Collected Novels and Plays (46 page)

Several things needed to be said right off. But Mr N. & Lucine were back, a waiter following with glasses &: wine.

I wanted to explain about Orson—that there were differences between us, which had gone so far as to be dramatized by our present
coolness
estrangement. But Mrs N. had given me to feel that he & I stood or fell together. In her eyes at least,
he
had taken advantage of Dora’s age, I was taking advantage of L.’s youth. Was there no age that couldn’t
be taken advantage of? Well,
there was Mrs N.’s who would, for another 5 years if not for the rest of her life, turn everything to her own profit.

Both her implications, actually, were unjust. I would have liked to correct them.

We began talking about the plays. I said tentatively—the words were Orson’s, not mine—that the Greek myths had become more & more literary, that indeed, if it hadn’t been for Freud, we should have no key to their shocking power.

Mr N. observed that in Europe Freud was passé, Europe had gone beyond Freud.

“Where has it gone?” asked L., really wanting to know.

Mrs N. (breaking bread): Don’t ask him that, I
think
he could tell you! I
think
it has been written down in 500 books of varying thickness which Akis will lend you, or I will—on condition that you mislay them one by one.

Her tone was infectious. Having set out to defend Orson, I made gentle fun of him instead. It was fascinating (I said) how deeply O., as both a Greek & a “modern man,” longed to enter that world of myth. For instance, it had never been enough just to be on plain bad terms with his stepfather (my father). Orson wasn’t happy until he could see him as Aegisthus & Mother as Clytemnestra, instead of an ordinary well-off Texas oil man (Mrs
N. take note) and his Greek-born wife. By the same token Orson, in loving Dora, may have loved particularly the idea of her being “old enough to be his mother.” He had been analyzed (met the Sphinx); here he was in Europe. Between the Dowager Queens of Thebes and Diblos there wasn’t much to choose.

I still had hoped to show Mrs N. how little of a fortune-hunter Orson was. Her face told me I had succeeded too well; she would think of him henceforth as seriously unbalanced.

L.’s face showed something else. She’s taken not my words so much as my tone of voice. Later, under the full moon, she asked what had been wrong, why I’d talked that way. “You sounded like the N.’s, making fun
of everything, you know? Are you like them?” Meaning, O God, what? That I was false & superficial, that my heart was withered in my breast? No, I was not like them, I told her, & closed
that fearful little mouth with a kiss.

Still at table, L. asked where Orson was now. I’d begun to think no one would, & drained my wineglass before speaking.

“I’m not sure. In New York, the last I heard.”

“No,” said Mr. N., “your brother is in Athens. He telephoned my office last week.”

Sensation.

Mr N.: It has its pathetic side. He’s under the impression that he has a claim upon Dora’s property, specifically upon a small cottage behind the house, which he says she gave him. There was no legal agreement, I assure you. The cottage was never Dora’s to give. Under Tasso’s will, the entire property goes to Byron after her death. Your brother is asking us, nevertheless, to write to Dora, and to Byron, how shall I say? Sounding them
out—

Lucine (rich girl, identifying): Even though they’re married, he wouldn’t be able—

Mrs N.: They are married? Still!

Mr N.: Yes of course. But we have no Code Napoléon in Greece, whereby a man is entitled to his wife’s estate.

Mrs N.: It’s true? You married me for love, Akis?

Mr N. (pressing her hand): You see through me like clear glass.

I: But then you’ve seen Orson?

Mr N.: As a friend of Dora’s I thought it tactfuller to let a younger man in our office handle the case.

Mrs N.: He’s not going to court!

Mr N.: Ah no. He’s asking where he stands, that’s all.

L. (to me): You didn’t know he was in Greece? Don’t you write each other?

I begged her not to worry, O. & I would find each other soon enough.
That was the time to bring up the famous letter of last year in N. Y.—I’d broken faith, was no longer the person I had been, I had “sided against him.” The N.’s I don’t think would have believed me, or if so, would have been further prejudiced against Orson. One doesn’t
write
letters like that! One certainly
doesn’t try to answer them.

(In any case, O. can only just have arrived in Greece. Good Lord, it’s his sabbatical again. Seven years!)

Mrs N. came oddly near the mark. “You’re not close to your brother, then?”

I shrugged it off. We’d grown up apart, 15 years’ difference in age, etc.

