A Short Tale of Shame

[9]

Krustev felt a little duped because instead of watching the boat arrive, instead of seeing the island dust off its dress uniform to meet the new arrivals, he had to go down to the car and get ready to leave. But he left the kids up on deck to watch the palace of the Grand Master rise above the dappled coast, stern and supercilious, and at least that was some consolation, as if some part of him would stay there, too, watching. Without noticing it and without meaning to, he had already slipped into their net of key words and tacit agreements, and he was forced to admit that this made him feel good. When he stopped on that Rhodope road and picked them up, he had simply wanted company, people to chat with, to distract him, and to have some immediate goal, in order to drive them to it. But from then on everything had developed so quickly and simply, and the mutual discomfort they had felt, he with them and they with him, was actually more helpful than not, for example on the beach on Thasos he had tried to look aside so as not to stare at Sirma’s brazenly displayed breasts, this had, in fact, brought him closer to them, some quiet thread of shame gleamed in the sunlight for an instant, weaving yet another tie between them. Alone in his car, in the garage, winded from the gas fumes, Krustev told himself that whatever the three teenagers’ secret was, he didn’t want to know it, he wasn’t enticed by the possibility of muscling his way between them, of digging through the strange space enclosed by their triangle, and he was thankful that they returned the gesture, not asking him why he had taken off on his own and what had happened, and if they had guessed, they didn’t pursue their conjectures with the doggedness of a blind hunter, something he remembered so well from his own youth, back then he had probed every patch of earth, digging down to reach a spring, and once he had drunk from the precious water, he lost interest, just as when he had played his solo and had to return to the familiar and steady rhythm of the song and somehow hold out until the end of it.

Rhodes didn’t seem to have changed since he had been there with Irina and Elena; while driving along the narrow, cobblestone streets of the old town, once again astonished that they were open to cars, Krustev tried to remember when exactly it had been, maybe seven years ago, or eight, yes, because Elena had certainly been, say, twelve, a girl, in whose body a woman’s figure was hesitantly emerging and this woman who was furtively sneaking into her confused her reactions, imperceptibly casting her shadows, doing with his daughter as she wished. If it had been possible to be jealous of his daughter’s relationship with her own self, perhaps that was what he had felt during that vacation, especially one day on the beach, when he emerged from the sea, heading towards their umbrella and she didn’t look at him at all, she had turned her head the other direction, and he turned, following her gaze, and his eyes collided with the muscular body of the lifeguard, and this staggered him more than if he had caught his own wife ogling the lifeguard with the little gold cross on his chest, and that was also the first vacation when he didn’t feel like sleeping with Irina, even though they had rented a suite at the hotel and Elena slept in a separate room, they simply fell asleep every night and neither one of them was particularly struck by this lack of desire, there was something here to fill the gaping empty space with, ice cream and cocktails, and walks through the old town, and coarse brown sand, as if for construction, you could fill bags with sand and easily soar through the air knowing you had something to unload if you started plunging downward.

