The Weary God of Ancient Travelers

By Jessica Stilling

Who is Lydia Warren? That’s what she’d like to know.

An amnesiac, she vaguely remembers arriving in Santorini with this one-armed man she instinctive trusts but cannot recall his name. She guides us through the fog that is her mind, and her odyssey towards understanding that is even further complicated by memories of a life not her own from before she was born.

"5 Stars" - Whispering Stories Book Review

“The blend of romance, the compelling—almost visceral—descriptions of Greece, mystery, and the psychological self-inspection all work together to create an absolutely compelling piece worthy of high recommendation.” — D. Donovan, Midwest Book Review

"Brimming with suspense and carefully controlled darkness, the sounds and smells of Greece waft from every page as Stilling moves back and forth from Lydia’s past life to her present with a dexterity and skill commensurate with Audrey Niffenegger." — Damian McNicholl, author of A Son Called Gabriel and The Moment of Truth

About the author:
Jessica Stilling has written two works of literary fiction, Betwixt and Between and The Beekeeper's Daughter. She also wrote poetry and short fiction for various literary journals. Her articles have appeared in Ms. Magazine, Bust Magazine and she writes extensively for The Writer Magazine. She has taught Creative Writing in both high school and university. She also publishes young adult fantasy under the pen name JM Stephen. Jessica loves Virginia Woolf, very long walks, and currently lives in southern Vermont where she writes for the very local newspaper, The Deerfield Valley News.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DX Varos Publishing
• Release date: Jun 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781941072967

Book preview

Part I:

The House by the Sea

One

I remember how it tasted. It was pasta that reminded me of past lives, where I wore a different face, slipped into another skin. It was the taste of white wine and garlic, the slight hint of salt coming off the Aegean. It’s the sea itself, how blue it is. Then again wasn’t it Proust who said that taste and smell are directly connected to memory? He ate a cookie once that he hadn’t had since his childhood, the story goes, and memories of being a little boy came flooding back. Then he wrote Remembrance of Things Past. They call it the Madeline Memory. But it’s not just this life, one past, that we’re connected to. Sitting at a restaurant looking out at the sea, I could taste it in the pasta, the white wine and garlic, a past life.

I took a quiz once, one of those test-your-self-knowledge-in-the-back-of-a-magazine gimmicks. I never believed them, but it was there and I was bored, why else do we read such things? "Test your past life, what animal will you be reincarnated as?" I answered the questions. Do you consider yourself a good communicator? What kind of music do you play when you’re sad? I answered them all, calculated the results twice and both times it told me I would reincarnate as a rhino. I would not wind up an insect, a bee with a stinger, a spider brandishing eight unimpressive legs. I would rear my horn at my enemies. I would lap water out of great African lagoons and fear nothing, save the lions.

It hits me in a restaurant looking out at the Aegean, that other life lying bare on my body, overlapping with another skin. I look out and see through her eyes, sharp corners of furniture, raw wood, New York City in the background. I’ve never been to New York. At least I don’t think so. I can’t remember…. I was another person with a different story in another time and yet some core has always been myself. It’s the taste of garlic, seared into a tangy iron pan. I see cypresses and palms, the deep, wide cuts of the Mediterranean. It’s in that taste that I know I’ve been here before. I remember green upholstery and straight parchment lampshades, paintings of Miró’s fractured stick figures and threadbare carpet. There had been the smell of that air, salt and water and garlic, the distinct scent of garlic. I feel it, the shot of a moment, sitting outside amongst the sea and straight furniture. I see it as if through a film; all light and sharp edges — the abstract lines of Cubist painters. There was this country, Greece, a country where I am only a tourist now and something else. Always there is something else.

