"Now this one you have to look out for," Peter says, pointing with his spoon to a dish in the centre of the table-squarish lumps covered by bright red sauce. "It's a fruit called tarwon, but the sauce is very spicy. Quite a delicacy here, but Westerners usually have a hard time with it."
He's much more relaxed away from the office, charming and at ease. His house is splendid, very open, with high ceilings and polished floors and a swimming pool out back. I don't know why a single man gets a swimming pool when a family doesn't, but I suppose if you've been around long enough these perks fall your way. Patrick is perched on Dinta's lap, playing with his food, and Lila is sitting next to Peter, looking cool and gorgeous in a red batik outfit with a pattern of interlocking lizards running all over it. Somehow the way she's sitting makes me think she and Peter are together, though there's no real evidence. For no reason, too, I'm sure that Maryse has noticed and that we'll talk about it in the taxi back to our house tonight.
Maryse is wearing a new dress that she got at Wexfords, the shopping mall for rich people near the government section of town. She calls it her diplomatic dress, something she'd never have worn in her previous life. It's white cotton with blue stripes and buttons up the front, short-sleeved. She knows how well it fits and keeps glancing over at me and smiling innocently. She's talking with an Australian woman whose name I can't remember. I have to get the hang of introductions if I'm going to be a diplomat, have those names stick instead of sliding away immediately. The Australian woman has bushy brown hair and happy, easy eyes, and has steered around all the meat dishes. Marlene, there, that's her name. Marlene the Australian vegetarian. Maryse has quietly been extracting the details of Marlene's life, snippets of which I catch from across the table. She had an unhappy romance and was one credit away from a nursing degree in Melbourne when she abandoned it to work with the village children in the mountains north of Santa Irene. She rides up in the morning on the regular bus, but it's slow because of the roadblocks, so she's hoping to be able to stay in the villages for longer periods. Her Kuantij is very good. She saw soldiers drag two boys off the bus the other day. They hadn't done anything wrong that she could see, they were just village boys.
"That's happening more often," Peter says, and the several conversations around the table become one. I try the squarish lumps in red sauce. My throat burns suddenly, and my face flushes so hot I burst into a sweat. "The government has become obsessed with the Kartouf," Peter says. "It's something to be aware of."
I quickly take a glass of water, the burning subsides for a second, then comes back as soon as I swallow, so I drink again, trying to be inconspicuous. But even breathing becomes hard, and tears run down my cheeks.
"Sorry, the what?" Maryse says.
"The Kartouf. It's a rebel movement based in the mountains. The government is fighting it by rounding up village boys. Actually, it's misleading to talk about the Kartouf as a single entity, because there are so many factions now, they're very loosely knit. They had some backing from Iran, of all places, because the founder converted to Islam for about a year. But it's not a religious movement at all. Probably we should have some training on them. I'll see if I can get Bruce Wilson from the State Department to come over. Are you all right, Bill?"
"Fine," I croak, gulping more water, the sweat now pouring down my face and my mouth feeling blistered.
"You had the tarwon?" he asks.
"Yes." I try to show that I'm all right, but no other words make it out.
"Oh, honey!" Maryse says, standing up.
"The water actually makes it worse," Peter says, as I drink more. "Lila, could you ask Min for some yogurt?" Lila excuses herself and I have to close my eyes because without the water the pain is searing.
"What's the matter with Daddy?" Patrick asks.
"Maybe some ice?" Maryse suggests.
"No, the yogurt is best. Just hang on, Bill."
For several agonizing minutes the dinner party stops completely while I grip the table cloth and focus my thoughts on the next moment, the next moment, getting to the next moment.
"I did the same thing once," what's-her-name says, the Australian vegetarian. "It hurt for a whole day. The islanders love it."
Finally the yogurt arrives. I spoon it in hopefully, feel the coolness of it creaming against my wounded throat and cheeks. I open my eyes and again try to say, "It's okay now, I'm fine," but the words come out unconvincingly between gasps.
"I'm sorry, I should never have served the tarwon," Peter says.
I spoon in more yogurt. Gradually my mouth cools down. Peter talks a bit more about the factions. Patrick spills his juice on Dinta's lap and she laughs in the most infectious way, almost dancing as she pushes away from the table, holding Patrick and wiping herself with a napkin at the same time. Maryse apologizes again and again but Dinta just keeps laughing. Children can do no wrong here, especially boys.
