The Names

5

People were always giving her shirts. Their own in most cases. She looked good in everything; everything fit. If a shirt was too loose, too big, the context would widen with the material and this became the point, this was the fit. The shirt would sag fetchingly, showing the girl, the sunny tomboy buried in hand-me-down gear. She used to snatch things off hangers in Yonge Street basements, the kind of shapeless stuff men wore north. These were stores with hunting knives in faded scabbards in the window, huge khaki anoraks with fur-lined hoods, and she'd grab a pair of twelve-dollar corduroys that became immediately hers, setting off her litheness, the close-skinned physical sense she expressed even sprawled across an armchair, reading. Her body had efficient lines that took odd clothing best, the weathered, the shrunken, the dull. People were pleased to see her in their work-shirts, old sweaters. She was not a friend who asked many favors or required of others a steadfastly sympathetic nature. They were flattered, really, when she took a shirt.

I stood watching from the deck. In the west the sun was banded, fading down a hazy slate horizon. We moved along the rocky coast and came booming in heavy gusts around the point. The village danced in light. As we approached there was a momentary lull, landward. Things seemed to pause to let the flesh tone seep in. Contours were defined, white walls massed around the belltower. Everything was clear and deep.The ship passed into a silence. Protected now. Old men came out to catch the hawsers.I saw her walk with Tap into the square. The shirt she wore was identifiable from a distance. Long, straight, tan, with brass studs and red-rimmed epaulets. She wore it outside her jeans. A carabiniere shirt. Long sleeves, sturdy fabric. The nights were getting cool.I hadn't seen the shirt in years but easily recalled who had given it to her.She asked about Cairo. I left my bag at the hotel desk. Up the cobbled streets, jasmine and donkey shit, the conversational shriek of older women. Tap walked on ahead, knowing she had something to tell me."We had a strange visit. A figure from the past. Out of absolutely nowhere.”"Everyone is from the past.”"Not everyone is a figure," she said. "This person qualifies as a figure.”We were taking unnaturally long strides on the broad steps. Some girls sang a song that began with the words one two three."Volterra," I said.She glanced."You're wearing his shirt. Practically an announcement. Not only that. The moment you started talking I knew you were going to say something about him. I realized the shirt meant more than the season is starting to change.”"That's amazing. Because the funny thing is I didn't even know I had the bloody shirt. Frank left three days ago. I found the shirt this morning. I'd totally forgotten the thing existed.”"A mock heirloom as I recall. Those were the days when he wasn't sure what he wanted to look and sound like to others. The young man obsessed by film. What was he doing here? Slow down, I hate this climb.”"He was passing through. What else? He drops in, he passes through. That's the way Volterra operates.”"True enough.”"He'd been in Turkey. He thought he'd drop in. Brought along his current lady. She kept saying, 'People with cancer always want to kiss me on the mouth.' Where does he find them?”"Too bad. I'd like to have seen him. He was coming here, I was going there.”"You're claiming foreknowledge. You knew I was going to say something about him.”"The old psychic motor is still running. When I saw you in the shirt I thought of him right away. Then Tap walked on ahead in his half-downcast all-knowing manner. You started to say something and it hit me: she's heard from Frank. How did he know you were here?”"I wrote once or twice.”"So he knew we'd separated.”"He knew.”"Do you think that's why he dropped in?”"Ass.”"How is he? Does he still sit with his back to the wall in restaurants?”A man and his small sons were mending a net. Kathryn stopped to exchange greetings in the set manner, the simple questions that brought such satisfying replies, the ceremony of well-being. I stepped between the gathers of yellow mesh and with an effort caught up to Tap.

Volterra came out of an old textile town in New England, a place with a dime store, one or two handsome public buildings in decline. A man in trail boots jerked the lever on a cigarette machine in the entranceway of a diner. Women drove station wagons, sometimes just sitting at the wheel, parked, trying to remember something. It was the last generation of station wagons. His father did odd jobs, the movie theater closed. But there were falls, the sound of rushing water. It was a northern sound, it smelled of the north. There was something pure in it.His mother had mental problems. Frank was the youngest of four. She was thirty-seven when he was born and she seemed now to be longing for senility. She wanted to sit in a warm corner and let the past fall slowly over her. Confused recollection was a state she felt was earned. It was a gratifying punishment, a sinking away from the life struggle. Her situation was exemplary. Let the children see how God does these things to people.The dark brick mill ran skeleton shifts, was always on the verge of shutting down. Men wore trail boots, wilderness boots, insulated hunting shoes.In New York he went to a school for private detectives, working in the stock rooms at Macy's during the day. The school, called an academy, was located off the lobby of a hotel full of West Indians. It was a crazy and money-wasting idea, he said, but it marked his freedom, it meant New York. You were a stranger and could do these things. Two months later he enrolled in film school at NYU.He cut news footage for a network affiliate in Providence. After writing a number of unfinished scripts he headed west to do technical films for companies with names like Signetics and Intersil. California was full of technocratic amaze. That's where the visionaries were, developing an argot, playing galactic war games on the display screens in computer research centers. Kathryn and I lived in Palo Alto then, happily on the fringe of things, sanding our secondhand chairs. She worked for Stanford University, the Center for Information Processing, where she helped students and faculty use computers in their research and course work. I was turning out the usual run of low-paying freelance work, most of it for high technology firms in the area.I wrote a script for a film that Volterra directed. He was fast and inventive with an offhand manner toward the work and many ideas