Cast in Doubt Read Online Free PDF

of such simplicity?
    Kostas offers us brandy— raki —in small glasses, and though it is too early for liquor and against my rules, I swallow my drink in one gulp. Helen sips hers slowly. Kostas and I converse in Greek and he pats Helen’s knee which, I can tell, doesn’t bother her. She appears to accept everything, almost neutrally. The youngest of the village children gather around us, having heard that foreigners have arrived. We are watched by dark-haired boys and girls who stand mutely by the side of the road. They stare at us guilelessly and as if we were noteworthy. Helen waves to them. Kostas eyes her and tells me, in Greek, that I am lucky to have her. I explain that we are friends, but he does not accept this and wants to know if I will marry her. It is lucky that there are many words for love in Greek, but I think he allows only one, in this case. Helen won’t have understood any of this, but I’m certain she knows we are talking about her. To change the subject I ask Kostas to show us the ruins at the top of the hill or small mountain that is the background to this scene, the backyard to his house.
    He pours us another shot and disperses the children with a shake of his walking stick, perhaps a bull’s penis or some such thing. They scamper away. Helen waves good-bye, something like a queen or more likely a fairy princess, and sips a little more of her raki. I down another. To hell with rules, to hell with noon. It’s a high noon. Kostas takes her hand, which is little in his rough, big one, more like a baseball mitt—a catcher’s mitt—than a hand, and she follows him up the hill, slipping and sliding in his wake. He wears those black leather boots that reach to the knee and that, even though he’s probably worn them for decades, are stiff, very stiff. Most uncomfortable, I should think. But masculine, I suppose, in their stiffness. I’ve never thought of that before. Helen carries on up the hill, struggling but undaunted, Kostas pulling her after him. I trudge behind them silently, and the odd thing is that once we get to the top, nothing memorable occurs. I can’t, now, remember what Kostas showed us. A ruin, of course, which I’d wanted to see, and probably had already viewed, years ago, but we looked around briefly and Helen seemed uninterested, and I’m embarrassed to admit that it all escapes me. I have to admit also that I am a terrible sightseer, for when in the site I have set out to visit I usually experience disappointment, not unlike that which one has after sex. I don’t want to make too much of this.
    But one sight I will always remember has nothing to do with what we ought to have seen. Perhaps the ruin was so ruined it was almost invisible. Perhaps we looked at hallowed, sacred and flat earth. Walking down the hill, Helen slipped and fell. Those stupid shoes of hers. Kostas swooped over to her, lifted her up and placed her on his back, and this ancient man carried her in that manner, on his back like a sack of potatoes, all the way down the mountain. Helen’s legs stuck out from his sides. I wouldn’t tell her so, but in the heat of the day, with her skirt riding up and her bare, tanned legs exposed, it was as if, indeed, Kostas were having her, as if they were making the beast with two backs. At the bottom of the hill, when he bent down to let her slide off his back, he kissed her cheek. It was very odd, and I don’t know what she made of it. Or what he made of it, that peculiar intimacy. She was silent all the way home but kissed me on the cheek when we returned to town, a kiss that seemed to me a bond. That’s what I thought at the time.
    It’s not yet 6 P.M. The sun has already begun its descent, relinquishing its place at the top of the heavens. I watch Helen walk away, her round bottom swaying or shifting with each determined step. What is she thinking about? I have time to go to a movie, though my head feels dull and my eyes hurt from having looked continuously at the