The Coming of Bright (32 page)

The
Fleur de Narcisse
had mesmerized the both of them, compounded by the sorcery of desire, and they could have spilled entirely from the balloon’s grasp without a surge of fear. They would have fallen through the bright in an embrace of life. For a few seconds anyway. Love may transcend gravity but it cannot conquer it.

Zora needed to bring her desire to fruition by bringing her lover to fruition, in a very physical, a very tactile, way. A very aromatic way. She lathered his penis in the perfume, and brought him inside her mouth. He was getting a taste of his own narcissism, or rather
she
was getting a taste. The bitterness of the narcissus against her taste buds was immediately overwhelmed by the fullness of his penis. She pulsed against him with her tongue, and encircled him, bitingly, with the very tips of her incisors. She heard him grunt and squeal. The sounds of a pig. She was showing him just how big of a male chauvinist pig he could be.

He was ready. He pulled her up straight, pushed her against the side of the basket, kissing—no, slavering—at her neck and her breasts. Without needing her hands or his to guide him, he knew her body perfectly by now, he entered her vagina in a smooth velvet motion. As he did so, her hand swung over the side of the balloon, and she dropped the bottle of
Fleur de Narcisse
. A sign that narcissism had surrendered to love—or the foreshadowing of a final tragic fall?

Either way, or both, the precious bottle belonged to Poseidon now. Neptune could bathe in narcissus. Victor didn’t even notice its descent, and Zora didn’t seem to care.

The view of the approaching mountains, on the northern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, was so spectacular that Victor wanted Zora to share it with him as they made love. He pulled out of her briefly, turned her around, and came into her again from behind. Aside from giving her a panoramic vista of the rocky land rising from the waves, this also elevated her to a new vista of pleasure, because he was able to reach around and massage her clitoris. They moved together so well, so fluidly, so much like a gentle breeze on water, that the basket of the balloon rocked only a little.

Three miles from the shoreline, where they would be passing near Panagia Kalamiotissa on their way to the northwestern slopes of Mount Helicon, Victor turned from stone to liquid inside of Zora. He withdrew from between her hips, and they helped each other back into their clothes. The winds were still taking them where they needed to go, Aeolus was still smiling upon them, the god of the winds apparently had no intention of hurling them into the rocks of Helicon.

Helicon was now fully in view, looming before them as it had before the ancients, majestic and forbidding. Mythic and deathly. Eros and Thanatos embodied in the earth.

“Did you know this is where Narcissus lost himself? Right over there I think, in a pool on the slopes of Helicon.”

He pointed toward the mountain’s western flank, at nothing watery in particular. He was definitely a better lover than he was a tour guide. For the first role, he used pure sensation; for the second, pure imagination.

Zora wasn’t done tormenting him with playful reminders of his narcissism. And her forsakenness.

“Let’s land then. I’ll wander through the forest like Echo while you stare into the pool.”

“I have a better idea. Look over there.”

He pointed toward another imaginary site on the eastern flanks of the mountain, now almost out of view as they floated by.

“The abode of Eros. Where his disciples believe he came down to earth, disguising himself as a rock.”

Zora couldn’t help but laugh.

“That would suit you too. You definitely know how to disguise yourself as a rock.”

She gave him a firm squeeze, right between the legs. He squealed again, even louder than when she’d had him between her incisors. He really was a swine. And they were many miles from Gadarene. But she had better be careful not to offend him, or offend his still-sensitive organ—she still needed him, organ intact, to land the balloon. Safely, not crashed and torn on the pinnacle of Helicon.

Eros had gone out of view. Nor was exploring his hiding places the end, the goal, of their journey. They had already done that, body to body, soul to soul, sailing on air between sun and water. Victor was taking Zora to Aletheia to reveal to her his darkest secret. A secret more sinister, more tenebrous, than the deepest shadows of Helicon, as dark as the depths of Hades. They had already felt ecstasy; they would soon feel despair.

He navigated the balloon down to earth, in the northwestern shade of Helicon, a mere two miles from the apex of the mountain. He landed in a field of flowers, narcissus flowers, white upon white upon white, hundreds of them. He had planned all along to land in this special place. A place where nature looked upon itself, reflected upon itself, its purity, its beauty, through the eyes of the living. And the memories of the dead.

They were a short walk from Aletheia. Beside a narrow road at the edge of the field, the balloon crew waited. As the lovers landed, the crew came over to secure the balloon and help Victor and Zora out. Walking away from the balloon, Zora felt regret fly through her. She had been carried through the heavens, and earth was not so divine. Aloft, Aeolus had done most of the work of the gods, but Victor had certainly helped.

They walked into Aletheia, past the town square. On the opposite end of the square stood a tiny museum. Zora knew this to be their destination—the limousine parked out front made it painfully, and luxuriously, obvious. The driver had already been sitting there for an hour, but he was being paid well for his time, and for all he cared, the couple could spend the night in town. Engaging in bacchanalian revelry. Little did he realize that they would soon be glad to put Aletheia behind them. Thousands of miles behind them.

The small bronze sign on the museum’s door bore a message in both Greek and English. Zora took in only the English.

Memorial Museum of the Aletheia Massacre.

Followed by a date,
6 March 1944
.

Things were already getting dark: the light in the sky, the secrets inside. Victor held open the door for her, and they entered the small hollow space.

The husband and wife who curated the museum, Magdalena and Yannis Papas, came up to greet the visitors—the only ones they’d had all day. They had spoken with Victor on the phone, in Greek, and were excited to meet him and the woman they assumed to be his wife.

When they actually saw Victor in the flesh, they wilted before his very eyes like dying narcissus flowers. Broad welcoming smiles turned in an instant to blank expressions of ashen dread. Victor said something to them in Greek; they muttered something back. Their words were faint and halting, like an echo of the dead.

