Night Fires Glowing

by Philip J. Lees

In the dream she always disappears just when things are getting interesting. Sometimes I manage to kiss her; maybe my lips even find their way down as far as the silk of her throat, that warm corner where neck curves into shoulder, but then, before I can explore her mystery further, she is gone. She gives no reason, never speaks at all, though from the expression in those sad eyes it seems she is about to say something: perhaps she wants to tell me but cannot. It’s hard to be sure.

I sit on my balcony, sipping from a thimble-sized glass of ouzo, and watch the sun burn its way behind the silhouette of the far mountains, waiting for the light to drain away from the landscape. Then there’ll only be the fires, dotted haphazardly over the dark plain below, and I can imagine they belong to my enemy’s army, camped and waiting to attack at first light of morning. Really, though, it’s just the farmers burning off stubble. I know that, but where’s the romance in it?

I watch the campfires and sip my ouzo, let my mind float free to follow a jazz piano dancing up and down the scale. If I turn my head far round to the left I can see bats snatching insects from the cone of the porch light, taking turns with the rapid, precise rhythm of ping-pong players. The dying breeze rustles the leaves of the mulberry tree and from somewhere comes the coughing whistle of the owl the people here call cucuvaya, in imitation of its call.

Later, if I’m lucky, she’ll come to me again. If I drink enough ouzo, or enough wine, to let me sleep longer, maybe this time she’ll stay.

A love affair is like a symphony. The first movement sets out the theme, the mood, the pace, the rhythm. It is the sweetest part—and the shortest. Then comes the second, the main, the central section, building on the simplicity of the first, but also twisting it, pulling it to and fro as both partners stake their claims. Then the final movement, where all avenues have been explored and now run together into single path too strong to be denied, a road that leads either to final fulfillment or dramatic dissolution. After that there is only silence.

I met Antonia in a resort town in eastern Crete, during a seminar on computers in medicine. In one of those curious symmetries of coincidence she, the postgraduate student in information science, was working as a waitress to support herself through the summer, whereas I, the electrician, had been co-opted as a replacement speaker when the session chairman happened to learn that I knew a thing or two about network design and had taught the occasional night school class.

So we approached each other in reverse, as it were, in a kind of choreographed dos à dos, and that may have contributed to the mood of our first encounter: I was insecure, she resentful.

“I don’t seem to have you listed.” She was polite, but there was a challenge in it.

I hadn’t noticed her before. I’d been concentrating on not looking too self conscious as I consumed my first meal in the reserved section of the hotel’s dining room, the only part that offered à la carte. I ate slowly, sipping from a glass of Merlot and looking around as if I belonged here and knew at least some of the other diners, occasionally glancing down to make sure that the freshly printed name badge I wore clipped to my lapel had not slipped askew.

“I’m sorry?” She had pulled me out of my reverie and I stared back at her for the moment it took me to collect my thoughts. Her eyes flickered down in deference to the direct look, then almost immediately swung back up defiantly. They were fine, dark brown eyes, wide as fate and clear as crystal. In that instant of contact something ineffable passed between us.

“Your name,” she said, aiming her waitress’ pen at my badge. “It’s not on my list.”

She, too, had a tag pinned to her blouse, but it was smaller than mine and only carried her first name.

“Probably because they only roped me in this morning.” I smiled a confidence I didn’t feel. “If you talk to Professor Michalakis over there,” I indicated a balding, silver haired, bespectacled gentleman who sat a few tables away, “he’ll confirm that I’m not an uninvited guest.”

She hesitated, then walked over to speak to the organizer of the meeting. I let my eyes follow her, not too obviously, but enough to enjoy the tensing of black-stockinged calves and the sway of her hips under a tight, olive green skirt with yellow piping. There were a half dozen waitresses serving different groups of tables and all were dressed in the same hotel livery, but Antonia was the only one it seemed to fit.

When she came back she was smiling tightly.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I had to check before you signed for the meal.”

She placed her pad and pen on the table in front of me and took a half step back to leave me some elbow room.

“Of course you did,” I said agreeably. I inspected the bill as if I cared what was written there (“It’s too late to find you a room here,” Michalakis had told me, “but you can splurge on the meals all you like.”), then improvised a flamboyant approximation to my surname below where she had printed it in neat blocky capitals. I handed the pen back to her, but held onto the pad while I studied her some more.

“You’ll remember who I am, I hope? If we should happen to meet again, later.”

