Perseus
Oedipus
Odysseus
Joseph (Mann)
Hamlet
Don Q.
Shelley
Houdini
Characteristics of cloth-of-gold: Ugly seams. The wearer’s skin suffers.
O. wore myth day & night like an unbecoming color. “I am Orestes, Perseus, Hamlet, Faust.” And, in the piping whisper of a child, unheard by him: “I am Pinocchio.”
Ah, but it made him so happy, made the ills that befell him bearable. Myth Metaphor formed like ice between him & the world. Backwards, forwards, sideways, he glided, spiraling, curvetting … The leaves close in as we retreat. Their colors—reds, yellows, a mottled purple—are those of fats & vital organs.
My God, it is sunset—where did the day go?
My dear Mrs N.,
I low can I ever thank you and Mr N. for tell you & Mr N. what a good a delightful Mr N. what a really enjoyable How can I possibly thank
Dearest Lucine
A few lines to say I am thinking about you. Arc you all right? I wish so much wonder if you are still afloat, & where. Part of me wishes very much it I had sailed away with you. Do you think you will ever come back? Will this reach you in Athens? What is it like in summer? (You needn’t tell me; I know.) Here nothing changes appreciably. A drizzle of Danes has descended. Giorgios caught an immense frowning Fish which everybody was invited to share. He wants to be remembered. So does the Enfant Sick. I guess I’m at work. Am I remembered? Please send me a card.
Well, those are written, plus one to Houston, sealed in last night’s bottles & flung into the foaming tide. A whole day (8.vii.61) frittered away. I still feel quite awful, capable, even, of returning by fall, as promised in my letter home.
Those gallons of wine! George! Those girls—I never want to see any of them again. Least of all a voluble Sunflower named Inge who must already have taken 3 of the Enfant’s boys into the pine trees when her whim shifted to the New World. And into me as well she sank her golden teeth. There are marks.
In writing the N.’s I felt stupid & awkward, as if I had wronged them, her deputy parents, rather than L.
What I want now is to sketch in the scene of the lemon groves, the panegyri, & make it express a number of things. Among them:
1) The community. The abbot. The light. Music & smells.
2) The rapport between Sandy &
3)
But not today.
9.vii.61
Or today.
This noon, leaving Inge & her friends waiting for the boat to Hydra, I did at least take the 10 minute ferry trip to the mainland & walked the mile or so out to the lemon groves. None of it familiar. Had hoped to find the clearing, the tall (pepper?) trees under which the musicians played, the stones where the fires & spits had been. Not a trace, as after a fairy feast, not even gossamer or the ring of mushrooms. Narrow earthen paths, rows of trees stretching deep on either side. Blink of perspectives—near, far, near, far—in green, dry heat as I passed.
10.vii.61
The morning of the panegyri found them bathing in the cove below Orestes’ cottage.
It was in a remoter cove that O., swimming one day, had discovered, wedged among rocks, a water-worn, barnacled fragment of statuary: the upper head (brow, eye, curling locks) of a marble youth. He treasured it above all his belongings. From then on, when he swam, magic upheld him. An element in which anything was possible.
(Dora), O., Sandy, Maritsa and the baby. A palmetto sunshade had been put up. They advise Sandy to use it, but he is plunging in & out of the water, charging here & there with the dog. The brown sand is flecked with tar; soon his feet are back. He sees for the 1st time the beautiful “skeleton” of a sea-urchin, its crust of green-or rose-tinted bisque, stippled, as in formal 18th century stucco, with dotted radii diminishing in size toward a little empty place at the crest.
“Yes, but those are dead stars,” said Orestes. “Look out there! Deep in their cool, luminous heaven live the real ones, revising slow, black, threatening constellations.”
“What are you saying, Kyrie Oreste?” cried Maritsa, and, when he had translated it for her: “Ah! Imagine!”
“Watch out for them,” said (Dora). She removed her bathing slipper & exhibited a cluster of minute black points sealed beneath the thickened skin of her heel. “Those are from just after the war.”
