The Water and the Wine

by Tamar Hodes

  ‘How kind of her,’ said Marianne. ‘I grew very fond of your mother.’

  ‘Really?’ said Leonard. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she is a good soul and she has suffered.’

  After Masha’s departure, Leonard had taken a short break from his writing and Marianne felt that he had, at least temporarily, returned to her and Axel Joachim; but now he was deep in his writing and fasting again. He may have complained about his mother but at least she had returned him to the fold.

  Marianne missed his company, their conversations, their long meals on the terrace, being a unit of three, and the feel and smell of him.

  ‘You know, Leonard, do you ever wonder how Axel Joachim and I feel?’ Marianne placed his daily gardenia on his desk. He did not look up but stopped typing for a moment.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Sometimes you are involved with us, loving and giving, and then suddenly you are absent as if you are not even here. It is very difficult. We miss you so much.’

  Leonard turned and buried his head in her chest. The smell of her, the warmth of her, the way her body curved – he longed for her.

  ‘I am truly sorry,’ he said, ‘but I have to write, Marianne. I cannot explain it to you. I have no choice. My novel is a corpse and I have to work on it with my scalpel.’

  She ran her fingers through his dark hair and bent to kiss him full on the mouth. It tasted strange and she wondered what he had been taking.

  ‘This morning, Axel is coming to see his son and then later, after he has gone, the three of us are going out together as a family.’

  She went out of the room, closing the door behind her. She heard him typing again.

  When Axel arrived, Marianne led him onto the shaded part of the terrace where Axel Joachim was playing on a rug. He had his wooden giraffe and tin soldiers to play with. The harbour shimmered in the morning sun. Citronella candles burned in tins, to deter the circling mosquitoes.

  ‘Why have you not brought him to our house lately?’ he asked, looking at the boy as if at a stranger.

  ‘It is too confusing for him with all your various women: first Patricia, now Sonja, and who knows how long she’ll last? The child needs consistency.’

  Axel looked sullen.

  Kyria Sophia brought them coffee, and apple juice for the baby. Marianne saw how disapproving she looked as she left: this crazy family.

  ‘If you would come back to me, Marianne, we could be a family unit again.’

  ‘You mean until you grew tired of us and found a new woman?’

  ‘What do you see in Leonard? He is not good enough for you.’

  ‘I hear that Line caused some controversy?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s good, isn’t it? I don’t want my work to be bland.’

  ‘How’s your new novel going, Axel?’

  His eyes lit up. ‘My fourth. Actually, it’s called Joacim,’ he pointed to his son, ‘but before you worry, it’s not about us. Or our son. Joacim is in advertising and is married to Cecilie but he is searching for meaning in his life and wants to be an artist. He takes his family to a Greek island…’

  ‘That sounds familiar.’

  ‘…and he falls in love with a Danish student. He is torn between his duty to his family and his desire for his art and his lover.’

  ‘Don’t tell me: I am Cecilie, the abandoned wife?’

  ‘No, you are not. True, the novel is set in Oslo and Greece and I write in the first person so readers might assume that it is autobiographical, but I have to draw on my experience. Where is my material supposed to come from? Believe me, Cecilie does not do you justice, Marianne. No-one could be as beautiful as you.’

  ‘It is easy to say that now, Axel. You did not always appreciate me.’

  ‘I hold myself largely responsible for what happened to us, Marianne. I want you to know that.’

  ‘Really? You’ve never said that before.’

  ‘Well, I am saying it today.’

  ‘Have you heard from John Starr Cooke?’

  ‘Yes. I write letters to him and the nurse replies for him. You know he is paralysed since the insect bite?’

  ‘You told me. It’s so sad. More coffee, Axel?’

  He stayed for two hours and by the time he had left, Marianne realised that he had not asked her a single question about herself or shown any interest in his son.

  Marianne gave Axel Joachim his lunch, he had a nap and she read some of The Tibetan Book of the Dead which Magda had lent her; then she went to see Leonard in his study. He had not eaten the food that she had left him and he looked tired and wan. Prickly stubble darkened his chin.