Once more our eyes met, and once more there was communication way beyond the words. She was blushing very slightly, or maybe it was just the same midday heat that left a fine line of perspiration along her upper lip. She said nothing, just nodded once, abruptly, then turned away. But it was enough. I had her consent and we both knew it.

Antonia’s breasts were small, but firm and beautifully shaped, with dark brown areolae encircling prominent nipples whose texture and taste reminded me of the tiny Cretan olives we had eaten in our salad earlier in the evening. She moaned faintly as I lapped and sucked, my hand resting across her belly, my thumb rimming her navel as the fingers gently explored further down. I felt hard as a rock and brimming with confidence—that was the effect she had on me.

It had surprised neither of us when we bumped into each other in the lobby after I emerged from the last seminar of the afternoon. There was an inevitability to our meeting that brooked no question. She stepped out of the elevator just as I was passing it on my way to the bar. Her shift had finished and she’d had time to change into a cream pants suit that contrasted pleasingly with her dark hair and tanned complexion. Under the jacket she wore a wine-colored silk blouse that matched her lipstick.

“Antonia.” I smiled.

“Er, Mr. Green.” She glanced at my name tag as if to suggest she needed reminding of my name, but I wasn’t fooled and she knew it.

“Peter,” I said. She pressed her lips together as if she had tasted something sour, then nodded.

“Look,” she began. “I ?”

“Drinks?” I suggested, without further preamble. “Dinner?”

She gave me a steady look.

“I’m not supposed to socialize with the guests,” she said.

“No problem,” I said. “I’m not staying here. I’m at the Halcyon down the road.”

“A drink then,” she said. “But not here.”

All day and through the evening she had worn her hair up, tightly coiled around the crown of her head, but soon after we reached my hotel room she broke off our kiss for a few seconds so she could reach up to unpin it and let it fall in a cascade down her back, halfway to her waist. Her hair was the color of stained dark oak and it was fine and heavy when I rubbed it between my fingers. I was kissing her low on her body now, breaking off to let my tongue flicker in and out of her belly button, and with my free hand, the one that wasn’t touching between her thighs, I took a handful of that fine, heavy hair that lay along the side of her body and I lifted it and stroked it very gently back and forth across her breasts, letting it swing under its own weight as her chest rose and fell ever more rapidly.

As my lips touched an even more sensitive spot she gasped once, then reached down with one hand to clench her fingers in the curls on the back of my head, pressing me against her as a shudder ran through her and she gasped again and a third time, then relaxed and released me. Slowly I let my kisses reverse the path they had followed before, alighting oh so lightly on her stomach, between her breasts, the V at the base of her throat, up her neck to the point of her jaw, then on her lips as once again I looked into her brown eyes.

“You’re so beautiful,” I breathed, and she smiled. We kissed again and held each other’s gaze as I slowly let myself slide into her and felt her mold her body against mine.

The drink had been ouzo, served with a plate of tidbits collectively called mezé, at a small seaside café that was for local people, not tourists, Antonia told me. It looked over a tiny harbor full of small, brightly colored fishing boats and was furnished with blue-painted, rickety metal tables and wooden chairs with raffia seats and legs all of different lengths. After the formal atmosphere of the hotel it was like reentering the real world. I took off my jacket and hung it over the back of my chair.

The proprietor, an ancient mariner with bushy mustache and black headscarf, baggy pants and knee-length boots, carefully set down a small carafe and two tiny glasses with one hand. The other held an aluminum platter that he placed before us with evident pride: sun-dried octopus vied with pink shrimp, sticks of cucumber, pickled capsicum, lumps of crumbly feta cheese, tomato slices and the inevitable black olives.

“Efharistó,” I thanked him and he beamed and shuffled away.

“You speak Greek!” Antonia exclaimed.

“Some. I’ve been here a while.”

I told her how I came to be there, as part of the support company that provided the technical know-how and equipment for scientific congresses all around the country.

“I used to travel all over Europe,” I said, “but I liked it here so I switched to a Greek outfit.” That was true enough, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. “I even bought a house.”

“Here in Crete?”

“No. In the Peloponnese. Not far from Nafplion.”

She told me about working on her thesis at the university in Rethymnon.

“My parents live in Salonica,” she said. “They wanted me to spend the summer there, but I’d rather be here—even if it means waitressing.”

From Salonica, in the north, to Crete, almost within sight of Africa, was about as far as one could travel in Greece without leaving the country. She must have really wanted to get away.