about film, the state of film, the meaning of film, the language of film. He spent a lot of time with us. We went to the movies and marched against the war. The two things were connected. The flag-tailored kids were connected, the streets were connected, the music, the marijuana. I stopped smoking grass when the war ran down.He was full of comic sorrows, self-dramatizing impulses, wasted-looking in a way that marked a style more than a set of depressing circumstances, and he seemed most content with himself cursing the chill mist that blew across the hills. He had a narrow face and the feral eyes of a boy absorbed in the task of surviving. The style, the psychological intrigues were elements he played off this deeper thing. When he filled out, later, and grew the second or third of a number of experimental beards, I thought I was still able to detect that early fearfulness of his, the schemer's flexible logic, whatever it takes to get the edge.He started a filmmaking collective in San Francisco. The group shared all tasks, did two documentaries. The first concerned war protests and the police. The second was a story of the love affair, outside marriage, of a middle-aged woman well known in Hillsborough society. The movie became notorious locally for this reason and well-known on a wider basis for a forty-minute segment detailing an afternoon of sex and conversation. For legal reasons the movie had only fitful distribution and eventually none at all, but people talked about it and wrote about it and there were private screenings for months on both coasts. The running time was two hours, the woman's lover was Volterra.Film. This is what there was, to shoot film, cut film, screen it, talk about it.The collective fell apart when a conglomerate bought rights to the second documentary, changed the title, changed the names, hired stars and reshot the whole thing as a feature, using a veteran director and four writers. It was one of those strange transferences in which people conspire to lose sight of a central reality. But what was the reality in this case? There were a dozen questions about ethics, manipulation, the woman's motives. The documentary was edged in politics and hate. Frank was a name in the business.He would go on to features himself, of course, dropping from sight for long periods, insisting on closed sets when he worked. Long before that he was a force in our lives. He made us think about our modest expectations. His drive to make movies was so powerful we couldn't help feeling anxious hopes on his behalf. We were involved with Volterra. We wanted to defend him, explain him, make allowances for his obsessions, believe in his ideas for uncompromising films. He provided an occasion for reckless loyalties.When we told him Kathryn was pregnant he showed an emotion deep enough to confirm our own awe, the remarkableness of what we'd commonly made, this almond curve, detailed and living. We didn't know we were ready for a child until Frank's reaction showed us how beside the point readiness can seem to be.Parenthood eventually deepened our sense of moderation, our not-wanting. It was Frank who left us wondering at this way of life but ultimately confirmed in it. This is one of the balances of a stimulating friendship.There's no denying his effect on Kathryn. He stood outside her measures of a person's worth. He made her laugh, she sparked to him. The sweet mean narrow face, the uncombed hair. He was a genuine talent, a commitment, the one person whose excesses and personas she needed to indulge. It was bracing to have one's principles challenged. It clarified her vision of things, to be able to defend him to herself, this man who would sit with her in a restaurant on a redwood deck and recount in earnest deadpan detail the methods and bents, the hand-grips, of some woman he'd lately spent a night with. The exception was valid if it was large enough. He had the charm of a vast and innocent ego.This was before the film about the woman from Hillsborough. Kathryn would refuse to see it.He liked to turn up unexpectedly and made it hard for people to reach him when they wanted to. He lived in borrowed apartments much of the time. Already he was building tunnels in and out. Our feelings for him were sometimes deflected because of this. Long periods went by. We'd hear he was out of the country, underground, back east. Then he'd show up, hunched against the night, moving through the door in a half prowl, nodding, touched to see us looking much the same.A glancing love."There's more," Kathryn said. "He talked with Owen.”Star fields, ruined time. Nearby a man with a flashlight and donkey hauling garbage in black bags. The hill was empty depth against the streaming night, the medieval sky in Arabic and Greek. We drank dark wine from Paros, too full of night and sky to use the candles."I only listened to bits and pieces. It was mostly about the cult. Owen is less vague about them now. They're a cult pure and simple. They qualify. I don't like listening to that.”"I know.”"He makes an exercise of it. All that speculation. He knows I'm tired of it but in this case I can't really blame him for going on at such length. Frank was absolutely fascinated. He prompted, he questioned Owen endlessly. They spent seven or eight solid hours talking about the cult. One night here, one at the dig house.”"Why was Frank in Turkey? Is he doing a movie?”"He's hiding from a movie. He left the set, the location, whichever it was. He didn't say where they were shooting but I know it's the fourth straight project he's abandoned. The second one to reach the shooting stage.”"Where is he now?”"I don't know. He took the Rhodes steamer. It stops at two or three islands along the way.”"Did you see his last film?”"It was wonderful. Just a great piece of work. All Frank's. No one else could have done it. It had his tension in it. Do you know? His way of cutting short extravagant things. Oh I loved it.”"That was about the time we were getting set to wind it up.”"I went to that revival house on Roncesvalles. I walked. How many miles?”"Past Bathurst.”"Past Dufferin.”"Going to the movies. What was I doing?”"It felt so good to go to a movie alone. Do you know?”"I think I must have been watching television. What a crucial difference.”"You were working on your list," she said."Your list.”"I've never organized your so-called depravities in my mind. That was your game.”"True, all true. How broken I must have been, to be watching television. There you were, striding past Dufferin in your boots and padded clothes like some dyke in a modern children's story.”"Thank you.”"To