Tymon didn’t have any problems smuggling his father’s ashes through airport security. The can was small, containing only a token portion of the remains. The ninety kilos of Dad’s flesh and bones were processed into roughly three kilos of ash. The bulk of it was buried in the family grave in a full-size urn. But Tymon had asked the cremator to set a little bit aside. The keepsake urn, the one Tymon smuggled in his suitcase, contained merely half a kilo of his dad.
Except it wasn’t a real keepsake urn. It was an old coffee can. The real keepsake urn looked suspicious. Well, it looked like an urn. Tymon didn’t want to take any chances with security, so he transferred the ashes into a can.
He didn’t check in any luggage. Everything he needed fit in a small carry-on suitcase. A change of clothes for two days, a sleeping mat, a diving mask with a snorkel, a small titanium pan, and a foldable solar oven. He would sleep under the sky. It was August.
He emptied the contents of his pockets into a bin. His suitcase was already being inspected on the detector’s monitor by a security lady. The machine beeped. The officer put her face closer to the monitor, squinted, shook her head, and let the suitcase slide out on the other side of the machine. She pointed to a flat, yellow bag that took up almost half of the space in the luggage.
“What’s this?” she asked with unfeigned curiosity. “Uh, a solar oven,” Tymon responded. The gizmo was folded flat inside a fabric cover which looked like a regular shopping bag. It even had two handles on it. The officer took it out. The whole thing was about five centimeters thick. She started to open the flaps. The overhead lights bounced right back into her eyes, reflected off the shiny metallic coating.
“It’s kinda big, if you open it all the way,” Tymon warned.
“Oh, yeah, I get it. It captures the sun.” She folded it, but didn’t put it back in the bag. She just dropped it on top of the suitcase. “Does it work well?”
“It takes about three hours to cook a steak. Well done.”
“I couldn’t wait that long.”
“I can make you an egg in an hour, ma’am.”
“Not in this weather, you can’t.”
Her attention shifted to the can. She picked it up, put it to her ear, and shook it. Then she swabbed it for explosives and put it back. “I bet the coffee takes half a day,” she nodded toward the oven.
“Thirty minutes, ma’am.”
“Don’t tempt me, sir. You have a nice vacation.”
The flight from cloudy Modlin to Thessaloniki lasted under two hours. It was still early, around ten, when the plane landed. Tymon walked out of the terminal into the sun. The dry heat startled him at first, and he had to take a few deep breaths. He hadn’t felt this sensation in thirty years. He started to walk toward the car rental zone, with each step feeling more cuddled by the balmy air. By the time he got there, the cuddle had turned into a sweaty embrace.
The scooter he rented was big enough for his small suitcase, which he fastened to the back seat. He didn’t need a car, nor could he really afford one. The funeral had set him back a bit more than he expected.
*
You know your destination by heart, don’t you, how could you not after those two-week adventures with Dad every summer, five consecutive summers, in fact, and always on Halkidiki, in that bleached Aegean village, starting at age nine, the age of divorce, which didn’t faze you at that time in the least, and you will always remember that road which the two of you took side by side, on the bus from Thessaloniki, those views you’re about to encounter again, kilometer by kilometer, which is how you now measure that past, you sure do, that metric childhood with Mom and Dad, then just with Mom, and Dad only one weekend a month, the valiant father trying to maintain his presence, borrowing money to invest in your affection through summer vacations he couldn’t afford, the trips you so loved, as any boy would, and loved every sun-scorched minute, every salty gasp of the warm air, that is until you turned thirteen and discovered your brain, a brain which collided with your feelings, demanding answers you couldn’t cash, how could you know any better, you were only thirteen, so you understood nothing, or very little, which was still nothing, and what you couldn’t grasp, you started to hate with that fierce teenage passion.
*
The Tuesday traffic was breezy. It took Tymon less than ten minutes to reach the familiar highway. Nothing had changed, really, except for the freshly laid blacktop. The road cut diagonally across the region, and, as he remembered, he would reach the sea in a little over an hour.
The scooter was fairly new and in perfect condition. There were no gears, just the throttle and front and rear brakes. Tymon was surprised how smooth the ride was. At this stretch, the road was still flat, so he opened it up as much as the 150cc allowed. He wore a helmet without a visor and cheap drugstore shades. His long-sleeve white shirt, unbuttoned to the belly, flapped wildly. He was going toward the sun, but the sun was already high enough not to blind him. The hot wind blasting his face and chest felt seductive.
