Gregory

by Panos Ioannides

  He had however done it with pleasure. Because after that landmark-evening in Famagusta his attitude towards his wife, he had to admit, had changed radically. He took care to enliven and enrich their relationship. To awaken her interest in herself! Pavlina noticed it but she did not worry. ‘You are doing it to give her value’ she told him, ‘so that you can be indifferent without remorse.’ ‘It’s better like that’ he answered her vaguely. He was not telling the truth. His interest in Eleni had become genuine. And it was founded neither in the egotistical intention which her sister ascribed to him, nor in feelings of guilt. It was simply that after that momentary transformation of Pavlina and the completeness which she was able to transmit to him, a completeness which he had vainly sought to create within himself with his imagination and his poetry, he began to think that with a little effort it would perhaps be possible to transform Eleni too. It was time for him to know that erotic joy which he had always extolled. To experience it with Pavlina, with Eleni, with Aegli, their young cousin, with as many women as he could.

  “Everything began when Lina started to take cello lessons. Music became part of our daily life…” his wife’s head continued the monologue.

  “The time when eroticism became the aim of our daily life” he commented ironically.

  All that had been denied him for so many years, he wanted to experience in a few days, in a few hours if possible. He took leave and installed himself at home. He suggested to Pavlina that she should adroitly bring the conversation around to music and ask him in front of Eleni to give her cello lessons. When he was young he had played the cello and the flute; he had left music for poetry. The plot succeeded. Andrei’s cello was tuned; they bought practice and theory manuals, scores and records of Casals.

  “How guilty we feel because we do not listen to you, dearest Pablo!” he noted in his diary. “You are sometimes the stereophonic noise to irritate Eleni and drive her out of the apartment and sometimes the accompaniment to two bodies so given up to their own sounds that your strokes of the bow do not touch them.”

  However, things had not developed exactly as he had wished. He had believed that within a few months he would have been compensated for his ascetic youth and his sterile married life and that the intense experience and the constant anguish which accompanied it would renew his inspiration. Certainly he experienced an unforgettably erotic spring, but without his passion letting up at all. Excess merely intensified his erotic desire. And it was not long before he was convinced that he would live like this for some time, if not for ever, and that in the final analysis he was not too displeased.

  As for the renewal that he had expected, it did not come. On the contrary his interest in poetry waned. It was impossible for him to give form and outlet to his new feelings. He now knew that words and images would have betrayed him, that either he would have to be inspired by genius, or he would have to follow in the footsteps of Rimbaud.

  And while he waited passively another change, completely undesirable was imposed on him; slowly, gradually, imperceptibly, with the sure rhythm of a natural law.

  One night, after making love, as he was smoking with his wife - it was the first night that Pavlina had refused to accept him in her room they heard in the quietness a long drawn out melody on the cello. They supposed that it was the latest record of Fournier that they had given as a present to Pavlina on her birthday.

  But no, that wrong note could not have been by Fournier. It was Pavlina!

  It was the first melody of the change! He listened to it abstractedly. Yes, the game had already started to run into a serious hobby, or perhaps…

  On the following nights her playing gradually began not to betray itself by wrong notes; it came to resemble, to a remarkable degree, the playing of the masters she heard on the record-player. ‘The hobby became inclination, inspiration, it started to become a purpose in life…’

  Without showing anything, Eleni was annoyed by the development. The superior armory of Pavlina provoked in her an irritability which was not justified, unless she suspected the truth. In order to quieten her suspicions he became even more effusive with her and never ceased urging her to develop her dormant talents. ‘Not a few times, from the way she spoke, from her gestures and her wordless expressions, there poured forth a music full of consonances, polyphonic, which convinced him of her rich inner world. Perhaps if she took up painting…’

  Being grateful to him for his intentions and hiding with self-irony her desire to vindicate him, she surrendered zealously to his embraces and gradually dropped the mask of prudishness and conservatism. ‘The spiritual world awoke the… gross.’ But no, here he was mistaken. The erotic awakening was merely the reflection of another, deeper, more permanent vigilance.

