Vignette of a moment

We left Klara at the harbour and set off to find Leonard Cohens house. It was hot and the late Greek summer was dry an harsh. Blissful were the moments when the breeze flowed across the flat ocean from the Peloponnese, finding us as it did that late afternoon among the olive groves. 

Christos smiled at a waiter and spoke to him in Greek, I don’t know what he said, but there was a thud as my friend slapped the waiter on the back; they laughed and the waiter pointed to the steep steps that lead up the hill through the houses. Later Christos told me Leonard Cohen's son was sat right there and the waiter had pointed him out. 

 The stairs were rough stone. Probably they had been there for centuries, but they looked sturdy and inviting. Steps like this wind their way all around the island, which rises from the ocean in a crescendo and falls away just as  dramatically, snaked with labyrinthine stairways, alleys and tracks. The houses are all white walled with terracotta roofs and from far off it looks like the whole island has been tiled, as if the earth herself had thrown up its contents in a volcanic expulsion which landed neatly on the hills of Hydra.

We walked up the first few steps and the sounds of the harbour fell away. There were little purple and pink flowers growing from the cracks in the walls that lined our way. And higher up we could see the forbidding thorny lobes of prickly pears overhanging from a curated garden. 

I insisted in the quiet moments we stood by the house that we should’t take photographs. We looked at the paradise around us, and laughing, retraced our steps.