They found a room at the end of the old city, on one of those streets that was so narrow that even pedestrians, especially the tubbier ones, could hardly pass, and at a reasonably good price so that the three of them were not taken aback by the size of the gift being given them; after they brought their luggage inside, Sirma went outside with Krustev and stood in front of the entrance, her mouth gaping open, looking at the crooked outline of the house, the flaking green façade and the window frames warped by the salty moisture, wow, she said, my whole life I’ve dreamed of living in a place like this, and Krustev smiled, the four-person room was narrow and dark, the windows actually looked out onto the wall across the way, but he understood Sirma very well, it was so interesting to live in such a house, for a few days, of course, and he was glad that he had overcome his own habit of comfort in order to go up the creaking stairs ducking his head and to breathe in the scent of old wood and the mossy stone wall, there was something very real about this house and the others like it nearby, a scrap of real life amid the whole touristic bacchanalia with its flip-flops, brand-name handbags and ridiculous souvenirs, there was life, which created the illusion that it was more real than your own, but still Krustev did not give himself over completely to sentimental ecstasy and carefully checked the bathroom and the water heater before paying. He left the car in a parking lot beyond the fortress walls, they wouldn’t need it inside, the three of them could hardly stay in one place, they wanted to wander everywhere, peek into every passageway, to touch every stone, he smiled in satisfaction and from time to time wondered why the hell he couldn’t go somewhere with his daughter in the same way, what were these barriers that arose between you and those closest to you, making impossible the things you were free to do with people you met by chance along the way, and in that case how had these three toppled all the barriers between them, or perhaps the more precise question was how had they prevented the barriers from arising? He looked at them and couldn’t imagine them separately, even though now Maya, now Sirma, now Spartacus hung back from the others and walked with him to talk, in the beginning on Thasos he had felt a certain forcedness in how suddenly one of the three of them would remember his presence and sheepishly come keep him company, now that feeling was gone, and at times he could even tell himself that he wasn’t twenty-odd years older than them, for example, when they were teaching him to swim with laughter and enthusiasm, encouraging him and he was catching on quickly, he could already keep himself floating on the surface and now the most important part was to coordinate his arms and legs, he thought that would be easy, he was a musician after all, with a sense of rhythm and timing, but he still hadn’t quite managed it.

That night he couldn’t fall asleep for a long time, listening to their steady breathing, truth be told the bed was too narrow and the mattress sagged, plus his dinner wasn’t sitting well in his stomach, he suddenly realized that he had chalked up his sleeplessness precisely to these everyday causes, while only a few days earlier he would have known that the reason was actually something else and he would have gone out to look at the birch trees, white as hospital walls; lying on the sagging mattress, he asked himself whether he should feel guilty that he was a few thousand miles from home in the pleasant company of young people, having thrown off his grief and depression like flannel pajamas, but wasn’t that why he’d set off aimlessly in his car, to slip away, at the time he hadn’t known either where he was going, or when he would come back, because he wasn’t thinking of returning, he just needed to go somewhere else, to go far away, and now it was ridiculous to feel guilty in front of his dead wife, she certainly would have approved. Krustev sighed and thought about how Irina had always been smarter than him, even in her death she remained smarter, surely some change was taking place within him now which he didn’t quite fully understand, but she would’ve figured out, just as she had figured out before him that their marriage had gone cold and she had accepted it with that strange calm with which she took in everything, even in the wild years when they had met. He was always a step behind her, and eight years ago was no exception either, when they had come here to Rhodes and had not made love even once, yet he had desired another woman, he remembered her all of a sudden, blonde and slippery, sitting at the hotel bar, Irina and Elena were out shopping, he had gone to have a drink, they started talking, she was from Belgium or Holland, what is an attractive woman like you doing here all alone, God, how stupid and banal, it’s like stepping in something sticky in the fallen leaves and saying to yourself god damn it I just stepped in shit, but it turns out that it’s only soft mud, he wanted her lazily, with the superiority of a successful man, and after all that’s why she was sitting alone at the bar, and while she spoke to him slowly, purring, he imagined taking her to his suite and tossing her down on the double bed or better yet, on his daughter’s bed, why not, screwing this easy woman on his daughter’s bed, and amid the astringent taste of this vision he suddenly felt ashamed, not from any sense of fidelity, not because he had decided that it was disgusting, but because it was not disgusting enough and that made it ridiculous, he hadn’t stepped in shit, but in mud, and every day men and women like the two of them sat at that bar, and they would continue sitting there until the hotel got old and was torn down, and after a new one was built in its place, those men and women with their repulsive smiles and worn-out lines would continue sitting there, and he started backing off, she sensed it, turned away, his phone rang, it was his partner from the promotional agency, who ecstatically roared in his ear dude, we got Rammstein, that was amazing news, they had been fighting Thracian Entertainment for that concert, they had turned somersaults to get this deal, and now they were becoming a leading player in the industry and Krustev barked into the phone wunderbar!