The city of Fira is tight angles. It is a room with too many people, elbows and knees jutting as the bright white buildings twist in a modern dance. I watch the tourists. It would not be wrong to say I am one of them. I came here from somewhere, sometimes I tell people, with a bump on my head, so that they won’t ask any more questions. When they persist I feel the tears well up but I won’t let them out, It’s just so hard, I say, not knowing who you are, and they go no further. I mean it when I say it, that I can’t remember. Doctors have floated phrases at me: Short Term Memory Loss, Long Term Memory Loss, Selective Amnesia. Something about trauma, so much trauma. I can’t remember. It’s not an act. I spend days in my room going over notebooks and letters, listening to voices recorded from a long-discarded phone and still I can’t see it, feel it, remember it. Who am I? Where did I come from?

I don’t know.

They said this is a new millennium. What was it, five, six months ago? Something about 99...1999 and now it’s 2000, 2000 exactly but I can’t remember...I can’t see. I know the year but not what it means anymore.

I turn my head as a Greek boy watches me. They are always watching, Greek men, but then they are always watching everyone—I have learned here not to feel special. I speak and they know I am American. Sometimes I’ll keep talking, especially if it seems they have known many tourists before. Maybe if I say enough they will tell me where I came from.

Maybe if I keep talking they will tell me who I am.

There is a card in my wallet. It reads Lydia Warren, and next to it is my picture. I knew the picture only after I looked in the mirror and saw the same dark eyes, brown hair below my shoulders, red lips (lips I painted on the plane? I’m not sure) and teeth that are just shy of perfectly straight. David Copperfield tells me I did not wear my retainer enough after I got my braces off but I don’t remember this. My name is Lydia Warren, I live in a house by the sea. The bills are always paid, the car runs fine. I think David Copperfield takes care of it all but I do not know how. He doesn’t work either. We have been here several weeks but I cannot remember how long.

I watch the boy as he sits on a ledge, one of the white painted structures, like sugar candy castles, with blue domed rooftops, the ones that litter Fira. The boy has soft, brown skin, big eyes, hair the color of honey. He wears white. Everything in this place is white. Someone (I don’t know who) once said that this is only common sense, chemistry really, white to combat the oppressive sun. I’m supposed to know how old I am. The card said that I was born in 1973 and now it is the year 2000. I am 27. The numbers, the math comes easily to me but I feel as if I am 38, 45, 57. Some days I’m 72. Too many lives litter this body and on top of that, someday I’ll be a rhino.

American? the boy asks. He has hopped off his ledge and I notice the black pants, contrasting his white shirt, like the rock of the moon and the black of the sea. Then again waiters also dress this way. I wonder if he speaks much English.

Yes, I reply nearly tripping on myself as I come closer. I am so very clumsy. Some days I would trip over my own two feet if they weren’t attached…or some other proverb.

New York? he goes on. They all say New York; then they say L.A. then California, as if it’s a different place. Sometimes they mention Florida. It’s when they offer something I haven’t heard before, Buffalo once, Maine another time, that I listen. I would like to think I would remember such places. If I had lived in Maine I would still be able to smell the pines. I know what Maine is, I understand basic functions of logic, I just don’t remember what my mother looks like. Do I even have a mother? I have seen you before? the boy asks and I can’t tell if it’s a line.

No, I reply, though I cannot be sure. He may have seen me. I may have forgotten. This has nothing to do with my faulty memory. Apparently the doctors checked, David Copperfield says and I believe him (what’s left but to believe him?), and my short-term memory is fine. You do have a problem converting short-term memories into long-term memories, but that’s getting better, he explained. It happens after a trauma like the one you’ve had.

What trauma? I ask David Copperfield constantly. "What trauma?" I beg sharply and he won’t say.

I’ve already told you, you already know. Sometimes the words are garbled. Then like a flash of white, a fading to black, the words come and then...they’re just not there. ---. Did you hear me? Do you know what I just said?"

Still, I remember everything in Greece that is not forgettable, but this boy, he is forgettable.

Do you have a name? he asks, sounding confused, as if he does not know how to word the question.

