Out of the Line of Fire (10 page)

Um, she said, shrugging her shoulders. Isn’t this great.

She took another bite from her roll and with her tongue licked the sticky excess from her fingers. As she ate she half rose from time to time to get a better look at whoever was coming down the lane-way on their way to the beach. I watched as her eyes found and followed a boy about my own age whom we had seen the day before on the beach. She stopped chewing until he disappeared from view and then smiled to herself. She took another sip of her coffee and looked up at me.

What are you looking at?

Nothing, I said.

Yes you were. You were staring at me. What for?

I wasn’t staring. You’re imagining things.

I’m not and you were. But I don’t care.

She wiped her hands on her paper napkin and threw it at me.

Come on, she said. Let’s get our things and go.

Our favorite spot, at the far end of the beach, was sheltered by three old and very stunted olive trees. Beyond these, the rocks curved out in a long finger into the sea just far enough to form a shallow basin of cool clear water.

As we walked along the beach several of the older boys turned their heads to follow us as we passed, or nudged one of their less attentive companions who then turned to look our way. Occasionally one of them whistled or yelled something incomprehensible at us.

When we arrived at the olives there was already somebody swimming in the small bay. I recognized him immediately as the youth Elena had earlier watched so attentively as we ate breakfast. It was still early and the sunlight appeared to dance on the surface of the water and from where we were standing we could look down on the boy’s strong form magically suspended in the shimmering transparency below. Elena, too, had noticed him.

She placed her basket on the ground and took her beach towel from her shoulder and carefully laid it out. She stooped to adjust one of its corners and then stood, crossed her hands in front of her and, gripping the hem of her loose cotton dress, with one swift flowing movement of her arms, lifted it high into the air. For a moment or two she held her body in a shallow arc as she stretched higher and higher with her raised arm. It was as if she wanted to shake off any lingering drowsiness she may have felt from our early start. The contours of the muscles in her legs were visible as they tightened beneath her brown skin and I remember being close enough to see a few tiny curls of dark hair caught beneath the elastic of her costume and the flexed tendon of her leg. With one arm held high and the other arched to fluff her hair into a new disorder her breasts appeared flattened against her ribcage, but as her arm came down in a wide arc to fling her dress towards her basket I watched fascinated as they regained their former fullness. She ran her fingers around the bottom of her costume and then stood for a few moments with her hands on her hips. It seemed absurd to think that we had sprung from the same blood, that we shared so much in common and yet were so utterly separate.

All of this could only have lasted a matter of instants. It was as though I had been mesmerized by this vision of Elena reaching out for the sun, a vision which now repeated itself in my mind—her arched body, the wisps of dark hair, the sinew in her thigh and the contrast of her red costume against her honey-coloured body.

Elena’s voice intruded suddenly into my reverie and I turned back to catch what she was saying.

Wolfi…Wolfi, what’s the matter with you? Please come here, won’t you, and put some cream on my back.

She lay on her towel and as I began rubbing the clear liquid into her shoulders she squirmed with delight.

Oh it’s cold, it’s cold, she cried digging her toes into the sand.

I watched her looking down to where the youth was still swimming. He would glide in a wide arc and then flip over onto his back, holding his arms away from his body. Intermittently he moved them, driving himself forward. It was like watching a large eagle circling in the morning’s heat, beating its wings occasionally to regain height. Then, with a splash, he rolled onto his stomach again and swam strongly to shore. He walked up to where his towel lay a few metres away. Standing on the sand he appeared more slender than he had in the water. But there was something about his leanness, something about the way he stood that suggested an air of self-assured sexual indolence.

Elena was still looking at him. We both sensed that it was no accident that he had been swimming nearby. I was sure he had watched us come here the preceding morning. It was also obvious that he knew he was being watched. As he finished drying himself he turned and looked over at us. He smiled and said hello.

His name was Alexis. His father was a short and talkative Greek who had come to Germany in the fifties and had eventually saved enough money to open an import-export business in Hamburg. He had married a tall Hungarian woman whose first husband had been killed in the last months of the war. She had a habit of resting her hand on his shoulder when they were out walking so that from behind they looked more like mother and son than husband and wife. In fact, I remember the day my mother and father, Elena and I ran into them for the first time in the crowded market place. I had recognized Alexis walking ahead of us with what I assumed to be his mother and younger brother and had called out to him. As the three of them turned I was quite astonished to find, instead of the young unblemished face I had expected, that I was looking into the gold-toothed smiling face of his middle-aged father. Alexis introduced our parents to each other and oddly enough they seemed to hit it off immediately. I heard Alexis’ father explaining to mine that they had been coming here for years because he couldn’t stand what was happening to the Greek islands. Eventually we left the four of them at one of the outdoor cafés and we made our way through the narrow streets and up onto the ancient embattlements that once protected the town, from where we could look down to the water and part of the beach below. Further to the north, about ten kilometres away, we could just make out part of the old city of Dubrovnik.

As we stood looking out to sea, I could feel Alexis watching Elena out of the corner of his eye. She seemed to have grown quiet now that we were on our own. Suddenly Alexis pointed to a small boat far out on the horizon, barely visible through the heat haze.

Where? I can’t see it, Elena said, shading her eyes.

He pointed again.

There, just below the horizon. It keeps disappearing from view. Here.

He put one hand on her shoulder and drew her to him so that she could sight along his outstretched arm. He bent his head to hers.

There, you can see it again now. See…

Oh yes. I see it. It looks so small. God, I’d be so scared out there on my own.

The three of us fell silent as we watched the tiny vessel bob up and down far out on the horizon.