Sandy reached into the shade to touch the place, wonderingly. Their bodies, Dora’s and Orestes’, fascinated him in ways he hardly knew how to think about.
Seen objectively, Maritsa was shapelier, more sexual, her contours firm & sweet as the melon she now sliced for them. Sandy himself had fine metallic hairs on his arms and legs, he turned a lean white belly to the sun. But what was this? Mere youth. It didn’t give out the exotic air sense of alienation between spirit & matter
the romance of accomplished individuality which reached him from (Dora) & his brother.
Orestes’ thin body lay, propped on elbows, knees bent; a locust carved out of oiled walnut. His ungoggled eyes gave back the horizon. What must have happened inside him to cause that one white hair among the others sprouting round his nipple? The sunken places above his collarbones, the waxlike glimmer of his shins. Dora—the scant fat forming in pearls, thoughtlessly, between arm & breast, the urchin spines in her foot—a constellation in negative; a destiny no longer in the heavens, waiting, but incorporated, part of her. Her thighs were shelled with flesh-an ivory browned more by age than by sun. These bodies woke no desire in Sandy, yet his imagination ran riot through scenes in which they must have participated—separately of course!—in order to achieve
yet he yearned to a degree that shocked him, to possess their memories of action & delight, so deeply incorporated now in those 2 forms rising from the sea, streaming with brilliant drops that paled to salt in the day’s dry blaze.
(The sea of the Past. Lot’s wife?)
The baby was still ¾ spirit. It flickered fatly, sweetly, a fire in their midst. Orestes would not tire of playing with it, taking it back into the water on his shoulders. A look on (Dora)’s face struck Sandy. Was it possible that, 20 years older than O., she saw in him—whose attempts at play impress S. as so much nostalgic artifice—reserves of innocent animality?
(Sharpen & reinforce this attraction she feels. The showdown is only hours away.)
A revery without end: If X. were young, if I were old. If I were young, if Y ….
They had stopped warning Sandy. He lay in the sun & burned.
The Panegyri.
They set out in mid-afternoon. Only Kanella remained behind, tail hopefully wagging even as they glided forth from the dock. A sheer whitish blue rippled on the water like silk. Kosta steered. Maritsa & Orestes, holding a child apiece, sang songs. From the stern, beaming like royalty, Dora & Sandy watched the gold-green shore approach.
When they landed, “We’ll start ahead,” said (Dora), taking Sandy’s arm. They followed a narrow earthen path.
These two were gay & easy together, pleased with each other’s (reality) which O.’s advance descriptions had done little to prepare them for. He still knew best, of course, knew them—didn’t he?—better than they would ever know themselves or one another. Their friendship was but some slight retrograde expertise in the wider heavens of Orestes’ life, from which they were to guide shine down on return his light.
(And time will prove him right. When O. no longer gives it meaning, their intimacy fades.)
At the festival. Continuous music, warm gusts of rosemary & fat, lambs on spits, sun-shafts turning the blue smoke to marble. It would last hours and was paced accordingly. “What we must first do,” said Dora when the others had caught up, “is to pay our respects to the abbot.”
This person stood black and bearded in the shade of the largest pepper tree. He offered Sandy a strong, white, soiled hand & fixed him with professionally piercing eyes, speaking all the while.
Orestes (translating): He welcomes you to Gre
ece & wants to know your age. He won’t believe you’re 20, you look 16, kid. I’ll tell him 18. They thought I was 25 until I grew a moustache. Ha ha!
(Somewhere else: “Ha ha!” exclaimed O. on a rising inflection, the notes exactly a fourth apart, as at the end of Manon’s Gavotte.)
Tiny glasses of ouzo were served, followed by tumblers of cold water & rose-flavored jam on spoons. The entire clearing, trees, glimpses of hills and sea, took on the air of an interior (frescos, mirrors) where, in the absence of the saint whose Day it was, a man in long black robes had agreed to play host.
After further civilities the guests were released.
O. (as they moved away): He wanted to know where you were going after Greece, Sandy. I told him, back to America. He would never have believed a boy your age had money & freedom to travel so extensively.
