Sick on Santorini - Day 4

Hope

My eyes blinked open suddenly this morning around 8am. Not used to waking up so precipitously — I am more inclined to claw and scramble my way slowly and grudgingly over the course of up to an hour — I had to lay there for a moment waiting for my brain to kick in.

The first thing I realized was that I hadn't slept until late morning as is my eternal wont. This pleased me, to think that my long hours in bed and many naps over the past several days had finally satiated my body of sleep so that it no longer needed to prolong unconsciousness well past the noisy insistences of my alarm clock. Notwithstanding, I decided in my condition to play it safe and closed my eyes again to doze until the generous 10am setting I had left on the alarm.

My eyes blinked open again around 8:01am. This was because I realized a second thing: I could breathe.

I took a tentative sniff through my nostrils and found both tolerably clear. I wiggled my feet and found that the surprisingly large number of muscles in one's legs that must flex in order to wiggle one's feet didn't groan in protest. I took a cautious semi-deep breath and listened as only a mid-sized rattle clanked around my chest in the process. I even essayed a very small, quick double cough, but that threatened to turn into an unstoppable hacking session so I quickly retreated. I needn't push my luck. After all: I was getting better.

At 10am I arose and gingerly went about my morning, fully expecting the dizziness, weakness, fever, drippy nose, coughing, and withal to come crashing down on me. They didn't.

I took stock of my situation and my state, and decided I could attempt the outside world today for more than just a trip to the pharmakeio and a gyro for lunch. I called a hotel in Prague to book a room for next week, as none of the hotels I faxed ever got back to me, though I had always called immediately afterward to make sure each fax got through. Luckily, though, the first place I called cold, the Betlem Club had a single available for about $40 a night, so I booked July 12–14 there.

I briefly reconnoitered with my hoary legions of white blood cells to sign a pact that they would continue the fight against the insidious Scottish infection even if I abandoned bed for bus and made a short excursion, and glanced at the Greek word for "better" as I stuffed my dictionary in my satchel so that when, as I headed out the door and clambered up the stairs past the hotel's other terraces, the nice hotel lady interrupted her conversation with a departing couple to ask me something I could never translate but understood perfectly, I was able to reply "kalyteros" with a weakly triumphant smile, and she smiled back in that beatific, grandmotherly way.

The ruins of Akrotiri were half an hour away by bus, and interesting enough — though I can only imagine how the few houses they've yet excavated under the enormous shed of corrugated tin and plastic must have looked with their remarkable frescoes in place. These frescoes were currently being stored in the protective environment of the Athens Archaeology Museum until a suitable museum can be built here, but the famous images were reproduced at the site, of course: a lithe brown fisherman proudly holding up heavy strings of caught fish like bunches of bananas, two chestnut youths boxing, a frieze of flowers and long-leafed plants painted around the base of a wall, an oversized canoe bristling with men going off to war.

I asked the bus driver on the way back to drop me off at Boutari, the largest winery on Santorini. I had to wait about an hour for a tour in English, but occupied myself by reading today's paper thoroughly and drinking the vino santo (they've got it here, too) that the young lady at the winery's shop cash register brought over to me after apparently thinking I had flirted with her when I offered her some ibuprofen for her toothache (the French couple she had just been dealing with had been rather rude, and she had looked tired and schlumpy, so, reminding myself that folks behind cash registers are people too and that many other people seem to forget this, I had smiled and asked if she was feeling tired, which prompted the toothache revelation).

Of course, she was the one who ended up leading our tour, in Greek and English, and mostly looked at me while spieling off the English bit, which was uncomfortable, so I looked back as much as I thought necessary for politeness, concentrating on her carefully detailed inky eye shadow (thick as an Egyptian's on a wall painting) but spent most of the time staring intently at the sides of steel vats or the steel bands holding together the French oak staves of the aging barrels. When it came time for the tasting at the end, I notice she poured a considerably more generous splash of each wine into my glass than into the others. Maybe I should have kindness mistaken for flirting more often!

I knew, though, that two activities was seriously pushing my luck, so after the bus dropped me back in Fira, I simply picked up some groceries for lunch and dinner, and returned to my hotel for a shower and a nap I only vaguely felt I needed but knew I should definitely take.

And that would pretty much sum up Santorini. I finished editorial queries last night for the Tuscany book — or at least all those that I could answer off-hand; I've also made a five-page document consisting of as-yet-unresolved queries from throughout the book that I plan to put to bed via phone once I'm in Venice (where I arrive tomorrow at 6:50pm — I just love no-frills airlines!).

I ate dinner last night on the windy terrace of the Miranda restaurant, served my Santorini Casserole (rice, spicy meatballs, tomatoes and tomato sauce, and a few other things) by a Frenchman named Patrick who has worked summers in Santorini for eight years now after tiring of Paris' rat race.

When I realized that I did not have my wallet with me (I had headed up to dinner immediately after a nap, and had only pulled on long pants with empty pockets and had not, for once, taken my shoulder bag with me), he looked pained to have to ask me to leave something in hock whilst I returned to my hotel to fetch my money. I gave him my watch, commenting on how sad it was to live in a world without trust.

When I returned and Patrick had disappeared to get my change, the owner of the place and I discussed what people will do on vacation that they'd never do at home (like skipping out on the bill). He is a self-proclaimed idealist who runs the island's most popular Internet cafe (in a room off the dining terrace), goes against the throbbing-beat trend of the island by playing only jazz in his establishment (I got Nina Simone during dinner), and is a proud member of the Santorini society for strays.

He sells jewelry at the bar the proceeds of which go toward veterinary care for the island's legendary legions of homeless cats and dogs. He also implores visitors to adopt any animal they become attached to during their stay, offering to pay personally for all the shots, certificates, even the boat- and airfare to get the animal to the adopter's home country (just last week, he financed a French couple's return home with a Santorini kitten).

He then offered me a drink, by way of making up for having to be so suspicious, and I said "no thanks." "Ah, but you see, it is mandatory. Patrick! Give him a drink." Patrick, who had by now discovered that I knew a little French, was delighting in the chance to speak his native tongue and we held a brief conversation — well, he held it and I listened — on what the poor, deluded Greeks mistake for liqueur. He brought me a cognac.

It was actually quite excellent, and it just may have been that, and not the ouzo, that in the end effected the famous Grappa Cure on my cold and left me blinking myself awake this morning feeling almost, if not quite, back in the land of the hale and the hearty.

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