What Casanova Told Me

by Susan Swan

  And Luce had been overtly hostile. It would have hurt Kitty to hear Luce dismiss her views.

  Perhaps she no longer knew how to appeal to young people. If Kitty had gone to the taverna with Theodore and Luce, she would have known how to talk to them. Oh, my dear, she thought, please help me. I am floundering.

  Turning from the window, Lee opened her purse and extracted the letter from Kitty that had been written the year they fell in love. She often reread it when she felt discouraged because it conjured up her memory of the Raki festival in Crete, when they visited a still not far from the water-bottling plant in Zaros. They had sat with the men on wooden chairs with raffia seats, eating baked potatoes and drinking raki. When one of the men passed a pomegranate to Kitty, she had rested the arch of her foot on Lee’s stout knee and whispered, “There’s no turning back now.” Lee knew Kitty had been referring to Persephone who was obliged to spend half the year underground with Hades for eating the seeds of the pomegranate plant. After they said good night to the others, she had taken Kitty into the woods by the trout stream and told her that she loved her.

  She unfolded Kitty’s letter reverently.

  My darling Lee,

  How can I ever thank you for our wonderful days in Crete? My hunch is that women on Christine’s tour claim it has changed their lives but then go back to their usual routines. In my case, I know the impact will be lasting. Yesterday, I told the dean I intended to retire because I needed more quiet time to think. “With Lee,” I very nearly added. I didn’t mention my plan to join you in Crete. I will talk to Luce about it first. I hope she will take the news well and be happy for my sake. She has always been a very understanding child. Still, she’s lived with me all her life, and it will be an immense change for her.

  I’ve told my friends about you, without going into my experience in the Skoteino cave. One needs to be there to understand it, I imagine. And how can I do justice to the emotions I felt when the women called out the names of their female ancestors? There it was: the link to our lineage and the truth that society hides from us—that women’s bodies are the foundation on which human culture rests. All those mothers, going back in time farther than we can remember, nurturing the spark of life.

  And thank you, dear one, for not teasing me after I confided that a little voice in the cave whispered that I should stay close to the earth. I knew it was telling me how to spend the years I have left. A great stillness overcame me. What is the promise of eternity next to the gift of physical existence?

  So you have my word: I intend to be less frenetic. It will be easy to slow down in your company because, like the Cretans, you take so much joy in the rhythms of daily life. Do you remember the farm-women on our trip to the old Turkish steam bath on that godforsaken mountain road? At first they looked like ugly penguins soaking in the near scalding water, the coarse red skin of their faces and arms clashing with the milky white of their sagging bellies and breasts. And yet, when I looked again, I saw their bodies as they are—not flawless or deformed, but alive and human. That’s a vision I wish to keep with me.

  Much love,

  Kitty

  P.S. I’ve just found a poet I like, Erin Moure. When challenged about my views, I intend to quote this verse of hers: “If they accuse me of mysticism, all right, I’m guilty. I’m a mystic. Now do you feel better? But it’s only an act of the body. My soul is simple and doesn’t think at all.”

  Her hand still holding the letter, she sank heavily down on her bed and stretched out on its uncomfortable mattress. She wanted to be good to Luce and make amends for the problems she had caused Kitty in the last months of their lives together. Lord knows, she was doing her best, but the girl wasn’t having it.

  That night, Luce dreamt about her mother. In the dream, her pale-haired mother stood at the top of the Aereopagos, holding up silvery hands in benediction to the masses of her followers streaming down the moonlit hillside of the Acropolis. Then her mother floated off towards the horizon, twinkling with a cold, rare light. As the dream faded, Luce felt a heavy sensation between her breasts, as if her heart had turned into a stone.

  The heavy weight shifted and began to emit sharp little whining noises. She opened her eyes slowly. The cat was sitting on her chest, gazing down at her, one paw lifted to prod her back to life. He looked different in the moonlight filtering in from the light well, and she realized her antibiotics had cleared up his left eye so he actually resembled a Siamese now. Sleepily, she spooned out the rest of his can and watched him toss back his food in large gulps as if he were choking. Satisfied, he climbed back onto the bed and watched Luce, who had started up her iBook. She opened her saved e-mails, looking for her mother’s message about Crete.