“But you
became
close.”

“Yes. Well, only here in Greece. At Dora’s.”

“So—” throwing up her hands at the devious ways of life—“you are Dora’s friend after all! Something told me!”

“Dora told you,” I said smiling.

“Perhaps you’ve even taken her side—brothers have been
known
to quarrel over women. Akis, tu écoutes? It’s dramatic!”

(With people like the N.s, evidently, I could make light of O. But in my story he must be kept fine & serious. Which means that I must keep sprinkling my sandy heart with that view of him.)

This was our 2nd & last night. The N.’s had booked rooms in a hotel on shore, as being more comfortable than the caïque. I said goodnight on the street, I was going to walk a bit. At 1 end of town a wide white path led round tall cliffs, blue, pulverized in moonlight. L. caught up with me there. Once I’d kissed her she seemed to relax. I led her back to the hotel, my arm around her. Outside her room, kissed her again. I didn’t want
anything to happen.

Ouf!

I’ve been writing all morning, my whole body aches. The others are due back from Mycenae. Since I stayed behind, they can tell me what I missed. The plan, as of yesterday, is to sail for Diblos after lunch, pick up some clothes, & move on to other islands for a week or 2 of Pleasure. We
are all so congenial, said Mrs N., it was a shame to separate. (Is she really Mme Verdurin?) Lucine is so passive, any suggestion automatically excludes
an alternative. She said it sounded lovely. I said I was expecting letters which would have to decide for me. It will be NO.

Diblos. Past midnight. I’ve seen L. off on the caïque.

Her face in moonlight, gray & mild, as if about to
administer
receive an anesthetic.

Before that, in the empty street. Her bags packed, the N.’s already aboard. I stepped back from her, trying to reason. She’d given up her room. I couldn’t take her to mine.

face in moonlight, grown transparent, a darkness bleeding through lips & eyes. The cricket’s gauze-dry

“Yes I see.”

I said something.

She: You don’t want it to happen. You’re writing your book, you don’t need anything else.

I said we would meet again. Athens, America …

Eaten by light silver maw

The moon had risen and drunk the water

“I thought the Greek boys weren’t human beings, were animals really, thinking just of their bodies. It seemed so selfish—” Whispering.

She was right. The soul’s selfishness was worse. The thirst for pattern, whether that of words on a page or stresses in the universe. The hubris that invents tragedy for the glory of undergoing it. As I saw O., Lucine saw me.

In my arms once more. Take me somewhere. I don’t care. Please.

She was so young, she thought that to feel love meant that it must be returned. My heart went out to her. My flesh as well.

Neither cold nor hot, the moonlight had the flimsiness of gauze, the intensity of frost. It was a gas inhaled

Holding my hand for comfort
                            inhale this gas
            made by the cricket’s
voice
            acting on
dark bl
   indigo
oxygen
                                    blind I go!

3 a.m. Impossible to sleep.

An opening. Orestes arrives at the Acropolis by full moon, only to have the whistle blow & the gates barred to him.

I could have sailed with them. She thought I would, up to the last.

I had taken her to some rocks above the path to the slaughterhouse.

1.vii.61

At last, the House.

I am sitting on pine-needles overlooking the smaller cove, the one we didn’t bathe in. 50 yards away, the House faces across darker water to the mainland. It is, I imagine, “Othonian” in style, with balconies, an empty niche, all pleasantly run down. It has shrunken over the years, or else the surrounding trees—eucalyptus, mimosa, cypress—have grown to disproportionate height.

The “garden” was, is, paved with dirt, one of those that so often adjoins a 19th cent, plastered house. Trees, benches, marble fragments, the table, the geranium urns stand up from the flat ground like pieces of scenery. A plate on a bench. One recognizes it not from life but from productions of Chekhov. One came out of the front door onto a kind of stage apron, a squarish terrace which was in fact the roof of the cistern
—can
that be right? Beyond it rose the tips of small cypresses planted below; one could reach out and all but touch them. They, too, are higher now, but the flat empty space they protect still catches &: holds the eyes. A 10 or 12 foot drop. Across the water: the slopes of the lemon groves, like a modern “textured” hanging done in green & yellow wools.

