C.J. Cooke - I Know My Name

I feel Hazel watching me, her small grey eyes absorbing every inch of me. ‘You were in quite a state last night,’ she says. ‘It was all very exciting. Do you remember what happened?’

I suspect she means if I remember what happened before I ended up in their kitchen. There’s a smile on her face, as if the sorry state of me amuses her. It makes me wary.

‘And you still don’t remember how you ended up here?’

‘I don’t think so …’

‘What about your name?’

I open my mouth, because this should be right there, right on the top of my tongue. But the space in my mind that should be bright with self-knowledge is blank, closed, emptied.

Hazel’s eyes blaze with excitement at my hesitation. I see Sariah giving her a look of caution, and instantly she looks away, shame-faced.

‘Don’t sweat it,’ Sariah says. ‘You’ve had a rough night, a bump on the head. Give it a few hours. It’ll all come back.’

The sound of heavy footsteps grows louder at the back door. Moments later, George appears, glistening with sweat and exhaustion, his grey vest soaked through. Hazel fidgets in anticipation as he heads towards us.

‘Did you find it?’ Sariah asks.

George shakes his head, too worn out to speak. He’s very overweight and so red in the face that I brace myself for the sight of him falling to the ground with a tremendous thud. He pulls a towel from the shelf above the sink and wipes sweat from his brow and face.

‘You mean, the boat?’ Hazel says in a shrill voice. ‘We’ve lost the boat?’

No answer. Hazel and Sariah watch George as he leans back in the chair and catches his breath. Both of them look worried. The mood in the room has plummeted.

‘What boat?’ I ask, and my voice is small and hesitant. It sounds odd to me, as though someone else is speaking.

‘We rented a powerboat from Nikodemos so we can travel back and forth to Crete for supplies,’ Sariah says in a low voice.

‘The only reason we found you was because Joe and I went out to check that the boat was moored properly during the storm,’ George pants, pulling off his wet boots, and then his socks. The sour smell of sweat hits me instantly. ‘And then we came across you. But the boat’s gone.’

‘I thought Joe said it would likely be washed up on one of the beaches,’ Hazel says.

George tilts his head from side to side, emitting loud cracks from his neck. ‘I’ve checked everywhere, trust me. Boat’s gone. Sunk, most likely.’

‘What will Nikodemos say about his boat sinking?’ Hazel says. ‘He’ll be cross, won’t he? Very, very cross.’

‘What will Nikodemos charge for his boat sinking?’ George corrects. ‘That’s the question.’

‘We’re covered by insurance, aren’t we?’ Sariah says, turning back to the hob to crack eggs into a pan. Her movements are rough, erratic.

George scratches a rough belt of stubble under his chin. ‘We’ll need to work out another way to get supplies from the mainland. Not to mention delivering our guest back to wherever she came from.’

I feel that this is my fault. I don’t belong here. I shouldn’t be here, and I feel helpless and awkward. George and Hazel acknowledge this with a quick glance in my direction, which only confirms that they feel I’m to blame. ‘I’m so sorry about your boat,’ I say.

‘We’ll work it out,’ Sariah mutters without turning, and I wonder if she’s detected that I’m feeling pretty awful. Joe is at the back door, a bundle of peaches gathered in the hem of his black T-shirt. George opens his mouth and begins to tell him about the boat situation, but Sariah cuts in.

‘Want some breakfast, Joe?’

Joe dumps his peaches on the worktop. He rubs his hands and glances at the pan on the hob. ‘Thanks.’

‘George, you want some?’ Sariah asks.

‘Okey-dokey.’ He glances up at me. ‘Sariah’s the cook in this operation, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘And what am I in this operation?’ Hazel pipes up from the table.

‘The cleaner,’ Joe says through a mouthful of omelette. He looks at me. ‘Hazel likes to clean and tidy everything in sight. She’ll take a glass out of your hand before you’ve even finished drinking to wash it.’

Hazel shrugs, clearly bristling. ‘Nothing wrong with being clean, is there? Next to godliness.’

‘Still, I’d hold on to your plate,’ Joe tells me. ‘She’ll take it off you.’

‘And what about you?’ I ask Joe. ‘What do you do?’

He tosses a cherry tomato in his mouth. ‘First aider.’

‘She means, what do you do here , dumb-dumb,’ George says.

‘Oh. Well, I tagged along, didn’t I?’ Joe says. ‘I’m the – provider of medical attention?’

‘House first-aider,’ George interprets.

‘George is the fixer,’ Hazel tells me.

‘And what does that mean?’ George asks.

‘It means you fix things, George,’ Joe says. ‘Unless “fixer” is Mongolian for “grumpy old git”.’

‘I’ll fix you in a minute.’

‘See?’ Joe says to me, arching a thick black eyebrow.

Sariah brings the last of the food, a plate of chopped figs and tomatoes. She removes her apron and slings it on a hook by the oven, then sits at the table beside me while George cups water on his face and armpits at the sink. Despite how terrible I feel, I’m incredibly relaxed in their company, as though I’ve known them for ages. It makes an otherwise alarming situation quite bearable.

‘So, if you can’t remember your name, how come you can remember how to talk?’ Hazel asks.

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ Joe tells her. ‘It’s called amnesia. It doesn’t stop people’s ability to function.’

She purses her lips. ‘So, you can’t remember if you’ve got any weird fetishes?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I tell her.

She looks thrilled, a sudden energy sweeping through her. ‘I want to study you for my new book. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?’

I go to say that I don’t mind, but Joe interrupts.

‘Look at you, such a busy-body,’ he tells Hazel, throwing her a wry smile.

She shoos his comment away with a wave of her hand. Then, to me: ‘Do you know what you like to eat?’

‘I guess I liked what I just ate.’

But Hazel isn’t satisfied. She tosses question after question at me: who’s the current President of the United States? What year it is? What’s the name of my primary school? When was I most embarrassed? And so on. I’m still too foggy-headed to answer most of these, though I’m relieved that I’m aware of what year it is. But not who I am.

‘You could be anybody ,’ Hazel says, at once exasperated and curious. ‘How do you have a sense of who you are if you don’t remember anything?’

‘Well, how do any of us have a true sense of who we are?’ Joe interjects, making quotation marks with his fingers. ‘We’re all of us many people in a single skin.’

‘I’m not,’ George says. ‘Cripes, you make it sound like we’re all … what are those Russian dolls called?’

‘They’re called Russian dolls,’ Hazel says drily.

‘Identity is performance,’ Joe says. ‘Ask any psychoanalyst and they’ll tell you the same.’

Hazel lifts an eyebrow. ‘Well, next time I bump into a psychoanalyst on this uninhabited island, I will!’

I’m shocked by this. ‘“Uninhabited?”’

Joe nods.

‘This whole island is uninhabited?’

‘An uninhabited paradise,’ Sariah says dreamily. ‘Just this old farmhouse and a few Minoan ruins. And us.’

I glance out the window and see a patch of dry earth rolling down to the ocean, nothing but blue all the way to the horizon. Hazel starts to tell me that the nearest island is Antikythera, which is eight miles away, but this sparks a debate with Joe about whether Crete is closer. I’m no longer listening. Eight miles of ocean to the nearest town. I’d assumed that there would be other people on the island, people we could speak to in order to provide answers to my situation, or who might help locate the missing boat. That I would be able to contact the authorities and find out where I came from.