Lily and the Lost Boy (7 page)

“What are you reading?” Paul asked.

“Herodotus,” she answered. “About the wars between the Persians and the Greeks.”

He looked rather sad as though she'd given him disappointing news.

“Listen, Jack will turn up,” she said impulsively.

Paul was staring at the king of spades. “He's crazy,” he said suddenly.

She was startled but said nothing.

“You want to play cards?” he asked.

“Okay. But don't get sore if I win.”

“You won't win. And I never get sore.”

The sky was darkening. Lily turned on the unshaded lamp on the floor. They played a few games. Paul began to look more cheerful. When a donkey brayed, he imitated it silently, opening his mouth wide and nodding his head up and down. A sudden breeze swept through the window, bringing with it the evening smells of Limena. Roses and chickens and squash flowers, Lily said to herself, and roasting lamb, dahlias, the black, tight smell of Turkish coffee, and the almost flower-like smell of the sea.

“And there's that piney smell,” Paul said.

“You read my mind.”

“I didn't, Lily. You're sniffing the air like Rosa does. It isn't hard to figure out. You want to make everything seem like magic … a mystery.”

She pondered that for a moment, selecting a card from the pile on the floor.

“Everything is, in a way,” she said as she laid down her hand, the ace of hearts she had just taken from the deck making a full run.

“You've destroyed my winning streak,” Paul said.

“Magic,” she said.

“It's only one hand. I'll allow it because I'm going to win anyhow.”

She heard her mother laugh. She felt weightless, suddenly, buoyed up by happiness. It was lovely to go to the village in the evening, lovely to be greeted with a special evening gaiety by people whom they saw in the daytime. It wasn't that the food would be so wonderful at Efthymios' tiny restaurant where they usually went for supper. It was the cheerfulness of the place that drew the Coreys there. Its four tables would be set outside on the pavement Efthymios washed down every afternoon with buckets of cold water. There would be pots of geraniums at the door, and Efthymios, the chef and only waiter, his clean, frayed shirt open at the neck, would stand patiently beside the Coreys' table, waiting for them to tell him what they wanted—which he already knew since each of them always ordered the same thing. Lily would have pastitsio, macaroni and lamb in a sauce; Mr. Corey would have sardines fried in oil; Mrs. Corey would take the soup of beans and macaroni that had been cooking slowly for hours in the dark little kitchen; and Paul always chose the omelet. The restaurant was the smallest in Limena. For a joke, people called Efthymios “Onassis,” which had been the name of a rich shipowner. In his placid way he appeared to enjoy the joke himself.

“Let's go, children,” called Mr. Corey.

Paul played his last, and winning, card. “Once again!” he cried.

“How boring it must be for you,” commented Lily.

“It's
never
boring to win,” Paul said with a grin.

As they passed Dionysus' shrine Mr. Corey said, “It looked like this in the moonlight on an evening two thousand years ago.”

“It couldn't have, Papa,” said Lily. “It was new then. There were statues inside it, and the columns were standing.”

“You could set yourself up as the local historian,” said her father.

If they hadn't all been together, she would have spoken to him of the great banquet she had read about that had been given for Xerxes, the son of Darius the Persian, 2,462 years ago, probably close by where they were now walking. But she knew it would annoy Paul; he'd say she was showing off or being horribly boring. If they were by themselves, Paul seemed to like it when she told him something she had read about the place they were exploring. But not around their parents.

She thought she knew why—it was because she was a better student at school than Paul. Her mother had said once that Paul was often lost in dreams. But Paul didn't know it was difficult to be good at learning. It seemed to her that everyone felt sorry for people who were lost in dreams. Her parents weren't sorry for her. Now and then she made herself into a heavy lump and replied dully, “I dunno,” when her father asked her what she was reading or studying these days. He'd just laugh and pat her on the head. But when Paul stood as though frozen by such questions, Papa looked dreadfully worried and lectured him for hours.

It was unjust. She could lose herself in dreams too.

On an impulse she took her father's arm and held him back while Paul and her mother went on ahead past the police station.