But, as he had come to realize years later, around the time they had won the Rammstein gig, his wife had already started seeing her director, he never did find out where she’d met him, whether he was blond or dark, whether he did Shakespeare or Pinter; she simply mentioned him once, when it was already completely clear to both of them that their relationship was more that of roommates, otherwise polite and considerate of each other, she mentioned to him that for five years she’d had a boyfriend who was a director, a theater director, she said, as if saying in passing that last night she’d been to a restaurant with her girlfriends, an Italian restaurant, and Krustev was stunned by his lack of jealousy, well okay, he replied, but I don’t want to see him, Irina agreed, afterwards he felt hurt, even though he knew he had no such right, he himself also had mistresses, and not just one or two, and perhaps that was precisely what changed things, he had scattered his sexual instinct, which was in any case blunted by work, among many women, while Irina had simply replaced him with another, she had found herself another man and she surely even loved him, it was just that she didn’t live with him, but no one mentioned divorce, the wounded Krustev’s first thought was that his wife, of course, did not want to deprive herself of the house, the car and everything else, of her secure and comfortable life, and that very well may have been part of it, but besides that she was surely afraid that if she got divorced and started living with her director, sooner or later their relationship would wither just like her marriage had. Does Elena know, he asked her, I’ve only hinted about it to her, Irina replied, Krustev suddenly wondered whether he would be expected to move out of the nuptial bed, but in fact, this foreign object, his wife’s body, did not bother him and she did not leave the bed, either, presumably the force of habit was too powerful, and with such an obvious act of separation, they would have had to give their daughter definite explanations. This conversation had taken place only three years earlier, so that means, Krustev calculated, that Elena had been seventeen then and sufficiently tuned in to sense what was going on even without her mother’s hinting. At that time, Krustev sometimes stared at his daughter in astonishment, momentarily stunned by the memory of that erstwhile baby in his arms and unable to understand what the pretty young girl in his living room could possibly have in common with that surprised little tuft of life, two so very different creatures, who by some coincidence bore the same name. Elena seemed to be going through some teenage crisis, from which she recovered on her own and he made sure not to grill her too much, he felt ill at ease rummaging around in his daughter’s life with his rough, manly paws and he certainly wouldn’t have understood anything of her problems and worries, the parade of pimply boyish faces, the staggering, terrible meaning that even the most casual words take on at that age, maybe six months before that, yes, that’s about how long it had been, he had started becoming seriously worried about Elena, she was out and about far more than she should be, she would silently lock herself away in her room, and when she would come out or come home, she looked steel-plated in her leather jacket, scornful and — in some vague and disturbing way — evil. What more could she want, he would sometimes ask himself the question of all parents from all continents and eras, and when he would catch himself thinking such thoughts, he would sullenly decide that he was starting to get old, not physically, but in his perceptions, in the automatic schemata through which one thinks about the world, and he would even tell himself that if he hadn’t become a father and husband so early, he would surely feel younger right now, he wasn’t even forty. But right when Irina had casually mentioned her theater director, her tagliatelle with gorgonzola, he had stopped worrying about his daughter, because she looked a lot better, she was sociable, as the doctors loved to put it, the two of them would talk, and nothing seemed strange or wrong to him, and besides, back when she was still out and about, she had never come home drunk and Krustev simply could not believe that was possible. And still listening to the three young people’s steady breathing, lying in the dark on the uncomfortable mattress, he wondered which Elena they knew, what had happened between them and whether he wanted to know or not. It was him, not Elena who was doing something wrong, chumming up with her friends, albeit her former friends, secretly, through the back door, he was sneaking into her personal life, so carefully hidden from her parents, just as it should be, and having once ended up inside this forbidden house accidentally and in the absence of its master, perhaps it would nevertheless be best not to act like a bull in a china shop, not to break or rearrange things, not to leave muddy footprints on the floor and not even to look around, but simply to sit with his eyes closed, until the time came to leave. He sighed. He had lost both his wife and his daughter, and if the loss of the former was in large part his own fault, the loss of the latter could not be helped, it was the natural result of the mechanical march of time, from a certain point onward our own children belong to us less than any other person around. He suddenly felt like sitting down with Elena again, like they had during the winter, when with her soccer banter she had unexpectedly wrenched him from his stupor, he wanted to bring out the bottle of scotch with two glasses and say with his unused voice, so now tell me what’s going on with you, back then she had told him some things, hinted at others, it seemed that leaving for the States had been very important to her, not just because of the university and the opportunities, but because it allowed her to break away from something or someone here, where her life had passed until then, and now her mother, her mother’s body tied up in its tubes, had called her back at the beginning of beginnings, Elena didn’t want to stay here. So he had assured her that he would be all right and sent her off to America, after which he proceeded to read all the books in the house and lose sleep. He knew he should be very grateful to her. In fact, she really didn’t know anything about soccer. She had read a pile of articles about the upcoming match and had learned the players’ names from pictures on the Internet, just to be able to talk to him.

