Authors: Roberta Latow
He took a long draught of his drink. ‘When it’s over for me, when I am no longer capable of living, only thinking about living, when I can no longer take on the freedom and responsibility of
my actions to you, Chadwick, I will no longer exist as the Hannibal I have always been, the man you love. I would hate to be otherwise. I want you to promise me that when the day comes that I no longer exist as the man I am now for you, for this glorious life we have lived all these years, you will put me out of my misery.’
‘Hannibal!’
‘Chadwick, you have lived practically your whole life for me, do you mean to tell me that you would not kill for me? That you would not grant me my last wish? I promise you it would be a mercy killing. Think, Chadwick, how many times we have died for each other in lust. The most cruel fate for me would be not to die when I was still riding high at the top of my life. You will have to do it, see me out, I would do no less for you.’
Chadwick began to laugh. ‘You are being fanciful,’ she chided him.
‘About death? Hardly. Is it so wrong to want to go out of this life when I am still whole in myself, my mind clear, still desperately in love with my wife who loves me no less? What is so wrong about wanting to vanish on the crest of a wave, never to return, after a glorious meal, in a remote and romantic place, after a night of love and sex unbound with you, the other half of my soul? We both know anything less would begin to tear at the roots of this extraordinary love of ours. I won’t have that, and I don’t believe you could bear to see that happen either.’
For a very long time Chadwick sat there looking at Hannibal. He was as usual right. She would find it unbearable to see Hannibal less than the man he wanted to be, less than anything he wanted to be. She was acutely aware of how miserable he would be. She was thirty-three years old and he was sixty-six and they had been together since she was twelve. Did she not owe him his last wish? Indeed, owe both of them?
She was still and calm, looking remote and grand and the loveliest of creatures. Hannibal told her in a voice now brimming with lust, as he slid his hand along her thigh and squeezed her knee under the small round table, ‘Let’s go back to the hotel for sex: a long and luscious stroll through an erotic landscape of rivers of come, mountains of passion, peaks of obscene acts of the
flesh, valleys of warm sweet places to penetrate, a sky dark with promise and a bright moon to reach for. Would you like that?’
He could see it in her eyes, she would very much like that, and more. He knew she would rise to the sexual occasion he had just presented her with. She, however, was not so sure. She had lived so long under Hannibal’s sexual domination. Her erotic enslavement was a rich and rewarding part of her life. She had no desire to be released from it. Whereas Chadwick had doubts as to what she would do, Hannibal knew that she would grant him his other wish. It suddenly occurred to him that he had trained her her entire life for his pleasure, their pleasure, but for one thing more as well: that she should be, when the time came, the one to say the last farewell and send him on his way.
Chadwick had been charmed by the life of the expatriate community in Livakia, the Livakian’s and their hospitality. Now as she walked along the cliffs among the first of the wild flowers and smelled the scent of rosemary and thyme, she gazed down to the white village clinging to the steep amphitheatre-shaped cliffs and the sheltered port with the open sea beyond. She marvelled that she was still, every single day, brimming with wonder at having found paradise and a new way to live.
Four months had passed since she had first seen Max, D’Arcy and Manoussos in that restaurant in Iraklion. She had seen them as lotus eaters addicted to being happy: free facile spirits, pleasure seekers. Now she, like Max and D’Arcy and the small group of other foreigners living in Livakia, was an expatriate living the good life, a pleasure seeker. She too was going down to the port early in the morning: waiting for the hot bread to come out of the oven, buying her fish off the boats when a catch came in, sitting on the quay drinking a coffee or a glass of wine, nibbling on
octopodi
fresh from the sea that had been beaten on the rocks to tenderise its tentacles, placed to roast over a ceramic dish of hot coals before being hacked up into bite-sized pieces and served on a worn, white plate, chipped to perfection.
Yes, there was that side to Livakia and island life: everything used, nothing thrown away, that she found just as enchanting. Worn, cracked, makeshift, old, new, perfection, existed next to ‘never mind’, ‘it doesn’t matter’, as loving bedfellows. It was the simple life in this place where the donkey and the boat reigned as kings of transportation. Even if you kept a jeep as Manoussos and Max did or a 2CV as D’Arcy did in the caves far up the cliffs, the
only road across the mountain rage to Livakia came to an abrupt end in the terrace. A steep donkey ride or walk from there was the only way down through the village to the port. The back-to-basics life allowed time and energy for the pleasure seekers to fulfil their heart’s desires or, as the case may be, not fulfil them if it was easier not to and more fun thinking and talking about them.
Chadwick had edged her way into that simple but at times extravagant lifestyle: D’Arcy’s walk-in larder like an Aladdin’s cave filled with succulent foodstuffs, a mini Harrods Food Hall or Fortnum & Mason’s grocery department. Jaunts on Max’s plane, Elefherakis’s hospitality and very grand house, the array of interesting and amusing people who dropped in for a few days of paradise and to visit one of the expatriates. The treats: caviar and champagne, steaks from Allen’s in Mayfair, were rare but there, brought in after holidays abroad or when friends arrived for longer visits. Chadwick entertained her newfound friends and neighbours with cruises on board the
Black Narcissus.
