by Rudy Wiebe
Love you all—Gabe (X marks my hotel room)
DAILY PLANNER 1984: August Monday 13
Spent 3:00 a.m.–7:00 a.m. Fred, Karen, I stuck in Florence train station yuk ABC #5 tiny inner courtyard. Phoned home, Mom answered, they got home and all fine as usual. 2 minutes, can’t ask anything re A and she of course says nothing.1,500 lire.
SPIRAL NOTEBOOK (3): August 13, 1984
Started with $1400, now $930 / 25 days $470 spent / enough to end of Sept?
Firenze, San Lorenzo, Tombo in Marmo per Berta Moltke di Giovanni Dupre (1817–82) Young lady on left side of marble mausoleum with a little boy in front of her. Muscular yet finely feminine arms, long, straight nose, smallish mouth and exposed breast. When looked at from the side you see this perfectly shaped breast, truly marvellous: with the young Lady’s sad, melancholic stare into nowhere. She stares year after year, for a century, always down and away. Lady of marble, why am I … you aren’t even alive. This shape of female, not seemingly obscure but—what is the object of desire? I’m a foolish person, can’t touch
What the hell’s my problem, I continue to look, even walking away I grab one more look. What is this, obsession? Do I really like it or does it control me. I just can’t seem to help it, my mind and gut take over my spine. Too much passion. Always the same type too, so obvious. Some very young girl—this one is a bit older good grief pathetic person to the nth degree
always that obscure Object of Desire
Obscure - dark, indistinct, not easily understood
Object - something solid that can be touched
Desire - feeling one would get pleasure, satisfaction from (touching?)
… Walked streets alone. People everywhere sitting together at café tables, beautiful. Laughing as if they were happy.
… In front of the Uffizi Gallery near the river (where our family went 8 years ago and little (then) Denn saw a dog in a painting and yapped about getting one the rest of the trip) I’m thinking how useless all the pictures I have taken today are. When 20,000 people go around and basically take the same pictures as you, I feel so cynical, so stupidly average. Thousands of cameras have taken this view, right where I sit. What does taking it too give me. Proof I was here—so? Luckily I’m off to see an art lecture tonight so I can get my mind onto something else. The question is whether I actually do have a mind. Hnnnn
DAILY PLANNER 1984: August Wednesday 15
Slept in late, everything closed, holiday in Italy. Karen gave me a haircut, feels good Mass at St. Salvatore in Ognissanti—Amerigo Vespucci tomb, name oddly attached to all the Americas Midnight walk to Ponte Vecchio Karen said pure obsession, and said that’s okay, that’s okay
So you said something about your feelings to Karen? Gabe, that’s good—very good—how much did you dare say? A warm, sympathetic, non-threatening listener. Did Fred mind? Did he know? Surely there was a world of understanding possible, especially for travelling young people, sitting around, waiting for the next bus, train—talk, impulse talk.
DAILY PLANNER 1984: August Thursday 16
(We 3 now 13 days together) Uffizi Gallery Young lady tomb again You could stand and stare at it forever, remains the same, stone, constant Karen followed her plan, left for Naples south today (hnnnn) we guys on train east, Florence to Rome/Tagliacozzo evening walk with Fred town people
SPIRAL NOTEBOOK (3): August 18, 1984
Pure - not mixed with any other substance, free from evil, chaste
Chaste - virgin, not sexually immoral, simple in style
Virgin - person who has never had sexual intercourse, undefiled, not used—not yet …
I am sitting here on a beach in Italia. Oh, I suppose I am conscious of it, thereby proving I am alive, but what will I do. Like Tolstoy wrote: “What then must we do?”
August 20/84
Dearest Ailsa,
I am sitting on rocks on a beach along the Adriatic Sea in Termoli, Italia. My Canadian friend Fred and I have been camping in my tent (some use for it at last) on the sand. The water is warm, bluer than sky. It is about 7:00 p.m., so back in Edmonton it would be 11:00 a.m., are you up, fixing your room with things you bought in Europe, perhaps listening to records? Right behind our tent there are rocks and train tracks.
