The Water and the Wine

by Tamar Hodes

  ‘How are you, Axel?’ she asked. All the anger and resentment had vanished and she now felt pity for him. He looked so unwell.

  ‘The vomiting and nausea have gone, and the doctor says that the malaria is fading but I still feel rough.’

  ‘You have Maria to look after you.’

  ‘Why would I have Maria when I could have Marianne?’

  He held out his hand to touch hers. She squeezed his back in a platonic way so as not to encourage him and then quickly removed it. ‘That is over now, Axel, but we can be friends.’

  ‘I do not want to be your friend, Marianne. I love you. You are the only woman that I have ever loved. Leave that new man of yours. Come back to me. Bring little Axel Joachim. We can be a proper family again.’

  She poured Axel a glass of water and passed it to him. ‘No, Axel. You had your chance. Do you not remember how you treated me? All the women you slept with when you said you loved only me?’

  ‘That was just sex. It means nothing, Marianne.’

  ‘Not to me. I think sex is something you share with someone you care for or love. Not just something you hand out like sweets to anyone who passes by.’

  ‘Leave him. What do you see in him? Some dark-haired Canadian dwarf, who writes poetry to depress everyone? Come back to me.’

  ‘You have Maria to take care of you and I will come from time to time to run errands, but you need to understand, Axel, I am with Leonard now. You can see your son, but I will never, ever live with you again.’

  Axel’s face twisted in scorn and anger. He held his glass high like a weapon and smashed it against the wall. It shattered into many pieces, splinters all over the stone floor and the water darkened the white paint. Marianne tried to stay calm. She had seen him lose his temper many times.

  ‘Axel,’ she said, ‘you are behaving like a child. Stop it.’

  ‘Come back to me, Marianne, or I will smash all the glasses in this house,’ and he began to cry.

  ‘That is stupid. You can destroy whatever you want but I am never coming back to you. Do you understand? I loved you and you betrayed me and it is over.’

  She took her basket and left. As she walked to the front door, she could hear him wailing and the sounds of more glasses exploding against the wall.

  All the way back to her house, her empty basket swinging in her hand, her heart raced. She remembered what Momo had said: at least you are breathing. Concentrate on that and be calm.

  By the time she reached Leonard’s house, Marianne was sobbing. Axel Joachim was on the floor playing with his tin soldiers and Leonard held his lover tenderly, felt her cries throb through her body, let his linen shirt moisten with her tears.

  ‘I wish he would move away from Hydra and leave us in peace,’ she sobbed.

  ‘I know, my love, but you have Axel Joachim and me.’

  He lifted the baby from the floor and held them together so that the three of them made a tight circle. Leonard kissed Marianne on her cheek and Axel Joachim on his soft white head.

  ‘Now this will amuse you. Do you know what we boys have been doing while you were out?’ Marianne shook her head and dried her eyes. ‘We tried to do an experiment. We had a bath and put the typewriter in to see if it would work underwater.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Just as an experiment.’

  ‘And did it?’

  ‘Not well but we had fun trying.’ He ruffled the boy’s hair.

  ‘Your lovely green typewriter. Is it ruined?’

  ‘No. It is very wet, but it will dry.’

  ‘Silly you,’ and they laughed again.

  That evening they ate the meal that Kyria Sophia had made them, on the terrace with Hydra below offered to them like a gift. As usual, on Shabbat, Leonard lit the candles, and recited blessings on them, the bread and the wine. ‘Baruch atah adonai, elohenu melech ha aolum…’

  ‘Why do you still do the Jewish blessings?’ she asked, ‘as you read so much about Buddhism?’

  ‘Other philosophies and religions don’t make me turn against my Judaism. In fact, they make me turn to it more. It reminds me of the difference between grace and guilt. Traditional Judaism never suited me but after my father died, I felt that I had to be the man of the home, looking after my mother and sister. My mother wanted me to take his place and for a while, I was comfortable with it. But here on Hydra, I feel free to be the kind of Jew that I want to be.’

  ‘Does this island set us free?’