Extravagance and generosity were never expected, always accepted, but most assuredly no one was ever trying to impress – and certainly not Chadwick.
In the expatriate community that was just not on, bad form, shunned, for hard times went with the good: money, love, creative problems for some. Commiseration was as big as sharing the fun and extravagance, the good times and even the boring ones when they rolled. Livakians, foreign or otherwise, clung together and yet respected privacy, another man’s secrets, and always his dreams. That was how they came to live with everything as acceptable, no questions asked, and the perpetual gossip which was rife and most always mundane: ‘Manoussos is in love’, ‘Eleferhakis is infatuated with Chadwick’, ‘D’Arcy looks to be pregnant’, ‘Rachel gave a poem of love to a guest of Mark’s’, ‘Tom sold a painting’, ‘Frances Pendenis’s cake fell and she gave it as a gift anyway’.
Living on a Greek island did not, however, mean isolation, a dullness of the brain. Quite the contrary. With intelligent and interesting people, a smattering of successful men and women from the realms of arts and letters, interested in the world and its
turnings, albeit more inquisitive from a distance and for the most part as voyeurs, there was always fascinating news to theorise on, stimulating conversation, amusement, clever banter that still, even all these months later, Chadwick found sparkling.
Here was a community that lived very much together yet very much apart, and most especially in the winter months when the weather kept them in their houses. Each of them managed to live private, uncomplicated lives inside and outside their own homes. The easy option, the fun option, the lazy option, socially speaking, was having lunch every day on local fare at the communal table at the Kavouria in the port or at Pasiphae’s restaurant. Unless one preferred to dine alone or with a friend at a table close to the long table. Island sensibility did not consider that a slight.
Those lunches and dinners, the long table for food or drink, were not for sustenance alone. They had to do with camaraderie and were a social pastime for not only the foreign community but the Cretans as well. They were a very great part of the joy of living in an island village like the sun, the sea, the terrain, the attitude towards life in general. These were the real extravagances, this was the luxury for this odd group of foreigners who chose to drop out and make pleasure seeking and happiness, an elementary life, the only way to live. Livakia, Crete was the place they could live out their dreams and heal their other world, other life wounds, and many of her new friends were doing just that.
All this was there right before Chadwick’s eyes to see and be part of but in truth she only lived on the edge of it. She had no dreams to live out, no wounds from another world and another life to heal, all that had died with Hannibal. She was here because she was, for the first time in her life, alone and free, had the wherewithal to live any sort of life she wanted to,
and
she had fallen in love at first sight with Manoussos. She remained in Livakia with him because they lusted after each other and being together seemed to be adding to their lives, or so everyone thought. The greater truth was, yes, she was there for that reason, but more importantly because every minute of every day she was creating a
new Chadwick for herself. That was how those high climbs alone to the little church on the cliffs came about. The church became a haven for her, a place not to commune with God but with her new identity.
Chadwick placed the key in the lock of the church door and pushed it open. Coming into this tiny white-domed church with its dark interior, not very good frescoes and several very good icons, whose silver covers glistened by the light of candle offerings, had become part of Chadwick’s Livakian life: like drinking her coffee with D’Arcy or Max, being amused by Rachel and her flirtations, listening to the fascist spoutings of Mark who could, when sober or drunk, which was a good deal of the time, mesmerise with his oratory, being Manoussos’s woman.
She placed her offering, a box of beeswax candles, on the small table near the door then sat down on the lone rickety chair and allowed the aroma of years of beeswax and incense, silver polish and dusty dried flowers, the sea air that slipped in through the open door, to envelop her. It was here in this very quiet and spiritual place that her own spirit took flight. She imagined she was closer not to one god but all the gods, all the departed souls, and her own. Chadwick never went to the church in sadness or despair or looking for answers; she didn’t have a sad spirit, quite the contrary. She always arrived there happy and left uplifted.
Manoussos was in his office, the upper floors of a two-hundred-year-old house facing the sea, and on the telephone when he heard the mournful sound of one single church bell echoing across the cliffs. It brought a smile to his lips. It always did when he knew that it was Chadwick ringing it. It meant that she would soon be running along the narrow footpath carved out of the cliffs that plunged dangerously down to the sea and then down through the village to meet him for lunch at the Kavouria.
Dimitrios, his deputy, was at the fax machine just tearing off a message from a friend and colleague of Manoussos’s at Interpol. The fax sheet still in his hand, Dimitrios went to his chief and took
the telephone from him; he too smiled at the thought of Chadwick racing along the cliffs. Not only was she courageous and a joy to watch but he always made money on Chadwick’s run, something Manoussos knew nothing about, or so he thought. Dimitrios and the barber-cum-mayor had a running bet. They timed Chadwick’s return.
