In the morning I say it. You come. You come, you stay ah for the breakfast.

In the afternoon I say it again. This is because the morning is finished and a person forgets. Also because in the afternoon they are thinking of the ferry, and the ferry is not until Thursday, and I would like them to stop thinking of it.

In the evening I say it many times. My wife counts. She says eleven. I say to her, then they heard it eleven times, and one of those times will be the one.

The people who come here are looking at the caldera. This is fine. It is a hole where an island used to be and they have paid to see it. My rooms do not face it. My rooms face the road and the wall of the house of Yannis, who does not repair his wall.

So I have the breakfast.

There is bread. There is the tomato, which is a good tomato, from a man I know, not from the truck. There are eggs. There is nothing here you cannot get somewhere else on this island for four times the money and a better view of the hole.

But at eight o'clock the table is on the roof and the sun is not yet cruel and you are sitting down when everyone else is already walking.

Some of them say maybe. Maybe is not no. I say it again.

Some of them say we have the early boat. To these I say nothing more, because a man with an early boat has already decided, and it is not my business to argue with a boat.

And some come. They sit. They eat the tomato. They say, this is a good tomato, and I say yes, from a man I know.

Then they go, and they do not come back, and this is correct. Nobody comes back to Santorini. They come once.

• • •

That is why I say it eleven times.