Gwen’s won’t be. Gwen will actively dislike my cause. She will have thought she had talked me out of going to find Helen. Helen Wheels, Gwen dubbed her — hell on wheels. She insisted, adamantly, that Helen wouldn’t have hitched a ride on a donkey with a Gypsy woman, but, like any punkette, would have driven to the caves or wherever in a fast car. Gwen has no faith in Helen. She is probably jealous of my regard for her. I can certainly understand that. I am jealous of her regard for others — even the sick rock-and-roll musician. But I’d never admit it to her. I have much too much pride. We are, both of us, in some strange way, under each other’s skins, and luckily we are not in any conventional sense in love with each other.
Yannis will take the news badly too, but unlike Gwen, he will mope. Gwen will pull her small self up, let fly a few caustic comments, and in my absence read a book or two. She will continue to dabble in John and Alicia. But to what extent is Alicia involved? If she is. That was not clear at all.
The leather weekender I haven’t used in years is a familiar and long-lost friend. A sight for sore eyes. I’ve had it since college. I’d never throw it away. I’m not sure how long I will be away, perhaps a week, and I toss into it a number of shirts, two pairs of trousers, socks, and so on. I briskly collect my toiletries and another bag, in which to carry books and notepads. But which books to take? I race to my shelves and grab a few travel books — as well as a map of Crete. But I’ll need to go to the tourist bureau. I throw in Miller’s The Colossus of Maroussi, Stein’s Writings and Lectures 1909–1945, and The Selected Writings of Sydney Smith, an early nineteenth-century favorite of mine, and of Roger’s, too, unfortunately. Credit where credit is due — Roger has a few good points.
I dress hurriedly, sip my cold coffee, bite into a roll, then leave my apartment. At the desk downstairs, I grab the mail, glance cursorily at it, tell Nectaria that I will be leaving for a week, watch her expression turn sour, or a trifle grave, and walk to the harbor where, as ever, its beauty overwhelms me. The simple life that I love. Yet I know that that simple life is not simple. I merely love the illusion of simplicity that it provides me, which is the paradox.
Many of the stalls at the market are shut or closing. It is late in the day. I rush to purchase bread, crackers, hard cheese, apples, olives and several bottles of water. The elderly Greek men, with their leathery and weather-beaten hands and faces, are unperturbed by the likes of me, moving here and there. Life for them goes on, characterized by its regularity and lack of interruption. Their games of tavoli involve them and they are intent upon moving their tiles around the board. It is strange to think now, but I often do, precisely because of its incongruousness, that when they were very young, mere boys, they may have been sexual playmates, just the way the boys are now, and one of them may have been the girl.
I reach the tourist bureau just in time and gather up as many maps as I can. The woman behind the desk is phlegmatic but warms to me slowly as she sees with what excitement I am planning my trip. She offers me, gratis, a booklet on inns and hotels that I may need. I thank her profusely. The drive, if direct, is not a long one, but I want to scout towns along the way, along the coast road, and even go off the main road, to wander into the hills and dales. I want to see if I can chance upon Gypsy encampments. I want to spy upon their way of life, upon them. Helen could be anywhere, after all, though the map she left on the dresser is evidence of her intentions, at least her intended destination.
Now it is growing dark, and some of the breath of life ebbs from me. A sunny day is transformed into a gloomy one. I cannot help it; dusk sometimes makes me mournful. The bank is closed. It is too late to set off on my trip, but I do not want to eat at the restaurant tonight, and see everyone, and have to explain anything. A few drinks and I could tell all. As if chased by a flock of reporters, I hurry back to the hotel and find Nectaria. She will bring me a meal in my rooms. I am safe. Except that I must tell Gwen and Yannis. But where is Gwen? She is not in her room. No matter, I tell myself, I’ll write her a letter; that is easier, in any case. She must be with John, and Alicia. And Yannis too has disappeared again. I am alone in my room. Happily, alone.
I take my place at the large open window and watch the sky change subtly, imperceptibly. It is night’s magic. Nectaria brings in my dinner and I thank her. The wine is blissfully cold, the moussaka, hearty. I am content once more.
Sitting by the window, with the cacophonous and comforting sounds of harbor life playing on my ears like incidental music, I open my book. We non-Gypsies, I learn, are designated by them as gadjo or gadje, for whom they have nothing but contempt. “The proper meaning of gadjo is peasant, farmer, with the pejorative sense of ‘clodhopper,’ ‘yokel,’ or ‘bumpkin.’” To the Gypsies, we are the sedentary ones. To these wanderers, nomads, travelers, we are ones who do not move, who are fixed. My eyes fix on these lines. Sedentary indeed.
Instantly I am overcome with exhaustion, and nearly close the book. So weary, even my eyes are tired, but I do not stop reading. I sense that I must go on. I flip to another chapter. “If the Gypsies have no system of writing, as we usually understand the word, they nevertheless use a very full list of conventional signs which enable them to communicate visually and in time. This secret code is called the patrin (from patran, leaf of a tree)…”
It’s pleasing to discover that patrin, their secret means of communication, is linguistically close to the English “pattern.” As this sentence is at the bottom of the page, I again nearly close the book, but resist, fight my weariness, and continue reading. “Each tribe has its own distinctive sign, and it is the chief who is usually the holder of the sign; and this sign is a secret.” Then down to the bottom of the next page: “Thus a Gypsy woman will be the first to go into a farmhouse on the pretext of selling items…or to tell fortunes.” She will find out family secrets, important family matters, recent illnesses and so forth. “As she is going away, she will scratch on the wall or mark with chalk or charcoal signs which only her racial brothers will know how to make out.”
These signs allow the next Gypsy to reveal closely held family secrets to the amazed family. How clever, I think.
Ultimately the full import of what I have just read reaches my clotted brain. “In chalk or charcoal.” Chalk. The chalk drawings or signs on the wall in Helen’s room may not have been made by Helen. They may have been drawn or penned by the Gypsy woman. This was the break I needed. What I ascertained to be penises and vaginas could have been messages from the Gypsy, written in her alphabet or code, which I don’t know and would never even be able to guess.
I am stunned. It is such a good story, and so mysterious, and I haven’t even made it up! I am in thrall to it, and frightened by it. For next I learn, as I study the pages before me, that Gypsies use herbs and plants and all manner of vegetable and animal matter for spells, to achieve various results. In a flash a picture of Helen appears before me and I see a small silver ball attached to a silver chain. The necklace hung around Helen’s neck the last night I saw her. It may have contained a plant, a potion. Ridiculous, Horace, I tell myself. Still, weird, foul, foreign herbs — or worse — may account for the dreadful smell, the aroma that suffused Helen’s room. That awful odor could have been produced by rotting vegetable matter, spoiled organic stuff, and have been a potion meant to cast a spell, over me perhaps, and which I may be obeying even now as I read. My acute exhaustion? A potion to do what?