Lydia, I reply, holding tight to my last name. You?

Saint Vincent, he proclaims proudly. I would be proud of such a name as well. Already canonized and I wonder what feats he must have accomplished in his previous life. What did Saint Vincent do? But there are so many of them. One of them made fire from the air and raised the dead. Then again didn’t they all raise the dead? Isn’t that a prerequisite for Sainthood, raising the dead? I go to school in Athens, the boy goes on. This is much less impressive. My family comes here all in the summer.

I see, I reply, giving away nothing.

A drink, perhaps? No? he asks. This boy is all clumsy questions, tangled together like unwound strings. I nod yes hesitantly. I touch the bruises on my left arm with my right hand. I am leery of men, I know not why.

In another life this Saint Vincent might have taken my hand and pulled me along these great, cavernous rock walls, up stairs and down tunnels until we reached one of the bars overlooking the cliffs. In another life I might have already been married, he might have already been dead, lost on a great crusade to the Holy Land. Not everything comes so clearly. I am as clumsy with facts at times as I am with my feet.

I follow him through the streets and outside the city. There is no bar on the beach, not like on other Greek islands where music flashes in waves like a nightclub. Santorini has a different kind of tourist; couples in search of romantic dinners, families with children sitting on the beach. Parties have not overrun it yet. These will come, they say. Maybe in my next life I’ll see them, a rhino tromping through clubbing strangers.

We walk closer to the water. I slip my sandals off and dig my toes into the rocky shore. It’s cold and clingy; water pricks at my skin like a thousand hungry bites by a band of arctic rabbits. Saint Vincent gives me his hand and I taste garlic and white wine, olive oil and butter on my tongue. There is a picture, I almost see it, like looking up at the sun through a film of water or Monet’s Impressionism, it’s almost there but then it’s not. I’m always losing things. David Copperfield said I used to be much better organized.

They say this is where the story of the Lost City of Atlantis comes from, I tell him. He looks at me and I realize only the moon lights us now—no streetlights, no city; the dull hush of the restaurants, of strangers at bars past midnight are gone—we have fallen off the face of the earth to the land of sea monsters too far out. The Lost City of Atlantis, have you heard of it?

The city that sank into the sea. They say that is where mermaids come from, sea people who live miles below the surface.

It was the Minoan empire, I explain, educating him on his own country, as if he has not heard these stories from birth, Atlantis, Heracles, Troy, as if these stories, these lives, have not been re-lived for millennia. They were a great empire, the Minoans, before Rome, before the Athenians built the Parthenon, before Aristotle. They had more money than King Midas, they had a civilization like this one, modern and technological, I look up at the white husks of houses over the cliffs, clinging to the rock like raw mussels. Then the volcano blew.

Sending the civilization to dust, Saint Vincent finishes for me. This is all that’s left of the island. This tiny, moon sliver of land. But there was so much. I wondered what we have forgotten. He reaches out to touch me, to grasp my hand, stroke my arm and I shrink back, shifting away from him. I am leery of men, although I don’t know why. Saint Vincent notices and pretends not to care.

But when Plato said that there had been a lost civilization, I begin again, an entire world we’d forgotten, one that now lives under a dome in the sea, it only made sense that he was talking about this island. The Minoan civilization that fell into the sea.

The Atlantians, they were supposed to be more advanced, Saint Vincent adds. They were supposed to have technology the ancient Greeks could only dream of.

And yet it was their hubris that destroyed them, I cite the moral of the story and Saint Vincent and I look at each other, ready to move on. Once hubris is mentioned the conversation has gone too far. There is no recovering.

I look out at the beach. We’re on the eastern side, where the island naturally slopes into the Aegean. The Caldera, on the north side, is a rocky blast where the volcano blew, a mountain climber’s trek into a vast moonscape of waters.

