CHAPTER 12
A Beach in Santorini
Her name was Nicole.
Yesterday afternoon I walked out of my hotel room, but not through the door. I had stopped using the door on the second day.
Seven days earlier, I had checked into the Kamari Beach Hotel, a four-star hotel on Kamari beach, which has nothing but pebbles. It was on the eastern shore of the island of Santorini, a mile north of the famous black sand beach called Perissa. My hotel was set on the back half of the property and overlooked a lush garden courtyard. A little farther out was the hotel’s large swimming pool, sheltered by rows of Hibiscus and lorded over by palm trees. Then a little farther was a pedestrian boardwalk, lined with open air cafes facing the beach, and then, as far as the eye could see, there was the beautiful azur Aegean Sea. The setting was exquisite and much to my liking.
My room’s louvered French doors were on the wall opposite the main door and were meant only for access to the small private patio, which intruded into the garden courtyard. But after the first day, I used them exclusively for coming and going. When open, which was much of the time, my room quickly filled with the fresh air that was flowing off the sparkling waters of the Aegean Sea. The rooms on either side of mine also had French doors opening onto small patios that intruded into the courtyard as well. If the other guests had been inclined to scale the low wrought iron patio walls, like me, they could have. But no one else was, and no one spent time on the tiny two-person patios anyway. So, I felt as if the courtyard was my private garden, and why not—I was the only one who went in and out of it.
The garden was a very special place, almost magical in its serene beauty, though it was overlooked by everyone but me. From my patio, I could see a nearly impenetrable perimeter of Hibiscus in full bloom, which lushly added to the garden’s privacy. And above me, was a canopy of hot pink Bougainvillea, extending from the balconies of the rooms above mine, thus creating a perfectly secluded secret world. Six Grand Canary palm trees were interspersed, like columns in a cathedral, filling out the canopy and putting the entire courtyard in sun-dappled shade during the hottest time of the day.
Passage through the lush courtyard was a thorny proposition—only for a bold and daring person, a pathfinder, someone seeking the road less traveled. It required deft footwork, the patience of a maze lover, and a joy for going where no one else had ever gone. I was that person. For the entire ten days of my stay, I never saw another person attempt to cut through the garden. Once, a service person saw me emerge from between a couple of six foot high Hibiscus plants and was surprised momentarily, but quickly recovered his “don’t look at the guests” composure, driven by hotel policy. I smiled like it was nothing. Maybe he thought I was peeing in the seclusion of the garden. I liked this route because it allowed me to avoid the obligatory greetings thrown at me in the lobby.
I particularly loved the palms in the courtyard. They were my favorite kind. They were a species I knew from living in Phoenix—a date palm that was native to the Canary Islands. There were lots of them in the Greek Islands. They had been introduced to the island by the Phoenicians, who sailed Mediterranean trade routes two thousand years ago. These palms were elegant and looked exactly like I think palm trees should look, not too tall and not too short. They would have been the choice of any Garden of Eden. They lent structure to my courtyard and order to its verdant chaos.
By the afternoon of my second day at the hotel, I was taking the garden route exclusively. During the week, once out of the garden, a pattern took shape: I would hike in the morning and into the middle of the day. Then toward the end of each day, when the temperatures were their highest, I’d go to the beach, swim an hour along the shoreline, exit the water, walk back in the ankle-high surf to my towel, and plop down for a while to soak up the sun and revel in my sense of wellbeing.
I had already been on Santorini on my own for three weeks. Sometime during the first week, which I spent in the village of Ia, the sunset Mecca of the island, I stopped talking to people. I didn’t need to talk. I effortlessly avoided shops and restaurants and spent most of the day hiking, sometimes for six or seven hours at a time, or reading Lee Child novels on the beach. I could buy my food at local markets without having to say a word. I didn’t feel like saying “Hello” or “How are you?” or anything that would reveal that I was an American. Any contact was too much contact. I withdrew into myself and became asocial and played it like a game. It was fun, actually.