the movies.”"It felt so good to walk.”"Not just any movie either.”"Remember the argument over the car?”"The squirrel in the basement. That one tree that flamed in the autumn.”"How strange to be nostalgic about the end of a marriage.”I saw him before I heard him, Owen Brademas (his shape) advancing softly up the stairs, knees high as he climbed, heedful, long-limbed, trailing the glow from his flashlight."But you're sitting in the dark.”I said, "Why were you pointing your light down behind you?”We spoke almost simultaneously."Was I? Didn't realize. I know the way so well.”"Darkness makes us sentimental.”Kathryn brought a glass, I poured some wine. He switched off the light and settled into a chair, stretching.The storytelling voice."I realize finally what the secret is. All these months I've wondered what it was I couldn't quite identify in my feelings about this place. The deep-reaching quality of things. Rock shapes, wind. Things seen against the sky. The clear light before sundown that just about breaks my heart." Laughing. "Then I realized. These are all things I seem to remember. But where do I remember them from? I've been to Greece before, yes, but never here, never to a place so isolated, never these particular sights and colors and silences. Ever since I got to the island I've been remembering. The experience is familiar, although that's not the right way to put it. There are times you do the simplest thing and it reaches you in a way you didn't think possible, in a way you'd once known but have long since forgotten. You eat a fig and there is something higher about this fig. The first fig. The prototype. The dawn of figs." Laughing out. "I feel I've known the particular clarity of this air and water, I've climbed these stony paths into the hills. It's eerie, this sense. Metempsychosis. It's what I've been feeling all along. But I didn't know it until now.”"There's a generic quality, an absoluteness," I said. "The bare hills, a figure in the distance.”"Yes, and it seems to be a remembered experience. If you play with the word 'metempsychosis' long enough I think you find not only transfer-of-soul but you reach the Indo-European root to breathe. That seems correct to me. We are breathing it again. There's some quality in the experience that goes deeper than the sensory apparatus will allow. Spirit, soul. The experience is tied up with self-perception somehow. I think you feel it only in certain places. This is my place perhaps, this island. Greece contains this mysterious absolute, yes. But maybe you have to wander to find yourself in it.”"An Indian concept," Kathryn said. "Or is it? Metempsychosis.”"A Greek word," he said. "Look straight up, the universe is pure possibility. James says the air is full of words. Maybe it's full of perceptions too, feelings, memories. Is it someone else's memories we sometimes have? The laws of physics don't distinguish between past and future. We are always in contact. There is random interaction. The patterns repeat. Worlds, star clusters, even memories perhaps.”"Turn on the lights," I said.Again he laughed."Am I growing soft-headed? Could be. I've reached an age.”"We all have. But I wish you'd stayed with figs. I understood that.”He rarely supported his arguments or views. The first sound of contention sent him into deep retreat. Kathryn knew this, of course, and moved protectively to other subjects, always ready to attend to his well-being.Terror. This is the subject she chose. In Europe they attack their own institutions, their police, journalists, industrialists, judges, academics, legislators. In the Middle East they attack Americans. What does it mean? She wanted to know if the risk analyst had an opinion."Bank loans, arms credits, goods, technology. Technicians are the infiltrators of ancient societies. They speak a secret language. They bring new kinds of death with them. New uses for death. New ways to think about death. All the banking and technology and oil money create an uneasy flow through the region, a complex set of dependencies and fears. Everyone is there, of course. Not just Americans. They're all there. But the others lack a certain mythical quality that terrorists find attractive.”"Good, keep going.”"America is the world's living myth. There's no sense of wrong when you kill an American or blame America for some local disaster. This is our function, to be character types, to embody recurring themes that people can use to comfort themselves, justify themselves and so on. We're here to accommodate. Whatever people need, we provide. A myth is a useful thing. People expect us to absorb the impact of their grievances. Interesting, when I talk to a Mideastern businessman who expresses affection and respect for the U.S., I automatically assume he's either a fool or a liar. The sense of grievance affects all of us, one way or another.”"What percentage of these grievances is justified?”I pretended to calculate."Of course we're a military presence in some of these places," I said. "Another reason to be targeted.”"You're a presence almost everywhere. You have influence everywhere. But you're only being shot at in selected locales.”"I think I hear a wistful note. Canada. Is that what you mean? Where we operate with impunity.”"Certainly you're there," she said. "Two-thirds of the largest corporations.”"They're a developed country. They have no moral edge. The people who have technology and bring technology are the death-dealers. Everyone else is innocent. These Mideast societies are at a particular pitch right now. There's no doubt or ambiguity. They burn with a clear vision. There must be times when a society feels the purest virtue lies in killing.”Talking with my wife on a starry night in the Greek archipelago."Canadians are stricken by inevitability," she said. "Not that I defend the capitulation. That's what it is. Pathetic surrender.”"We do the wrong kind of killing in America. It's a form of consumerism. It's the logical extension of consumer fantasy. People shooting from overpasses, barricaded houses. Pure image.”"Now you're the one who sounds wistful.”"No connection to the earth.”"Some truth in that, I guess. A little.”"I like a little truth. A little truth is all I ever hope for. Do you know what I mean, Owen? Where are you? Make a noise. I like to stumble upon things.”I knocked over a glass, enjoying the sound it made rolling on coarse wood. Kathryn snatched it at the edge of the table."Talk about stumble," she said."The worst thing about this wine is that you can get to like it.”A light high on the hill. We waited through a silence."Why is the language of