Three Friends
Dominating the island with its vertical lines and sharp arches of powdery white stone, the cathedral was a continuation upwards of the mountain. From its triple doors a series of terraced gardens sloped downwards, with short flights of steps connecting the levels. When viewed from the boutiques at the pier, the cathedral seemed to have been hewn straight from the rocky peak. It was not possible to walk all the way around - the back wall fell away in a precipice all the way down to the rock beach where they swam every morning.
Inside it was light and dry and cool, with wall paintings in pastel colours reaching up to the high vaulted ceiling. They wandered from chapel to chapel in silence.
"This kind of place is far more interesting to me than Florence or Chartres. The vaulted ceiling is amazing. I could look at it all day." Christoff spoke, a tall well-built Belgian with a fearsome shaved head. From the moment they left Trieste he had attracted mistrustful stares. Not that he noticed; he greeted the trembling old shopkeepers with the same geniality and openness as ever, leaning across the counter in all his innocence to point at what he wanted to buy. If he'd been completely bald it might have been acceptable, but a wing of bristles extended from his temples to behind the ears. And then there was the dangling two ounces of brass earring.
The past week had been a month of experiences for the three of them, each day a rollercoaster ride through time. Living off loaves of bread, bananas, and cartons of juice, and snatching five hours of sleep sprawled across a train seat, each more dynamic and lucid than ever before. This was the first place where they'd stayed more than one night, but after half a dozen cities in eight days the feeling of pace and motion was still in them.
They left the cool interior and walked along a narrow path around the cathedral. The smooth paving stones meshed so tightly there was no room for a blade of grass to push through. At a dip in the parapet they searched the shoreline with their eyes. Across a stretch of calm sea the grey humps of other islets rose from the sea like an indolent sea-monster. A scraggly white line ran around close to sea-level: rows of little white houses.
The three friends sat on a low stone bench in one of the exterior alcoves, and it was there that they found, crudely engraved in the stone, the simple board-pattern for the same game they'd played on overnight train journeys over the past week. Christoff insisted on playing a game right there and then. He could feel the influence of the workmen who had played there centuries before, he could feel their spirits join with his. A security man stood watching them, as though to memorise each move and countermove.
"Let's go," said Colin, "someone doesn't like us."
"Ignore him, we're not doing any harm," said Christoff.
"We need to sort out somewhere for the tent. Let's go."
"Ha. You'd sleep on a rock. You'd sleep on a moving, shaking rock."
On the long intercity trips Colin had slept soundly every night stretched out on the steel floor, waking up with a cross-hatched pattern imprinted on his right cheek. Bullet-headed, black-haired Colin, the others wove a mythology of warrior-clans about him. The orc, they called him, reading out his description from the pages of a fantasy novel.
Hans was more reticent than the other two, outwardly less enthusiastic, yet just as committed to making the most of the trip. Totally dedicated to his studies during term, he was now making up for lost time. "You guys are saving me from over-education," he said, "I was in danger of becoming a nerd."
Often Hans had to hide a smile at Christoff's literal-minded approach. This had already embroiled the three of them in trouble before they even left the UK. Some pages from a travel guide had fallen on the floor. They stood accused of littering the train. The fine was affordable, but Christoff refused to compromise on his devotion to reason, and this led to the farcical situation of the huge punk gently explaining to the hot-headed British inspector that he was 'over-reacting' while the latter ranted about lack of respect and the destruction of public values. Of course the inspector was over-reacting - he probably knew it himself - but felt obliged to teach them some manners. They had to pay the fine each, or be thrown off the train.
"That's the ideal place," said Hans. He pointed down to an expanse of bare concrete close to the rocky shore, some apartment development abandoned when the currency crashed. As they trooped down the corkscrew road the white blocks wandered in and out of view. Taking a bearing from memory, they clambered a wall and crossed through a luxury holiday villa. At the other end was a two metre high barbed fence. They giggled like schoolboys when a six-year old girl came up from the private beach to open the gate, trotting past them without saying a word. An improvised gravel path led off across the rocks, apparently built by the residents themselves. It twisted just out of reach of the waves. A couple of minutes later it opened out to the abandoned foundations.
