What Casanova Told Me (28 page)

Luce finished Lee’s letter in the old olive-press behind Gaby’s house. No one used it now, and the rusting treads of the machinery were thick with cobwebs and dust. Outside, the sun had set, and shadows were falling in the musty interior of the building. From where she sat by the door, catching the last of the daylight, she could hear birds in the nearby almond trees. And somewhere close by, an angry bee was banging against the glass of a window. It must have flown in with her.

She had gone to the abandoned press to read because she guessed that Lee had something important to tell her about Kitty. She had seen it in the other woman’s face when she gave her the letter at supper. So now she understood the reason for Lee’s remorse in the cave. And Lee had confirmed that Kitty neglected her. It stung to hear the truth from the mouth of another person. Well, Lee also said that Kitty had loved her. She knew she did, she always had, even when Luce thought her mother expected too much of her.

She opened the door of the press and the bee buzzed out with her. She took a long breath and gazed about the small valley around Gaby’s house. Summer had come although it was still only June; the fields of dry grasses, already brown
from the heat, were glowing the colour of old brass in the fading light. She wondered if her mother had stood where she was standing on such an evening in early summer. It was too late to know. They had missed the chance to enjoy Crete together. Clutching the letter, she set off to find Lee.

She discovered her sitting on the terrace, making notes. An array of goddess icons stood on the table next to a tray of
mezes.
Luce hesitated, touched by the sight of Lee’s bulk next to the small, delicate objects: the round, squatting snake goddess of Ierapetra, Crete; the tall poppy goddess of Minoan Crete with a crown of poppies, her palms facing outward in a benediction; and a porcelain replica of a praying Virgin Mary. There, in miniature, were Kitty’s gods, arguably objects of worship and admiration. And here sat the life-sized figure of her mother’s companion whose body must feel like an unwieldy suitcase to its owner.

“Well, did you read it?”

“Yes. I …” Luce felt herself start to choke.

“I know you were angry with me for taking your mother away.”

“I’m not angry now.”

“Balls.”

Luce tried not to smile as she lowered herself onto the bench beside the other woman. She had a feeling Lee enjoyed using the word.

“Lee, you don’t have to be so tough on yourself. My mother’s accident—it just was. It wasn’t your fault. And it wasn’t mine either.”

Lee nodded sadly and for a moment they sat together in silence in the summer twilight. Luce noticed the dejected look on the older woman’s face.

“I guess that doesn’t help much, does it. Is something else wrong?” Luce asked.

“When I want help, I’ll ask. All right?”

“Okay, Lee,” she said, trying not to smile. Here was someone as uncomfortable with accepting help as she was.

“Good. I was just thinking I’ll be sad when our trip is over.”

“But we’ll see each other when we go home, won’t we?”

The anxiety in Luce’s voice gave Lee an experience of pleasure so sharp that she felt a momentary shame, like a child who has been given a present greater than she believes she deserves. Her face softened into a smile, and she nodded, yes.

The next morning, the two women set out to find the gorge where Kitty had died. Gaby reminded Lee that it lay to the west of her house about half a mile up the dusty road winding by a small lake. Despite the heat, they went on foot, toiling past cratered fields of brittle, sunburnt grass to find the hairpin turn where Kitty’s car had gone off the road. The sound of Lee’s breathing worried Luce. The older woman was trudging gamely alongside, but she looked hot and uncomfortable in her baggy, sun-proof garments. Luce walked slowly, feigning interest in the wildflowers on the dusty hillside. She would miss Lee when she left Crete. She had decided to go to Istanbul. Gaby had phoned the airlines and changed her ticket. Just when I decide I like Greece, I find myself leaving, she thought wryly. Well, she was discovering that this was how she moved in the world. She said no first and then waited to see how she really felt. She had always needed more time than her mother to understand her own reactions. Halfway up the steep bluff, they stopped to take stock. Ahead lay two nearly identical turns in the road; each one looked down on an equally steep hillside.

