Secret Souls
Authors: Roberta Latow
Secret Souls
Roberta Latow
Copyright © 1996 by Roberta Latow
For
Iris and Joseph Faratzi
in gratitude
ON THE ISLAND OF CRETE, IRAKLION AND LIVAKIA 1994
THE BACK WOODLANDS OF TENNESSEE, NEW YORK, PALM BEACH 1972–1994
When he entered the nearly deserted restaurant Chadwick was sitting alone at a table where she had a spectacular view of the sea crashing up against a tumble of huge jagged rock formations. On occasion it would take aim, hit the window with a splash and the salt water would run down the glass.
It was as if all the lights of the world had been turned on or the sun had burst through the roof of the small ancient building that had once been a place of worship, a mosque. Everything seemed suddenly to brighten and come alive. He was a man whose very presence made things pulsate, the adrenaline run.
The Cretan proprietor of the Rhadamanthys smiling broadly and waving his arms, rushed forward to shake the newcomer’s hand, greet him with a bone-crushing bear hug. Not satisfied, he kissed him: a short, sharp kiss hard on the lips, then roughly pushed him away. He slapped the man affectionately on the cheek. Arms round each other, the two men walked to a table across the room from her, the restaurateur announcing loudly the man’s arrival to the hovering waiters and the cooks somewhere out of sight in the recesses of the building.
Three men and a woman, all short, plump and dark, and smothered in huge white aprons stained with cooking, rushed from the kitchen to greet the man. Chadwick could barely keep her eyes from drifting to the handsome intruder who looked more like the Greek god Poseidon risen from the sea than another diner at the Rhadamanthys. Out had come the bottle of wine and the stubby thick glasses. They sat, all of them, laughing, drinking, and talking food: special dishes they were going to make for him and his friends.
No, he was not alone as she was. Here was a man who had never in his entire life been alone. There was something in his physiognomy that expressed that.
Just looking at him made her feel good, so alive. This was no man with a tenuous hold on life. He held it tight in both his hands. Life was an adventure and he was a pleasure seeker, one who loved women, all things exciting and sensuous. With his laughter, his smile, his sexy good looks, generosity of spirit, he was a man who played with the world. How she would have liked to be a part of his world.
It was difficult not to steal the odd glance nor to wonder what his friends would be like. She knew one thing for certain: at least one of them would be a woman, his, beautiful, and they would have sex before the day was out. He was that kind of man. She would be a special kind of lady, his kind of woman.
While sipping her wine she looked over the rim of the glass and caught him looking at her. How often had he done that? Only for a second did their eyes meet; she recognised lust and looked away with a heart racing with carnal desire. She smiled, felt warm all over, but never looked his way again. Instead she concentrated on the delicious food set in front of her, the view, and eavesdropped on the conversation and laughter that drifted her way.
Chadwick never minded dining alone, in fact she quite liked it. But this stranger made her suddenly aware of how alone she must look to him. It was a strange sensation, one she had never known, being caught out in her aloneness. She wanted to shout across the room to him, ‘Alone but not lonely’. How fanciful! She couldn’t help but smile. What fun being fanciful. Another new sensation. Thirty-four years old and only just discovering life and the different worlds it encompassed.
Chadwick raised her chin and shook her head ever so slightly to shake her hair away from her face, then briefly ran her fingers through it, a lifelong habit. Hannibal had often told her it was a sensuous act that never failed to draw his attention, excite his lust. Hannibal! He would be with her always, all the days of her life. She sighed as the memory of his words burned bright for a split
second. She raised her hand for attention and finally caught a waiter’s eye. Her Greek was good, he was impressed as all Greeks were when a foreigner spoke their language as well as she did.
The second small carafe of house wine arrived at her table and her glass was filled before the waiter returned to sit with Poseidon and the others. Yes, by now she thought of him as that god of the sea, it amused her to think of him as a man of myth, a creature from the depths.
