The Village Girl

Posted on by Justin



The sun comes down through the trees. Ancient olives, sturdy as the maples back home, and giant planes, their broad shadows swimming on the rutted surface of the old state highway, the one that was replaced by the smooth new four lane road to Lindos. Ahead of me, the road turns, and then it simply ends. Sooner or later, all roads on this island end in the sea.
            Sabina’s truck is beside an old pier. On this pier is a building which looks recently abandoned. A few weathered chairs are scattered about, along with the remnants of a bonfire. It reminds me of the old music pier in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Susanna and I were there just over a year ago, which is hard to believe.
            Sabina is looking out to the water. She wears a light jacket and jeans that hug her hips. Her hair, taken by the wind, is splayed out behind her like a river delta. For a moment I watch her from afar; a silhouette framed by the blinding blue of the sea.
            “Hey,” I call out.
            She turns but stays at the railing. I join her so that we’re beside one another, me facing the water and her, the land.
            “So this is it, huh?” I say.
            “Do not be dramatic,” she says, tightening her lips. I mean it, though: her husband is back from Athens. I saw them at the bar they own three nights ago. It’s the only bar in this small village, and it was crowded, even on a Wednesday night. Petro came up behind his wife, placing his chin in the furrow of her shoulder. He whispered something to her and she laughed in a way I haven’t seen her laugh.
            She turns so our elbows touch as we watch the sea coming in. She fights to control her hair.
            “You wrote the dramatic letter,” I remind her.
            She smiles. I will miss these hard won smiles.
            “You asked me if I ever thought to leave here. And you asked me why I do this. You ask many questions.”
            She corrals her hair and pulls it back. I have the urge to curl a strand behind her ear.
            “I did leave once, Nathan. I was seventeen and I ran from home, to Rhodes Town. I lived in a sad room in a hotel. It was a gypsy and prostitute hotel. There was mice everywheres and shit on my pillows every morning. There was a hole in my room, a big hole, bigger than windows. I covered holes with metal I found on the street.
            “I do not know why I left here. I cannot remember that much. I think maybe I saw my mother who had no money of her own, and no dreams. She was tied to my father, who drank and drank. She could not live alone and I did not want my life to be her life.
            “In Rhodes I found a job at a tourist bar. Finding the job was not hard. I was very prettier then.”
            “You’re still pretty. For what it’s worth.”
            She casts me a glance that tells me to shut up.
            “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
            She stays silent for a time and I worry that I’ve fucked it up, that she’s not going to tell me the rest of her story. She finally continues.
            “Money was not bad, but I dealt with many men. Men look at a lonely women as a boat, a boat to put their own sadness on. They hope my boat will take their sadness away. I soon learned that all I was in Rhodes was this kind of boat. Maybe all I was in this world.
            “One week, a man came to drink every night. He was very clean. I thought he seemed kind. He looked like his soul was good. He smiled a lot.” She shakes her head, looking down at the stone beach, which is littered with garbage – old beer bottles, the odd syringe. “I thought I could tell goodness just by seeing people. One night he asked me for dinner, and I went. I don’t know what I was thinking it would be like. I was young and stupid. I guess I thought he would take me away to live a good, clean life. I guess I thought he was a boat, too.
            “Dinner was very good. He gave me wine. The waiters treated him with importance. I was impressed. He seemed like the kind of men people gave respect to. I had never met such a man, only stupid village boys. So I went to a hotel with him. Suddenly, he was like an animal and I was something to hunt.” She narrows her eyes, which are small to begin with. “He was very hard with me. I did not want to keep going, but felt I must. It was going to be the price of my new, good life, where waiters were nice to me.
            “After sex, he said I could be his girlfriend. He already had a wife. He said it was a good thing for me and I would be stupid to not take it because otherwise I would have men trying to rape me and if they knew I was his, they would be afraid of him. He would pay for me to live a good life. Waiters would still be nice to me. They would know I was his. Not his wife, but his whore. I told him I was not a whore.
“Two nights later a new man came to the bar and asked me out for dinner. That night I went to back and cleaned out my sad room with the mice and the shits and in the morning I came back to Masari.”
            She pulls a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her jeans. I put my hand out for one, which she gives me. We fumble around with a lighter, fighting the wind. She starts to laugh, the unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth, her hair a splayed mess.
            “Oh God, this is so stupid. So, so stupid.”
            I can’t help feeling like she’s talking about us. She wouldn’t be wrong. We finally get the cigarettes lit, turning our backs to the sea.
            “What happened when you came home?” I ask.
            “People looked at me very funny. I could not tell them what happened because then no one would marry me. I would be dirty. It would kill my parents for anyone to know what had happened. I had to live with my story in silence.”
            Strangely, a smile crosses her face.
            “October came. The first cold weather and we went to the mountains for dancing. My cousin was back from university. He was five years above me. I had not seen him in many years and he had not seen me as a woman. We danced together that night and I still remember his first words. ‘You tried to break free,’ he says. I was so shy. I could not meet his eyes. ‘Do not stop trying,’ he said.
            “After the dance I found reasons to visit my aunt. To see him. He made me feel grown up, like I was bigger than my village. I felt something so strong inside me. It was this crazy happiness but also this very big fear. It shocked me, that he could do that. That I could feel something for him that was so much stronger than anything I’d ever felt. I did not know such a thing existed.
            “To remember it now, it seems obvious we would get together. He was hunting me and I would have given myself to him anytime. But I did not know the way of things then. I thought he barely saw me. That I was crazy and full of dreams.”
            She can’t help smiling again.