  ‘To some extent. It is the contradictions that I love. We live on an island called Hydra where it hardly ever rains. We are both free from society and yet enchained to it.’

  ‘Yes, I agree. I thought I would find happiness and love here and I have, with you, but Axel is nearby reminding me always of reality and pain.’

  ‘Rather than blot out his darkness, you have to edge closer to it.’

  ‘What do you mean, Leonard?’

  ‘Accept what you wish to reject and take it in. Learn from it, lean into it, as you would the night.’

  Over the next few weeks, Marianne tried to heed Leonard’s advice. She still went to see Axel regularly and took him shopping but she refused to engage in his fights or arguments even though he seemed to want her to. She lifted herself above them, let him rant if he wanted to, and shielded herself from it.

  ‘I did everything I could for Patricia,’ he said one day, ‘and what thanks did I get for it? I sat there for days on end at the hospital, by her side’ (Marianne did not say: so did I) ‘and then I helped her get treatment in America and still she rejected me. Life is a struggle, every day and month of it. Every minute, even. Writing is the same. I toil and slave away at it and try to form perfect sentences, the best I can, and even then I am not appreciated.’

  Marianne listened but did not respond. She remembered Leonard’s advice, to edge towards it but not be swallowed by it. Axel did not like to be patronised or told that it would get better soon. She avoided contentious subjects, such as when he was going to see his son again, or pay any maintenance for him. These topics made him angry. She watched him erupt and let him do so.

  After she left his house, she would feel relieved to be away from his toxic anger and back in the fresh summer air. Yellow flowers beaded the gorse bushes; wild gladioli dotted the island with their colourful blooms and the eucalyptus leaves caught the sun. One day she was walking back when she saw an osprey land on a nearby wall. She paused for a moment and observed its hooked beak, its green, glassy eyes and the marbled feathering on its back and wings. Stunned by its beauty and its willingness to let itself be seen, Marianne found herself smiling. There might be pain on this island but there was undoubtedly beauty, too.

  She felt great comfort knowing that when she returned to Leonard’s house, he would be there with her son. She loved their daily life: the meals they shared; the walks they had in the harbour, showing Axel Joachim the boats and the cormorants that stood still as iron on the boulders; the picnic lunches carried in Marianne’s deep baskets and drawn out like secrets. She felt they made a family, the three of them, hands held, facing each other.

  And in the evenings, when Axel Joachim slept and Kyria Sophia had gone home, she and Leonard made love with tenderness and passion. The more sex they had, the more they wanted. She liked to receive him in her mouth and between her legs, anywhere she could feel his hardness within her, and they took their time, as if they hoped that the night would never end. Her breasts were small but he liked to take her nipples in his mouth and then find her lips and kiss her, as if he would never stop. Sometimes they had sex two or three times in a row, pausing only for a few moments in between, desperate for more of what they had already had: more and more of it.

  One night as they lay in the darkness, satisfied, he said: ‘By the way, my mother, Masha, wants to come and visit me here.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Marianne.

  ‘Is it really?’ he answered. ‘Wait and see.’

  xiii

  ‘My
love,’ said Marianne, placing her hand gently on Leonard’s shoulder. ‘You have been working so hard. Won’t you come and rest?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have to finish this. The publisher is waiting for it. I’m focusing on the characters of Shell and Gordon and I have to get them right.’

  ‘I understand, Leonard. I will leave you in peace. Kyria Sophia has taken Axel Joachim to Katsikas to get groceries and collect the mail. I’m going to visit Axel.’

  ‘Why do you still bother with him? He doesn’t deserve your care.’

  ‘I know, but he’s ill and lonely and still the father of my child.’

  She kissed the back of Leonard’s neck and as her lips brushed his feathery nape, she noticed how the sun had warmed it. On the wall in front of him she saw that he had written in gold paint: I am change / I am the same. He wrote on paper, the walls, tables: any surface receptive to his words.