He passed several small towns, then the landscape turned rural. Road signs alerted him to cow crossings, but there were no cows in the fields. There were no animals. There were no people. Only a few cars passed in the opposite direction. Then he remembered that it was already eleven. The August sun was entering its furnace hours. Everybody was cooling inside. Including the cows.
*
Yes, so you turned thirteen right before that final father-and-son sojourn, only agreeing to it for spite, to enact vengeance on Dad, vengeance for something you couldn’t name, only felt, and you cleverly scoffed all the way on the bus, barked monosyllabic answers, then shut down all dialogue altogether, stayed in the shade reading comics, rejected the sea, ate by yourself, that wonderful chicken liver which he fried in a pan, with sweet onions dripping butter over your first stubble, so you’re a man now, you thought, and all those nights under the sky, away from the tent and Dad’s large, useless body which only provided nuisance, with the stars failing to sooth you, their vast unknown making you angrier, the square root of your pain, of Mom’s pain, reaching infinity, until a nebulous ache crashed down on you from the azure water, from the sun, and from the rest of the planet, so you assigned all blame to Dad, who now only spoke in soliloquies, if he said anything at all, and when you returned home from that disaster, all pasty white, you didn’t even hug him goodbye.
*
The road was beginning to incline. Tymon eased up on the throttle to placate the engine. The once distant hills were encroaching, and fields yielded to pastures and groves. A soft mountain range lay up ahead, peppered with evergreen shrubs. Both sides of the highway were almost bereft of vegetation, their banks reddish and rocky.
A whiff of brine cut through the herbal and resinous air. The breeze felt fleshy. Tymon was still not high enough to spot the sea in the distance, but he could sense it already. Coming to a sharp curve, he had a silly urge to accelerate and dive straight into the cloudless sky. Instead, he took the turn gently, peeking down into the drop. Below, a vast valley of orchards and groves spread out. He let go of the throttle and quietly sailed down the other side of the hill.
Everything around him was gentle. The curled canopies of olive trees. The gnarled trunks caught in sinuous embraces. The tall grass combed over by its own weight. And everything was rendered in only two colors. Green, in all of its shades, and sienna, burnt by the sun into ochre or bleached pale blond. Now, he smelled wild lavender, too.
*
You vowed never to follow in Dad’s footsteps, in any area, rejected humanities and all liberal arts, especially history, which he taught in some high school, and you embraced the dreaded physics instead, inflicting four years of thermodynamics on yourself out of that joyful spite, stockaded by laws and theorems from which you found refuge in reading historical fiction, now smart enough to see the irony of such a twist, but still stupid enough not to break it, and, yes, at twenty-three, I suppose, the questions began to find answers, and, for a change, your father assumed the shape of a real person, a human put together the way you now were, which was made easier to spot by the decade-long distance since you last saw him, a buffer from which a different image of him started to form, an image not colored by feelings as much as by recall, for which you could now find a theoretical model, the smart ass you were, a model with few constants, like the height of your dad, which was exactly like yours, and the eyes, the build, the fingers and toes, with Mom’s nose and full lips as mediating variables, so, as it turned out, you were your farther’s replica of sorts, after all, but certainly not a copy, and that anatomical revelation felt good, yes, it felt nice, as it freed you to start probing elsewhere, and elsewhere was taking shape every time you looked in a mirror.
*
There was a village ahead. The speed limit was now 30 km/h, so Tymon obediently slowed down. A blue sign announced the name of the place in the alphabet he knew so well from physics. Awkwardly, he tried to cobble the characters into a pronounceable word, but it was useless. Another sign with the village name followed, this time in Latin letters, kindly assuaging his embarrassment.
He passed well-kept buildings, none more than two-story high, all crested with rose-red tiles. Some had their stone walls exposed, some were lime-washed. Each had a garden attached, with at least one olive or fig tree, and plenty of blooming flowers.
He rode through the main square slowly. There were two tavernas, one on each side. The one with more shade had a few patrons at the outside tables. The one on the sunny side had none. Huge cotton sun sails spread above both restaurants’ patios. Tymon’s eyes, exposed to sunshine, couldn’t see clearly into the shaded areas. He rode by without knowing if anybody was waving hello. But just in case, he waved.