  One evening, just before they went to bed, she shyly broke the news to him. She had enrolled in the conservatoire.

  “Flute?”

  “Piano.”

  “And so that’s why you chose the piano,” the presenter returned to the screen. And he continued: “After this decision of our honored guest, events followed their course. In a few months talent triumphed and the stiff fingers of the housewife turned into the magical hammers of perfection!”

  And he explained the way in which the two performers had decided to unite their virtuosity and become a duo.

  “By chance, as Lena was helping Lina to tune up, they noticed how harmoniously the sounds combined.”

  He smiled. Who had told him that? ‘They were simply united, my friend, by their common enmity.’

  “The perfecting of their technique, as was natural, required toil, long hours of practice, sacrifices. Sacrifices both by themselves and by their partners.”

  Which in this case was only one!

  “Me!”, he shouted.

  They began to ignore him as though by common consent, to find in the beginning a lot of specious excuses for repulsing his erotic advances and afterwards to tell him directly ‘art first and then the rest.’ He protested, pleaded, threatened, declared passive resistance. In vain. In the end he was compelled to adopt another tactic. He began to systematically undermine their self-confidence, following a method diametrically opposite to that which had brought them close to him first and to music afterwards. ‘They didn’t really have any talent, it was a passing hobby. He was pleased, of course that with his own small assistance they had managed to reach such an enviable, for amateurs, standard, but they should not neglect their sole authentic talent, their ability to be real women.’

  Then at other times, unable to restrain himself, he went from one to the other and pleaded for a little tenderness or a little attention. As though in complicity they both indicated to him politely that the wisest thing would be for him to return to ‘his verses’ and to leave them to devote themselves to their study.

  It was then that the solo performers realized that they would be able to put up a better defence against the corroder ‘of the sole worthwhile satisfaction they had found in life’ if they became a duo.

  “And so my dear friends we arrive auspiciously at the most interesting part of tonight’s programme. To the real initiation…”

  The camera back-tracked trembling slightly and revealed the two performers ready for the recital. ‘PASSIONATA’. The bow was drawn across the string and the finger hammered the first note.

  On returning home they found their cousin waiting for them in the living room.

  “Hello Aegli. What a surprise!”

  The young girl looked them straight in the eye, with a steely expression. They had always known her to be reserved and shy.

  “I called to congratulate you” she softened their surprise with feigned politeness.

  “We played terribly.”

  “You played wonderfully.”

  Scattered on the coffee table were cards and cigarette ends. And a long narrow box, covered in black leather.

  “Has he gone to bed?” they asked her.

  “I didn’t find him at home…”

&
nbsp; “You didn’t find him at home?”

  And their eyes fixed on hers questioningly. “Then how?”

  “I had the key!”

  They sat opposite her, almost glued together, on the divan. Surprise and suspicion of the truth prevailed over indignation. In the light of the fire, their tied-back hair made them look old and terrified. They clasped their hands, one on the breast the other on the knees. They fell silent, unable to give a polite form to the questions that burned them.

  “I found this envelope. It’s a letter to both of you.”

  She gave it to them. It was evident that she had read it. But again without asking what they were entitled to know, they took it. They read.

  Dear Eleni, dear Pavlina.

  The honey was absorbed by the hive. I am leaving to find the honey again.

  They looked at each other. “What does it mean?”

  And they were genuinely naive. They turned to Aegli.

  “It’s simple!” replied the sixteen-year-old girl. “He believes that you stole his talent!”

  “Us?”

  She preferred to enjoy their confusion before answering.

  “Well?”

  “He has a curious theory. He believes that he transmits his talent to the women he makes love to.”

  “What nonsense is this?” said Lina.

  “And how do you know this?” said Lena.

  Without paying any heed to their truculent mood, Aegli continued:

  “He says that his inspiration began to dry up when he discovered love. Isn’t it interesting? He connects it with the fact that just a few months after the consummation of his relations with a woman her transformation, he says, begins. And her success! He says he is in a position to prove it. He bases all his theory on this. He believes that he himself is responsible for this curious situation.

