I left my car at the village’s edge—you could not drive through the narrow passages, and because of this, the little streets into the village felt like corridors, the doors opening to rooms of one giant dwelling. You reach a sweet little overlook and quickly realize it’s a private terrace.
The village felt clear and still, so different from the hectic ambiance near the port, from the beaches with their bars and tavernas. And after the bustle and noise and smells of Athens, it felt like another planet, with the island mountain stillness, the shock of bright flowers, the echoes from inside the dwellings nestled into the hills. It’s a particular type of mountain repose, one I haven’t felt anywhere else in the world.
I was early, so before turning the corner to the taverna I took a detour to wander the hushed, narrow streets. Colorful rugs hung from balconies, and I could hear the muted sounds of conversation, some violin music, the sound of silverware on plates.
I passed the novelist’s house: his large red door and then the smaller green one of his guest studio, where I’d stayed many nights with Aris: a space detached from the main house, with its own entrance, bathroom, and tiny kitchenette. Though the two shared a wall, to reach it you had to exit the main home and walk ten steps down the narrow road. I had a flash of that younger self, the one in the gossip photo, stumbling back here with Aris, buzzed, after one of the famous dinners his father often hosted, headed to bed reeling from the joy of those hours just before dawn, fueled with wine and music and conversation. How we’d sometimes find the most stalwart of the guests having coffees the next morning, still at the table, not having slept. I’m romanticizing it a bit, I know, but I had really loved this life. It’s when I felt my best, truest self.
•
The novelist and I sat down at Thanassis’s, on its traditional terrace shaded with grapevines and shocks of pink flowers, at a table at the veranda’s edge, looking over the valley. A huge plane tree stood grandly in the center. The actual kitchen was across the street—and by street I mean these narrow pedestrian walkways, no cars and only the occasional donkey—though there was a small bar within the café space itself. Sometimes Thanassis’s son—Thanassis himself had died last year—plugged in an old, clunky television and set it atop the bar for soccer games.
When I was a graduate student, before Aris and I were together, I had spent two fascinating days listening to his father talk about the junta, which echoed the Nazi occupation, which echoed the Greek Civil War that started when the Germans left, and all of which was being echoed now. He kissed me hello, and though this was not the first time I’d noticed it, Aris had his eyes—wide set, almond shaped, nearly black. My eyes, of course, were my mother’s.
I lowered my gaze, and he leaned over the table and tipped my chin to him, the way my father used to do. “I’m so sorry, Myrto,” he said. It was the first time I’d seen him since my parents’ funeral. I was used to this sort of sympathy, and though I was always glad for the kindness, I learned very quickly how to make people comfortable around my loss. But I realized he was also talking about Aris, and the freshness of the rejection surged through my body again, as if I were experiencing it for the first time.
I told him everything would be fine. I wanted to ask him if he’d known, but I couldn’t bear to hear the answer, the humiliation of it. But as if reading my mind, he offered the information. “Aris only told me before he left for Brussels.” I nodded again and let out a long, shaky exhale.
It seemed as though he wanted to say more. I feared that the knot in my throat would become permanent, the tightness in my chest. “Of course we’ll stay friends,” he pronounced.
We shared a plate of lamb chops. Here in the mountain villages it was meat and meat and meat, which always surprised my father, who remembered an Athens childhood almost devoid of it. Everywhere you went it seemed people were grilling it. There was always an endless supply of local white wine in large plastic jugs. At first introduction I thought it would be terrible, but I’ve grown fond of it, the sharp barb of it that cuts the food, its soft back end.
The novelist topped off my glass again and again as the afternoon spiraled out, our conversation similarly circling and weaving, and I slowly relaxed. Aris had loved the way my mother would balk when he tried to pour her a drink, feigning shock if he poured too much, a gesture that would have been amusing had she not been slowly destroying her liver. Once, at a party to celebrate Aris’s PhD defense, she gently tipped his bottle of beer so it would pour a bit more into her glass.
As for my mother, I have long ago replaced blame with sympathy for her behaviors that, as a teenager, I perceived to be inadequacies. Even in her moments of rage against me I’d understood that she did not mean them. In some ways I had distanced myself from my mother in the way I might view a grandparent: all-loving, a person you knew in a very specific capacity; but you could not imagine their life before you, could not really know them. It was Aris who’d helped me with this, his push to give me an understanding of my parents through his Greek lens, through the lens of exile, through the lens of a difficult past. His own
