Vacation in Crete

 

For Bruno, Anika would have endured almost any conversation. Even after more than ten years of knowing each other, their bond had only deepened. They were close—but not so close that they dissolved into each other, not so entangled that being a couple was the whole story. Bruno gave her the closeness she needed, the landing strip, the occasional anchor she could fall back on when the work, with all its travel and risk, began to loom too large, or the simple brutal logistics of life grew too heavy to shoulder alone.

            And yet, he was a man she didn’t believe loved her because he needed her. No, he loved her simply because he did.

            He lived his own life, full and separate. And she had the quiet, unsettling sense that he would go on living it even if one day she didn’t return from one of her trips. He would grieve her, but he would go on living.

            He loved her. Period.

            No reason.

            Without any why.

            No despite.

            No explanation.

            He could be romantic in small, real ways—waiting for her at the airport when she returned from some distant city, listening first to her stories without rushing to unspool his own.
When they found weekends together, he was the one who planned them: a long mountain hike ending with a rustic dinner at an ecological guesthouse; a night of chess and whispered conversations under thick quilts; an evening listening to young writers battle a skeptical crowd at a smoky café; a jazz night in a basement bar at the city’s ragged edges.

            She was allowed to arrive exhausted, collapse against him, say little, fall asleep on his shoulder after a few minutes of television. Other times, when desire struck, she could be wild, ravenous, and he would meet her, match her, with the same rough glee. He never pushed.
He never demanded. He waited—patient, solid—until she chose him, again and again.

            And yet, the beginning had not been without its tests. Their first vacation together—Crete, 1991—had been one of them. Bruno had known about Feeny. He knew Anika’s history, knew that Feeny was more than just a masseuse, more than just a friend.
He had accepted, even respected, the way Anika’s attachment to Feeny had grown beyond the simple roles they had once played. He listened when Anika spoke of her—her voice softer, more careful than usual—and he made no claim to be threatened.

            No, what was harder for Bruno was appearing in public, mingling with others. He preferred their bubble—just the two of them, no audience. Anika loved that closeness, craved it at times, but she also needed the larger circle: the gatherings, the messy, chaotic dinners with friends, the living proof that love could stretch and still survive. Bruno was uneasy with crowds. He told her so. And so she had devised a compromise: a small vacation with Feeny and her partner René, a delicate experiment in balancing intimacy and independence.

            When Anika first proposed it, Feeny had been confused. Professional boundaries had always been sacred to her. Even after three, almost four years of regular visits, Feeny had kept a polite, clear distance from her clients—even those, like Anika, who tugged at something deeper. She could listen, comfort, even care—but she knew the limit. Money drew a line, and she honored it.

            Anika, however, was different. Not the only regular female client, but the only one who felt... necessary. Essential, somehow. Still, Feeny hesitated. Was it wise to blur the line now?
She didn’t ask René for advice. The salon, the business, the slow empire of her own making —that was hers alone, separate from their partnership. Smaller than René’s ventures, perhaps. Less celebrated. But hers. Built with her own hands, funding the slow growth of her fashion work, allowing her small luxuries: a dinner out, a gift now and then for René.

            Why had Anika invited her? And with Bruno? Did Anika really want to bring her lover and her client and herself all into the same sunlit frame?

            In the end, Feeny said yes.

            Because it was Anika. Because something inside her ached to see where the story might go.

            The trip began with a kind of comic asymmetry.

            Bruno and René had flown out together from Frankfurt, while Anika and Feeny had booked a later flight from Munich, arriving an hour behind them in Heraklion.

            The day before departure, Anika had still managed to squeeze in one last visit to Feeny’s studio—a session that, like so many before, had pulled her out of her sandy world of seminars and papers and theory, and returned her to herself, raw and vivid and alive.
Bruno was away on business, but when she called him, breathless with half-truths, he had agreed without a single question.

            At Heraklion Airport, it was no surprise to find Bruno waiting inside the terminal, looking crisply solemn despite the chaos around him, while René lounged outside the building in a battered white jeep that looked about as roadworthy as a soapbox. The vehicle was far too small for the two massive suitcases the women hauled behind them.

