As I walked to Helen’s house, I had lost this sense of assurance. I did not know what to expect, which alone unnerved me. I was already unnerved — or nervous — because I didn’t understand her disappearance, but when I imagined the consequences of this ignorance, I became confused. I had never even been inside her house. Years ago, when its owner Bliss was still in residence, I visited him there, but that was a long time ago. Much as I tried to envision Helen’s house, its contents, and to create it in advance of seeing it, I could not. I simply did not know what awaited me.
Now one may want to interject — part of me does — that I, Horace, sought to feel compassless, to experience the vertiginous highs and lows of the unexpected, having already insisted upon my pleasure in the unknown, having insisted upon how much I needed to invent my life, to make it closer to fiction. But I am a writer and given to such musings. One mustn’t believe everything one reads, after all.
But this one must, and I would implore one to, believe. The desire to invent is not what I felt. I felt without or separate from desire. Indeed I felt blank. I have never felt blank before in my life, yet this feeling which I do not know and do not recognize must be that; it is the only way I can express it. I have felt blotto, but not blank, at least not when conscious. I have been blind-drunk, deaf-drunk, dumb-drunk.
It is different today. I don’t know what to think. I imagine this is what Stephen the Hermit experiences with horrific consistency. He cannot turn on his electric lights, as his electricity has been shut off, and why this has happened — why something like electricity may be shut off — is incomprehensible to him, so he is forced to light candles and place them in tin cans, and he sits in his dimly lit room far from whatever he knew as a child in England or Italy, without secure thoughts to comfort him, disoriented, without thought at all perhaps; and he is blank, as empty as the proverbial unpainted canvas. Let me not bore you with such an image, though.
I was blank and yet I marched, in away even happily, toward Helen’s house. I have thought about this often since and decided, retrospectively, that I was emptying myself, though I did not know that at the time. I was not truly blank, I realize. Can one be? I was readying myself for an experience as fulgent as one of Blake’s epiphanous poems or paintings of such. Laugh if you will. But it seems to me now that I wanted to experience mystery and not just to write it.
On the way, quite near the harbor, actually just behind it, I pass a wake. The village style or ritual for death is to set a table or two outside the front door of the home of the bereaved upon which are placed flowers, a large basket of bread, and a tray of cakes, and above this hangs a piece of cloth, a tapestry, with a religious figure woven into it. The walls here are so old and crumbly that wakes are ancient and exotic tableaux and have an especial appeal to me. I believe it was the baker’s mother who died, though I am not sure. I did not take this as an omen since death here never takes a holiday; it is a most regular part of life. But as I remain a foreigner, I am uneasy in the face of it. I hate it. I despise death. It is the only natural aspect of life that I detest. Because I have no faith, Alicia would insist.
When I turn the corner and round the bend, to walk along the harbor, which is a singular joy, always and in all situations beautiful — it never fails to surprise and delight me, even now, as anxious as I am — I spy Gwen sitting at a table in front of the restaurant. Were it not for my alertness, I might have come face-to-face with her. She is at my restaurant, seated at my table, looking at my harbor, but looking at the water and the scene with her look on her face, that inimitable expression. From the way in which she is sitting, so relaxed, it is now her restaurant as much as mine. Dear, dear Gwen, how quickly she takes possession — of me, too, for how can I not talk to her, yet how would I tell her where I actually was intending to go when I do not want her to know. I do not want her advice. So I rush on as if I had not seen her and madly hope, hope jarring hope, that she has not seen me. Her look of concentration is unbroken; so great is it, quite likely she has not noticed me. I decide she has not, and even if she has, she hasn’t made contact with me, and I have a right to be miffed, if I am. I’m not. In fact I hope she will be just where she is after I have finished my business at Helen’s house. For who knows, I think to myself, again and again, what I will find there?
I move in haste around the wide Venetian harbor and nod my head in greeting to shopkeepers who know me and even to some who don’t. Then I take my favorite shortcut, along the most narrow passage, which joins with the street I desire. Then I walk up the wide, flat concrete stairs that lead directly to Helen’s house. I listen to a canary sing from its cage — I do not find their music particularly pleasant — and from a courtyard I hear the sounds of domestic bickering, muted enough that the subject of their argument is unclear to me. I am not aware of being tired, or arthritic, not aware of my body at all, though I had spent days in languorous semi-retreat, I believe, from nearly everyone.
But I exaggerate. I did expect to find something, just one thing, to be honest, and that was Helen’s diary. Not expected, but hoped, I desperately hoped that it would be there, and in a way, because it was my certain hope, the predictable one, the one that anyone would have hazarded as Horace’s hope, I knew, in my heart of hearts, that it would not be there. In the natural course of things, she would have taken it with her. A girl’s diary absolutely would be carried with her, a precious object, faithful as a dog. Helen would never have left it behind. Apart from that, I did not have any particular hope.
The corroded iron gate to Helen’s house is hidden in shadow which I take as ominous, a warning, if not an omen. I stare at it before ringing the bell Bliss had fixed there years ago, though I know no one is at home. Or at least I hoped no one was at home. Suddenly Chrissoula appears from across the lane, having seen me approach, and greets me warmly, as if everything were normal. Helen? I ask. I have not seen her, I explain in Greek, in a long time. Chrissoula nods her head up and down and then from side to side, indicating she is dubious about her young charge. She then places one finger at her mouth as if to say she cannot speak or is not supposed to. And promptly Chrissoula shuffles off, her skirt swinging about her ankles. She disappears across the lane and enters the door to her house. She takes such good care of Helen. But her behavior is odd; usually Chrissoula is garrulous.
I do not ring the bell. I walk through the exterior gate to the front door. I am enormously light-headed and, in the moment, unconscious of any specific worry. Blank, as I have already said. I push open the centuries-old thick wooden door and glance around the small ground-floor room. The house is remarkably narrow, a sliver of a house. It still has no floor. Then I ascend the equally narrow stairs which are in almost complete disrepair and most likely dangerous, so I step lightly. I always say to myself when stepping lightly, why should this matter? Am I not the same weight?
I arrive at the second floor. It is sparsely furnished and obviously disused. There are many books in Bliss’ bookcases; they are in poor shape. There is a broken chair as well as some insignificant ceramic pieces. Unimportant pieces, I tell myself, ruing the fact that Bliss, though a painter, has no eye for decor and the decorative arts. I continue the climb and reach the top floor, which I know to be Helen’s space, as she had called it such.