by Tamar Hodes
She wondered whether Leonard was sleeping with other women when he was away. She wouldn’t ask him, for fear of arguments, for fear of ruining what they had. Self-doubt flooded her, but then Leonard’s letters arrived and she was reassured that he did love her. The last one she received was just one line:
I have my guitar and my notebook, my songs and my poems: now all I need now is you.
Leonard
xxii
Marianne and Axel Joachim were the first to return to Hydra. The little boy had been tearful when he left Oslo and his granny to begin the long journey home. Marianne held him close and read him stories and also spoke to him of his friends, especially Alexander and Jason, Melina and Esther – whom he would see again soon. She thought: all this change and upheaval is not good for him. Like the wallflowers around Hydra, which search for a patch of soil and flourish there, he needs roots.
The island was more beautiful than Marianne had remembered. Although cold, the sun was bright and brazen, coating the land and sea in a glorious varnish. Campanulas held their beauty modestly in white bells. The sky was wide and expansive, and everything seemed fresher, crisper, than when she was last there.
It was wonderful to be home again and have her own space without fear of upsetting her mother. Kyria Sophia had kept the house clean and shielded against the winter. There again were the familiar sights: silver plates heaped with hot coals and the green soup simmering. When Marianne hugged the elderly maid, she felt that she had really returned, that the woman was a second mother to her, without the emotional history that shadows families.
On the day that Leonard was expected to return, Marianne lit candles in tiny glasses and placed them on the cobbled courtyard outside their house and in a line leading him towards their shared haven.
When he arrived back, after a tiring, lengthy journey, he was delighted to see the lights dancing and flickering, and even though it was the early hours of the morning, Marianne had waited up for him.
He slipped off her gold kimono, untying the wide sash at the waist and letting it fall to the floor so that she stood in a pool of light.
They went to the bedroom and made love, his illness and their absence from each other only fuelling their desire. Their sleeping together was not only physical – to feel, again, that skin and softness and hardness and touch – but also an unspoken reminder that their love had not diminished over time but had only strengthened.
‘Every leaf, every cloud, every paving stone reminded me of you,’ said Leonard as she lay on his chest afterwards and he stroked her boyish blonde hair, her soft neck and her smooth skin.
‘I missed you so badly, Leonard, my love.’
They could not believe how lucky they were to have rediscovered each other like finding treasure thought lost. The dream was clearly not yet over.
Walking around the island the following day felt like finding beauty again, as if they had been hibernating and had awoken. Hydra seemed more delightful than it had before: the sea lifting its waves up high before flattening them out again; the earth wet and heavy as if preparing itself for spring; the firs and evergreens holding defiantly onto their foliage.
In the evening they walked down to the harbour, avoiding the sight of Lagoudera, dark and locked up. At Douskos’ Taverna, the friends sat talking under the pine tree as if they had never left. Everyone was happy to see them and they slotted back into the previous conversations.
‘So you knew Buber well?’ Chuck asked Jack.
‘Oh yes. Very. I first went to him because my sister was ill and I thought that he could help me. I rang him from a phone box and asked if I could make an appointment with him and explained why I needed his help. He spoke to me softly and quietly as he always did and said that I could see him that day. “I know that you are standing in my street,” he said. A few minutes later, I was sitting in his book-lined study, opening my heart to him.’
‘How did he know that you were close by?’ Charmian took the carafe and poured herself more retsina. George raised his eyebrows at her but then did the same.
‘I don’t know.’ Jack looked around him as he spoke, excited by the interest. ‘That was just the way he was. Intuitive and wise. I was twenty-five and he was seventy-five but that didn’t matter. He taught me to search inside myself, to make sure that all my relationships were I-Thou, not I-It.’ He looked away from Frieda as he spoke. ‘We need to listen to every word that is spoken, be alert to everything we see, make connections, build bridges.’
‘It reminds me of the Buddhist distinction between the eye-mind and the eye-heart. We need to get to what is essential, to what really matters,’ Gordon observed.