This, her first day, had been just wonderful and now this stranger bursting with sensual life seemed only to add to it. Chadwick felt incredibly happy, at ease with herself and life in general. It felt good to be back in Crete again and to have made her pilgrimage here to Iraklion. She had dreamed of her return for such a long time. She had fallen in love with the island and its people when she and Hannibal had made a trip there. It had inspired her to perfect her University Greek and to work on something she had been dithering with for too many years. Those were some of the happiest years of their life together, when they returned from Crete and she worked on her
History of the Life and Work of El Greco.
She drained her glass. How surprised she had been at the book’s success, the way she had taken the art book world by storm by writing the definitive work on the Spanish Mannerist painter who had been born more than four hundred years earlier, here in Iraklion, when Crete had been a possession of the Republic of Venice. Not Hannibal. He had always believed in her abilities; her success had been his success, no man could have been more proud and pleased with his wife.
Another dull thud against the window as spray from a breaking wave hit the glass and ran down the window. What a stroke of luck to have remembered the name of this restaurant given to her by an archaeologist friend who had been in Crete on a dig for two years. She stole another glance at Poseidon. This time she was more brave and allowed her gaze to linger. What, she wondered, must it be like to be made love to by a god, or even a man who lived and loved like one? Yes, there was something to be said for
being fanciful. She gave a little giggle, feeling young and very foolish.
Chadwick was forking a slice of crisp and golden deep fried courgette to her lips when she felt his gaze upon her. She looked over the fork and their eyes met. They told her he thought she was lovely and luscious, as delectable as the morsel on her fork. That look however did not say, ‘I want you.’ It was one of admiration rather than flirtation. She didn’t mind; in fact, being admired by a god would do just nicely.
Very nearly two hours had passed since his arrival had created a buzz of life, and still Chadwick lingered over her food and fantasised about the life the man across the room led. She was quite looking forward to the arrival of his friends. She thought they might somehow complete a picture of what this charismatic figure’s world was all about. This way of life she would have liked, for even a brief moment, to be a part of.
How easy it was to slip into the Greek rhythm of life: long lazy lunches and afternoon siestas, racing around like a mad man or lazing like a lounge lizard, the laughter, sun and the sea. Chadwick was lingering over her wine and a third demitasse cup of strong, black and thickly sweet coffee when his friends arrived. Chadwick saw them before the man did. The woman had the kind of sensuous beauty that Chadwick had expected a woman of his to have.
The woman was only a few feet away from him when he saw her and rose from his chair, as did the two men sitting with him. The way he looked at her … no man had ever looked at Chadwick with such passion, lust shimmering like translucent waves of heat. Chadwick’s heart raced. The woman said only a few words to him. Chadwick could only catch: ‘Going there was like a last lament for Arnold. It’s done, it’s over. Please, let’s live.’
The look in her eyes was for him alone when she said, ‘Let’s live.’ Chadwick placed her hand over her heart and closed her eyes for a moment, so touched was she by this woman who could love as Chadwick had never loved. ‘Let’s live’ seemed to have new, different, more thrilling connotations. Chadwick had been
happy, she had been in love, but where had she been? Certainly not where this man and woman had been, nor where they were going.
Chadwick was mesmerised by the couple. She heard his name for the first time: Max. Her Poseidon was immediately transformed from a god to a man, and Chadwick liked him even better. Max swept the woman into his arms and held her there. He whispered something in her ear. Chadwick’s heart was racing. Every fibre of her being hungered for the love emanating from this couple as Max caressed his lady’s hair, her shoulders, and taking first one of her hands in his and then the other, kissed her fingers.
At last, with an arm round her waist, he stepped away from their embrace and shook hands with the man who had accompanied her. After enthusiastic greetings for Max’s guests from the men he had been sitting with, the three customers sat down. The proprietor and his staff left the table, as obviously impressed by the couple’s passion for each other as Chadwick was. She could tell that by the tongue clicking (Greek admiration), the raised arm and wrist rotating, a cupped hand caressing the air (Greek wonderment) as they rushed about bringing food and more drink to the table
Now Chadwick heard the woman’s name: D’Arcy.
Max and D’Arcy.
