on a small island, having useless thoughts in summer…

Some things are in our power,others are not in our power. In our power are opinion, sentiment, aversion… (E…)

The world was smaller and the borders were liberatory when we were more active. But we are decades after those years.. I think the diameter of this small small island is about five or ten miles at most. A narrow coast road runs alI the way round it, often with sheer drops into the sea off the steep cliffs to the south. But mostly it runs level along the coastline to the north and east. With slopes down to the beaches which alternate between sandy coves and shingle beaches. Occasionally I have stopped and explored these lovely beaches. On the western end of the island there are concrete groynes placed to slow the inevitable erosion of the island. On the south concrete tetrapods are placed to protect the cliffs, gradually becoming a reef as the sea level rises. There are three or four towns, two of which have harbors for small boats and the regular ferries from the mainland which is five to ten kilometres to the north. And its on one of these beaches that I am sitting eating an ice cream, with a cappucino in a takeaway cup, speaking to you. I am speaking quietly to you because you are lying in the sunlight, the sea and the sound of the wind on the yachts moored out to sea has made you close your eyes. You are beside me , your body is rising and falling with the rhythm of a sleeping person, to the rhythmanalysis of a sleeping person. I don’t want to wake you so I talk to you quietly about the place. Spacetime perhaps. your soft brown leather bag is beneath your head. A violent pillow. Some writers we know would be entranced by this island, with its seagulls, terns, cormorants, crows, songbirds, trees, hills and rare insects. The photographs of the bunker archaeology collated by the council. Perhaps its the island he told us about over cocktails in the snow, before he died, killed by the leviathan. We exist in the net, captured by its almost visible lines, drawn out in the… I can hear you laugh “no no stop this is a lovely day, forget these things just now…” But when I look down I see you are still asleep, I sip coffee and wonder what time it is. I am phoneless and watchless on this beach. Only you a pen and a notebook, Children run into the water… splash splash splash. I watch.

I found out by chance that he is still alive. The bookseller in the allay behind the town hall, next door to the hairdressers and adjacent to the ice cream parlour, who likes to pretend that he is still ukrainian even though he was born on the mainland 80 kilometres up the coast. Do you speak russian well I asked him. Not at all, hardly at all he replied. A ukrainian russian newspaper is delivered to the shop a few days after publication, perhaps he reads it? most likely he simply wraps up the books he must post in the pages. Once a week, once a month in the newspaper, they run a provincial section of news of the place where he was born, before his parents took him, that is you to america. I remember when you, she and I went there for a week, staying at the ramshackle dacha that you had inherited and still owned. I remember the treelined roads, that we rode along on the bikes, and the open top german car… and sometimes as we drove down the long intricate road into the river valley we would drive through the shadows of the cork oaks. In the village, mostly emptied of people who had deserted this place for the cities and a better life. And there looking up at me from the opened out pages, on which a book rests which is about to be wrapped for posting, I can see a picture of your smiling face. The face of a man who supposedly died on the other side of the world, but is now looking at me, not looking at me, as I look at him from a two day old newspaper. It’s the same smile I remember from the hospital club, and the hotel off wardour street from your last trip to london. “Bye S… see you next year in april” you’d said. Before dying they said in A… But there you are. Big, alive, unable to avoid the photograph in a local paper that ended up here on this small island. This invisible island.

Here we are later, I wonder if it’s him she said, again. What should we do if it is ? Nothing she said. It’s nearly sunset the sun is setting in the west, the east. The cypress trees are lit by the deep yellow of the setting sun. They were deep green earlier, now they are yellow and black. Down the hill on the plauteax leading to the beach there is a cafe, the smell of Greek food. We walk down the slope. There is a row of houses facing the sea, northwards, just down the road. The end house, a short distance away was once Susan Kant’s house, she’d landed there from Germany and spent a decade praying they would never find her, they didn’t. Only she was left there, here. Her husband and mother had never returned even years after the nightmare ended. She never knew what camp they had ended up in, and now was still trying not to talk about them, survivors guilt perhaps. But we left Susan in peace, we would visit her tomorrow we said, and went down to eat moussaka and to drink cheap retsina, though we ended up drinking Chablis. Thinking about how he was still alive, how his being alive threatened us, how he’d escaped from the south, traveled across the world to hide out there, there of all places… Was there a trail of bodies and ruined lives behind him enabling his escape? she wondered quietly between mouthfuls of food. Probably, I said. Thinking of the monsters he’d spent too much time with, hiding in plain sight. THINKing that he could hide in their culture, traditions and earn money supplying them with the tools of oppression that… but no it all disappeared. He (must have) thought, i’ll go in, take what’s needed, supply them, be valuable, I will become them, I’ll go when… as if the monsters he served were harmless. Then they began to come for you. for you.