She had taken her bachelor’s degree in Edinburgh—she stated this as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a young Greek woman to do, so I forbore to comment—and at times her fluent English was punctuated with the usage of those parts in a way I found quite charming.

“I have a wee room in the hotel,” she said, “and all my meals.” She shrugged. “I like to be independent. If I went back to my family they’d be watching everything I do and I canna stand that any more.”

When I suggested she recommend somewhere for dinner—having done so well in her choice of our first venue—she didn’t hesitate. By that time there was no question we were going to spend the evening together.

Now my mouth was filled with the taste of Antonia herself and as I moved within her, slowly at first, it felt as if she was inside me as I was her; but she was around me, too, enveloping me, embracing me not only with her arms, her hands clasped against the small of my back, reaching for my buttocks, urging me on, but with her entire body. Her breath came more sharply, panting faster and faster and I tried to keep up, my own pleasure intensifying until it reached that point where I couldn’t hold on any more and I arched into her, as she (“Yes! Oh yes!”) seized my shoulders and pressed her face up into my chest and I grunted like a rutting animal and heard her muffled cry (“Oh, oh, oh! Aaaaah!”) vibrate through my own flesh as I felt her release and then, a second later, my own.

And then we lay in the almost darkness and held each other for a long time.

Now it’s a stately Copland clarinet that’s playing and the bats have changed their rhythm to match, or perhaps it’s just my imagination. Along with the change in music I’ve poured myself a glass of wine, a product of the local vineyards, red as blood. This was the wine we drank and this the music playing the first time Antonia and I watched the sunset from this balcony.

The fires seem to have spread out further than earlier. There’s more smoke and they’re not so bright. And I’m a bit drunk, I admit it.

When the moon comes up its brightness threatens to expose my illusion, so I turn off the lights (“Goodnight, bats.”) and climb down the step ladder, leaving the music to play out to the end. Sometimes the music helps.

Downstairs, in that room that smells of damp even in the hottest part of summer, I slide between the unmade, crumpled sheets. I settle on my back, rest my head on the lumpy pillow and wait for sleep to come.

I had one more congress in the north and Antonia had to work off her notice, so it was two weeks before she joined me here. She came over from Crete on the ferry, via Kythira island, and I drove down to Gythion to meet her off the boat.

During the last fortnight our daily phone conversations had only served to emphasize how slowly the time was passing, but now, with her sitting beside me as I drove through the mountain pass and down onto the Lacedaemonian plain it seemed as if we hadn’t been apart at all and that hiatus had been in another universe, another age.

She chatted gaily as we went, telling me stories of troublesome customers, importunate drunks, neurotic chefs, and how glad she was to be out of it; how happy she was to be here, the two of us together. I hardly spoke, just a word now and then, but I was saying the same thing and she knew it.

When we reached the house she threw her bag in a corner and then we fell upon each other. Our desire seemed to have its own gravity that would pull us together the moment we stopped moving.

“It’s beautiful here,” Antonia said later, when the day—and we ourselves—had cooled down a little from the fiery heat of the afternoon. “It’s so quiet.”

Apart from the occasional cicada chirping we could have been in a silent world of our own.

“That’s one of the things I like about it,” I said. “People don’t often come up this way.”

We stood by the balcony doors, looking out over the village and the plain beyond, a hand’s breadth of space between us. Suddenly that was too much and I reached out to touch her. At the same moment she turned into me and pressed her lips up to mine.

“I love you,” I said. “S’agapó.”

“S’agapó,” she replied.

It was like that all evening and through the following days. It was as if we had to find excuses to do anything other than embrace and kiss—everything else was no more than a distraction. In a way it became a challenge, a shared ordeal to resist temptation.

I had booked tickets to the ancient Epidaurus theater for Saturday evening and in that spirit of determined resistance we drove up there early to look around. A beautiful setting, the great fan of curved stone benches spread out against the hillside, so cunningly angled that even from the back row, high above the stage, you could hear a penny drop to the ground.

The theater slowly filled, the light dwindled, and the play began. Euripides’ Hippolytus—a tale of passion, rejection and vengeance.

“Poor Phaedra,” Antonia said afterwards. “She wasn’t so lucky in her lovers, was she?” She smiled and put her arm around my waist, a comment on her own better fortune.

“No,” I said, and I kissed her temple, although privately I felt that Phaedra had got no more and no less than she deserved. Teased by the goddess or no, she had betrayed the man who loved her, trusted her. She was weak and faithless—it was only fair that she should die.

