Palm tree

BURT’S RELATIONSHIP WITH CHARLOTTE AND THE PALM TREE

A homosexual woman cannot have an erotic relationship with a normal man. A palm tree cannot grow on rocks and dry soil. But sometimes nature works miracles. Charlotte falls in love with Burt and their relationship grows and wants to last

But wait a minute now. I looked at her painted church again. I sensed that there was something missing there, something important. It had taken away all life from her painting and left it with the dead stones. I looked at the real church. But of course!
“You’ve forgotten the palm tree,” I said.
“I haven’t forgotten it. I’ve left it out.”
“Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s unreal. Palm trees need hot, dry air. But they also need loose and wet soil. Ios is a volcanic island with scarce water. What would a palm tree be doing among the rocks?”

(Ch. 4, page 45)

She looked at all my pictures with care, although she carefully stood over a particular one. It was the one that was almost a copy of what she had painted, with the palm tree intact, of course. I liked the way her fine fingers had wrapped around my camera and the way she pushed its buttons. It was more than aesthetic. It was almost sexual.

(Ch. 4, page 47)

“I tell you love is in the stars,” she said. “We even chose the same subject. You took a picture of it and I painted it.”
“Give or take a palm tree.”
“You are quite wrong young man,” she said.
She took me to her workroom and found the painting in her large stand.
“Now what do you call this?”
It was the palm tree! She must have painted it later, over the empty landscape. I put my fingers on it and let them run smoothly over her paint.
“My God,” I said.
“You see, when you’d passed around that afternoon, the painting wasn’t quite finished. And you know why it wasn’t finished?”
“Why?”
“Well, don’t throw my question back at me. Why wasn’t it finished?”
“Oh, I don’ know.”
“Don’t just stand there like a big blob of meat. Look at it.”
There were some markings on the tree trunk, maybe a word or two. I looked closer. It said ‘Burt’. She put her hands on top of mine and held them over her painting.
“You see now why it wasn’t finished?” she said and her breath brushed past my cheek. “Because I hadn’t met you.”

(Ch. 8, page 88)

And I carried on up the narrow alleys until I had reached the four churches at the top, and once again looked at the majestic palm tree. Maybe Charlotte was right. I mean a palm tree had no real reason to be there, among the stones. On a digital photograph, one would think that it had been added through one of the software programs. But this was no touched up photograph. And you could not see through it like Charlotte had. No, the tree was there. It was tall. And it was real.
It was real enough to have markings on its trunk.
That was funny. I walked in closer. Fresh paint markings it seemed. I distinguished four letters and a heart drawn around them. Nothing could deter the young people. They were the same all over. I could even make-out the initials: C.K. & B.C.
C.K. & B.C.?
Good God, what had the silly girl gone out and done? How could she just go out and paint our initials on a tree trunk like a sixteen-year-old? How could she be so bloody immature?
But those names there were our own. And the heart that enclosed them was our love. They weren’t a bunch of indecipherable hieroglyphics. Nor were they on a photograph or a painting. No, they were permanently written on something tangible, something real. It was like an engagement ring.
It made it official!

(Ch. 10, page 103)

What I discovered there was a tree near a church at the top of the village, a palm tree amidst the stones. It had no right to be there. What little soil held its roots was terribly dry and impregnable. And its trunk was thin and long and you got the feeling that the northern gale would snap it off. But the years had passed and it stood. And on one of the stumps, which made up its trunk, someone had painted two names with acrylic paint. They couldn’t stay there forever. They weren’t drawn up on marble, like Homer’s name. Maybe someone would slice the stump off or scratch them out. Maybe someone else would stop watering the tree and the tree would shrivel. And anyway, even if none of those things happened, the tree was real. One day it would die, and the stump and the names would slowly disintegrate to dust. But until that day, the tree and the names would be there for everyone to see.
And they tell me that palm trees are not only majestic.
They are useful and live long lives.

(Ch. 23, page 220)