As a couple they were like thunder roaring in the sun. Now, for the first time, Chadwick took more than a glancing interest in the man who had arrived with D’Arcy. He was incredibly good-looking, certainly as much so as Max but in a different way. He too was a big man, well over six feet, broad-shouldered, dark and rugged-looking. Yet there was something sensitive, a certain sensual warmth, in a face that was Greek of the Classical period. She had seen that face depicted in paintings and sculpture in museums all over the world. Greek male beauty: the perfect nose, wide-set eyes, bone structure, sexy, succulent lips. He had the aristocratic looks of a young Marlon Brando, that same unbounded sexuality.
His black curly hair was worn long enough to curl at the collar of his jacket. The man’s dark eyes – marvellous for being ever so
slightly hooded, their expression sultry and with a definite lusty twinkle in them – excited her interest in him further. He had a moustache; she had never known a man with a bushy moustache. Chadwick found it very macho and surprisingly attractive, possibly more because of the deep winsome dimples in his cheeks, the smile that was broad and laughing and showed his very white teeth.
He was dressed in a well-tailored dark suit, white shirt and a handsome tie of black ribbed silk. He looked important, official even. It therefore surprised her that he had hardly taken his chair when he loosened his tie and slid it from round his neck to fold it neatly and place it in his jacket pocket with one hand as he opened several buttons of his shirt with the other. He seemed now to be even more attractive to Chadwick. She imagined most women wanted him. He was a strong man with a real hard core of male beauty, sex appeal, the sort of erotic looks and style to which a great many women would like to submit.
He sensed her gaze upon him. Their eyes met for only a brief moment but in that time she understood by the way he looked at her that he was a man who enjoyed women enormously, taking over their bodies and their souls. She liked his Greekness, that Cretan temperament she saw in his every gesture, and yet there was too something quite elegant and polished about him. She mused on the many foreign women who had wanted and had him, what it would be like to be one of those women. And now came the fun, imagining who, what he was, how he lived, loved, what his wife was like, if he did indeed have a wife, children. Chadwick often created imaginary lives for strangers. That was how she got to know them for a few minutes.
Another splash against the window distracted her for a moment. The rivulets of salt spray running down the glass sparkled in the hot sun. Chadwick followed one of them with the tip of her finger. It was an unusually hot sun for late-October in Crete, perfect weather because as hot as it was there was autumn in the air, a clear, fresh crispness. She could not have asked for a better day. Through the window, she watched the sea crash up against the rock formations, a mere fifty feet away, and enjoyed
its power and its force. The excitement of the sea contrasted with the quiet, steady warmth caressing her: the sun beating through the glass, the sound of the laughter of beautiful strangers from across the room. She had been happy, content in her life, many times and for long periods. Even as her mind drifted away from the here and now to remember, she was aware of experiencing something new and better in her life than she had ever known.
Max de Bonn was intrigued by the elegant woman at the far side of the room. She was sensuous, a very great beauty who seemed remote from, although hungry for, love. And she was alone. He had been watching her for some time before Manoussos and D’Arcy had arrived. The flirtation that had gone on between them had been pathetic by Max’s standards, but then he had an excuse. He was distracted: trying to get a feast together for the woman he loved and was committed to. Two very new sensations for him. Under ordinary circumstances he would by now have captured the beautiful stranger’s heart as well as her fancy and they would be only hours away from sexual oblivion. Too bad Max was so much in love with D’Arcy. What a shame to let such a delicious woman vanish without a trace from his life.
But all was not yet lost. Since Manoussos and D’Arcy’s arrival, the woman seemed, if no longer flirtatious with Max, interested in Manoussos. Her glances at him were no longer stolen as they had been with Max. Her interest in his friend peaked when she had been merely curious about Max. He was an old hand at recognising a woman’s desires, he was not a man to miscalculate how far a lady would go for a man she wanted. This remote beauty across the room would go to the limit, even beyond, for Manoussos. Max was amused. Always the tease, he wasted no time. ‘D’Arcy, don’t you find that woman dining alone intriguing?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it, but now that you mention it, yes, incredibly beautiful and intriguing. She looks to be a woman who has been loved but hardly touched, strange for someone so sexually vibrant. It’s as if she has been encased in a crystal clear casket. She’s like the beauty waiting to be released by a kiss from her prince.’