Why must everything take place in the present? I say and he looks at me and only nods. I have said something silly, something out of place, I am always doing that. Since my memory began to fade to nearly nothing beyond the time I came to this island I do not know how to talk to people. I speak with the awkwardness of a girl raised by wolves. Saint Vincent only smiles.

What’s your name again? I ask, just to hear him say it.

Saint Vincent, he replies, from Athens. He looks at me and he must know he’s picked the wrong girl to coax away from the city. He must know how very little will happen tonight. Do you want to maybe…? he starts slowly. They all start slowly.

Not tonight, I tell him, but thank you for the walk. It’s a lovely place.

Can I get your number at least? he asks and I rattle a list of digits and he only says okay. After a while he settles in, says something about the weather, something about his mother, the conversation falters and in a few minutes he goes home.

~ ~ ~

I sit up in the morning and watch the waves. Placing my hands on the ground, I try to get up, but remain sitting. I look into the light of the early morning sun that pierces the air like a weapon, a sword coming out of the sand, as David Copperfield appears.

Late night? he asks. Reaching toward me he scoops me up with his one arm and I am on my feet, leaning into his right side. He is a hard, solid man and he could have carried me. I am leery of men but not this one. What was his name? He cocks his head, smiles.

Saint Vincent, I reply and shake my head. A boy.

David Copperfield laughs. You know, it’s dangerous, sleeping out on the beach like this, you could get yourself killed.

If you honestly thought that you would have come looking hours ago, I retort.

The only thing I know about David Copperfield, the only thing I really know, is that his name is not David Copperfield. He tells me his name every night and every night I forget it, calling him this instead; a nickname from our past or a character from a book I once loved. Selective Memory Loss... his name is one of the things I can’t keep.

David Copperfield takes my arm and I steady myself against him. He is large-chested and broad, his legs giant logs of muscle; his hair cropped short, as if he’s growing out a shaved head. He is dark, but not Greek. He speaks English with an American accent. I know nothing else about him except that we must know each other. He lives in the house with me, and when I stay out, when I get turned around, when I cannot recognize a street sign or recall my own address, it is David Copperfield who comes.

We walk up the beach and toward the road. Flickers of light shine into my eyes, reflecting off discarded tin cans and I feel my face—I have not worn sunglasses. When did I leave last night? I can’t remember.

Let’s get you back, David Copperfield says. I reach for his left hand and he turns at the last second; we fumble and I forget, we’ve spent three weeks, nearly a month on the island, and still I am always forgetting that he is not whole either. He turns me around and grabs with his right hand as if it’s second nature.

We walk the whole way. I look out past the hotels, they’re getting larger and nicer. Santorini used to be a sacred place. There is Akrotiri, an archeological site where they’re digging up remnants of the Minoan civilization, the vast cliffs, a refuge of sea and silence. On other Greek islands there are hotels with large pools; they play techno music at night while tourists go out drinking. I’m glad there is the house, my house apparently, on the sea, on the eastern edge of the island. It is made of white wood and a red roof, the paint is chipping in places, with rock walls on the bottom. We have several windows and a red painted deck on the second floor. We do not look out to the cliffs, at the great volcano that tore this island apart; we watch the Aegean sitting quietly at night, as if the sea has been put to bed. There is a dilapidated wooden dock and a little rowboat, a blue metal contraption, something curved and rudimentary, a thing a child might draw with broken crayons.

When you didn’t come back last night, David Copperfield starts when we arrive at the house. He opens the red front door. I thought maybe the beach near Fira.

We walked a long way, I reply once we’re inside, sitting on an old red couch that seems to have been reupholstered—poorly. I want to ask him what he’s been doing but he won’t say. He won’t tell me anything. I have asked him a hundred questions, I have sat up at night, a bottle of black wine between us, and begged him for answers. I have cried into my hands, he has lifted me up and carried me to bed and still he will not tell me. He says he has, he promises I know, but it’s not there.