‘There is some fucking bullshit in the world,’ said George.
‘So true,’ said Charmian, glaring at him. ‘Closer by than we realise.’
‘I suppose that is why we have all come to Hydra, to get away from what is irrelevant and focus on the real, the significant.’ John Dragoumis stroked his beard to steady his shaking hand as he spoke.
‘I have left behind the rubbish of the world to collect the rubbish on Hydra,’ said Norman. He did not speak often but when he did it was always wry and thought-provoking.
‘As long as you don’t think you’re living amongst rubbish, mate,’ said George and everyone laughed.
‘I wish that Buber could be here to see all of us,’ said Jack, his eyes glassy with tears. ‘We are living out his ideas about responsibility, truth and the existential test. Living on Hydra is our test.’
‘Cheers to that.’ Charmian raised her glass.
‘L’Chaim! To life!’ said Leonard.
‘What are you working on now, Jack?’ Gordon was always interested in other people.
‘I’ve been given a grant by the Institute of World Affairs in New York to write a book about the ongoing conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis, a situation that breaks my heart. I open it with a story I read from the Antilles Islands. Two neighbours live on either side of a wall. One side is painted black, the other white. Then one neighbour calls out, “The wall is black!” “No,” shouts the other neighbour. “The wall is white.” A fight breaks out and both men are killed but neither of them thought of ever looking at the other side of the wall.’
‘You are extraordinary,’ said Chuck. ‘Full of ideas and stories and anecdotes. What a brilliant mind!’
Two hours later, back at their house, Frieda echoed the words bitterly, ‘What a brilliant mind!’
‘Well,’ said Jack, undressing, ‘I am pleased that someone appreciates me and recognises the work I do.’
‘It must be lovely,’ said Frieda. ‘I wish people acknowledged the work that I do and asked me questions and shone the light over me for once.’
‘I’ve told you before, Frieda. You just have to join in. No-one invites you to speak. It is not a tea party.’
‘But they do ask you. They always do. Whether we are in the kibbutz or Hydra or wherever we are, people are always interested in you and your writing. No-one ever asks me about my painting. Why is that?’
Apart from Carl, she thought. He was the one person she knew who took her seriously as an artist, one who had ideas, an original style and talent. How she wished that he would come to Douskos’ Taverna, stand on a chair and shout out: ‘This woman is an incredible painter. Ask her about it! Focus on her!’ but they had agreed that he should stay away from their soirées. One glance between them and their secret would be out.
‘I do care,’ said Jack, coming over to Frieda and trying to kiss her. She turned her head away. She simply could not bear to touch him. That morning, she and Carl had made love in her white studio, the grey light banished and their skin and mouths wet with each other.
‘I’ve told you,’ said Jack. ‘You need help with your lack of self-esteem. I think it’s linked to your frigidity, your aversion to sex. It’s all to do with your childhood, I’m sure, but that doesn’t help us. You need to get professional help, Frieda. It’s gone on too long. It’s
not fair to me. Men do have needs, you know.’
So do women, thought Frieda, and mine, luckily, are being met.
He carried his bedclothes to the living room where yet again he would be spending the night.
Frieda felt a pang of guilt and sadness for him. He was not a bad man, but she felt that they were two islands that the sea was pushing further apart.
Not very far away, beneath the same blank sky, it had taken a while to settle Axel Joachim into his cot again, but he was now asleep. In their bedroom, Marianne and Leonard closed the shutters to make the room dark. Sometimes they felt that the whole world had disappeared and it was just the two of them, this moment, everything reduced to this as if everything they had been through had been leading them to this time.
They took it slowly: he slipped one sleeve of her dress from her shoulder; kissed her grooves and dents, loving every part of her. From there to her mouth was a short distance and he found it open. They kissed, deeply, smoothly, each receiving the tongue, lips, skin of the other with delight. She felt the dark stubble on his chin and he touched the golden silk of her hair and he moved his mouth to her neck which was long and white and like that of a swan.
