A Separation

13.

That winter, a small cruise ship disappeared in the South Pacific. A meteorologist in New Zealand received a satellite phone call at two in the morning from an unidentified woman, who stated that the ship was in bad weather, gave their coordinates, and asked where they should navigate in order to move away from the storm. The meteorologist, who was covering the night shift, told the woman to call back in thirty minutes, by which time he would have studied the forecast and would be able to advise her.

The woman never called back. Following protocol, the meteorologist raised the alarm. Rescuers initiated a radio search, attempting to contact the boat and the mysterious woman who had placed the initial call, and whose number the meteorologist and rescuers continued to ring in the hours that followed—the phone was not dead, it simply went unanswered. Rescuers then began contacting other boats and ships in the area to ask if they had spotted a vessel in distress, or indeed any vessel at all.

A military plane was next dispatched to survey the area from which the call was believed to have originated. This took place some thirty-six hours after the initial call was made—a communication that was not necessarily a distress call, more a cautionary query, an indication of distress that might yet come—but time at sea is slower than it is elsewhere, on land and in air. The designated area was immense, working from the coordinates given in the initial call, it had a radius of over one thousand nautical miles. For many hours, the plane scanned the pocked and dappled surface of the ocean, but found nothing.

A week passed. Two hundred and thirty-two people were on board the ship, including the captain and crew. The immediate families of the missing persons were flown to Australia during this anxious week of waiting, and remained there—they were put up in an expensive hotel by the cruise company, a small ship corporation that specialized in luxury voyages through the South Pacific—as if geographical proximity might somehow lessen the strain of their anxiety. It was true that many of them were from Europe, in traveling to Australia they traveled twenty hours closer to embracing their loved ones, once they were found and returned to land.

As the search widened—several national governments were now involved, the story was getting a great deal of play in England, the cruise ship company, whose boats boasted spacious cabins and an excellent passenger-to-crew ratio, was popular with retired couples—the families began to tire of their extended stay in Cairns. Among other amenities, the five-star hotel provided bay and marina views. The sight of the water, however, was hardly soothing. Before long, the luxury served only to remind the families of the fact that they were not at home but in limbo, a state of waiting.

In reality, those weeks were merely an introduction to the months and then years that would follow, during which—even as the search tapered off, and the insurance companies began preparing enormous settlements for the families of the missing passengers and crew—there was no news of the ship, and those on board were neither dead nor alive but simply missing. In the numerous interviews that the families gave (these too petered out, at first the media could not get enough of the story, journalists hounding the families for comment, but then they suddenly lost interest, it was often the case) they spoke about the difficulty of grieving, when they did not know whether they should live in hope or, as one of them put it, move on.

One of the reasons why it was so difficult to do this moving on was because of the vastly improbable nature of the ship’s disappearance, it was small as far as cruise ships go but large as an object to go missing in this day and age, especially when it had been outfitted with the most current technology and multiple redundant safety features. There was no ready explanation, in fact there had been no actual report of bad weather—which made the phone call from the unidentified female all the more baffling—and no wreckage or debris was ever discovered. The ship had simply vanished without trace.

There were many theories regarding the disappearance of the ship, ranging from environmental disaster (the ship had literally been swallowed by the sea) to geopolitics (the ship had been hijacked by terrorists). One of the more popular theories that circulated during this time held that the passengers aboard the ship had conspired with the crew to orchestrate their own disappearances. They purchased their tickets, they bid farewell to their families, and then vanished into thin air, central to this theory was the fact that the ship’s itinerary included such remote and exotic locales as the island of Vanuatu (known for its natural beauty and its native inhabitants’ worship of Prince Philip) and the Solomon Islands.

The notion that all the missing were living together on a tropical island was of course outrageous, and although it was an attractive solution—the missing alive and not dead, and living in relative happiness, on something like an extended holiday in a beautiful place—it was not without its complications, given that it was predicated on the idea that everyone aboard the ship had wanted desperately to escape not only their lives, but all the people in them, that is to say, all the people who had gathered in Cairns in the hopes of being reunited with the disappeared.