David Copperfield looks at me and I watch him. His body has been shredded. There are long jagged scars on his stomach and thighs and a stump near his shoulder to commemorate his missing left arm. I have asked how it happened, how he lost his arm and he tells me, in an accident. When I inquire further, he replies, you have to remember, Lydia, you just have to remember. He is soft and sad, a creature torn apart. His single hand is beautiful, connected to the muscled arm of an ancient General-King and his face is sharp and hard, it takes a second, a third look to see the softness, the Saint Bernard puppy, in his eyes.

Coffee, he offers and it’s not a question. Sugar? I am always putting too much sugar in my coffee; I just keep heaping it on as if sugar is going extinct—then there is too much, the coffee is too sweet and I cannot drink it. These are not memories as much as innate facts of my existence. Did the other Lydia, the one I can’t remember, drink her coffee this way or did she take it strong and black, like a lumberjack?

We step into the kitchen, the nearly defunct epicenter of the house it is barebones and decaying. Rust forms a paisley pattern on the white oven, two of its knobs have come off, a rack of metal pots stands over a dark green counter near a wire hanging basket. There is something, something I cannot name, about wire hanging baskets and I know I have seen them before. I see metal faucets with sharp sprays of water, leopard-spotted bananas, and salmon-skinned onions inside these baskets. I smell thick sauces and garlic...onion...butter. Where is this other life?

Who lives here? I ask David Copperfield as he grinds the coffee beans, using his one hand to press the grinder, stopping and using the same hand to pour the grounds into the filter. He is an expert at doing the most complicated tasks one-handed.

We live here, he says matter-of-factly, taking the grounds from the machine and transferring them into the pot one-handed. More accurately, you live here. I’m just staying, like one of those old roommate crashers you don’t know what to do with.

An old friend who sleeps on your couch and won’t leave when you gently hint but you don’t have the heart to ask them to go, I add, and he nods as if now I’ve got it.I smelled something last night, I tell him and David Copperfield looks at me with such hope. The coffee has started to percolate, soft and bitter, its aroma replaces the air with rich fragrance.

You smelled something? he asks, hopeful. You remembered?

I think I’ve been here before. In a past life, you know, maybe a hundred years ago, maybe only fifty. This is not what he wants. His face falls and I know I’ve disappointed him.

"You have lived before, Lydia. There’s much more to you than the name Lydia Warren on an Illinois driver’s license. What do you remember? When have you lived before?"

I saw something. I was eating pasta and it was something about the smell, the white wine and garlic—

Yes? David Copperfield coaxes me, leaning in closely as the coffee continues to brew. Do you remember the plane ride to Greece? The ferry to Santorini? He starts slowly. He always starts slowly. Do you remember the plane, the ferry, can you imagine the airport you took off from, the hospital, the bridge, how you got there? I close my eyes and try to see these things he tells me to see. I can make them up in my mind. I know what an airport is, it has metal doors and glass windows that look out to giant jet engines; there are bars, gate-side restaurants, duty free shops and stands that sell tickets. I see an airport in my head but that does not make a memory.

Do you believe in past lives? I ask and David Copperfield’s face falls further.

Past lives?

Yes.

Like how some people say that they remember a time when they were World War Two soldiers, or they remember being cavemen? he ventures a guess and his voice tells me that he thinks this is ridiculous.

Yes, I reply, but not like that. Not that complicated. I just think, I remember a house…more like an office, a whole roomful of straight lines and right angles. I remember a moment, I feel it, like I have been there before, like I’ve lived before.

"You have lived before, David Copperfield coaxes again. Maybe that kitchen is the kitchen you need to remember, not from fifty, a hundred years ago, but from a year and a half ago."

No, I tell him. I was another person. I wasn’t me but I was me and it was another time— I remember the furniture, really straight lines and earth tones, the 60s or something and there was garlic. But I wasn’t born—Lydia, this person, wasn’t born yet.

