“Shall I pretend it never happened? Or try to help Dora accept & overcome her feelings?”
Orestes often borrowed this rhetorical device from Greek tragedy. Never “How did you come here?” but “Did you walk today? Or take your bicycle?” So that to answer him (unless one can say I swam or I flew) one must admit that he has foreseen, in his wisdom, every alternative.
The alternative here—the unforeseen one—would be to return the love.
(Dora’s more “Byzantine” device: “I suppose, in this heat, you came by boat …?”)
Anyhow, he talks & talks. The prison of words. S. may fall back to sleep in the midst of it—as I am about to do, myself, this hot, hot afternoon.
It is a crucial scene. How it was actually resolved I must try to remember. From then on
Outdoors, alone.
The setting sun. A clear golden
From the horizon a golden-pink light flows. When I lower my eyes it is to see water breaking on a rock a yard or two below my bare feet. The waves are small, their bravura limitless. One could name
(Sandy, feverish) tried to name their different movements: the swirl pirouette, the recoil, the beat missed on purpose, the upward hurl of white nets, the pounce, the pause for reflection; but no two were ever accomplished with quite the same motive or, for that matter, success. Again & again an ornate sequence would inexplicably break down; the sea would shrug, collapse, retire into a slot, a coulisse prudently hollowed out of rock before-hand. For an instant the stage would be empty; one felt a sad kinship with the effaced gesture. Then a new star
Use this to complement description on p. 17
a crash of harps! A new, staggeringly assured star, all mist & fretted crystal, had leapt and “frozen”—like only the greatest dancers, a second longer than anyone would have thought possible, in the tense, vivid air.
His feet alone gave scale to the spectacle. He tried to keep them in sight.
The play of water: a fou rire that goes on & on. Successions of rapid, fluid shocks, unending variations, each as simple, each as elaborate, as the last. It bears no message.
It wrote a message in invisible ink, not to be read for 1000’s of years, upon the worn, slotted surface of the rock.
12.vii.61
He felt (Dora)’s hand on his forehead. “I came out to see how you were. You looked feverish at lunch.”
She sat down beside him. He gazed avidly into her face for signs of unhappiness her own fever. None showed.
“Kosta is bringing some bismuth from town. If you’re no better tomorrow we’ll have the doctor.”
“I’ll be all right. I’m all right now,” said Sandy. It was what he said & said during the fortnight that followed. There were days, furthermore, when D. & O., occupied by their own dilemma, gave every appearance of believing him. They never told him to stay in bed. He was free to wander about, thinner & weaker daily, as if he were not a child. The doctor materialized. When the bottle of medicine had been emptied, no one suggested that it be refilled. Sandy would rise from lunch, having eaten some soup & 2 spoonfuls of Dora’s cornstarch confection which reappeared, larger & sturdier it seemed, from meal to meal. He would totter down to the water’s edge with his book & his blanket, there to remain until one of them came for him.
Orestes, he supposed, kept him informed of the unfolding drama. What (Dora) had said, what he in turn had replied. Somehow, by the time Sandy left the hospital—they have stayed on in Athens to be near him—it was all resolved. Her great wave of feeling had spent itself.
Psychologically (O. explains) it was to have been expected. A final sexual upsurge that had little to do with him personally. As he, rather than another, happened to be her guest, he had borne the brunt of it. Patiently, reasonably, he now faced with her all the contributing motives—the delayed shock of widowhood, the sense that this had not brought Byron closer to her. She ended by seeming to accept his interpretations gratefully. She would keep Orestes as her dearest friend.
(In fact she is going to America with him.)
“You see,” said O. gravely, “Dora means too much to me now, for me to risk the ambiguities, the tensions of a sexual relationship. She sees it, she agrees with me. We’re more than ever in perfect accord, having lived through those anxious weeks together.”
Something of the sort, put into talk or not, gets through to Sandy. In his mind Orestes & Dora perform a final somersault: they have chosen imagination, withstood the coarse quicksand of the senses. Platonic love! S. lies back on his pillow, impressed.
