Grove Koger

Calvi

 

 

After flying into Paris, Sansom had taken an express train south to Toulon and, early the next morning, a ferry to Ile Rousse. Another train—a crowded, rickety little affair this time—then carried him past rocky coves and stands of umbrella pines before finally delivering him to a nondescript stop on the outskirts of Calvi. Now uncertainty overtook him. How close to his hotel was he? And was it going to be toward the city (south) or away (north)? He spoke a bit of French, but none of the shopkeepers he questioned recognized the name of the place. Why hadn’t he thought to print out a map? Cicadas were stridulating madly in the trees as he made his way down the shady street.

 

Finally, a woman carrying a bag of what looked like chestnuts pointed him in the right direction and everything fell into place; the hotel was set back from the street only a few steps away. He woke up a man dozing at a desk, handed over his passport, and in a moment found himself in a small room at the back of the building. It seemed pleasant enough—ochre walls, a big saggy bed—but when he slid open the glass door onto the little balcony, the shrill rasp of the cicadas washed over him and he closed it quickly. He remembered reading that at close range the noise could make you deaf.

 

# # #

 

After unpacking and putting on trunks and sandals and a loose shirt and throwing a towel over his shoulder, Sansom roused the clerk again and, poor as his French was, extracted directions to the beach. The route took him back toward the train stop and through a belt of pines—and there were those cicadas again!

 

Five minutes later he emerged onto the shore of the bay. A broad beach swept away in a voluptuous curve to his right, disappearing in a tumble of black boulders near the horizon, while Calvi’s imposing citadel rose above the other end of the arc. A flotilla of sailboats was skimming across the mouth of the bay. When he started planning his trip to Corsica, he had hesitated between Ile Rousse and Ajaccio, but online photos of Calvi’s long beach had decided him. In fact, they might have been shot from the very spot on which he was standing—the crest of a low, grass-tufted dune.

 

Bathers crowded the sand near the path, but Sansom found an empty spot a few dozen steps away. It was midday, and the sun was nearly blinding. When he tested it, the water was cool—cooler than he would have liked—but he plunged in and swam out a hundred feet or so and back before lying down on his mat. The sun that had felt blistering a few minutes before was now balm to his cold skin. He closed his eyes and the heat enveloped him. That and the tang of the sea air, the gentle susurrus of the surf, the murmur of voices here and there, and the idea—simple as it was—of being in a totally new place, a foreign place. Anything could happen here. Anything. The word echoed and re-echoed in his mind, anything, anything …

 

He couldn’t have dozed more than a minute or two, but when he opened his eyes, he was aware of someone nearby. He turned his head slightly to the right to see a raven-haired girl spreading her towel a few feet away. As he watched out of the corner of his eye, she removed her blouse to reveal a bare, uniformly tan back and the bottom of a black bikini. Ah, he thought, these French girls. He followed her progress as she walked into the gentle surf before finally plunging in.

 

He lost sight of her in the sparkling water, but she came loping back a short time later to her towel. What followed seemed to play out like clockwork as she emptied a small cloth bag and began rubbing lotion on her arms and legs and breasts. Glancing around at last, she saw him, and after a few seconds’ appraisal, twisted her head back over her shoulder, raised her eyebrows and held out the tube. French, yes, but could that nose make her Greek? That nose …

 

Sansom took the cue, rubbing the lotion onto her warm skin but without prolonging the operation. They exchanged smiles before retreating to their private worlds, Sansom thinking of the girl’s lanky body and of a profile he’d once seen in a Minoan fresco.

 

The next morning Sansom walked into town to visit the massive thirteenth-century citadel he’d seen from the beach, serenaded all the while by the ever-present cicadas. But his thoughts were elsewhere and the citadel’s picturesque ramparts were lost on him. He made a point of returning to the same spot on the beach at the same time as the afternoon before—and was rewarded again. The girl’s English was not much better than his French, but they were able to make the kind of easy chit-chat that lying beside each other on a beach encourages.

 

# # #

 

The third day Sansom helped himself to a pair of plastic glasses from the hotel’s breakfast buffet and bought a small chilled bottle of vin blanc on the way to the beach. As it turned out, she had brought a bottle as well, and they shared easy laughter and a short drink before she suggested finishing the wine in her apartment.

 

The nondescript three-story apartment building stood beside a straggle of pines only a few blocks from his hotel. Holding his hand now, she led him up two shadowy flights of stairs to a door that she opened with a skeleton key from her bag. As he watched, she carried the wine bottles across a darkened room through a doorway to the right and set them in an ice bucket on a night stand beside another sagging bed. Slatted blinds hung over a pair of tall windows, and streaks of bright sunlight fell in a jagged pattern across the bedroom and its furniture.

 

The windows themselves must have been open—the cicadas were sawing madly.

 

They kissed and for a few seconds Sansom couldn’t help thinking about her nose again and he was a little nonplussed, but the seconds passed and they were both excited and he took off her blouse and they stumbled onto the bed. She hooked a leg over him and pulled his head down to hers with both hands and their faces collided—collided! Under other circumstances he might have laughed. She sensed the absurdity of the situation too, and it hung there between them. She was breathing hard but she pushed him up and smiled seductively as she held up a finger.

 

“Un instant.”

 

Had she said that? Could he have heard it above the cicadas?

 

Then she did something very strange. Still smiling, and it really was a seductive smile, as if she were about to show him something especially exciting, she grasped her nose with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand and pulled. There was a moist pop, as if a small bottle had been uncorked, and she twisted over to the nightstand to set down what she held, and the cicadas were singing madly and she stretched her hands up to him again and pulled him down to her.

 

 

 

Boise, Idaho, resident Grove Koger is the author of When the Going Was Good: A Guide to the 99 Best Narratives of Travel, Exploration, and Adventure and Assistant Editor of Laguna Beach Art Patron Magazine, Palm Springs Art Patron Magazine, and Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal. He has published fiction, nonfiction and poetry in a number of journals, including Danse Macabre and Cirque, and blogs at https://worldenoughblog.wordpress.com.