by Tamar Hodes
The air felt fresh as if someone had lifted the dustsheets from the island and swept it clean. It smelled of sunshine, of almonds, of the sea, of love.
She hummed as she walked and she thought: I am happier than I have been for years.
Back at Leonard’s house, Marianne told him about her modelling session.
‘No painting can ever do justice to you,’ he said. ‘There is no bird in the sky or tree on the land that has what you have but I would like to see the picture and maybe buy it. Then you could be with me all the time.’
A week later, Leonard saw the artist at Katsikas’ store. ‘Anthony, can I come and see your painting of Marianne, please? I want to make you an offer for it.’
Anthony looked down uncomfortably at the sawdust-covered floor. ‘Sorry, dear chap,’ he said. ‘I lost it as a bet in a poker game.’
ix
Olivia de Haulleville and her husband, Georgos Kassipidis, lived with their children Michael and Melina in a beautiful house jutting out from the clifftop like a bird ready for flight. Their home was hung with brightly coloured rugs which Olivia had brought to Hydra from India. Tibetan paintings and ornaments brightened each room. There was always Oriental music playing and a gold statue of Buddha dominated, with offerings at his feet. Guests at their frequent parties were encouraged to bring him bowls of fruit and flowers. The house was heady with incense and a log fire, upon which Olivia tossed rosemary and sage.
Marianne and Leonard arrived later than the others. He had been singing to her and reading her his poetry and neither of them had wanted to leave, afraid to break the spell in case it would not return later. It did.
‘Marianne, my Nordic troll,’ Olivia greeted them at the carved wooden door. ‘Come in. Oh, you have made your famous kofte meatballs? How lovely.’ The women winked at each other. ‘Hello Leonard, welcome.’
Olivia wore a psychedelic kaftan and a beaded headdress. She resembled an exotic bird and no matter how many colours she wore, somehow they worked. Marianne wished that she had the confidence to wear such dazzling outfits.
‘Where is that blond god-child of yours?’
‘Asleep, with Maria watching him. Thank you for The Crows of Pearblossom. He loved it. Not everyone has Aldous Huxley as an uncle to write for them.’
‘Wasn’t it a delight? Come and see everyone.’
The usual partygoers were there: Norman, his plate full of curry and rice, probably the first hot meal he’d had in ages. Chuck and Gordon standing, as always, side by side, and Charmian and George nearby, less harmoniously. Magda’s bright-red hair and her orange dress made her look like she was on fire.
‘A conflagration,’ Olivia said, as she sailed by, a plate of onion bhajis in her hand. ‘Darlings,’ wafting around graciously in her kaftan, ‘please, eat!’
There were lots of colourful characters there: Zina Rachevsky, a Russian princess who was on her way to Nepal to live as a nun; Madame Paouri, who had painted all the window frames of her house blue and given polka dot dresses as gifts to the local girls; and David Goshen from the UK, whose wife was a Scottish aristocratic sculptor who owed a spinet but had no money.
Jack and Frieda were also there, still settling in on the island and adapting to its ways. Jack had embraced it, loving the colour and the chaos, but Frieda was still doubtful: had they done the right thing in moving there?
‘My dear friends,’ said Olivia, introducing them to others. ‘Have you met Carl?’
A tall man, short brown hair, defined, chiselled features as if he had been carved, stood before them. His eyes, though deep set, held a magic in them. ‘Carl has seen the light and given up the world of corrupt law to paint,’ said Olivia, and having introduced them, she floated away.
‘Have you just arrived here?’ Frieda asked him, blushing without knowing why.
‘Two months. I’m from Toronto. And you?’
Frieda turned to include her husband. ‘We’ve just recently arrived from Israel, although we are from South Africa originally. Jack’s a writer. I’m a painter, too.’
‘Really? What do you paint?’
‘Darlings,’ called Olivia, ‘gather around. We have a surprise for you.’
They all obeyed and stood round a mosaic table on which there was a parcel.
