I nodded. Left.
Krhis"s prayers would not save Max"s life. But they were nevertheless very important.
Omio came up to me as I walked along the path with the roses.
"I"m inky." I held out my purple hands. "Don"t touch me."
"My Polly, you have been beaten, and you are still bleeding, and, lo, I have rubbed salt in your wounds."
I shook my head. Tears rushed to my eyes. "I"m being very silly."
"Is it that Zachary? Has it something to do with him?"
"No!"
"But you have been hurt. When I gave you my picture of the Laughing Christ, I hurt you. If you do not want to keep it, I will not be offended."
"No. Please. I want to keep it."
"Lo, I am glad then, of that. Before you came to Cyprus, someone hurt you?"
298.
"Yes. But I"m not thinking straight about that, either."
"Are we still friends?"
"Of course." I closed my eyes, and the slanting rays of the sun made dancing dots behind my eyelids. "I don"t know what"s the matter. It doesn"t have anything to do with you."
"Doesn"t it? That does not make me happy." His fingers lightly touched mine.
"We of Baki are still close to the old ways. It was always understood that it was possible to love more than one person at a time, without dishonor."
I nodded, looking at our shadows, which were lengthening on the hot ground.
"And," he said, "Jesus was more forgiving to those who made mistakes in love than to those who judged each other harshly and were cold of heart." "Your picture"-I tried to speak over the lump in my throat-"of the Laughing Christ will not let me forget that. Omio, I do have to go wash off all this ink."
"And then we will meet Vee under our fig-sycamore tree. She is ready to go swimming."
I got most of the ink off before going to the tree, where Omio and Vee waited.
"Sure you"re up to it?" Vee asked me.
"Sure. I had a good nap this afternoon." And my foot no longer hurt me.
When the water came in view, Omio stopped us. "Look!" he exclaimed. The moon rose above the water, waxing full and beneficent, while on the other horizon 299.
the great orb of golden sun slid down into the darkness behind the sea"s horizon. I had never before seen the end of day and the beginning of night greet each other.
We were caught in the loveliness between the two.
"Oh-joy!" Vee breathed.
Above us the sky was a tent of blues and violets and greens, with just a touch of rose, and we were enclosed in it. We walked slowly until we got to the path Omio and I had made through the encircling ring of stones.
"What a splendid job," Vee said. She bent down to the stones and searched until she had found four small round white ones. She put them in the pocket of her terry robe. "One for each of us. And one for Frank. Whenever there is a full moon we will hold our moon stones and think of Osia Theola, and the rising of the moon and the setting of the sun. Now, children, you go ahead and race."
"Just one quick one," I said. We swam parallel to the sh.o.r.e, and I could tell that Omio was constantly checking me.
"I"m a good swimmer, Omio, you don"t have to worry."
He swam beside me. "If you were not a good swimmer, lo, you would by now be washed up on some strange sh.o.r.e, and that-young man with you." He used a Bakian word I did not understand, but I knew it was not complimentary. He went on.
"I.
do not want him meeting you in the airport. I, too, have time between planes.
I.
will stay with you to take care of you. If you will let me."
I did not answer that. I tried to turn it into a joke. "He can"t take me kayaking in Athens airport."
"He is not good for you," Omio said. "He wants too much. He is someone who takes. He does not give."
300.
Those words were an echo of something, but at that moment I could not remember what.
"We"d better swim back to Vee," I said, and we turned toward sh.o.r.e.
When we got back to her, Omio asked, "Will we be able to have our afternoon swim tomorrow, when the delegates are all here?"
"We"ll manage," Vee said. "We need the exercise. Don"t worry about it now. We have today to rejoice in, and this moment of sheer loveliness."
"Don"t you have a saying?" Omio asked. "That we should live every day as though we were going to die tomorrow and as though we were going to live forever?"
"It"s an old adage," Vee said, "but a good one. Let"s have another swim."
The water was caressing as I swam, this time with Vee. The sunset was deepening, and Omio called out and pointed, and we saw great bursts of lightning zagging behind clouds which were all the way across the Mediterranean. "Shouldn"t we get out?" I asked. "Isn"t it dangerous?"
Vee rea.s.sured me. "It"s all right. The storm is over in Lebanon and Syria, so far off we can"t even hear the thunder."
But we swam for only a few minutes longer, then turned into sh.o.r.e. Vee put on her robe and pulled two of the stones out of the pocket, giving one to Omio, one.to me. Moon stones.
