If you think you’re sentimental, I wish you had seen my friend Diane. Farewell scenes in films especially would turn her into a blubbering baby.

 

She cried through all the classic farewell weepy scenes; her favorites were Bergman’s round wet eyes in Casablanca as she stares at Bogart, and Streisand brushing the hair out of Redford’s eyes in The Way we Were with a last hopeless hug in front of the Plaza as the soundtrack plays “Misty water-colored memories...”

 

But it was in Pepe le Moko, a hardboiled French film from the 30’s mostly set in the winding alleys of the underworld Casbah in Algiers, that she went through a whole packet of tissues. At the end, a young handsome Jean Gabin stands down by the dock, his sorrowful eyes searching for the woman he loves. She’s on the ship, bound for France, out of Algiers, out of his life forever. The camera pans the ship until he finally sees her, yells “Gabby!” (or another name, it doesn’t really matter). As he calls, the blaw! blaw! of the foghorn cuts off his words, buries them at sea.

 

I had met Diane at college at a Foreign Film Club meeting.  When we graduated, we decided to go to Europe. France seemed the logical choice since we were both French film fans, but one evening we saw a rerun of Zorba the Greek. That was it. Anthony Quinn dancing on the Cretan beach beckoned us both.

 

So there we were on a ferry from Pireaus, going to Crete, not the direct overnight boat but the slow boat leaving lazily around noon and stopping at many islands along the way. I just wanted to get there, but Diane was caught up in the journey. By late afternoon, we had docked at several islands, and she had taken dozens of pictures of white stone houses, blue and white churches, and the sea with sunlight reflecting on the water.

 

On the deck, I struck up a conversation with a vegetarian health food store owner from Eugene, Oregon.

 

“Everything is meat here,” he said. “Four days in Athens and I was afraid I was going to starve.”

 

He didn’t look in any danger of starvation with his round and flabby stomach that he patted as he spoke.

 

I felt sick, maybe from the boat rocking, and went in search of Diane. Excusing myself, I spotted her smiling and gesturing with a large man wearing a blue denim cap, the kind that covers those first stages of baldness. I saw him offer her a soggy looking meat pie. She seemed enchanted. I went back to the vegetarian, but he was giving someone a recipe for sesame eggplant parmesan. I hated eggplant.

 

Later, as we sat eating spaghetti and meat sauce in the dining room, Diane told me about this big gentle guy; he was from a tiny island near Rhodes called Halki.

 

“Just think, Karen, no hotels, no tourists, only fishermen and flowers!” Diane had a dreamy look, and I should have worried right then. He had left Halki in the early 60’s to work in Switzerland and was returning that summer 18 years later to fix up his grandfather’s house on the island.

 

He joined us briefly as we sailed into the Santorini caldera at midnight and watched the lights on the hills above. Spreading his arm in an arc he said, “Much people here,” and that was all the English I heard him speak. Diane didn’t even get his address when we got off in Crete, but the vegetarian made sure to give me his.

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A week later, vacation over, never having found anyone dancing syrtaki on the beach but lots of disco and drinking raki, we were back on the boat, stretched out on benches and feeling calm. Around dinner time the boat was nearing an island.

 

“It’s Halki!” yelled Diane.  We both looked over the railing as the boat neared. And there he was with those soft eyes, searching for her on the ship. Their eyes met.

 

He beckoned to her, “Come down!” She nodded.

 

“I’m getting off a moment to see him,” she told me.

 

“Diane you can’t!” But she had run down to the front of the boat. They were already pulling up the rope.

 

“Let me off!” she started screaming.

 

Passengers stared, and a crew member explained patiently, “Too late miss we leave now.” He patted her shoulder. “Next week boat miss.”

 

“Diane,” I ran up and grabbed her arms. “It’s okay.” What if the boat had left without her?

 

Up on the deck, she saw he was still there, staring at the boat as it slowly drifted away from shore. Of course he realized she wasn’t getting off, he must have seen them untying the rope. He yelled something; her name? Who knows? The foghorn blew. She never learned his name, nor anything about him, but she waved and wiped her eyes with a towel, waved and bid farewell.

 

When Diane brought in her pictures to be developed, the Halki photos didn’t turn out. They were at the end of a roll the employee explained, and she had ripped the film taking it out of the camera canister. In some of the old cameras it could be tricky taking out that spool of film. I watched her in the store as she held up those black opaque negatives for what seemed like an eternity, searching for a shape, a figure, a flicker, a glimmer of light in the darkness.