| OCR Text |
Show falling on the port of Pireaus. It has rained all day, but now the moisture falling from above seems to have no more substance than tha't blown up by the wind from the sea below. The Naxos is about to put to sea. Two Greeks in blue navy pea coats with turned-up collars and blue woolen caps are letting out the long slow lines, the gray hawsers that have held the Naxos to its berth all day. They are late; the boat is late; across the deck they shout urgent belated instructions at one another. The Naxos is twelve hours behind schedule. The difference between the day's first light and its last, thinks Garrett, no difference at all. Beneath the deck which rattles and shakes he can hear and feel the powerful engines, pulling at the line, tearing at the water. But they have not left yet, the line attests to that. On the dock, half a hundred people watch the boat's uncertain progress as it tries to back away. Ahmed's sister is among them. Then Garrett hears the gulls and looks up. Above the boat they scream and turn, then climb the gray sky only to fall forward, like clumsy acrobats, end over end. Before Garrett finds Ahmed in the barn, and long before Athens, Pireaus, and the Naxos, Garrett and Ahmed live together, share the rent on an old farmhouse situated among the fields and factories of Ohio. It is late spring and wet, a brown and muddy inland world. Neither of them are farmers. Garrett works in town, at the city |
