Intimate Distance Read Online Free PDF

in bed. ‘Just until I help my parents for a while. Then we can decide when we’ll leave for Australia.’
    This is not what I’d imagined. He wants to stay, establish roots, while I’m left out, in the cold. He touches my shoulder, tentative. I jerk away.
    â€˜What’s wrong?’
    â€˜Nothing. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.’
    I want him to divine the source of my discontent without words.
    â€˜You sure?’
    â€˜Just let me sleep.’
    â€˜Why? Are you tired?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    He strokes my back with long sweeping motions.
    â€˜Where did you go today?’
    â€˜The temple by the sea.’
    He insinuates his right arm under my body, holding me from behind.
    â€˜Did you like it?’
    I let him kiss the nape of my neck, angling my head forward. His hands firm over my breasts.
    â€˜My mum and dad met there, did I tell you? ‘
    â€˜You never told me how he died.’
    â€˜Don’t really want to talk about it now.’
    â€˜Why? Is it too painful?’
    â€˜No – at least I don’t think so. I never really knew him. It happened when I was about eight, after he came to visit us in Sydney.’
    â€˜So tell me how it happened.’
    â€˜Really, Zoi, I’m too tired.’
    â€˜Why, did my brother tire you out?’
    He presses the weight of his body on mine, still talking.
    â€˜Do you like my brother, then?’
    His voice fierce in my neck.
    â€˜He’s all right. Don’t know.’
    He twirls his fingers round and round on my navel, tracing an imaginary line to my groin.
    â€˜He likes you, I know that.’
    His fingers stop moving and I feel him hard against me.
    â€˜Don’t, Zoi. They can hear us.’
    â€˜Don’t you want him to hear us?’
    I surrender to him, floating in that dark quiet space between time, borne along by the movements of his body, bodiless myself. My thoughts turn again, involuntarily, to my mother. There was shining light and bright water when she met him. Stranger. Older than her. Man in a cheap dark suit, with a squint in his eye. Olga was at the temple for the day and saw this tourist, this Turk, travelling for the first time in his life, though he tried not to let it show. He wouldn’t even take off his jacket, sweating under the columns. He paid the tea seller ten drachmas instead of five. Offered her the glass without averting his eyes as she drank. Slurped his tea noisily. Stood balanced at the edge of the rock, holding his shoes in one hand. Marvelling.
    A pounding crash, the waves reared up and drenched his trousers. She laughed out loud. This young man, he didn’t smile as he wiped his glasses carefully with a clean handkerchief. The spray salted her lips and she licked them slowly, showing her tongue.
    Fanning coastline, jewelled water and death rocks. Poor Aegeus; threw himself off the cliff when his son didn’t come back from Crete. All bad sons. Stern fathers, stern temple. View of heaven and water and no world in between. I close my eyes. Darkness, shot with streams of red and yellow. Capillaries of light. Blue water. Clear sky. My mother’s pupils, shiny as a bird’s in the dark. My eyes shut, Zoi carrying me on the wave of his need. I can’t even call it desire.
    7
    THE KITCHEN IS a mess after lunch: dirty plates and lamb bones and glasses with rings of wine around them. The television is on although there’s nobody watching it. I’ve just made up my mind to turn it off and start cleaning when I hear a shuffle behind me.
    â€˜Mara?’
    Zoi’s voice is low, almost a whisper.
    â€˜I got the contract – and I won’t have to work nightshifts anymore. I meant to tell you on Friday but things got in the way.’
    I don’t kiss him. I wipe my hands with stiff fingers on a teatowel. No congratulations. No answering flicker in my eyes.
    â€˜Well? It’s a great opportunity for me. For us. I know you