On the way out of the village, he nearly ran over a dog. It came out of nowhere, and Tymon braked just in time. He let the animal creep to the other side of the road. It was an old, mangy creature with long, dirty fur extending way to the ground. The hair on its rear was knotted into thick, soiled braids dangling like multiple tails.
Before the beast reached the other side, it paused. Lazily, it turned its shaggy head and stared at Tymon for a moment. Its eyes were barely visible behind the fur strands. Finally, the dog nodded acceptingly and cleared the way. None of its many tails wagged.
*
They shouldn’t have let you graduate, ever, you lucky bastard, with your D’s glorified into C’s by charitable professors, that angry momentum which carried you thus far long expired, all interest in science lost, no, there was never any interest there, was there, then another undeserved break saved you, in that dreary provincial town, with that desperate headmaster, landing the high school physics gig, which you found tolerable and definitely the least painful as jobs go, for it required precisely nothing of you, and you always excelled at nothing, then, somehow, you discovered empathy for idiot teenagers, which you were, naturally, yourself not long ago, no, no, an epoch ago, and now those dim neolithic boys with no hope of making it out of the mud house made you feel weepy, so you attempted to guide them into regional science Olympics with little ambition, but somehow came in the first place, got a sweet raise from the now less desperate headmaster, and you started to think, hey, I might just be getting somewhere, but then you remembered that Dad also taught high school, so, once again, it all went back to him, but this time, amazingly, without any pain, only with a growing compassion, which, at thirty-three, surprised you to no end.
*
The big hill ahead looked like a challenge. Tymon accelerated as much as he could on approach to gain momentum. The scooter inevitably slowed down on the way up, settling on a miserable speed. But it went steady, and Tymon kept climbing. Soon, an old red pickup passed him with ease. There were some chicken cages in it, and barbed wire.
He puttered along patiently for a good fifteen minutes without any views. The road was carved into the mountain and both sides were covered with low pines. Listening to the agonizing stroke of his engine, Tymon wished he could put wings on the fifteen horses that powered the scooter. Even chicken wings would do at this point.
Then it all opened up. He saw the end of the sky yielding to the rising horizon. The banks of the mountain spread wide, and the sweep of the sea flowed right into view. The scooter jolted forward, so he let go of the throttle, again allowing his ride to remain silent all the way down.
He had seen it all before, of course. But for Tymon, it was one of those views he could never rebuild when back home. It was too rich for memory and too tactile for photos, of which he had many. But the photos were not only useless, they were insulting. And his memory could only produce flickering shadows of the real thing. It was a view that eluded any form of entrapment.
*
Funny, all that frenzy you’ve manufactured around Dad and stoked for so many years has finally come to an end, only to be replaced by your own frantic guilt for taking so fucking long to reach out to him, but, ha, ha, ha, wouldn’t it be hilarious if you actually managed to catch him in time, with that guilt doing the trick before he died, and not a moment too soon, and there he would be, a retired teacher, deep into his books, both of you talking about world history, skirting the obvious like two champs, perhaps out of mutual respect, perhaps out of fear that those final encounters could crash any day, reverting both of you to a state of perpetual suspension, which, at this point, none of you wished, so you would continue to just spend time, weaving a tightrope with multiple strands, some of them mushy, others perhaps not so much, until it wouldn’t be just a balancing act but an alliance, if not a relationship, but hey, what is the name of that fearful inaction you undertook to ensure that none of it would ever happen?
*
The landscape had a few new scars. Gliding down, Tymon noticed several abandoned bank barns. The low, flat buildings were built on southern slopes out of bluish tin sheets. Most of the wooden pen posts were broken or missing. Everything was skewed at odd angles, appearing on the verge of total collapse. But it didn’t collapse, remaining there, attended to by the faint smell of manure. Tymon couldn’t tell if the inhabitants used to be goats or sheep. The bank barns were too small for cows and too big for chickens.
There were more and more olive groves sprouting from the hills. The grass between the evenly spread threes was cut neatly. There was a mesmerizing geometry to those patterns, which somehow made Tymon think of mosaics.
The rhythmic curves of the serpentine road cradled him left and right. The engine was still idling and he only needed to tap on the brakes at each turn. Finally, the coral tiles of village roofs peeked from the green foliage, far below, by the shimmering blue. There it was, Tymon smiled.