  Her basket filled with food, and the marked manuscript of Axel’s novel, Line, she set out on the walk to her old house. Today, the summer brought with it the Meltemi wind from the north, which blew harshly from a marble and granite sky. Marianne wrapped her headscarf tightly around her head to protect her from the blast and clasped it close to her throat with one hand. In Norway, this wind would have created rain and cold, but how like Hydra for the wind to be hot as if it were delivering bad news but in a sweet coating.

  Along the side of the path she saw purple stocks growing haphazardly from any patch of ground they could find, sometimes a single stem, sometimes in clumps. Wild roses clambered the walls and filled the air with their scent. A goat looked up nonchalantly when he saw Marianne appear and then bent down to his clump of weeds again. It made her smile: Kyria Sophia often boiled nettles for them to eat, money always being tight, and the wild greens, herbs and garlic made a nourishing broth, a swirl of olive oil over the top. You and us, mumbled Marianne to the goat: sharing the same meal, making do with whatever we can find, and enjoying it.

  Arriving at Axel’s home, Marianne saw that Maria had cleaned for him although she was nowhere in sight. The kitchen tiles were gleaming; the stone floor still slightly damp. Marianne put the food in the kitchen and went to see Axel, writing in his study. Moving between one novelist on a green Olivetti typewriter and another novelist on a Remington black typewriter, she sometimes wondered who she was. She had the sense of not quite being anyone, as if her identity was shifting, dependent on and determined by others. She thought: maybe I am destined to be a daughter, mother, wife, lover and muse to other creators, while my own creative self never seems to evolve.

  There were times when she felt the role to be a privileged one: both men needed her. But there were other days when she felt like nothing, a ghost of who she might have been, an invisible shape wafting between the two houses, less effective than the Meltemi wind.

  ‘Have you eaten today, Axel?’ she asked, speaking to the back of his head. She remembered kissing Leonard’s nape and thought: I haven’t even seen either of these men’s faces today.

  ‘No time. Groth is waiting for the final draft to be finished. Have you brought the marked copy?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve put red dots in the margins where I feel there needs to be more work or embellishment.’ She handed him the edited manuscript, disappointed that he had not even thanked her or looked up.

  In the kitchen, she mashed some avocado into a paste, added chickpeas, olive oil and lemon juice and warmed pitta in the oven. She thought back to the manuscript, the novel about Jacob, a young seaman, whose parents both have psychiatric issues. He goes back to Norway and falls in love with Line, to the disapproval of everyone. She did not say to Axel that Line reminded her of herself and that the novel seemed to be a thinly disguised account of their relationship. He needed to stay focused and she did not want to rile him when the novel was due. He was talented, of that she had no doubt, and she was not going to block that.

  She carried the food through to him, insisting: ‘Please take a small break to eat and then you can carry on.’

  He half-turned towards her and obeyed, ripping bread and shovelling it in the paste, like a digger through cement.

  ‘How is it going?’

  ‘Better now that I know Groth likes it. I hadn’t heard from him in ages, you know how long the post takes to come from Piraeus, but he has now written to say it’s good. With your suggestions and one redraft, I may finish it this week.’

  Marianne smiled. Axel and Groth, his publisher, had had their difficulties. Although Groth had declared Axel a genius, the two men had often argued, for example, over the title of the novel. Axel had favoured Linedansen – The Line Dancer – punning on the character’s name but Groth disagreed. Line was the compromise they had grumpily reached. That was just one of many quarrels they had had.

  ‘Good. You are feeling better?’

  ‘Yes. No more sweating or nausea. I have lost a lot of weight though.’

  He ate the food hungrily. It looked to Marianne as if he had been so absorbed in his writing that he had not eaten for days. The plate soon empty, he turned back to his typewriter.

  ‘I will bring you a pot of coffee,’ she said, ‘so that you can have it by you before I leave.’

  She removed the soiled plate.

  When she brought the silver pot and cup through, he seized her hand and said: ‘Don’t leave me, Marianne. You are the only woman I have ever truly loved.’

  She withdrew her hand but tried to do so graciously. She did not say: remember, you were the one who betrayed me. He needed to be calm in order to write.

  Walking back, Marianne felt tears stream down her face. Maybe it was the summer wind, she thought, but maybe it was also the endless strain of trying to understand life and knowing how best to live.