Sandy: Who misrepresented my age to him in the first place? Sandy nodded. At that moment he couldn’t imagine leaving (Diblos), let alone arriving in Cairo, Bombay, Yokohama!
A Greek shopkeeper in Houston had given him 5 lbs. of caramels wrapped in colored papers “for the children of Greece.” These now, alerted by Orestes, came up in droves to claim them, stopping, however, a courteous meter from the young foreigner.
O.: They’re shy. In Greece the stranger is a god. Especially if he’s blond & blue-eyed. Hey, fella, (slapping Sandy on the shoulder) you’re turning rosy, too!
Each child waited gravely for his sweets &, on receiving them, broke into a slow smile.
O.: That’s the smile of the kouros, the archaic smile. Pose a Greek child for a snapshot, his shoulders lift like wings, his arms stiffen at his side, and he smiles. How full of pride that smile is! It’s the 1st photograph of Man taken by his new young god—before they’ve learned how to torment one another.
“What are you saying?” a little boy must have asked. He listened soberly to whatever O. replied. A last phrase sent them all laughing & scrambling away.
Orestes: Greek children love me because I treat them like adults.
Their fathers, meanwhile, had sent many cans of wine to the table cleared for (Dora)’s party. It was the work of the next hour to consume these, toasting the givers or whoever happened by. To eat: a cube of cheese, crust of bread, 2 olives, a segment of grilled octopus. Small plates piled up empty. They could be used later, said O., to throw at Kosta’s feet, if he danced well. Kosta blushed.
They had all danced, Sandy included—connected by handkerchiefs to Maritsa & Dora, to numberless others forming a great swaying crescent. Then this simple dance would end, another kind of tune begin, a single young fisherman spin, dip, snap, leap his way through it, eyes always on the earth; or an older dancer, closer to earth in another sense, allude
execute slow allusions to the passion & agility he no longer commanded.
Presently Sandy was able to watch with—and Dora without—astonishment his brother & Kosta alone in the dancing place. Circling one another Hhissing like serpents, Kosta wriggling his powerful shoulders rapidly, seductively in parody of a belly dancer (fat, clown-white, a dream of beauty to any man present), they circled one another until, suddenly, on an emphatic beat
The very hissing is sexual—ssss! It’s of course the consonant missing from a married woman’s name (put in the genitive: Mr Pappas, Mrs Pappa, etc.) and so commends itself to the dancer as a tiny linguistic feature related to moustache & phallus, one more fine feather of virility—
beat, Kosta jumped & landed not on the ground but in midair, with legs wrapped about O.’s waist, head fallen back, shoulders still undulating. The two pairs of arms outstretched, the 2 moustached heads oppositely inclined—something was there of Narcissus & his image, something of the Jack of Clubs. Then they sprang apart, to revolve separately, barely smiling, until the piece ended.
“Come now,” said Orestes to his brother, later, after a fresh can of wine had been drunk. “You and I this time.”
The state of high spirits known as kéfi had descended upon their table. (Dora) at whom Sandy had looked questioningly, merely laughed & said, “Of course!”
Already the instruments were wrangling happily together. Sandy contented himself with repeating, most gracefully, he thought, the basic steps Orestes indicated—forward, sideways, snap your fingers—while the latter went on to dip, whirl, touch earth, strike shoe with palm, resoundingly, rise, dip again, & abruptly, facing Sandy, whisper Now.
“I’m too heavy, I’ll knock you over.”
“Don’t worry, come on, boy!”
He places his hands on O.’s shoulders. “Hup!” cries Orestes, and S., with a last desparing look at the world, springs upwards & backwards to lock his thighs around his partner’s waist. The rest of him has fallen free, head inches from the ground, arms trailing. Upside down, trees, tables, (Dora), the colored wool embroidery of her bag, everything exuberantly revolves. O.’s face grins down: the look of the initiator. Now Sandy remembers to snap his fingers. O. hisses lightly, provocatively. It ends all too soon. “Up!” cried Orestes & their uncouplement is effected to applause. S. lurches backwards, sustained by the music’s beat, by nothing else. His dizziness has hardly passed before O. confronts him—“Ready? Now brace yourself. Hup!”—and in a flash the whole staggering weight of another body has become his. But he’s mad, S. thinks, I can’t hold him up! as they go reeling towards a group of tables and Orestes, blissful & trusting, smiles up at him. I cannot. Sandy has opened his mouth to cry—the blood pounding beneath his sunburn—he cannot—yet within seconds it appears that he can; he can, he can. Power & joy fill him. His eyes fill. He can dance under his brother’s weight. Then it is over, & the music, too.
