Living on the island was like being under a loupe: all goings-on were exaggerated and there was no place to hide from public view. A love affair became common knowledge and everyone was dragged into it. If someone drank too much, his alcoholic dissolution was observed by everyone.
* * *
Morning and evening, the landscape was enveloped in a warm light that infused Marianne with serenity. Loose dogs barked in the back streets. Neighbours whispered in the dark on their terraces. A woman shifted some potted plants in her garden. From the window Marianne could see red roof tiles and blue, green and purple woodwork. Pink blooms spilling over white walls. She heard the church bells ringing. She slept next to Leonard under a mosquito net. Made love under the same white net. Wrote in her blue-lined notebook that “it’s good to be naked in one’s own house.” By the light of an oil lamp, Leonard read poems to her on the terrace. Not sure what was a dream and what was real, Marianne could only be certain this was her life and that this was where she wanted to be. Here, now.
FREE UNDER THE SUN
Before the expatriates arrived with their alien sexual attitudes, it was unheard of among Hydriots for young men and women to be lovers before they were married. Marianne had on many occasions seen a blood-spotted white sheet hung out so that everyone could see that the bride had been a virgin on her wedding night. It was common for girls to walk hand in hand and for boys to do the same, and for Greek youths their first sexual experience was often with the same sex. Homosexuality had ancient roots in Greece, where during antiquity certain forms of the practice were widespread and socially approved.58
In the 1960s, homosexuals from different parts of the world sought out Greece, where they could live out their sexual orientations. Some came to Hydra as couples, while others arrived singly, establishing sexual relationships with the young Greeks they met on the island. It was not unusual to see foreign men accompanied by Greek youths, and as far as Marianne could tell this did not seem to be a matter of controversy among the islanders.
Marianne and Leonard were close friends with the American couple Chuck Hulse and Gordon Merrick. The two young men were inseparable. Axel Joachim called them “ChuckandGordon,” regardless of whether he was referring to Chuck or Gordon: for him they were one and the same person. Gordon wrote novels with homosexuality as the theme and had enjoyed great success with his debut The Strumpet Wind, which came out in 1947. The book contained autobiographical elements and concerned a gay American spy in France during the Second World War.
Marianne and Leonard kept some thriving marijuana plants near the outhouse in their yard. Greece had been an important producer of hemp — used for making rope and textiles — since the middle of the nineteenth century. The use of hashish was pronounced in the shipping towns and was associated with rembetiko, a form of Greek folk music. The music of the working class, rembetiko originated in the early 1900s, a time of political chaos and widespread unemployment and poverty. Especially in the checkered milieu of Piraeus, men repaired to hash dens to listen to music and escape from reality.59 Growing marijuana was widespread in Greece, and up until the military seized power in 1967 the police often looked the other way at the use of the plant as a narcotic.
Once in a while Marianne cut up some marijuana leaves and kneaded them into her meatball mix along with grated onions. Everyone was happy to be invited to dinner when Marianne’s meatballs were on the menu.
One day when Kyria Sophia’s daughter was there, she pointed at the pot plants and said sternly, “Very dangerous!” Marianne and Leonard hid the plants among some other flowers in the garden and let them remain there, for domestic use. Some years later Marianne read in the paper that the farmers of Crete were no longer allowed to cultivate marijuana. She and Leonard uprooted the few plants they still had growing in the garden, dried them and called it “oregano.”
* * *
The foreign women on Hydra helped one another with childcare. Many had small children but not all had babysitters. If there was a marital problem at one household the children could spend a night or two at a friend’s house until things had settled down. Flower-power people took their children with them everywhere but Marianne, sticking to Norwegian tradition, wanted her son to be in bed when evening came. Without electricity the house was dark, and she didn’t dare to have the oil lamps on when she and Leonard were out in case one should be overturned. If he awoke, Axel Joachim could call from the terrace to the neighbour girl, Sophia: “Ella Sophia — Come, Sophia!” But Marianne preferred to have a babysitter in the house.
