High Life | 19 July 2008

The sea surface is smooth and mirror-like, and from the deck of Bushido I scan the coastline for the mother and baby porpoises who live inside a blue-green grotto off Assos, the tiny village which clings to a small isthmus between the island and a huge, forested pine hill crowned by a ruined 15th-century fort. It is a bad time of day to meet mother and baby, the sun is straight up and blistering, the air still except for the noise of an occasional motor pest disturbing both the porpoises as well as yours truly. I first made their acquaintance at sunset the day before. My friend Nicola Anouilh, son of the great playwright Jean Anouilh, and a Cephalonian by choice, knows every nook and grotto of this, the most dramatic of the Ionian islands. He took me on his rubber boat inside the grotto, turned off the motor, and we both slid silently into the clear, cool water.