  Kitty’s tone was more conciliatory than she remembered.

  Dear Luce: When you were small, you punished anyone who hurt you by withdrawing, and this is what you are doing to me. Well, I won’t give up on you and you must not give up on me. I have so much to share. Only I need you to listen.

  The Minoans knew something we’ve lost, and I want you to have it. Will you come with me when we go the next time to Crete?

  There it was: the generous offer that Luce had refused. When Lee had asked her to come to Crete, she had told herself that this time she would honour her mother and accept. She needed to go, too—not just because she wanted to pay an overdue homage but to see for herself the mountain road near the town of Zaros where her mother had died. She had read all the news reports about her mother’s car losing control after swerving to avoid a truck carrying a load of tiles; it was an accident, she knew that, although there’d been hushed talk at her mother’s funeral about Constantine Skedi, the young Albanian who drove the car and died with her mother. He was reputed to have a juvenile record for breaking and entering, but Lee had told her that Constantine was her mother’s friend.

  It was foolish to imagine she could have stopped the accident from happening. Still, if she had been with her mother during her last autumn in Crete, if she had gone when Kitty had wanted to go, maybe her mother wouldn’t have died.

  As a child, she had liked looking after her mother, and it was her special task, her mother told her, to run the house. But after the frightening rise in terrorist incidents, when Kitty was off travelling with Lee, her urge to protect her mother had grown until it sometimes felt uncontrollable, a huge, leaping yearning that reached out to Kitty like an anxious hand. Wanting, she thought sadly, to keep her peripatetic mother close and safe. She had been too proud to tell Kitty how she felt.

  If only the trip was going smoothly, but travelling with Lee was difficult. Lee didn’t want to go back to Zaros—claiming there was no time was only an excuse—and Lee seemed to think she should chaperon her as if she was a girl and not a woman who was almost thirty. Well, she would go to Zaros. She would see with her own eyes where the car carrying her fearless, magnificent mother had vanished from the earth. Just let Lee try and stop her.

  She extracted her small cloth bag from her travel pack and removed its contents: her mother’s compact of golden powder and tube of lipstick called Brazilian Samba. Sitting on the bed, with slow, upward strokes like the ones Kitty had used in front of the mirror, she rubbed her face with the sweet-smelling sponge, trying to brush a layer of her mother’s skin cells onto her cheeks. When her face was thoroughly dusted with golden powder, she applied the dark brown lipstick, drawing it slightly above the tip of her upper lip, the way her mother liked to wear it.

  Then she lay down on the bed beside the cat who pressed himself against her thigh and begun his rattling purr.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Venus. Or are you Aphrodite?”

  The cat purred more loudly, as if he wanted to reassure her. Meanwhile, outside her hotel, life in the streets of Athens seemed felled by the same ominous melancholy. The Athenians had gone home from their bars and tavernas. It was long after midnight. The light show at the Acropolis was over and the old landmark stood in shadows under the dark void of the sk
y. What was it Asked For Adams had said about losing her father? That life is as absolute as death.

  The next morning, Luce phoned and found Theodore Stavridis at home. She was surprised at her nerve, and told herself that she was calling to ask him about his friend who translated old Turkish. His voice sounded gruff but friendly, and Luce was glad he had answered instead of his mother. She suggested they meet for lunch. He named a place but she could tell from the change in his tone that he didn’t want to see her. She asked if something was wrong and he didn’t answer. She heard him inhale deeply and realized he was smoking.

  “Luce?”

  “Yes, Theodore.”

  “I am—I am a man who likes men. Can you hear me, Luce?”

  “Yes, I heard you.”

  “Neh, it is hard because I like women very much. But as friends.”

  “I understand. I’m going to hang up now.”

