I removed my sunglasses, wiped my sweating brow with a handkerchief, and put them on again, then gazed at the seabirds.
I thought about Sumire. About the colossal hard-on I had the time I sat beside her when she moved into her new place. The kind of awesome, rock-hard erection I’d never experienced before. Like my whole body was about to explode. At the time, in my imagination—something like the
I gulped down some lemonade to clear my throat.
*
I returned to my hypothesis, taking it one step further. Sumire had somehow found an exit. What kind of exit that was, and how she discovered it, I had no way of knowing. I’ll put that on hold. Suppose it’s a kind of door. I closed my eyes and conjured up a mental image—an elaborate image of what this door looked like. Just an ordinary door, part of an ordinary wall. Sumire happened to find this door, turned the knob, and slipped outside—from
What lay beyond that door was beyond my powers of imagination. The door closed, and Sumire wouldn’t be coming back.
I went back to the cottage and made a simple dinner from things I found in the fridge. Tomato and basil pasta, a salad, an Amstel beer. I went out to sit on the veranda, lost in thought. Or maybe thinking of nothing. Nobody phoned. Miu might be trying to call from Athens, but you couldn’t count on the
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phones to work.
Moment by moment the blue of the sky turned deeper, a large circular moon rising from the sea, a handful of stars piercing holes in the sky. A breeze blew up the slopes, rustling the hibiscus. The unmanned lighthouse at the tip of the pier blinked on and off with its ancient-looking light. People were slowly heading down the slope, leading donkeys as they went. Their loud conversation came closer, then faded into the distance. I silently took it all in, this foreign scene seeming entirely natural.
In the end the phone didn’t ring, and Sumire didn’t appear. Quietly, gently, time slipped by, the evening deepening. I took a couple of cassettes from Sumire’s room and played them on the living room stereo. One of them was a collection of Mozart songs. The handwritten label read:
*
I was awakened by music. Far-off music, barely audible. Steadily, like a faceless sailor hauling in an anchor from the bottom of the sea, the faint sound brought me to my senses. I sat up in bed, leaned towards the open window, and listened carefully. It was definitely music. The wristwatch next to my bed showed it was past one o’clock. Music? At this time of
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night?
I put on my trousers and a shirt, slipped on my shoes, and went outside. The lights in the neighbourhood were all out, the streets deserted. No wind, not even the sound of waves. Just the moonlight bathing the earth. I stood there, listening again. Strangely, the music seemed to be coming from the top of the hills. There weren’t any villages on the steep mountains, just a handful of shepherds and monasteries where monks lived their cloistered lives. It was hard to imagine either group putting on a festival at this time of night.
Outside, the music was more audible. I couldn’t make out the melody, but by the rhythm it was clearly Greek. It had the uneven, sharp sound of live music, not something played through speakers.
*
By then I was wide awake. The summer night air was pleasant, with a mysterious depth to it. If I hadn’t been worried about Sumire, I might very well have felt a sense of celebration. I rested my hands on my hips, stretched, looking up at the sky, and took a deep breath. The coolness of the night washed inside me. Suddenly a thought struck me—maybe, at this very moment, Sumire is listening to the same music.