On the outskirts of the village, he was surprised to see many unfinished houses. They were all facing the bay. The solitary structures appeared at regular intervals, with construction halted at the very same stage. There were gates guarding paved driveways, leading to concrete skeletons of two-, sometimes three-story buildings. They were ambitious projects, some certainly commercial, and requiring serious investment which clearly dried up. Many had columns which stuck out into the sky. All windows were hollow. Stairs climbed nowhere. They weren’t ruins, exactly, just empty temples to something fleeting, housing nothing but echoes.
The village proper started to emerge, descending toward the sea. With terraced plots, the houses were almost stacked one atop another. Laundry hung motionless on lines, and Tymon smelled meat being cooked with oregano and thyme.
After a few more kinks in the road, each hiding a tiny rocky lagoon, he rode onto the cobblestones of the main square. It was enclosed on three sides by low buildings, with one arc reserved for the bay. A few small fishing boats were swaying by the concrete pier, along with one motorized yacht.
He pulled into a parking lot by the pier. Three cars with local plates were there. The red pickup lingered off to the side by a grocery store. The chicken cages were gone.
Tymon took off his helmet and scratched his sweaty head vigorously with both hands. He got off the scooter and stretched, facing the water. He was a meter away from the edge of the sea. The emerald green at his feet flickered with golden veins. He looked up, past the pier, and everything faded into azure. He didn’t bring his camera on purpose. He didn’t want to cause any affront to something he couldn’t contain with words.
He sat on the patio of the square taverna. There were a few locals under the sail, engaged in conversation over a flask of retsina. Two women and a man, all well over forty, roughly his age. Noticing Tymon, one of the women got up and approached him languidly.
“Kalimera. Ti tha thelate?”
“Kalimera. Ena frape, parakalo,” responded Tymon, nearly exhausting his vocabulary.
“Tipota gia fagito?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t really speak Greek,” confessed Tymon in English.
“You eat something?”
“No, no, just the frappe, please.”
She nodded her head at that cute angle Tymon had forgotten about. There were many things he’s forgotten. Now, they were coming back from all directions, and he wandered if it would be an onslaught or a gentle immersion.
He knew he wasn’t going to dwell here, at the square, for long. He finished his coffee quickly, paid, and left with a few cubes of ice in his mouth. Across from the tavern was the grocery store, the same as always, though now with a far more diverse selection of goods wrapped in plastic. Tymon purchased half a kilo of chicken liver and a large onion, butter, some bread, and plenty of water for the day. Exiting the store, he paused, turned back and added a big bottle of retsina to the essentials.
*
There is not much more you can say, can you, you’re here now, where you thought you could wrap it all up, all nice and neat, in some ceremonial gesture which, as you know, is completely weightless, but it still fills you with something resembling duty, a purpose of which you cannot fathom, a request you placed on yourself and soon will fulfill, only because you believe it may just matter enough, just enough, to help you move on in a direction you haven’t yet tried.
*
Tymon rode slowly about a kilometer along the coast, leaving the village behind. There were still a few houses there, mostly attached to olive groves, and a few trailers. He focused, trying not to miss that dirt road which he and his dad would take to set up camp. He found it without trouble. The road was just a bit more overgrown. Now more of a path, it was steep and full of rocks. The hill wasn’t big, maybe a hundred meters, but for the last thirty Tymon had to get off the scooter and push it. There was a small clearing on top, partially shaded by wild fig trees. The place hasn’t changed a bit. The trees and bushes seemed to be exactly the same height as they were thirty years ago. He rolled in there feeling somewhat uneasy, put the scooter on the kickstand, and unloaded the suitcase. He took out the oven bag and tried to squeeze the snorkeling mask into it. It didn’t fit. So, he put it into the grocery bag. The can with Dad’s ashes went in there, too. He noticed that his hands were shaking a little.
The rocks overseeing the sea were just below him, a short but perilous walk away. It wasn’t easy to slide down the path with all the supplies in each hand. He held his arms high, but the thick, thorny bushes were grabbing onto his shirt and pants. By the time he reached the bare rocks, his clothing was torn badly. Somehow, his skin was intact.
His stomach had been grumbling for a few hours now. Tymon set up the solar oven against a boulder. With all the flaps opened, the contraption was almost a meter in diameter. He angled its tulipy petals toward the sun and placed his titanium pan at the focal point. It must have been shortly after twelve. An optimal time for solar cooking, he concurred. The pan should be hot enough when he gets back.