"Nice, we've got two courses of blocks to keep the wind off," said Colin. The hotels had charged inflated prices, calculated no doubt on the basis of their passports. It was Christoff's idea to trust to nature and sleep under the beautiful stars.
They rolled the tent out on the wind-scrubbed concrete and flattened out the creases. Nothing to do on such a balmy day but take a siesta. Who knew what way the weather would turn at night; it was good to get some sleep stored up.
Elderly walkers looked disapprovingly at the sleepers and discussed quietly if it was civil or criminal offence. A man with a dog stopped and gazed at them a long time, as though his stern glance might be strong enough to make them pack up and leave. He called his dog to heel in a loud voice.
Hans and Christoff discussed the ethics of the issue and came to the conclusion that, though it was a minor disrespect to the environment to camp on the beach, in this case they were morally justified as the prices on the official site were extortionate. Colin had no problem with his conscience.
"I never thought there'd be a place like this here. It's like an oasis in a desert." Christoff looked around the dance floor. A girl in a taut white sweater glanced over at them, leaned back against a pillar. She had black hair and blitzy eyes, glinting eyes that latched on things and held them in their grasp. Her glances locked on to Christoff, the drinks bar, the door, Colin, the bar again.
"There are many interesting girls here."
"Yes, I've noticed," said Colin.
"Why didn't we find it before? It's a lot better than those plasticky cocktail bars," said Hans.
For the previous two evenings they'd wandered from the harbour to the market place and back again, sitting in kiosk-sized bars and calling the bar attendants by name. It was fascinating to sit with their gin and lime juices and look out at the fishermen and traders, for a few hours anyway. After the bars had shut they'd prowled up and down the sea-front in a restless access of energy.
Then on the third evening, along the waterfront where they'd tramped on every cobblestone, they found a night club. Not just a night club, but an industrial-music night club with the names of top DJs stencilled on the door poster like a rebel proclamation. Hans had spotted the cut-out coffin. They followed a black arrow down a lane between high vacant warehouses. An old woman at the door took their money and insisted on taking their raincoats. She looked the same as the old woman in the state museum, or the one at the gallery. Wherever there was an admission price there was a grandma.
"I don't think the people here really appreciate what they're getting," said Hans. "That DJ really knows his stuff. I think this is stuff from a Rotterdam band called 'Loave', but it's so new I didn't hear it yet at home. We should talk to the DJ afterwards."
Colin nudged the other two and pointed. "Look at the way those chicks are dancing!" A girl wearing a pilot's cap stared at the ground as she hopped twice on one foot and twice on the other. She had obviously never seen MTV. Christoff shrugged.
"She's just doing her own thing. She's just getting into the rhythm and doing it her own way."
"Do you see over there," said Hans, "there's another room next to this. Maybe it's the chilling-out room." He scouted over for a look. "Yeah, they've got funky seventies stuff in there, I was thinking the hardcore might be too much for the locals."
She had been standing in front of him, almost leaning back against him, for ten minutes. The dance floor was crowded; lots of people stood with their backs to the wall to take a rest from the pulsating throng. She didn't move away from him, but remained just standing there, the nape of her neck close enough to breathe on. She had dark red hair, too deep and burnished a colour to be natural, straight hair that curled in to an abrupt end high on the back of the pale column of her neck, and she stood there quite still. He was straight-backed against the wall, his chin almost resting on her shoulder, and felt that now, now surely she must feel his presence, must sense it, pressing so close, and it seemed to him she must, she did, and she accepted it and he accepted hers and their auras, which at first had resisted each other, were now mingling, creating tiny links of attachment. A few moments more and he no longer felt uncomfortable standing so close to her, and knew that he could speak to her whenever he chose. In any case it wouldn't be possible to squeeze past without saying 'excuse me'. He waited, letting their auras mingle and bond, then thought of a question which she couldn't dismiss coldly. He touched her shoulder lightly and she turned to look up at him.