‘It’s come from India,’ announced Georgos. ‘Our friend has sent it as a gift.’
Everyone stared and gasped as Olivia and Georgos opened the package. Bits of brown paper and string flew to the floor. Gradually a toy mule emerged.
‘Darling, we love you,’ said Olivia blowing the mule kisses.
Georgos released a tag on the underbelly of the colourful mule and there, sealed in wax, was a lump of hashish. He shred a few pieces off it, put it in a pipe, lit it and passed it round the circle. Jack saw that Frieda’s eyes were shining and thought: maybe on this island she will finally discover who she is.
As the pipe was passed around, the room filled with sweet and spicy smells: the incense smoking in pottery holders, the almost flat bowls with purple stock and wisteria blooms draped seductively in them, heady with their perfume.
All over the house, Olivia had placed large cushions and poufs covered in mirrored sequins and tie-dyed, which she had collected in Nepal. Guests were invited to lie down, close their eyes and relax. Marianne and Leonard did so, feeling like they were floating over the island, all thoughts of Axel and money and fame dissolving in the sky.
Jack and Frieda took turns to go back hourly to check on Gideon and Esther, Evgeniya being unable to babysit that night. When it was Jack’s turn, Carl saw him leave and took the opportunity to talk again to Frieda.
‘Tell me about your painting,’ he said, leading her out onto the terrace, below which the harbour of Hydra sparkled like a feast.
‘Not much to tell.’ Frieda felt shy with this good-looking man, his short hair and glasses making him seem earnest. ‘I paint what I see: landscapes, seascapes, the fishermen with their nets, the monasteries on the hill, nuns, goats.’
‘Have you ever thought of painting what you do not see?’ He brought them each a glass of retsina.
‘How can I paint it if I can’t see it?’
‘You can feel it,’ he said quietly. ‘I never reproduce what is in front of me. What’s the point? It’s already there. Yes, in a sense, the colours and the light might come from memory but everything I try to capture can’t be put into words and I try to convey those feelings and emotions to the viewer.’
Frieda felt her world open. She smiled when she thought back to her provincial high school and how her mother had fought successfully with the headmaster to provide a few art lessons. And here she was, years later, on a terrace overlooking Hydra harbour with a man she found alluring, talking about art, her head spinning with the effects of hash and wine and attraction.
‘As Olivia said, I am a lawyer, but I have taken a year out to come to Hydra to paint.’
‘How has that gone down with the family?’ Frieda felt her cheeks burn. She was talking to Carl as if he were an old friend. She felt disloyal to Jack. They didn’t speak like this any more.
Carl laughed. ‘Not well. But I was an easy child and I think my parents have accepted this as my mid-thirties rebellion. They hope that I will get it out of my system and then return to normal life.’
‘It occurs to me that many of the artists and writers here come from quite conventional families.’
‘I agree. Lawyers, businessmen. I think we are people who are searching for something else. We don’t feel satisfied by the restrictions of everyday life and want something more creative, more imaginative than that daily office grind. We are all dreamers, maybe.’
Frieda nodded.
‘What are you dreaming of, Frieda?’ he asked.
She looked out to where the candlelight in houses and stars in the sky had joined forces to illuminate the island.
She thought carefully about how to answer. After all, Carl was a stranger. She looked at his deep-set eyes, his for
ehead which jutted out slightly, his warm smile. It felt good to be listened to, as if her views counted. He waited for her to answer but there was no awkwardness in the silence, as if he would wait years, if necessary.
As she looked back into the room, she saw that Jack had returned from checking on the children. He raised his hand to signal to her that all was well and then he joined a group that included Charmian and George, the latter offering him a drink and slapping him warmly on the back.
‘What I would like,’ Frieda said to Carl, ‘is to paint but also to be loved, to give my love to someone and to be happy.’ She blushed at her own confession. She had never admitted to herself what she wanted, what she lacked.
‘That is exactly what I want, too,’ said Carl.
They stood in silence as if holding that moment.
