A House Like A Lotus Part 28

"Kyria? Despina?" The old man was looking at me anxiously.

"Epharisto." I smiled at him and turned away from the cave and returned to the wooden seat he had first offered me.

"Parakalo." He picked up a candlestick and polishing rag. I sat there for quite a long while, holding the little bouquet to my face. There was something healing about the pungent smell. Then the bells began to ring, so I got up and left quickly, waving goodbye and thanks to the old man, and wandered across the courtyard to the cloister.

Omio was there before me, in the refectory section, sitting at a table and writing in a notebook, with another book beside him. He looked up and beckoned to me. "I promised I'd show you this." He pointed to the big notebook and pulled out a chair for me, watching me while I leafed through the pages.

He had set down in this book the stories of his people, first in Bakian, then in English. The stories were lavishly and beautifully ill.u.s.trated in bright watercolors. Many of his paintings and sketches reminded me of Max's notebooks.

Max would love this book of Omio's.

"Why does this man have so many wives?" I looked up from a story of a man with seventeen wives.

He laughed. "Seventeen is, lo, excessive, is it not? But to have more than one.wife was the old way. On Baki there used to be many more women than men, sothe 254.

kindest thing to do with all the extra women was to marry them. Every Bakian woman had a family to care for, and to be cared for by. My grandmother was, lo, my grandfather's fifth wife, and the most beautiful.

The children-there were many-thought of each other as whole brothers and sisters. If a woman did not have enough milk after childbirth, there was always another to suckle the baby." He smiled his merry smile.

"We were lucky on Baki." He put his hand down on the book, his long forefinger with the delicate pink nail pointing to a picture of a baby being held by a white man in a dog collar. "In some places the missionaries made the men get rid of all but one of their wives. Do you think Jesus would have wanted that?"

I shook my head. "It doesn't show much concern for the leftover wives."

"In Baki, the missionaries who came to us were warm of heart, and said only that when the children grew up, each, like my father, like me, should have one wife only. And this made reason because, with, lo, the new medicines they brought us, fewer male children died, and there were no longer many women needing men.

They -the missionaries-wanted the women to cover their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but they said little to those who went around as usual. They believed that, as time went on, we would move into their ways."

"Did you?"

He smiled. "We are still moving. The missionaries who came to Baki understood that differences need not separate. But they were followed by others, the military people, for instance, and their families. Some of their ways were good ways. But there were ways, too, which we did not understand."

There was a tightness in his face which I had not seen before. "Tell me-"

255.

Omio looked at me with his dark eyes, which were usually so merry but now were simply dark, the pupil hardly darker than the iris. "I'm not sure you will understand."

"I can try."

"Our ways are so different."

"Please."

"On this far island of Baki there came, lo, many Australian and many English people. We felt very fortunate when my father got a job working in the big military hotel they built. These people called themselves Christian, you understand."

I did not.

"Although many people, my family included, welcomed them, they did not think they had to treat us as they treated each other. When my father displeased them in any way, they beat him. One time they beat him so that he bled on his back, and then salt was rubbed into him. My mother bathed him and bathed him, making more blood to come to wash away the salt, and then took him down to the sea because the salt in seawater is healing. But I heard his screams."

I looked down at the open page to hide my horror; he had painted birds and b.u.t.terflies, vivid and happy. "How could you be Christian, then?"

He put his hand down on mine. "Oh, I think we could be. I think we were Christian, lo, long before the missionaries came, although we did not know to call it so. We knew only that the maker of the great whale came to us and was part of our lives, and the missionaries called this person who loved and cared for us by the name of Jesus. And we were glad to have a name for the part of the maker we had not known by name before." He turned the page, and there was a painting of the statue which had become so familiar to me at 256.

Max's, the stone carving of the man laughing in sheer delight.

If Max had ever told me that the statue was Bakian, I had forgotten. Seeing it in Omio's book was like the slap of a rough ocean wave. I had last seen the statue in Max's arms as she ran down the stairs after me.

Omio said, "The missionaries who were our friends called it the Laughing Christ.

Some of the others called it a heathen idol."

"Oh-Omio . . ." From Omio's painting it was evident that the actual statue was much larger than Max's copy, but the loving delight was the same. Had Max put the statue back on the landing? I looked at the joyous face and pressed my hand against my mouth to stifle a sob.

I hardly heard Omio. I was hearing, seeing, Max.

He said, "My father told me we must learn to love such people, because they must be sick in their minds, and only love could heal such sickness. When people have great power, lo, they become very sick, and must be loved as we love those who are dying. It was not easy, my Polly, after I had seen my father's back and heard his screams."

Suddenly he put his hand under my chin and looked hard into my eyes. I could not hide my confusion and pain. "My Polly," he said gently, "let us not hold on to past wounds. You don't have to bear it with me. I see you entering into the hurt of others, and I love you for it, but you must try not to carry too much."

His words echoed Max's the night she told me about her father, and the echo almost undid me.

He went on. "I do not think it is love if it is too easy. Have you not yet lived long enough to need to love someone who is not easy to love? Surely you have known people who have done wrong things and need to be healed."

257.

I bowed my head and a tear dropped onto the page.

Quickly I took a tissue from my pocket and blotted it, where it had fallen on the foot of the Laughing Christ.