            In the end, they crammed one suitcase onto the backseat, leaving Anika no choice but to squeeze into the front beside René, while Feeny clambered laughingly onto Bruno’s lap.

            The ride was a kind of madness.

            At first, they hugged the coastline, the sun slicing over the water, the air still heavy with salt and jet fuel. But soon the road curled away from the sea and climbed into the mountains, twisting through rock and scrub in tight, harrowing loops.

            Inside the jeep, things grew wilder.

            René fumbled between Anika’s legs—not lasciviously, not yet—but drunkenly, groping for the whiskey bottle that had slipped under her seat.

            He found it and drank straight from the neck as he drove.

            Anika weighed her options: Jump from the moving car? Wrench the bottle away?
Or simply accept the chaos and take a pull herself?

            She chose the third.

            When the bottle passed to her, she drank deeply. Feeny, giggling, followed suit.

            There’s nothing more ridiculous, Anika thought, than watching men get silly drunk while you’re still stone-cold sober. Better to join them.

            And so the bottle circulated, the jeep hurtled onward, and Anika found herself loosening: opening her legs wider, laughing too loud, letting the hot summer air whip her hair and shirt and skin into something fevered and free.

            René wasn’t concentrating much on the road anymore. The whiskey made him exuberant, reckless. Feeny and Bruno laughed uproariously in the backseat, their voices blurring together into nonsense.

            The road narrowed, curled tighter around the mountain’s hips. Ahead, nothing but hairpin curves and sudden plunges.

            And still, somehow, impossibly, it felt right. The four of them, tossed together in this rickety machine, drunk on whiskey and sun and the terrifying certainty that something wild was happening, something they couldn’t stop even if they wanted to.

            Anika stripped off her sweater and camisole, keeping only a loose t-shirt. She kicked off her jeans and slipped into a tiny bathing suit, the move both practical and wickedly theatrical. René whistled softly but said nothing, his eyes flicking to the road just long enough to keep them alive. Anika leaned into him with quiet intent—hands on his leg, his arm, her grip moving up to his shoulder—not just to steady herself through the jolts and swerves, but to press herself into his awareness, to remind him of presence, of body, of her. And René, stirred more by instinct than thought, was suddenly alert again—alive to the moment, and to her.

            The bottle kept circling.

            The laughter got louder.

            Somewhere, far below, the dark blue Aegean gleamed like a promise.

            Time blurred. Space melted. Crete unspooled around them, rough and golden, demanding nothing but surrender.

            When night finally fell—soft and deep as velvet—they reached the outskirts of Sitia.
Their destination was supposed to be a guesthouse tucked in the hills.

            But René, wild with drink and bravado, jerked the wheel hard left instead, hurtling the jeep onto the soft, forgiving sands of an empty beach.

            The vehicle lurched to a stop under a cypress tree, breathing heavily like a tired horse.

            For a moment, no one moved.

            Then Anika tore off her shirt and ran, bare-chested, laughing into the night.

            Bruno barely had time to register what was happening before Feeny peeled off her clothes too—first her blouse, then her skirt fluttering to the sand like a discarded flag. She sprinted after Anika, laughing, the dark swallowing their shapes until only their voices remained, bright as bells against the rising wind.

            For a second, Bruno hesitated. He was, perhaps, the only one left sober enough to worry: about the rocks jutting out from the shore, about the sharpness of unseen dangers hidden under the water.

            But it was too late for caution. And what was caution worth, when the people you loved were already vanishing joyously into the sea?

            He stripped off his own clothes in a flurry, boots and shirt and jeans tumbling onto the sand, and hurled himself toward the waves.

            René had already disappeared into the dark surf after the women, whooping like a child.
Bruno caught a flash of Feeny’s pale shoulder, the quick silver of Anika’s laughter, and then the chill of the water took him, shocking and invigorating at once.

            The Aegean wasn’t cold, not truly—just fresh enough to wake every nerve in his skin.
He gasped, sucked in the salt and the night, and pushed forward.