The gang of girlfriends frequently gathered in Marianne’s kitchen to prepare dishes originating in places like China or other Asian regions. For many, Hydra was a stop between Europe and India, and an Eastern inspiration was reflected in the foods they made. The women would bring diverse ingredients and spend the whole day cooking. Chocolate mousse spiked with marijuana was the specialty of Olivia de Haulleville, who had grown up in the home of her uncle, Aldous Huxley. Olivia was married to Georgos Kassipidis, a Greek, and they had a daughter who was Axel Joachim’s age.
One day a package came from India. A friend of Georgos had sent home a toy mule — named Jack — and everyone swarmed to Georgos and Olivia’s house. Full of anticipation, they gathered around Georgos while he cracked open Jack’s belly. Inside lay a big lump of hashish, which was waxed to prevent the telltale aroma from leaking out. They carved off a little and smoked it in a pipe while giving thanks to Tibet. Marianne floated, feeling that all her senses had been opened.
Marianne had the impression of entering a temple when she stepped through the doorway of Olivia’s house, resplendent with colourful Indian rugs and cushions that dazzled the eyes. Olivia played oriental music and introduced Marianne to Buddhism. They lived near each other and once in a while Olivia slept over, sharing Marianne’s bed. One morning Marianne awoke to find a little poem on the pillow, addressed “To my darling Nordic troll.” On another occasion Olivia disappeared over the mountain without warning. Georgos looked after their child while his wife was on her jaunt; she returned two days later. In comparison to her exotic and adventurous friend, Marianne felt like a staid country bumpkin.
Olivia and Georgos’s daughter slept on the floor below the main level of the house. Marianne couldn’t help smiling to herself as she observed Olivia close the hatch in the kitchen floor after the little girl had gone to sleep — it was as if the child had been tidied away for the evening.
MOTHER-IN-LAW’S VISIT
The summer that Leonard’s mother came to visit him, Marianne vacated the house to avoid offending her religious sensibilities. Just a few days into Masha’s stay, Leonard implored Marianne to move back in. His mother was complaining about the heat, Leonard couldn’t write and the visit was turning into a catastrophe. Marianne took Axel Joachim back to the house and they all spent a week together under the same roof. Leonard’s mother went into fits of pique just about every other day: it was too warm or too cold, or something else wasn’t right. She packed her suitcases and a donkey was sent for, to carry her things down to the port. Moments later she would have a change of heart and decide to stay.
In spite of her capriciousness and excitability, Marianne became good friends with her “mother-in-law.” Masha had taken to Axel Joachim. Playing with him and feeding him, she became another person when she was near the child. The sight of the two of them together warmed Marianne. It was as if the boy had gained an extra grandmother. Leonard thanked Marianne and, with a little smile, said that he would have killed his mother had it not been for her.
Marianne and her little boy communicated in Norwegian. Leonard said it was wonderful to hear this foreign language and to be admitted into the world of this white-haired child who came from the land of snow and who spoke a tongue he couldn’t understand.
She was often nervous that the boy would bother Leonard while he was working but Leonard claimed the child was possibly what he loved most about her
. He could calm Axel Joachim and get him to bed when Marianne couldn’t manage it. When Leonard heard her arguing with the child in the kitchen he would gallantly open the door to his workroom and say, “Axel, I need your help.” Before long, Axel Joachim lay quietly under the desk, drawing, while Leonard continued with his work. The boy enjoyed being with Leonard, whom he simply called “Cone.”
After Marianne had tucked Axel Joachim into bed in the evening she couldn’t relax completely, anxious that the child might wake up during their love-making or other private moments she and Leonard shared. And it troubled Marianne that Axel Joachim wasn’t Leonard’s child and that they shared a home without being husband and wife. Leonard asked her many times if she found their way of living problematic; she lied and assured him that everything was fine.
