“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...
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