The Man Who Was Left Behind Read online

  “For God’s sake, Hank. He’s out of his mind. He ought to be in an institution.”

  The Larsens passed along the deck under the strong sunlight, and joined the line that had already formed.

  “I don’t like her,” Amy said.

  “She’s all right. She didn’t realize, that’s all.”

  “Just the same, I don’t like her.”

  “Be fair, Amy. How could she know?”

  She watched the men working with the cables and preparing the way for the passengers to step ashore. Her husband looked at her: short in her skirt that was too long, and her long-sleeved blouse that she wore sloppy Joe art-major style outside the skirt. She had a small-nosed, intense face like a terrier, and her ordinary brown hair just hung to her shoulders instead of billowing out in a wave like Sally Whitlow’s hair.

  “You just can’t stand it about her hair,” he said.

  “Well, I don’t see how it can look like that. It looks like she just came out of a hairdresser’s. But we’ve been on this boat for five days.”

  “Some people don’t have to wash their hair more than once every two weeks.”

  “That’s what’s so annoying. I bet it always looks like that.”

  “But otherwise she’s okay?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You know, I like you just exactly the way you look.”

  “Somebody ought to lock you up,” she said. “You ought to be in an institution.” She opened her mouth and laughed and laughed.

  He set down his suitcase and took her by the arm.

  “Look,” he said. “The line’s starting.”

  It took them quite a while to work their way forward. When they were at last standing on the quayside, the other passengers were beginning to form up in front of the three guides. They walked past the French-speaking guide and came to the English-speaking guide, who had been nice to John about changing the tickets.

  “You will know the island of Rhodes is supposed to be the island of roses,” she was saying. “Rhodos means a rose. But it is more probably truly the flower you see here, the hibiscus.” She gestured towards some beds of red hibiscus flowers.

  “Let’s find that hotel,” he said. “Let me carry that. She said it wasn’t very far away.”

  They set off towards the town. In front of them half a dozen cab drivers stood beside their Chevrolet taxis. The drivers began to call to them as they came nearer. Two rushed forward to carry the bags. Larsen lifted his head to the side and said no in Greek. He had to say it twice, and Amy said no thank you.

  The hotel was small, new, and looked clean, but the room was small, too. There was just room enough to stand up between the bed and the window. The shutter was down because of the sun.

  “Can you ask him if there’s a shower?” Amy asked. The man who had shown them the room beckoned them out again and down the hall. There wasn’t any shower, but there was a bath. They took the room and began to unpack. They didn’t take out much, as they were only staying the two days.

  “I’ll go see about the car,” John said.

  “There must be a bus.”

  “But it would be nicer by car. And we’ll need it tomorrow.”

  “It’s your money,” she said.

  He went out of the hotel, rented a car for two days, and drove it back. Amy walked out the hotel door as he was putting the key in his pocket. She had been sitting downstairs near the door, watching out for him.

  They got in, and John took out the map he had been given at the garage.

  “I think I’m okay, but if you see any signs that say Petaloudes, sing out. That’s us.”

  “Does Petaloudes mean butterflies?”

  “I don’t know. It might. It sounds like it ought to mean petals.”

  “That’s because of the way they look when they fly. Like petals,” she said, and made her hands do butterfly motions.

  He looked at her face. She was looking happy, and was calm enough. He started the car.

  Once they got clear of the town, the roads began to wind and to climb steeply. And the island was lusciously green, unlike the art book photographs of the rest of Greece, where temples which turned out later to be made of grey, orange, or honey-coloured stone appeared stark white under annihilating sunlight and set in landscapes of sand and rock and cracked, impoverished earth.

  “It seems to be way up in the mountains,” he said.

  “I wish it were the right time of year.”

  “So do I, but we can see the place, anyway. It’s nice to see a couple of places that are just pretty without all the history.”

  “And maybe they’ll have postcards. Oh! Oh, John! Stop the car.”

  He slammed on the brakes.

  “What is it?”

  “I forgot to mail my postcards.”

  “Jesus H. Christ, Amy. You could have killed us.”

  “I’ve got to mail them,” she said, reaching for the door handle.

  He pulled her back.

  “One hour isn’t going to make any difference.”

  “No!” she said. She started to scream, “No, no, no! I’ve got to!”

  He shook her by the shoulders and then held her head between his hands.

  “Just calm down, now. Just relax. We can buy lots of postcards in a few minutes, and then we can send them all together.”

  “But——”

  “We can send them all together, and everything will be all right. Okay?” He kissed her on the nose three times.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He started the car again. Luckily they hadn’t been on a corner when she had made him stop.

  They drove around more corners and the road kept banking upwards, and then suddenly there were lots of trees very close to the road.

  They did not speak. He kept his eyes on the road but was thinking, So, we’re not going to get out of it so easily. And the right half of his body seemed to have taken on the sensitivity of a third eye; if his wife were to make another dash at the doorhandle, or perhaps towards him, trying to get at the wheel, he would know it even though he was looking ahead through the windshield.

