Wallace says that Stephen eats scraps these days. Roger harrumphs caustically. Poor Stephen, I declaim, and, in Roger’s direction, ask, have you no pity? I reach for my glass but can barely lift the drink to my mouth. And to think that, by comparison with Stephen, Wallace now seems sane. Roger bothers to respond only with, You’re drunk, Horace. Then he turns his chair around so that his back is to me. But where is Helen? She has disappeared. Has she run after our Nijinsky, our Stephen?
Yannis as usual has managed to appear from nowhere, like one of the Furies. He is begrudgingly at my side, but where has everyone else gone. Have I been talking aloud again or thinking to myself? Where is Helen? Yannis grabs my hand and pulls me out of the chair. He walks ahead of me, leaving me to putter along after him. A great rage wells in me. I want to strike him, to hurt him. I mutter something. He looks at me as a wounded animal might, but what have I done? I am infuriated by his reproach. I throw down some money, I throw it down on the ground in front of him. He turns again. There is on his face an expression of disgust so great that I must avert my gaze. Surely he cannot hate me that much. This is a dream, a poisoned vision.
Chapter 8
A yacht named Viridiana docked in the harbor the other day, a sleek white sailing vessel off of which my friend Gwen alighted, sleepily. She met the owner in Iráklion and took up his offer to sail here with him — a French-Greek millionaire — and his wife, who’s just French, and assorted guests. Gwen tells me the vessel sleeps twelve, all in one bed, and I can’t decide whether or not she is joking. She remarks that I’ve been away from the States too long if I don’t know.
Gwen is in fine shape, thin and energetic, yet she somehow exudes, at the same time, a soigné world-weariness. while here, she announces, she will work only on her tan, and me. Then she laughs. Gwen hugs me, not too tightly, and mentions being beat but not a Beat, not ever, and later, something about missing the beat or the boat. I’m not sure. She talks very fast, she always, has. I’d almost forgotten that.
It’s a tonic to see her, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, running her tongue over her lips, patting her knee impatiently. Lulu — she calls me Lulu — you’re looking well for a beaten man. She is capable of using one word or metaphor all day long, in as many different ways as one could. Gwen views Yannis through her jaded eyes, and it is as if I can see him through them. I know she is suspicious of him and our arrangement, as she is naturally suspicious about everything, and certainly exaggeratedly so about affairs of the heart. Gwen has often remarked she has no heart for the heart, that hers just ticked over and died, stopped beating ages ago, that she goes through the motions. Her heart’s wound up, ready to spring, like a dog on a bone, but really it’s only the motions, the emotions. Statements of this kind often issue from her, but in fact she continues to fall in love over and over again, even if heartlessly. She has carried on an affair with a friend’s husband for years. I’ve nearly given up men, she confesses. But I’ll never quit smoking.
I lead her to her room, which is one floor below mine. A bouquet of flowers carefully arranged and placed in a locally made ceramic vase has been set on the white dresser. Nectaria put the flowers there, to welcome Gwen. I think Gwen is surprised and pleased. People who expect bad or poor treatment are usually overcome by kindness. I would never allow anyone but Gwen to call me Lulu.
It’s so nourishing to talk with Gwen. We talk and talk. I embellish the stories about Alicia and Roger, and then offer my tale of Helen. Gwen listens, scrutinizing me, getting the story. Her lips caress and hold tight a Greek nonfiltered cigarette. Her dark eyes, which slant upward, are narrowed. When I’ve finished, she repeats, You’ve been out of the States too long, Lulu, you’re becoming one of those expatriates. She waves her hands in the air, indicating, I suppose, a dizzy expatriate, a confused one. A predictable expatriate, she explains. Then she adds, Horace, girls like Helen are a dime a dozen. Pish-posh! I exclaim, like a character out of Dickens.
It’s been some time since I’ve seen Helen on her terrace, and she hasn’t come for dinner at Christos’ restaurant. One of the beauties of this place is that one can make oneself scarce, it’s true. One can disappear at will, for a time. Yet Helen may be angry with me. It is no fault of mine that John is living at Alicia’s house, surrounded by bougainvillea, and that he is cared for by such a lovely older woman, though to me she is a younger woman. Isn’t everyone younger than I? Helen may need to blame me, but I am blameless. Of this event, anyway. The last time we dined, in the condition I was, I may have blurted out something about suicide, about her having had a twin who died. Too much time has passed since then. A few days’ absence is normal. And though, prior to Gwen’s arrival, I was furiously at work on my crime book, I was unsettled and concerned about Helen. I thought about her and that evening, and then repressed it. I said to myself it is nothing; but then I dwelled on her and it again, and yet I did and have done nothing. Actually I have been waiting to hear from her. But now I think I will send her a note. I will also ask Yannis to go to the market and buy her some flowers to accompany the note. I don’t think this can be viewed by Helen as another one of Horace’s impositions.
With Gwen here, my absence from home seems poignant. I’ve been here nearly as long as Helen’s been alive. I might become annoyed at Gwen’s harping on my being out of touch. No doubt I am, whatever that means. With the zeitgeist, with American life and day-to-day reality, whatever that may be, with the city, the polis. Politics were not why I left America. I’d lost my lover of many years. I had a publisher, a contract, books to do. I was tired of everyone and everything, just as I am now, come to think of it. I had a little money to play with, as I was and am privileged. I loathe people who hide their means of support, though I am no Marxist. I identified during the sixties with James Baldwin, especially when he fled to France, and though I’m not black, and he’s years younger, and I didn’t suffer the poverty and discrimination he did, I felt close to him. I still feel close to him because of these things and certain details like our bulging eyes and predilection for men. I always thought I’d meet him, but fate has not been kind to me in that respect. He’s a marvelous writer and much misunderstood. Gwen knew of my feelings for him, and she’s the only person I ever told. She’s met him. Gwen knows everyone. She is more than twenty years younger than I. I must ask her how Baldwin is these days. If anyone would know, she would.
The sea is remarkably calm now and the only sounds one hears are small waves slapping gently against the harbor walls. It is quiet, peaceful. The States is a maelstrom. All those products, and people and clubs, and TV shows. I watched television once only. It gave me a headache. There is some noise here of course. On Sundays the army marches around the harbor. Gwen will watch the parade, laugh her sharp little laugh, and flick the ashes of her cigarette. I never would have marched in protest marches. I couldn’t, carrying a banner proclaiming, “U.S. Out Of Vietnam,” or “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Lives,” and not because I don’t believe in the truth of both, but because I abhor the idea of wearing a placard or button. I hate to think that a phrase could in any way even for an instant define me. That I could be summed up that way is appalling, absolutely terrifying. I immediately conjure a tombstone upon which my life is reduced to an engraved epitaph.