TO PARIS
Nightmares sometimes cast a shadow over Marianne’s days — she couldn’t shake her unease about the future and the fate of her relationship with Leonard. He couldn’t make any promises to her and didn’t want to get married. Marianne didn’t believe marriage was the solution for them, but she was also afraid that, once again, she would be left on her own. Another concern for her was that having a child rendered her less free to follow Leonard on his travels. From the outside it all looked so perfect. There were good meals and flowers on the table, but her face was often drawn with sadness. When Leonard asked what was wrong, she answered, “Nothing, nothing’s wrong.” She wasn’t able to express her fears and neither was she content with what Leonard was able to give her. The sense that they were living together on borrowed time gnawed at her.
The first draft of Leonard’s first novel, The Favourite Game, had been turned down by McClelland & Stewart. Since their return to Hydra he’d been working on the revision and he planned to go the States late in the autumn of 1962 to wrap up the book. The semi-autobiographical novel concerned a young man in Montreal who pursued his calling as a poet.
In addition to closing the book deal, it was important for Leonard to renew his connection with the metropolis. Hydra’s primitive, pared-down conditions fostered the inner tranquility and discipline that he needed to write, but he also required recharging from another kind of environment and other stimuli. In the same way he could feel impeded by Montreal, extended stays on Hydra made him feel stagnant.60 Moreover, he calculated that he and Marianne required as little as eleven hundred dollars per year to sustain them on Hydra. On the other side of the Atlantic, he could earn enough money for another year in Greece.
Leonard was frustrated that he couldn’t live off his writing, despite the rave reviews his work had received. He didn’t know what to do — the only things he was good at were writing and playing the guitar. Marianne noticed that Leonard was becoming restless. He asked her what she wanted to do most — if she wanted to stay on Hydra or if she desired something else. Again, she found herself unable to say what she truly wanted, which was to be wherever he was. Instead, she told him that it had crossed her mind to go to Paris to learn French and to model. She’d served as a model for painters and photographers on Hydra and had been encouraged to try to model professionally.
The thought that she and Axel Joachim would be left alone on Hydra while Leonard was in the U.S. made Marianne disconsolate, so she made up her mind to go to Paris. However, she didn’t think it was a good idea to take her son — not quite three years old — to a new big city, where they had no one to support them. Marianne asked her mother to look after him in Oslo while she was in France.
Marianne wrote to Axel, from whom she hadn’t heard in a long time, to apprise him of her plans. He was living with Lena Folke-Olsson and their firstborn child in a house owned by his publisher near Larvik, on the western shore of the Oslo Fjord. On the 15th of November she received his reply, which explained that he was screwing up the nerve to write some sort of masterpiece or other and that he was fed up with roaming the crust of the earth, leading a “poetic” lifestyle. Axel also informed her that he was prepared to take on full responsibility for his son if Marianne was willing to agree to his terms.
Dear Marianne, Len and Little Axel,
So now you’re thinking of learning French, Little Axel is going to his granny and Leonard to the States. That’s the way it is and there’s little I can say about it. Naturally, my resignation is mixed with a good portion of concern about the boy. We would be more than happy to have him here, but the place is remote and it would be quite dreary and lonely for him here after life on Hydra. That we have peace and quiet here wouldn’t carry much weight with a child, but I think that the contrast would get him thinking and missing you and his playmates on Hydra. If there were more hustle and bustle here he would tire himself out and not have time to turn inward and sulk. I’m also worried about the inner chain reaction that a parent switch like this could trigger in anyone. Don’t think this has anything to do with unwillingness on my part. I’m just trying to do what’s best for him (as we parents are fond of saying). At the risk of wounding and offending you, may I propose another suggestion (which you will reject even before you reach the end of the sentence) and that is that we keep the boy for an undetermined period of time and you cannot make any demands on him until you are able to offer him a settled, harmonious situation. If you absolutely must go to Paris to learn French (and may God go with you) I agree that that it’s hardly the ideal place to drag a little tot. That he stays with his grandmother is certainly a good choice but, as I said, my suggestion is open and you think it through the best you can.…
Give Leonard my regards and my wishes for all the luck in life, the gods know if we’ll ever see each another again. My exit from Hydra was an unfortunate affair that drained me and seems to have thrown me on the rocks of defeat.61
Marianne is lonely without Leonard, who is in the U.S. for an indefinite period of time. It’s not the same when it’s just her and Axel Joachim in the house, and the days drag by slowly. She exchanges telegrams and a few letters with Leonard; otherwise her thoughts and longings end up in her diary.
