The Captain and I shared adjoining back balconies that overlooked the courtyard, separated by a wall of opaque thick glass, an architectural veil behind which I heard him now moving from one side of the balcony to the other. I could not see him but felt his presence. He sighed deeply, and for a moment I thought he was going to speak. But it was my voice that first bridged the gap.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, in my most polite Greek. “But can you tell me how to turn on the heat?”
“There is no heat.” The building had voted to not pay for heat this winter, he explained. The costs were too high. “But this cold is very rare for this time of year,” he added reassuringly, noting it would warm up again in the next few days.
He could tell by my silence I did not find this comforting. “I have a few space heaters,” he added. “If you’d like them.”
“There’s one in my living room,” I said. “But I’m afraid of it.”
He laughed, then apologized, offering to come have a look.
Moments later, the Captain hesitated at the threshold, glancing around, focusing on my table: coffee gone cold, a half-finished beer, a bar of chocolate, my books and pens and papers and laptop. My two suitcases, one of them thrown open in the middle of the dining room. He was taller than I remembered. I realized I looked a little ridiculous, my hair covered in a navy beanie, wearing my father’s too-large fisherman’s sweater that I had found in a drawer.
His eyes were drawn to Nefeli’s early painting above the table. “She lived here, years ago,” he said. “A friend of my father’s. A well-known artist.”
I did not reveal my connection to Nefeli then. I can’t say why. Though much of it I would later discover he already knew. How my father and Haroula, Nefeli’s lover, were siblings. How Haroula had hid her sexuality from my grandparents, despite the years that she and Nefeli had lived here, in this apartment together, a fact I suspect they’d nonetheless known and simply refused to accept. Though I admit a hazy understanding of Greek inheritance laws, I do recall that children should inherit property equally. Some divide it up among themselves, assume ownership for this or that. Haroula died with nothing to her name. She wanted no property. She was against it. “Penniless like Sotiria Bellou,” Aris’s father, the novelist, used to say. There’s a photo in his house on the island of the three of them: he and Haroula and Nefeli dancing around a table, Haroula with her head thrown back in laughter, a black curtain of hair concealing Nefeli’s face.
I offered the Captain a drink, some coffee, but he declined. I showed him the contraption in the living room.
“Kerosene,” he said. He explained how to light it and I stood back while he did so, as if it might charge us like a wild animal. Then he moved across the room and opened the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. “You have to leave this cracked,” he said. “Not safe otherwise.”
“Carbon monoxide,” he added, in English.
I peered into the heater, at the flame, as if to see how close I could get without getting burned. I rubbed my arms, hugged myself. “Maybe I’ll just wear layers for now.” I spoke in English now. His use of it had been an invitation.
“It’s really fine. Just leave the window cracked, for venting. The whole place will warm in no time. But again, this cold snap will pass.”
As he was headed toward the door, I asked how long he’d lived here. He hesitated. I had not expected it to be a difficult question. “The apartment has been in my family but I’ve only recently moved back.”
“Me too,” I said. I did not ask from where, and neither did he. I thought about asking again if he’d like a drink, in the Greek manner of asking—insisting—a million times, but I did not.
•
I could not come and go discreetly in this building, and the afternoon was backgrounded by the echo of voices and footsteps on the stairway, the hum of the old elevator, the loud clatter of keys. The jet lag felt really terrible this time, and I could barely move my body, stuck in some sort of torpor. I wasn’t ready to see anyone just yet, not even Nefeli—as if I were waiting to first see Aris before anyone else, as if Aris was my link to the rest of the city. Eventually, though, I decided I should leave, if only to spend a little time outside the apartment before the sun disappeared. It was warmer outdoors than it was inside.
On the way home, I passed the tiny periptero across from my building. Not the usual freestanding kiosk, but a tiny storefront. Only one person could enter at a time, maybe two. “Myroula?” a voice called out to me, as if I were still my five-year-old self. I couldn’t believe that Sophia, the Italian woman, still owned the little shop. Today she wore purple: purple jeans, purple sweater, purple velvet ballet slippers. Eyeshadow too—purple. She had owned the shop since before I was born.
She kissed me before holding me at arm’s length so she could look at me. The last time I’d seen her must have been when I was in my twenties, visiting Haroula and Nefeli.
“I was so sad to hear,” she said. “Memory eternal.”
I nodded, thanked her. And because I wasn’t sure what else to say, how to extricate myself from her sympathy, I bought some more chocolate, a few more bottles of beer.
“The Captain bought almost the same things,” she said, handing me my change. “Plus cigarettes, of course.” She looked past my shoulder toward our building, as if the Captain had just appeared. “So hysterical about smoking, Americans,” she added, as if I both were and were not one of them. “You haven’t met him?” Sophia asked. Almost an accusation.
“Not really.” Not exactly a lie. He had not yet told me his name.
“A ship captain, though no longer working. He lived in America when he was young, too. Someplace cold, like you.” Sophia shared everything and nothing. I remembered she had a key to our building, and probably most of the apartments in it, entrusted to her by the tenants. I had still not found the key to the building and realized I’d have to ask to borrow hers.
Sophia was now telling me the other things she knew about the Captain: that he was friendly but reserved, that though she’d known him for decades he talked very little of himself. He had two children, twins, though they were living with their mother abroad. She stopped speaking and watched my expression. “And you? Children?”
I shook my head.
“A pity,” she said. “Why you girls wait so long,” she added. I’d gotten nearly the same line from the taxi driver, who surveyed me through the rearview mirror to determine my age. “Well. You have time. Me to kalo.” I didn’t have much time, if any, at all. I was already now referred to as “childless” as opposed to “without kids.” I’d come to see that as we age, things are measured not in terms of potential but in terms of lack. And here, in Greece, to be a woman of a certain age without children, well. Perhaps this is why Nefeli and I were so close. We understood each other, the thing we never talked about but that bound us together.
My parents, my friends, even Aris: all of them thought I had postponed marriage and children for a career. But how could it be that simple? I liked my work fine. But an academic position, for me, was not my identity. It was my financial stability. I was proud to have just gotten tenure. But it was not my sense of self. What, exactly, was? That was the question.