‘Go ahead, chief, I might just as well hold on for you until someone at the other end picks up the receiver. Oh, and take this. It’s from Colin Templeton in London.’
Manoussos handed over the telephone and stepped out on to the narrow balcony into the sun. He shielded his eyes and looked across the harbour and up the cliffs. She was no more than a dot racing across the edge of the buff-coloured cliffs. Hardly any of the foreigners and very few Cretans had ever been to the white-washed church because of its perilous access; they were terrified of the footpath but proud of the church perched on its small precipice and believed that it was a blessing to have it guarding their village and harbour.
It had been built hundreds of years before as a memorial to a beloved dead father and remained always a private church though open to anyone who wanted to make the pilgrimage to it. One of the monks or the priests from the larger church in the village went there on occasion to ring the bell for those long gone whose spirits they wanted to call to order. At Easter and Christmas a procession of brave villagers led by the priest, impressive in his long black robes and tall black hat, heavy gold and silver crosses dangling from chains draped across his chest, and two visiting Mount Athos monks who seemed to be residing in the village, they had been in Livakia for so many years, would make the climb at dusk. One of the monks carried the village church’s Greek Orthodox cross of silver on a staff, the other swung two incense burners from silver chains, everyone else carried white candles with paper cones wrapped around them to shield their flame from the wind. All the while they remained in the small candle-lit church on the precipice and prayed, a small boy rang the church’s single bell. The echoing sound ringing off the cliffs then, as at all other times, was part of the fabric of life in Livakia.
Chadwick did not make the run from the church every day or even every week but she did do it often after that first time that Manoussos had taken her there in the Christmas procession. Several times he brought up the subject of her frequent visits to the church but though she was forthcoming about how exhilarating the walk to the church and the run back from it was, how much she enjoyed opening it up and bringing the odd offering, merely sitting there and enjoying the essence of faith, he actually had not the least idea what was behind those visits nor what she was telling him. And there was something. In the same way as there was always something unfathomable about Chadwick, this magnificently beautiful, enigmatic woman with whom Manoussos had fallen so deeply in love.
Dimitrios, the telephone against his ear, stepped out on the balcony and handed Manoussos a pair of powerful binoculars. It brought another smile to Manoussos’s lips, and without taking his gaze from Chadwick, he took the glasses, placed them against his eyes and adjusting the focus said, ‘Thanks.’ Then asked because he could no longer resist teasing his deputy, ‘What’s the time she has to make today for you to win your bet, Dimitrios?’
‘You know about the wagers!’
‘And your winnings. The mayor is not a good loser, he always bitches when he loses. I don’t much like a bad loser.’
Dimitrios could tell by the sound of the police chief’s voice that Manoussos was more amused than annoyed though he would rather have read his boss’s eyes than his voice. An impossibility because Manoussos still had the binoculars clamped against them.
‘I should have known better than to think I could keep the wagers a secret. From you of all people, who have your fingers on the pulse of everything going on in town. I feel really embarrassed, chief,’ said Dimitrios.
‘You should be, that’s what getting caught out is all about.’
‘You’re not angry are you?’
‘No, not angry, disappointed. You’re supposed to be, as a law enforcer, a good example to people. Taking a wager on a private person on a pilgrimage to a church shows a certain disrespect
even though it is no big deal and certainly not against the law. Actually quite amusing. Something I might do myself if the woman in question were not such an important person in my life and I didn’t feel so protective of her. How’s Chadwick’s time, are you winning?’
A nonplussed Dimitrios checked the stop watch mechanism on his wrist watch. ‘So far I am.’
‘Good! Win or lose you’re joining Chadwick and me for lunch, and you’re picking up the tab. You can think of it as your penance.’
Dimitrios could not afford such a fine and Manoussos knew it. He was quite stunned at the prospect not only of having to pay a financial penance for his misdeed but having to face it out over lunch. However, Cretan pride would not allow him to beg off. His silence caused Manoussos to lower the glasses and turn around to face his deputy who was flushed with embarrassment. Katzakis the grocer, who was sweeping the cobblestones in front of his shop, saw the two men on the balcony and called up, ‘Dimitrios, it looks as if it will be your round of drinks tonight. Look!’ And he pointed to Chadwick with the end of his broom. She was now halfway down the cliffs from the church.
‘I would like to crawl into a hole,’ said the deputy to his superior.
Manoussos could not help but laugh. ‘My best policeman in a hole? No, I don’t think so. There’s Mark, Chadwick wanted to see him, I think I’ll ask him to join us for lunch. That is all right, isn’t it?’
Dimitrios had to swallow hard before answering, ‘As you like.’
The telephone was still clamped to his ear and finally the man they had been trying to reach all morning was on the line. Dimitrios said a few words and then attempted to hand the telephone receiver over to Manoussos.
I’ll tell you what, Dimitrios, you take this call and get the information I want and that can be your penance. I’ll buy the lunch.’