At night, I’d walk the boardwalk, looking into the open-air restaurants, checking out the tantalizing dishes on the plates and the tantalizing dishes in the chairs, but not pursuing either. I usually went to bed early, reading until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, which was about midnight. This often coincided with the island-wide plugging in of hair dryers, as every young female tourist coifed up for a night of revelry till dawn. Despite the activity, I’d fall asleep with my French doors open. My room was close enough to hear the waves hit the shore, and that rounded out my idea of an idyllic setting for my summer vacation.
The days’ events on Kamari Beach became predictable and passed like clockwork, though for me, time had become irrelevant. I was living every moment in the moment and loving every moment, however solitary my existence had become. I was loving being a loner. I thought of it as my big fat Greek retreat.
On the day before my departure from Santorini, I went through my usual routine, enthralled with its simplicity and purity. By the time I got to the beach, I stood on it for the last time and imprinted the view of the sea in my memory bank. A hundred feet out, a string of fishing skiffs ran the length of the crescent of the beach. I imagined them to be moored for effect because I never saw any of them actually leave their moorings. Surely, they were there for ambience only—so that tourists could take photos of freshly painted, quaint Greek fishing skiffs, all dressed in varying palettes of Mediterranean colors, bobbing happily and reminding every tourist that this was Greece. Opa!
Beyond the skiffs was the open sea, dotted with distant islands that were engulfed by the overwhelming beauty of the blue light of the Aegean Sea, and with it, all the mythology that was stuffed into my head in high school. It was the sea of Odysseus, the man who destroyed Troy and dodged Poseidon’s trident, only to lose men to the Lotus Eaters and the Cyclops. Danger lurked everywhere, with no peril worse than falling under the trance of the enchantress Circe, who with a glance could turn men into swine. It was a timeless tale.
Only the toughest feet could walk on Kamari beach in the afternoon. Not only were the marble-sized pebbles annoyingly painful, but their blackness absorbed a lot of heat from the sun. The effect was as good as walking on a bed of hot coals. Very few people put a towel on the beach—almost everyone opted for renting one or more of the five thousand lounge chairs that ran the full length of the beach above the high tide line. It was a nice set up, especially since every set of two chairs came with an umbrella, making a day at the beach bearable under the summer heat.
I heard a different drummer. For me, an hour of surf and late day sun was the perfect antidote for a day of hiking mountainous goat paths. So, every afternoon I would seek a spot on the shoreline for my towel below the high tide line, below the umbrella line, and close to the surf. My towel was my oasis, and I hoped it would stay that way. I laid it out, anchored it with stones, sloughed off my t-shirt, kicked my sandals off, slipped on my Nike water booties, put on my Nantucket Red ball cap to protect my bald head from the intense rays of the sun, and waded into the chilly, but refreshing, surf for a swim that would take me the length of the beach. Today would be my last dip in the Aegean for what? two years? five years? forever?
I swam the length of the mile-long crescent about one hundred yards out and patiently worked my way around the skiffs and through the humpy swells that had been working their way to break point closer to the shore. Eventually, a cliff wall kept me from going any further, unless I wanted to swim out to sea. With that, I began my exit from the Aegean, wading with the wave
s and navigating the roiling surf, beach bound.
Walking out of the water could be tricky. The waves always picked up toward the end of the day, and they were beginning a show of their power, making it difficult for anyone to keep their balance on the way to dry land, especially if they got blindsided or were caught right in a frothy break, but the real challenge was getting a solid step forward on the rocky bottom. Everyone walking out of the surf walked like they were drunk. A lot of stumbling and an occasional knockdown made for a good show for the umbrella crowd. I was one of the few who made it the whole way without a knockdown.