  ‘Leonard,’ she whispered, ‘you promised that you would come out with us just to get some fresh air and then you can write again.’ To her amazement he obeyed.

  They walked for half an hour across Kala Pigadia. The sun was intense and Marianne had put a hat on Axel Joachim and cream on his arms to protect him from burning. She wheeled the pushchair, Leonard by her side.

  They went to Demosthenes, the barber, to have their hair cut. Inside it was plain: stone walls, two chairs, a mirror in front of each, and a crucifix on the wall. There were no basins at all: if he needed to moisten your hair, he poured water from a bottle into his large hands and sprinkled your head, so the islanders joked that you could get your hair cut and be baptised in one go. Demosthenes was bald, which did not inspire confidence in his haircutting skill, but everyone went to him. Leonard reluctantly sat in the chair first. The black locks fell to the stone floor as the barber chatted in a language they didn’t understand, as if the words were his rhythm, his music, spurring him on. Leonard rubbed his hands over his shorn head.

  Marianne liked to wear her hair short in the heat and Demosthenes trimmed it now, adding her blonde curls on top of Leonard’s.

  Axel Joachim cried when it was his turn so he had to sit on Marianne’s lap. The soft locks of his hair fell like snow. They paid Demosthenes and Marianne saw, before she left his shop, how their hair had combined in one heap on the floor and it brought tears to her eyes, how connected they were – or rather they would be temporarily – until Demosthenes took his brush and swept them away.

  The island was bright with colour and light, as if someone had been up early and painted it as gaudily as they could. Camellias caught the sun like mirrors in their bleached blooms and blood-red hibiscus seemed a warning of danger.

  The Gardenia Dwarf was out in the garden, pinching dead leaves with her pincer-fingers. Donkeys walked slowly by, loads of fruit and vegetables on their backs, the mule boys snapping at their sides.

  Men were installing electric wires across the island so that phones could be used.

  They stopped at Katsikas’ and sat at the back where they drank cool lemonade from curved bottles. Marianne remembered her first meeting with Leonard all those months before. Little had she known then what awaited them, what challenges they would face. Axel Joachim had fallen asleep and Marianne parked the pushchair under the shady pine tree.

  ‘There are some wires by my study window now,’ said Leonard. ‘This morning, I looked up briefly to gaze at the almond blossom as I wrote, and the men were there, placing these dark lines across my vision. It was as if the modern world was impinging on the mystical one. Time upon timelessness. A stain on perfection. Man’s destruction of nature. The birds perching there looked like notes on a stave.’

  ‘You could write a great song about that.’

  ‘I have started one.’

  ‘It might be good for us to have a phone, though?’

  ‘Don’t tell my mother! She’ll ring every day.’

  ‘I like Masha.’

  ‘I know you do.’ He smiled gratefully at her. ‘I do, too.’

  For the second time that day, Marianne heard of the dilemma of responsibility versus desire. ‘Actually, I have been writing the lyrics for a song, Bird on a Wire. It just came to me and I was thinking of you. I wrote that if I was unkind to you, I didn’t mean it but
that I was torn. Between my writing and you. Between the familiar and the new, between stability and risk.’

  Marianne smiled, and the sun caught her hair.

  ‘I don’t know where my writing comes from. I don’t even know if it is any good, but I feel that I am beholden to it. I am not the master. I am the servant. It controls me. It comes and demands to be written.’

  That afternoon, Leonard went back to work and Marianne took Axel Joachim to play with Charmian’s son, Jason, on their terrace. Jason had brought out some books for the boy and was reading to him. The sight of the older blonde boy with the younger blonde boy moved her.

  Charmian knocked back a glass of whisky in one go and dragged on a cigarette. ‘You know, Marianne,’ she said, ‘that man drives me crazy.’

  Marianne smiled politely. Sometimes she tired of the Johnstons’ quarrels, wished that they would sort themselves out rather than airing it all in front of friends, and more importantly, their children. Charmian did not care that Jason was within earshot. There was no attempt to protect him from adult issues.