It made me feel a little uneasy: this was the first time we had failed to agree on something. Of course, I scolded myself silently. Of course you’re not going to see every single thing in exactly the same way—it wouldn’t be natural. But when she fell asleep in the car during the drive back it felt like a rebuff, as if she was deliberately drawing away from me.

That night the old dream came back, the dream I had left behind when I escaped to Greece two years before. The hot, red dream that threw me out of sleep to find myself lying twisted in the sheet as if bound by a straightjacket, grasping on to my bonds in terror until the images faded away. Except that this time Antonia was there beside me, the moonlight through the window splashing in her wide eyes, highlighting her concern, her hand against my cheek.

“What is it, love?”

I shook my head, unable to speak.

“It’s all right,” she said, stroking my hair. “It’s all right.” And presently it was.

The next morning we drove to the sea and swam, then lay in the sun and let the salt dry on our bodies. This was a special rocky cove I knew, accessible only via a rough back trail barely passable by motor vehicle. Nobody came here except the shepherds, who sometimes herded their flocks down so they could bathe the sheep in the sea to rid them of ticks. That was unlikely this late in the summer, and anyway, you could hear them coming a long way off, so Antonia and I could dally all we liked in the open air without fear of discovery.

“Stop that!” she chuckled in her throat.

“I need the salt,” I said, and licked a different spot. “It’s this hot climate. I have to eat you all up.”

“In that case,” she said, levering her body around against the silver-bright sand like a beached fish and grabbing at my flanks, “I need my salt, too.” Ah, the delight!

And so the days passed, and through it all she was mine and nobody else’s. Then suddenly it was time for her to leave, to return to Rethymnon, to resume her studies. I hated the thought, and a hundred times I had almost told her, begged her not to go, to stay here with me. But I knew it would do no good, knew I mustn’t speak, even though inside me the idea of her going away was like a heavy knot that pulled tighter as the day grew nearer.

On her last evening I could resist it no longer. She must stay, I decided. At least another few days, maybe a week, perhaps forever. I drove us down the coast to Tyros, just north of Leonidion, where we dined in a restaurant on the shore, the seaside location a reminder of our first evening together. I was gallant, charming, she smiled and laughed at my jokes.

After dinner we sipped sweet Metaxa brandy and I puffed on a rare cigar.

“You really can’t leave tomorrow,” I said, when I judged the moment was right.

But Antonia just shook her head, not even taking the time to think about it.

“I must,” she said, and in that moment I realized that in fact she had already left—an important part of her wasn’t there, with me, at that table, in that restaurant, but had already taken itself off somewhere else.

She smiled and reached to place her hand over mine.

“It won’t be long,” she said. “You’ll come and see me soon.”

I was suddenly furious at her insincerity. How could she forsake me like this? I pulled my hand from hers and turned my face away, clenching my fist and trying to swallow my rage.

“Don’t be like that,” she said. She sounded unsure of herself, even afraid.

Perhaps now she would listen. I forced my face into contrition and looked deeply in her eyes, willing her consent.

“I don’t want to lose you,” I said. “I’ll miss you so much.”

“Don’t spoil it.” She blinked away tears. “This isn’t easy for me, either.”

Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe she was sincere. Maybe she didn’t want us to part either. It was just necessary. That was all. A necessary break.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I drew on the cigar one last time and stubbed it out in the ashtray, pressing it hard against the glass base again and again until it was completely extinguished. I exhaled slowly, letting my tension flow out with the smoke.

“Come on,” I smiled and took her hand. “Let’s go home.”

That night we made love more passionately than ever before.

I slept fitfully. My dreams were violent, alarming, though I couldn’t remember details—just a vague sensation of barely controlled panic. I woke with a headache. It was a hot morning and the cicadas were in full, deafening cry. She has to stay, was my first thought. She belongs to me now. It’s only right. I climbed out of bed resolved to try again to persuade her, my head pounding.

Antonia wasn’t there. She must have walked down to the village to buy something from the meagerly stocked local store. I drank three glasses of water from the bottle in the fridge while I waited for the coffee to brew.

In my befuddled state, it wasn’t until I was pouring my second cup that it dawned on me that various items of Antonia’s—a headscarf, a shoulder bag, a hairclip—were not strewn around the room as they had been on previous days. The coffee was beginning to have an effect and I looked round more carefully. The indicator was flashing on the answering machine. I pressed ‘Replay’ and heard Antonia’s voice.