‘Where do you paint?’ she asked.
‘In my home. I deliberately found one with a light, airy space. The studio is bigger than the rest of the house put together. And you?’
‘I rent a studio behind Demi’s bakery. I love it there, its big windows looking out onto the quayside. The light is wonderful.’
‘It sounds perfect. Maybe I can come and visit you there sometime? I would love to see your paintings.’
Frieda blushed again. ‘I would like that, Carl.’
‘Come on, darlings,’ said Olivia, clapping her hands as if rounding up sheep. ‘Dinner is served.’
The dining-room table was covered in an exotic cloth and many plates of food. It was mostly Indian: curries, bhajis and bowls of steaming rice, and there was lamb tandoori and spicy vegetables. Olivia had taught her maid, Ellina, to cook Indian dishes and there was something incongruous about this Greek woman carrying in bowls of what must have seemed alien food to her. It reminded Frieda of how the Jewish women in South Africa taught their black maids to be wonderfully adept at making gefilte fish, chopped liver and chicken soup with kneidlach. They sometimes ended up being better cooks than the women who trained them.
The guests moved in a slow square around the table, helping themselves and gasping at the delicious spread. Frieda and Jack ended up beside each other.
‘Here,’ said Frieda to her husband, ‘try some of this,’ and she scooped chutney onto the edge of his plate. I feel guilty, she thought, when I have done nothing wrong. Can one be culpable, she wondered, just for your feelings alone?
Carl was in her head. She could not think of anyone or anything else. She saw that he was talking now to John Dragoumis but she avoided his gaze. She knew, and so did Carl, that their lives had been changed for ever.
The friends enjoyed the evening and mingled freely. For dessert, Olivia had made her speciality, chocolate mousse spiked with marijuana. The wine and coffee flowed.
After they had eaten, Leonard played the guitar and Magda sang Russian songs.
Frieda went back this time to check on the children. The sight of their still bodies, so unaware of life’s complexities, brought tears to her eyes.
Later, walking back to Olivia’s house, the sky dizzy with stars, she thought about Carl. She knew that to embark on a relationship with him would be dangerous, but she also wondered whether she deserved to be happy.
Outside Olivia’s house, white and stark against the magical sky, Carl was standing in the doorway. His angular features were half-lit by the candles inside. Frieda was surprised to see him.
‘I’ve been to check on our children,’ she said.
He stepped forward and held her face in his hands and then he kissed her. It was long and soft and tender, and Frieda responded warmly to him. Then he held her in his arms as if he had come to save her and she wept.
She knew that it was too late now to turn back.
x
It was not difficult for Frieda and Carl to find time together.
She walked down each morning to her studio where she had hours and space to herself. Carl’s narrow cottage was nearby.
At first the affair began tentatively: coffee, talking, learning about each other through their painting, feeling their way, cautiously, as if wanting to avoid mistakes.
Frieda’s small canvases depicted boats and fishermen, trailing their nets of silver fish. She could see them from her studio, bringing their coloured vessels in, fat-bellied, bearded men, talking, laughing, slapping each other warmly on their backs, pleased with their catch and sharing retsina afterwards.
Or she painted the donkeys, their furry skin, their slow reluctance as they trudged over the hilly island in the searing sun, the young boys at their sides, hitting their flanks irritably with sticks when they needed to move more quickly.
She also painted the whitewashed houses with the women in black scrubbing the doorsteps, stray cats lurking near the taverna, searching for scraps, the goats on the rocky terrain, or the monasteries on the hill, built as close to God as possible.
Carl’s paintings could not have been more different: huge swirling canvases, alive with movement but with no figures, neither human nor animal, in sight. There was a suggestion of water and boats and light and trees in the blocks of colour used and the atmosphere conveyed but he wanted them to be as abstract as possible, ‘In order that the viewer can make his or her own images,’ he explained, ‘and therefore the painter is in collaboration with the spectator: working together to make sense of what we see.’