He lifted her dress completely off, to reveal her satin skin beneath. Even when he saw her at the shop or the taverna he was always conscious that beneath the cotton dress was the treasure. Sometimes he felt that he could not bear to know what was there and yet not have it, so he would have to distract himself by holding the guitar to cover his stiffness whilst he sang.
Marianne lay on the bed now and he moved his mouth onto her breasts which lay pert and expectant and he found her nipples, dark and hard to the touch. He took them in his mouth while she stroked his hair and shoulder blades and legs. Then he moved down to the centre of her and his mouth was on her until she cried out.
She pushed him away and rolled him over so that she was on top and she hung above him like an angel from heaven, a golden-haired angel with white skin, and she rolled herself over him until they could bear it no longer and they called out for each other and they kissed hard and then lay together in the darkness, silent.
She liked to lean her head on his chest and listen to his heart beat. It made her feel that she was part of him, almost within him as he had just been in her. They could not be close enough.
There was no need to say anything.
They lay there happy, full of love and the smell of each other.
xxiii
‘I love it,’ said Leonard, lighting the candles on his menorah, ‘when Christmas and Chanukah coincide.’
‘They don’t every year?’
‘Oh no, not at all. Christmas is fixed; Chanukah is changing, according to the moon. But when they are at the same time, it means that everyone has something to celebrate, something to light.’
He said the bracha over the candles and sang Ma’oz Tzur in his gravelly voice which Marianne loved. Axel Joachim’s little face was lit by the glow and the excitement shone in his eyes.
‘Look, darling,’ said his mother. ‘All the pretty candles.’
They ate gold chocolate coins which Masha had sent them and they flattened the foil covers into discs.
There was a knock at the door and there, in warm clothing, were children singing carols, or kalanda, in the street. Some played drums and triangles. A girl at the front carried a golden model ship full of nuts. Marianne gave them dried fruit to eat and thanked them for coming.
Then, wrapped up warmly, Leonard and Marianne wheeled Axel Joachim in his pushchair across the island and saw how the pine trees were shrouded in mist and the leaves were like plastic, shiny with rain. As they walked past houses, they saw Christmas trees in some windows and in others, the traditional basil in wooden bowls, a cross at its centre, to keep the kallikantzaroi (evil spirits) away.
Olivia’s house was, as ever, warm and welcoming, the shrine to Buddha with offerings of gold and fruit at his feet. She also had a Christmas tree, decorated with oranges and ribbon, juniper berries and cinnamon sticks so that the room smelled and looked delicious. There was a Chanukkiah there too. ‘For you, Leonard, darling,’ she said, ‘and for Esther, Gideon and their family.’
‘You make everyone welcome,’ said Marianne, embracing her and thinking: please let us stay here in this warmth for ever. Let our lives stop here, today.
So many lovely people there already and the door kept opening as more guests arrived and the house became full of dear friends: Charmian, George and their children; Norman, looking thinner than ever; Anthony Kingsmill, slightly the worse for wear; John Dragoumis, with such a long white beard that some of the younger children thought he was Father Christmas; Gordon and Chuck; Jack, Frieda, Gideon and Esther; and, on this occasion, Carl. He usually stayed away from events so as not to arouse suspicion and although he would like to have shouted his affair with Frieda from the hilltops, he respected their decision to keep it secret. She did not want to hurt Jack and, even more so, the children.
But Olivia always invited Carl to her house (he and Georgos got on well) and as he told Frieda, to refuse the invitation would have seemed strange. Where else would he be on Christmas Day? So he and Frieda made sure that they kept out of each other’s way all evening and dared not look at each other.
In a side room, games had been organised for the children and some of the older ones went there. Axel Joachim, clingy since they had returned from Oslo, stuck to Marianne and wouldn’t leave her even although his friends Melina and Jason tried to tempt him.