            Somewhere ahead, Feeny turned back, catching sight of him. She stretched out her hand and pulled him toward her, both of them laughing, half-sinking under the small crash of a wave.
She clung to him, wrapped her arms around his neck, her bare breasts pressing against his chest with a boldness that surprised him.

            And he—god help him—held her back just as fiercely.

            The ocean rocked them together, a push and pull stronger than alcohol, stronger than doubt.

            He kissed her—because what else could he do? Because her mouth was there, open, salt-sweet and hungry. Because the night demanded it, and the sea gave permission.

            They broke apart, breathless, only to find Anika and René not far away, tangling and untangling themselves in the dark water. For a moment, all four of them floated there—separate, together, anonymous in the vast blackness.

            There were no names. No promises. No rules.

            Just bodies—warm and laughing and free—crashing against the waves and against each other in the dark, endless night.

            Eventually, the chill drove them back to shore.

            They stumbled out of the waves, dripping and breathless, clutching their discarded clothes to their chests, shivering under the sudden vastness of the night sky.

            The sand clung to wet skin. Every step was clumsy, graceless, full of laughter and slipping hands and half-hearted attempts at modesty.

            René collapsed first, sprawling on the damp beach like a felled giant, still clutching the whiskey bottle in one hand like a trophy. Feeny dropped beside him, tugging Bruno down with her, their bodies knocking together, easy, unembarrassed.

            Anika stood for a moment apart, clutching her loose t-shirt to her chest, her hair plastered to her forehead, her eyes wide and shining.

            She looked at them—at Bruno, at Feeny, at René—and for a moment felt the ache of distance, even amid the reckless intimacy.

            She had wanted this. Had orchestrated it, even. A chance to blur the lines, to test whether the walls between love and friendship, loyalty and desire, could be more porous than she had ever dared believe.

            And yet... standing there, half-naked, half-drunk, heart hammering against her ribs, she wasn’t sure she had crossed into freedom or simply floated into another kind of trap.

            Morning came harsh and brilliant.

            The sun cracked open the sky with merciless heat, and the world that had seemed so infinite in the dark shrank back into sharper, more unforgiving outlines.

            The evening had ended abruptly—or at least that’s how it felt in memory, like a reel had been ripped from the projector mid-scene.

            When Bruno woke up, tangled in bed and in Feeny’s arms, he had the vague, sinking feeling that they hadn’t arrived where they were supposed to. Not the location. Not the apartment they’d planned for.

            As it turned out, over breakfast, they discovered they had ended up in a different vacation rental altogether. But at least all four of them were in the same place—and their Jeep, by some miracle, was parked in decent shape under the olive trees in the yard.

            The door must have been unlocked when they arrived, and clearly they’d found empty beds—rooms to collapse in. What became immediately obvious, however, was that the house was far from unoccupied. There were already other guests having breakfast out on the terrace.

            Their cheerful, now slightly crumpled quartet was not the only group inside what was clearly a house divided into multiple holiday flats.

            Bruno rubbed his eyes. Feeny still breathed softly beside him. Across the room, Anika lay curled up against René on the couch, fast asleep. Bruno tried to reconstruct the night, to trace how they had ended up here—but his memory wouldn’t cooperate.

            What finally woke him was the smell: fresh-baked bread. Real bread. And then voices—happy ones. He looked up and saw figures outside the window chatting and eating in the morning sun.

            Feeny stirred beside him, reached for Bruno and blinked herself awake, a wide, lazy smile on her lips. She ran her fingers through his curls, trailing them gently across his cheek. Bruno, still weary from the night’s punishing journey, leaned into her warmth and let himself sink.

            “Do you know where we could get coffee?”

            “No idea. But looks like people are eating out there—I’ll go check.”

            He rolled off the unfamiliar sofa, peeked out the window, and called to the people outside in English—he thought he’d caught a few English words floating in the air:

            “Do you think we can get a coffee around here?”

            “Just join us,” came the answer.

            With a loving brush of his hand, he slipped away from Feeny and stepped quietly outside.

            A few minutes later he returned, balancing four mugs of strong-smelling Greek coffee. He placed them by the couch and at the bedside, kissed Anika—just as she blinked her heavy eyelids open—and stepped out again.