Given my late afternoon departure to the U.S. the next day, I was cognizant of doing everything with the realization that it was the last time I might do it for a long time. This heightened every experience of my final twenty-four hours and created an intensity in my awareness of this spectacular Greek setting. My walk back to my towel was intentionally slow, almost an amble, a pace that allowed me to see an amazing panorama: strings of homes, which looked like white sugar cubes that ran up the treeless foothills, the bone-dry stretch of mountains of brown craggy rock surrounding the village of Kamari, the soaring limitless blue sky, a sea and sky snugged without an horizon line, and the pebbled beach of thousands of red and blue umbrellas painted by a pointillist at its far ends. It was a perfect day on the beach, probably for everyone. It certainly was for me.
As I was walking down the beach, through the last gasps of the foamy surf, my attention to the natural beauty of the island shifted to the natural beauties of the island. I scanned the umbrella crowd with a manly interest in the sighting of topless women, which wasn’t a particularly difficult thing to do, given this hot beach on a Greek island in the month of July. It certainly was a fun thing to do, and with each hit I was reminded how different American culture is and how unusual it is for American women to go topless on our beaches.
I was certainly enjoying the scenery and the entire experience of simply being on a beach on a Greek island, feeling carefree and as relaxed as I have been in years. I almost walked right past my towel. I guess it didn’t register at first as my towel because there was another towel fairly close to it—close enough for me, in my reclusive state of mind, to feel that it was next to mine. Six feet was close enough to cause this illusion.
I plopped down on my oasis, removed my water booties, admired my tanned toes, put my sunglasses on, and then discreetly stared at the towel that was intruding into my coveted space, searching for clues to the identity of the unwelcome intruder.
It was obviously a woman’s towel. The pink floral design told me that much right away, but there was plenty of other supporting evidence, including a tightly woven “beachy” straw purse and some girly sandals, along with a small heap of some light material in a pattern resembling the beach wraps that were so popular with women on the boardwalk. It was an open and shut case, but where was she? I looked in both directions on the shoreline. No single woman was in sight, just some little kids playing in the surf on the left and an older couple walking away from me in the shallows on the right. Maybe in the water—maybe she was out there somewhere, suddenly regretting her move into my space now that she saw that a live person was on the towel next to her. When she returned, I decided I’d be aloof, as if she were invisible. I didn’t want her in my space, but I wasn’t ready to abandon my oasis either. I decided to stick it out, defend my turf, and continue my loner life, oblivious of other people.
I scanned the water and waves in front of me, but saw nothing but floating heads. Then, one head faced the shore and exposed a pair of shoulders, as it rose out of the water and slowly moved toward me, as if adrift, not having yet begun the real climb out of the surf. She got my full attention. Possibly, she was the intruder. I could see it was a younger looking woman, maybe a lot younger than me. She paused to tilt her head back and moved her hands over her head to get her wet hair in place. Her shoulders were barely exposed. That’s when a wave washed over her. For a second, I thought she deserved it, if she was the owner of the towel next to me. She did the dip to her hair again and found enough purchase on the rocks underfoot to move forward.
I stared at her, though my head was aimed slightly askew, as I didn’t want her to know I was staring at her. I thought she was pretty, but I wasn’t really sure of that because of the distance. She made some progress moving forward but had a little trouble with her footing. Her shoulders rose out of the water, and a large step forward suddenly put her waist-high in the water, and that’s when I audibly said to myself, “Oh! My! God!” Now that she was moving closer to me, I could see that she was absolutely beautiful—a Bo Derek kind of beauty, like in that old classic movie 10 with Dudley Moore. This moment was the remake of that beach scene, the one that had caused every man in America to go silent and gulp. In front of me was a strikingly beautiful woman walking out of the surf onto the beach, every bit as beautiful as the shapely Bo Derek was in her skin tight, wet bathing suit. The only difference was that Bo Derek wasn’t topless. “Oh! My! God!” I muttered again, as she began the jiggly ascent up the slippery slope of pebbles. “Is it possible, Lord, that she’s the owner of the towel next to me? The intruder?” I prayed and prayed for a “Yes” from the Almighty. This would convince me that there is a God. I sat breathlessly for the half a minute it took her to traverse my universe and move into my space.