Maybe it’s just old furniture, David Copperfield suggests. "Maybe you’re thinking of a place that has old stuff, the 60s, the 1960s, you could be confusing memories from 60s TV, reruns of that stuff was on all the time when we were kids. Or your aunt’s old furniture, from pictures. Maybe you’re just creating ‘memories’ from something you saw before. Whatever it is you’re avoiding having to think about what you need to remember. It doesn’t mean you’ve lived a past life."

What do you know? I demand of him. The question has many layers. He catches this and won’t bite. Instead, he looks down at the table. David Copperfield picks up metaphors as if he speaks a special language.

Next week we should go to the mainland, he offers. I’ve been in Greece for weeks and I haven’t seen Athens. How can you go to Greece and not see the Parthenon? He says this jokingly, to make up for his dismissive tone. I grasp his hand and he looks down at my fingers as they cover his.

I am leery of men but not this one, never this one.

Who am I? I ask him as he gets up. What happened That Night? The coffee is not ready, I hear it still dripping, and yet he gets up and grabs the cups from a cabinet above his head with his one hand. I hear the clink of the sugar bowl, the suction of the refrigerator door opening as he finds the cream. The coffee is still not ready but he waits near the counter. Did you buy fish for dinner last night? I ask and David Copperfield nods.

I’m sure it’s still good. We can have fish tonight. Then, when he says nothing, Three, I call out and David Copperfield nods.

Three sugars coming up, he says, spooning one, two, three, four. He knew I meant four.

~ ~ ~

The rooms upstairs are a labyrinth of creaking wooden floors and dusty monotone carpets. I have told David Copperfield many times that we should redecorate and he only says, When you remember. The doctors said not to change anything. He is always speaking of doctors. There is the man with the small practice in Fira I visit once a week. He writes in a notebook and tells me to go to sleep on time. Then there’s the other doctor I speak to on the phone. I haven’t met him yet but he’s in Athens and sometime soon he would like to examine my brain, take a picture of it under bright lights and see if it’s working.

My bed sits against the wall, near a box of papers. There are pictures here. One is of a girl with long blond hair. She looks young, a teenager. I stare at her as she stands next to another blond woman, this woman is shorter, older. They both frown and I wonder if I could stand them in another life. I sit on my bed and flip through a book. Moby Dick. I remember the story, a man and a captain and a great white whale. I remember the details of the sea but not the act of reading, where I was when I read this book or how it truly made me feel. Can you say that you have lived if there is no memory of living?

You hated that book, David Copperfield says when he enters. He takes a seat on my bed far away from me. Eight pages in tiny print on the whiteness of the whale. I just went to the library and found the CliffsNotes in high school but you insisted on reading the whole thing.

The whiteness of the whale? I repeat. There was confusion on the ship. Poor leadership, I recite what I remember. There was a boy who was lost at sea...from another country. I remember from the news. You and I fought over it. I called you a Communist. I am mixing the story with something...something from my life but I don’t remember.

Elian Gonzales… The Cuban boy whose mother died in a raft escaping Cuba. His father in Cuba wanted him returned and there were arguments for keeping the boy here. I thought, I think, the boy should be returned to his father even if we aren’t friends with Cuba. You called me a Communist but there was no need—Lydia are you remembering?

Who are these women? I point to the picture on the bed and David Copperfield barely acknowledges them.

You have to remember.

Did you like to read? I ask him and she shakes his head no.

I never would have gone to college but you...Lydia...she encouraged me to go.

A man hollers down at the door and David Copperfield looks up. I think the grocery delivery is here. He gets up to get it and as he stands, he moves toward me like he wants to reach out, he wants to touch my hand but instead he pulls back and walks away.

Two

The next day I walk out to David Copperfield as he works in the garden, and wonder if he’ll go with me to Ouia today. Eee-ah, I pronounce the name of the city once, rolling it around on my tongue like it is melting ice. I envy those who do hard work, work with their hands; I’ve told him this is a clue as to who I am and he only laughs. The old Lydia knew how to get her hands dirty, he tells me.