destruction so beautiful?" Owen said.I didn't know what he meant. Did he mean ordinary hardware -stun grenades, parabellum ammo? Or what a terrorist might carry, some soft-eyed boy from Adana, slung over his shoulder, Kalashnikov, sweet whisper in the dark, with a flash suppressor and folding stock. He sat quietly, Owen did, working out an answer. The way was open to interpretation, broader landscapes. Wehrmacht, Panzer, Blitzkrieg. He would have a patient theory to submit on the adductive force of such sounds, how they stir the chemistry of the early brain. Or did he mean the language of the mathematics of war, nuclear game theory, that bone country of tech data and little clicking words."Perhaps they fear disorder," he said. "I've been trying to understand them, imagine how their minds work. The old man, Michaeli, may have been a victim of some ordering instinct. They may have felt they were moving toward a static perfection of some kind. Cults tend to be closed-in, of course. Inwardness is very much the point. One mind, one madness. To be part of some unified vision. Clustered, dense. Safe from chaos and life.”Kathryn said, "I have one point to make, only one. I thought of it after James and I talked about the finds in central Crete, human sacrifice, the Minoan site. Is it possible these people are carrying out some latter-day version? You remember the Pylos tablet, Owen. Linear B. A plea for divine intercession. A list of sacrifices that included ten humans. Could this murder be a latter-day plea to the gods? Maybe they're a doomsday cult.”"Interesting. But something keeps me from thinking they would accept a higher being. I saw them and talked to them. They weren't god-haunted people, somehow I know this, and if they believed some final catastrophe was imminent they were waiting for it, not trying to prevent it, not trying to calm the gods or petition them. Definitely waiting. I came away with a sense that they were enormously patient. And where's the ritual in their sacrifice? Old man hammered to death. No sign of ritual. What god could they invent who might accept such a sacrifice, the death of a mental defective? A street mugging in effect.”"Maybe their god is a mental defective.”"I talked to them, Kathryn. They wanted to hear about ancient alphabets. We discussed the evolution of letters. The praying-man shape of the Sinai. The ox pictograph. Aleph, alpha. From nature, you see. The ox, the house, the camel, the palm of hand, the water, the fish. From the external world. What men saw, the simplest things. Everyday objects, animals, parts of the body. It's interesting to me, how these marks, these signs that appear so pure and abstract to us, began as objects in the world, living things in many cases." A long pause. "Your husband thinks all this is bookish drool.”Our voices in the dark. Kathryn reassures, James issues mild denials. But he wasn't far wrong. I had trouble enough getting Greek characters straight; picturesque desert alphabets were a little too remote to keep me interested. I didn't want to become an adversary, however. He'd probably withheld some things, misled us slightly, but I didn't think these were pieces of strategy so much as instances of personal confusion. And in his present silence I thought I sensed a dreaminess, a drift into memory. Owen's silences were problems to be worked out. Night is continuous, he'd said. The lulls, the measured respites were part of conversation."It's possible they've killed another person," he said after a while. "Not here, Kathryn. Not anywhere in Greece.”His turn to reassure. This was considerate, his quickness to ease her fears for Tap's safety. I could imagine from that point on she would no longer feel so protective and affectionate. He was the friend who brought the bad news."I received a letter from a colleague in Jordan. He's with the Department of Antiquities there. He knows about the cult, I'd written him. He tells me there was a murder two or three months ago which resembles this one in several respects. The victim was an old woman, near death, lingering for some time. She lived in a village at the edge of the Wadi Rum, the great sandstone desert in the southern part of the country.”Kathryn stood against the white wall. She wanted a cigarette. Twice a year since she'd given them up she wanted a cigarette. I always knew. Moments of helpless tension, an imbalance in the world. They broke the rules, so will I. She used to go through the house groping in dark closets for a lone Salem left faded in some coat pocket."They found her outside the mud-brick house where she lived with relatives. She'd been killed with a hammer. I don't know whether it was a standard claw hammer like the one used here.”I said, "Is this what you and Frank Volterra talked about for two nights?”"Partly. Yes, he wanted to talk. To talk and listen.”"Is that where he's gone?”"I don't know. He seemed to be considering it. Something about the place excited him. I made the trip myself once, some years ago; there are inscriptions, simple graffiti mostly, camel drivers scratching their names on rocks. I described it to him. We talked about it at some length, the idea of these people, this mad scene being played out in a vast beautiful silent place. The man almost frightened me with his attentiveness. To be listened to so closely can be disconcerting. It implies an obligation on the speaker's part.”"Frank's not your everyday tourist. Did you tell him about Donoussa?”"I don't know anything about it. Only that a young girl was killed. My assistant heard it from someone.”"Also a hammer," I said."Yes. A year ago.”A claw hammer. Is this what he'd meant when he talked about the language of destruction? Simple hand tool of iron and wood. He liked the sound of the words apparently, or the look of them, the way they were bonded perhaps, their compact joinder, like the tool itself, the iron and wood.If you think the name of the weapon is beautiful, are you implicated in the crime?I poured more wine, suddenly tired, feeling drumheaded and dumb. It didn't seem logical, the hangover preceding the drunk, or concurrent with it. Owen said something about madness or sadness. I tried to listen, realizing Kathryn was gone, inside somewhere, sitting in the dark or in bed already, wanting us to take these murders somewhere else. I would go down the hill with him in the small beam of his flashlight, watch him ride off on the undersized machine, legs crowding the handlebars. Then to my hotel, one flight up, the room at the end of the hall.Owen was talking again."In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.”