My feelings at present are neutral; not up or down. I would love to have you here to talk to. However, what would we talk about. Let’s face it, is there anything we really have in common, you a girl barely 13 and I a man 23 and a half. So.
A boat is crossing the water going north. Sound. The traffic on the road behind me. Sound. The waves barely making one continuous rush. The sun sinks.
I am alone. By my own doing, but I do so feel I need someone. If only you had not acted so affectionately in Germany I might have forgotten you, or at least … now I think of nothing but you. I must get your letter [[so stupid!!! blaming her]]
The sun is bright red, and low. I hope, hope with the hope of a fool that you
There is nothing to say. My body is cold, the waves continue to come on the sea, the sun ever deeper red sinking into the hills. A short train rushes past. End of day.
DAILY PLANNER 1984: August Wednesday 22
(Greece) Our Adriatic ferry made two stops, did not get to Patrai from Brindisi till 5:00 p.m. 20+ hours on that dumb ship. Try to see Hitchcock The Birds, still on marquee, but theatre closed for summer. Supper: spaghetti + meatballs + tomato salad + memories
August Thursday 23
Spend another day in Patrai, leave tomorrow, Athens. Read Van Gogh book and walk around looking food a lot cheaper than It big shaded squares where you can sit and drink Retsina great
August Friday 24
1:30 train standing room only—crowded into bar train car with no windows open, loud American in bar sweaty people crammed together Embassy p.m. already closed for weekend find cheap hotel easily
August Saturday 25
Saw Theatre of Dionysus and climbed up to Acropolis ugly heat up there, boiling took a number of usual tourist shots it was after we had the Athens room I found out the name, Hotel Orpheus, o great story for me, make it all the way to hell and one big mistake and come back still alone. Start reading Love, Stendhal
SPIRAL NOTEBOOK (3): August 25, 1984
4:00 just woke from a short nap. Had a wonderful dream, a dream like one has in high school. There is such pleasure while you are dreaming then but upon waking up everything overwhelms you because the dream will not carry on. The real over the imagined, Yes!!! Such awesome hope I have, tremendously imagine, never ending!
Sunday August 26, 1984
(Athens)
Dearest Ailsa:
I walked up the Acropolis today again on top of high hill white rock very hot and on this famous place I think of nothing but you see young women walking around, I follow them, watch their habits, body movements for traces of you but no matter how slender they are, how long their thighs, what graceful very young Naturally if this is the truth—I want to kiss you, I do, even, especially to get over you to go on to something else this is ridicu—
August 26, 1984
Sorrow I have been making a major mistake these past days. I have gone under the assumption that Ailsa cares for only me. This is a ridiculous and selfish stance to take. Except for one evening, three unforgettable days and one goodbye morning in Germany I have hardly seen her over the past two years, my moments in her presence would come monthly, not even weekly, they are barely glimpses of her if I go to church, and then at a distance over heads in the lobby or down the stairs in the teens room surrounded by giggling girls. Or sometimes she tags along with whatever Denn and her brother do. Ever a word? A glance? It’s really been pathetic on my part. And just because I get back to Edm. doesn’t mean anything will change, why should it. So I remain faithful to something that doesn’t really exist, and I’m a fool for blabbering on about it, and on.
I don’t want to travel this is sick. Who cares about ancient rock piles and millions of camera tourists. I’ve been a fool.
One can’t expect anything. Oh, one can hope, but one cannot expect anything
A few hours later: triple fool
Not sorrow but faith. Orpheus had to have faith not to turn around. I will have faith, not necessarily in any particular future but faith that to remain as I am is a good and worthy thing. Things will work out, life goes on. Caring love survives.
DAILY PLANNER 1984: August Monday 27
Can. Embassy first thing, only one long letter, Mom. Good excuse, phoned home about business, I am really healthy, doing fine, Mom said she got my Duino pc—so A must have got my letter, sent same day. She mentioned A’s family’s back, and all I could dare was, “They okay?” and she just said yes—to be so close but Right after I got my plane ticket booked for Rome Sept. 15 scout more book stores movie tonight Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Hotel, read Tess. I miss home so much.