  He should have realized, he says, from the beginning that for most men art is a substitute for love making, while for women carnal love is the beginning of fulfllment. He summarized it all in a phrase: ‘the strength of a woman begins where the strength of a man ends’, I think I remember it in his own words. And he gave as an example the queens and the drones!”

  Silence fell among them for a while.

  “So his foolishness went as far as that?” said Lina and threw the letter into the hearth.

  “He always had a sick mind” said Lena.

  They watched the small flame which fiercely bit into the crumpled paper; then it calmed down and was absorbed into its ashes.

  “How do you know all this?” they asked Aegli. They already suspected the answer of course.

  “He gave me this flute” replied the young girl.

  “When?”

  “A year ago now.”

  She opened the leather box. A new wind instrument with its pallid silvery gleam nestled there, wrapped in velvet.

  “You… have you taken lessons?”

  “Yes” she answered and brought the flute to her lips.

  The melody poured into the room.

  “Do you love him?” asked Lena.

  “No” answered Aegli, lowering the instrument. “I’m indifferent to him. Now I live for my music.”

  “Do you believe his theory? asked Lina.

  “No. At least not all of it. It’s not impossible, of course, that in some cases what he says is true, that maturity in a woman begins after erotic fulfillment.”

  Silence fell again. Then Lina spoke.

  “And so our hive has no drone now.”

  Aegli regarded them both with a doubt which she did not, however, dare to formulate. The others understood. And they thought that her doubt would easily be resolved if she bore in mind the way he had led her astray and the way she had deceived them. But they stayed silent. An inexperienced little girl was not to blame.

  He was the guilty one. It would be foolish of them not to see it and to lay the blame where it did not belong.

  They smiled at her kindly. Lena answered:

  “We learned the truth too late. When it was no longer of any importance. It’s foolish to suffer for a person who is only interested in his own satisfaction…”

  “Not even when through this satisfaction, you begin to find yourself?” Aegli joked.

  “Not even then!” answered Lena in a tone that brooked no objection. “No one can give another something which he did not already have.”

  Lina got up and untied her hair. She threw a log on the fire and sat on the rug, leaning dangerously close to the flames.

  “I think it’s time we heard the progress you’ve made with the flute” she said to the young woman.

  In two weeks Aegli was installed in the apartment with her cousins. The duo became a trio: ‘Lena, Lina, Aegli’. Three women with one heart, with one memory and one single language composed of a hundred keys, four strings and a brass thyrsus.

  They rarely spoke of the man who had left. Their selfsufficiency in the absolute world of sounds did not leave room for any other interests. Only Lena, answering a doubt of Aegli “where can he be, I wonder, the unfortunate man?”

  “He’ll be all right!” she said. “If he doesn’t recover his talent, he can always open a conservatoire!”

  From the collection:

  Cyprus Epics, P.K.I. Publications, Nicosia 1968

  Translated by David Bailey

  The Bath

  She adjusted her spectacles and looked at him. With the sponge, which perspired fragrant bath salts, he was now rubbing his thighs and knees. She consulted her watch again. Another hour yet: half for his calves, half for his feet. His shadow on the wall reminded her of a locust. She took off her glasses for presbyopia, put on those for myopia and bent over the horoscope again.

  “Lucky number four. Lucky colour yellow. Emotional calm.”

  What was his name? Six or seven? Cri-, three; -ton, six. Of course! Two more than Noni.

  “Lucky number five. Lucky colour…”

  “After your bath I’ll make you a hot cup of tea to help you sleep,” she told him. “Should I bring you your blue nightclothes?”

  “Yesterday’s,” he replied and regarded her severely through his glasses, which he insisted on wearing even in the bath. They were misted with condensation. “Give me the towel.”

  She wiped them five times on her yellow robe.

  “Mona phoned. She’ll drop by to see us,” she told him.