We walked slowly through the steamy evening, up the sand and stones of the hill, pausing to say good night to the little goats. Omio leaned over the fence, and one of the goats came and nibbled on his fingers, and he stroked the soft ears.
Then we walked on. Omio did not take my hand.
301 /.
After dinner we stayed in the cloister. Krhis said that a bus would meet the first load of delegates in the early morning. There would be delegates coming in on three different planes. And our lives would change radically as we were joined by thirty or more different people from all over the world except behind the Iron Curtain.
"But you will be amazed at how quickly you come to know them," Krhis said, "how soon they will seem like family, as we are family around this table."
"But there will be four or more tables," Norine said, wiping her face. The breeze was hot, the air so heavy it was tangible.
"This heat has got to break soon," Krhis said, "and then I will insist on swimming at the scheduled time, Vee, please, in the middle of the day."
Vee put her hands together, bowing. "Yes, master."
Then we sang for a while, ending with Saranam.
For those who"ve gone, for those who stay, For those to come, following the Way, Be guest and guide both night and day, Saranam, saranam, saranam.
Omio walked with me back to the dormitory and down the length of the long hall to my room. My room alone for this one last night. As I turned to open the door, he took my hands. "Would you want never to have had these days together, before everybody comes, never to have become friends?"
"Of course not. It"s been marvelous."
"Isn"t it still marvelous? It will go on being marvelous when lo, we are a large instead of a small family."
302.
Omio had never promised me anything except friendship, and that was still his offering to me. The intensity of the experience with the kayak was part of that friendship.
I had been greedy, grasping. Everything Renny had warned me of I had fallen for, if not actually, at least potentially. I felt small and chastened.
Chaste. Chastened.
Omio looked at me questioningly.
"It"s still marvelous," I said.
Would I want never to have met Max? Never to have had my horizons expanded?
Would I truly want to eradicate all of the good times because of one terrible time? Yes, it was terrible, Max insane with alcohol and pain and fear. But would I wipe out all the rest of it for that moment of dementia?
If I wanted Max as G.o.ddess, as idol, then, yes, I would have to destroy it.But not if I wanted Max as a human being, a vibrant, perceptive human being, who saw potential in me that I hardly dared dream of. Not if I wanted Max as she was, brilliant but flawed. Perhaps the greater the brilliance, the darker the flaw.
And what about Ursula? Surely Ursula had given me the best, with open generosity, not threatened by Max"s love of me.
Why was I able to feel compa.s.sion for Zachary, who was selfish, who belonged to a world of power and corruption, and who had nearly killed me? Why didn"t I want to wipe Zachary out?
And now I knew that I no longer wanted to wipe Max out. To wipe Max out was to wipe out part of myself.
"Good night, my Polly," Omio said.
I got ready for bed and worked on my school journal.
303.
I was in the middle of a sentence when there was a great flash of lightning, coming through the slats in the shutters, followed immediately by thunder, and the heat-breaking storm struck.
I closed my notebook. This was not the kind of violence one could write through.
There was a knock on my door and Millie came in. "You all right, Polly?"
"Yah, fine. This is going to break the heat."
"You"re not afraid?"
"No."
"Would you like me to stay with you for a few minutes, till the worst is over?
These storms never last long." Millie was nervous over man-made power failure, but not of a storm caused by nature. She had come to me, not because she was afraid, but because she thought I might be. "Yes, please, Millie," I said.
The lights went out.
Millie reached over and took my hand.
"Ahoy!" We heard Frank"s voice outside, and he came in with a flashlight and a handful of stubby candles.
"Krhis has these for all of us." He came in, and we saw that Vee and Bashemath were with him. He lit candles for us, placing them on desks and chests of drawers. In a moment Norine came in and Vee beckoned her to join her on the spare bed.
Millie began to sing, her voice unwavering through the crashing of the thunder.
Krhis came and stood in the doorway, looking at us with his gentle smile, and Norine pulled him in and Omio offered him one of the desk chairs.
"All of us sing," Millie ordered, and we sang until 304.
the storm was over, and cool air came in, even through the cracks of the shutters. Bashemath stood up and yawned, and said good night.
"Yes, it is time," Krhis said. "Tomorrow will be a busy day."
Frank held out his hands to Vee. Omio left with them.
Krhis stood looking down on me sitting on the bed. "Bless you, Polly. Good night."
I felt somehow as though at last I had been allowed past the outer gates of Epidaurus, and into the sacred precincts.
Millie stood and stretched. "Good night, little one. It"s cooler."
"Much. We may even need our blankets."
"You"d better not open the shutters, anyhow. Did you light your bug coil?"
"I will."