Writing on Crete

Writing on Crete, the fourth and last book of the Freewheeling series, opens on Emery, having departed Spain alone, making his way to Grez-sur-Loing, France, where he learns the George Sand Bookshop proprietor Walt Lowen has something he wants his vagabond friend to do for him. It involves Emery’s traveling to Crete on Lowens behalf and, at his expense, writing back to him up close about certain vague, intriguing things apparently going on there, in which Lowen, even from his distance, has somehow got himself entangled.

Old Lowen got Emery a flight out of Paris on a 1-300 B4 plane seating 315 people. The plane was soon twelve meters up, flying 870 kilometers an hour, passing over the snow covered Austrian Alps, next flying over Yugoslavia, then Albania, and on to Athens where luminous, delicious oranges were being sold on bleak, ashen streets. The grim city was surrounded on three sides by rough mountains Mount Parnitha, Mount Penteli, and Mount Hymettos. At the core of the congested city was Plaka. In Plaka there were cheap flop houses with communal bedding for half a dollar, where local wines cost seven cents a glass.

In the morning, Emery took a bus to Piraeus on the Saronic Gulf, hidden by clouds. He enjoyed early morning coffee at a harbor front cafe. Black-haired, brown-eyed sailors in green uniforms stood idly about. Emery had evening tickets for Heraklion, and so had time to kill. He'd be on the ferry traveling overnight to Heraklion. He walked to the town center. He ate bread and Feta cheese. It was very cloudy, very chilly. Back at the docks in the evening, he boarded the ferry, the Knossos.