by Tamar Hodes
George had refused to have a phone at home but there was one at Katsikas’ store now and Leonard and Marianne had one, too, so she would be able to phone the hospital for regular updates and she and George would write each other letters.
George did not enjoy his time in the Athenian hospital. The stark white walls and absence of beauty made him homesick for his lovely house with its colourful rugs and mayhem. He thought of his friends at Douskos’ Taverna and Leonard’s playing and singing and the warm atmosphere, their faces lit by candles, under the giant pine tree. He even missed his fights with Charmian, their repartee, their discussions and the drink. One of the kinder young nurses, Angelina, whose dark hair and dimpled cheeks George fell for, managed to find him some paper and a pen so that he could carry on writing Clean Straw for Nothing. After much nagging, she also procured a small bottle of brandy and George rationed himself to one swig a day. But when George tried to slap her backside, she gave him a frown and walked away.
A succession of doctors saw him and he was eventually diagnosed with pneumonia, tuberculosis and Herrmann’s Disease, which had damaged his kidneys. George didn’t know who Herrmann was but he cursed the fucking bastard for identifying a putrid illness and giving his name to it.
Charmian worked better on her own. Without George’s intervention and with the children at school, she wrote the script she wanted and within two weeks had it finished, packaged and posted at Katsikas’. She also made great progress with Peel Me a Lotus. As she neared the end of her book, the writing flowed more easily and she wondered to what extent the constant immersion in language, the atmosphere of Hydra and even George’s absence were spurring her on. Certainly she felt that there was a new rhythm and energy to her writing as she wrote of: Morning sounds. Children, donkeys, roosters, bells – goat bells, sheep bells, donkey bells, church bells, even…yes, the handbell of Dionysus the dustman…all the air swinging with bells.
That completed, she turned back to her first novel, Walk to the Paradise Gardens. She found the transition from fact to fiction difficult. She had worried that George’s next novel was too much about their marriage and its infidelities but now she faced the same dilemmas herself. In describing the turbulent marriage of Charles and Julia Cant, she kept finding herself referring to incidents that had happened to her and George. How could she justify using real life in her fiction when she had criticised him for doing the same?
As well as her writing, Charmian became more domesticated while George was away. She worked alongside Sevasty in the kitchen, ignored her disapproving tuts and head-shaking, and learned to make home-made pitta and baklava. The children were amazed when they came home from school to find that their mother had cooked and even laid the table. She felt her life was more complete and harmonious with George away and, of course, her needs were well met by Anthony and Nature Boy, the one more aesthetic and sophisticated, the other more carnal, the combined effect, perfectly satisfactory.
She even wondered whether she would be better off without her husband. She was certainly more productive, drank less, and it was good not to be fighting and wrestling every day: so exhausting, so draining. Then one of his letters would arrive and she would miss the old bastard.
My dear Charm (he would write)
Here I lie in this white sanctuary devoid of your beauty or that of the island. It is so dull here that sometimes I think I may have died and gone to boring old heaven, especially as the only nurse here with any humanity is called Angelina. And what a pretty little angel she is. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had wings. She has supplied me with pen and paper and a bit of brandy which is keeping me going. She has also promised me chocolate.
The matron and the doctors are cold and business-like and lack the warmth and humour that we usually associate with the Greeks. They are giving me tests each day and this morning one of the sternest doctors stuck his gloved fingers up my arse. Jeez, that hurt! I felt like charging him and saying there are many people who would like to do that, mate! What gives you the right? Join the queue!
I miss you terribly, my little praying mantis. How is the script? Have you finished it yet? I bet you have put in all sorts of things that I didn’t want you to, you little minx. Oh well. And the kids, how are they? Is Sevasty still shaking her head and being disgusted at us and our bohemian ways?
Give my love to our children and our friends at the taverna, Len, Mari, Mag, Norm, Chuck, Gord, Tony, Pete, Liv, Jack and Frieda.
I miss them all but especially I miss you, not just our spats and disputes but also our very deep, indisputable, love.
George.
Each time Charmian read one of his letters, the tears sprang to her eyes. She wondered: am I just used to him or is he right that this is love? Or, like her script, simply a version of it?
xxix
Marianne and Axel were sitting in the living room of the house they both owned. Axel Joachim was walking now in that unsteady, drunken way that toddlers do, bumping into furniture, looking as if he was about to fall as he tottered, so that Marianne had to keep jumping up to stop him from hurting himself. She noticed how bare and shabby the house was now, as if Axel had lost interest in it.
‘Sonja’s left? Why?’
‘Who knows? She didn’t like Hydra, couldn’t settle, was homesick. I did everything I could for her but the woman was impossible. There was no pleasing her. Partly I see what she means. I’ve had enough of this place for a while. I need a change. There’s nothing to keep me here.’
Marianne thought: pay attention to your son in front of you, but she didn’t say anything. Axel flared up so easily that she tried to avoid provoking him.
