Getting to Know Michali

Writers are like Odysseus sailing through the siren-islands, insecurely lashed to the mast.

—Patrick Leigh Fermor, "The Aftermath of Travel"

It was December 1980 when I first met Patrick Leigh Fermor. Of course there had been sightings before that—a man with matinee-idol looks walking the road into the village, erect in a military sweater, going to fetch his mail. Or on the road down from the hills as he passed the professor's house I rented with Jonna, my first wife. We had been staying in the seaside village since August, two aimless young Americans sampling life abroad; and, as our Greek improved and this sunny coast came into focus, we discerned much talk about Michali, who lived in the villa to the south in the bay called Kalamitsi. Much was made of names. The Irish Patrick worked no magic in the Orthodox world, so in the war he had adopted his middle name, Michael, and to the Greeks he was henceforth Michali. To English friends he was Paddy. The former name was the legend, you might say, while the latter belonged to the man.

As for the professor, in Greek his name, Fred, came out as something like Friend, and it was in Friend's concrete and brick pile, not yet sufficiently hidden by fruit trees and climbing vines, that I found Paddy's Mani and Roumeli, and began to read. Then I bought A Time of Gifts at a shop in Kalamata and was trebly hooked. Eventually I borrowed Paddy's other books from the author himself and read them all straight through. I distinctly remember that his prose made me hungry, and I had to get up for a plate of figs and cheese before returning to bed where, opening his book, I dove into pools of bright prose.

So I had seen and read him. I desired nothing more than to be in the company of writers, as if their mojo might rub off on me—as if I too could be a writer and live in such beautiful circles. I had met Bruce Chatwin in the village and knew he was a guest of the Fermors. Now I nailed down a scrap of courage, jotted a note of appreciation, and waited. In due course a telephone call came from Joan, Paddy's wife, whose accent evoked an aristocratic universe I had experienced only in movies and books. Would we come to lunch? That would be lovely.

Admitting people like me into his life is one of Paddy's vices, the distraction of conviviality too often keeping him from his desk; but to this day I remain grateful to him for this small lapse in discipline. Over the years Paddy and Joan have meant more to me than I could ever convey to them—as models of graciousness, always curious about the world. More than two decades later it would be pointed out to me that Paddy was a youthful spirit, Joan an older one. He was all energy, she more reserved, growing into a wisdom I began to appreciate more deeply over the years and miss terribly now that she is gone. But Paddy was the dashing hero in ways he couldn't help, and I was a starstruck young writer with a smart and beautiful wife, and perhaps this childless couple found some harmless charm in that.

Though we had passed the bay and their villa many times on our walks to other villages, we had never been down to it and nearly got lost thrashing about for the trail. At last we followed the high stone wall of their garden to the roofed gate and were admitted to that extraordinary compound of cobbled paths and a house that combined the best Mediterranean ideals, large sunny vistas and an artful containment of stone and tile. Old friends were there, including Xan and Magouche Fielding, and we were the young interlopers briefly admitted to their intimate circle.

That first meal began as most others in fair weather would have, with drinks out on one of the terraces. Because it was winter...