  The road levelled out, went down, and then up again. The air was cooler, the coolness seeming to come from the trees. Perhaps it really did, he thought—released oxygen or something, causing a freshness around the trees. But perhaps also part of the sensation was induced by a mental reaction to the green colour. The previous spring, the university store had had a large pile of notebooks on sale, the paper of which was a peculiar green colour, and inside the cover of each notebook you could read a statement to the effect that “research had shown” green to be extremely soothing to the eyes. He had bought one and found the colour irritating, but there might be something in the idea after all.

  All these things were connected: the eye, the mind, the body. Hip bone connected to the thigh bone. Yet even when the whole business was going right and healthy, it was fundamentally mysterious. Research showed, but you could dig into your past till you were blue in the face and it still wouldn’t help you to feel confident walking into a room full of strangers if that was the sort of thing that had always made you nervous. Research could probably stop you washing your hands fifty times a day, but then you’d start something else, like picking your nose. Or worrying about postcards.

  They came over a ridge and began to descend into the valley.

  “This is it,” he said. He guided the car up a slope and around to the right where there were three other cars parked under the trees. They could see the weathered wood railing and the steps going far up the mountainside, and the two lower ponds and the little waterfalls between. Everywhere was the sound of water.

  “It’s pretty,” she said.

  He locked up the car and took her arm. He led her past the postcard stands and made sure that he didn’t seem to be trying to distract her attention. And she didn’t notice.

  They began to climb the stairway. The wood didn’t look very solid. Down below, w
here there were other railings around the watercourses, the wood looked yellow, like bamboo, and the water was a vivid green, even greener than the trees. Three people, slung with cameras, came down the path and passed them. It was very narrow, and John had to pull Amy back from the edge. There were more people farther up, and it looked like a long climb.

  “Do butterflies need a lot of water?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, Amy.”

  “It’s a nice place for them, though. Think of having a place where you go to every year like this. They fly for miles and it’s the same place they’ve been coming to for generations.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s nice.”

  “I wonder why people don’t do those things. I mean, why don’t people have places they go to? Migrating and hibernating and all that. It’s very strange when you think about it. But then it’s very strange if you suddenly wonder why not.”

  They climbed to the level of the third pool and looked down at the emerald circular ponds in their nests of yellow railings, with the sun dappling over everything through the leaves of the overhanging trees.

  “It looks like some place in Africa,” he said. “I wonder what makes the water so green. Maybe it’s very cold.”

  They stood there for a while and then she looked farther up the path. He could see that she was suddenly frightened of going up to the top. She looked back down at the water again.

  “It makes you dizzy to look all the way down.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s a long climb to the top, too. How are your loafers holding out?”

  “Oh, they’re okay. John, did you ever think—you know, people who say there isn’t any life after death think it’s because it would be so peculiar. But it’s even more peculiar to be alive in the first place, isn’t it? So why not?”

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t know. I think it’s one of those things you believe in or you don’t. I don’t believe it has much to do with thought. I mean, you’re predisposed to believe one way or the other. And I don’t think it has much to do with how you feel about the sacredness of life, if that’s what’s bothering you. Do you want to try going to the top?”

  “I’m sort of tired,” she said.

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve had enough of a climb, too.”

  They began the descent.

  “It’s being on board the boat for so long,” he said.

  “But we walked all over Delos and Crete.”

  “But your legs get to feel different.”

  At the bottom of the path she saw the postcard stand and made a beeline for it.

  “Oh!” she said, picking up one card after another. “Oh look, they’ve got pictures of all the butterflies.” She handed him a picture of a leafy tree with a brown trunk. He didn’t see any butterflies. Then he looked more closely and realised that the entire trunk of the tree was composed of hundreds of butterflies lying next to each other.

  “That’s amazing,” he said.

  “Aren’t they pretty? It looks like they’re just sleeping there.” She kept picking up more postcards. “Just sleeping,” she cooed.

  The woman behind the stand had caught the spirit of the thing and began to select better and better pictures to be looked at.

  “Look at this one, John,” Amy said, and handed him a picture of a flight of pink butterflies taken against a background of dark leaves. If you squinted your eyes they looked exactly like flamingoes flying in formation.

  The postcard-seller was even shorter than Amy Larsen. The top of her head only came up to Amy’s chin. She began to talk in French about the butterflies, and handed John a piece of paper which had the history of the place written on it.

  “What’s she saying?”

  “Wait a sec. Her French is worse than mine.” He interrupted her and asked why the butterflies chose that particular spot. It seemed a nonsensical thing to ask, but the woman answered him straight away: it was because of the trees, because of the resin in the leaves.

  “Isn’t that interesting,” Amy said. Then she picked up one of the things on the tray full of keychains, paperknives, cheap unworkable ballpoint pens, and other souvenir objects.

  It was a green-enamelled brass frog with red glass eyes. Its head was on a hinge and the mouth opened up into a spout. When you lifted the head, the belly of the frog became an ashtray and the bottom jaw a cigarette-rest. She clicked the head up and down several times, and then bought the frog, though neither of them smoked.