            Soon he was back with four plates and warm, fragrant pita bread. He knew Anika well enough by now to guess that the smell of coffee and bread would pull her from sleep.

            And sure enough, she opened her eyes, blinking into the sunlight, her face crumpled but smiling with quiet optimism.

            “Thank you. You’re so sweet,” she murmured.

            René, on the other hand, didn’t seem like coffee or conversation would be enough to rouse him.

            Anika sat up in bed, pushed aside the sheet that had been covering her—by now the morning sun had warmed the room fully. Naked and unbothered, she raised her coffee cup and toasted Feeny and Bruno.

            “What a ride. And what a landscape!”

            Bruno had been about to say, “Happy we made it safely,” but the women’s buoyant mood swept him up instead. He suggested they go to the beach right after breakfast—to look at the place where, during the night, they must’ve tested their guardian angels.

            René began to stir, groping for his glasses, blinking as he took in the scene around him. He looked relieved to see his three companions and appeared to be slowly sorting the world back into place.

            Anika, beside him, was happy to see Bruno enjoying himself in this strange little circle. Still holding her coffee, she handed the cup to René and thanked him for the night drive.

            He smiled at her closeness, then looked over at Feeny, still curled on the sofa across from him with Bruno, who by now was halfway dressed, holding a mug of coffee in one hand and half a piece of bread in the other.

            “You’re all up early,” René said. “Thanks for the coffee. That’s real Greek stuff—strong enough to wake the dead.”

            Bruno handed him a plate with olives, sliced tomatoes, and sheep’s cheese he’d gathered from the terrace.

            He liked the idea—heading down to the beach in the daylight, to see where they’d thrown themselves into the sea the night before to cool off. But once they were standing there, sober and exposed to the bright, clear morning, they were shaken. Startled, even. It was a wonder they’d survived it without a scratch. Fate watches over the drunk, René thought.

            Later that afternoon, they finally located the rental they had actually booked—a beach hut more than an apartment, but with just enough space for four people. Each couple had their own quarters, and there was a small shared kitchen in the middle with a rustic wooden table. The hut sat a few hundred meters up from the beach, nestled in a hilly grove of olive trees.

            Night fell quickly. Both couples retreated to their spaces. Anika and Bruno lay close, worn out—not just from the previous day, but from the evening and the long night that had followed. Sleep, however, was elusive. A steady banging and groaning interrupted them. They looked at each other, puzzled. From outside came a clattering, a rattling, a rising creak that swelled to a crescendo—and then again. Over and over, as if it would never end.

            The next morning, over coffee and peals of laughter, the four of them shared their night’s experiences. Each couple had secretly marveled at the apparent stamina of the other, jealous and sleepless, wondering how the hell they’d managed such endurance. It wasn’t until they put their heads together that they realized: it wasn’t the others at all. It was the stormy wind rolling in from the sea, battering the shutters, groaning through the wooden frame of the hut—while four exhausted souls lay awake, imagining the passion of others and quietly lamenting their own stillness.

            For Anika and Bruno, this was their first real stretch of time together. In recent years, their schedules had been so consumed by work that a shared vacation had remained a hypothetical indulgence. Now, after breakfast, Feeny and René—who clearly knew each other well—headed to the beach with towels slung over their shoulders. Anika looked over at Bruno.

            “Would you mind if I took the morning for myself?”

            Bruno seemed to agree, not begrudgingly, but with a kind of quiet relief. The idea that Anika wanted time apart aligned perfectly with his own unspoken need: that the two weeks they had carved out for this trip wouldn’t have to be spent entirely together, and certainly not always at the beach.

            He had cleared the time for the trip, yes. But in the back of his mind, always, was the pressure of his habilitation thesis—the keystone of his academic ambitions, the gateway to professorship. He’d told himself he’d set it aside for this vacation. That he’d let his mind breathe. But now Anika’s request felt like liberation.

            Was she granting him that freedom deliberately? Had she sensed the pressure and offered him this space to ease it? Or was it, more simply, what she needed?

            He would only learn later that Anika became unsettled—even unbearable—when she felt cornered. When she didn’t have room to move, or time that was hers alone.