The custom in warm weather is to hang curtains in doorways. The solid finish of the village yields to human needs. Surface shapes are engagingly disturbed. The wind blows, houses open to the passerby. There's no clear feeling of mysterious invitation. Only of stillness moved inside, stillness darkened, the grain of the inner day.The rooms are plain and square, immediate, without entranceways or intervening spaces, set at street level, so close to us as we walk in the narrow passage that we feel uneasy about intruding. The Greek in conversation crowds his listener and here we find the same unboundaried exercise of life. Families. People clustered, children everywhere, old women in black sitting motionless, rough hands folded in sleep. The bright and vast and deep are everywhere, sun-cut clarity, the open sea. These modest rooms mark out a refuge from eternal things. This is the impression we have, Tap and I, a sense of modesty, of nondescriptness, only glimpsing as we pass, careful not to appear too curious.Above the stepped streets there were occasional open spaces, stronger wind. I followed Tap past a large well with a conical iron cap. A woman with an open umbrella sat on a mule, waiting. Cats moved along the walls, watched from roof ledges, cankerous, lame, mangy, some of them minute, the size of a woolen glove.Climbing. The sea appeared, the ruined windmill to the east. We paused to catch our breath, looking down on a church with an openwork belfry of some patchy rose-pink hue, a rude and pretty touch in all the layered white. A single small church might press together half a dozen surfaces in unexpected ways, sea-waved, domed, straight-edged, barrel-vaulted, a sensuous economy of shapes and arrangements and cross-influences. We heard the hoarse roar of a donkey, an outsized violent sound. The heat felt good.I showed Tap a postcard my father had sent. It had a picture on it of the Ranchman's Café in Ponder, Texas. My father had never been to Texas as far as I knew. He lived in a small house in Ohio with a woman named Murph.Tap had received the same kind of postcard. In fact almost all my father's communications for two or three years had been in the form of postcards showing the Ranchman's Café.The message on his card, Tap said, was the same as the message on mine. He didn't seem surprised by this.A distant lazy drone. Cicadas. We'd seen them come whirring out of olive trees to sail into walls, dropping in a dry stunned rustle. The wind began to gather force.Tap led me to an unpaved area of houses with courtyards, the upper limit of the village. There were tall gateways here, some of them located a fair distance in front of the houses to which they belonged. Seen from certain angles these gateways framed a barren hilltop or the empty sky. They were artless arrangements, free of the texts they put before us, material cleanly broken from the world.We climbed a rock path that worked around a shoulder of land and curled out of sight of the village. A whitewashed chapel across a defile, abrupt in brown earth. We were high up now, in the sweep of the wind and sea, stopping frequently to find fresh perspectives. I sat at the edge of a narrow stand of pine, wishing we'd brought water. Tap wandered into a rocky field just below. The wind came across the defile with a sound that changed levels as the current increased in speed and reached the trees, rushing, from a pure swift surge of air to something like a voice, an urgent emotion. Tap looked up at me.Ten minutes later I got to my feet and walked out into the sun. The wind had died. I saw him standing fifty yards away in the steep field. He was absolutely still. I called to him, he didn't move. I walked that way, asking what was wrong, calling the words out across the immense silence around us, the drop-off into distances. He stood with his knees slightly flexed, one foot forward, head down, his hands at belt level, held slightly out from his body. Arrested motion. I saw them right away, lustrous black bees, enormous, maybe a dozen, bobbing in the air around him. At twenty yards I heard the buzzing.I told him not to worry, they wouldn't sting. I moved in slowly, as much to reassure Tap as to keep the bees from getting riled. Burnished, black-enameled. They rose to eye level, dropped away, humming in the sun. I put my arm around him. I told him it was all right to move. I told him we would move slowly up toward the path. I felt him tense up even more. His way of saying no, of course. He was afraid even to speak. I told him it was safe, they wouldn't sting. They hadn't stung me and I'd walked right through them. All we had to do was move slowly up the slope. They were beautiful, I said. I'd never seen bees this size or color. They gleamed, I told him. They were grand, fantastic.Raising his head now, turning. Did I expect relief, chagrin? As I held him close he gave me a look that spoke some final disappointment. As if I could convince him, stung twice before. As if I could take him out of his fear, a thing so large and deep as fear, by prattling on about the beauty of these things. As if I could tell him anything at all, fake father, liar.We held that inept stance a moment longer. Then I took his arm and led him through the field.

Kathryn and I had dinner on the harborfront with Anand Dass. She knew what was in the kitchen and gave our orders to a boy who stood with his arms crossed on his chest, nodding as she listed the items. The food and supply boat was docked nearby, a single-masted broad-beamed vessel with mystical eyes painted on the bow. No one wanted to talk about the cult."It was flawless. A perfect flight. I mean it, those Japanese, they impress me. When I learned they have their own security at the Athens airport, I knew I would send him JAL.”"You go to the States soon," I said."The whole family, we converge, what an event," he said. "Even my sister is coming.”"Do you come back in the spring?”"Here? No. The University of Pennsylvania takes over the whole operation. I'll be back in India by then.”Kathryn passed the bread around."In any case I'm not interested in underwater work," he said. "Outside my frame.”"What do you mean?" I said.He looked at Kathryn. She said to me, "They're going to concentrate on the submerged ruins. They'll alternate. Next season, underwater work. Following year, back to the trenches.”"This is new," I said."Yes.”"But I don't think we'll ever alternate," Anand said. "I think we're finished for the season, the decade, the century, whatever.”He had a strong laugh. People stood along the quay, talking in last light. I leaned back in the chair and watched Kathryn eat.The argument was long and detailed, with natural pauses, and moved from the street to the terrace, into the house, finally up onto the roof. It was full of pettiness and spite, the domestic forms of assault, the agreed-upon reductions. This seemed the point, to reduce each other and everything else. What marriage is for, according to her. Our rage was immense but all we could show for it, all we could utter, were these gibes and rejoinders. And that we did poorly. We weren't able to take advantage of the clear openings. It didn't seem to matter who got the better of it. The argument had an inner life, a force distinct from the issues. There were surges, hesitations, loud voices, laughter, mimicry, moments in which we tried to remember what we wanted to say next, a pace, a range. After a while this became our only motive, to extend the argument to its natural end.It began on the way up to the house."Bitch. You knew.”"I've been trying to find an alternative.”"This means no England.”"We could still go to England.”"I know you.”"What do you know?”"You want to dig.”"I didn't want to tell you the plan had broken down until I had some kind of alternative.”"When will you tell me about the alternative? When the alternative breaks down?”"Shut up, ass.”"I know what this means.”"I don't know what it