The Man Who Was Left Behind (8 page)

The big tourist boat was about to dock and most of the passengers were standing up on deck to watch. John and Amy Larsen sat inside on a bench in the lounge where the evening before they had listened to music and drunk wine.

“I don’t have any more postcards,” she said, and rummaged through her purse. From the outside pocket of it she took out three postcards, already written on and stamped. All were addressed to the same name and place, and at the top left-hand corner of each she had conscientiously put down the day, and the month, May, and year, 1965, as though the cards were intended to be saved for posterity.

“Don’t worry about it,” her husband said. “We can buy some more as soon as we get off.”

They had been married for eighteen months, although they did not look married. To look at, they might even have been related by blood rather than by law. They looked like students, and John Larsen was one; his wife had graduated the year before. She had majored in English, he was in his last year at business school.

Standing near them was another American couple, who were on their honeymoon. They came from New York, and, in contrast to the Larsens, looked well-dressed, sophisticated, and as though they were either not married at all or had been married for several years and were taking a break from the children and a life of suburban cocktail parties. Their name was Whitlow. And they were on their honeymoon,
all right. When the boat had put them ashore at Crete for the day, the Whitlows had had a quarrel of some kind and John and Amy had found Mrs. Whitlow alone, standing as though posed, with the sun on her shiny hair, and her tropically flowered sleeveless dress looking brand new, like a magazine ad for winter holidays in the Caribbean. She had walked forward towards them, peered this way and that into the other sightseers among the reconstructed ruins of King Minos’ palace, and recognized them.

“Lost your husband?” John had asked.

“Well,” she had said, “he went off in a huff, but I think maybe he’s lost now. I’ve been wandering all over the place.”

That night they had laughed about it as they drank with the Larsens. Another couple named Fischer, a New Jersey businessman and his wife, had joined them. The Fischers were already grandparents, but were throwing themselves into the spirit of things with more zest than the younger couples. They had all begun to talk about the places they had visited or would have liked to see. The Whitlows had been to Nauplia.

“Oh, we were there, too,” Amy had said. “That’s where we couldn’t get any artichokes.”

“We sat down on the terrace of the hotel restaurant, you know, facing the harbour——” John had said.

“That’s where we were, too,” Whitlow had told them.

“And two tourist buses drove up and parked. We started to order dinner and the waiter handed us the menu and said, ‘With group?’ ”

“With group?” Amy had repeated, in the voice the waiter had used.

“So we said no, not with group, and started to order.”

“And there were artichokes on the menu, which I just love.”

“We were okay till we hit the artichokes, and then it
turned out that they were all for group, forty-seven darn orders of artichokes. That just about finished the place for us.”

“Did you notice what a funny kind of butter they had there?” Amy had asked. “It was white. It tasted just like Crisco.”

“I told you, it was some kind of margarine,” John had put in.

“Not tasting like that. I’m sure it was Crisco.”

“Did you go to the island?” Mrs. Whitlow had asked.

“Yes, we had tea there.”

“So did we, but we made a mistake about the boat. Tell them about the boat, Hank.”

“Well, when Sally and I got there, we saw this beautiful boat tied up at the landing-stage.”

“A yacht, really, but a small one——”

“And later we wanted to get out to the island, but the boat was gone. We went and looked at the sign, and it had the times of sailing on it.”

“So then——”

“Do you want to tell it?”

“Oh, go ahead.”

“So then later in the day we saw it there again and barrelled down to the jetty to get on board. My God, it was somebody’s private yacht. Nobody on board but the English mate. The real boat was a rowboat.”

“Then we got into the rowboat and this girl who was staying on the island climbed in too, and dropped a paperback she’d been carrying, and Hank handed it back to her——”

“Fanny Hill.
No kidding. Sort of broke her up. She’d been reading it with the cover held back.”

“The rooms out there were gorgeous, weren’t they? If we’d known you could stay on it, we’d have booked in there.”

“That boat was a beauty,” Whitlow had said. “Some big wheel owned it and chartered her out for the season. The mate said it was built in Holland.”

“Never mind,” Sally Whitlow had said. “One day we’ll have one.”

“Diamond-studded,” her husband had agreed, and they had shaken hands on it.

“Did you get to Delphi?” John had asked them. The Whitlows had been all through the Peloponnese and driven up to Delphi from Athens. They had really wanted to go all the way up into Macedonia too, but there was only so much time. This was the fifth and last week of their honeymoon. The Larsens had missed Delphi, which they regretted, but they had hired a car and driven through some of the Peloponnesian cities. The Fischers had seen Athens, taken a day’s excursion to Hydra and Aegina, and that had been all.

The boat they were on had stopped at Mykonos, with a side trip to Delos, and at Crete. Mrs. Fischer had liked Mykonos best.

“Well, I know it’s supposed to be a photographer’s paradise,” John had said, “but that whitewash and bougainvillea and arts and crafts just leave me cold. I think you either like Mykonos or Delos.”

“And you liked Delos,” Mrs. Fischer had said, smiling at him.

“Yes, maybe the best of all. What I’d really like to do is go back there and stay a couple of days.”

“But there isn’t any hotel.”

“Yes, there is. At that tourist pavilion, they’ve got about four rooms they can rent out. I asked them about it. Friends of ours stayed there last year.”

“They loved it,” Amy had said.

“They said that at ten o’clock the caique from Mykonos pulled in with all the sightseers who spent a few hours
scrambling over everything and climbing up the hill, and when the boat pulled out again the island was covered in shoeprints and sneaker marks. Then it took about an hour, and when you looked after that, all you could see on the ground were lizard prints.”

“And the starlight is bright enough to see by even when the moon isn’t out,” Amy had said.

John had touched her hair and told her that they would go back there some day.

But now the boat was docking at Rhodes, and they had their luggage ready, because they were leaving the group in order to be able to spend two days on the island. Then they would fly back to Athens, and from there would take a plane home. The tour leaders had allowed them to reclaim a small part of their tickets. They had even given the Larsens the name of a good, cheap hotel they could recommend. But the Larsens would be joining the group again for lunch at the luxury hotel and might go along on the guided tour of the city in the afternoon, since that had all been paid for and couldn’t be refunded. Only the morning would be different. In the morning the other passengers were going to take buses to Lindos and then visit the monastery of Philerimos. The Larsens were to visit both places the following day when they would be able to take their time. Amy had liked the cruise, but John was beginning to tire of constantly being hustled along from one thing to the next.

The boat was almost at a standstill.

“There’s that creep again,” Sally Whitlow said to her husband.

One of the passengers, who had started off the tour standing with the German-speaking guide and had changed to standing with the English-speaking guide because of Mrs. Whitlow, shuffled into the lounge. His eyes were always on her, and he had been attempting to strike up a friendship
with both the Whitlows all during the voyage. Mrs. Whitlow turned her head sharply away. Her husband glared at the man, who tried to start a conversation about what a nice day it was. Whitlow didn’t answer. The man sat down. The boat struck against something.

“Feels like we’ve landed,” John said.

Mrs. Whitlow stood up and walked out. Her husband followed. The German-speaking man stood up and began to walk behind them. Whitlow turned around and shoved him in the chest.

“You stay right here,” he said, and turned his back and walked off.

The Larsens went up on deck, carrying their bags. The Whitlows were leaning against the rail, and Sally Whitlow was saying, “It just makes me nervous, that’s all. You could knock him down ten times and he’d come up like a rubber ball. There’s just something missing. Really, somebody ought to lock him up, you know.”

“Oh, I think he’s harmless enough,” Whitlow said.

“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.