            Bruno unpacked, set up his workspace at the kitchen table, and opened his laptop. Meanwhile, Anika unpacked as well. Her clothes were rolled, not folded—neatly, efficiently, wrinkle-free. She chose a thong, a short skirt, and a loose T-shirt cut wide at the arms, letting the sea breeze drift freely through.

            She gave Bruno a strong hug, pressed her chest against his.

            “See you later—I love you.”

            Bruno was surprised by the declaration—especially since it came as she was walking away, on the very first morning of what was supposed to be their first true vacation together.

            It felt like a preview of what being together might mean: not clinging, but trusting space. He watched her walk through the olive grove, confident, self-possessed, until she disappeared among the trees.

            Should he follow her? Had she wanted him to? Had that “I love you” been an invitation to ignore the words and chase her? He almost did—almost sprang up to catch her, laugh with her, hold her.

            Maybe that was exactly the kind of affection she’d wanted him to show.

            But something stopped him. His own need for space, perhaps. The quiet gift she’d given him. Or the respect he had for her independence.

            Was she the kind of partner who didn’t define herself through him—but instead knew how to live as herself, and allowed him the same?

            So far, he had only known relationships that demanded exclusivity. That couldn’t accommodate the reality of his life, or his obsession with his work.

            Anika seemed different. And already, she challenged him. He had blocked off these two weeks for her—a full commitment, something rare. And she, on the very first morning, had upended that premise.

            Almost annoyed, and slightly dulled by the early sun, Bruno opened his laptop. He pulled out the few books he’d brought and began reading the text he’d last touched before he closed the laptop at home, proud—naively proud—to be taking it on vacation with him.

            Unlike usual, it took him quite some time to settle into his thoughts. To begin again deciphering the Greek texts, to write his commentary on the thinking and ethics of the Christian Neoplatonist Apollinarius and his connection to the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart. But he couldn’t concentrate.

            He kept hearing the moaning of the shutters, kept glancing outside, half-expecting someone—anyone—to poke their head in. But nothing. Only crickets chirping from the olive grove, the late-summer wind rustling faintly, the distant barking of dogs. The door remained closed.

            No René. No Feeny. No Anika.

            Out of restlessness, Bruno brewed himself a cup of green tea—the kind he always used back home to ceremonially ease into work. It usually helped. That soft, grassy scent, the heat on his hands. Today it didn’t.

            Instead, he kept seeing Anika in that outfit. Her form, the movement of her body, her walk, her certainty. Her nearness the night before. And even more: the way she had left—without a backward glance.

            It was already afternoon when Bruno finally found his rhythm. Crete and the world receded, and he lost himself in the dense, tangled thickets of late antiquity, Neoplatonism, stoic strands, and slowly began to carve a path through them.

            That was when the kitchen door flew open.

            And there she stood—Anika—radiant, already peeling off her T-shirt, wriggling into her bikini.

            “Coming to the beach? Sorry, it got later than I’d planned.”

            Bruno looked up. He hadn’t even noticed the sun already far past its zenith, beginning its descent. He felt abruptly torn out of something—though not deeply enough, as he sensed from Anika’s reaction. She saw it in his face, in his delayed response, the way his attention lagged behind her presence.

            And then, just when he felt his own failure at being present—she surprised him. Touched him.

            “Bruno, I’m sorry for barging in like that—if you need a few more minutes, take them. I’m heading to the beach to meet Feeny and René. Come when it suits you.”

            She spun lightly on her heel, gave him a warm look—and was gone. As quickly as she’d appeared.

            Bruno sat in silence. Stunned by himself. By how unready he’d been. How flat his reaction had landed. He’d behaved like a stage extra who had missed his tiny cue—without protest from the director, and no second take.

            And yet, somewhere inside him, he sensed the scene would pass him by completely if he didn’t step into it—step into himself.

            He’d never shut the laptop so quickly. For the first time, he didn’t even bother to save his work. It suddenly felt meaningless. He pulled on his swim trunks, grabbed a towel, and left in search of the others on the beach.

