The Second Wish and Other Exhalations Read online

  He was all of twenty-four inches long, maybe seven across his back, mottled red and brown to match his cave. When he saw me, he headed straight for home, and I made a mental note to mark the spot. Next time I came out here, I’d have my gun with me, armed with a single flap-nosed spear. The spear goes into the fish, the flap opens, and he’s hooked, can’t slip off. Tridents are fine for small fish, but not for this bloke. And don’t talk to me about cruel; if I’m cruel, so is every fisherman in the world, and at least I eat what I catch. But it was then, while I was thinking these things, that I noticed something was wrong.

  The fish had homed in on his cave all right, but as his initial reaction to my presence wore off, so his spurt of speed diminished. Now he seemed merely to drift to­ward the dark hole in the rock, lolling from side to side like some strange, crippled sub, actually missing his tar­get to strike against the weedy stone! It was the first time I’d seen a fish collide with something underwater. This was one very sick grouper.

  I went down to have a closer look. He was maybe ten feet down, just lolling against the rock face. His huge gill flaps pulsed open and closed, open and closed. I could have reached out and touched him. Then, as he rolled a little on one side, I saw—

  I backed off, felt a little sick — felt sorry for him. And I wished I had my gun with me, if only to put him out of his misery. Under his great head, wedging his gill slits half open, a nest of fish lice or parasites of some sort were plainly visible. Not lampreys or remora or the like, for they were too small, only as big as my thumbs. Crustaceans, I thought — a good dozen of them — and they were hooked into him, leeching on the raw red flesh under his gills.

  God, I have a loathing of this sort of thing! Once in Crete I’d come out of the sea with a suckerfish in my armpit. I hadn’t noticed it until I was toweling myself dry and it fell off me. It was only three or four inches long but I’d reacted like I was covered with leeches! I had that same feeling now.

  Skin crawling, I drifted up and away from the stricken fish, and for the first time got a good look at his eyes. They were dull, glazed, bubbly as the eyes of a fatally diseased goldfish. And they followed me. And then he followed me!

  As I floated feet first for the surface, that damned grouper finned lethargically from the rocks and began drifting up after me. Several of his parasites had detached themselves from him and floated alongside him, gravitating like small satellites about his greater mass. I pictured one of them with its hooked feet fastened in my groin, or over one of my eyes. I mean, I knew they couldn’t do that — their natural hosts are fish — but the thoughts made me feel vulnerable as hell.

  I took off like Tarzan for the beach twenty-five yards away, climbed shivering out of the water in the shadow of the declining spur. As soon as I was out, the shudders left me. Along the beach my sunshade landmark was still there, flapping a little in a light breeze come up suddenly off the sea; but no red towel, no Julie. She could be swimming. Or maybe she’d felt thirsty and gone for a drink under the vines where the taverna fronted onto the sea.

  Kit in hand, I padded along the sand at the dark rim of the ocean, past the old blanket tied with string to its frame of branches, all the way to the taverna. The area under the vines was maybe fifty feet along the front by thirty deep, a concrete base set out with a dozen small tables and chairs. Dimitrios was being a bit optimistic here, I thought. After all, it was the first season his place had been in the brochures. But … maybe next year there’d be more chalets, and the canny Greek owner was simply thinking well ahead.

  I gave the place the once-over. Julie wasn’t there, but at least I was able to get my first real look at our hand­ful of fellow holiday makers.

  A fat woman in a glaring yellow one-piece splashed in eighteen inches of water a few yards out. She kept calling to her husband, one George, to come on in. George sat half in, half out of the shade; he was a thin, middle-aged, balding man not much browner than myself, wearing specs about an inch thick that made his eyes look like marbles. “No, no, dear,” he called back. “I’m fine watching you.” He looked frail, timid, tired — and I thought: Where the hell are marriages like this made? They were like charac­ters off a seaside postcard, except he didn’t even seem to have the strength to ogle the girls — if there’d been any! His wife was twice his size.