"Sorry, do you know who the DJ is by any chance?" Her face was an attentive blank. "Sorry, do you speak English?" he added.
-"Yes I do. What did you say about by chance?" Her accent was foreign, her syllables a little rushed and breathless.
"Sorry, what was that?" he asked.
She smiled and spoke in a firmer voice. "You asked me something first."
" - Yes, I was wondering who the DJ is tonight."
"Who is?"
"The DJ - the guy up there who plays the records. He's got pretty good taste." He suddenly felt that the question might seem pretentious. "Because the stuff here is so weird; it's all the latest stuff from Amsterdam and Berlin and stuff."
She smiled brightly.
"It is weird music. It's very modern, isn't it?" She had turned fully towards him now, standing almost under his chin.
"It's so new I don't recognise much of it," he said.
"It's interesting music," she said, perhaps reluctant to reveal her lack of knowledge. He could see her face more clearly now. She had strong features and dark brooding eyebrows. Her hair was straight and shone a burnished red in the light. Her features were too forceful for her to be acknowledged as a classic beauty - and there was a complete absence of coquetterie in her manner which put Colin at ease.
The music stepped up a pace. Most of the crowd were out dancing. Someone heading for the toilets squeezed between them, and she took one step back to let him through, then one step forward again. Colin smiled at her and felt suffused by her presence, and neither of them spoke for a while.
"Are you on holidays here?" he asked.
"Yes. I am here two weeks now."
"Where do you come from?"
"I come from Croatia."
"Really? I've never met anybody from Croatia before. What's it like there?"
"It's pretty boring. My town is not very big and there isn't much to do."
"Why did you come here?"
"My parents have a summer cottage here. We come here every year since I was small."
"Yeah, it's a beautiful place," said Colin.
"It's so boring. There's nothing to do here. It's just a place for babies to go on holidays."
He laughed at this.
"It's true," she said, "It's just for mothers and their little babies. This place here is the only interesting place in the nights, and you never know what day it will open."
"It's a strange place, this night-club," said Colin, "It's like an oasis in the desert. I mean there are no music pubs, there's no other night life, everywhere shuts at the dot of midnight, and then suddenly we find this place." He shrugged and looked around. "No advertising or any sign outside, we just sort of discovered it after we'd been walking around the island for days and just being bored stiff at night."
"Who are you with?" she asked.
"Two friends of mine I got to know at college. I started last year. Christoff from Belgium and Hans from Denmark."
"And you?" she asked.
"Scotland. Inverness."
"In the what?"
"Inverness. It's a town in Scotland."
She looked at him with admiration. "Don't you wear a skirt or something?"
Colin laughed. "I have worn one yeah, a couple of times."
"I'd like to see you in a skirt," she teased. He looked down at her light yellow and orange skirt. She pushed one brown shapely knee forward.
"I wouldn't wear your skirt though." She laughed giddily. "It's called a kilt anyway; the skirt that Scotsmen wear."
"Kilt? Like 'I kilt you'?"
"Yeah, kilt."
The music changed rhythm and then was blended into Lou Reed's 'Walk on the wild side'. She knew this song and rocked to it with her shoulders.
"Can you dance to this?" he asked.
"Ssshh, the next one," she said, and then a moment later, "What does 'Do de do de do' mean?"
He hesitated, examining her puzzled expression for a couple of seconds. She broke into a laugh.
"Fooled you!" She pushed him lightly on the chest. They went out on the dance floor for the next couple of tracks. They were fast energetic mixes with no lyrics. She kept her eyes mostly to the floor and danced with a minimum of leg movement.
The music changed again to a dense percussive tangle. They stood a moment, but it was impossible to find a rhythm.
"Let's stop," she shouted in his ear.
"That's my friend Christoff!" Colin pointed. Christoff was the centre of attention, performing a squatting dance to the impossible music. People pulled back to form a circle. He was a strong and skilled dancer, able to copy the acrobatic movements seen on music channels.
"He must be a very extrovert kind of person. He's like a rock star or somebody famous," she said.
