was the butt of some sort of joke. The woman was clearly taken aback by his response, and repeated herself. Again he did not understand what she was saying, but he forced a smile and a noncommittal shrug because he was afraid that if he spoke to her, she would hear gibberish, or some sort of animal noises. The woman's smile vanished, for of course she had seen him address the boat attendant in English.

When they came to the larger of the volcanic islands, he took the option of walking up the hill from the beach to the top of the island in order to escape conversation with the other passengers. They were already changing into bathing clothes when he set off, removing his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. He was accustomed to feeling a stranger even among people he knew, but he had always been able to pass as normal. On the stony ascent, however, he wondered if what had just happened meant he was degenerating; becoming more and more of a stranger was really only another way of becoming mad.

It was a steep, surprisingly hot walk to the top of the island, though the day was cooler than the preceding days. Several small fumaroles on the way confirmed this was not an extinct volcano. He ought to have felt afraid, he supposed, but he was preoccupied by what had happened on the boat. His mind swayed like the old woman's crucifix. He was careful on the return journey to the island not to meet the eyes of the other passengers, and he disembarked with no more than a brusque nod to the captain and crew.

It was just before dusk and he decided to eat dinner earlier rather than return to the villa and come out later, for he had been told that none of the restaurants remained open after dark. He chose an empty restaurant he had eaten in before, and tensed when the waiter approached and spoke to him in careful English, clearly remembering him. Relieved to understand the boy, he asked for a glass of wine. The waiter frowned and leaned closer, his expression puzzled.

‘Excuse?' he said.

Case licked his lips and pointed to a wine bottle on the drinks menu, then indicated the Kleftiko on the food menu. The waiter looked confused and slightly sullen, but he collected both menus and sauntered away to fulfil his duty. Case sat there feeling shaken to his bones by the realisation that the boy had been unable to understand him.

Man in restaurant looks at hands. They are trembling.

There was a stiff breeze blowing as he left the restaurant, and by the time he walked the forty minutes to the villa, the sun had set and it was cold. He was shivering and his face tingled as if he were sunburnt. The air was clammy in the room, and the smell of the earth seemed to press on him from all sides. He had intended to shower, but he was too cold. He piled blankets on the bed and forced himself to drink some tea, reassured by the sudden certainty that he was ill. Wasn't it possible he had been getting sick when he left Australia? The long plane trip always exacerbated any incubating illness, and it would explain his delirium.

Under a mound of blankets, he fell asleep and into a dream of walking up the stony slope to the top of the volcano. The sky was a bleared red and sulphur hung in the air, burning his nostrils and throat and making his eyes water. The heat was terrific yet he was shivering with cold because he was naked save for his shoes. This did not strike him as incongruous so much as inconvenient. He hoped he would not slip and graze himself on the black rocks. When he reached the top of the slope he saw that there was a swirl of magma turning in a slow spiral in the upturned bowl that was the top of the volcano. The woman in white stood there with her back to him, gazing into the fire. Instead of a suit, she wore a robe of cream wool with a long, pointed hood falling down the centre of her elegant back, but he knew her stillness. After a long while, she turned to look at him, and her eyes were a cool touch on his fevered brow.

‘We have been waiting for you,' she said. Her voice was soft and deeply accented, and although the words were not English, he understood them. ‘We live among you, but we are no longer seen by you.' She smiled and he saw that her teeth were small and sharp and very white as they pressed against the scarlet plush of her lower lip. ‘All that you know of us are dark myths and distorted tales of long ago, when we were young and savage because we were too close to human.'

‘I don't understand,' he murmured.

‘You are the one and the way,' she said, and there was reverence and a profound formality in the words and her speaking of them that made him know they were ancient words of ritual.

‘The way to what?' he asked, marvelling that such a fantastical conversation on the edge of a volcano in a dream could feel more real than all of the conversations he had heard and taken part in during his life.

But he saw that he should have no more answer than that.

He woke suddenly to impenetrable darkness, with the feeling that someone had called his name. He sat up and turned on the bedside light. He rubbed his face. It felt stiff and sore and he cursed himself for failing to think of sunscreen, especially given the country he came from.

He would have gone back to sleep but he was terribly thirsty. He realised that he no longer felt ill. The fever, if that's what it was, had broken. His skin felt sticky with sweat, and he was repulsed at the thought of returning to the tumble of stale bedding. He rose and went to sit in a creaking wicker chair, drinking the water slowly. He finished the glass and poured himself another water, drank it off, then walked to the door and opened it. Moonlight flooded down into the yard and the bent olive tree was limned silver. As he stood there, soaking up the eldritch beauty of the little scene, he heard the woody pop of a falling olive.