  ‘He only thinks about himself and his writing. Nothing else matters to him. Not me. Not the children. He is the centre of his own little world. He doesn’t rate anyone else’s work. The arrogance of the man. He thinks that he is the only person on the planet who can write.’

  ‘I suppose writers and artists have to believe their work matters or else why bother?’

  ‘But why are writers special? Maybe doctors and teachers take their work seriously, but they don’t then look down on others in the same field, do they? Are they competitive in the same way?’

  ‘Creativity is hard. I try to write and draw but I get nowhere. I have ideas but I can never see them through.’

  ‘It’s because you are not conceited enough. You don’t have a strong enough sense of your own importance. You are more interested in bending to the needs of others than satisfying your own.’ Walking back home, Marianne remembered what Charmian had said. She probably meant it kindly but it made her feel as if she were nothing: less substantial than the summer poppies which only lasted a few days before shedding their paper-thin petals on the ground.

  That evening, when the baby was asleep, Marianne and Leonard made love more intensely than ever. It had been weeks since they had really connected and it was as if they had stored their passion up for that occasion. They loved and kissed each other with energy and a desire to be as close to each other as they could be. Even when Leonard had entered Marianne, he felt that he wanted to be more inside her, more connected to her, more with her and to never be apart from her again. They cried and moaned and licked the tears from each other’s faces. Marianne slept well that night but when she awoke in the early morning, the other side of the bed was empty.

  Leonard was typing again.

  xviii

  The intense summer heat made the island more fertile. Citrus groves bulged with orange and yellow globes which hung like coloured lightbulbs among the shiny leaves. Fig trees heavy with fruit lowered their branches to the ground like boats allowing their passengers safely to disembark. The black spheres burst open like overfull sacks of grain, releasing their sticky seeds in a gluey syrup, much to the delight of wasps. Peaches and plums swelled with their own juicy importance and grew fat.

  In this time of growth, death was the last thing on their minds.

  Kyria Sophia was the first to bring the news. She came rushing into the house one morning, her face blotchy with tears. She mimed strangling to Marianne, her hands around her own throat.

  ‘What is it, my dear? What’s happened?’

  ‘Spyros,’ the maid wailed. ‘Spyros,’ and she ran from the room, weeping.

  Not long after, Magda came by Marianne’s house, her usually rosy face ashen. She was carrying her dark-haired son Alexander, who she put on the floor beside Axel Joachim. The boys stared at each other and then played with their own toys.

  ‘Oh, it’s so awful, have you heard, Marianne?’

  ‘What? Kyria Sophia was trying to tell me something.’

  ‘Spyros, the son of Mikalis, the boatman, he got caught in his rope when he was mooring and has died.’

  ‘Oh my god. Poor boy. He was so lovely and young. And poor Mikalis.’

  ‘Yes, he is already a widower. Spyros was his life. Will you come with me this evening to view the body, in the church? The Greeks always have their funerals soon after death.’

  ‘Of course, Magda,’ she said.

  Later, the two women walked up the hill together leaving Kyria Sophia to mind the boys. Most people were wearing black and the body lay in an open casket in the church hall. Mikalis wept, tears running down the grooves in his leathery face. The papos was there in his black cloak and high headdress, a large wooden cross on his chest, muttering prayers and incantations. They filed past in an orderly line, forming a square of mourners around the coffin. When Marianne looked inside, she saw a young boy taken away in his prime. His dark hair and handsome face seemed unsuited to death. Tears filled her eyes and Magda held her hand. That night the bell in the waterfront tower rang solemnly, as it did whenever there was a death on the island.

  There were no spare seats in the little stone church the following day and many people had to stand. It occurred to Marianne that there were not many times on Hydra when they all came together as a community. There were fishermen and sailors comforting Mikalis; maids such as Evgeniya, Maria, Agape, Sevasty and Kyria Sophia; Demi the baker; Douskos from the taverna with his wife Polixenes and her mother, The Gardenia Dwarf; Demosthenes, the barber; Vassilis, the crippled sponge diver, and Francisco, the carpenter, as well as Tzimmi, the log deliverer. Many of the expat artists attended, too: Magda, toned down in black with no adornments; George and Charmian; Frieda and Jack; Norman, who had made an effort by trimming his beard and wearing a clean (but crumpled) shirt; Olivia and Georgos; and trembling John Dragoumis in a black hat.