“Papa, listen. When Thasos was called a continent and the Thasians ruled cities in Thrace and had a big navy and trading fleet, Darius told the people they had to sink their warships. Then he made them give a huge feast for Xerxes and his army, and it bankrupted the treasury. And Mr. Kalligas was telling me about another big feast that the people here had to give a Bulgarian garrison during the second world war. And that was only forty years ago. There was a cook in Limena, and he told the fishermen to bring him a catch of dolphins. He cooked them up and served them, and the whole garrison—two hundred eighty soldiers—got violently sick because you can't eat dolphins, Mr. Kalligas said. Then the cook and the people who served the feast had to hide up in the mountains until the war was over.”

“That's so impressive, Lily,” her father said.

“No, no!” she protested furiously. “Don't talk that way!”

“What way?” he asked mildly.

“It's
not
impressive. It's what happened. But what I wanted to tell you was this. You know that sleepy old man who sits on the bench near the baker's every morning? Well—he was the one who cooked those dolphins!”

“I'm speechless,” said her father.

“Not quite,” Lily noted tartly.

Mrs. Corey and Paul were down the street near the butcher's, talking to the handsome policeman. As Lily and her father joined them, she saw the reflected light of a street lamp sparking off the policeman's dark glasses. He wished them all a good dinner, bowed, and went on by. Rosa waddled confidently toward the tables of a taverna where her master, the lawyer, was sitting with friends, all of them nibbling at little bits of dried squid, which they ate with their drinks of ouzo. As usual, the lawyer was wearing his prosperous-looking suit of salt-and-pepper tweed. He stood up and shook hands with all of the Coreys, and Rosa wagged her tail once. Mr. Corey had let Lily taste ouzo; it reminded her of licorice. The Greeks always served it with water. They served water with nearly everything, it was so precious on the island.

Efthymios welcomed them, flicking a napkin at the only table that had an umbrella. They knew he prized it, and although they would have preferred to sit at another table—the umbrella made them feel a bit as though they were in a cave—they felt obliged to accept the honor of sitting beneath it. Still, though the faded canvas flaps drooped down, Lily could watch passersby—the best thing about eating outside on the street.

An old man went past carrying a loaf of bread shaped like a discus; two girls arm-in-arm, laughing, their hair combed up and teased into enormous dark beehives; a plump lady, hurrying, her face peering out from a huge bouquet of roses she was carrying; couples; several families with small children; and an old fisherman in a black sweater, whom Lily and Paul had seen setting out in his caique to fish by himself. Although the fisherman's face was ridged with deep wrinkles, his hair and beard were black.

“Odysseus,” Mr. Corey said to Lily.

“Too short,” said Paul.

“Too short for what?” asked their mother. “I've seen him stand in his boat and lean on those huge oars, and it looked like he was rowing away the whole Aegean.”

People stopped to speak to them, to ask them if they liked their supper. They even made comments about how the fish was fried—too long, said the cobbler—and how thick the soup was—the right way to make it, said a sister of Stella's who lived on the road to Panagia.

They hardly ever spoke about home anymore, Lily observed to herself. When they'd first come to Thasos, they'd compared life here and back in Williamstown. They'd found the house uncomfortable, not having dependable electricity or plumbing or a refrigerator and furniture, and there was not much either, it had seemed at first, to choose from in the markets. She recalled how, on their third day in Athens, before they had come to the island, she and Paul had spotted a dusty box of American cornflakes in a grocery shop window and how they had stood in front of it for what seemed an hour, wishing they could eat it all up.

But they didn't notice the discomfort anymore. When Lily walked into the kitchen and saw the table covered with huge strawberries, or yellow-green zucchini as slender as her fingers, or four pomegranates, blood-red in the sun, she couldn't think of anything that was missing.

“I've been thinking about it, and I don't believe I can bear seeing that movie again,” said Mrs. Corey. “What if, instead, we go to the pastry café and eat cake?”

Everyone agreed to that. Mr. Corey paid Efthymios-Onassis, and they set off for the café on the quay, which was usually crowded all evening with people drinking coffee and eating ices, or cakes made from walnuts inside honey-soaked leaves of pastry so thin they looked transparent, or small, hollowed-out chocolate buns filled with cream, or puddings redolent of oranges and cinnamon and vanilla.