  “No, Luce, wait! My friend, the translator, Ender Mecid—he is coming to Athens and wants to see your old Turkish writing.”

  “I’ll talk to you another time. Goodbye.”

  She hung up. So the oracle had given her the right answer about Theodore after all, she thought despondently. She had used the pendulum because it was associated with her mother but she accepted its advice only when it told her what she wanted to hear—she had not been credulous enough to take its bad forecasts seriously. She supposed this was sane. She didn’t believe in mystical divination, or any other godly power in the universe. She was just aesthetically delighted and soothed by the kit’s lyrical advice, its pretty tasselled bag and fan-shaped chart. And if Lee was right about her mother keeping her empirical views, perhaps Kitty’s interest in the kit had been mostly aesthetic too.

  She stuffed the pendulum back in her knapsack, taking out her iBook. Mulling over the trip to Crete, she realized she still hadn’t decided what she wanted to say at her mother’s tribute. It was only a few days away and it was impossible to find the right words. She opened the file labelled “Kitty’s Memorial” and reread her notes:

  How can I possibly sum up what I feel about my mother? I’m a grown woman and I still can’t even see her as a person. When I was small, I thought she was the most perfect human being I had ever met. She was so kind and brave and I wanted to keep her from harm’s way … then she neglected me and ran off with Lee Pronski. Isn’t it strange the way your mother can hurt you but you refuse to believe it? You just keep on idealizing her, as if the childhood picture of her love that you carry around in your mind is stronger than the reality of the woman who acts and speaks in the world.

  These were her true feelings about her mother, but she could never admit how she felt to Kitty’s friends, especially not Lee.

  That evening, Luce took a cab to the British consulate to hear Lee give her lecture on Minoan Crete. When she arrived, Christine and Julian were in the foyer talking to an older, dark-skinned woman and a plump girl with a shaved head. Next to the girl stood a woman whose body resembled one of the rotund goddesses Luce used to see on her mother’s tables and desks. The girl, who looked as if she could be the plump woman’s daughter, was carrying a copy of her mother’s An Archaeologist Looks at Prehistory.

  “Luce! We’re over here!” Christine waved.

  Luce walked over. The women gathered around her as if they wanted to touch her clothes.

  “You’re her daughter, aren’t you?” the girl with the shaved head asked. “Christine told us who you were.”

  “She’s Kitty’s daughter all right. I can see it in her eyes and chin.” The plump woman smiled. “I’m Jan, and this is my daughter, Toby. Kitty and I met in high school. We got reacquainted on one of Christine’s tours.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Luce said.

  Keeping her eyes lowered, she followed Jan and Toby into the consulate and found a seat at the back of its library. British and Greek flags hung limply from a wall in the airless room. The people waiting to hear Lee were a mix of her mother’s friends and English expats there to attend the monthly lecture.

  In the front row, applause broke out as Lee walked to the front and sat down heavily at a table strewn with microphones, her Borsalino tilted at a combative angle.

  Julian Harmon stepped up to the podium. “It’s good to see so many familiar faces,” he said into the microphone, “because tonight I am honoured to introduce my old friend Dr. Lee Pronski, who will talk to us about Dr. Kitty Adams and her views of Minoan Crete.”

  At the mention of Dr. Adams, a few rowdy cheers broke out. Julian motioned for silence, smiling approvingly.

  “Will everyone quieten down, please? The daughter of Dr. Adams is here with us tonight, and we’re very proud to welcome her into our midst. Are you there, Luce? Will you stand up and say a few words?”

  Luce rose to her feet. The applause was loud and she saw people all around her swivelling in their seats, craning their necks to see Kitty’s daughter. She stared blankly across the room at Julian. Then she turned and ran out of the consulate.

  PART THREE

  A Gentle Heresy

  The taxi let Luce out on a dusty road near an olive grove, somewhere in the northeast foothills of Crete. There was no human habitation that she could see, but the driver pointed up the hill, past trees hung with nets that he said would catch the ripening olives in the fall. The women had gone in there, he told her. Then he drove off before she could ask him to help her decipher the map that Lee had left at the hotel in Herakleion. She’d caught a spring cold and slept in that morning, and Lee and the other women had gone off without her, leaving a note asking her to join them for a picnic lunch in Kitty’s favourite olive grove.