            What he hadn’t seen—what Anika hadn’t shown—was that she had been looking back. More than once. She had tried to play it cool, not let it show that she was waiting for him. But she missed him. The morning had gone as she wanted—time to herself, space to breathe—but it only made her hunger for him sharper.

            She felt drawn to him—because she sensed he hadn’t just reluctantly allowed her the space she’d asked for, but had truly sunk into his own world. His passion. His work.

            That tension—between absence and longing—had already gripped her the moment she stepped into the doorway and saw that he hadn’t even noticed.

            She had tried to catch his attention. She had dressed that way for him—not for the old men hunched over tables in the cafés. She had wanted him to know what he was missing. That’s why she’d chosen the skimpiest outfit in her suitcase.

            And yet, on the way through the town, she’d enjoyed the looks—more than she expected. They were different from what she’d experienced in Rome, where the bus driver had made a remark about her legs and her skirt before handing her a ticket. Her friend, staying in Rome for a language course, had noticed the exchange and later told her not to be shocked. “It’s normal,” she’d said. “In fact, Italian women complain if the drivers don’t comment.”

            Still, Anika had found it disturbing.

            Crete was different. There was respect here. People greeted her in Greek—men and women alike. She couldn’t respond, but she acknowledged silently with a smile.

            By the harbor, she found a café where the locals sat—not tourists. She figured, rightly, it must have the best coffee in town.

            They served her a glass with a golden rim and a thick, black liquid—unfiltered, stronger than espresso, with a layer of dark silt settling slowly at the bottom. They gave her plenty of sugar and a small bowl with goat cheese and olives.

            An older man stood, gave her his table, and joined the others at the next one. They all sat at a proper distance, smoking, speaking little. Playing Portes—not Tavli, not backgammon exactly, but something fiercer. Even at this early hour, the air between them pulsed with intensity.

            Anika still had a mild headache from the wild ride through the Cretan mountains, even after the two nights. She couldn’t recall all of it. Only that it had grown more and more euphoric.

            She and René—whom she only knew through Feeny—had become a sort of team. A philosopher and entertainer, yes. But something more. Somewhere between whiskey and hairpin curves, they had ended up discussing Nikos Kazantzakis.

            René thought him too entangled in orthodoxy. Anika admired him—this fiercely criticized, now iconic Greek writer. His atheism spoke directly to her.

            At the café table, she opened her laptop, located a power outlet—successfully, without question—and got to work.

            She was writing her dissertation, which examined the lives and works of artists who had emigrated during the Nazi era. Since the earliest days of her studies, she had been fascinated by the interplay between Western and non-Western contemporary art, and by the question of how Western modernism had influenced other regions—particularly in Britain—and how exile, especially of the avant-garde, had reverberated through Africa and Asia. Equally, she was interested in how the encounters on those continents had, in turn, altered the very shape of artistic thought in the West—especially in America and, after the war, in Germany.

            She had long understood that people could change clothes more quickly than eating habits—but did the same hold true for habits of thought, for aesthetic needs?

            What kinds of buildings did people want to live in? What kind of art did they want on their walls—what kind of beauty did they want to wrestle with? And how would women shape that beauty? How would they represent themselves?

            These questions felt even more urgent in patriarchal societies—which, in her view, included most of Europe and even more strongly many of the societies into which these female artists had emigrated. Here, conceptions of gender—especially idealized ones—played a central, and often unquestioned, role.

            She wasn’t surprised to find, for instance, hotels in Tenerife—her beloved Canary Island—built with Indian architectural flourishes, catering specifically to Indian guests. These hotels offered at least one Indian main course every day.

            Food, she had come to believe, lingered in the soul far longer than fashion. Even generations later, long after family ties and traditions had frayed, people clung to the foods—and especially the spices—of their childhoods. They returned again and again to familiar restaurants, paid high prices in specialty shops, all for the memory of taste. For the grounding power of smell.

            Clothing, on the other hand, was far more disposable. The sarouel, the gandoura, the headscarf—they were folded away, replaced by skirts and blouses, suits and ties. But no one wanted to give up the Moroccan tagine, the Egyptian mulukhiyah, the shawarma. Even in Munich offices, where everyone dressed alike, the dishes served at family dinners remained a form of rootedness.