  The coffin was once again open and the congregation stood when the papos entered. The building was heavy with incense and smoke from the fat white candles. The foreigners did not understand the words of the priest, nor did they recognise the prayers or hymns, but they stood quietly, respectfully, and felt part of the event even without the language.

  The weeping of Mikalis needed no translation.

  After the service, they all moved to the graveyard on the hillside behind the church. Spyros’ coffin was buried deep in the ground, a cross on its lid moulded from soil, and people threw single roses on top. The papos chanted in pain as if it were his own son who had died.

  The following evening, people gathered at Mikalis’ humble home for the wake, or makaria. There was not enough room for everyone so some mourners stood on the cobbles outside and the windows were open to the night. Friends brought food: bread, cakes, pots of stew, fruit, and people ate modestly and quietly, talking in low voices. Mikalis’ face was red as if he had not stopped crying.

  After that, he gave up his job. His brother Alexis took over and Mikalis turned his attention from the boat to the bottle. Anyone passing his cottage at night could hear him sing songs of the sea and dirges in a wailing, mournful voice.

  Frieda would walk a different way down to the harbour to avoid hearing his moans if Esther was with her. The little girl had a tendency to get upset, and Mikalis’ laconic singing could pierce the heart.

  ‘Why are we going this way, Mummy?’

  ‘I thought it would make a nice change, sweetie.’

  Marianne was upset for days after the funeral. Although Leonard was still writing crazily, not eating and being very distant, he did come out from his study when he heard her crying.

  ‘You know, my love,’ he said, holding her close to him, ‘that the ash we become is the testimony to our lives, that the more fully we live, the more fully we die.’

  ‘But you and I are hardly living together any more,’ she sobbed. ‘We were so close. You write all the time and I understand your need to do that but I feel that we are g
rowing apart, Leonard. Being at the funeral yesterday has just reminded me that life is so short, that it will soon be over. We only have a little while. Please spend some time with me.’

  ‘It’s the writing, Marianne. It isn’t a question of you coming first, or it coming first, but I want and need you both.’

  ‘We’ve been invited onto Onassis’ yacht this afternoon. Will you come with us or must I be a widow again?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Marianne. I absolutely have to write.’

  ‘Magda will come with me then. Do you think I am wrong going on a yacht when Spyros has just died?’

  ‘Marianne,’ said Leonard, looking her directly in her eyes. ‘It is life and death and shit and orchids. There is no division here. It is all connected. Just go.’

  They had met Aristotle Onassis at one of Olivia’s many parties and he had immediately found Marianne attractive. With her blonde hair, fair skin and blue eyes, she stood out from the swarthy Greeks around her.

  Onassis, grey hair swept back, a tanned, sculpted face, and wearing a blazer and cravat, sharp linen trousers and suede loafers, oozed money and sophistication.

  ‘Where are you from, my dear?’ he had asked, intrigued.

  ‘Norway.’

  ‘Oh, I have been salmon fishing there. It is so beautiful. And what are you doing on Hydra?’

  ‘My husband is a writer and so is my lover.’ She blushed at her own candour.

  ‘Splendid.’ He smiled warmly. ‘Well, you must come on my yacht sometime, with either one of your men, or both, or preferably neither.’ He smirked at his own flirtatiousness.

  In the end, she had gone with Magda who, having been on the yacht before, dressed in white with silver necklaces and earrings. Marianne had worried about what to wear, settling in the end for a buttercup-yellow dress which matched her hair. She felt her leather sandals were too casual but they were all she had.

  Christina O was a huge yacht, moored close to the harbour. As Magda and Marianne embarked, they were greeted by stewards in white uniforms who offered them champagne. The women stared at all around them: a helipad and an outdoor pool with a minotaur-themed mosaic floor, flanked by carved dolphins from whose mouths more champagne spurted.