David Copperfield is made of lions. He is always fixing things; he took a wrench to the dripping faucet, a screwdriver to the knob on the front door. When he is not working David Copperfield runs in place, does one-handed pushups and variations on the usual sit-ups twisting his body with such skill I feel tongue-tied just watching him. There is a punching bag, large, lopsided, old-fashioned, near the side of the house and he is always hitting it, punch, punch, punch, then he uses his legs, kick, kick, kick. No wonder he is raw muscle. It would take a great expedition to get down to bone in that body.

I sit next to him, kneeling in the dirt, and when I place my hand on his shoulder he turns away, gets up and sits at a little wooden table, leaning lopsided like it’s made of driftwood. Did the old Lydia like gardening? Did she live by the sea? I ask, taking a seat next to him. The table did not tilt when David Copperfield rested his hand on it, but it dips heavily when I clumsily lean my elbows on the surface like a little girl you cannot take anywhere.

She lived in Chicago, David Copperfield reminds me. I already knew that. Some facts are easy to memorize and other things are not about rote memorization but actually knowing, like learning the state capitals versus remembering a long equation. After…after you just sort of sat in your room reading old documents from your father. He keeps mentioning this father, this mother, but I can’t see them, not at all.How do I know you know me at all? I accuse him. I cringe when his face breaks, but I’ve come this far. How do I know you’re not some guy I met at the port who figured out that I’d lost my memory and you’ve been using that to live here for weeks?

You don’t, he replies like Christ when they asked Him to perform a miracle, any miracle, to prove He was the Son of God. His face fell humbly and He offered nothing. Even in the face of death He offered nothing.I think it’s awfully convenient…

David Copperfield moves like a mouse, with tiny, twitching gestures, so small for a man so large. He digs into his back pocket and pulls out a worn leather wallet. Something gets stuck; he tries pulling it, still holding it in his one hand until the wallet falls to the ground. I reach to help him but he scoops it up.

Let me help you, I offer and his face flashes red and hot so quickly before shame sets in and he lowers his eyes.

I can do it. I’m supposed to do these things myself. It’s been two years. With his one hand he opens the wallet and holds it sprawled in all three sections and with that same wrist he wiggles a piece of paper out of one of the pockets and hands it to me.

He looks so sad, so embarrassed and I don’t know why. It’s only your arm, I tell him, reaching out I grasp his shoulder. You’re so capable.

Only my arm? he asks, a little upset. That’s like a skinny girl complaining to a three hundred pound woman that her size four dress makes her look fat.

I’m just saying, I barely notice. I wish he’d at least talk about it, his missing arm, but like everything else, he won’t say a thing.

There, he says, coming up with a photo. Did I make that up?

He could have, there are ways to alter a photo, I know this. But I believe him.

It’s a picture of two children. They are probably ten, maybe eleven, a girl and a boy standing in a large, green yard on a sunny suburban street. Streets like this do not belong in Greece with its crumbling walls of brick and stone (or sometimes plaster). In this picture an aluminum-sided subdivision looks like it sprawls for miles; there are trees and filtered sunlight that does not bake the ground; I hear dogs barking and cars coming in and out of small driveways. I don’t remember this at all but I can see myself in the girl. The two children are replicas of us. My hair was longer and in a braid; I wore a pink shirt and white pants and I know (though I know little else) that such fashions were distinctly the 80s. David Copperfield’s hair was not cropped as close as it is now—it hung messily in his face and freckles dotted his light brown skin. We were smaller, different, our faces not identical to, but molded from the same cloth as those of the grownups we’ve become.

That’s us, I say and he nods. Is that your house?

It is. I was never allowed in yours.

Does your family still live there? Can we go back? Maybe it’ll jog my memory. Maybe we have gone back. Maybe we’ve returned again and again and again and I just can’t remember.