            What made aesthetics—especially culinary experience—so transversal, she had discussed with Feeny. She asked her: Is it because love and connection pass through the stomach? Because food, unlike clothing, doesn’t hang limply on a hanger at night but remained part of the self?

            And yet, Feeny insisted, it is appearance—always appearance—that functiones as the magnet for projection. The spark of desire. A person’s look can draw attention immediately, while the scent of food and the subtle memory of taste work more slowly, more secretly—reaching only the initiated.

            These were the kinds of questions they exchanged and pondered upon.

            Her thoughts were still spinning outward and inward, discontented with her outline.

            Distance, she told herself. She needed to step back. Far from the university. To watch people. To understand what mattered to them—and, more importantly, why.

            Here in the café, Portes seemed to matter more than anything else.

            Women, at least within these four walls, seemed entirely absent. Or perhaps that absence was itself a presence—a presence she now, unwittingly, embodied. Maybe she had been looking in the wrong direction. Maybe the question wasn’t about the visible representations of women—icons on public altars—but about their invisibility.

            Maybe the real subject was absence, and the symbolic clutter that replaced it: men’s football, military parades, guns—phallic, mechanical, absurd. Cannons, tanks. Men’s games, where women appeared only to cheer from the sidelines.

            And perhaps even those drinks, the chain-smoking—phallic rituals in their own right—were poor substitutions for moisture, warmth, for the sensual danger of engaging with the feminine directly. Or perhaps it was all just routine. Habit.

            The men around her looked unkempt, or at  indifferent to their appearance. The waiter—perhaps the owner’s son—wore jeans, branded but clearly knockoff. It was enough to distinguish him from the older men and the few local teenagers who had wandered in.

            There were no other women working in the café. No other tourists this early in the morning either, and the few she spotted sat at shaded tables outside.

            She was the only woman inside.

            The daylight outside was too harsh for her laptop screen, which was why she had chosen the interior. The men, too, seemed to prefer the dimness, likely for the same reason—or simply to avoid the heat.

            Although her entrance had raised a few surprised glances, she was left alone. She could work in peace. Even the young waiter approached only when her glass of coffee was nearly empty. And even then, he avoided her gaze, fumbling politely for his German and looking just past her shoulder.

 

By the time Bruno arrived at the beach with his towel, he threw himself straight into the waves. Feeny followed with a shout, then Anika and René, and soon the four of them were tumbling through the surf, laughing, wild with joy.

            They joked about their mountain journey—no one could quite remember the details anymore. They all marveled that they’d made it down those narrow, winding roads in one piece.

            Back on the sand, René asked Anika what she’d been working on at the café. She told them about her research—her exile artists—and about one woman in particular who fascinated her. A gifted Jewish artist who had fled via Britain to Kenya. She didn’t yet know enough to tell the whole story, but the trail was promising.

            Bruno, no doubt, was used to these moments turning into lectures—moments that revealed just how deeply Anika burned for her work.

            After another dip in the water, they retreated beneath their two umbrellas.

            Anika pulled a heavy, pale red book from her bag—Kazantzakis’s Odyssey, in German translation—and began reading aloud. Bruno followed along in his own deep red copy, in Modern Greek.

            Unimaginable: thirty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-three hexameters. Kazantzakis had created something bottomless.

            Anika didn’t intend to read much—just a few selections from the behemoth. But here, on the beach of his homeland, the music of his language seemed to reach further back into history, and deeper into the present.

            Greece, caught between modernity and the past, between youth and tradition, between secularism and religion. Between Europe and the world.

            Even the Turkish neighbor haunted the twentieth-century Greek imagination—despite the fact that Crete lay closer to Africa than to Cyprus. The division of Cyprus, and its enduring tensions, echoed in the anti-Turkish and anti-Islamic undertones Kazantzakis confronted in his work.

            In his Odyssey, what began as a return became a metaphysical journey—an exploration of the spiritual chasms within the human condition, where the gods became metaphors for the unknowable abyss.