"Actually he's a fairly ordinary kind of guy when you get to know him. That hair-do and his clothes make him look strange, but he's a straight-forward kind of guy. He'd never let you down. He's always concerned about being fair, and world justice and all that. You'd have to see him helping old ladies with their bags."
"No, I can't imagine it," she said, shaking her head. "Aren't they afraid of him?"
"They are! They are!," said Colin, "they take one look at him and hold on tight to their shopping bags and start screaming for help."
"Where's your other friend?"
Colin looked around him. "I don't know, I can't see him." They both stood against the wall again and talked about the people dancing on the floor, where they were from, what kind of people they might be. Every sentence they exchanged was tagged with a skittish laugh.
"Do you want to dance again?" he asked.
"No, not yet. I want to go outside for a while," she said, "the doorman lets you come back in again."
She sat on a low wall and looked up at him. He had to say something. She didn't look as if she was going to say anything. He had to find something to say.
"I really needed to cool down. I'm all dried out," he said. She closed her eyes and leaned backwards, swinging her legs to the muffled beat. The more she looked relaxed, the more Colin felt uneasy. He wanted to sit beside her, to take her in his arms, to get back that feeling of being soothed by her presence. He was outside of it now, distant again.
"Will we go down to see the harbour?" he asked.
"Why?"
He shrugged. "Just to see it at night. It might be nice. Or we could go back in to the music too, if you like."
"It's nice here for a while," she said. He sat down beside her. Colin was wondering if she was really beautiful, the incontrovertible beauty only seen on television or in a magazine photograph. He was trying not to look too hard at her. The girls at his college were all ordinary, some better-looking than others. They all had faces he could look at. But with this girl he felt unsure of himself, as though such beauty demanded something special, and he must find out what was needed to attain it.
"Actually I have to ring my parents before eleven," she said.
"Oh?" he grinned. She was younger than him, a year, possibly two. It was a significant difference. "You have to ask your parents if you can stay out late?"
"My parents went up to Rijeka for the week. I promised I'd ring them."
She stood up and brushed the back of her skirt with her hands.
"Will you wait for me here?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, and looked around, "right here?"
"No," she laughed, "Inside of course. You're not a bus-stop."
"So where have you been?" Hans asked with a big grin, "making contact with the natives?
Colin grinned back. "She's not exactly a native, but close enough."
Hans hooted, a trump card played. "So you hooked up with a girl! I was only testing you."
"-You didn't see her?"
"I didn't see you all evening, you sort of disappeared as soon as we got in. Did you take her outside for a walk in the starry night?"
"No, she had to go make a phone call. What have you two been up to?"
"Well I think Christoff has something going on. He seems to be talking to three girls at once - and in French too. I'm impressed. He gets a grade A for that."
Christoff's tall frame leaned over a double row of people at the counter. One hand reached out and grasped two beers and several colas. He turned with the bottles, eyes searching the room. Hans signalled to him: one more.
"Girls in the plural? How's he going to handle that situation? - Hey, Christo, those girls of yours are getting away. Did you tell them you're a barbarian?"
Christoff grinned. "You're not missing out. I don't know if they are just playing or if there will be something more. They are more talk than action, I think, but they are interesting to talk to. I like the signs they make." They clinked bottles and drank down the cool weak pilsner. Blond Beer was printed on the label. It seemed appropriate.
"I asked someone and they said this place closes in another hour," said Hans, "so whoever goes back for the bags won't have enough time to get back here. We should have taken them from the ferry station a long time ago."
Colin said, "How'll we decide who's going to go back for them?"
"Maybe we should all go back? There's only an hour left," said Hans.
"No, no, no," said Christoff, "we have to drink the night to the dregs. Unless you want to go back too Colin."
Colin shook his head.
"Then we'll choose by chance, maybe toss a coin or something," said Christoff.
"We can guess how many matches are left," said Hans, holding up a box and shaking it, "Whoever is most wrong is the loser."
