Edward Whittemore - Nile Shadows

It was in Smyrna. She was from one of the leading Greek families there, back when it was still a Greek city. We were married. It was before you and I met.

Joe was astounded. He had never known that Stern had been married.

What happened?

It was when I first returned from studying in Europe, whispered Stern, when I was just setting out and beginning to learn about revolutionary work. We fell in love and we were married and for a while it was wonderful. But my life didn't seem to allow for a marriage, at least not for two people as young as we were. There was trouble between us and she left me and came back, then finally she left for good.

Where is she now?

Dead. She's been dead for years.

She must have been young.

She was, whispered Stern. Much too young.

What was it?

Stern turned uneasily and looked at Joe.

I'm not sure, I've never been sure. Footprints in the sky that I couldn't see? The sound of perfect sunlight? Laughter and joy and the eternal tragedy of the Aegean?

Abruptly Stern turned away from Joe and stared hard into the shadowy interiors of the mirror. He raised his hand and reached out, as if he were groping for something there.

It seems everybody doesn't make it, he whispered. It seems everybody can't. .

***

He had been in Athens when he finally heard the end was coming for Eleni. She had left him during the First World War, left him and Smyrna and gone to live in Italy. She hated war and she hated killing and she had learned to hate Stern's work, even though it was her uncle, Sivi, who had taken Stern in as a young student returning from Europe and had first trained him in that very work.

In Athens, years later, Stern chanced to meet a man who had seen Eleni recently, an acquaintance who had known them both in Smyrna before the war.

I'm afraid it's all over for her, said the man. The drinking just gets worse and you can't really talk to her anymore. But it can't last this way. She's killing herself.

They talked awhile longer and then Stern said good-bye to the man and walked back to the small hotel where he was staying in Athens. Only a year earlier he had become a morphine addict although he hadn't admitted it to himself yet, although he was still pretending he could face the grayness in the window at dawn, the coming of a new day, alone.

But that night he did admit it to himself as he sat up in the little hotel room in Athens, thinking of Eleni. That night he admitted many things to himself while thinking of her, because he had to.

A kind of prayer. That's what he'd had in mind.

He wanted to remember how beautiful Eleni had been when they had first met in Sivi's lovely villa by the sea. And he wanted to remember the long nights of love they had known that first spring and summer and autumn, and winter. The closeness and the tenderness, the excitement, all of it.

A kind of prayer to send to her to bring the good times back to life, by remembering them. So perhaps that one night at least Eleni might also be able to remember the good times, for it had been a wonderful love they had known.

And so Stern had recalled it all and been drawn back to the very beginning of their love, back to a spring day in Smyrna before the First World War. .

***

A brilliant afternoon. The two of them young and laughing and falling in love, wandering through the empty alleys near the harbor and coming to a little café, deserted at that siesta hour. And sitting down at a small table in the shade of a narrow old building, quietly laughing in the stillness of the little square, a breeze off the water and the warm colors of sunlit stones against the blue sky.

A sudden thud. Eleni and Stern turning with smiles on their faces.

Two cats, still coupled, had slipped off the roof of the building above them and fallen, fallen, and come crashing down into the cobblestones no more than ten feet away. One of the cats was unmoving. The other cat was trying to raise itself on its front paws, its hind quarters crushed in the sudden fall from sunlight to shadow, quietly screeching and trying to raise its head and sinking back, trying to sniff for life as its eyes closed. The one cat dead and the other dying.

Stern staggering to his feet and stumbling away, sick to his stomach and sick in his heart and utterly bewildered in the small shaded square. Eleni running after him and taking him by the arm and holding him tightly, pressing herself to him as he wandered lost by the sparkling sea. .

***

Yes, Stern had remembered it all and left nothing out in the darkness of the bare little hotel room in Athens. And once he had even imagined reaching out and touching Eleni in the stillness, and she had looked at him the way she used to and they were young again and in love and the world was made for them, and they would go on forever doing all the wonderful things they had known on the shores of the Aegean, with wine and love and soft whispers in the shadows, and little boats in the harbor. .

A kind of prayer, then, down through the hours of that long night in Athens. And he hoped his whispers had reached Eleni and helped her in some small way as the darkness closed in and the end drew near. Nothing left out of his prayer, all the bright dark moments of love, the exquisite joy and the infinite sadness. .

It wasn't much but he hoped it had helped a little, for soon after that Eleni had slipped and lost her way, and the end had come for her.

***

Joe shook his head, stunned by this revelation from Stern's past.

Somehow it's all hard to take in, he said at last. I've just never thought of you as having had a wife. The way you've moved about and forever uprooted yourself, always traveling. . I don't know.

Stern groped for his glass, a clumsy motion, his other hand edging back and forth on the counter.

Well it was a long time ago and you never lose what you had together, but you go on as best you can, if you can. Everybody doesn't seem to be able to, and it's not a matter of courage or worth that decides it, or of being more or less of a person. I don't know what decides things like that. People come up with all sorts of answers but I've never found one that works for me. Eleni was a beautiful human being, that's all.

She had so much to give the world and she was no weaker than the rest of us, so why did it happen to her?

Yes, said Joe, it's always the same Why.

And what is that feeling anyway? asked Stern. The belief that there's a purpose to it all, or should be?

Stern moved his hand on the counter, edging it back and forth.

I've always envied people who have it, but I've never been able to see things that clearly myself. It all seems chaotic to me, and only in retrospect does life take on any kind of purpose or design. Of course that could mean I've just never been able to fathom it. Or it could mean the purpose and design aren't there, and it's only our need for them as dreaming creatures that casts some kind of coherency over life when we look back.

Stern shrugged.

When we do look back, he said, we always know there were certain moments that determined our lives, and certain things that did become inevitable for us, eventually that. . But when did it become so?

When did it begin, I wonder. .

***

Stern took out the worn Morse-code key he always carried and held it in his hand, feeling its balance.

Joe smiled.

Bit of the past still traveling with you?

What's that?

The Morse-code key. I see you still carry it.

Stern gazed down at the smooth slip of metal shining from years of being rubbed between his fingers, gently polished by the oils of his skin. His eyes were thoughtful, far away.