On their way they passed through the main square, which was, Lily thought, like a vast living room for the entire village. Beneath the overarching branches of two enormous plane trees were shops that stayed open until late evening, a tourist restaurant, and several tavernas in which the older men of Limena often came to sit and visit with each other, drinking wine or ouzo very slowly during the hot, still hours after midday. Sometimes a young boy from a nearby coffee shop would pass among the men carrying brass trays with small white cups of Turkish coffee and tall, moisture-beaded glasses of very cold water. Lily, crossing the square of an afternoon, had heard the clicking of the amber-beaded circlets that the men moved rapidly through their fingers—worry-beads, the tourists called them—and that were said to calm a restless mind.

Local people as well as Greeks from the mainland were laughing and gesturing and eating at the tables set out in front of the pastry shop. Next to where the Coreys sat down a whole family watched raptly as a plump little boy about two years old was fed by his mother. After each spoonful of honey cake he crowed like a rooster, and his dark-eyed, black-haired mother would laugh, holding up her head and leaning back so that Lily could see a thin chain of gold closely circling her beautiful, long neck.

“Would you say my neck is long or short, Mom?” Lily asked.

“It's sort of retractable, like a turtle's,” said Paul, grinning.

“For someone with an acorn for a nose—” Lily began, then stopped. Paul was looking beyond her shoulder, his expression surprised, then joyful. He stood up and waved. The other Coreys turned to see what he had seen.

“Who's that?” Mr. Corey asked.

“Jack,” Paul said somewhat breathlessly. “Mom, he's the American I told you about. He lives in Panagia.”

Jack was standing past the last row of tables, his hands in his pockets. He stared at Paul expressionlessly, then gave a curt nod. A dark-haired man had also halted several yards away from Jack and was looking at the Coreys. Paul looked confused as though he didn't know what to do, sit down again or remain standing.

“Maybe they'll have coffee with us, fellow-Americans and all that,” said Mr. Corey. He got up and walked toward Jack, Paul following him. Lily noticed that the dark-haired man didn't come forward but stood absolutely still, poised as though on his toes for a leap.

“Where did you meet him?” asked Mrs. Corey.

“Up by the acropolis,” Lily answered, keeping her eyes on her plate. It was odd that when you had something to hide, you were at once sure that someone was looking for it.

Mr. Corey and Paul returned with Jack and his father, and the woman who had served them their desserts brought two more small folding chairs. Jack sat down—reluctantly, it seemed to Lily—next to Paul; his father sat next to Mr. Corey, who asked them what they'd like.

“We won't have anything,” the man said in a deep, harsh voice. “We eat much later. I'm Jimmy Hemmings. I gather you know Jack here. Everyone on the island knows us. Strange to meet up with Americans. We thought we were the only ones, didn't we, Jack?”

Jack looked up at the sky wordlessly.

Mr. Hemmings wore a black leather jacket and a black T-shirt. He looked much younger than Mr. Corey. His eyes were a brilliant, piercing blue, and his lashes were as black as his hair.

Mr. Corey explained how and why they'd come to Thasos. Mr. Hemmings nodded rapidly and muttered
uh-huh
constantly, as though hurrying Mr. Corey on with his story.

“A teacher. Well. I've been a teacher too,” he said when Mr. Corey stopped talking. “I've taught languages for one thing. I speak several languages, including Magyar—”

“—You mean Hungarian?” Mr. Corey interjected.

“If you prefer,” replied Mr. Hemmings somewhat loftily. “We're here mainly for Jack. I wanted him to see a thing or two before he gets too old to appreciate a foreign country—before prison walls close around the growing boy—and so forth. Also, I've been doing a bit of prospecting up in the mountains. There's more than marble on this island. There're precious metals and ores. I guess we've been here about eight months, wouldn't you say, Jack?”

Again the boy said nothing. Mr. Hemmings frowned for a moment, then went on.

“We had to take care of our residency requirements, of course, so we went to Istanbul last month.”