But isn’t that often the suspicion about the dead? There was, of course, nothing so catastrophic as a missing ship in our case, nor was there any doubt about whether or not Christopher was dead or still living—he was definitively dead, there was no question or hoax about it—but there was still something unresolved about his death. Once you begin to pick at the seams, all deaths are unresolved (against the finality of death itself, there are the waves of uncertainty in its wake) and Christopher’s was no exception.

As predicted, the investigation was not successful and the case was closed a little over a year later, quietly and with no notable air of defeat. The police had not expected to find the killer and therefore seemed neither surprised nor disappointed when their investigation did not succeed. I heard the news from Isabella. They have closed the investigation, she said on the telephone. We could push to reopen the case, she continued. But there is no guarantee that we will be any more successful, in fact there is little likelihood of that. There is no evidence, the entire thing was botched from the start. We are ready to close this chapter and move on, she said. But we wanted to ask how you felt.

Her voice was quizzical, perhaps she really was wondering. To my surprise I found that I did not agree, I was inclined to pursue the investigation, to set in motion whatever legal proceedings would make this possible, as Isabella said, the entire thing had been mismanaged from the start. Perhaps there was a chance we would find the person responsible for Christopher’s death, knowledge that would genuinely close this chapter, and genuinely allow us to move on (the language Isabella used was bizarre, not the way she usually spoke, the statement was clearly rehearsed and in bad faith).

Before I could reply, she continued, I also wanted to tell you that Christopher’s investments—or rather, the investments Mark made on his behalf—have been wound down, the amount is roughly three million pounds. I was too startled to speak, there had been nothing to indicate that I was due to inherit such a large sum. The lawyer will contact you with all the details. It’s not very much, she continued without any audible irony, these days it will barely buy you a house in London. She then rung off abruptly, saying that she was tired, and that we would speak again in a day or two.

That day, I experienced the opposite of closure. By evening the money was rotting in my mind, it was contaminating everything. I did not see how I could accept it and I did not see how I could refuse it. I began to wonder what sum would have been acceptable, would a mere million pounds have troubled my conscience less? Two million pounds? Did it matter, the fact that my own feelings toward Christopher had changed since his death, or the fact that had Christopher been alive and had we proceeded with a divorce—which we would have, undoubtedly—half the money would have been mine anyway, given the fact that I was, according to the language of divorce, the aggrieved party?

People hired lawyers and paid extravagant sums of money to achieve the outcome that had by chance, or rather misfortune, come to pass. I wondered why Christopher had not told me about this money, these investments—when I returned to London I was informed that he had inherited a substantial sum of money two years earlier, at a time when our marriage was still intact, and which Mark had invested on his behalf. I wondered why he had chosen to leave the matter in Mark’s hands, perhaps even under Mark’s name, I hadn’t inquired as to the specifics. It might have been done with a future separation already in mind, in his mind at least—a way to circumvent the division of assets—or it might have been out of sheer lassitude, Christopher didn’t need the money.

Just as I had no need of it. And yet it was there, and something would need to be done with it. Three million pounds—I was not mercenary, I wanted nothing less than to be mercenary in these circumstances, and yet I discovered that it was a sum of money that infected the imagination. A great deal could be purchased with three million pounds, contrary to Isabella’s assertions, three million pounds was a great deal of money, it was a new life and not simply a new house, the house that I had begun, despite myself, to imagine.

Perhaps a week after this, I received a Facebook message from Stefano, saying that he and Maria had married, that they were very happy and were thinking about starting a family. I had not been in contact with Stefano, I was in some way amazed that he had thought to find me on Facebook, through an account I rarely used. I clicked and saw that he had posted a set of wedding photos on his profile page, they had been married at the hotel in Gerolimenas, exchanging their vows—it appeared from the photos—on the stone jetty where I had once sat and looked up at Christopher’s window.