means. How could you?”"I know how you think.”"What does it mean? I don't know what it means.”"You won't go to England.”"Good. We won't go to England.”"That whole thing was based on your coming back here.”"We could go anyway. We could work out a plan for the summer while we're there.”"But you won't.”"Why won't we?”"Because you won't. It's too obvious and simple. It lacks in-trepidness. It was intrepid when you came up with it originally. It is now obvious and simple and dull.”"You want to see the Elgin marbles.”"It's a fallback. You hate that.”"You're a fallback.”"What are you?”"You want to see the Elgin marbles but you won't go to the Acropolis. You want to see the rip-off, the imperialist swag in its proper surroundings.”"Hopeless. How the hell did I ever imagine I could come here?”"Swag. I got that from Tap.”"I hate this climb.”"You keep saying.”"I'm not the man-never mind.”"You never were. You're not the man you never were.”The argument had resonance. It had levels, memories. It referred to other arguments, to cities, houses, rooms, those wasted lessons, our history in words. In a way, our special way, we were discussing matters close to the center of what it meant to be a couple, to share that risk and distance. The pain of separation, the fore-memory of death. Moments of remembering her, Kathryn dead, odd meditations, pity the sad survivor. Everything we said denied this. We were intent on being petty. But it was there, a desperate love, the conscious hovering sum of things. It was part of the argument. It was the argument.We walked the rest of the way in silence and she went in to check on Tap, who was sleeping. Then we sat on the terrace and began immediately to whisper at each other."Where will he go to school?”"Back on that, are we?”"Back on that, back on that.”"He's way ahead of them. He can start a little later if necessary. But it won't be necessary. We'll work it out.”"He's not so way ahead. I don't think he's way ahead.”"You distrust his writing. Something in you recoils from that. You think he ought to be diagramming sentences.”"You're crazy, you know that? I'm beginning to see.”"Admit it.”"Why did it take me so long to see what you are.”"What am I?”"What are you.”"You enjoy telling me that you know how I think. How do I think? What am I?”"What are you.”"I feel things. I have self-respect. I love my son.”"Where does that come from? Who asked? You feel things. You feel things when they're in your interest. You feel things when they further your drive, your will to do something.”"Ass of the universe.”"Pure will. Where's the heart?”"Where's the liver?" she said."I don't know why I came here. It was crazy, thinking something might come of it. Did I forget who you are, how you consider the simplest things people say and do an affront to your destiny? You have that, you know. A sense of personal destiny, like some German in the movies.”"What's that mean?”"I don't know.”"What movie, ass?”"Come to my room. Come on, let's go to the hotel, right now.”"Whisper," she said."Don't make me hate myself, Kathryn.”"You'll wake him up. Whisper.”"I'm fucking pissed off. How can I whisper?”"We've had that argument." Bored."You make me hate us both.”"That's an old tired argument." Bored. The worst remarks were bored ones. The best weapons. Bored sarcasm, bored wit, bored tones."But what about Frank? We haven't had that argument in a while, have we? How is it he just happened to drop by? Did he want to talk over old times?”She was laughing. What was she laughing at?"What a pair, you two. The ragged self-regarding artist, the secretly well-to-do young woman. How many intimate little lunches did you and Frank have while I was doing my booklets and pamphlets? All those diminutive things I was so good at. That minor status you hated so much and still hate in me. What sexy currents passed in the air? Buddy-buddy. Did he ask you up to one of those dreary flats he was always holed up in? He spent half his life looking for bottle openers in other people's kitchens. Did that make it sleazier, sexier? Did you talk about your father's money? No, that would have made him hate you. That would have made him want to fuck you in all the wrong ways, so to speak. And what about Owen, the way you look out for his interests, his curious interests, that half-flirtish thing that comes over you." I went into my female voice routine, a tactic I hadn't used since the recitation of the 27 Depravities. "Are you sure, Owen honey, you never wrote a single line of poetry when you were a lonely farmboy under that big prairie sky?”"Fobuck yobou.”"That's right.”"You stupid.”"That's right. Bilingual.”"You're just shit.”"Whisper, whisper.”She went inside. I decided to follow, feeling my way in the dark. Soft noise, a light around the corner. She was in the bathroom, pants down, seated, when I moved into the doorway. She tried to kick at the door, one arm flailing, but her legs were caught in the jeans and the arm wasn't long enough. Water music. Too urgent to be contained."What were you laughing at before?”"Out.”"I want to know.”"If you don't get out.”"Say it in Ob.”"You bastard.”"Would you like a magazine?”"If you don't go. If you don't get out.”The argument worked in such a way that we kept losing the sequence. It moved backwards at times, then advanced abruptly, passing over subjects. There were frequent changes in mood. Moods lasted only seconds. Bored, self-righteous, injured. These injured moments were so sadly gratifying that we tried to prolong them. The argument was full of satisfactions, the major one being that we did not have to examine what we said."It lacks intrepidness.”"Get out.”"You'll build a reed boat.”"James, son of a bitch, I want you out of here.”"You'll live in a gas balloon that circles the earth. A seven-story balloon with ferns in the lobby.”"I'm serious now. If you don't get out. I really mean this.”"You'll take him to the Museum of Holes. So he'll have a better understanding of your life work. Dirt holes, mud holes, tall holes, short holes.”"You bastard, I'll get you for this.”"Pee pee pee pee pee pee pee.”"You stupid.”"Don't you realize that as long as you have to sit down to pee, you'll never be a dominant force in the world? You'll never be a convincing technocrat or middle manager. Because people will know. She's in there sitting down. “I stayed on the terrace for a while. Then I climbed the short stairway to the roof. Flashing lights in the harbor. He was awake, I could hear them talking and laughing. What were they laughing at? She came up, tossed me a sweater and sat on the ledge."Your son's afraid you might frobeeze.”"What?”"Frobeeze tobo dobeobath." Amused."I wish you'd stop doing that. Both of you.”"Issue a formal order.”"Why did you come up here?”Amused. "He sent me.”"I want to see him. Wherever you two end up. You'll send him.”"Issue a command. We'll route it through the system.”"Bitch. You knew.”"How do you think I feel? I wanted to come back here.”"To dig.”"You make me insane sometimes.”"Good.”"Shut up.”"You shut up.”"You're afraid of your own son. It disturbs you, that there'll always be a connection.”"What connection?”"We find things. We learn.”"What do you learn?”"I never minded what you did. I know you've always arranged your life around things you couldn't possibly fear losing. The snag in this plan is your family. What do you do about us? But I never minded what you wrote. It's your present occupation I despise. I would hate your life. I would hate doing what you do. That awful man.”A high-pitched voice. "That awful man.”"The travel alone would drive me crazy. I don't know how you stand it. And the job.”"We've heard all this." Bored."What am I, who am I, what do I want, who do I love. A Harlequin romance.”"Make sense.”"Make sense. If only you knew. But you're so small and whining.”"I'm the ass of the universe. That implies a certain scope, a dimension.”"You'll be an alcoholic. That's what you'll be. I give you a year. Especially if