He imperceptibly dropped off to sleep during the night and woke up only when the human presence leaning over his face pulled him out of the depths into which he had sunk. It was Maya, she was looking down on him with a slyly bashful smile, uh, it’s eleven o’clock already, she said, we were thinking of going to check out the beach, the water here must be a lot warmer than on Thasos. They had to walk quite a ways before finding an open space with fewer tourists, the season had already begun and the hordes crawled in tireless ranks between the hotels and the beach. The shoreline was covered with tiny pebbles and Maya grumbled that she would cut her feet, which wasn’t far from the truth, and after hesitantly wobbling around at the water’s edge for a while, Spartacus dashed forward, scooped her up despite her protests, carried her out to sea and simply tossed her in the water, you’ll drown me, you idiot, she screamed, well, he giggled, I’ve been meaning to for a while, and now I finally got my chance. Sirma was standing a little aside, up to her neck in water and watching them indulgently, momentarily amused by their childish antics. Krustev tried floating on his back, at first he thought he’d done it, but then it suddenly turned out that he was lying diagonally in the water with his feet almost touching the bottom. The sea was choppy, the tightly packed waves approached from the horizon and rocked their unmoored bodies, today isn’t so great for swimming lessons, Sirma said, still, the water is a lot warmer than on Thasos, that goes without saying, Maya swam up to them panting, her face red from her battle with Spartacus. It’s nice, said Krustev.

They ate gyros downtown, that was good, Maya said, but now I can just tell that I reek like garlic, come on now, Krustev joked, we’re not gonna kiss each other, right, and suddenly he realized that it sounded exactly as if Spartacus had said it and the three of them didn’t react, the comment sailed past just as their own routine comments did, springing up so naturally amid their conversations that they didn’t even find them funny anymore, and he felt his chair rising slightly off the ground and swaying in the air, that same sense of rocking and the loss of solid ground that he felt in the sea. He took them through the old town’s narrow, fantastic streets, lorded over by haughty, regal cats in the lazy afternoon, and that became yet another easily lost day, for months now all his days had been lost, but until now he had been at pains to lose them, he had wriggled through the cramped holes in the rough, scraping walls with effort; here, where the streets really were cramped and the walls rough, he couldn’t sense the sand draining away; but when evening came and the city again filled up with tourists eager to buy sandals and silver bracelets, to eat heavy, impressive dishes and to drink bad wine, Krustev already knew where he wanted to go, and he knew that he wanted to go alone. They had set out to walk around the old town along the fortress wall, this was actually his idea, but he had forgotten that it was quite a hike, at one point Sirma announced that she’d had enough, you guys go on ahead, and sat down on the grass along the path, come on, lazybones, Spartacus goaded her indignantly, but she was already leaning against a crooked tree and taking off her sandals. Spartacus waved dismissively and he and Maya continued on, I’ll stay here with her, Krustev called after them and sat down in the grass across from the girl who was intently massaging her toes, and felt the urge to light up a cigarette, a long abandoned habit, which from time to time cut through his consciousness like a flashback, the consolation of having something in your hand, the awkwardness of just sitting there doing nothing. How is she, Sirma asked him suddenly, how is Elena, and only now did he stop to think that she alone of the three hadn’t said a word about his daughter until now, I think she’s fine in the States, he said cautiously, not because he was hesitating as to what to say, but because he didn’t know whether what he was saying was true, and plucked a blade of grass, started chewing on it and admitted, I don’t really know her at all. Sirma seemed about to say something, but then kept quiet. Now was his chance to slip away for a few hours, he tried to explain and she seemed to understand immediately, you must’ve been here with Elena and your wife, and she nodded at his left hand, and Krustev said, yeah, I was with them, now he already knew that they knew, and Sirma knew that he knew that they knew, but she didn’t ask anything more, silence about silence, Krustev said to himself, I don’t ask them about their stuff and they don’t ask me about my wife’s death, what on earth could I tell them, that my wife went to the seaside with her boyfriend, whom she’d been with for eight years, someone I may have read about in the papers, but I didn’t want to know who he was and now I’ll certainly never find out, they had gone to the seaside together, she could swim, unlike me, but she got caught in the undertow and when they pulled her out of the water, she wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t alive either, and it was only then, when I went to see her in that white room that I could again speak honestly and openly with her, and yes, as you guessed, she died, and it’s a bit of a long story, but in the end I grabbed my car keys and credit cards, left the house and hit the road, yes. Go, said Sirma, go, you don’t need to explain, everybody needs time alone, remember that Guns N’ Roses song, everybody needs somebody, you’re not the only one, but sometimes you need to be the only one, right? What, you don’t think that we always keep tabs on one another, go on, and if you’re late getting back, we’ll meet up at the apartment, but if not — you’ve got our phone numbers.