  She started up the road that wound its way in ridiculous loops around the olive grove. Underfoot, the ground was sandy and massed with little stones that bumped out and caught the arch of her sandalled foot at unexpected angles.

  The sloping hills and valleys played back her sense of isolation. She felt disoriented by the wildness of the place; if only Crete looked more civilized, she thought forlornly. The last few days in Athens had passed in a blur—of apologies for her panicky flight from the consulate and of self-recrimination for her naïveté in misjudging Theodore. But in the end she and Theodore had talked amicably again. He had phoned unexpectedly to give Luce the e-mail address of his friend in Istanbul, and then had surprised Luce by offering to take Aphrodite while she was in Crete. She’d agreed, because she knew it would be hard on the cat to take him with her. She had watched sadly as Theodore drove away over the cobbles of Apollonos Street while a caged Aphrodite yowled at her from the front seat of the Volkswagen.

  The hot noon sun was making her feel feverish. She saw no sign of the women. Looking for shade, she noticed a wide stone beneath a large, spreading tree; some olive nets lay bunched across the stone. She moved them and sat down to rest. There was still no sign of anyone and though she strained to listen she couldn’t hear much over the racket of cicadas which seemed to grow louder as she concentrated. At least now she could see that the olive grove ended about a mile away in a low-lying mountain range she hadn’t noticed from the cab. Its rounded peaks shimmered in the heat, a row of dusty green humps.

  She heard a shout. A group of hikers was walking over the brow of a hill to her left. They had on veiled sun hats and light-coloured clothes, and some wore what looked like garlands of vegetables hung around their necks. From where she sat, they resembled a family of beekeepers searching for an apiary.

  Two women walked behind the others. The heavier woman was plodding along in diaphanous sun wear, swinging her arms like a bandmaster. Luce had no difficulty recognizing the stagy drapery of Lee’s sun hat and the birdlike figure of Christine Harmon. As they came closer, she spotted Julian Harmon with the mother and daughter from the consulate, Jan and Toby. She rose to her feet and waved.

  “Is that you, Luce?” Julian yelled.

  “It’s me!” she called.

  Christine cheered, and the group walked over. There were ove
r forty now, not counting Christine. They had met up with the rest of the group at the hotel the day before and Luce was struggling to remember their names. Julian was the only man; he wore a long-sleeved white shirt over denim pants and an old straw hat, while the women were dressed in baggy clothes and thick-tongued Nikes. Bulging Loutraki bottles dangled from their waists or shoulders. And it was vegetables she’d seen hanging from their necks, necklaces of garlic bulbs and onions. The faces of several of the older women looked slightly woebegone, and for the first time it struck Luce that the women who came to her mother’s talks often seemed to be asking you to care for them in some frightening, unspecified way. She wondered if her mother had felt this way.

  “Look, everyone! She’s found the kernos stone!” Christine cried.

  “Beginner’s luck, Luce.” Lee smiled.

  “Luce, the Minoans worshipped a harvest goddess who was their version of the Great Earth Mother,” Christine said. “And we are very glad you are here with us today because your mother wrote about this very altar. We’ve been looking for it all morning.”

  Luce stared curiously at the stone she’d been sitting on. It was a flat, circular grey slab, ringed with small holes along the edge.

  “How’s your cold this morning?” Lee asked, as Christine rounded up the group.

  “The heat seems to be making it worse,” Luce whispered.

  “All right, everyone, let’s begin,” Christine said. “You know the words … ‘The earth is our sister,’” she prompted.

  “‘We love her daily grace,’” the group responded.

  Luce watched as they made a circle around the stone and joined hands; some of the women began pulling apart their vegetable garlands and filling the holes in the stone with cloves of garlic and onions.