  George was drinking beer from a glass. A bottle, three-quarters empty and beaded with droplets of moisture, stood on his table. I fancied a drink but had no money on me. Then I saw that George was looking at me, and I felt that he’d caught me spying on him or something. “I was wondering,” I said, covering up my rudeness, “if you’d seen my wife? She was on the beach there, and—”

  “Gone back to your chalet,” he said, sitting up a bit in his chair. “The girl with the red towel?” And suddenly he looked just a bit embarrassed. So he was an ogler after all. “Er, while you were in the sea …” He took off his specs and rubbed gingerly at a large red bump on the lid of his right eye. Then he put his glasses on again, blinked at me, held out the beer bottle. “Fancy a mouthful? To wash the sea out of your throat? I’ve had all I want.”

  I took the bottle, drained it, said: “Thanks! Bite?”

  “Eh?” He cocked his head on one side.

  “Your eye,” I said. “Mosquito, was it? Horsefly or something?”

  “Dunno.” He shook his head. “We got here Wednesday, and by Thursday night this was coming up. Yesterday morning it was like this. Doesn’t hurt so much as irritates. There’s another back of my knee, not fully in bloom yet.”

  “Do you have stuff to dab on?”

  He nodded in the direction of his wallowing wife and sighed, “She has gallons of it! Useless stuff! It will just have to take its own time.”

  “Look, I’ll see you later,” I said. “Right now I have to go and see what’s up with Julie.” I excused myself.

  Leaving the place, I nodded to a trio of spinsterish types relaxing in summer frocks at one of the tables further back. They looked like sisters, and the one in the middle might just be a little retarded. She kept lolling first one way, then the other, while her companions propped her up. I caught a few snatches of disjointed, broad Yorkshire conversation:

  “Doctor? … sunstroke, I reckon. Or maybe that melon? … taxi into town will fix her up … bit of shopping … pull her out of it … Calamari? — yechhh! Don’t know what decent grub is, these foreign folks …” They were so wrapped up in each other, or in complaint of the one in the middle, that they scarcely noticed me at all.

  On the way back to our chalet, at the back of the house/taverna, I looked across low walls and a row of exotic potted plants to see an old Greek (male or female I couldn’t determine, because of the almost obligatory floppy black hat tilted forward, and flowing black peasant clothes) sitting in a cane chair in one corner of the garden. He or she sat dozing in the shade of an olive tree, chin on chest, all oblivious of the world outside the tree’s sun-dappled perimeter. A pure white goat, just a kid, was tethered to the tree; it nuzzled the oldster’s dangling fingers like they were teats. Julie was daft for young animals, and I’d have to tell her about it. As for the figure in the cane chair: he/she had been there when Julie and I went down to the beach. Well, getting old in this climate had to be better than doing it in some climates I could mention …

  I found Julie in bed, shivering for all she was worth! She was patchy red where the sun had caught her, cold to the touch but filmed with perspiration. I took one look, recognized the symptoms, said: “Oh-oh! Last night’s moussaka, eh? You should have had the chicken!” Her tummy always fell prey to moussaka, be it good or bad. But she usually recovered quickly, too.

  “Came on when I was on the beach,” she said. “I left the blanket…”

  “I saw it,” I told her. “I’ll go get it.” I gave her a kiss. “Just let me lie here and close my eyes for a minute or two, and I’ll be OK,” she mumbled. “An hour or two, anyway.” And as I was going out the door: “Jim, this isn’t Nichos’s bad wa
ter, is it?”

  I turned back. “Did you drink any?”

  She shook her head.

  “Got crabs?”

  She was too poorly to laugh, so merely snorted.

  I pocketed some money. “I’ll get the blanket, buy some bottled drinks. You’ll have something to sip. And then … will you be OK if I go fishing?”

  She nodded. “Of course. You’ll see; I’ll be on my feet again tonight.”

  “Anyway, you should see the rest of them here,” I told here. “Three old sisters, and one of ’em not all there — a little man and fat woman straight off a postcard! Oh, and I’ve a surprise for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “When you’re up,” I smiled. I was talking about the white kid. Tonight or tomorrow morning I’d show it to her.