Sweat was making his clothes stick to his body. He peeled them all off and came to the edge of the cliff naked. The drop was clean and not very big, maybe seven or eight meters high. Tymon remembered it well. At nine, he had refused to dive, but at ten, his dad coaxed him into trying. He jumped feet first and the freefall felt like an eternity. He immediately climbed back and did it again. And again. At twelve, after some practice from the lower rocks, Dad boosted his confidence enough to try a swan dive from the top. As instructed, he leaped off the cliff toward the sky, without even looking at the water. It wasn’t falling this time. It was flying. They flew together dozens of times, side by side, always hitting the surface at the same moment. The next year, at thirteen, he didn’t even get wet.
Tymon turned away from the edge. His movements were now almost mechanical. He took the can out of the bag, unscrewed the lid, and in one violent sweep poured his father’s ashes all over his head and body. He felt the dust sticking to his perspiring flesh. He opened his eyes and looked at his arms. His belly. His thighs. All greyish-blue. He felt some ash on his lips, too. Without thinking, he grabbed his snorkeling mask, came back to the edge of the cliff, and dropped it into the sea. Before the mask even hit the water, Tymon bounced off the rock and flew face forward, until gravity pulled his arms and head down into the blue.
He hit the water at an odd angle and felt a burning smack on his thighs. It shocked him, but he kept going down. A second later, he opened his eyes and started to look for the mask. He saw it through the air bubbles, slowly sinking. He pushed against the water and grabbed it, then went up for air. He kept himself afloat with ease, looking around, taking it all in for a moment. Then, he poured the water out of the mask and snapped it on. He bit on the pipe’s mouthpiece, but it didn’t quite fit. Then he remembered he had a few molars missing on one side. The mouthpiece had little to grasp. He bit on the rubber harder and submerged.
He swam around the base of the cliff for a full hour. He didn’t lift his face above the surface even once. The soft rocks below were whirling with sunbeams. On their rolling slopes grazed hundreds of sea urchins, with yellow-striped fish nibbling on whatever they managed to glean. A school of anchovies passed him, chaperoned by glistening sardines. Tymon moved his arms gently, surveying the topography of this vast planet, its valleys and ranges of hills, strange settlements with tubular chimneys, he glided above forests of swaying seagrass, all rendered in a scale without measure, without gravity, without air. He heard no external sounds whatsoever, except for his own muffled breathing. Finally, even his thoughts stopped making noise.
It took him a while to figure out how to climb out of the water onto the rocks. He didn’t remember how he had managed it with such ease as a kid. It wasn’t easy to find footing. The submerged shelf was slippery. He stomped on something sharp. A cutting pain shot through his toe.
Limping, he made it back to the top of the cliff in three of four minutes. Except for the hair, he was already dry. He tried to sit down on a boulder but it was too hot for his bare buttocks. He moved into a more shaded spot. The cut on his toe wasn’t that deep. It already stopped bleeding. But it still stung.
Tymon hopped over to the oven. He didn’t have a knife with him, so he dipped his finger in the butter jar and scooped out a lump. He let it drop into the pan. It didn’t melt right away, as he hoped. Instead, the lump slid lazily to one side. Tymon leveled the contraption and pressed the butter down to spread it evenly. With a sharp rock, he smashed the onion into manageable pieces and placed them in the pan. Then, he did the same with the chicken liver. He estimated that the oven would need at least another hour to seize enough sun for the cooking. Maybe two. But there was no rush. He quenched his thirst with the retsina, gulping down at least half the bottle in one greedy swig. He shuddered at the aftertaste, but the buzz was immediate and it felt great.
The bushy hill over the cliff was slowly beginning to offer some shade. Tymon found a flat, cooler spot to lie down with the bottle. He spread his legs and outstretched his arms, staring at the powder-blue field above. He could hear the waves underneath and the electric hum of cicadas. What Tymon no longer heard were his own whispers of nonsense.
His eyelids grew heavier. Before they closed for a restful nap, Tymon saw a bird fly into his patch of clear sky. It stayed there, circling directly over the cliff. Was it an eagle, he briefly pondered. Then he said to himself, “There goes the liver.”
***
I guess this was the most "modestly-priced receptacle" he could find for the ashes...?
(Agree with Lisa on everything)
Really like the dialogue, nice story! Also very effective alternating with the 2nd person.