Forgotten Garden

I’d been to Lefke once...for no more than an hour when the boat I was on made a brief stop for a few passengers to disembark. I was eighteen years old then, a college student on my way back to Athens to fly to New York, after spending a summer studying Greek history and language in Salonica.

From a distance, Lefke is a glimmering mass of mountains wrapped in a diaphanous blue-gray mist, a mass suspended over the sea that gives the impres­sion of faceless, ghostly apparitions...either the keep­ers of the island or imprisoned spirits that seek to break through the mist to eternity.

Was it Lefke’s dainty, ethereal appearance that I was drawn to, that I could never forget? I remember look­ing across the shoreline, at the sparse, sprawling villas gleaming in the rising sun, evoking utter serenity...a dream-place where one could spend the rest of her life. Many of the villas by the sea, I later learned, were owned by Lefkians who lived abroad but returned to their beloved Lefke again and again, many to die and be buried there.

I, of course, did not want to spend the rest of my life at Lefke, only a week or so if I could ever afford it.

But it was this one villa atop the rock rising over the sea that I glimpsed from the distance as the boat head­ed to Athens that I’d coveted for years and longed of spending some time there.

When the circumstances were fortuitous at last...I finally had made enough money from my last book and, worn out by the publicity stunts and interviews, my agent suggested I leave New York and take a long, much needed vacation before I plunge into my next project. “It’ll give you a chance to relax and think things over about your relationship with Paul,” she said, but seeing my discomfort at the mention of my fiancé, she added, with a controlled smile, “Who knows, you might find your next subject in Lefke.”