  Feeling a bit let down — not by Julie but by circumstances in general, even by the atmosphere of this place, which was somehow odd — I collected the sunscreen blanket and poles, marched resolutely back to the taverna. Dimitrios was serving drinks to the spinsters. The ‘sunstruck’ one had recovered a little, sipped Coke through a straw. George and his burden were nowhere to be seen. I sat down at one of the tables, and in a little while Dimitrios came over. This time I studied him more closely.

  He was youngish, maybe thirty, thirty-five, tall if a little stooped. He was more swarthy peasant Greek than classical or cosmopolitan; his natural darkness, coupled with the shadow of his hat (which he wore even here in the shade), hid his face from any really close inspection. The one very noticeable thing about that face, however, was this: it didn’t smile. That’s something you get to expect in the islands, the flash of teeth. Even badly stained ones. But not Dimitrios’s teeth.

  His hands were burned brown, lean, almost scrawny. Be that as it may, I felt sure they’d be strong hands. As for his eyes: they were the sort that make you look away. I tried to stare at his face a little while, then looked away. I wasn’t afraid, just concerned. But I didn’t know what about.

  “Drink?” he said, making it sound like ‘dring’. “Melon? The melon he is free. I give. I grow plenty. You like him? And water? I bring half-melon and water.”

  He turned to go, but I stopped him. “Er, no!” I remem­bered the conversation of the spinsters, about the melon. “No melon, no water, thank you.” I tried to smile at him, found it difficult. “I’ll have a cold beer. Do you have bottled water? You know, in the big plastic bottles? And Coke? Two of each, for the refrigerator. OK?”

  He shrugged, went off. There was this lethargy about him, almost a malaise. No, I didn’t much care for him at all …

  “Swim!” the excited voice of one of the spinsters reached me. “Right along there, at the end of the beach. Like yesterday. Where there’s no one to peep.”

  God! You’ll be lucky, I thought.

  “Shh!” one of her sisters hushed her, as if a crowd of rapacious men were listening to every word. “Don’t tell the whole world, Betty!”

  A Greek girl, Dimitrios’s sister or wife, came out of the house carrying a plastic bag. She came to my table, smiled at me — a little nervously, I thought. “The water, the Coke,” she said, making each definite article sound like ‘thee’. But at least she can speak my language, I had to keep reminding myself. “Four hundred drachmas, please,” she said. I nodded and paid up. About two pounds sterling. Cheap, considering it all had to be brought from the mainland. The bag and the bottles inside it were tingling cold in my hand.

  I stood up — and the girl was still there, barring my way. The three sisters made off down the beach, and there was no one else about. The girl glanced over her shoulder toward the house. The hand she put on my arm was trembling and now I could see that it wasn’t just nervousness. She was afraid.

  “Mister,” she said, the word very nearly sticking in her dry throat. She swallowed and tried again. “Mister, please. I—”

  “Elli!” a low voice called. In the doorway to the house, dappled by splashes of sunlight through the vines, Dimitrios.

  “Yes?” I answered her. “Is there—?”

  “Elli!” he called again, an unspoken warning turning the word to a growl.

  “Is all right,” she whispered, her pretty face suddenly thin and pale. “Is — nothing!” And then she almost ran back to the house.

  Weirder and weirder! But if they had some husband-and-wife thing going, it was no business of mine. I’m no Clint Eastwood — and they’re a funny lot, the Greeks, in an argument.

  On my way back to the chalet, I looked again into the garden. The figure in black, head slumped on chest, sat there as before; it hadn’t moved an inch. The sun had, though, and was burning more fiercely down on the drowsing figure in black. The white kid had got loose from its tether and was on its hind legs, eating amazing scarlet flowers out of their tub. “You’ll get hell, mate,” I muttered, “when he/she wakes up!”

  There were a lot of flies about. I swatted at a cloud of the ugly, buzzing little bastards as I hurried, dripping perspiration, back to the chalet.

  Inside, I took a long drink myself, then poured ice-cold water into one glass, Coke into another. I put both glasses on a bedside table within easy reach of Julie, stored the rest of the stuff in the fridge. She was asleep: bad belly complicated by a mild attack of sunstroke. I should have insisted that Nichos bring us right to the door. He could have, I was sure. Maybe he and Dimitrios had a feud or something going. But … Julie was sleeping peacefully enough, and the sweat was off her brow.

