Three Ways to Capsize a Boat - Chris Stewart [14]
Then one particularly luminous morning—I remember that even in Kalamaki there was a special quality to the light reflected in the grubby scum of the harbor—Nikos handed over a crumpled message. It was from Jane, sent via Ecstaticos, whose contact details I had given her as soon as I had engaged him. She was at Spetses at last in their summer villa and there was her telephone number. I dropped my oily paintbrush and rushed to the Bar Thalassa, where as a regular customer they let me use the telephone.
“Hi, Boss. How’s the hips?” I asked.
“Much better now I’m here—nothing a bit of Greek sunshine and sea won’t cure. Your Ecstaticos tells me the boat’s nearly ready.”
“It’s looking good. I don’t want to be unduly optimistic, but I reckon within the week she should be done.”
“Well, that’s the most marvelous news, Chris. Now tell me, would you care to come across on the hydrofoil and join us for luncheon tomorrow? I’d love you to meet our friends here, and I can hand you the papers for the boat.” It seemed Captain Weare had only had photocopies…. Hmm, so maybe she hadn’t been quite so trusting after all.
SO THE NEXT MORNING I took the bus along to Piraeus and hopped on a hydrofoil, one of the “Flying Dolphins,” known by the Greeks as Flyings. The sea was rough, so the passengers were confined, moaning and subdued, to the cabin, and all I saw of the sea and the islands was a blur of rock and water through spray-soaked windows. I buried my nose in Zorba. In a couple of hours, squinting against the noonday sun, I stepped onto the long concrete quay of Spetses. Cries of “Ella, Ella” (“Here! Here!”) rang out around me as the crew nonchalantly tossed ropes onto the quay. The handful of disembarking passengers shouldered their bags, some hugging waiting families or lovers; a trolley manned by a handsome brown-limbed youth picked up the parcel post. I watched as the hydrofoil eased slowly away from the dock—more cries, more snaking ropes—then I turned and followed the Spetsiots up toward the town.
My first Greek island, a richly textured little city-state. It smelled of the sea, of which there was a lot, it being an island; also hot pine because what wasn’t beach or olive grove or town was pine forest … and then there was fish, fresh or frying, and roasting meat. As a subtle counterpoint there was burnt petrol from the little motorbikes and vans, and from time to time an agreeable hint of drains.
Little wooden boats, blue and white, the beautiful Greek caïques, jostled one another on the swell set up by the unruly sea. Gulls cried, flapping to and fro with beakfuls of the glistening bowels of fish. Outside the kafeneion, fishermen, dressed like Bolsheviks in worn shirtsleeves and frayed trousers, sat at wooden tables, idly clicking their worry beads and nursing little glasses of milky ouzo and water. The town was tiny, a labyrinth of cobbled alleys clustered round the dock. The buildings blazed white in the bright sunshine, with the woodwork picked out in blue. The scale, the proportions, and the color seemed perfectly contrived to make you feel at ease. Here and there handfuls of holidaymakers ambled among the alleys, happily displaying their newly browned limbs. They smelled of the sweetest scents and suntan lotion, and they laughed and twittered in that peculiar state of abandon and gaiety that holidays bring.
The euphoria was infectious; I gave a hitch to my bag and strolled among the squares and alleys, my heart lightened by so much beauty and pleasure. Little by little I left behind me the hubbub and the din of the town and, following the directions that Jane had given me, climbed up through the quieter streets to the north, hugging the shade to escape the fierceness of the glaring sun. A mottled dog loped by. Somewhere a turkey gobbled. A donkey tethered in the shade of a tall eucalyptus tree brayed long and loud, enough to break your heart.
“The reason a donkey makes that heartrending noise,” I reflected, thinking of country lore, “is because the donkey has seen the devil.”
To Spiti Joyce—The Joyce House—Jane