Magdalena, who had staggered against her husband’s side upon seeing Victor’s face, now pulled desperately against his arm, and both husband and wife walked quickly from the room. Victor and Zora were alone.

Zora peered up at Victor’s face, searching for the meaning of their sudden isolation, her own face clouded. She was starting to feel agitated herself, her anxiety feeding off her hosts’ bewildering fear.

“What was that about? That was very strange. And frightening. I hope that’s not what Greek hospitality is like around here.”

“No, I thought that might happen. Come over here, you’ll see why.”

Zora looked around the room. The place was a chamber of names, hundreds of them, ringing the walls, each on a small plaque with a brief biographical sketch of the person who had worn the name in life, and wore it still in death. A few dozen of the names were accompanied by photographs of the people who had carried the names through the world. One of the images, of a young woman in a blue floral dress facing the camera from the edge of a bridge, was in color; the rest were black and white.

On a black metal stand against the far wall, tilted at a readable angle, was a sign about 2 feet wide. Casually, Zora looked down at the sign, and it took her brain a few moments to register what her eyes were seeing.

She screamed. She couldn’t help herself. Below her eyes, in black and white, was a picture of the man she loved, the man she had sacrificed so much for—dressed sharply, standing at attention, in a Nazi SS uniform.

Her mind reeled. How was such a thing possible? The photograph looked authentic, not staged, not recent—yet it was undeniably Victor.

She turned her eyes to the flesh-and-blood image of the man standing next to her, the
real
image of her lover, and away from the colorless picture on the sign. Or at least she hoped he was real, and not the simulacrum. She looked at him with the same horror that Yannis and Magdalena had worn on their faces. The same confusion. He simply pointed to the text beside the photograph. The English version.

“Read.”

They read the words together, silently, at the same time, with the same mind.

On the morning of February 29, 1944, Greek guerrilla fighters ambushed a convoy of German troops on a road outside Aletheia, killing over a hundred fascist soldiers. Among those killed was Generaloberst Friedrich von Vormann, commander of anti-guerrilla forces in the region and close confidante of Adolf Hitler. In retaliation for the attack, Hitler ordered the severest reprisals be carried out against the residents of Aletheia.

To fulfill Hitler’s order, Sturmbannführer Walther Rass of the Waffen-SS was dispatched from Athens with a detachment of troops. They encircled and then entered the town, forcing everybody from their homes. On March 6, all 471 members of Aletheia, ranging in age from 3 to 91, were taken to a nearby field and ordered to lie face down. What followed has become known as the Aletheia Massacre.

Without any help from his troops, and only stopping to reload his pistol, Commander Rass shot every member of Aletheia, young and old alike, in the back of the head. His troops then stacked and burned the bodies. After the war, despite the strongest possible protests of the Greek government, Commander Rass was not extradited to Greece to stand trial, nor was he charged with any crime by the Allied Powers.

Justice did finally come for “The Fiend of Aletheia.” Walther Rass was shot and killed by an unknown assassin in Mannheim, West Germany, on March 6, 1952.

Zora stared numbly at the sign, washing over its surface again and again. Her eyes could not yet form tears. The tragedy of words and images in front of her, all around her, confining her, paralyzed her, paralyzed her mind, paralyzed her heart.

Victor said simply, “He was my grandfather.”

She pulled her eyes away from the brutal, godly gaze of Walther and looked into Victor’s eyes. The feeling they held was infinitely different from the feeling she had pulled away from. She saw sympathy, she saw her sorrow reflected in his eyes. A sorrow deeper than hers. A sorrow borne out of perfect tragedy, carried like a gift of perdition upon the earth. She saw the man that she loved, not the grandfather who had given him his likeness. Not the man who had killed without mercy, who had killed with the passion of the damned.

Zora said, softly, “Thank you for showing me. For bringing me here.”

“We’re not finished. We need to read about the people around us, the victims and their stories, try to remember their lives and their loves.”

For well over an hour, that’s what they did, opening their hearts and their memories to the field of the dead on the wall. They spilled for them their tears. In the souls of those two people, in that small room, those hundreds of dead could find some small measure of greater salvation. Of greater justice.

When they got to the last name, the last story, the final memory, they walked outside. They left that sacred place forever. Together. Redeemed through each other. The darkest of secrets revealed, and forgiven, in the name of the simplest of gifts the earth can give. And the most profound: love.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

In the short time she had known him, Zora had traveled with Victor from the heavens to the depths of perdition and back again. She was Persephone who had gone with Pluto by love and not by force. Yes, her love had been a wavering one. But now, finally understanding his pain, his past, Zora could not bear to forsake him. She vowed never to leave him, nor to let her love ever waver. She wanted her love to mirror his love, her pain to deflect his pain, her laughter to mingle with his.

Their lives, their stories, their bodies, would be their blessing. Together, they could not, would not, fall prey to the vicissitudes of fate. Their love would be immune from tragedy. Romeo and Juliet be damned.
They
would not follow that inevitable path.

Early Sunday afternoon. Two weeks after their Grecian odyssey. The lovers recently risen. Tragedy banished from their lives. Hunger not quite.

“I have a surprise to announce at tonight’s meeting. Your idea actually. That damn idealism of yours. But first we need a meal. Something our patron god would approve of.”

“Who’s our patron god again?”

She needn’t have asked. The god in question might have disguised himself as a rock on the slopes of Mount Helicon, but he was the most fluid part of their lives, flowing between them like falling waters, like ascending winds. How could she forget Eros when he resided in every single one of her senses, holding her holding Victor, kissing her kissing Victor, desiring her desiring Victor?