Tales of the City 06 - Sure of You

Sigourney.”
    The grass, which Mona had already sampled, was from the garden at Barbary Lane. Anna—who named all her dope after her favorite people—had mailed it to herself before leaving home. Despite the buffer of several boxes and four or five layers of shrink wrap, the package had reeked to high heaven when they picked it up in the tiny post office next to the Molivos police station.
    No one had said a word, however. Anna could get away with anything.

    An hour later Anna and Stratos left for the Dukakis natal site in a beat-up Impala convertible that, to hear Stratos tell it, was all but legendary in Lesbos. Trim and tanned, gold tooth glinting in the sun, the old guy looked almost rakish behind the wheel. Arranging herself next to him, Anna set about doing picturesque things with scarves. “If you can,” she told Mona as the car bumped away down the cobblestones, “find something Sapphic for Michael.”
    “O.K.” She trotted alongside the car. “If you don’t like Pelopi,” she said, “feel free to come back and use the house.”
    Anna gave her an enigmatic smile.
    “I’ll be gone for a few days…is what I mean.”
    “Yes, dear. Thank you.”
    As the car pulled away from her, Stratos yelled: “Sappho the Russian.” It sounded like that, anyway.
    “What?”
    “It’s a hotel. Remember.”
    She yelled after the Impala. “Sappho the what?”
    His answer was drowned out by a chorus of barking dogs.

    She finished up the breakfast dishes, then packed a change of clothes, locked up the villa, and hired a cab on the esplanade. The cabs here were all Mercedeses, beige and battered, with lurid and elaborate shrines to the virgin obstructing every dashboard. This was Mary’s island, really, not Sappho’s, and they never let you forget it.
    The trip across the island took several hours along winding mountain roads. For most of the journey her driver plied her with cassettes of bouzouki music, so there was blessedly little call for conversation. Beyond the olive groves the landscape became barren and blasted, made vivid here and there by roadside memorials to people who’d gazed too devoutly at the virgin and missed a hairpin turn. She was thoroughly nauseated by the time they descended into the green farming outskirts of Skala Eressou.
    It was a beach town, basically: two-story concrete buildings with tile roofs, a row of thatched tavernas forming a sort of boardwalk along the littered gray sand. At the edge of town, where she got out, a jumble of homemade signs offered various services for tourists. Among them, almost as crudely lettered, was one that purported to be official:

WELCOME TO SKALA ERESSOU
    Please respect our customs and traditions.
    Be discreet in manner and dress.
    Happy holidays.

    How fucking dare they? How many odes to discretion had Sappho ever written? She wondered if busloads of visiting dykes had become too demonstrative in the lap of the motherland and somehow horrified the Mary-worshipers. It made her want to rip off her shirt and grab the nearest woman.

    She walked along the seafront tavernas to get the lay of the land. Most of the other tourists were Greek or German. The British voices were North of England, people on package tours, pale as larvae, buying sunshine on a budget. She spotted several pairs of lowercase lesbians along the way, but hardly enough to qualify the town for mecca status.
    Thirsty and still a little queasy, she stopped at the nearest taverna and ordered a Sprite-and-ouzo, the drink she’d learned to tolerate in Molivos. She sipped it slowly, watching the beach. A bare-breasted fräulein with huge mahogany thighs was sprawled towelless on the coarse sand, reading a German tabloid. Her hair was bleached so white that she looked like a negative of herself. Mona made a mental note to pick up some sun block.
    The beach curved down to a big gray mountain crumbling into the sea. There were wind surfers in the sparkling water and, just beyond the next taverna, a queue of bathers waiting for an outdoor shower. Despite obvious civic efforts at making the place look like a resort, there was an irrepressible seediness to Skala Eressou, which she found completely endearing.
    But what of Sappho? Was there a marker somewhere commemorating her birth? Something noble and weatherworn, bearing a fragment of her work? Maybe she could buy a volume of the verses and read it while she strolled on the beach.
    She tried three different gift shops and found not so much as