Gently, carefully, he encouraged Frieda to be less photographic in her work, blurring edges, hinting at reality rather than depicting it. The more she was with him and he praised her use of colour and brush stroke, the more she wanted to paint. She felt as if she had been opened up, as if Carl had prised apart the bars of her prison and set her free, or unlocked the oyster shell in which she had been trapped and released the pearl. For the first time since she was a teenager, she started writing poetry and he helped her with vision, with words and with passion. She could not stop painting, writing poetry, falling in love with Carl. She slipped poems in envelopes under his front door:
With you, I can drink the juice of lemons
And think it sweet.
You have opened my eyes to the sea
And its endless possibilities.
I am every cypress tree,
Each fantail dove, each pomegranate.
It is you who has helped me,
Who has lifted me to the clouds
And enabled me to be
Whatever it is that I need to be.
The more she slept with Carl, the more adventurous her paintings became.
The more she painted, the more adventurous her sex with Carl became.
So her canvases began to use colour that was deeper, brighter. She no longer felt the need to make her landscapes realistic and her figures so lifelike, but more abstract, hazy, as if she was willing to run the risk of people not knowing exactly what it was she was depicting. She transferred more responsibility onto the viewer and less onto her and this freed her, gave her the courage to paint the way she had always wanted to. Even her movements as she painted changed. She lifted her arms wide, more expansive, more expressive.
Hydra had liberated her in other ways, too. She knew that her children were safe and were being looked after: Gideon, quiet and guarded but doing well academically at school, Esther happy with Evgeniya. Jack was immersed in his own work: she had accepted now that their marriage was dead and that any hope of reviving it was unrealistic. She saw that. They had married too young, on the kibbutz, mistaking their shared idealism and Zionism for compatibility. Both virgins, they had hoped that sexually they would be in harmony but had discovered that they were not, and lacked the language to air their problems so that they tended to argue rather than explore.
At the start of her relationship with Carl, they had taken it slowly, tenderly, as if there was no hurry. They did not talk of the future or how long they would be on the island. More sexually experienced than Frieda, Carl led the way, being careful not to rush or put pressure on her. As well as pleasing himself, he was concerned with helping h
er to discover what she liked. She had not said much about her sex life with Jack (she felt bad enough about her disloyalty to him without humiliating him further) but she implied that he charged at it hungrily without due consideration for her needs.
Carl felt himself blessed. He had come to the island not knowing anyone, escaping the pressure to stay at the law firm in Toronto and take it over when his father retired. All his life, Carl had done as he was told to. An only child, able at school, exams had not been a problem, and at law school he had continued to sail through. The issue was that none of this excited him.
Bored by law, he kept life interesting by painting his huge canvases and sleeping with as many people as possible when the day’s work was over. It was easy to find women to have sex with, but it did not satisfy him. He sensed his life shrinking, felt suffocated. Complying with his father by day and his mother by night, being introduced to nice, dull girls whom she considered eligible at her frequent stiff dinner parties, he could hardly breathe.
After ten years like this, he rebelled. There was a terrible argument during which he told his mother that he did not want children and probably did not want to get married either. He told his father that he had always found commercial law stifling and tedious, a pretence at doing good while lining one’s own pockets, that he had felt pressurised into studying it when he really hadn’t wanted to, and that he wished to focus on his painting. It did not go down well. His mother wept for days and his father’s face drained of colour. How Carl wished he had a conventional sister living near their parents, who had five children, so that they would be guaranteed the grandchildren they so desperately wanted.
In one of his arty magazines, Carl had read about an Aegean island called Hydra where people went to escape the trappings of capitalism and focus on their art. He had saved enough money from his work and could afford to live and paint for a while. Arriving on Hydra had been so effortless. Locals such as Douskos knew where the rented houses were, and Carl found one easily. It was wonderful to live simply, swap suits and ties for shorts and cotton shirts, and paint whenever he wanted. He loved the island, its simplicity, its beauty, the light which enveloped the whole place in a golden haze and slipped itself onto the canvas.