  They walked back to the car. A Greek soldier passed them on their way. Two other cars had pulled in to the left of theirs, and six soldiers were standing leaning against the fenders. Amy’s hands were clenched on her postcards as they walked forward. John unlocked the car door, got in and leaned over to unlock the other door, and pulled the handle back.

  She sat down on the seat and left the door open. She put all her postcards up on the dashboard and set the frog beside them. John got the map out of the door pocket. He left his door open, too. Now that they were away from the coolness of the water, the heat was noticeable.

  “Why are they all looking at me like that?” she said.

  “Soldiers always look at girls, honey.”

  “They’re looking at me like I was some kind of a freak.”

  “You’re just freakishly Nordic, that’s all. Probably your hair.”

  “My hair is dark.”

  “Not in this country.” He opened the map. “We’ve got time to go someplace else. We could go visit this temple. That’s on the other side of town, but we’d have time.”

  “Okay,” she said. She began to click the frog’s head up and down.

  “Do you like my frog?”

  “Sort of.”

  She opened the head again and looked into the bowl of the frog’s belly.

  “It’s built just like me. Slim as a lily down to my tiny waist and from there on in like a battleship. Like a kangaroo.”

  “The ideal female shape,” he said, punching the map to make it fold up again. He looked to the left and saw that the soldier they had passed had returned, and three of the men were drinking out of bottles.

  “Lucky I bought so many stamps,” she said, and took a ballpoint pen out of her purse.

  “You cleaned them out. Would you like something to drink?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “I’m thirsty. I’m going to see if they’re selling soft drinks back there.”

  “I’ll write my postcards.”

  “Okay. If they’ve got any ice cream or something like that, would you like that instead?”

  “No, thanks.”

  He got out and closed the car door after him, knowing that she would be crouching over her postcards, having dragged her hair over most of the left side of her face because the soldiers were looking at her. And then, of course, she really would look like a freak.

  At the postcard stand the woman sold him a fizzy lemonade, opened the cap, and gave him a straw. It wasn’t very cold. He walked back to the car and drank most of it there. Beside him Amy was writing away furiously. He drank through the straw and put his right hand on the back of her neck and then squeezed her shoulders.

  “It isn’t inherited, Amy,” he said.

  She went on writing. He finished the lemonade and looked at the postcards she had finished, lying beside the hideous frog. The date, still complete with year, was on each, and the left-hand side crammed with minute writing. He got out of the car and looked around for a basket or some sort of container to put the bottle in, but there wasn’t one. The soldiers had stood their empties at the foot of one of the trees. He put his bottle down beside the others and went back to the car.

  He waited till she had finished writing the postcard she was working on, and said, “All set?”

  “I haven’t finished yet.”

  He appropriated the remaining cards.

  “How many have you done?”

  “Wait. One, two, three—six.”

  “Well, that’s quite a lot. We’l
l leave the rest till we get back to the hotel. You wouldn’t want to get stuck there without any and have to go out and buy some new ones.”

  “But if I finish these, I can send them off and get some more later.”

  “Nope. Right now we’re going to see that temple.”

  He put all the written postcards into the outside pocket of her purse, leaned over her, and closed her door. She kissed him on the cheek.

  He started the car and gave her a hug with his right arm.

  “Better put that away,” he said. “I don’t want it to fall off.”

  “It can’t break. It’s brass or something.”

  “Supposing I had to put on the brakes suddenly? It could hit one of us in the eye.”

  She put the frog in her purse and he backed the car out and down the slope and on to the road. He hadn’t expected the kiss and it had made up for a lot of things.

  They were halfway to the town when she said, “I’ve got to go to the bathroom again.”

  “Didn’t you go at the hotel?”

  “Yes, but I’ve got to go again.”

  “Can you wait till we get into town?”

  “No.”

  He looked for a field with bushes and finally found one, pulled over to the side of the road, and stopped. She bolted out the door and ran across the field, the handbag, which contained wads of Kleenex as well as everything else, clutched to her chest.

  He leaned forward over the wheel and closed his eyes. A car passed on the road. He sat up again, then leaned back on the wheel, and by mistake sounded the horn. When she returned through the field, she said, “What’s the rush?”

  “No rush. We’ve got plenty of time.”

  “You were honking the horn.”

  “Oh, I leaned up against the wheel. I didn’t mean it to hurry you.”

  They drove on, back through the town, and he decided to be smart and get her to mail half the postcards so that she wouldn’t pull another stunt like the one earlier in the morning.

  “How nice you are to remember. It just slipped my mind,” she said, ducking out of the car to put the postcards in the slot. He had made sure that she took the ones she had written on instead of the others; they were all stamped. She had bought one hundred air mail stamps in Heraklion. That wasn’t counting the stamps she had been buying for two weeks. He hadn’t even known she had brought the money with her, and then she had simply said, “Oh yes, just in case of emergencies.”