            “One day I went over and my aunt was gone. He took me to bed. I was shaking so hard, but he was not like the man in Rhodes. He was kind with me. He moved slowly and cared about me. After this, we were together all winter and spring. I could think of nothing but him. I wanted him all the time. No one could know, so we had to be sneaks. It was very exciting. I found places on this island I never knew were places. Because we had to always be out of sight. Hidden caves and monasteries. We made love any place we could. It was happiness I did not know, even in dreams.
            “I loved him very much. So much more love than I have ever felt.” She sighs, rests her chin on the railing, peering out to the sea. “He was always going to leave here. Everyone knew. I knew. But I thought I would go, too.”
            Abruptly, she drops the cigarette, which had burned the tip of her finger. She stubs it out beneath her foot. There’s anger in the force she uses.
            “I do not know what I am telling you. It is a stupid story.”
            “No. It’s not.”
            “Yes. It is very stupid.”
            The wind rises up and momentarily overtakes us. She brings her arms around her chest, braced against the cold.
            “Do you really care to hear?” she asks me.
            “I do.”
            She looks at me with her small, dark eyes, and for the first time I wonder about whether we could have been together under normal circumstances – if she had lived in Philadelphia, if I had been a village boy; if she were fifteen years younger or I fifteen years older. Of course, even thinking this makes me realize the absurdity of it. These are the normal circumstances. It also makes me realize how rare it is when the circumstances are right. It makes me realize how rare Susanna was, and how large her absence is. Will I spend the rest of my life trying to fill it with such mismatched circumstances – with village girls who are fifteen years too old?
            “When summer came, he tells me he will go to America. Another cousin is there and they will open a pizza shop. My heart, Nathan, it was beating so fast. I was smiling.” She shakes her head, her cheeks turning red all these years later. “I was so stupid. I was smiling and it was so stupid.
            “He says, ‘This is something I will do alone.’ I did not know what to say. So I ask why.”
            She closes her eyes. I can see the fine blue capillaries on the backs of her eye lids. They are like the bottoms of dried leaves.
            “He was not a liar. He never lies. He looks at me and he says, ‘Because you are made for a village. My heart will always be in this village with you, but if I stay here, I will die.’”
            She gets out another cigarette and turns away from me to light it. I don’t bother asking for one.
            “So that’s it?” I finally ask.
            “No. That is not it, Nathan. He marries an American woman. They have kids. They come back some summers and drink in our bar and we must have them for dinner in our house. Because they are family. He knows I can tell no one. He knows that our story is safe because to tell would ruin my family, too. And he knew that to tell before would have made me a whore.”
            She looks at me and almost smiles.
            “I do not know if he loved me. I think sometimes he just wanted to fuck while he was home and he knew I was easy. But …” This time, she does smile. “There was a day, not long before he tells me he will leave. He shows up at my home on a motorcycle. He loves this motorcycle. I heard it on the street and I looked out my window and he is sitting on his motorcycle. He holds a giant watermelon, trying not to fall over, shaking back and forth like a sick bird.
            “He knew my parents would be in the mountains that day. We made love in my bed. Then we went naked to the kitchen and we was cutting up the watermelon with a sharp knife, hacking it into pieces so the pulp was everywhere. Our tongue and lips and tooths turn red, seeds sliding down our necks and down his chest. Laughing. We were just laughing so much for no reason. That watermelon tasted so good, so sweet and perfect. I will never be able to eat watermelon again in my life, never so much as see watermelon, without thinking of that afternoon. I think I could be 105 and have lost every single memory of this life but if I see a watermelon, I would remember.”
            The smile becomes something different; it’s as if she’s ingested acid.
            “And when he comes to dinner at my house this summers, do you know what he does?”
            I don’t want to say, but I know.
            “He brings watermelon,” she says. “Like it is some secret for us.”
            “I’m sorry,” I say softly. It sounds even more pitiful and inadequate aloud.
            She violently exhales smoke.
            “I just … I remember being in my kitchen with him, sticky with juice, thinking, ‘We have a whole life of this ahead.’ And I guess that is what all eighteen-year-old girls in love think. It is not special, but it feels like it is. And that is what I think. ‘We have a whole life of this left.’”
            I remember an afternoon last September. Susanna had invited me over for lunch. It was a beautiful, early fall day, the leaves just beginning to turn. When I pulled up to her house, I saw her reading beneath the large maple in her front yard. As I stepped out of the car, she stretched like a long, lean cat before unexpectedly breaking into a sprint. To my surprise, she leapt into my arms, tackling me to the ground. We lay there for a while, her familiar weight atop me, grass tickling the back of my neck. I thought the exact same thing as Sabina: we have a whole life of this left. A village girl and a city boy, but it turns out we have more in common than I thought.
            Sabina throws her cigarette into the wind.
            “Now I think he only brought the watermelon because he knew he would leave. It was a gift. A good bye gift.” She looks at me with her hands open, supplicant to the past, mystified. “I will never know if he loved me.”
            “Why don’t you just ask?”
            She laughs the kind of laugh meant to keep back tears.
            “I do ask, Nathan. I do. Life does not give you answers to big questions. Or maybe it gives you answers at one time and then the time changes and the answers are not good anymore. And then life is over. Maybe that is how it all ends. With no answers.”
She smiles ruefully. I think about Susanna, and about the letter I have written her. She is not going to write back. There will be no neatness, no reconciliation. There are simply the questions and the rest of my life to sort through them. Sabina looks at me once more, her eyes clear.
            “I did this with you because you are the only person here who can hear my story. Because you will leave. That is your answer.”