‘Where would you go to if you did leave?’
The little boy held his wooden giraffe, which he was now chewing. Marianne wiped the dribble from his chin.
‘John and I are corresponding and he has asked me to join him in Mexico.’
‘How is he now? Did he recover from that horrible mosquito bite?’
‘Yes. He’s much better now. He’s great, busy with the occult and spirituality and horoscopes, and all sorts of interesting things.’
‘He’s an amazing man.’
Marianne remembered when he gave her a solid bar of gold and told her she could sell it and keep the money.
‘But I may just go back to Oslo. There is nothing to keep me here. My writing’s going through a bad patch and I think possibly being near home and family will root me again. I don’t know.’ He was dark under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept.
‘I see. What shall we do with our house, then?’
‘We could rent it out. You don’t need to live here now that you’re with Leonard,’ he said bitterly.
Marianne did not say: you left me first for Patricia, remember?
‘That’s fine. Let’s talk more about it later. I have to go now. Come on, darling,’ she scooped the boy up. ‘We are going to see your friend, Alexander.’
Wheeling the pushchair across the island, Marianne wondered what the effect would be on Axel Joachim of not seeing his father very often. Well, he has me, she thought.
The February wind was biting and she tucked the boy’s jacket closely around him, smoothed his hair down against the cold.
The women met at Katsikas’ where the scrubbed tables and chairs were still indoors, by the warm fire.
Marianne hugged her friend. Magda still looked pale but the colour was slowly returning to her cheeks, if not to her hair.
‘You know, Marianne,’ her voice was quieter than before, ‘your letters really sustained me when I was in prison.’
‘You are my friend,’ said Marianne, stroking the woman’s arm. ‘It was my pleasure.’
The boys on the rug played cautiously, as if they had forgotten each other and would need time to reconnect. Marianne had brought some wooden animals in her basket and the boys enjoyed arranging them on the floor: cows, sheep, giraffes, lions, rhinos, horses. ‘Not very Greek,’ laughed Marianne. ‘My mother sent them, but we might
see them all one day.’
‘Do you think you will leave Hydra?’ asked Magda.
‘I just don’t know. I feel Leonard slipping away from me, as if he is being dragged in the opposite direction. I do not know where our future lies or whether we will even stay together.’
‘But he loves you so deeply. I can see it in his eyes.’
‘And I love him, but he is being pulled towards fame and America. We have groups of fans outside our house every day now. He has phone calls with famous singers like Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan.’
Anthony Katsikas brought them bowls of olives and tzatziki, baskets of bread and crisp whitebait with lemon wedges. The boys abandoned their animals and immersed pitta in dips. Then they were brought a Greek salad with feta, a white slab like a tile on the top.
The women drank red wine from large glasses; the boys had apple juice in tumblers.
‘What about your plans, Magda?’
‘I don’t know. All I want at the moment is stability and peace, so I will certainly stay for a while. Who knows what the future might bring?’
‘But you will not reunite with Paolo?’
‘Never. I could not forgive him for what he did to me.’
‘Have you heard from him?’
‘Nothing. We seem to have been forgotten. He has moved on.’
Alexander choked on an olive stone and Magda had to slap him on the back. The boy’s eyes watered but the coughing soon stopped. Axel Joachim stared at him in horror.
Anthony brought them watermelon wedges, the flesh blood-red and the rinds green and tough. Their crescent shapes reminded Marianne of the boats in the harbour.
‘Yes, my ex is the same.’ Marianne avoided saying Axel’s name. ‘He just told me that he may go to Oslo as there is nothing to keep him here.’
‘Extraordinary. Some of these men are so selfish and like children. They don’t accept responsibility for their own sons.’
‘Well, we do not need them. We can manage on our own.’
‘So true. We are stronger than we realise.’
By now the tables were covered in smeared plates, watermelon rind and wooden animals. The women wiped their sons’ faces which were stained with olives, apple and melon juice, like a watercolour painting on the canvas of their skin.
‘When you were younger, Magda, did you dream of a perfect family? Mother, father, two children, all happy, seated around the table, eating cake?’
‘Absolutely. I remember the colourful drawings in picture books. It looked so perfect, like a dream. I thought: I want to live like that.’
‘I think we should start a campaign to make picture books more like reality: a man, a woman, not married, the child only hers. She has a new lover; it isn’t his child.’
‘Yes, or maybe we could use Paolo as our inspiration: a woman, a man, baby boy, princess in the Hilton Hotel and the man runs away. The woman is in prison, away from her child. That is the reality.’
‘Yes. Good idea. Then maybe little girls will not grow up with the crazy dreams we had and not be disappointed by life.’
They paid Nick and put the boys’ jackets and hats on.
The harbour was still, a slight mist hanging above the water like soft breath. The boats were rocking slightly as if they were finding it hard to settle after a busy morning. Some were blue, some red, but with a different colour inside, like tissue-lined envelopes. A few fishermen were swilling out buckets and nets, ready for the next day’s catch. The cobbles were caked in a light frost as if there was a chill that they just could not shake off. A gull perched on a rock and shrieked in protest at the weather, its beak open wide.