Over the last year, at various points, I had worried that I had liked Stefano too much, that I had allowed my interest in his plight—which, in retrospect, was no plight at all, a woman does or does not love you—to blind me to his true nature. He had, after all, a clear motive, a motive that was stronger than a handful of worn bills and a watch and wedding ring, sundry charges made to a credit card. He would have had time to plan the murder, he would have had access, the thought must have occurred to him, Things would be different if he was gone.

But I at last felt certain that he could not be guilty of killing Christopher, the tone of his Facebook message was happy and relaxed, he posted his wedding photographs freely and without hesitation, photographs that were entirely ordinary. He could never have sent me such a message had he actually killed Christopher. But if not Stefano, then who? Since these coincident events, the phone call from Isabella and the message from Stefano, my thoughts have returned once again to the facts and circumstances of Christopher’s death, and to the question of culpability.

Most days, I believe Christopher was killed by a thief, that it was a meaningless and unintended crime and therefore death—although it is hard to know what is worse in these circumstances, a meaningless or a meaningful death. There are days when I think almost incessantly about the thief—who I believe exists, despite the fact that he was never seen or described, much less apprehended, and yet who is now free, entirely embodied, pursuing a life unchanged by the nature of his crime, who perhaps continues to roam the Greek countryside mugging hapless tourists. And it is astonishing to me, the fact that we do not know the first thing about the person who killed Christopher, or at the very least left him for dead.

We do not know what he looks like, we do not know if he has dark or light hair, if it is curly or straight, coarse or fine or neither, if he has a family, if there are children and a wife in a house somewhere in Mani, if he is a small man or a large one, perhaps he is a small man with soft features and delicate skin, why not? Or perhaps he stands six feet tall and his skin is marked with acne scars, this is also possible. The man—in some ways, although none of us will say it, the most important man in Christopher’s life, the man who brought him death, just as Isabella gave him life—is a blank.

But we do know, if we dare to imagine, that those final moments will have been intimate, even if the precise nature of that intimacy diverges from what we usually think of when we hear and use the word—the arm thrown around the neck, the hand resting on the shoulder, the lips against the ear and the whispered words. This will have been no tender embrace between loved ones but it will have been intimate nonetheless, the contact between the two men being of the most definite and significant kind, against which all erotic touch fades, including my own, including that of all the others.

Did he see the man, did they speak before he was attacked—perhaps the man asked a question in order to disarm him, a request for directions, or maybe he asked for change or a light for his cigarette, anything to strike up conversation and make Christopher slow his pace. Or did he spring on him from behind, so that Christopher did not see the face of his assailant, did not look him in the eyes—did not even see the features of his face or the build of his body—the man’s only greeting being the blunt force of the rock he wielded, hitting against Christopher’s skull.

Not too hard, not with the intention of killing—simply in order to daze and disorient him, enough force to knock him out, nothing about the nature of the blow indicated that murder was the intended outcome of the crime, it was theft and not murder. Most likely the man believed that Christopher was merely unconscious, he would wake up with a terrible headache and a little dehydrated but nothing more, a little less force and Christopher would be here today.

But that is assuming he was killed by a stranger, that is assuming he did not, for example, stumble and hit his head on the rocks below—an unlikely and unfortunate blow but not necessarily an impossible one, stranger things have happened, the autopsy had shown that he had been drinking, that he was inebriated at time of death. In the middle of the night, this possibility is infinitely worse, a death completely without dignity, perhaps what we had feared most during the course of the investigation—an outcome worse than the final, inconclusive one—was the confirmation that there was no killer, that he had died wandering drunk and alone.

An empty and ridiculous death. That is why I sometimes prefer, perversely, the notion that Christopher’s death had in some way been brought about by his own actions, unintentional and unknowing as they were. Sometimes it is comforting to think that his death was a result of his being in the world, rather than his death having occurred entirely at random, as if erasing a presence that had already failed to leave its mark, that had not insisted sufficiently upon its life; then it would truly be as though he had vanished into thin air.