After a few minutes we decided to make our way down to the beach. At the bottom of the stairs leading onto the white sand an old man with a mule laden with sugar melons was stationed waiting for thirsty passers-by. He gestured to us with a melon in one hand and a large shiny knife in the other as we came down. Alexis held up three fingers and the old man broke into a gap-toothed grin. As he cut our three giant pieces he babbled away to us in a language none of us understood. Then he handed us each a large, black-pitted crescent of red flesh and raised his fingers to his lips and kissed them smackingly. We went across to the wooden pier and sat with our legs dangling over the edge. It was warm and as we ate pale drops of sweet juice escaped from our hands, sending tiny ripples to momentarily disturb the image of the sun floating in the still water below.

A few days later, the three of us were sitting on the beach when Alexis suggested we go and have a look at a small cove he had discovered on the other side of the rocky peninsula. Since we had nothing better to do we packed up our things and prepared to set off. The sun was already high and once we left the shade of the olive trees the heat quickly became quite oppressive.

Instead of making our way directly over the top of the rocky outcrop we headed inland towards a sheltered little path where Alexis said the going would be easier. We scrambled up the steep side of the exposed hill behind us until we reached the path he had mentioned and began to make our way along it towards the bent and twisted trees that grew along the escarpment of the ridge opposite. Once we had reached these we sat down for a few minutes to rest. Around us the air pulsated with the noise from thousands of invisible cicadas in the trees overhead.

How much farther? asked Elena.

About half a kilometre. In a minute or so we’ll be able to look almost directly down at the sea again through the trees.

We set off once more. Within about ten minutes we came to a small clearing where the path branched off.

This is where we go down, Alexis said. It’s steep, so be careful. Half way down the path doubles back and from there you get a great view overlooking the little bay below.

We started the climb down. At the bend in the path the little cove suddenly came into view between the trees. Alexis, however, stopped abruptly in front of us and motioned with his hand for us to be quiet. At first I couldn’t make out why, but as I looked across to the narrow band of sand opposite I saw a young couple lying in the shade of the escarpment not more than twenty metres away. They were making love. The three of us stood, silently watching, fascinated as the reverberation of the man’s sharp thrusting shook the form of the woman beneath him. They were like two animals, he holding her arms pinned against the sand above her head, his upper torso held away from her, while she clasped his buttocks with her encircling legs and seemed to pull him with increasing violence into her. With each thrust her breasts quivered and she emitted a short, sharp, unidentifiable syllable. She lay there pinned, staring back up at him, her body arched to meet his.

Then, abruptly and without warning, it was over and he subsided onto one elbow beside her. As he lay there the noise from the cicadas seemed to die away. It was as though we had suddenly been engulfed in a strange and palpable silence.

Clearly it was impossible for us to go down now and we turned to make our way quietly back up to the path above us.

None of us said a word until we arrived back at the olive trees. When we did, Alexis mumbled something about having to get back. He stood facing us awkwardly for a moment and then turned and started walking slowly across the sand towards the town. A few minutes later we followed him in silence ourselves.

*

The statement that every event has a cause carries strict necessity with it and therefore cannot be grounded on an inductive survey of empirical evidence. Causality for Kant and Hume is a relation between successive events—a cause is an event that regularly precedes its effect. In other words, it is an invariable antecedent.

While we admit events are necessarily connected, one must not, however, conclude that causal connections can be established a priori. All causal propositions are synthetic and empirical. There is then a nexus between logic and causality. In nature, in the real world, causality exists as an empirical syllogism. It is fundamentally metonymic.

Kant was prepared to accept that all experience is experience for a subject. ‘Whatever thoughts or feelings I have I must be capable of recognizing them as my thoughts or feelings.’ But for Kant, as has often been noted elsewhere, the subject referred to here is not something substantial; it is merely a logical requirement: ‘In the synthetic original unity of apperception, I am conscious of myself not as I appear to myself, nor as I am in myself, but I am conscious only that I am.’ This representation is a
thought
—not an
intuition.
Here is what Kant himself had to say:

The original and necessary consciousness of the identity of the self is thus at the same time a consciousness of an equally necessary unity of the synthesis of all appearances according to concepts, that is according to rules, which not only make them necessarily reproducible but also in doing so determine an object for their intuition, that is, the concept of something wherein they are necessarily interconnected. [A107–108]

Synthesis in general is the mere result of the
power of imagination
, a blind but indispensable function in the soul [in dem Geist], without which we should have no knowledge whatsoever, but of which we are scarcely even conscious. [B103]

*

Like most childhood holidays, before we knew it our holiday too was almost over. My father had decided to leave on the Monday to avoid the weekend traffic and it was already Saturday. We had not seen Alexis since the episode of the lovers on the beach and in the interim Elena had been moody and irritable, so I had spent the time on my own exploring the nearby villages of Kupari and Srebreno.

But our last Saturday was market day and everybody would be about. Despite this, all my arguing could not convince Elena to shake off her lethargy and join me for the walk into town. She just wasn’t interested. Instead, my mother offered to accompany me and we set off arm in arm in the bright morning sunlight. She was wonderfully happy and when we reached the plaza we decided to sit and have coffee at one of the sidewalk cafés and watch the people milling about the stalls that had been set up in the square overnight.

We had just finished and were about to go when I heard Alexis’ voice call out to us. I turned to see him making his way through the crowd. When he reached us he said hello to us both. Then he asked if Elena and I would like to go to the movies that evening.

I didn’t know they had movies here, I said.

Here the movies are an institution. You haven’t experienced anything until you’ve experienced movies Yugoslav style. It’s primitive but a lot of fun. Will you come?

Sure.

And Elena?

I think I’ll be able to talk her into it. What time?

Meet me at seven-thirty outside the Plaza Hotel. It’s on the far side of the square. Okay?