"Yes, and you've counted them already you bastard," joked Colin. Hans put on an evil chuckle. They each guessed a number, which Christoff wrote down, and then counted out the matches. After taking an inordinate amount of time to make the few simple subtractions they finally discovered that Colin was the loser. They quickly agreed he was to pitch the tent on a sandy area close to the abandoned foundations.
He waited outside. The music boomed down the narrow lane. He walked to the entrance door and back again. Then he saw her, half running, half walking, her skirt flapping against her legs. She waved and slowed to a walk.
"It's just my hard luck," he said, "and just when the music was getting better too."
"But it's nearly over anyway," she said.
"Will you be here tomorrow?"
"I can't. I have to visit some friends of my parents. They live on the next island. I have to get the ferry in the morning."
"Oh!" he said, at a loss for words, "Well maybe we'll be staying a couple more nights here - I don't know, we've other places to see. Will you be back by then?"
"Yes, maybe," she said.
"-Then maybe I'll see you here again the day after tomorrow?"
"Maybe," she said, "But you know you'll probably meet me by accident if you're still here when I come back. The town is not very big."
"Yes, it's not very big. And we usually camp on the small stony beach on the other side of where the steps go up to the cathedral. You know, the place where the concrete walkway and the small strip of grass beside it are."
She nodded and said nothing. He needed to find courage and found it and took her hands.
"You can come and visit me in Scotland."
"That would be nice," she said, "but that would be too expensive to me."
"Then I could visit you in Croatia," he said.
"You would come to Croatia just to visit me?"
"Yes. You're . . I've never met anyone like you before. You're a special person to me," he said awkwardly.
"Oh really?" she said, and nervously took her hands away from his. "You see too much in me. You see too much in people," she said. Colin didn't know what to say to that. He waited for her to say something more.
"Well, do you want to give me your address in case I'm ever near Croatia again?" he asked. She went in to the cloakroom and borrowed a pen. She sat on the low wall and wrote the address with such an air of solemnity and hesitation that for one dark moment Colin had the horrible thought that she was writing a false address. Why should she give her address to a stranger she'd just met? Perhaps it had been too forward for him to ask for it, he thought. He could, after all, be any kind of oddball. But then after handing him the slip of paper she gave him a disarming smile and leaned forward quickly and kissed him.
"It was really nice to meet you," she said, "maybe you will still be here when I get back on Thursday?"
He jogged to the ferry station feeling light-hearted and alert, his mind racing ahead with plans of visiting Croatia. He regretted not offering to see her off from the ferry port in the morning. Still, he could check the times of the return trips from the next island and wait in one of the harbour cafes, drinking coffee and reading all afternoon.
Christoff strode out from the seething breakers. When he reached the band of bare rock studded with sharp cockles he had to pick his way cautiously. The water ran in rills off his naked body. He was well-built, tall, and with muscular torso and thighs. He paused a moment, leaning forward with hands on his thighs to recover his breath, then turned back and looked out to sea. Hans was swimming towards the shore a little further down the beach. It was early morning, and the sky over the hills of stony fields behind them was strewn with pink-tinged clouds. Christoff reached the smoother rocks and jogged the last few steps to where his clothes were bundled. He picked up a towel and patted the water glistening on his shaven head, then peered down at his shrivelled genitals.
Hans had climbed out of the water, and made his way on a converging path to the patch of coarse grass where Colin lay sleeping. The latter hadn't bothered to pitch the tent the night before, but simply lain down on an isolation mat with his sleeping bag pulled over himself. His two friends pulled extra dry towels from a disordered heap and scrubbed themselves vigorously in the cold morning air.
"I really needed that," said Christoff.
"Especially after last night," said Hans.
"I really needed that too," said Christoff with a laugh, "I haven't had sex for six months. I've been living like a monk. I needed to clear out all these . . . ," he inhaled through his nostrils, " . . tubes. Now I feel my yin and yang energies are back in balance."
Hans laughed. "You know, I'm not sure how I feel about that - sleeping with the same girl as you. It kind of feels weird. I'm not sure if it's healthy."