I hope he has forgiven me for the way we spoke at the end. If I’d been more reasonable perhaps he’d be here rather than there or dead, after these few years. I sighed and poured more wine. I wonder what he is called now. She said, tapping the table. How should you address the man you loved who said see you in April and who vanished half a year later, presumed dead and yet has now appeared in a monochrome image in an un-understandable newspaper… Was he loved down there in exile? Is he loved now? floating down the lines in the liquid modern. Were you with a man, a lover or friend, perhaps betrayed by them with the inevitable quick exit or was it a slow exit, the run across the face of the earth. Or was it just furtive moments for the gratification of the body. Were you mostly alone at night, in your bed alone. Did anyone say “my love” in the way of the liquid modern , holding you in their arms. Did you remember the first night of your escape in Lyon? in the small hotel, the small room with its paisley cloth wallpaper, that was the first night in the run away from Italy. You unable to sleep from fear, me and the other carriers still awake in the adrenaline rush of the drive north, eventually sleeping in the chair or sofa. How did it feel for you as we paused in our northward trajectory? From Lyon we dispersed northwards, you by train with a courier who took you to London and your new identity. Me to Amsterdam, then Belgium and the yacht across the channel and southwards along the coast. We were never innocent, just smugglers of people.

So seeing the picture of you again, all the time and memories I had suppressed returned again. The years returned, tectonic plates shifted. The long recovery into this stable place after the final disastrous runs across europe, losing people on the way, time falling away as the police searched for the few who escaped, me hiding in the alps. Meeting her in the mountains and then in late summer traveling north with her by train, leaving the car in Avignon. A few photographs and unreliable memories are all that remain of that summer. How did they find us? I spent the summer wondering. The photograph of her is beautiful, she is young, recovering from her divorce, a picture of her in profile, reading a book outside a building, a cafe or school perhaps, I don’t remember. There is a second photograph, the book laying open on your stomach, half asleep in the sun, eyes closed, relaxed. Weeks passed. She took me out of my life, took me home with her. I thought she was saving me but really it was mutual. We changed trains at Lyon, traveling on the fast trains north, in first class, looking like the young couple that we were becoming. “Come with me, to my house” she said, “In case he is there…” Her flat was empty, half the furniture, books, music, all his clothes gone. I never left. Time passed. Eventually we left together. We were both surprised that we stayed together. Then later after I felt safe to go to my old flat again, to collect some belongings. The shock on your face when you saw me loading hastily packed suitcases, a few books. “How are you here? “ You said, the look of betrayal on your face. I shrugged and said i escaped. And so the photograph reminded me of the betrayal that was the cost of your building a life. I understood your life and knew you would never understand mine. “How did you have a life?” is the question you never asked me. Did you also betray them ? The subtext of the utterance. One that I never answered as I never told you about the alps, about how she and i met as I hid waiting for the police to arrive. The fear I suppressed as we boarded the train and traveled north. How could you understand a life that wasn’t founded on the betrayal of your rescuers ? Did you ever understand why I never spoke of it. Looking at the photograph I got the idea that this time someone had tried to betray you. You were building systems you told me, us. That do what? I asked. It was clear that you couldn’t tell me, us. Perhaps you thought that it was a step too far, to tell us about your relations to the leviathan. Did you think we were about to take some form of vengeance on you ?

It’s a little later, we are in Y. A small town or village on the island. It’s not particularly beautiful but in the summer its always full of happy people. The section of the port that you can see from the dockside is full of pleasure craft, yachts and motorboats, behind you is a street of restaurants that leads to the square and other shops, tourists and working people pass through, a few fishermen, sailors, laborers travelers, upper class figures imagining… Perhaps its still beautiful because we can be scarcely visible here. And that’s what we did, changed my name to hers. Adopted new numbers, identities. Pretended I only spoke english. Becoming english, learnt how to be monocultural. More interestingly we became monosexual only facing each other. From the small house we are staying in you can see the sea and further on you can see the hills that run along the centre of the island before sloping down to become cliffs to the south. We spent days and nights looking out to sea. So since we are about to leave this place and travel back to our home north of london we look at the hills for the last time. The walls of the house are covered with tongue and groove planking, painted a pale blue colour. The bedroom had a painting of yachts on the light blue sea. There was a wardrobe to the right of the bed, in which we had kept clothes and pillows. One of the sliding doors had a long dressing mirror hanging off it. On the walls of the living room, small paintings and photographs hang. Two small sofas and an easy chair are lined up together, a bookcase with a a flat screen monitor standing on the top. This is where I am sitting, waiting for her to return from the local cooperative with food for the night, and a full tank of petrol. I thought of you in your flat in Shoreditch with your parrot, cats and guilt. And for the first time since you vanished I thought that something needed to be done about you, to prevent you from acting again. What is the point of this life if we don’t stop you this time ? We are catching the last ferry from the island, driving north for three or four hours, she will sleep in the passenger seat. iwill be contacting my old friends in the group… So whilst iwait, i write this note to you. We know your location and your address will be found soon. There will be no more trips for you, no more waiting at airports to fly to moscow, madrid or dayton. No more boarding of ships, yachts or driving across the country searching for a broken down byzantium church. No more betrayed bodies. The mirror of your old age is approaching. The newspaper that brought you back to me, says you may travel to brussels soon. It is a tribute to your life that they admire you, describing you as a man of peace and progress. This letter which is in your hands now, either in brussels or wherever, is timed to arrive in your post box the day before the woman from shanghai delivers the heart attack, arriving to see you off, will you see her approaching you? […] Before this decision is finalized we are on the beach, I drink more coffee. She moves in the sun, her head tilted to one side to get the sun out of her eyes. she mutters something in her sleep. I put my hand on her warm shoulder. She sighs contentedly.