What Casanova Told Me (24 page)

T
he taxi let Luce out on a dusty road near an olive grove, somewhere in the northeast foothills of Crete. There was no human habitation that she could see, but the driver pointed up the hill, past trees hung with nets that he said would catch the ripening olives in the fall. The women had gone in there, he told her. Then he drove off before she could ask him to help her decipher the map that Lee had left at the hotel in Herakleion. She’d caught a spring cold and slept in that morning, and Lee and the other women had gone off without her, leaving a note asking her to join them for a picnic lunch in Kitty’s favourite olive grove.

She started up the road that wound its way in ridiculous loops around the olive grove. Underfoot, the ground was sandy and massed with little stones that bumped out and caught the arch of her sandalled foot at unexpected angles.

The sloping hills and valleys played back her sense of isolation. She felt disoriented by the wildness of the place; if only Crete looked more civilized, she thought forlornly. The last few days in Athens had passed in a blur—of apologies for her panicky flight from the consulate and of self-recrimination for her naïveté in misjudging Theodore. But in the end she and Theodore had talked amicably again. He had
phoned unexpectedly to give Luce the e-mail address of his friend in Istanbul, and then had surprised Luce by offering to take Aphrodite while she was in Crete. She’d agreed, because she knew it would be hard on the cat to take him with her. She had watched sadly as Theodore drove away over the cobbles of Apollonos Street while a caged Aphrodite yowled at her from the front seat of the Volkswagen.

The hot noon sun was making her feel feverish. She saw no sign of the women. Looking for shade, she noticed a wide stone beneath a large, spreading tree; some olive nets lay bunched across the stone. She moved them and sat down to rest. There was still no sign of anyone and though she strained to listen she couldn’t hear much over the racket of cicadas which seemed to grow louder as she concentrated. At least now she could see that the olive grove ended about a mile away in a low-lying mountain range she hadn’t noticed from the cab. Its rounded peaks shimmered in the heat, a row of dusty green humps.

She heard a shout. A group of hikers was walking over the brow of a hill to her left. They had on veiled sun hats and light-coloured clothes, and some wore what looked like garlands of vegetables hung around their necks. From where she sat, they resembled a family of beekeepers searching for an apiary.

Two women walked behind the others. The heavier woman was plodding along in diaphanous sun wear, swinging her arms like a bandmaster. Luce had no difficulty recognizing the stagy drapery of Lee’s sun hat and the birdlike figure of Christine Harmon. As they came closer, she spotted Julian Harmon with the mother and daughter from the consulate, Jan and Toby. She rose to her feet and waved.

“Is that you, Luce?” Julian yelled.

“It’s me!” she called.

Christine cheered, and the group walked over. There were over forty now, not counting Christine. They had met up with the rest of the group at the hotel the day before and Luce was struggling to remember their names. Julian was the only man; he wore a long-sleeved white shirt over denim pants and an old straw hat, while the women were dressed in baggy clothes and thick-tongued Nikes. Bulging Loutraki bottles dangled from their waists or shoulders. And it
was
vegetables she’d seen hanging from their necks, necklaces of garlic bulbs and onions. The faces of several of the older women looked slightly woebegone, and for the first time it struck Luce that the women who came to her mother’s talks often seemed to be asking you to care for them in some frightening, unspecified way. She wondered if her mother had felt this way.

“Look, everyone! She’s found the
kernos
stone!” Christine cried.

“Beginner’s luck, Luce.” Lee smiled.

“Luce, the Minoans worshipped a harvest goddess who was their version of the Great Earth Mother,” Christine said. “And we are very glad you are here with us today because your mother wrote about this very altar. We’ve been looking for it all morning.”

Luce stared curiously at the stone she’d been sitting on. It was a flat, circular grey slab, ringed with small holes along the edge.

“How’s your cold this morning?” Lee asked, as Christine rounded up the group.

“The heat seems to be making it worse,” Luce whispered.

“All right, everyone, let’s begin,” Christine said. “You know the words … ‘The earth is our sister,’” she prompted.

“‘We love her daily grace,’” the group responded.

Luce watched as they made a circle around the stone and joined hands; some of the women began pulling apart their
vegetable garlands and filling the holes in the stone with cloves of garlic and onions.

“‘The earth is a circle … She is healing us,’” Christine said, grasping the hands of Luce and Lee who stood on either side of the tour leader. The group repeated, “‘We are a circle … We are healing you.’”

“And now repeat after me, everyone,” Christine said, lifting Luce’s and Lee’s hands high into the air. “‘Merry meet and merry greet, and merry part—and merry meet again. Blessed be.’”

Holding up their clasped hands, the group repeated the refrain. It reminded Luce of a nursery rhyme. Then they dropped hands and, talking and laughing, headed back down the hill, taking a new route through the trees. Luce ambled along behind. Did her mother come to Crete to play-act schoolgirl games? Surely not, she told herself. She hoped the noisy group wasn’t visible from the road. She didn’t want anyone to see her with this band of dotty middle-aged tourists pretending to understand a civilization that wasn’t their own.