you don't go back to North America. You'll drift into it here. You'll find yourself packing a flask to take to Saudi Arabia. If you're better off without it, you're an alcoholic. Remember that.”"That's your father's line.”"That's right. But he wasn't better off without it. He was a dead soul either way. You're different.”"I like what I'm doing. Why can't I make you understand that? You don't listen. Your view is the only view. If you don't like something, how could anyone like it? If you're better off without it, he'd say, pouring another bourbon. And I like his writing. I think it's fantastic. I've told him that. I've encouraged him. You're not the only one who encourages him. You're not the sole support. And I'll tell you how you think. I'll tell you exactly. You need things to be committed to. You need belief. Tap is the world you've created and you can believe in that. It's yours, no one can take it from you. Your archaeology is yours. You're a wonderful amateur. I mean it, the best. You make the professionals seem like so many half-ass triflers. They just dabble, they putter. It's your world now. Pure, fine, radiant. He'd pour another bourbon. If you're better off without it. He liked his bourbon all right. What was the name of that boat, where we talked? The fisherman pounding the octopus. Boats are either saints or women, except when they're places.”I put the sweater on."You know how it is with Canadians," she said. "We love to be disappointed. Everything we do ends up disappointingly. We know this, we expect this, so we've made disappointment part of the inner requirement of our lives. Disappointment is our native emotion. It's our guiding spirit. We arrange things to make disappointment inevitable. This is how we feed ourselves in winter.”She seemed to be accusing me of something.

The terrace was L-shaped. From the longer of the segments, the east, where I sat doing a pronoun exercise in my book on modern Greek, I saw a familiar figure in red shorts and t-shirt go running across the street and along the restaurant wall, where he passed quickly from sight, the first of two familiar figures I would see that day.It was David Keller, toning up. I put down the book, delighted to have an excuse to do so. Then I went outside and headed up through a small dusty park toward the pine woods that form a band around Lycabettus Hill. As I walked through the opening in the fence I heard my name called. Lindsay was behind me, also tracking the runner.We walked into the woods and found a path that looked as though it might suit someone running, being set at less of a lateral slant than the others. The pine floor was dry and pale. There were no shrubs or bushes and it was possible to see a fair distance up into the woods."Why does he come all the way up here to run?”"He likes the woods. Someone told him it's better to run on rough terrain.”"A milder heart attack.”"He was serious about sports. He needs to hear himself breathe, he says. He was football, basketball crazy.”"The dogs will get him in here.”"Dogs like him," she said.She walked lazily, swaying, hands clasped behind her. From an opening in the trees we saw part of the sprawl toward Hymettus, white buildings, a white city in this September sun. She seemed often to be thinking some amusing thought, perhaps something so nearly inseparable from a private perception she could not share it easily. She was shy with people but eager to receive, never wary or distrustful. Her eyes were full of humor, fond remembering. Her favorite stories concerned men making fools of themselves heroically."I like it here. It's so still.”"He has a kind of shagginess. As far as dogs.”"They really do. They follow him.”We saw him coming back this way, pounding crookedly on the narrow path, dancing over tree roots and stones. We stepped out of the way. He went past grunting, breath blasting, his face twisted and stretched, looking unfinished. We found a crude bench in the sun."How long will you stay?" she said."Awhile. Until I begin to feel I know it here. Until I begin to feel responsible. New places are a kind of artificial life.”"I'm not sure I know what you mean. But I think that's a Charles Maitland type remark. A little weary. I also think people save up remarks like that, waiting for me to come into range.”"It's your own doing.”"Sure. I'm so innocent.”"How are your storefront English lessons going?”"It's not exactly a storefront and I think I'm learning more Greek than they're learning English but aside from that it's going well.”"It's not that we think we see innocence. We see generosity and calm. Someone who'll sympathize with us over our mistakes and bad luck. That's where all these observations come from. Mistakes in life. We try to make pointed remarks out of the messes we've created. A second chance. A well-turned life after all.”Below us two dobermans ranged along a draw. The woods were marked with shallow draws and deeper man-made channels to carry off winter rains. We heard David approach again. The dogs went taut, looking up this way. He passed just above us, blowing, and Lindsay turned to flip a pebble at him. A girl in a school smock said something to the dogs."When will we get to meet Tap?”"They're still on the island. They're laying plans.”"You make it sound sinister.”"They're sitting in the sunlit kitchen, avoiding mention of my name.”"We haven't had dinner in a while," she said."Let's have dinner.”"I'll call the Bordens.”"I'll call the Maitlands.”"Who else is in town?”"Walk around the Hilton pool," I told her.The three of us went slowly down toward the street. David talked in short bursts."Happen to have a canteen? What kind of friend?”"What are you in training for?”"Night drop into Iran. The bank's determined to be the first ones back in. I'll be leading a small elite group. Credit officers with blackened faces.”"I'm glad we're here instead of there," Lindsay said. "I don't think I'd want to be there even after the trouble ends.”"It ain't ending real soon. That's why I'm doing this commando stuff.”An old man with a setter walked along an intersecting path. Lindsay stooped over the dog, murmuring to it, a little English, a little Greek. David and I kept walking, turning into a path that ran parallel to the street, twenty feet above it. A woman walked below us, headed in the opposite direction, carrying pastry in a white box. David's breathing leveled off."Dresses with thin shoulder straps," he said. "A puckered bodice, you know. The kind of dress where the strap keeps slipping off and she doesn't notice for two or three strides and then she puts it back up there casually like brushing a curl off her forehead. That's all. The strap slips off. She keeps walking. We have a momentary naked shoulder.”"A puckered bodice.”"I want you to get to know Lindsay. She's terrific.”"I see that.”"But you don't know her. She likes you, Jim.”"I like her.”"But you don't know her.”"We talk now and then.”"Listen, you have to come with us to the islands.”"Great.”"We want to do the islands. I want you to get to know her.”"David, I know her.”"You don't know her.”"And I like her. Honest.”"She likes you.”"We all like each other.”"Bastard. I want us to do the islands.”"Summer's ending.”"There's winter," he said.His probing looks disarmed me. It was a practice of his to search people's faces, determined to find a response to his vehement feelings. Then he'd show his big tired western smile, his character actor's smile. It was interesting, the esteem in which he held Lindsay, the half reverence. He wanted everyone to know her. It would help us understand how she'd changed his life.She caught up to us now."Everyone's so nice," she said. "If you speak a few words of the language, they want to take you home to dinner. That's one of the things about living abroad. It takes a while to find out who the madmen are.”Near the spear leaves of a blue-green agave she turned to speak to David, her left ear translucent in the sun.

