Black Butterflies Read Free Page A

be the same donkey. ‘How old is he?’
    ‘ She’s about fourteen by now. Come on, I will …’
    Marina ’s attention is caught by another donkey man. A Japanese girl is being helped up onto the last donkey in the line, and once she is uncomfortably aloft the donkey man lashes her bags to the lead mule. He stops his movements every now and again to twist his handlebar moustache. Neither the moustache, nor the action of twisting it, seems to suit his young age. A Japanese man is circling around them taking photographs, tripping over the cats sprawled on the cool marble flags.
    ‘ Who is that?’ Marina asks.
    ‘ Yanni, but his donkeys are no better than mine, we …’
    ‘ How old is he?’
    ‘ How old is he? First the donkey, now the man. Well, let me see. He was at school with my son, not the same year though, the year above I think, so that will make him thirty-five. Although anybody would be forgiven for thinking he is older. No humour, that one. Old for his age. Not like my boy, so full of life …’
    ‘ You say he was at school with your son. So he has been here all his life then?’ Marina tries to sound casual.
    ‘ He lives with his parents up on the ridge there.’ The man points above the houses to the skyline. ‘Hey, Yanni, there’s a lady asking after you here!’
    ‘ Hush up, I was just curious.’ Marina smiles and feels her cheeks colour.
    Yanni, with the girl and her bags ready, leads them off, holding the first animal ’s bridle. He glances at Marina before looking away again, with no smile, no pleasantry.
    ‘ Good day,’ Marina calls, but Yanni just hurries his animals on with the command ‘Dai’, and the procession ambles away, the Japanese man still photographing the spectacle and laughing as he chatters to the girl, who is hanging on with both hands, looking very nervous.
    ‘ You won’t get much out of Yanni. Now, which hotel am I taking you to?’
    ‘ No, no thank you.’ Marina smiles as if to ask his forgiveness as she walks quietly away until she is under the clock tower. She has no hotel booked, she doesn’t know where she is going. In fact, it seems ridiculous to be here now. She is not normally one to interfere. She looks around at the houses encircling the port like an amphitheatre.
    The houses highest up, Marina knows, follow the line of a gully which is hidden from view and extend all the way to a second tiny harbour a couple of kilometres from the main port to the west.
    The only destination she knows is the house she stayed in with Aunt Efi on the other side of this hill. The shallow steps up past the bakery could take her directly there, or she could walk right around the harbour and go along the coast and then inland up that gully to some steep steps which lead there, in no hurry. She looks behind her. The donkey man is watching her so she sets off with purpose towards the coastal path.

Chapter 2

    At the far end of the harbour the shops dwindle, and Marina turns the corner along the coastal walk past a jumble of jagged rocks. The port felt so busy and she is glad to be on her own. The absence of cars, bikes and roads slows the pace but seems to increase the intensity of activity at the port, which bustles with donkeys, handcarts and wheeled luggage. Marina takes a deep breath and exhales the rush.
    The sea sparkles. The rocks drop away and flatten off to the water’s edge on her right where a set of concrete steps have been laid to give access to the sea for bathing. By the steps she remembers there is a cave, with waves crashing inside, booming even on a calm day. She recalls young men jumping, laughing, through the hole in the cave’s roof to the darkened sea below, climbing out again and prancing their way back up, on the sharp, sun-baked rocks, to somersault from the edge of the cave’s roof into the deeper water. She had longed to join them, and had smiled at one of them but Aunt Efi had pulled her away by her sleeve.
    There are signs now, forbidding diving