He found the place more by feel than by memory, he had gone there only one single time eight years ago, a stupid tourist with his wife and daughter, but he had been told to definitely visit that humble and inconspicuous little restaurant far from the tourist joints, where it showed that locals also lived on Rhodes, here you didn’t order food, the owner decided for you and brought it over himself, an elderly, bony Lydian with a white beard and a huge moustache, with blue eyes and a salty face, as if he had just stepped off the fishing boat, he served his guests with respect and spry gestures, in which there was not a trace of the sycophantic servility demonstrated by the waiters in the usual restaurants, he moved briskly through the small space, carrying bowls of salads, plates of octopus, calamari, and mussels, which his wife prepared in the tiny kitchen behind the bar. Even Elena, who was known for reluctantly pushing food around her plate for half an hour, was impressed, now these were unpretentious, yet disconcertingly delicious appetizers, which they washed down with a liter of white wine and despite the stern glance from her mother, he poured some for Elena, too, for the first time he poured wine for her at the table, she took a sip cautiously, yet proudly, wrinkled up her nose and said it was a little sour, but otherwise all right, and drank her first glass of white wine along with the strange black dish which swallowed up the light, squid served in a sauce made of its own ink, if you were a writer, Elena said suddenly with one of her last fanciful, childlike whims, if you were a writer, you’d have to eat only this, an animal cooked in its own ink, being a writer, you’d have to eat ink, what do you say? They said that’s exactly right and even shared this idea with the owner, he found it amusing and twisted his long moustache in satisfaction, well maybe your daughter will become a writer some day, if she eats ink regularly. Then Krustev turned his attention to the squid itself, incidentally, if you’re a photographer it also made sense to eat it, but Elena’s idea had lodged in his memory, because he thought of it from time to time, imagining a writer who ate ink sitting alone at the table, lost in thought and slightly scowling, dipping his bread in the black sauce and stuffing it into his mouth, now after all those books he had read over the winter, in which the people and the stories from the printed page seemed more real to him than everything around him and certainly more real than he himself was, he again wanted to eat squid ink, the strange, slightly tart taste of the sea and of something which cannot be defined, and for one more evening to draw close to the life of the man with the blue eyes and salty face and his heavy wife, who chopped, minced, fried and steamed, the two of them truly like something out of a book; and for that reason he had to go alone.

