Silence

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus

The hotel is called Corfu Silence, and it sits on a hill overlooking a bay. Mornings the tide rushes in and jostles the moored fishing boats, running rivulets through the upside down tavernas anchored to the beach.

She stands in water up to her navel, gazing at the pregnant hill opposite the hotel. Along its crest is a line of spinning white windmills, blades in the thrall of an itinerant breeze. The road that cuts through its midsection is, for the most part, empty. She has no idea where it leads.

Where. . . she wonders, and listens to the water’s answer, gurgling in its tiny catacomb of caves. The rocks are layered, their history plain to anyone who cares to fathom it: below the fuzzy green moss they are orange, then a deep crimson, and just before disappearing under the sand they turn black.

On a submerged rock before her is a stonefish, its pebbled camouflage perfect but for one obsidian eye. She stares back at it, unmoving, as she and the fish steel themselves against the surging water’s will. In death it is impossible to resist the rush of water; one must be alive, and impenetrable as stone. Her legs have begun to turn numb from lack of movement, little pinpricks stabbing at her pores from within.

“Reenie!” Kristos’s voice hammers at the iron silence, and from a nearby olive tree a squawking seagull takes off, cries echoing as it disappears beyond the bent knee of the bay. “Reenie! Stavros wants you!” She looks back and waves to the young bartender, trying to rouse her stone legs.

“The Israelis call with requests,” Stavros says, lighting a cigarette as she towels her hair. He waits until she finishes dressing, then lights one for her as well. “You are sure you can work this week?”

“You said we don’t have a choice.”

“We don’t.”

“Bring on the fucking Israelis then.”

He eyes her with that look he has, two parts apprehension and one amusement, then refers to the organiser on his desk. “They need gluten-free options and vegans, one is allergic to eggplant and one can die if she eat any bell pepper at all. Five prefer to have the fish and everybody else want meat.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Stavros’s room is on the incline above the hotel, overlooking the tide-swollen bay. The wavelets lap now at the top of the waterwall but it is well-planned, Reenie has never once seen them leap over.

“Israelis are so picky,” Stavros says, knitting his lined brow. “I never get so much requests.”

It used to be that she was scared of floating (a silly fear of sharks—there are almost none in the Mediterranean) but like all the others that fear went away. At length she stands, runs her fingers through a school of glassfish; they shatter into shards and then regroup. Fish, she knows, will only let you touch them when they have no choice: netted, strung up, or dead.

She is on the balcony smoking a cigarette when the Israelis pull up in a cloud of parrot-chatter, punctuated with “wow”s and “look at that”s as they devour the yoga studio’s view of the bay. Kristos’s patient offers of cucumber water are all but submerged in a volley of obnoxious sirens, any remnant of silence defeated, gone. Reenie stamps her smoke out and strides into the kitchen, where she has set a container of orange lentils to soak. Her fingers begin to separate broccoli florets from their stems, then she checks the boiling pots and starts on the lasagna; layers of pasta, parmesan, and tomato sauce swell beneath her swift hands.

Efficiency is itself the most efficient form of meditation, Reenie’s found; it is energy bypassing consciousness to materialise in the tangible world. As a waitress, back in college, she could avoid dwelling on the rudest of customers by stacking glasses, filling ketchup bottles, grating cheese. Her palm rests on the silver flank of a bream fish as, with a deft swipe of the knife, she splits its undercarriage open, spilling its warm red guts all over the chopping block.

“They love it,” Stavros says later, “especially the fish, they ask me for recipe.”

“Tell them it starts with death.” She reaches over the hill of his belly for the cigarettes on the nightstand.

“Yes, yes,” he chuckles. “Of course I will tell the guests morbid things like that. Then we can both be out of a job.”

“That wouldn’t be so bad.” Reenie reclines against his ample chest and takes a deep drag. “Tell me a story, Stavi.”

“Oh no no, it’s very late,” he teases, but she rubs the fur on his paunch and begs.

“Plea-ease?”

“You know, you remind me of someone. A woman who used to come to our village, every year around this time.”

“Oh?”

“A witch, they say she was.”

Reenie nods, sucking in another contented drag.

“See, I knew you would like that.”

“Was she very old and decrepit?”

“Oh no, not at all. She was beautiful, with red hair, curly, wild like the wind.”

“Was little Stavi in love with the witch?” Reenie asks, poking his jiggly belly.

“Haha, maybe,” he says, lighting a cigarette for himself. “But I was very young, just a boy. I remember she had very much hair on her legs, and, how you say, armpit? She go around telling girls not to shave. My sisters make fun of her, but she don’t care. Crazy witch-lady they call her, never get a man.”

“But you liked all her hair,” Reenie says, glancing up at him.

“Yes,” Stavi answers, pushing stray locks off her forehead and kissing the thin film of sweat. “I like all her hair.” 