In the dining room, the table was laid with delicious food: legs of lamb, roasted and crispy, adorned with spiky rosemary; roast quail and partridge in terracotta pots; spinach and cheese pastries; fried pastry; rabbit stew and a goat and lentil casserole; whitebait encrusted in batter. Aubergines shone velvet, while baked tomatoes failed to keep their skins falling off and roast artichokes lay on a large platter.
There was also baklava smug in its own syrup, kataifi, sweetened with nuts and cinnamon and melomakarono, rectangular biscuits rolled in honey and chopped walnuts.
In the centre of the table was a Christopsomo, or Christmas bread, sweetly flavoured with oranges and cloves, a cross carved into its crust. There was white and red wine in carafes with beaded covers and when the drinks were poured, the friends clinked glasses and wished each other ‘Kala Christougena’ or ‘Happy Christmas’, or ‘Chag sameach’ as Leonard said to the Silver family.
And yes, Charmian drank too much and got into an argument about Vietnam with Georgos; and yes, George coughed and smoked at the same time; and yes, Norman gobbled the food as if he had not eaten for weeks; and yes, John Dragoumis’ hands were shaking more than ever, but Leonard looked around the room and thought: these are my dear, dear friends and I would miss them so much, each one of them, if they – or I – were not here.
As the evening wore on, Leonard brought out his guitar and sang Christmas songs, Israeli songs and those of his that people requested such as Bird on a Wire, Winter Lady and Suzanne, inspired by a friend (‘No, I never slept with her,’ he reassured Marianne later that evening) in Montreal.
‘Love it, Len,’ said George after the song was finished. ‘Jeez, you’re one hell of a creative guy.’
‘What about you?’ Leonard smiled teasingly. He knew that George wanted to deflect the glory back onto himself. ‘Not exactly unproductive yourself, are you, George?’
‘Yeah, well. I must say, I’m in a good run at the moment. The Sponge Divers is coming out soon, although they’ve renamed it The Sea and the Stone, and Cosmopolitan have bought my knife story.’
‘That’s great.’
‘Jeez, thanks, Len. I must say, there is something about Hydra which makes everyone creative. It’s sort of constructive.’
‘In some ways. Destructive in others?’
‘Not sure about that.’ He had a coughing fit and, to Leonard’s horror, spluttered blood into a hanky and lit another cigarette. ‘It’s been fucking good to me. The Cyprian Woman
is still in print and I have just sold stories to several magazines. Jeez, I’m not complaining!’ But in the middle of his boasting, he started coughing so badly that blood spurted again from his mouth. Suddenly, he fell to the floor with a thud and Charmian fell to her husband’s side, anguish flooding her.
‘George! George! Can you hear me?’
Some of the guests had gone to midnight mass in the chapel and so there weren’t many people left. The children had all gone home to bed.
Leonard said, ‘Charmian, can I help you?’
‘What can we do?’ asked Marianne, worried that the scene would upset Axel Joachim.
‘Please leave us for a moment,’ said Charmian. ‘I will call you if I need to.’
Everyone obeyed.
‘George, my love,’ she panted. ‘Can you hear me? Are you alright?’
He mumbled a reply but his eyes were closed. His face was white but the blood that dribbled from his mouth drew a crimson line from his lips to his chin and a little pool formed a circle on the floor.
‘George,’ she whispered, ‘let me call Dr Benedictus.’
He shook his head defiantly.
‘You’re more stubborn than the mules that walk the island. You are very ill.’
She removed the shawl from her shoulders and rolled it into a ball to place under his head. That seemed to ease the coughing and the bleeding.
‘There,’ she said tenderly, and he reached out his hand to hold hers.
‘George,’ she whispered, tears flowing uncontrollably down her face. ‘You know I love you, don’t you?’ He nodded. ‘We quarrel about such silly things and we fight and shout and it’s madness because we both know that we were made for each other and that no-one else can even come close. I am the Charmian to your Cleopatra. We are Scott and Zelda. Remember, George?’