(Dora, 5 years later, in her narrow N. Y. flat, studying Chinese. She has aged, seems paler & softer, from spending less time out of doors, perhaps. Her brush, her inkstone. “This is the ideogram of power, this of language, this of island.” She & Sandy spend a sweet, elegiac hour together; he is going abroad, who knows if they will meet again? Is he going to Greece? She would like to give him some letters. Speaking of Orestes, as of a character in a novel, she says, “He was Greek, yes, but with the glaze of a Turk.”) (It’s after hearing—from me—of this visit that O. writes his letter full of hurt withdrawal: Dora’s charm had “blinded” me; I was no longer the serious, childlike, brother-loving etc …. It strikes me now that behind these words lay his dismay over my not having sought to bring him & Dora together again. “Love is not merely feeling, but action,” he wrote. A dreamer to the last.)
Wait—
One conversation he did remember, from his 1st week in the hospital. The doctors had yet to determine what the matter was. Orestes stuck his daily bouquet in water & seated himself. To cheer S. up, he remarked what a lucky guy he was to be able to afford a private room—all O.’s experiences of hospitals had been wards full of moaning & dying. Well, Sandy was just a gilded youth.
S.: I still don’t feel I’m really sick. It doesn’t seem possible to be sick in Europe.
O.: Oh? Were you often sick at home?
S.: Oh, you know—measles, colds, a sprained ankle. I’d stay in bed and let Mother bring me soup & orangeade.
O.: You enjoyed being sick at home, is that what you mean?
S.: Well, I guess so—compared to this place. Did I say something wrong?
O.: Wrong? Of course not. But my dear Sandy, you understand what you are saying, don’t you?
S. (after thinking): That I’m sick now because I want to go home?
Delighted by his pupil, Orestes develops the theme handsomely. Tuberculosis is the 19th cent, disease—smog of conventions, lungs failing for lack of a purer, fresher air. Asthma. Then comes cancer—20th cent, disease: gnawing of GUILT. Homesickness would naturally express itself by upset tummy & bowels.
Sandy (recapitulating): So I’m not really sick at all?
O.: Of course you are. I never said that.
S.: But only in my mind?
Orestes reassures him; there can be more talk. It is a subtle point, though, & he may never fully grasp it. More & more he is like the oyster who can’t feel the grit for the pearl loses faith in phenomena uncolored by the imagination’s powerful dyes.
Some days pass. Sandy turns vivid yellow to the very eyeballs, thus facilitating a diagnosis. “What did I say?” joked Orestes, after expressing concern.
“That I wasn’t sick.”
“No—that you were a gilded youth!”
July. Sandy leaves the hospital. His father has cabled him to fly home; out of question to proceed, as planned, to Egypt & the Orient. At first S. means to ignore it, to travel by freighter, working his way if need be. As he has known no hardship, the prospect intoxicates. Also, he has gathered from Orestes that sons must rebel against their fathers. O., however, is shocked. Learned doctors have prescribed rest & proper food; a diet of amoebas & ghee would be “suicidal.” They compromise. Sandy will travel through Italy & France with his brother & (Dora), & sail for New York when they do. This pleases everybody.
Dora’s house in Athens. Rents frozen since the war, no income from it. She worries about having money in America. She decide
s to sell
She decided finally to travel wrapped, as it were, like Cleopatra, in one very fine Oriental rug which, sold, would keep her for the rest of her stay. She wanted not to be a burden to Orestes.
It relieved them both that Sandy was to travel with them. While he was in the hospital, (Dora) & Orestes had begun to miss the company of a 3rd person. By themselves, their talk broke out at strange levels, painfully, as if a device to regulate pressure had been damaged. (“Dora, you went ahead and sold that mirror! Ah, that makes me very cross with you.” Or: “I think I’ll plan to stay on in Paris with my friends there. You go to N. Y.; I’m too old for the New World.”)
In saying that their crisis was over, Orestes was mostly correct. Certainly it would never be repeated. But what neither took into account—fancying themselves too civilized, too enlightened—was the sediment of shame & resentment on her side, and on his a blitheness left over from having been found desirable by a woman he idolized
a blitheness that emerged as the issues receded. One never minds having been found desirable.