August Friday 31
Two separate letters, Mom and Miriam, lovely with all the ordinary family news; nothing else for Canadian Citizen Gabriel T. Wiens. Mir packing for South Amer. study, and of course laughing at the mess of it. Got money from bank. Fred leaves to join Karen in Italy, return to Canada with her I am completely alone moved to narrow HOrpheus Rm #7 make notes on Tess in my favourite secluded spot in National Gardens Brits play cricket in heat by pool Greek mother, grandmother, great-grandmother with three little children running. Beautiful bodies all.
September Tuesday 4
Never mail—almost a month. Where are those hands that reached and touched me I need people around me Athens good grief I’m in world-renowned Athens Greece of all places, alone don’t know a soul don’t know a word don’t move don’t want to be here / Mail is the only reason I sit here but can’t go to Embassy every nothing
Ach Gabriel: the telephone! Okay, the personal computer and e-mail and Facebook and Twitter and cellphones and iPads and all that instantaneous tech grabbing everyone together anywhere in the world didn’t exist in 1984, but you air-mailed that one and only “Confession” letter on August 11—twenty-four days—how often in your days of sitting, watching, walking in the dead heat of Athens did you pass a public telephone? A post office where the booths stand row on row, lift the receiver and operators are ready with Greek and instant English? You must have looked. And agonized. You phoned us in Edmonton—always during the day when you knew I wasn’t home?—each time you made a full page of notebook notes of what to say: I’m healthy … doing fine … I got the money … got Mir’s lovely letter … won’t be too long in Italy, after 10th don’t mail Marseilles, mail to Paris embassy. You explained everything so carefully to Yo—and the entire world was waiting in those booths of coded numbers, waiting for the one number you certainly knew, by heart. That white phone with the long flexible cord hanging on the wall just outside her room, the smaller room she deliberately chose because the phone cord was long enough to reach in and close the door—if one of her parents answer, fine, they’re your friends, just to say hello—what were you thinking when you always had to see all those telephones? Of course there was none in your tiny Hotel Orpheus room, but even in the lobby—
Hello? And then you would have to speak. Say something.
Abruptly Hal recognized the ordered basement shelves standing over him. So neatly built by their Argentinian son-in-law Leo; filled with a lifetime of stacked file boxes. Yo’s and his, ordered and labelled, such unimaginably comfortable lives made possible by the desperate refugee flights of their Mennonite parents from Stalin’s devastating Soviet paradise on the edge of Europe and Asia; so both of them could be born in Canada and given every humane Canadian right: they always had enough to eat and could grow and learn to trust in God and work and pray and dream and develop themselves however they pleased in whatever community they pleased until their last living day. And so now he could sit here, alone on his own basement floor among the paper remains of his son’s freely chosen “world travel,” that unsuspected beginning of the end in Europe, July 24 to October 18, 1984—ach, never a “memory hole” possible there—a few months hinted at in bare words of places, times, movies, a rare flip of something seen or a moment’s contemplation of history, but overwhelmingly nailed down into that emotional laceration by those quick days in Germany. Gabriel alone and living only, as it seemed, every solitary repetition of night and day with pen and paper in hand and writing, writing mostly the same, words.
My son: could you not move? That exquisite Mediterranean world—move!
As if you had been sentenced to motionless life by a girl barely thirteen.
DAILY PLANNER 1984: September Wednesday 5
I woke up in HOrph #7 bed thinking of Ailsa of kissing her long thin fingers, of the soft skin just below the neck in the back, of her eyes, her beautiful teeth. Will she ever care for me again? What are those fingers doing do you still sleep in the bed I put together for you when your family escape to movie Cannonball Run ugggh
September Friday 7
Mir leaves for Lima. Letter—not A—from Mom, she mentions Joan told her A had received a long letter from me—oh heaven and earth and hell what are they talking about me how stupid did I sound in that
My letters I’m working on the next, I need to be more dignified, more not to regret again what I wrote when I come back to Edm.