We visited the house but we didn’t go in. My parents have passed, we sold everything.

So we knew each other as kids, I say, giving him the picture. His hand grazes mine and he pulls away like he’s not allowed to touch me.

I remember him the night before last and the night before that, and the night before. He comes to my room only at night. I don’t know how long it’s been going on. He sat on my bed, Lydia, he whispered my name as if not to wake me. He ran his hand down my arm, brushed his fingers through my hair. Some nights he kneels at my bed with the rosary, Ave Maria, Ave Maria, Ave Maria, like he’s calling something. Senoir, por favor protégé a esta chica y perdoname, perdoname.

I have stopped sleeping with my blanket, my sheets. I wear a camisole to bed and when he comes in I wait for him. I feel his touch so close, but he won’t do it. He only looks at me. I have considered sleeping in the nude but I fear if he found me naked he would leave embarrassed and never return. I have come to depend on this custom, to need it. And his eyes, his hand, I feel them on me, like referred pain, he’s there and not there and yet he won’t touch me.

So that boy last night, did you sleep with him? David Copperfield asks, interrupting my thoughts.

I stand up, sick at the question. What’s wrong with you?

He looks at me as if his face will shatter. I didn’t…I mean, I didn’t mean, he fumbles.

I’m heading out, I say and then I walk away from the garden and toward the path around the house that leads to the road. Instead of pulling weeds and harvesting cherry tomatoes, instead of waiting for him to run after me, instead of having it out on the back porch, I take the bus to Ouia. It’s too far to walk.

~ ~ ~

Ouia is an aged city. It has not taken kindly to the young tourists who’ve recently discovered the island. She is an old world mistress who thrives off gilded picture frames, shining chandeliers and spices from India; trust funds and private parties do not impress her. There are no roads in Ouia, only stone streets the width of a thin sidewalk and you could not drive a bus, a car, even a motorbike through it. Great stone gates sit at her entrance and her visitors must come on foot, squeezing through her narrow doors, most wearing sandals like ancient plebeians. We are all humble here.

I pass through the gated city, walking by shops selling long red scarves, little bodegas with shiny silver wrist watches and necklaces of pearls mined from the sea. The smell of fish lingers and I hold my breath. Is it the same fish I sensed the other night, simmered in white wine and lightly burnt garlic?

Ouia is a city of antique stores, one after another the past lies on display. I place my hand on a small sign and enter one from a side door. It’s the light in this one, more orange than yellow, a kind of terracotta, lightly painted, nearly frescoed walls. It’s the sharp-edged furniture I catch out of the corner of my eye, dull, muted colors, nothing so gilded as the 18th century in the antique store next door.

This is a hectic store, a hodgepodge of the 40s, 50s, and 60s mixed in with the early 19th and 20th centuries. Large wooden and metal trunks sit every few paces, stacks of old books and magazines with pictures of black and white heart-faced pin-up girls, boxes of clothes that have been sifted through by wandering hands. Paintings hang close together on the walls, clamoring for space.

World War Two, an old man calls as he enters from a back room partitioned with a salmon-colored curtain. The coat rack behind you, he explains when I watch him, confused. He has an accent I cannot place, it’s not Greek, but it’s European. Nonetheless he speaks English to me; I must be that obvious. I have heard that Americans always are. World War Two. It’s French. I purchased it myself when I lived there. After the War of course, just after. It’s been with me for years, that old rack. We took it just after the Nazis. He makes a face and shakes his head at the mention of Nazis. I suppose everyone hates the Nazis (this I know, an innate fact of history), but there is something about his distaste that is not entirely distanced. I must look at him strangely as I do the math in my head (I have always been good with numbers) and he nods. Yes, I remember that war, he tells me, I’m 80 years old.

It’s beautiful, I love the iron. It’s iron, correct? I ask, touching it. The metal is rough and weathered like aged leather, black paint chipping off in delicate flakes. "I have