With this one secret of Dora’s captured & tamed, O. assumed wrongly that it had no jealous mate. It did, though—a 2nd secret that circled round them both for some time, unperceived. It was that Dora disliked him.
During these last weeks in & out of Athens Orestes met the Hollywood producer: a Greek American, like himself, sitting at the next table in a café. They fell into
(This will be a strand running throughout the book—O.’s relations with Greek intellectuals, as gleaned here & there over the years. On 1st arriving he naturally seeks them out—men of letters, painters, etc. There is great warmth on both sides. They have felt, what with the war, extremely isolated. O. sets about correcting this state of affairs. He collects their books with a view to translating them, placing stories & poems in American magazines. Before leaving Athens he persuades 2 or 3 painters to ship some of their best work to him in N. Y. where he will arrange for it to be shown. And he does what he has promised. In time there is an exhibition, the stories Sc poems do get published. What goes wrong? Well, the pictures don’t sell; the magazines are small, ephemeral, do not pay. Shipping costs actually cause the artists to lose money. Certain British philhellenes, perhaps more out of spite than taste, have things to say about the quality of O.’s translations. None of it, really, is his fault. He has done his best. But several years will have to elapse before Greece is chic, & it will take a more persuasive figure than Orestes to make it so—Mrs Kennedy, for instance, or Melina Mercouri. In any case, he returns to find this chill on the part of men who had once clasped him to their hearts. Those who remain loyal aren’t the most distinguished. With one exception. The poet & novelist V—who with his English wife found O. brilliant & charming from the 1st, & never revise their opinion. Voici pourquoi. Along with his immense, mystical odes, at once symbolic and “folkloristic,” V. was the author of an historical novel, a picaresque 19th cent, version of the Agamemnon in which the hero, back from a campaign against the Turks, is murdered by his wife & her lover, then avenged by his children. In this book, admired by every imaginable reader, Orestes saw the makings of an excellent film. He suggested it over coffee to the Hollywood producer, the latter took fire, read the novel & asked O. to do the screenplay, giving him a contract to sign the day before he & Dora leave Greece. Poor O.! If he had paid his usual attention to myth, he would have known that Hollywood destroys the artist. The process takes years: private planes, costly dinners, conferences leading nowhere. At the end his script is discarded, but the film made. It can still be seen in Greece. O. is left with the taste of ashes in his mouth, and V., left rich & famous, will not hear a word against O.)
Oh dear, I’ve met Byron.
I broke off & went swimming. Then, from the café, watched the boat from Athens come in & him get off, and thought no more of it until, looking up 20 minutes later, there he was returning along the waterfront, with packages, & talking to of all people the Enfant Chic. The latter smiled venomously at me (George had joined me on the beach, refusing to budge when the E. C. called him) & said something to Byron out of the corner of his mouth. B. looked, stopped, abandoned the Enfant, came over to my table.
“I know who you are. My mother’s so fond of you. I’m Byron. Will you let me give you another ouzo? I’m afraid I’ve been remiss about doing the honors of Diblos.”
He is very handsome, very much a man. Slender, well-preserved for over 40 (just Orson’s age?). Beautiful hands, knuckles & wrists, tanned, manicured. A flat gold watch, a blood-red seal-ring he removed to show me. “It’s a good one, isn’t it? Actually it was my mother’s engagement gift to my father.”
He wanted to know where I was staying, where I ate, whom I knew. An anecdote at the expense of the N.’s. But I was comfortable, & liked Diblos? Good! His relief just skirted megalomania: the island was his, it had better be run properly.
About Orson:
“How’s your brother? He’s in Athens, I’ve heard. Will he be joining you here? I see. Well, it’s of no importance. He’d left some books & things on the place, but there couldn’t be less rush, he can pick them up any weekend. Tell me, what’s he done since that film? Published lots of things? Brilliant chap. The talks we used to have!”
I gather B. & his wife are separated. “I usually bring a girl along. The house is conveniently inconvenient. No, this weekend I’m a bachelor, brought reports to read instead. In fact I’ll be off now, I’ve a putt-putt waiting. Look, come for a drink tomorrow—sixish? Splendid. Cheerio.”
