It’s only at the airport that it starts to feel real.
He’s checked in, has walked through the metal detector, shoeless. The air’s filled with the thin odor of spent jet fuel. Security made him hold out his arms, spread his legs. They waved a wand over him, verifying he was not carrying anything he shouldn’t, that he’s left all things dangerous behind.
He has no right to be here, he knows. The money he used to buy the ticket wasn’t his. It was Sofar’s. It was N.J.’s. Still, he spent it.
Saying goodbye to his father was awkward, painful. It took all the strength he could gather. He was breaking from something he’s always had. It was something he needed to sever himself from, an umbilical cord that no longer provided life. It held him back. “I’ll be back,” Morris told his father. “To see you. To visit.” Seymour nodded, said nothing. His face was blank, his eyes hard. Morris could tell his father didn’t want to speak, feared his voice would betray his rigid façade. His son was leaving and he didn’t want him to leave; he wanted him to leave. The boy needed to be on his own.
To Morris, his home already didn’t seem his home; it was now a part of an older life. On his blank wall, where the world map had hung, Morris placed a single red-headed pin. It stood out, a drop of blood in a field of snow. “I am here,” he wrote below it.
“Okay,” Morris told his father. “I’m going.” Seymour held out his hand.
Morris embraced him.
Not one to display his affection, Seymour didn’t fight. He let his son hold him.
“I’ll miss you, Seymour,” Morris told his father. “I’ll miss you.”
Chapter 50
The smell of wild sage and sea salt hangs sharp in the morning air. Kos, Greece, with its whitewashed houses and jagged bluffs, all looking out to the sea. The craggy mountains are covered in thorny brush and wild flowers. This is the island of his mother’s birth. The home of his ancestors, of Hippocrates, and a resting place for Ulysses on his journey home from the battle at Troy.
Pili, the village his mother’s family is from. The narrow streets seem built off a drunkard’s design; they turn and rise and dip for reasons Morris can’t see. His aunt welcomed him as her son, took him in and made her home his. Christo, his cousin, has him helping with his business.
The light here is different than in New York, Morris has noticed. It’s stronger, heavier. Morris can see a difference, sees that it’s both tender and more potent, as though it can give birth to and kill a thing with a single beam. It colors everything in a way he’s never witnessed.
Morris feels a strength he’s never felt before, feels an aspect of himself he never knew. An aspect he likes.
Late morning and he’s at the village’s main café. It’s located near the fountain, a fountain that has flowed for centuries, the water rushing down from the mountain, working its way through the tons of stone. His mother drank from this fountain. Morris drank from it his first morning here; the water was so cold his teeth ached.
The café owner greets him, says hello in his stilted English. Morris orders a coffee, a snack. He has all the letters and pictures his father gave him, spreads them out on the table, studying each. The café’s empty save for him. The owner sets a small, thick coffee and a tyropita, a cheese pie, before him. The bitterness of the coffee fills his mouth.
From across the square, an old man with a face of weathered ravines slowly works his way toward the café. He takes a seat at Morris’s table. He could sit anywhere. He sits with Morris. “Kalimara,” Morris says to him, practicing his few words of Greek. He gathers his items, stacks them.
The old man greets him with a nod, then summons the café owner over, and speaking to the owner in a voice of creaking timber, points to Morris, then to himself. He reaches over and picks from Morris’s stack a photo of Stavroula, Morris’s mother.
The owner translates. “Mr. Paleo,” he tells Morris, “is related to you, far, far down the line. He knew your mother as a little girl.”
The old man taps the picture, then reaches across the table, takes Morris’s hand in his. His fingers are long, thin, like Morris’s. Morris feels the warmth, the kindness of the man. Feels the years and years of toil, heartbreak, and joy that this man’s experienced. His hands offer this all, a record of his life and all he’s touched, all that’s touched him.
The old man speaks again. The owner translates: “He remembers many things about your family. He wishes to tell you about them, about this island, Kos. It is your island, too, he says. You have its”—he searches for the proper word—“its soil; it’s in your skin.”
“I’d like to hear his stories,” Morris says, leaning toward the old man. He raptly listens. Wanting to know. Wanting to be told.
The old man speaks. The owner translates, the words shift from language to language. “There are two theories,” the old man says, his voice sonorous and resounding, like the earth sprung from his throat. Like life itself originated there. He tightly holds Morris’s hand, holds it like his search is finally ended. “The first theory,” he tells Morris. “After creating a world with water and soil and fish and plants and beasts that stand on two feet, God dipped his finger in the wetness between Athens and Africa and summoned forth the rock called Kos…”
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