  At Leonard’s house, he seemed even more absorbed on The Favourite Game than Axel did on Line. Now she prepared food for him: an array of salami, olives, tomatoes and dolmades. She arranged them prettily on a plate and made him a carafe of coffee, too.

  ‘Leonard,’ she whispered, her hand pressed gently on his back, ‘here is some food and drink. You need nourishment to keep you going.’

  His hair was messy as if he had been rifling his fingers through it and he was sweaty, damp patches spreading under his arms and staining his cotton shirt.

  ‘Thank you, my love,’ he growled, ‘but I can’t stop. I have to keep writing. I must finish this novel if it kills me. Please leave me alone.’

  She went through to Kyria Sophia who was doing the ironing.

  ‘As Axel Joachim is having his nap,’ she told her, ‘I am going for a walk.’

  These were days when Marianne felt angry and restless. Walking down the hill to the harbour, the wind had died down a little and she saw the donkeys standing irritably in the heat, twitching their ears to rid them of the midges that encircled them in a hazy cloud. The houses piled haphazardly along the bay, and the boats were now resting after their busy morning.

  Suddenly she heard her name being called: ‘Marianne, over here!’

  She turned and was delighted to see Sam, an old friend. She and Axel had worked for him on his schooner, her cooking, Axel sailing. She had never told Axel of her affair with Sam and they all became friends, Sam, Eileen, his wife, and their young son, James.

  They embraced and he seemed so pleased to see her again. ‘You look amazing, Marianne, as beautiful as ever. So, you’re still here on Hydra? How’s Axel?’

  ‘There’s so much to tell you,’ she said shyly, noticing how tanned, blond and beautiful Sam was. ‘Do you have time for a drink?’

  They sat behind Katsikas’ store where, at those same tables and chairs, she had first met Leonard. The light made the place seem more pleasant than it really was: old sacks of flour and rice stacked in the corners; the ubiquitous stray cats, moody, sulky, on the lookout for scraps.

  ‘Where do I begin?’ she asked once they were seated and they had clinked their glasses of lemonade. ‘After we had our beautiful boy, Axel Joac
him, we separated.’

  ‘No? What happened?’

  ‘He found someone else. An American painter named Patricia.’

  ‘What an idiot. Are they still together?’

  ‘No, but Axel lives in our old house, alone. He has not been well.’

  ‘And where do you live?’ Marianne noticed Sam’s muscular physique. She had forgotten how attractive he was.

  ‘I am with Leonard. He is a writer, singer, composer. Very talented. He is wonderful.’

  ‘Axel is stupid, a loser. He was never good enough for you. I do not know Leonard. Live with me, Marianne. Marry me. We were so good together. We can sail the seas and move between Oslo and Hydra. I could make you happy. You know it could work.’

  Part of Marianne thought: I have two men on Hydra who do not appreciate me. Maybe I should go with Sam? He was always so attentive to me. But she shook her head.

  ‘Thank you, Sam. We have always been friends. But it is Leonard I love. He makes me happy. Anyway, what happened to Eileen?’

  ‘It didn’t work out either. She found a new lover.’

  ‘And James?’

  ‘He remembers you warmly, the way you told him stories. He is fine, growing up fast.’

  They paused and Sam looked at her fondly.

  ‘I would like you to have this, Marianne,’ said Sam, digging in his duffel bag. He drew out an old captain’s watch. It was silver and elegant, the numbers Roman. She threaded it through the chain so that it hung next to the Star of David that Leonard had given her, and which she wore each day. ‘Think about what I’ve said. Contact me. You could have a good life with me.’

  ‘Thank you, Sam. Thank you for the watch. Tell me about you,’ she said, moving the conversation away from the past.

  ‘I am well, but I have never stopped thinking of you.’

  Later while Marianne made her way up the hill back to Kala Pigadia, she fingered the watch from Sam and the star from Leonard in the same hand, at the same time. The sun and wind grazed her face as she walked. Decisions, choices, all the time.

  When she arrived home, Leonard greeted her.