*

“Bug war!”

Stavi has already grabbed his organiser, the ultimate weapon: huge, lightweight, and flat. Kristos pounces for a tray, leaving Reenie with no choice but her own flip-flop, but she does her best work with this anyway. The clumsy creature is buzzing around Kristos’s head and he smacks it with a dull crack at Reenie, who lunges but misses, and the huge beetle careens towards Stavi’s desk. He lifts the organiser over his head and brings it down with a grunt of finality. “Ha!” he yells. “Double points!”

“Ah, I give you that one!” Kristos slaps his forehead.

“Fair’s fair,” Reenie says, bending to key the new score into the underside of the wooden bar. Her phone vibrates, probably the fishmonger with news of the day’s catch.

But no, it is an Israeli number. Reenie’s breath catches. Her heart beats its wings clumsily against her ribcage as she walks to the far edge of the balcony, staring at the screen in her hand. “Allo?”

“Shalom, may I speak to Orin?” an officious male voice says in Hebrew.

“She’s. . . not here right now, can I give her a message?”

The voice sheds its shell, pliant now. “It’s Alon, from channel twelve, about the interview—”

“I’ll be sure to pass it along,” Reenie answers, trying to control the ascending pitch of her voice. “But Orin’s not doing very well these days, so she’ll most likely have to pass.” And then with the push of a button the call is shut off and Reenie’s palm finds the sturdy, woven trunk of an olive tree, blood pulsing in her fingertips as the tide rushes out of the bay.

There is a hand on her shoulder; it is Stavi’s. Reenie shrugs it off and folds her arms across her chest.“Congratulations,” she says. “You’re leading.”

“I am good at this bug war, I believe?”

“Yeah, well, you Greeks have had more practice. We don’t have such stupid, lazy insects in Israel.”

“Ah yes, the bugs in Israel, all very hardworking and intelligent,” Stavi says, putting his arms around her and resting his chin on her head.

“Damn straight.” She swipes at her nose with the back of her hand.

*

The Israelis awaken every day at six promptly, though they drink plenty of wine and spirits with dinner and go to sleep well after midnight. Kristos runs himself ragged making their outlandish coffee orders, substituting this milk for that one, adding more espresso or hot water, then redoing the orders that weren’t up to par. Still, he is adamantly friendly; it is not his first time serving Israelis, and he knows his tip depends on how sympathetically he smiles.

Stavi is on the phone in his office, talking in clipped Greek to the produce man. He is once again late with the order, and Stavi stubs his cigarette out angrily, shaking his grey-tufted head.

“No matter, I’ll get started on the lentils,” she tells him. “And we still have tomatoes and onions in the fridge.”

“You check numbers first, okay?” and he gets up to smile at the yoga instructor knocking on the glass door. Reenie sits at the computer and runs her eyes over the spreadsheet, calculating figures in her head. Numbers merge and separate like waves in the water, following a singular logic like the tide. A loud meow startles her; one of the strays has sauntered in. It rubs against her shin from mouth to haunches, teeth exposed, curled tail flicking, tickling her skin. Reenie moves her chair back and the cat jumps into her lap, digging its hungry claws into her thighs.

“Shhh,” she whispers as her fingers find the gratifying spot behind its ear. The cat settles then, purring into her abdomen as if some shuddering monster were in there, coming eagerly to life.

In college, Reenie had taken a course on Gothic literature for no reason other than she’d needed extra credits and the time slot had matched her schedule. They’d read Frankenstein, and learned that Mary Shelley began writing the novel just a few months after losing her infant daughter. Reenie had thought this fact interesting at the time, then forgotten all about it until the first time she held the ginger cat. Its purr seemed to imitate both the lightning bolt and the grumbling rectangular head that popped into her mind then, out of nowhere. Now the images are practically a conditioned response.

In the kitchen, Reenie watches the tiny orange bodies crumble and coalesce into a broth. The lentils are almost ready to merge with the Israelis’ flesh, to become the energy with which they swim and sunbathe and make demands, with which they perform sun salutations all aligned in movement and purpose, their unified breathing summoned by slow and deliberate commands.

“Inhale,” Hebrew trickles through the door, “exhale,” and she hears herself sigh. Where is she? Reenie asks again, staring at the orange mush. If she could only know, like the numbers; if she could only know, then happily perish; the ashes from a smoked-up cigarette, the squawk of an ascending seagull, the final bubbles from a hooked fish’s mouth.

*

That evening, at dinner, she makes a stupid mistake. One of the guests comments that there is no salt on the table, so Reenie brings a shaker from the bar. The woman looks up at her with recognition as Reenie sets the salt at her elbow, for the complaint had been made in Hebrew. The woman opens her mouth but Reenie darts away before she can get a word out, back into the kitchen where the guests are not allowed. She removes the vegan mousse from the freezer, nearly dropping the huge tray on the floor.