The weeks pass. Mother and child follow their daily routines. In the evenings, Marianne sits in the deep windowsill on the second floor, her eyes resting on the horizon. It’s the only spot in the house with a view of the sea and when the moon shines its borrowed light, millions of crystals glitter on the water’s surface. Axel Joachim sleeps under his mosquito net on the first floor. The hens in Evgania’s backyard have settled down for the night. During the day the chickens produce an incessant cheerful racket. When Leonard is home they sometimes aim peas at them just for the fun of seeing the comical birds burst into action.
Some evenings Marianne walks to the old cemetery and sits among the gravestones, the black-and-white photographs and icons and oil lamps. She is not afraid. The moon and the little oil lamps provide all the light she needs. Time seems to stand still. Sitting there until dawn and treasuring the tranquility that dissipates with daybreak, Marianne inhabits — as Momo had tried to teach her — a place inside herself.
By not asking to accompany him, Marianne has granted Leonard the freedom she knows he desires. But it has cost her dearly. The only way to achieve a balance is to create something with her own life and her own experiences. She weighs again the pros and cons of going to Paris or staying on Hydra. In any case, she will not accept Axel’s offer. After a few months on Hydra she resolves to follow through with her plan to go Paris: she needs to get away. Her son will be well looked after by his grandmother in Oslo. It won’t be for long anyway: she wasn’t thinking of an extended stay in France. If she ends up prolonging her time there, she’ll make arrangements for Axel Joachim to join her.
* * *
In Paris Marianne stayed with a friend of Leonard, Madeleine Lerch, who was a model and could help her with contacts. Madeleine was the girlfriend of the director Derek May, whom Marianne had met when they lived in Montreal and made the film at Morton Rosengarten’s house in Way’s Mills. Madeleine’s apartment la
y on Rue de Savoie, in an exclusive part of the sixth arrondissement, by the Seine. Moving into the sleeping alcove in the living room, Madeleine relinquished the only bedroom to Marianne. Madeleine was dark and beautiful, Marianne blond and Nordic. It didn’t take long before the first meeting with a photographer was arranged.
Nervously, Marianne walked up to the big atelier. She wore a black dress with silk lining and a zipper up the back that her mother had sewn for her when she had hoped her daughter was going to take up secretarial work in Oslo. Not speaking a word of French, Marianne received instructions in broken English and posed to the best of her ability as the photographer shot a strip of photographs of her, seated on the floor in the clean lines of her classic dress. Afterward he invited her out to dinner. During the meal he asked if she would go to bed with him. Marianne declined.
That was the last she heard from the French photographer. The only thing she was left with was a strip of small black-and-white pictures. She had no income, and having Axel Joachim living at her mother’s in Oslo was only a stopgap. Leonard had his calling and was devoted to his work, while Marianne felt steadily more seized up when it came to finding her way. Up to now she’d gone wherever love led her.
Her financial circumstances were becoming increasingly straitened. She had some dividends from the stocks inherited from her grandfather but it wasn’t enough to make ends meet in a city like Paris. She was considering sending Axel Joachim to private school, as was common in France and among their coterie on Hydra. He would benefit from a good education and a more structured life, and she would have more freedom. With this in mind, Marianne decided to try to extract from Axel the child support she was entitled to, so she wrote to him and explained the situation.
Not long afterward a letter tumbled through the mail slot on Rue de Savoie:
So Long, Marianne Page 14