  Someone tut-tutted, and I was surprised to find it was I. Hey! — this was supposed to be a holiday, wasn’t it?

  I sighed, took up my kit — including the gun — went back into the sun. On impulse I’d picked up the key. I turned it in the lock, withdrew it, stooped, and slid it under the door. She could come out, but no one could go in. If she wasn’t awake when I got back, I’d simply hook the key out again with a twig.

  But right now it was time for some serious fishing!

  There was a lot of uneasiness building up inside me, but I put it all out of my head (what was it anyway but a set of unsettling events and queer coincidence?) and marched straight down to the sea. The beach was empty here, not a soul in sight. No, wrong: at the far end, near the foot of the second spur, two of the sisters splashed in the shallows in faded bathing costumes twenty years out of date, while the third one sat on the sand watching them. They were all of two or three hundred yards away, however, so I wouldn’t be accused of ogling them.

  In a little while I was outfitted, in the water, heading straight out to where the sandy bottom sloped off a little more steeply. At about eight or nine feet, I saw an octopus in his house of shells — a big one, too, all coiled pink tentacles and cat eyes wary — but in a little while I moved on. Normally I’d have taken him, gutted him and beaten the grease out of him, then handed him in to the local taverna for goodwill. But on this occasion that would be Dimitrios. Sod Dimitrios!

  At about twelve feet the bottom levelled out. In all directions I saw an even expanse of golden, gently rippled sand stretching away: beautiful but boring. And not a fish in sight! Then … the silvery flash of a belly turned side-on — no, two of them, three! — caught my eye. Not on the bottom but on the surface. Grey mullet, and of course they’d seen me before I saw them. I followed their darting shapes anyway, straight out to sea as before.

  In a little while a reef of dark, fretted rocks came in view. It seemed fairly extensive, ran parallel to the beach. There was some weed but not enough to interfere with visibility. And the water still only twelve to fifteen feet deep. Things were looking up.

  If a man knows the habits of his prey, he can catch him, and I knew my business. The grey mullet will usually run, but if you can surprise him, startle him, he’ll take cover. If no cover’s available, then he just keeps on running, and he’ll very quickly outpace any man. But here in this pock-marked reef, there was cover. To the fish, it would seem that the holes in the rocks were a refuge, but in fact they’d be a trap. I
went after them with a will, putting everything I’d got into the chase.

  Coming up fast behind the fish, and making all the noise I could, I saw a central school of maybe a dozen small ones, patrolled by three or four full-grown outriders. The latter had to be two-pounders if they were an ounce. They panicked, scattered; the smaller fish shot off in all directions, and their big brothers went to ground! Exactly as I’d hoped they would. Two into one outcrop of honey­combed rock, and two into another.

  I trod water on the surface, getting my breath, making sure the rubbers of my gun weren’t tangled with the loose line from the spear, keeping my eyes glued to the silvery grey shapes finning nervously to and fro in the hollow rocks. I picked my target, turned on end, thrust my legs up, and let my own weight drive me to the bottom; and as my impetus slowed, so I lined up on one of the two holes. Right on cue, one of the fish appeared. He never knew what hit him.

  I surfaced, freed my vibrating prize from the trident where two of the tines had taken him behind the gills, hung him from a gill ring on my belt. By now his partner had made off, but the other pair of fish was still there in the sec­ond hole. I quickly reloaded, made a repeat performance. My first hunt of the season, and already I had two fine fish! I couldn’t wait to get back and show them to Julie.

  I was fifty yards out. Easing the strain on muscles that were a whole year out of practice, I swam lazily back to the beach and came ashore close to the taverna. Way along the beach, two of the sisters were putting their dresses on over their ancient costumes, while the third sat on the sand with her head lolling. Other than these three, no one else was in sight.

  I made for the chalet. As I went, the sun steamed the water off me and I began to itch; it was time I took a shower, and I might try a little protective after-sun lotion, too. Already my calves were turning red, and I supposed my back must be in the same condition. Ugly now, but in just a few days’ time …