That night she knocks impatiently on Stavi’s door until he opens it, dripping, holding a towel around his waist. She tears it off and takes him into her greedy hand, and slamming the door behind her, she pushes him backwards onto the bed.

“Tell me a story,” she commands later, as the cold moon casts its glittery net over the bay. Stavi sighs and lights two cigarettes, the ashtray on his belly rising and falling as he exhales. Twin embers glow bright for a moment—fiery islands bobbing in a sea of black.

Finally he says, “Did I tell you story about when my sisters fall into the pit?”

“The pit?”

“The pit with the shit, you know it?”

Laughter bursts from Reenie’s mouth; she rolls helplessly around on the bed. “That should really be a Dr. Seuss book, Stavi.”

“Doctor who?”

“Never mind,” she says, still giggling. “Anyway, I think you mean the sewer.”

“Yes yes, with all the shit inside.”

“They fell in?”

“Yes! They yell for hours, two little girls covered in poo-poo and pee.”

Reenie is helpless again. Wiping her eyes, she finally says, “I hope they made it out.”

“Yes yes, the milkman find them. My father say, put those girls on a rope, how you say, like for the dog?”

“You mean a leash?”

“Yes, this,” Stavi nods, grey eyes twinkling. “Those girls stink for weeks, they must shower and shower. . . My mother say she will throw them away, they smell so bad.”

“And then you put them on leashes?”

“I go around with them like little doggies, but they hate that, whole town make fun.”

“Unfortunately, it is not considered good form to put children on leashes,” Reenie says, and takes a deep drag.

She comes to with a start, he is shaking her. It is dark, so dark, and hard to breathe, is she drowning? Drowning, but only her cheeks are wet. “Shh, shh,” he is saying. Her arms are frightened, lashing out. Gathered into a cage of flesh they lose their will and lie trembling. . .  “Shh, shh. . .” consciousness already melting out of her again, pouring itself into an ocean of oblivion. But some landlocked part of her still rages: Get up and get out of here, out of this foreign bed! Back to. . . where? There is nowhere. . . she drowns in darkness again. Nowhere. . . nowhere at all to go. . .

Morning. She wakes before Stavi, tiptoes out and clicks the door shut. In her own room, where there are no mirrors, she splashes cold water on her face and neck. “Stupid, stupid,” she curses herself—“kus-emek”—this is why she makes a point of sleeping always in her own bed.

In her recurring dream, Talia is just a baby, naked and milk-fat and slippery with brine. Reenie bounces her over the waves, chubby palms splashing, lips like licked cherry candy, a dazzling red. Her daughter grabs at the silver flashes darting through the water, launching her squirming body from her mother’s hip. Up to this point the dream is just a memory of a camping trip they took, one of many in which they would pitch a tent on a random beach and laze around for days. Sometimes, when the dream visits, Reenie’s mind convinces her that she is back there, that everything is okay, that October 7th never happened—that, in fact, it was the nightmare and she’s finally woken up—but a nagging corner of her mind knows the facts; she is dreaming, and when it wakes up, baby Talia turns into a fish right there in her mother’s arms. The silver flesh slips from her grasp and cuts through the water, wriggling like shaken silk as it vanishes into the deep. Talia! she opens her mouth to cry out, but her voice catches, and as she struggles to dive in after her daughter, she realises that her legs have turned to stone.

*

“Please tell the chef how wonderful everything was. You will tell her, won’t you?” a woman’s voice says.

“Yes, of course,” Stavi assures her. “We are very lucky to have this chef.”

“Is she. . . do you know—?”

“She is from nearby village,” Stavi cuts in. “Learned to cook from grandmother, when she was a girl.”

Reenie has picked up a carrot from the cutting board, she turns it over now in her hand. Once a root, conductor of nourishment, it’s been dug up to face the fate of the knife; to be chopped mercilessly up into salad, ground by fangs and molars, disseminated and digested into energy and waste; the succession of dwindling particles reaching its atomic finality in evaporated sweat, or morning breath, or the stuff of sewers, and never once in this process will it ever cry or complain. She examines the dewy green tendrils that still reach out like tiny, stubborn fingers, and for some reason tears come into her eyes.

How strong must her daughter be, she recalls thinking in the aftermath of the bloody war that was childbirth—how tiny, yet how strong—to have shattered her mother like a sledgehammer from the inside, and even then, even at the very moment Talia materialised, unbeknownst to either of them, she had already begun her descent into death; the same way a forest fire is not only an end but a beginning, devastation fueling the green sprouts already on their way.

And how strong must her daughter be in this moment, Orin thinks, wherever she is, her hair perhaps no longer orange, as the tireless bugs go about decomposing it into the tiny patch of earth most of the world still calls Israel, and which some, a very few, still call home.