SPIRAL NOTEBOOK (3): September 7, 1984
(postcard rehearsal)
Dear Big Ed: This is the old pile of rocks that makes Athens famous. (There would obviously be lots of work for you here). If man-made things here are not thousands of years old, they invariably take on the other extreme, as you can see. I sit downtown having tea surrounded by the other (brutal) extreme. Cheers.
Reading notebook entries: am I too much, only, my narrow self? Writing the same trivial things over and over in the same childish way? Note, objective fact: there are millions of mosquitoes in Athens. I have dozens of bites. So. Good night.
Sept 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 1984
Letter rewritten—Athens
If my Duino letter was a confession of love, this letter will be a confession that I do not really know you, what goes on in your mind on a late Friday evening when you can’t fall asleep—why do you haunt me so? The most simple answer probably holds most of the truth: you are a dream to hope for, but, once obtained, would fall away. Naturally if this is the truth—but I do want to kiss you I do, even, especially, to get over you, to go on to something
—this is already truly ridiculous—
Ailsa my Love
If ever any beauty I did see, which I desired and sought (got)
’Twas but a dream of thee.
(John Donne, “The Good-Morrow”)
If ever any beauty I do see,
That I desire, and seek, it’s but a dream of thee.
—nothing double here, just me—
Psalm 102
Turn your ear to me, O Lord,
when I am in dark distress.
Listen to my voice, dearest.
Let my cry come to you.
September 9, 1984
I wake up and it is 2:00 a.m. How all this sounds so contrived, so artificial. And why should you care anyway? I think I have a slight fever. To think that we are all dying. The instant one is born you start to die and nothing ever seems to get done or said the way one feels it should happen. You once said aloud at our Aspen Creek cabin, “Who would want to live out here!” I would, and have, and it’s very good there. One reason I went to the cabin so often was to get away, actually to forget you among trees and running water, in four steps one has disappeared into nature, every look up at a night sky carries one away into space, nobody anywhere, except God, maybe—I realize this sounds silly because I hardly ever saw you in Edmonton, not even weekly, barely monthly when I went to church, and always when I did you were with the boys and/or your parents and as an adult I could really speak only to them and act cool. So much so that maybe you remember you once asked me, “I don’t even know if you like me.” But that kind of close yet untalkable distance is dangerous, a
seeming possible that can hardly be endured while doing nothing. And here, far away in Europe where I can’t possibly talk to you, I write words words to/about you like some kind of fool. If you or anybody laughs, you have good reason. But remember we are all dying, and a hundred years from now who will care what I have felt or even acted. Yeah, but I live now. Life goes on and people continue to lay their living room carpets
ATHENS LETTERS IN ADDRESSED BUT UNSTAMPED AIRMAIL ENVELOPES
I have before me a hundred blank pages. I have in my hand a ballpoint pen full of blue ink. I sit at a desk covered with repeating letters, only to stop and begin them again in the very same way, until my thoughts, my writing becomes unreadable. My room, Number 7, Hotel Orpheus, 58 Chalkokondyli Athens, Attica, 104 32, Hellas, is littered with letter attempts, books with quotations ready and underlined, laundry drying on the line I’ve strung up, and food. I have basically stayed in this narrow room since Thursday Sept 6—it is now Tuesday 11. Six days in solitary trying to write the perfect letter to you. Emotionally I have gone full circle so often I have reached my present state: resignation
… The time here in Athens, Hellas is 8:50 in the evening of the 11th day of September 1984 (19 days in Athens, a whole 31-day month since my ) and therefore according to my second watch, the one always set on Edmonton time, you will shortly be walking home from Rowand School for lunch. Last May one day I deliberately drove past your house. It was getting close to noon and at the school intersection I saw you walking on the wide sidewalk towards the lights. You adjusted the Walkman on your head as you walked home alone for lunch. As soon as I could I turned around and followed you home at a careful distance—now in Athens I follow you home again down the same streets in my mind with the same care. I follow you past the church, past the corner store, past the walk-ups, past the patch of intersection lawn, around every corner and across every intersection—Look both ways!—towards your house. You enter through the back door and run so easily up the four steps into your kitchen where you slide your slim body into the nook and read this very letter. Perhaps one day this will, in fact, happen.