“Bravo,” said Dora, welcoming them back. “You’re going to make an excellent Greek, Sandy.”
It had earned them lots more wine.
An hour later (Dora) looked at Sandy more closely. “I think we shall have to take you home.”
“Ah, no!” from Orestes. It was a good panegyri; Sandy must be allowed to see it all—look, they were carving the lamb at last!
S. (earnestly): I’m not drunk, you know.
Dora: No, but you are bright red. Look at him, Orestes, he’s badly burned.
O.: Ah, it’s too bad, etc. The upshot (to be written?) is that Kosta takes his family, Dora & Sandy back to the House, then returns to bring Orestes home when the panegyri has run its course.
Sandy feels nothing, notices nothing. The wine has numbed him. He is put to bed.
(Make the dancing less euphoric?)
Just before dawn something woke him. The gray light barely tinged his sheets. Burning all over, head throbbing, Sandy got up to peer into the front room. Orestes’ bed had not been slept in. Nor was he to be found lying facedown among the cactuses outside his door. No one was anywhere. Had there been a sound? A voice? It came to S. that if he were to walk down those steps, under those eucalyptuses at every moment more visible, & reach that last tree at its point parallel to the façade of the House, he would see—What? He hardly knows; he would simply see.
He walks there. He does see.
First he has met, on his way, Kosta in great good humor, making for his quarters—“Ah, Kyrie Sandy,” and touches the sunburn inquiringly, laughing, nodding.
Then the dog Kanella, tail not wagging, puzzled at the edge of the terrace.
20 yards distant stands Orestes. He has been out all night. Sober as stone, he is nonetheless hesitant, blinking, off guard, as if having just gained this level & found it unfamiliar. Between him & the House (Dora) has appeared, in her nightgown and dark blue flannel robe. At the sight of it, Sandy’s teeth begin to chatter. Neither sees him. Her feet are bare, her hair unkempt. O. breaks the silence, but in Greek.
“The servants,” she whispers, warning him.
The air grows a shade paler. It dawns on the audience that she has had no sleep. Her whole body shakes once. She asks where Orestes has been.
He replies. It sounds harmless, plausible. A night of drink, of talk——anythi
ng. A few hours sleep at———’s house. Kosta hadn’t felt like leaving.
“My dear,” she said with a light, hysterical laugh. “You’re lying to me. Don’t.”
A very long pause. She turned her clenched face from him, savagely.
“Dora, I never dreamed,” said Orestes.
“Nor I,” she sobbed. “Help me. Oh my friend. It came too suddenly. I couldn’t control. Do you understand. It’s not what I.”
He goes to her now, draws her hands down from her face, saying her name. She stares: half panic, half outrage. “Go to bed, Orestes.”
He will not. She has asked for his help.
She throws herself into his arms.
She gave him a look from which reasonableness had been scrupulously withdrawn and threw herself
“Go, go,” she sighed. “I’m all right. Go to bed.”
Sandy, from behind his tree, obeyed her. Back to the cottage he sped, unseen, bone-cold, with clacking teeth.
In 5 minutes he hears O. come in, say his name &, when he doesn’t answer, fall on the bed in the front room.
The day was brighter when Orestes spoke again. “Are you awake, Sandy? Do you feel better? Shall I fetch you a glass of water?”
Now S. lets O. tell what has happened. Orestes is, as usual “amazed,” “profoundly disturbed,” wonders if he will be able to “cope” with (Dora)—it will be for him, naturally, to take charge of the situation.
Collected Novels and Plays Page 38