Later that afternoon, near a kiosk where I often bought the newspaper, I saw Andreas Eliades in a car with another man and a woman. The car had stopped for a light and I'd glanced that way. He was alone in the rear seat. It was one of those low-skirted broad-visored Citroëns, medieval, with slash headlights and heavy trim, a battering contraption for sieges. Above the full black beard his dark eyes were set on me. We nodded to each other, smiled politely. The car moved off.

Sherding. Crouched in the pungent earth, soft forms all about her, pink-ridged, curled, writhing, here in B zone, below the black decay. She is scraping down the square. Right-angled corners, straight sides. Her sweat is a rank reminder, the only one, that she exists, that she is separate from the things that surround her. Troweling around a stone. She remembers someone telling her that stones gradually sink through humus and loam. Clip the roots, leave the stones in place. Part of a hearth, perhaps, or wall. An incised design. A glimpse of political life. Rodents, earthworms turn the soil. She senses the completeness of the trench. It is her size, it fits. She rarely looks over the rim. The trench is enough. A five-foot block of time abstracted from the system. Sequence, order, information. All she needs of herself. Nothing more, nothing less. In its limits the trench enables her to see what's really there. It's a test device for the senses. New sight, new touch. She loves the feel of workable earth, the musky raw aroma. The trench is her medium by now. It is more than the island as the island is more than the world.I was helpless, overwhelmed. The bare fact of it disheartened me. I couldn't see what the work signified or represented to her. Was it the struggle that counted, a sense of test or mission? What was the metaphor, exactly?I was compelled in the end to take her literally. She was digging to find things, to learn. Objects themselves. Tools, weapons, coins. Maybe objects are consoling. Old ones in particular, earth-textured, made by otherminded men. Objects are what we aren't, what we can't extend ourselves to be. Do people make things to define the boundaries of the self? Objects are the limits we desperately need. They show us where we end. They dispel our sadness, temporarily.She called that night to say she'd taken a job with the British Columbia Provincial Museum. She spoke haltingly, her voice full of concern. I could almost believe someone close to me had died. The British Columbia Provincial Museum. I told her that was fine, fine. I said it sounded like a wonderful museum. We were polite, accommodating. We spoke softly, moved to a gentleness we clearly felt we owed each other. Owen had helped arrange the job, through contacts. The museum was in Victoria and specialized in the culture of the Northwest Coast Indians. The museum sponsored occasional field schools. Fine, fine. We were warm to each other, considerate. I wanted her to be certain the job was good enough, what she wanted, although she wasn't sure at this point exactly what she'd be doing. She apologized for having to take Tap so far away and promised we would work out visits despite the distance. Work out meetings, trips together, long talks, father and son. Her voice was dense, chambered, the telephone a sign and instrument of familiar distance, this condition of being apart. All the tender feelings passed between us that I'd sought in recent months to revive by some jumbled luck of character, will and indirection, carried now in the static of our voices, undersea. There were many silences. We said goodnight, dark, sorry, making plans to meet in Piraeus for the trip to the airport. After that we would talk again, talk often, keep each other informed, stay in the closest possible touch. Ashes.

In the painted evening they walk past the windmill. He points out to sea, about a hundred yards, to the place where dolphins breached, a week ago, in a softfall of violet light. It is one of those imprinted moments, part of him now, contained in island time. A fishing boat approaches in the calm that settles in at this hour. It is blood red, the Katerina, a life ring fixed to the mast. She smiles as he makes out the name. The motor leaves a cadenced noise.The small Cretan rugs. The plank floors. The old lamp with its sepia shade. The donkey bag on the wall. The flowers in rusty cans on the roof, the steps, the window ledges. Tap's handprint on a mirror. The cane chair in a rectangle of light.In the morning they leave. From the top deck of the boat they see the white village rocking in the mist. How brave and affecting it is, houses clustered on a windy rock, news and reassurance. They eat the food she has packed, sitting low in their slatted bench, out of the wind. He asks her the names of things, ship parts, equipment, and later they walk across the lower deck to trace the system of ropes and anchor chains.The sun is obscured in dense ascending cloud. Soon the island is a silhouette, a conjecture or mood of light, scant and pale on the iron sea.