Most of the action took place, had to, here on the terrace. Lunch, tea. Orson at his typewriter, Dora sewing. I close my eyes to see before me that recurring rubbery dessert of cornstarch & boiled milk & sugar, concocted for me alone by D. who said it would do good. I could get through a few mouthfuls each meal; after 4 days half of it was still left, hardening, a jellyfish in sun. At the meal’s end Kosta would come for instructions before taking
the boat to town. Maritsa, their soiled child toddling in her wake, would clear the table, dish by dish. One by one we too rose & strolled off. Last of all, the dog Kanella (Cinnamon). An act ending in a theatre where there is no curtain.

Chryssoula had known Kosta & Maritsa; they have moved to Athens.

It is there on the
moonlit
terrace that (Dora) confronts Orestes on his return from the lemon groves. At dawn. She has sat up all night.

Entering the house: a large square hall, staircase of dark wood. A window on the landing, some clear panes, others of green or amber, making it all the harder to see the old man’s paintings. We had to take them outdoors where they showed, I fear, dismally in the live radiance. Dried blues & oranges, villas, vases, women setting tables, windows onto the sea. Blossoms pressed in a History of Impressionism.

Orestes cannot understand why his brother is so touched by them—his own tastes run to Michelangelo, Grunewald, the monumental, the metaphysical. Picasso’s Guernica. Have him ask, when they are alone, “Why, (Name), should Tasso’s paintings move you so?”

The reply to be carefully phrased, for here we touch an essential point. “Perhaps because they
are
so slight. They will not
change ask
command anybody to change his life”—O. having quoted Rilke in the Athens museum.

(Dora gives the brother a little harbor scene as they are leaving.)

Also downstairs: the salon—furniture under sheets, a marble mantel; the library—window seats, Morris chairs, a gas heater, a Revue des Deux Mondes of 1936 with a dozen pages cut. Out in back: the well, the oven, the servants’ quarters and, further off, Orestes’ cottage.

His
cottage.
His
rock garden.
His
private cove. How proud & happy it made him! Two whitewashed rooms paved with hexagonal terra-cotta, interspersed with square black, tiles. Rush chairs. A low, wide window. His marble
trouvaille
on the sill. The table strewn with papers, dictionaries. His life-mask, plaster painted dull red, hanging above. Two wooden beds, woven striped coverings. The pillow Mother embroidered for
him—neon-pink & yellow flowers on black—which looked so sad, so cheap in Houston but was suddenly at home here

—for although she was by now thoroughly American, (Eleni’s) hands still did what they had been taught to do in her childhood.

All this to be recalled in idyllic contrast to the apartment Orestes & Dora take in New York.

A name for O.’s brother: Sandy.

Look! A figure is walking out onto the terrace: no one I have ever seen. He turns round, speaks, is joined by a girl in toreador pants. Why, this will be my “Byron.” He has overstayed the weekend.

He is deeply tanned, more gracefully built than the real Byron—than mine, I mean. A libertine?! And his hair is turning gray.

If Sandy ever returns to the House, he can think, “That was my youth, where it bloomed.” Will he need to recall his illness?

Once the buds opened, the red blossoms kept their shape for days & days, without perceptibly maturing …

I am so sleepy now. Slow bright tears of gum encrust a section of
mauve
bark, brownish mauve, like

mauve-brown bark, like rouge on a negress.

As they were leaving, (Dora) gave Sandy a little oil sketch of red geraniums.

2.vii.61

The Enfant Chic pauses, passing the café, to welcome me back. Mrs N. he pronounces
sarmante
. I smile & nod. But Mazmaselle Lucine, where is she? Gone. Then, like a cat pouncing: And your brother? I reply without hesitation: à New-York.

Seeing the Enfant reminds me, one of his beach friends, Giorgios, practised English on me today. Where are you from? Are you married? How old are you? Why not married? What do you earn a month? What does a car cost in America? A kilo of meat? One egg? It made, I thought, for a delightful conversation. I replied as I thought best, asked my own simple questions, & that was that. Neither knowing more than 50 words of the other’s language, we were soon reduced
to a friendly goodbye. (Who described talk between friends as the ticking of not quite synchronized clocks on the same shelf?)

Mrs N. shares George’s peasant curiosity, but oh the elaborate web she must spin to trap each new fly of fact—while G. can do no better than to thread a single strand across one’s path; one sees it from far off, & arranges to trip over it just to please him.