There is a God. Intruders are welcome into my world. This one was anyway.
I looked down the beach, away from her, pretending to be cool and aloof. That lasted less than three seconds. I simply didn’t have the willpower to look away. I turned toward her, to watch her claim her towel, the one next to me, with her radiating presence. She fell to her knees and stretched out on it, on her stomach, facing the open sea, dripping, nearly naked, and dreamlike. My heart was pounding. She turned to look at me, and we made eye contact. In that instant, I forgave her for her intrusion into my space. I wanted to make amends, end the hostilities, and just breathe her into my entire body. I lifted my sunglasses to my forehead and said, “Hi,” thankful I still had a voice after weeks of self-imposed silence. She said, “Hi” back with a French accent and asked me, “Are you American?” I replied, "Yes" and said, "Êtes-vous Française?” asking her with my best accent if she was French.
I hadn’t really spoken to anyone in over three weeks, and suddenly I’m speaking in French to a nearly naked angel.
"Oui," she replied. “Cela est trés intéressant. Vous êtes un Américain et vous parlez Française?”
She thought it was very interesting that, as an American, I spoke French. An uncommon occurrence, granted. It was very funny, I thought to myself, because I too thought it was very interesting that I spoke French, when lately I hadn’t been speaking anything. Why I took a shot at it, I don’t know, but I could speak enough for a petite conversation. Maybe that would be worth a few points. But how long, I wondered, could I keep it up, which in my mind, was an interesting choice of words. I was betting I could keep it up for a long time because I can speak French pretty well.
“Je m’appele Thomas. Avec plaisir. Et toi? Quel est votre nom?” It was a simple start. I introduced myself, told her it was a pleasure meeting her, and then asked her for her name.
“Mon nom est Nicole.” She said her name was Nicole.
Our conversation began in French and would continue the whole time we were together. We broke away from the beach an hour later, walked up to the cafe above us, chatted with great animation over a bottle of wine, and discovered that we could have a lot of fun talking to each other in her language. She had a suite at The Bellonious Villas, which was also a four-star hotel, next to my hotel. It was easy to agree to meet later that evening, refreshed by a Greek nap, the power of an hour in the shower, and some fresh clothes for a night on the boardwalk.
We met at ten o’clock at the same café where we’d been several hours ago. We picked up right where we’d left off, only this time she was dressed in a shear white cotton shift with white san
dals. She was even more beautiful, though I admit, seeing Nicole topless left me with an impression of her that was difficult to override with clothing.
The evening together was magical, and every moment was such an incredible break from my reclusive behavior that I was electrified, as if a million volts had been held on reserve for use in a moment exactly like this. Nicole triggered every neuron in my body, and we clicked like two star-struck lovers well into the night. At some unknown hour, after partying in one outdoor club after another, we went to her hotel room and enjoyed each other in every way the universal language of love could be spoken.
I didn’t leave Nicole until ten the next morning, spent, when a different kind of hunger took over. I returned to my hotel, cut through my secret garden, entered my room, devoured two bananas that I’d had in reserve and a hard boiled egg from my refrigerator. I took a hot shower and then collapsed on my bed in exhaustion.
Three hours later, I awoke totally refreshed and asked myself, "Did the encounter with Nicole really happen? Or was Nicole just a dream?" The answer is no and then yes. There was no encounter with Nicole. There was no Nicole, not even a towel next to me on the beach, but wouldn’t you say my imagination is working rather well? The truth is I had a great night of uninterrupted sleep, by myself. Thirty minutes after I woke up, I went to the airport and checked in for a puddle-jumper to Athens. I began talking again for the first time in many weeks. It wasn’t easy at first; the words didn’t exactly flow, but I felt great.
∞
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas John Dunker was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated from Indiana University with a B.A. and an M.B.A. and then enjoyed a thirty-five year career in advertising, which began in New York City. Besides being a writer, he is also an artist and paints under the name Tomaso DiTomaso. You can see his work at his website:
https://www.TomasoPaintings.com
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