THE ISLAND OF CHARON
a novel in the series
"PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY"
Chapter 1. The FISHERMAN
1.1. FISHING NETS
many years later
…Water, water, all around is water, and a panic horror seizes me. I try to float up to the surface, but for some reason I can’t, and… I am suffocating!
He woke me up. I opened my eyes and saw before me only the boundless starry Sky.
It instantly got dark on that Island.
“The Ocean comes here silently,” said the man grimly and held out his hand to me.
I got up from the white sand, just a little bit more and the hide tide would have swallowed me.
Besides…
“What’s this? Brrr! Whoo! What a nightmare! The Ocean threw a… fishing net on me?!”
I twitched and squeamishly threw it off.
“Hey!” I shouted to the man, who was moving away into the distance.
He turned around. I ran up to him and…
“Sorry! It seemed to me…”
He smiled. It was a strange feeling that I’d seen him somewhere… before. Probably… A familiar face? Or even a look? Otherwise, nothing special: tall, thin, black-eyed… without distinctive features. In a light shirt and blue shorts, with rosaries on his wrists and a pirate bandana on his head…
“Do you speak English?” I asked the stranger, and he nodded.
We slowly wandered along the Ocean to the beach cafe.
“I was on this Isle once upon a time,” I said. “I happened here accidentally, although… there are no accidents in life. I went on vacation to Cebu, met a compatriot, he spent winters there, and we decided to take a walk around the neighborhood. We got on the ferry. We didn’t even know where it was sailing us. But I liked Camotes. There is some mystery in this Island!”
“Have you been dreaming of coming back for all your life?”
“Yes, but not for all my life.”
“So, the man decided not to come back, didn’t he? That’s why you’re sad here all alone. Did you love him?”
“No, we had no affair, although, oddly enough, he felt something for me in his soul,” I smiled. “But did he have a soul? It’s a big question. He reminded me of the main character of the ‘Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens.”
“I haven’t read it.”
“An old man, an avid atheist and former financier. Many people called him a ‘secret millionaire’. He considered himself a brave Robinson, because after retirement he leased a cool apartment in the center of our city, while traveling abroad around Asia: Thailand, Indonesia, Bali, Philippines and so on. He aspired to female companionship. I think he felt very lonely. His parents had died long ago, he’d got a divorce, his only daughter had emigrated to Italy. He certainly lacked love, care and attention. Perhaps, because of the internal conflict ‘I want to, but for my age I can’t’, he became so angry and intolerant towards the opinions of others. Everyone around annoyed him, everything went wrong. By the way, his name was Alex. And what’s your name?”
The man stopped and looked into my eyes.
“Yanis. And yours?”
For some reason, his gaze made me feel uneasy.
“Alice. Is your name a Greek one?” I asked, and Yanis nodded smiling, and I supposed, “So, you moved here from Greece, didn’t you?”
“Yes…”
“I often spent my holidays in Greece, on the islands. It’s your cafe on the beach, isn’t it?”
Yanis nodded again and offered to come in for a bite to eat. I sat down at a table, he brought me his fish menu.
“Are you a fisher or just buying fish in the market?”
“I fish myself,” Yanis grinned.
“So, was it your net that the Ocean threw over me!?” I laughed.
“Correct! I set up nets around the Island every night!”
“Isn’t the net too big for fishes? Do you catch mermaids?” I joked and thought that I wasn’t hungry. “Would you bring me some shrimp to try?”
Yanis nodded again, and at the same moment I heard children’s sobs.