I looked up and saw Bashemath and Millie walking toward us. I could not speak to them. I ran to one of the open arches and jumped down, ran blindly to the shadows of the fig sycamore.

I could hear Omio running after me, but I could not see him for the blinding tears. His arms went around me.

"You are not crying about my father." I blew my nose, shaking my head. "What is causing your tears?"

I could not tell him. I wiped them away with the palms of my hands.

"Who has hurt you?" he asked. When I did not answer, but shook my head again, he kissed both my eyelids, the still slightly puffy one first, then the other.

Renny had kissed my eyelids, too. Young Doctor Renier, with his stethoscope and white jacket and all- American face, couldn't have been more different from Omio, and yet they were alike in their experience, and my nonexperience.

When I woke up in the green shade of the sleeping porch of Nell, the nurse, she was sitting looking at me. 'I'm home only for a few minutes,' she said. 'I hope I didn't frighten you.'

'No.' A mockingbird was singing sweetly in the magnolia tree.

'I just need to get a few things. I'm doing a double shift, covering for a friend. Renny asked me to fix you some more broth. Here it is, donax soup.

It'll cure all ills.'

258.

'Thank you.' Even in my state of shock I was impressed by Nell's offering of donax soup. The tiny sh.e.l.ls are no longer easy to find, so it was a real gift. 'Thank you, a lot.'

'Renny'll be back a little after five. He's a good man. He'll be a good doctor, but that doesn't make a good man. Renny's good.'

'I know.'

She stood looking down at me. 'You're just a child.'

I moved my head negatively against the pillow. 'Not now.'

'Whatever it is, whoever it was, it'll pa.s.s, you'll get over it. People have bad things happen but they survive.' She turned away from me, took some things out of one of her drawers. 'You'll be okay?'

'Yes. Thanks for taking me in.'

'Make yourself at home. Wander about the place. There isn't much to it. But you'll be here when Renny gets back?' She was afraid I was going to run away.

But I'd already run away. There wasn't any place else to run.

'I'll be here.'

After she left I managed to drink the donax soup with its delicate ocean flavor.

At first I thought I was going to throw up, but I didn't, and I got it all down.

For some reason that seemed important, if only for Nell's generosity in giving me such a rare delicacy. Then I wandered around a little. There was only the large sleeping porch, and a living room with a couch, where she probably slept in winter, and a kitchen and bath. It was obvious that Nell rented it furnished.

I went back to the porch. To bed. Nell's bed.

Nell had given me donax soup, something special. Renny, too, always gave to me.

He didn't take. Straw wanted to take. Max- 259 /.

I started to cry, but crying was exhausting, and I fell into sleep in the middle of a sob. I woke up as I heard Renny letting himself in, hurrying to the porch.

'Did you sleep?'

'Yes.'

'Nell make you some broth?'

'Donax soup. That was really nice of her.'

'Nell's a nice person. A good nurse.' He perched on the bed beside me. 'I want to take you home, Polly.'

'No. Not yet. I need to-I'm too confused, Renny. I can't see my parents till-'

He stroked my hair back from my forehead. 'Why are you confused, Polly? Tell me.'

'Straw-' I said, knowing that I was incoherent, but not knowing how to make sense. 'He killed a tortoise, with some other guys, and he liked doing it-'

'Polly, honey, what's that got to do with it?'

'If you try to take love, it's as bad as-as bad as that.'

'Don't let someone like that creep upset you.'

'It's just that-he tried to take -and it doesn't work that way-it has to be given-'

'Hush,' he said, 'hush. Yes, it has to be given.' And he kissed my eyelids again, then my lips, the way he did when he cut the motor on the boat when we'd been together. And the kiss continued on past the point where he usually broke off. Then, slowly, he pulled away.

I groped for him, as though I were blind. 'Renny, please, please-' My lips touched his.

And he was kissing me again, and slipping the shorty nightgown over my head.

His strong and gentle hands began to stroke me, his hands, his lips, his tongue.

Gentle. Not frightening. Knowing what he was doing. I felt my nipples rise, and it startled me.

'Shhh,' Renny whispered. 'Shhh, it's all right, don't worry, just relax and listen to your body.'

260.

He was slow, rhythmic, gentle, moving down my body, down . . .

and I was nothing but my body there was a sharp brief pain brief and then a sweet spasm went through me and I seemed to rise into the air no more pain just the sweetness the incredible oh, the and then Renny, panting I pressed him hard against me.

He kissed my eyelids in the darkness, under the fig sycamore. "We'd better go back to the others," he said.

Omio said.

Bashemath and Millie were drinking tea, sitting at the table. I hoped I didn't look as though I'd been crying.

Norine came toward me. "Where were you, Polly?" she accused. "That same young man phoned you again, and I couldn't find you."

Bashemath said, in her calm, deep voice, "She doesn't have to tell you whenever she goes for a walk, Norine."

"Well, you missed him once more," Norine said to me.

"Is he going to call again?" I asked.

"He didn't say."

I wasn't sure whether I wanted him to or not. This 261.

world of Osia Theola was a completely different world from Athens, and Zachary seemed alien to it. Still, I was glad he had called. I was glad he had sent flowers.

"Tea, Norine?" Millie asked. "Polly?"