Christoff acted offended. "Do you want my doctor's certificate? What kind of suspicions have you got in mind? Anyway, maybe I should worry about what you might have."
"No," laughed Hans, "I'm sure it's all right. I was more thinking about her. You don't think she was a bit weird or anything?"
Christoff grinned. "She just wanted to have sex, and more sex. What's so weird about that? I doubt if she can sleep with whoever she wants in smalltown land where she comes from. But over here she can be a free spirit. A bit like me, really. She was dynamite though, I've never met a girl like her. If I think about her I'll have to go cool down in the water again. Don't make me think about her."
"She was a real beauty," said Hans.
"Don't make me go back in the water, I said. Those four times last night weren't enough for me. I could do it again. I wish there were more girls like her. Hey, how many times did you do it?"
Hans snorted, reluctant to answer. Colin had woken up and lay with his eyes shut, listening to the conversation. He was wondering if it was an elaborate ruse to make him regret being the one who had to leave early. At the same time he believed it: it would be just typical of Christoff to run into a girl like that, a free spirit like himself.
"So how many times was it?' asked Christoff.
"It depends on what you mean by 'sex'," said Hans. Christoff hooted with laughter. "How many different kinds of sex did you have? Oral? Axial?"
"Aw come on," said Hans, reluctant to speak any further.
"OK. Put it this way, how many times did you come?" asked Christoff.
"Four, maybe five," said Hans, "Now give it up."
"OK. OK. She must have liked you more than me."
"Did you two meet some girls?" asked Colin, sitting up.
"Yes," said Hans smiling, "some wild thing from Croatia. She was like dynamite."
Colin felt a fungus taking root in his stomach, swelling and seeping pores into his bloodstream. He forced his voice to speak.
"And will you meet her again?"
"No. I'd love to," said Hans, glancing up at Christoff, "but she's gone on the ferry to visit relatives on the next island. We'll be gone by the time she gets back. Besides, it might not be a good idea to meet her again. It was a once-off kind of thing."
The fungus swelled and bloomed and burst, flooding his system with its poison. Hans noticed the change.
"What's wrong with you, oh shit . . . was she the girl you met?" Colin shoved his feet into his shoes. He could barely see out through the water in his eyes. He snatched several times at his laces before he could tie them. Perhaps it was not the same girl. He seized on erratic memories of the previous night. Her finger nails, the home-stitched hem on her skirt.
"Do you think it was the girl you met earlier?" asked Hans, "Jolita or something?"
Colin had never thought of her by name before - the name didn't sound like her. She had thought it hilarious that he'd only asked her her name after they'd been chatting for more than twenty minutes.
"Yes," he said dryly, pulling his bag from the pile and walking off.
"Oh shit! oh shit! We didn't know," said Hans.
"It's not our fault," said Christoff, walking after him.
"Leave him alone," said Hans, "he'll be pretty mad: he's a Scotsman remember."
"Where's he going to go? He's got his bag and stuff. Is he going to leave us? He's a strange kind of guy. Remember when - "
"Let him cool off."
"Well fuck we can't sit here waiting for him."
Colin slowed down as Christoff approached.
"Honest, I swear we didn't even guess. We never saw you with her last night."
"I know. It's all right," said Colin.
"You must have liked her. She was a nice girl," said Christoff.
Colin was silent.
"You know, I admire you," said Christoff.
"You do?" said Colin, confused.
"Yes. You're so . . . passionate about things. You believe in things. I'm not like that. I kind of envy you. A girl might shoot herself in the head for you, but not for me."
"That's no use to me," Colin said grimly.
"Were you . . . in love with her - a bit?" asked Christoff shyly.
"Just go back to Hans." Colin began walking away again.
"Look, I'm sorry," said Christoff walking behind him, "I said I didn't know. Be fair! Tell me straight out: will you bear me a grudge?" Colin stopped in his tracks, and turned and looked him in the eye.
"No," he said, wishing him disfigured and maimed, retarded, paralysed, crawling on his knees with idiot eyes, and crushed and crushed.