The road led to a grassy meadow where a lunch had been spread out on tables set up under a huge olive tree. Luce recognized some of the dishes Theodore had introduced to her in Piraeus, the crusty brown red mullet,
barbounia
, and the welcoming bowls of
horiatiki salata.
There were also new discoveries, plates of tiny Cretan olives, along with the sour local bread that needed to be moistened in water.

Two men stood by the table, opening bottles of yellow wine. They were short and thickset, with high cheekbones and sloping foreheads; the pair could have been father and son, their resemblance was so strong. The younger man had tied his reddish-brown hair back in a ponytail and he was dressed neatly in a plaid jacket, jeans and Kodiak boots. The
fillings in the older man’s teeth shone in the sunlight as he talked and laughed with his young companion. His hair, a bunching mass of dark grey curls, made him resemble a woodland satyr with curling horns growing out of his forehead. He wore a grass-stained mechanic’s suit, with the words “Andreas. Shell Service” in gold thread on the breast pocket.

When they heard female voices, the two men turned and stared frankly at Luce.

Andreas limped over to her in his floppy sandals. She noticed that one of his ankles was bound with a dirty tensor bandage. “Motorbike, eh, shorty?” he said, pointing to his foot. “Engine burn Andreas!” He made a jubilant, roaring noise, grasping at a pair of imaginary handlebars. “I call you ‘shorty.’ No problem, eh?” Andreas said.

Luce looked helplessly at Lee, who was walking over to her with Christine.

“Of course Luce minds, Andreas. Behave yourself now. Luce is Kitty’s daughter.” Christine beckoned to the other man, and he came towards them with big springy steps.

“Luce, Yannis Vatakis is our local guide. And this is his uncle, Andreas, who knows the caves around here better than anyone.”

“Ela
, Christine!” Yannis wagged his finger at the older guide. “If anyone make
Andreas-kamaki
good boy, it you.”

Andreas turned to Luce, pinching together his finger and thumb, measuring something infinitesimally tiny. “Yannis, my nephew. Too small for you, eh?”

Yannis spoke in a low voice to his uncle, who growled back an indecipherable answer that sounded like a curse.

“Stop that, you two,” Christine said. “Yannis, this is Kitty’s daughter.”

“I know Kitty,” Yannis said, his dark eyes lingering on Luce’s face.

Before she could respond, Christine interjected, “Luce, Yannis lost his friend, Constantine, in the accident that killed your mother.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Luce said.

“We all are,” Christine replied.

“You didn’t tell me
he
was coming,” Lee said, nodding at Yannis.

“I do apologize, Lee,” said Christine, and it seemed to Luce that she was straining to speak gently. “I must have forgotten. But, yes, Yannis and Andreas are helping us.” She turned away towards the others, calling, “Lunch is served, everyone. Eat well because this afternoon we are going to the Skoteino cave.”

Luce smiled shyly at Yannis who had retreated from their group and stood smoking under a large olive tree. He smiled back, his cheeks forming sunburnt hollows as he sucked on his cigarette. If he had known Constantine, perhaps he would help her find a way to Zaros, she thought.

Luce sat in the shade of one of the olive trees. The picnic lunch of simple, country food was over and on the other side of the meadow her mother’s entourage now lay about in small groups, chatting or sunbathing. She had chosen a spot as far away from them as she could manage, but a group of older women had come over and settled themselves under a nearby tree. From where she sat, the plump drooping forms of the white-haired women looked like burst milkweed pods, leaking the silvery fluff of their seed pods. It startled her that these women didn’t care about their appearance; they lazed about on the grass, carefree, oblivious to the way their T-shirts and shorts exposed their breasts and the meaty slabs of their thighs. She knew she was being cruel—she had youth on her side—but she didn’t mean them harm. She thought of her own
looks as a temporary loan—like an overdue library book that would one day be recalled.

Ignoring Luce, the older women began to tell each other their life stories and Luce realized, with a little lift of her heart, that she finally had a moment to herself. Reaching into her knapsack, she brought out the pictorial guide to Crete that Lee had bought for her at Knossos. Three days had gone by since her rush from the consulate, and none of the women, not even Lee, had asked for an explanation. They had all been tactfully sympathetic, and even Lee had seemed determined to avoid the subject.

She stared curiously at the guidebook’s photographs of Minoan artifacts—clay rattles, cylindrical seals made of lapis lazuli, an ivory fly, and a gold signet ring depicting a woman and a griffin—all relics of the artistic, exuberant culture that had meant so much to her mother. She could see how Kitty would be entranced by their beauty, as Lee obviously still was. She paused at a picture of a statue of a Minoan snake goddess whose fierce black eyes seemed to shine with ecstatic fervour. Or was it cruelty?

Setting the guidebook on her lap, she glanced again around the meadow. Lee was nowhere to be seen and the rest of the group were asleep or resting. She retrieved Asked For’s journal from her knapsack and placed it discreetly inside the guide to Crete. She wanted Casanova all to herself.