my flesh has a soul. The quotation came from Colette, the French writer she loved and admired. She had often questioned its meaning and now at last she understood: her own body, her own flesh, was showing her the way.
Speaking Greek as she did, she was familiar with the observation that in the Greek language there are many ways to differentiate love, from the platonic to the parental, to friendship and the erotic. When she was on the brink of adulthood and starting to be interested in matters of the flesh it was the erotic love that caught her interest. It was Aphrodite’s love child with his love arrows that captured her imagination and intrigued her. Later, when she was older, Eros did strike her a few times but there had been nothing to equal the way Nicos made her feel. All she now needed was to find out if Eros had targeted him in the same way too.
She had been sitting alone under the olive trees, eyes closed, lost in thought, deliberating what to do about Michalis when Nicos arrived at the garden gate. He softly whispered her name, reluctant to disturb her in case she was asleep, but the sawing song of the cicadas masked his voice. He stood silently gazing at her as she reclined on the faded deckchair, eyes closed, her arms folded behind her head, her skirt slightly raised above her knees, and his heart swelled with desire. This unusual woman, neither Greek nor English but a child of the world, knowledgeable and bright, wise yet innocent and fun-loving, had got under his skin. He had been unable to put her out of his mind since he first laid eyes on her and he too had a great need to know if she felt the same way about him.
He stood motionless for a while, still gazing at her, when suddenly, as if she sensed his presence, her eyes snapped open. She saw a troubled look on his face: his brow was furrowed, his cheeks faintly flushed, yet his eyes were smiling down at her.
‘Oh! Nicos,’ she murmured, ‘where did you appear from?’
‘I fell out of the sky,’ he joked, ignorant of the significance of his words.
‘Were you circling above?’ she said and gave a little laugh. He gave her a perplexed look.
‘I was circling the village on my motorcycle,’ he said and moved a few steps closer. ‘I’ve come to take you for a ride if you are free.’ He moved still closer and took her hands in his, flooding her with delicious shivers.
He parked his motorbike under the shade of a stand of eucalyptus trees and mimosa bushes and they made their way towards a deserted beach, so white and so blue they were blinded by its glare. Throwing their clothes off, they ran holding hands into the surf and plunged into the cool waters. She had no idea how long they swam, diving in and out of rocks, coming up for air, chasing fish with bright shimmering scales that she had never seen since she was a little girl, when Keith would take her into the open sea with him. Finally, exhausted and exhilarated, they waded out of the water and collapsed under the shade of the eucalyptus trees. She lay on her back, limbs heavy on the sand, and looked through the branches at the flawless blue sky, holding her breath in anticipation of his touch. Nicos turned on his side, one arm folded under his head for support, and looked at her. His eyes held hers for a long while before he spoke.
‘Calli,’ his voice was low and throaty, ‘do you feel it too?’ He didn’t need to say more; she knew what he meant.
‘Yes, Nicos, I do,’ she said and felt her heartbeat throbbing in her ears as he pulled her to him. She reached for him and her touch made him catch his breath, and when she ran her palm over his forearm, she felt the goosebumps rise on his skin.
‘Stop thinking so much, and listen to your heart,’ her friend Josie often used to say to her when she judged that Calli was trying to be too accommodating, too compromising. Michalis, too, had said something similar not long ago.
Unable to ignore the clear voice of her heart and her friend’s advice, Calli was doing just that, listening, and not only to her own heart, but to Nicos’s too – apparently, he told her as they lay under the