Sofia

Spinalonga

The boat, eye-searing white,
draws close to the silver-sand shore:
last leg on the long journey
from the Athenian middle class
to this little fortress off comely Crete.
A dusty Dakota drones overhead
bound for Souda's mini USA.
Tiny Spinalonga, all sandstone and edges,
sits buff as a Saharan legionary outpost.
White clothes shine on the strand:
children's ideas of ghosts
welcoming the new arrivals
with embraces that none
sent for the sake of others
should fear.

Ari

Ari's boat was the newest in the harbour, shining white and chrome in the sun. The others gave it a wide berth, few tourists came to look at the name on the prow. Ari was proud of 'The Lazaro'. The vessel could reach a steady 10 knots and she made the trip to Spinalonga and back in less than a day. Agios Nikolaos port had many such vessels, hired by adventurous Americans and artistic English. Their owners fished for bass, bream and mullet, when the tourists evaded the net. Not Ari, the contract saw to that. Except for the trips to the tiny island, Ari's boat was home. At its berth in the Marina: rolling tobacco, retsina and a seat on the deck, what more could a man want.

He tried not to think about the passengers on the trip to little Spinalonga. Two or three times a year he'd take them. There were no return journeys. Only Ari came back. The nuns waved 'The Lazaro' away, staring out from the quayside long after their charges became minute specks on the deck. Ari always tied up alongside the island jetty himself, it wasn't fair to ask the passengers to do it. Besides, often they were only children as Sofia had been. About once a week, Ari left the boat to visit Demis in his taberna.

Over ouzo and salad, Demis would ask his brother for news of his niece.

'She lives yet,' Ari would say and toss off the clear liquid, then slam the glass on the table.

Demis would fill the glass, and look at his brother.

'It is living, isn't it?' he would say.

'Perhaps it is.' And the glass would be empty again.

Ari could not know if Sofia lived or died, week by week. The telephone was not necessary at Spinalonga, why would it be? So she lived at least until the day Ari did not see his daughter waiting at the jetty and accept - as any father would - a kiss from a leper's mouth.