Well, Orson doesn’t get his cottage, I’m afraid.
B. bubbles over with charm & good will. What a disappointment! My own (Bryon) I’d seen more as the type of heavy, petulant, weak young man so often found in the wake of a powerful mother (Frau Doktor & son in Tangier). My Byron would greedily have examined those “books & things” of O.’s, hoping for something to use against him.
(A scene—the Enfant Chic present. The photograph is shaken out of a book. Yes.)
Or is the real Byron, in the last analysis, weak? For all his charm, a point keeps recurring when every woman—mistress, wife, mother—rises & tiptoes out of his life, as from the living room of an irksome host, to tear her hair & ask the mirror in the guest John “How will I ever get through this evening (or marriage or whatever)?” Doesn’t he feel this? And what need has he to be so British in Greece? The vogue nowadays is for Americans & Scandinavians. (This last after 2 more ouzos.)
13.vii.61
A package has come for me but no one can find it, Chryssoula is at home, unwell. The pyjama’d manager says it has gone back to the P. O. which is shut now, as of noon. And tomorrow’s Sunday—Bastille Day. Seeing my face, he cries placatingly, “That’s all right!”
One last scene in Athens. The Hat on the Acropolis.
(The contract is signed, they sail that evening, Orestes decides he needs a hat.)
Sandy: I thought you didn’t like hats.
Dora: We’re leaving the worst heat behind us.
Orestes: Won’t they be wearing hats in Rome & Paris?
D.: In midsummer! Do they in New York?
O. (laughing): Don’t they? They do in all the ads.
S.: Well, you’re the one who lives there.
Orestes: Ah, Sandy, I’ve become so Greek. I think of America as a country known through film movies & magazines, where the sidewalks are made of gold.
They entered the shop. Orestes made his wishes known to the clerk who brought out hat after hat for him to try on. Dora & Sandy exchanged glances. A long time passed before O. said, “I think this one will be suitable.”
It was an expensive “young executive” model—gray green felt, snap brim, ribbon, feather, the works. On hearing that it was a Borsalino, imported from Italy, & that while he waited the shop would stamp his initials in gold on the inner leather band, Orestes’ joy knew no bounds.
His companions hardly knew where to begin.
Sandy: You look like a businessman.<
br />
Dora: It’s not a hat for warm weather. You’ll have a stroke!
S.: Is that feather real?
Dora: For summer, a straw hat—
S.: We’ll be in Italy tomorrow. You can buy a Borsalino there, probably at half the price.
D.: Tasso used to wear a gondolier’s hat, it was always cool & becoming. This looks like the Greek-American dream.
But no. Orestes wanted this hat, and at once. He was a G. A.; such a hat was his dream. “You are sophisticated,” he informed them, “but I am more sophisticated than you. I choose this hat precisely because to wear it means that I’ve arrived.”
“Arrived where?” cried his friends tormentors.
O. kept laughing. “It means you’re rich, respected, a big shot. Do you want me to go to Hollywood bareheaded? My taste may be bad, but this isn’t a question of taste. I could never have had this hat a month ago. Now I deserve it.”
It was an odd moment. Both sides were, & were not, in agreement. The subject was dropped and never ostensibly
only to be resumed at a higher level.
Orestes wore his hat out onto the street. “Shall we walk up to the Acropolis? Will that tire you, Sandy? We ought to make a ceremony of our last day.”
(No one is seeing them off. Dora has been purposely vague about this, well, elopement. From her point of view it’s all to the good that Byron has been in Switzerland these past months—let his wife be pregnant difficult in a clinic, something glandular. O. has been more precise. A group of his friends, students, very motley, turn up at the sailing, with gifts. Disturbing Dora not at all. These young people will never have entrée to her world.)
“Everything depends,” said Orestes cheerfully, “on the spirit in which one enters the arena. It’s a game.” He was speaking of Hollywood. “I can stop playing when I choose. And I’ll be left financially able to do my real work, the work that demands my total dedication.”
Collected Novels and Plays Page 39