Yannis is there but not there. It is true that I am never unaware of his presence, of his odd and occasionally sinister gaze that can so brutally penetrate and pierce me, my soul, if I have one. His look can pin me to, or in, a moment. It is painful, dreadful. It has to do with one human being being seen by another and one or both being able to understand in that all-too-human instant something intensely peculiar, even deranged, about the other. There can be no recording of the vague exchange, no document left behind, just one’s experience of a naked expression, of being naked, in an impropitious moment. It is chilling and unsettling to be caught unaware. It is probably why many people prefer to live alone. I remember Gwen telling me that a man she was seeing caught her staring at herself in a mirror, as she pushed her hair from her forehead and studied her face. She realized that in that brief moment he discovered something about her, her narcissism, her paranoia, her incessant insecurity — in regard to him as well — all of which she would never have wanted revealed. He didn’t telephone her again, though they had been seeing each other off and on for two years. Gwen was relieved. She felt that neither he nor she could have borne the burden of what had passed furtively between them.
It is strange to break off a relationship in that manner, but then that is the way it happens. The break is sudden and sharp but seldom clean. And, to prove my hypothesis, Gwen is one who lives alone. One Who Lives Alone is another good title. I pull over to the side of the road and jot that down.
Looking at the map of Crete, at the road ahead and the environs, I am struck again by the island’s magnificent geography. Most of the major roads appear to halt in the middle of the island, because of the treacherous mountains. The mountains defy one and all. This is extraordinary country, rugged and violent. Its landscape is unexpected and invigorating. With my eye and finger I trace on the map the many possible courses — possible worlds — from which to select, and decide, again on the spot, to quit the road I have been taking and head toward the coast road again, so as to travel near the sea and around the exterior of Crete. It was what I originally had planned but then for some reason rebelled against, even though it was my idea. At my age it may always be one’s own ideas, however hackneyed, that one rebels against.
I don’t particularly want to drive through the mountains, and of course the roads do come to a halt disastrously and one would have to backtrack here and there, to meet up with the right road, and in a sense one would be much too directed by the terrain. One is by the coast road too, but one does not experience it in just that way. Besides, if Helen were with the Gypsy, or on her own, mightn’t she want to see the beautiful coastline? I start up the car, plot my new course, and turn around, to begin again. The scenery is magnificent.
I wish I could keep my mind on it. I am not one who can keep his mind on what is actually before him; I am more involved in what I see in my mind’s eye. It is prosaic but true. I tend merely to register the physical world, my surroundings, but then, in a matter of no time at all, have in view a whole range of associations — a mountain range, if you will — which looms in front of me, and off I go. I might consider the mountains in the distance, their rough beauty, how purple they appear, but the color purple might lead me to the term “purple prose,” for example, which then always brings to mind Alicia and how Alicia has been written about.
Alicia. I see Alicia when I first knew her. She is young, willowy, graceful, nearly ethereal; her face is before me as if pasted on the windshield. Years ago she took a trip into the mountains, which she did not invite me to join. A friend had arrived from France and she devoted herself to her — another opera singer, I believe. Alicia is a devoted friend, one capable of loving. There are few of those. I easily slide to the opposing concepts, and to Stan-Greenish thoughts, to hate and betrayal. I ponder anew what I have often pondered before. These repetitions are as annoying as they are compelling and absorbing. If Alicia hates Helen, as she seems to, what is the true reason? Has it anything to do with Helen? What exactly are Alicia’s feelings toward Helen? Are they murderous ones? Would Alicia murder Helen? Would Alicia be capable of murdering anyone? And why not? What about Helen? Would she have strangled her sister for her father’s love or his fortune, though he probably has no fortune — a psychiatrist earns well but not spectacularly. He may have inherited a great fortune. Just as I would have if my father hadn’t lost much of his, if there hadn’t been the Great Depression, and if and if. And what of Gwen and Alicia? What of them right now? Where does John sit in the equation between them? Is John sitting or reclining right now, is he recumbent on a bed of silk?
John. The idea of him arouses in me a range of emotions, a mountain range of feelings, of highs and lows, a violent, lusty landscape, which can be quite uncontrollable. The one thing one cannot control is lust. But it is what we most often control, or are controlling most of the time, or are most controlled by. I don’t want to think of him, he is not on the map right now. He is not on my course, and I have not plotted him there. Isn’t it odd, the two significant meanings of plot — one having to do with a conspiracy, the other with a story. Perhaps all stories are conspiracies. But there, my paranoia is showing. I am happy to be alone.
In real life one cannot find the single, unmistakable, absolute event or fact that drives everything and everyone forward. It is, this motive, what makes a compelling if thin narrative, for the stories I particularly admire relish ambiguity and happenstance. One character meets another — the servant is there, so Raskolnikov must kill her as well. How does it take shape that someone, even someone like me, will do the unexpected? I hope to work these ideas into Household Gods. Is it now, at this precise moment, that I joke to myself about being off the road yet again?
It is well past lunchtime. I have arrived at a small village and spy a taverna that appears to be open. I pull up to the side of the road and park the car. I am not thinking anything special as I am hungry — famished — and a little tired. The owner leads me to a table on the terrace. A breeze blows and the air is fragrant and rich. It is more than comfortable here, it is pleasant, and its pleasure is ordinary, inexpensive. Overhead is a trellis, a grape arbor. All is as it should be. This taverna, this scene, is in no way extraordinary. It is, and I am, comfortable, yet something is missing.
I order grilled sardines, a salad, and a bottle of mineral water and the white wine I drink. Fortunately they have it. After one glass, I am tranquil. With the second glass, I am impatient and want more wine and, I suppose, action. John might put it that way. I can almost hear him pronounce it, can imagine his lips loosely forming the words. Horace, you want action, man. I do want something or want for something. For lack of a better word I will name this luck. If I were lucky, a Gypsy would appear and sit beside me at this table. As this does not happen, my meal is unadventurous and undisturbed. Even disappointing.
I drive toward the coast. I don’t care to stop or to make a detour. I see no strange encampments along the way. Had I chosen the faster way, I would already have been on the southern coast, quite near to the dot on Helen’s map which signified where she had probably gone. But I am not sure if that is the case, or if she had been the one to leave the map lying there, with its mark. Thinking about this is ludicrous, in one way and confusing in another. I drive, plagued by the uncertainty of it all, and of how this isn’t and wasn’t like me, to go flying off in pursuit of a mere girl, even one like Helen.