“I couldna bear to wake you, and anyway, I hate goodbyes. I’m taking the bus. I’ll call you when I get to Rethymnon. S’agapó.”

I swept the machine off the table and onto the floor. She must have called from the public phone in the village square. I looked at my watch: 10.30. The bus had passed more than half an hour before. Damn! I thought. Damn! Damn! I could hear Antonia’s voice inside my mind, telling me that she was just being thoughtful, considerate. But still I felt betrayed.

I had another dream last night. Again Antonia was with me, but this time her back was turned and I couldn’t see her face. I tried to speak, to make her hear, to beg her to turn and face me, but my voice came out as no more than a hoarse whisper that I couldn’t understand myself. I reached out to touch her, but she was gone. Then came the hot redness, consuming me until I writhed in helpless terror, and I woke to find myself bound in sweat-drenched sheets, like a memory of two years before.

Tonight the fires are almost gone—soon they will all be extinguished. Far away up the hill the cucuvaya whispers a warning—the hunt is up. I’m quite surprised they haven’t come for me before now. A shooting star glides across the sky, not here and gone in an instant like most of them, but taking its time, glowing bright yellow like a tiny sun following its parent over the horizon.

A shout floats up from the square below. It’s not Epidaurus, but the natural curve of the hillside carries the sound upwards on a still evening like this. Sometimes you can even make out a conversation.

I followed her, of course. I didn’t even think about it, didn’t hesitate. I packed a bag, closed the house, jumped in the car and set off, expecting to surprise her in Gythion as she boarded the ferry.

Close to Sparta the road was blocked. A farm truck had skidded and overturned. The police were flagging drivers down and a queue had already built up. I wouldn’t reach Gythion in time. I shouted at one of the policemen, insisted that he clear the road and let me pass. He looked at me strangely, so I pulled out of the line and turned the car around in the entrance to a field. I couldn’t even consider returning to my home, so I drove north. I could be in Piraeus by late afternoon, in plenty of time to catch the night ferry to Chania and be in Rethymnon early the next morning. She couldn’t escape me that easily. Not now I had decided that she must stay with me.

The ferry was full. There were no cabins free—not even a bunk in shared four berth economy class. I was tired from the drive and curled myself up on the floor in a corner of the lounge, but sleep wouldn’t come.

In the morning I waited, bleary eyed, in the yawning belly of the ship, enveloped in the stink of diesel oil, waited as trucks and cars streamed off until I could reach my own. I drove down the ramp, followed the traffic onto the main coast road, headed east. I had her address memorized and the directions for getting to it. In an hour I would be there.

Her apartment was on the upper of two floors in a small, white building with brown, louvered shutters, set in a small garden a little way outside the town center. I parked outside, checked the number of the house and myself in the mirror, prepared what I would say.

Her door opened and a man came out, a young man with dark hair and a mustache. He turned and there was Antonia in the doorway. He bent and kissed her and she hugged him as she had hugged me less than two days before. I sat frozen in my seat.

Then the other man left. I climbed out of the car, my legs wooden, my heart a stone, my head on fire, the tendons in my arms and hands trembling like taut steel wires. I climbed the steps to the door. She opened it, smiling. The smile was for the other man, not for me, because when she saw my face the smile disappeared. I said nothing, I pushed her in and followed her, and there, in the hallway, with my stone heart and my steel hands I showed her how much I loved her. I showed her that nobody else could have her, that I would never let her go. We were together at the center of a hot, red cloud and a voice was shouting through it, my own voice, but I couldn’t understand the words.

I took a scarf of hers as a keepsake. It was only fair. The people downstairs watched me leave, but nobody tried to stop me. I got into the car and drove away. Now I could go home.

The carafe is almost empty and as I tilt the last of the wine into my glass something catches my eye. A flashing blue light is moving down the winding pass on the far side of the plain. It won’t be long now, but I’ve made my preparations. A quick visit to the bathroom and I’ll be ready for them.

By the time I come upstairs again the light has turned off the main road towards the village. It slows as it reaches the first houses and I settle into my chair. The fields below are dark. The fires are gone.

The blue light is flashing down in the square now, and I think I can hear their voices. They are asking for me, I know. It’s time. I’ll be gone before they arrive.

I raise my glass in one last toast to love, found and lost. In the palm of my other hand is a small pile of crumbled white pills, like a miniature rock fall. Six will be plenty, and they act within minutes.

I hear the cucuvaya cry, but now it is far away. Soon there will be only silence.

Night Fires Glowing

by Philip J. Lees

- End -