There are more dishes, but my taste buds have been traumatized. I call it a near-death experience, which gets everyone laughing, but the pain and the heat and the hammering of my heart were very real.
"They use chilis in their torture here," Peter says nonchalantly over coffee. "The IS. They're brutal. We'll be having dinner with some of them on Saturday."
"What's that?" Maryse asks.
"There's a reception on Saturday at the Pink Palace," Peter says. "It's black tie. They have them about every two weeks here. Honestly, they just love protocol. Everyone who's anyone will be there. And the IS people-Intelligence Service-are the most charming of them all. Really. Most of them have spent time in Washington and London. They've been trained by some of the best. And they love what they do."
"What do they do?" Maryse asks.
"They brutalize people, especially village boys, whom they suspect of sympathizing with the Kartouf. Even if they don't suspect it they'll sometimes brutalize them just to send a message to others. You won't read about it in the newspapers, but there's a body problem in the harbour. Or least there was. I think it's been sorted out by now."
"A body problem?" I ask.
"Yes. The IS were disposing of their bodies, the Kartouf boys, by weighing them down with cables and rocks and pitching them into the harbour. The cables only last a certain time, and then the bodies bloat up and float to the surface. A lot of them, I gather, are taken out to sea by the tides. But fairly often they washed up on shore. Their hands and feet would be bound and there'd be burn marks and welts all over the bodies."
"Burn marks?" Maryse asks.
"From the electroshocks," Peter says. "It didn't get reported, really, because it would have been damaging for the tourist industry. But some months ago the bodies stopped turning up on the beaches. Roger Davis from the CIA told me that the IS are now slitting the bodies open before sinking them, so they won't bloat."
Peter has been careful not to say any of this in front of Patrick, and when he and Dinta come back from playing in another room the conversation switches.
"Who was Saint Irene?" Maryse asks.
"A Christian martyr," Peter says, evidently pleased with the question. "In Macedonia. She was hauled up in front of the governor along with her sisters and some others for failing to eat food that had been offered in sacrifice to the gods. She resisted all sorts of pressures, and was finally thrown naked into a brothel for 'moral punishment.'"
"Oh, my God," Maryse says.
"But she emerged with her virtue intact!-only to be hauled up again for hiding sacred texts. With her life on the line, and in front of the governor, she refused to implicate any of her friends. Finally she was burned at the stake along with her books."
"So this place is named after her?" Maryse asks.
"Yes, of course," Peter says, "although there is some debate. The first European here was a Spanish explorer named Enrico Vasquez. He and his crew went through purgatory to get here-they were down to about twelve men from the sixty they started with. They suffered storms, scurvy, they were even attacked by a sea-monster, Patrick"- no rise from the boy. He's exhausted. We really should be going. "Anyway," Peter says quickly, realizing his story-telling time is running out, "most people believe they named the island Santa Irene in memory of her suffering and steadfastness. But Irene is also the Greek goddess of peace, and there's a minority school of thought that says they were so thankful for this refuge, this peace of paradise, that they just called it Irene, and the Santa was added later when the island became part of the trade routes and the missionaries arrived."
"Room for both, maybe," I say, standing up, getting ready to go.
"Purgatory and paradise. Yes!" Peter says, also rising. "Most diplomats come to that conclusion after about the first week."
Patrick's asleep in my arms as we wait on the verandah for the taxi. It's pouring rain, the night is slippery, obsidian. Peter's gardener manages to find us a taxi, Peter tells me to pay the driver 1500 loros, and then we pile in the backseat, soaked from just the moment's pause to open the door. The driver speeds us through the streets of Santa Irene as if we're in a James Bond car chase, the only working wiper on the passenger side of the windshield so the driver has to lean over to see. But I stop thinking about it after a minute when I lose track of the streets. We're completely in his hands. I'm too tired even to worry.
"How's your mouth?" Maryse asks.
"It's okay. It's better."
"I was worried," she says, and kisses me for a long time, Patrick snuggling and snoring slightly on my lap, the driver speeding us to God knows where.
I was wrong. We don't talk about Lila and Peter. We don't even talk about Santa Irenian torture methods or the Pink Palace. We just kiss and kiss until suddenly we're stopped and home. I fumble over the money and try to ignore the driver's disappointment, staged or otherwise. Then we dash once more through the drenching rain, and even stripping Patrick, toweling him down, and pulling on his pajamas doesn't wake him. In our own bedroom we're much less gentle with our wet clothes, and I swear in the darkness that I can see steam rising from Maryse's body.
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