  “What does she want?”

  “She’ll bring the clock.”

  “I hope he doesn’t come too…”

  “I shouldn’t think so. He is at the office in the afternoons.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Three and a quarter hours exactly.”

  “I asked the time.”

  “Twelve!”

  She returned to her newspaper. She still had fortyfive minutes at her disposal. He would not leave the bath before his four hours were up. Four and a quarter hours in the morning. Four hours in the afternoon. For a year now he had not deviated from the schedule even once. When Noni had asked him in admiration how he managed to be so exact without a watch, he had regarded her ironically and said something which disconcerted her:

  “Are you sure you are not daydreaming?”

  But of course she was sure! For months now she had been his shadow. From the very first day she had noticed that he stayed shut in the bathroom longer than normal; it was the day of Mona’s wedding, she had suspected that something serious was happening. She began watching him secretly, trying to find out what was going on. At first out of fear, in case he was ill. Later, when she was sure that it was nothing more than a new habit, to help him. Now she knew the process in every detail. Moreover, he himself asked her recently to stay with him.

  The reasons, however, for his strange behavior remained unknown to her. She could not bring herself to ask him directly, all she could do was prove to him that he was clean. This she attempted repeatedly and discreetly, but without success. Neither her “spontaneous” compliments about his cleanl
iness, nor the mirrors she carefully placed opposite his favorite armchairs, succeeded in convincing him. The only thing she ventured to do was to consult, first, his niece. “You are the only person who understands my uncle!” she replied. And then her stepson. “I could never understand Father.” He did, however, provide a plausible explanation for the marathon of cleanliness: “I see Father still keeps office hours!”

  Perhaps that was it! The eight and a quarter hours in the bath corresponded with the timetable he had pedantically followed for years. But Noni hoped that was not the explanation, that it was simply a coincidence. She remembered that after the marriage of her stepson, her husband, in spite of the fact that he was over seventy-five, had doubled his working hours. Shortly before his doctor had compelled him to retire he had been working sixteen to eighteen hours a day. If these two habits, consciously or not, had indeed become identified in his mind, there was a danger that…

  “And what do you do when you want to use the bathroom?” asked their daughter-in-law cheerfully.

  “I wait until your father has finished,” replied Noni.

  It was the first time since she had joined the family that their daughter-in-law had shown an interest in their problems; she insisted on learning more details. But Noni changed the subject. It was not right to discuss such things with others. It was better to keep them to herself. Only she would be able to understand if he ever decided to give her an explanation, no one else! She was the only one who knew that those hours in the bath were unwarranted! But in whom could she confide and admit it was that, especially, which comforted her. Who would believe they were not really necessary at his age? Who would not be eager to connect them with all his other eccentricities? Of course, she had to admit that in the past his eccentricities had been innocent and less annoying for others. Simply habits. He could not tolerate the smell of cheese, for example. (Now he was allergic to all milk products.) Or, he could not bear a stranger to be in the room when he was eating. (Now he could not bear the maid in the house after his morning bath.) As regards food, sleep and lovemaking, he was always a creature of habit. The orderliness, then, which characterized every habit he cultivated now, after his enforced retirement from the business, was only natural. That of the bath was the second. The first was the “pips and the crumbs.” In a silver cup he saved all kinds of pips. “Fuel for the fireplace”, and the crumbs, “for the sparrows!” At first he confined himself to his own crumbs and his own pips. Later he imposed the habits on her. But Noni forgave him. In serious matters he showed understanding. He never humiliated her as so many of his class do when they marry poor girls. Nor did he show that he harbored any resentment that she had not presented him with a child, in spite of the fact that she suspected that that was the only reason he had married her after the death of his first wife. Of course, he had never tolerated Mona; “perhaps because she is the only relative of yours I get on with,” she had once complained to him. “And the only one who has remained faithful to us to the point of self-sacrifice!” “She doesn’t do it as disinterestedly as you imagine,” he answered her. “The hoyden can’t wait for me to be gone.”