Gospel, page 51
“I seee yoo,” said a familiar voice.
Lucy froze. Stavros was on the neighboring balcony, leaning around the concrete wall. Damn him. Well, she was on her stomach and better that than the other. No, she would not get up and run. He would go away and she would slip into her room quickly.
“Hello, Stavros,” she said. “Please go away.”
“I want to see.”
“Well, you’ve seen, so now go away.”
“You turn, uh … orange.”
Orange is a familiar word because of American soft drinks. “Red. I might turn red, not orange.”
“No,” he laughed, “orange!”
She craned to look around at her feet and saw him leaning out around his balcony. “Are you going to go away?” she asked firmly.
He misunderstood. The next thing she knew he threw a leg around the partition separating the balconies and swung around to her side. He stood there dripping in his brief bathing suit, still leering at her. “Look what you do to me,” he said, pointing at his bikini briefs.
Oh my God, thought Lucy.
She looked away and began to compose in her head a stern edict, when she saw his discarded bathing suit flung into the far corner of the balcony with a slap. The next second, on his stomach, he lay down beside her on the towel. “Halloo Lucy,” he said.
Lucy shook her head. Well, maybe the worst was through. She wouldn’t turn over, he wouldn’t turn over, and what a story this would make! Judy, just wait till you hear about this!
Stavros spied the bottle of sunscreen on the far side of Lucy. He leaned over her, supporting his weight on her back and Lucy felt her breath become more shallow. “White, white, white,” he said, commenting upon the expanse of Lucy’s Irish coloring. He squirted some oil on her back before she could say anything. He rubbed it in with both hands, deeply kneading her back.
Lucy swallowed with difficulty. She sucked in her stomach as tight as she could, and lengthened her body as best she might, willing her appearance to thinness. You better get him out of here, she told herself, or it’s going to end in … Yes. Maybe it should end the way it’s going to end. She could feel Stavros’s breath on her neck as he leaned over her shoulders. He rubbed oil on her upper back and his hands strayed perilously close to the edge of her right breast. She craned her neck around to see him, naked, amusing himself by rubbing oil on her.
Well, of course it’s going to happen.
And I’m not going to prevent it, she heard herself think. It will be now. In such moments there is only the present; maybe the consequences fall to some other entity, but not the Lucy Dantan who is right here in this moment—
“You want?” Stavros asked.
He took her hand and squirted some oil into it and then pressed it to his chest and said something in Greek to her. He spoke again but she shook her head, not understanding. He touched her cheek, then stopped smiling as he took her shoulder and turned her over on her back. She closed her eyes in the searing sun, which had turned the day white and otherworldly; through her eyelids there was only the red and in her ears only a furious heartbeat and she fought to keep her eyes closed as he led her hand down to his waist, and his other hand traced a line down to her waist … Briefly there was flash of something ancient and dimly lit, a mother’s face at church, an indistinct shape of sorrow, someone not quite recognizable, something not to be heeded, and though they all reached out, Lucy, throwing her head back, obliterated them in the sun. And she pulled Stavros, who smelled of oil and sweat, closer, and when he became more energetic and pressed himself upon her, she held him all the more lightly as if he might break or dissolve, and a drop of sweat from his forehead fell on her tongue with miraculous accuracy, the deliberateness of a nail through a hand—
Her heart beat furiously, the beating of wings, fallen angels cast out—they bore her aloft as a supreme selfishness welled within her, but she would not recant or be moved though fire consume her, though broken on the wheel, though tossed to wild beasts, she would now hold tighter, she would own this sin and commend herself to the sun above, the white-hot chorus of the Aegean …
Consummatum est.
* * *
O’Hanrahan, packed and ready to go, stood at the door of Megistri Lavra, now at midday. Father Irenaeus had assigned Brother Nikolas to stand guard over him while a boat could be procured, then to accompany him to Daphne where the police had been summoned.
“So,” the professor protested politely, “I’m to be handed over, even though I’m innocent, to Greek authorities?”
Father Irenaeus: “Yes, to tell your side of the story, so that when this culprit is caught your witness will be on record.”
I’m looking at three days down the tubes, thought O’Hanrahan. Greek police, Greek bureaucracy and of course, they may decide expeditiously that I am guilty of these things. Father Sergius wouldn’t be able to come testify for me and no subpoena would be effective on Athos …
“Young Nikolas,” explained the father, “will take you down to the dock now. The boat has arrived.”
Nikolas, the earnest, fiery one with accusing eyes and a straggly teenage beard, said to his elders that he would be careful with O’Hanrahan and would soon return with news.
Oh yeah? thought O’Hanrahan. We’ll see about that, little boy.
Nikolas escorted O’Hanrahan down the winding, rough cobblestone road on which O’Hanrahan had endured such dire prostrations ascending the day before. O’Hanrahan brooded briefly on the failure to see the Sermium Compendium. And what’s worse was the mysterious Mad Monk had seen that very codex the week before. Bah, enough of this! First thing was to lose this twerp.
“Do you speak any English?” asked O’Hanrahan.
He didn’t, he mumbled in Greek.
O’Hanrahan could make a run for it … Yeah right, huffing and heaving up this very road yesterday afternoon—what kind of getaway could he make? Maybe he should hit the kid over the head with—what, a rock? No, an act of violence would be taken as a sure sign of guilt. At the pier, an older fisherman in a tiny motorboat caked in blue-green peeling paint sputtered up to the concrete jetty.
“I am eager to get to Daphne,” O’Hanrahan began. He then repeated it in Greek: “I want to clear up the whole trouble. And I hope they catch the fiend who did this.”
“Neh,” said the monk, eyeing the professor unsurely.
“All my research stolen! What a disaster my trip to your monastery has been. Accused of a horrible crime, my papers taken…”
The monk softened. “Me sinhorite,” he sympathized.
“The policeman will meet me at Daphne, correct?” asked O’Hanrahan, hoping to get into the boat alone, where he might promise a bribe to the fisherman.
“Yes, I will be there to guide you,” said Nikolas.
“You hardly need to trouble yourself, son,” added O’Hanrahan, patting the novice on the shoulder. “Have no fear, I want to go to Daphne and assert my innocence.”
“Ohi,” he said sharply, “I will accompany you.”
No dice. O’Hanrahan smiled sheepishly at the monk before stepping into the center of the boat; the monk, precariously, then stepped into the bow. The puttering motor was revived and the old fisherman began them on their journey around the end of the peninsula, back to Daphne.
Maybe the policemen would be understanding … This was dreaming! Then it occurred to him: whoever stole my photos has to escape from Mt. Athos too. At some point today he will have to go through Daphne and take the boat back to Ouranopolis, unless he wishes to walk the length of the peninsula, forty grueling miles. If I could get free then I could maybe intercept this criminal, see who he is.
“Beautiful!” exhaled O’Hanrahan, as the peninsula passed by to their right. “Ti thaumasios keros!” he said, hoping to initiate banter about the weather. He continued in Greek: “This is Karoulia, no? Where the monks live in caves?”
“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.