He found it; and it was the same, nothing about the place had changed, the same simple tables, the guitar hanging on the wall, and on the other wall — black-and-white photographs of old men from the islands, rugged, eternal old men, but among them there was one with huge, magnetic eyes, which seemed to have gathered all the possible dreams of his island, emanating them in his radiant gaze, which gushed from the picture and spilled throughout the space and far beyond it. The proprietor’s beard was also as white, his moustache was also as long, Krustev sat down at one of the small tables, across from him four men were drinking ouzo, it was unusual for someone to come here alone, but he and the blue-eyed owner agreed on salad, squid and wine, he spoke English well, Krustev remembered that back then, too, they had been surprised that such an elderly man did so well with English, but perhaps he wasn’t really as old as he looked, or perhaps he was eternal, like the old men in the photos. Krustev turned his eyes to the pictures and gave himself over to the oncoming return, the reversal of time, he let it pull him back into the sea, he once again thought of his grandfather, hidden behind a mask of rugged and scowling silence in the last house in the village, heavily treading the earth with his feet, how would he have gotten along with this spry man of the sea here, and right then he appeared with the plates and pulled him back into the present. Krustev broke off a chunk of bread, dipped it in the black squid sauce and involuntarily blurted out, I was here years ago, and back then my daughter said that this was a dish for writers… Because writers should eat ink, the owner added, well, yes, I remember all three of you, I was just wondering where I knew you from, years may have passed, but it’s all stored up here and he tapped his forehead, I’ve got a memory like an elephant, I don’t forget anything, and even if I want to, I can’t, which is sometimes not a good thing at all, but other times is good, so did your daughter become a writer? I don’t know, Krustev said foolishly. And he thought to himself that whatever he might be asked about his daughter, about his wife, he would be forced to reply I don’t know far too often, he bit his lips and suddenly started talking, as if the chunk of bread soaked in ink had freed the long stopped-up stream, the swarms of words stuck in his body now poured out uninhibited in a language that was foreign to both of them; when he started telling him about his wife, the proprietor’s salty face grew serious, until that moment he had been standing over the table, stunned, but now he pulled up a chair and looked at him carefully with his blue eyes and only when Krustev fell silent, winded, after he had told him about his daughter as well, and about the three young people and how he had brought them to Rhodes and about that self of his that he remembered from years ago, the raging Slav with the guitar from Euphoria, he told himself that he didn’t know anyone else who was able to listen like that, you did right, the man said suddenly, sitting there across from him and looking at him with his blue eyes, and repeated you did right. Krustev felt himself blushing, he turned his eyes away and his gaze fell on the guitar. How long has it been since you’ve played, asked the old man. I don’t know, Krustev smiled and realized that he didn’t even know his name. Ardis, said the proprietor. Boril, Krustev replied and again wondered at the hard, marble sound of his given name. The squid had gone cold. And it shows that you loved to play when you were young, Ardis said. They called him from the other table, but he waved them off angrily and fixed his blue eyes on Krustev. Your daughter, I remember her very well, saying that about the ink, she was a smart girl, find her again. But first, eat up.

Krustev obediently finished off the cold squid and the salad, and drank the wine, only then did Ardis again grace him with his attention, he brought a bottle with two glasses the size of thimbles and sat down across from him, smiling. This is called mastika, he explained, they make it on the island of Chios and only there, from the sap of some special trees, they only have them on Chios. Now that you’ve eaten ink from the sea, he winked, some sap from the tree will do you good. Krustev wasn’t sure if he should look for some hidden meaning in his words, because the old man clearly loved speaking in parables. But the sudden sweet scent of the drink hit his nostrils, refreshing him. Ardis, he said, the whole time, when I’m with these kids, I get the feeling that I should be ashamed. Well, of course, you’re ashamed, replied the proprietor. If you weren’t ashamed, I would have kicked you out of here long ago. Ardis got up abruptly, took the guitar off the wall and gave it to Krustev, he took it and carefully tried the strings and heard a voice that had sunk deeply in the sea of his own past, when Ardis told him take it, do you hear me, he said, take the guitar, I’m giving it to you.