Then Luce spotted the little roadside shrine. Gaby and some of her friends had placed the
eklisaki
by the road. The
shrine resembled a mailbox made of metal and glass. Mounted on metal legs, it stood in an arid spot tucked away behind a rock. Nothing was growing there but a few dried-out bushes. Luce wished she knew their names. Except for the shrine, the spot was hardly worth a second look.

They walked over and opened its door and together they peered inside. Luce saw a small oil lamp placed next to a photograph of Kitty Adams and Constantine Skedi.

“Yiate psiethis
, for the light of her soul,” Lee murmured as she lit the wick of the small lamp. She stepped back and lightly touched Luce’s shoulder.

Luce reached in and placed the small blue-eyed charm that Gaby had given her by the burning lamp. “Mother, wherever you are,” she whispered, “Lee and I wish you peace
.”

I
t was twilight when the taxi dropped Luce at the Arasta Hotel in Istanbul. She registered at the desk, then set off up the hill to the moneychangers’ shops on the street by the Blue Mosque and Santa Sophia. The northern blue of the sky lent an eerie solemnity to the majesty of the old buildings. Swallows floated on air currents above her head and a pale filament of jet stream was stretched pink and radiant from the immense dome of the Blue Mosque to one of its slender minarets. She stood gazing at the swelling shapes of the mosques, unaware that her appearance was creating a sensation with the passersby in the street who were turning to stare. The Cretan sun had turned her skin the colour of dark honey and lightened her hair so that she no longer resembled the pale, timid archivist who had come into Venice in a water taxi with Lee Pronski.

She noticed a tall young man with a striking Levantine face stop to gaze at her. Then, as if he felt he’d been impolite, he turned away and she watched him head in the direction of her hotel. On the doorstep, he turned and looked for her again before stepping into the Arasta.

A group of loitering men with dark eyes and soft, musical voices were commenting on her hair and clothes.

“What country are you from?” one of the loiterers called to Luce. She tried to ignore him, but he jumped in front of her holding up a badly worn briefcase. She realized he hoped to impress her with his badge of Western commerce.

“No, no—no!” she said firmly.

The man bowed sadly. “You are from the country of no, no, and I am from the country of yes, yes.”

Luce stifled a laugh, and continued on up the hill, her movements quick and graceful as she threaded her way through the ogling throng. She imagined the withering comment that Lee would have directed at the loiterer. The country
of no, no—
indeed. She wasn’t looking to meet anyone, and it was a good feeling. To her surprise, she felt comfortable travelling by herself, although there had been a bomb scare in the Athens airport when she left. As police with machine guns inspected her luggage, she’d panicked and considered booking a flight back to Toronto that night. Then she’d calmed down and flew on to Istanbul, thinking of Asked For Adams and the hazards she had faced in Athens—and Istanbul, too, if her ancestor had made it that far. It had always been dangerous to travel, she told herself, and the list of harrowing perils grew or dwindled, depending on your destination. But even more than its dangers, she supposed travel and the prospect of chaos in other places had gone against her sense of order. Until she read the old journal, she had resented the sense of possibility that travel represented and its freedom which had captivated her mother and transformed her beyond recognition.

She changed her euros into Turkish lire and walked over to the Blue Mosque. She paused and peered through one of its huge windows. Inside, partly concealed by metallic bars, she saw a huge, majestic room, where hundreds of men lay
face down before a robed imam intoning a prayer into a microphone. She stared in fascination at the prostrate men, searching for signs of female worshippers, since she’d heard that women worshipped at the back and sides of mosques, segregated from the men just as they were at Orthodox Jewish synagogues. How did Aimée Dubucq de Rivery survive in such a world, she wondered—or had the Catholic idea of Christian humility prepared her for submission to Islam? In her convent, the young Aimée would have certainly learned about submission to both God and husband.