No doubt that is why, late at night, other scenarios occur to me—that there was indeed a vengeful and cuckolded husband to some unknown woman who was not Maria, who followed him out of the village—there were rumors that there was a woman involved, a jealous husband would have solved the case for us. Wasn’t it possible that the investigation failed not because the husband did not exist, but because the village had closed ranks against the police and, by implication, against the idea of justice for the stranger, the outsider, for Christopher? Or perhaps the police themselves had known the parties involved, and had chosen to protect them.

Of course, by morning, these ideas are absurd, and the conjectures that seemed plausible enough by night fall apart. In daylight, I can admit that my imagination was only seeking drama in what was, what has always been, a transparent death. When someone you love dies an unnatural death it is natural to look for a larger narrative, a greater significance, the shock of the event seems to require it. But in the end this is only chasing shadows. The real culpability is not to be found in the dark or with a stranger, but in ourselves. Of all the suspects—scattered among disparate bodies, existing in separate narratives—no one had more motive than I did. I had motive, several motives in fact—a huge sum of money to gain, a philandering and careless husband who had, at least according to appearances, all but abandoned me, another man I wished to marry. The motives had coalesced around me, a mantle manifested by my guilt—the guilt of the living, for which it is impossible to atone.

And yet it appeared to be a matter of indifference to everybody else. We sold the apartment about eighteen months after Christopher’s death—I did not want to live there, and Mark and Isabella thought this much the best course—and shortly after, I purchased a house in the same neighborhood, a fifteen-minute walk from where Christopher and I had lived. Yvan and I are now engaged, and we live in this house, which is too large for us, but which we say we will grow into, perhaps, if we have children, or at least a child. The money Christopher left to me—I still believe inadvertently—sits untouched, something that I think Yvan understands, although I do not know if he thinks this will change with time, in a matter of a year, perhaps two.

I cannot be certain it will change, or even if the relationship with Yvan will last, not out of any reluctance on my part, but on his. Something about the terms of the contract—the agreement that we entered into, unwritten and unspoken but no less binding—have changed, he finds himself living with, and also now engaged to, not a woman newly divorced, but a woman who has lost her husband, and who continues, while trying to conceal it from him, to grieve this loss. Sometimes, lying in bed beside Yvan, I remember being in Greece with Isabella and Mark and worrying that they would spot the rift of my pretense, the artifice of my widow’s grief.

But there was less difference than I thought, between the grief that I experienced and what I thought of as the legitimate grief of a legitimate wife—the grief that I attempted, while with Isabella and Mark and then before the world in general, to emulate. The emulation became the thing itself, in the end there was not that much difference between the grief of a wife and the grief of an ex-wife—perhaps wife and husband and marriage itself are only words that conceal much more unstable realities, more turbulent than can be contained in a handful of syllables, or any amount of writing.

They say that there are five stages of grief, that things get worse before they get better, and in the end time does indeed heal all wounds. But what about the wounds you do not know you do not know about, and the course of which you cannot predict? I know that one thing is certain: if Christopher were still alive, I would now be married to Yvan. There would be no regular visits to see Isabella and Mark, no meetings about the setting up of a foundation in Christopher’s name (despite her misgivings, Isabella decided that in the end she would like to see a foundation established), no prospective publication of Christopher’s second and final book.

There would not be this, or the many e-mails and telephone calls relating to this. There would be no sleepless nights, no reservoir of emotion both unexamined and unknown, which only gathers and grows, a black and nameless pool that petrifies me, on the precipice of which I seem to lie, and of which I speak to no one. Against which my relationship with Yvan—the current relationship, the one that matters, whose details are entirely sunlit, in fact too well lit for my taste, it hurts to look at them, there is nothing I cannot see—is forced to contend.

Sometimes Yvan jokes that it is rotten luck that Christopher was killed and I have to agree, it is terrible luck, for all involved. Yvan said only last week that he did not know how much longer he could wait. And although I could have said, For what?—after all, wasn’t I here, in his home, in his bed, and weren’t we engaged—I knew exactly what he meant, and I could only say that I was sorry, and that I agreed—although what we were waiting for, what exactly it was, neither of us could say.