Luce wondered what Aimée would have thought of Asked For Adams’ belief that only the humane and reverent way you practised a faith mattered, not the slavish following of a doctrine. Perhaps Aimée would have agreed.

Back at the Arasta, she discovered a note waiting for her at the hotel desk.

He had left a phone number and a name, Ender Mecid.

Mr. Mecid doesn’t waste time, she thought. She wondered if he would be like the manuscript librarian from Bulgaria whom she’d met at a conference in Toronto, an excessively polite man who smoked a pipe, had messy, longish grey hair and a little notebook in which he’d scribbled his favourite poems. From time to time, he would pull it out and recite her a poem. Well, she would put up with any number of bores if they could translate her manuscript.

In her room, she phoned Lee in Crete and told her she had arrived safely after the bomb scare in Athens.

“It’s frightening to come back into modern life after the experience of the ancient world with its wisdom,” Lee said.

“I guess there’s nothing we can do to ward off the unexpected. The Minoans lived in fear of earthquakes, didn’t they?”

“Good for you, Luce. Statistically the chances of getting blown up are the same as winning the lottery.”

Then, with a little catch in her voice, Lee told Luce how much she missed her. She had gone with Christine to Archanes on the north shore of Crete and found that the museum that had once exhibited the bones of the allegedly sacrificed Minoan was closed. But they hadn’t been too disappointed—they’d laughed about it and spent the day at the taverna instead, she said. She was going back to Brooklyn in the morning.

It struck Luce after she put the phone down that Lee had always been reassuring her about one thing or another in the early days of their trip, but she hadn’t understood that the other woman’s concern was genuine. She began to unpack, surprised to find herself feeling grateful for the trip and just a little nostalgic. She retrieved Lee’s gift from their first morning in Venice from under a pile of tank tops and placed it on her dresser top, noticing for the first time the two heads above its pairs of pebble-sized breasts. She hung up her clothes, and when that chore was done, she brought out the blue notebook she had purchased that morning in a Herakleion supermarket. She hadn’t used a diary since high school. “Tuesday, June
28
. I arrive in Istanbul and find myself missing Lee’s unflappable manner,” she wrote on its first page. “Lee doesn’t lean on me the way my mother did. I suppose that was one of the things Kitty enjoyed about her. She could turn to Lee for strength
while the world sucked on hers. Well, Lee and I have decided to like each other and that’s a relief.”

She paused and looked over at the double-headed figure on her dresser. Then she added: “First Inquiry of the Day: What is the most common sight in the world? Lesson Learned: Two female heads side by side. The image is as old as time.”

Pleased with herself, she crawled into bed.

Luce’s hotel was in Sultanahmet, the old European section of Istanbul. She opened her curtains to the morning light and saw a street of worn clapboard houses with unscreened verandas piled high with old lumber and broken furniture. Her room was directly opposite a crumbling apartment building whose windows were shrouded with grey curtains. The building and the wooden houses alongside it were screened by a line of tall plane trees that grew like bushy weeds, blocking out the sun. Her room that morning felt humid and gloomy which must have been why her small washing from the night before had stayed damp.

She climbed a high, spiralling staircase up to the roof terrace for breakfast. The terrace overlooked the Sea of Marmara, glowing grey-blue in the morning mist. Luce gazed at it in awe, moved by the hypnotic morning stillness and the delicate fan-shaped wakes of the freighters.

“Just like New York City, isn’t it, madame?”

She turned to see the clerk who had checked her in the night before and whose name, according to the tag pinned to his jacket, was Aziz gesturing at the hilly shores strewn with a colourful bricolage of offices and apartment buildings. Behind Aziz, a waitress carried platters of pale yellow cheese, tomatoes, olives and fresh, sweet-smelling bread to the other guests on the terrace. Was Istanbul like New York? The atmosphere
felt more northern than she’d expected—perhaps slightly Russian. And the breeze was cooler than Crete, although that wasn’t saying much. A slight metallic odour drifted across the terrace.