The women hugged and promised to meet up again soon, they looked forward to sunbathing when the weather improved. Then each took her son and walked away.
The rolling motion of the pushchair up the hill sent Axel Joachim to sleep, his cheeks pink from the breeze and his drowsiness. Marianne felt suddenly quite bleak. She was still reeling from Axel’s insensitive comments earlier and it made her feel that she had failed. She had tried to create a perfect family unit for her son and it had not worked out. Then she had tried to recreate that family again with Leonard and although he loved the child, she felt that he too would slip away from their lives. Was there a man alive who could be a good father to her son? And, if so, where was he?
Her spirits were lifted by the sight of more green shoots peeking through the dark ground but again dashed by the usual group of fans outside their wooden door.
‘We are looking for Leonard Cohen,’ said a young girl, her hair plaited, a camera looped expectantly around her neck.
‘He isn’t here,’ said Marianne sternly. ‘Excuse me,’ and she wheeled her sleeping baby home.
In his study, Leonard was singing into the phone. He waved at Marianne but continued his song.
Marianne transferred her warm-cheeked son into his cot, waved to Kyria Sophia who was doing the laundry and went back to see Leonard in his study.
‘Yes, that’s great. Thank you, Judy, let’s see what happens. Bye,’ and he put the phone down. ‘That was Judy Collins in New York,’ he said. ‘She wanted me to sing her Suzanne.’
‘Lovely.’
‘How was Axel?’
‘Selfish.’
‘And Magda?’
‘Bruised.’
‘What’s wrong, Marianne?’ He held her in his arms.
‘Your adoring fans are outside again and I feel that you are being pulled away from me like a boat on the shore and I am left standing on the quay. I don’t want to lose you, Leonard.’
‘That won’t happen. I love you,’ and he kissed her so softly, so tenderly, that she had to believe him. It was a while since they had made love, so many people phoning, writing, talking, and constantly interfering in their relationship.
They moved through to the bedroom where the shutters were closed in defiance of the cold. Kyria Sophia had lit one of her silver plates of coals in the room and they glowed orange and hot.
They undressed each other and slipped between the sheets, their movements as slow and deliberate as a dance. They touched each other as if rediscovering who the other was, as if the landscape they found themselves in had made everything unfamiliar, as if it needed redefining.
Leonard had forgotten how soft her skin was, her mouth warm and open, and caressing her breasts was like rediscovering a pleasure thought to be mislaid or lost for ever. He liked to run his hands up and down her legs and part them gently as if he were unwrapping fruit, peeling it, pushing apart the flesh to discover what lay within.
She liked to hold him, feel him hard like a thick plant stem in her hand, moving him and kissing him at the same time so that they did not know where they were or what day or even season it was.
And still they kissed, their mouths adept at finding each other even with their eyes closed so that they only felt and smelled each other and did not need to see.
Then he was within her and she dug her nails in his back and felt him give her all that he was, all that he could be and they both cried when they came for they knew how lucky they were, how privileged they were, to have each other. And along with that came her fear, her terror, that it might not always be that way.
Marianne sobbed, and Leonard licked the salt-tears from her face.
‘Do not be afraid, my darling Marianne. We have danced on the pebbles in the moonlight and we are always free.’
xxx
Each time Carl came to Frieda’s studio, he brought her a gift. Sometimes it was goat’s cheese wrapped like a moon in fig leaves, or a tin of olive oil infused with thyme. Another day, a basket of peaches, their skin pink and their flesh white. Limited by the season, what Katsikas had in his shop or by what Carl could buy on his occasional trips to Athens, he took great care to choose presents that would please her: jars of honey, the comb trapped in its golden syrup; chocolates individually wrapped, like secrets, in tissue paper; three cakes of herbal soap in a sturdy, hinged box.
�
��There is no need to bring me presents,’ she said, gratefully accepting them.
‘I know, Frieda, but I want to express to you how much I love you,’ and he kissed her lightly. ‘I know that you’re unhappy in your marriage and I feel deeply for you.’
‘I have so much guilt about deceiving Jack. We married too young. Maybe we were carried away by the romanticism of the kibbutz with its orange groves and roaming chickens. On paper, we seemed the perfect couple, both from South African Jewish backgrounds, both passionate Zionists with a love of culture and a hunger for excitement.’
‘It isn’t the paper that counts. It is what happens when two people are together.’
‘I understand that now, Carl. The evening at Olivia’s party, I knew for the first time what that meant, to feel so connected to someone that you cannot believe that you are not physically joined.’
‘I feel that with you, too, Frieda.’
‘When I met you, it was like being struck by thunder. I wondered if it would be a fling or short passion which would then fizzle out, but you and I are in love. There is no doubting that, but what do we do about it? I feel so bad for you that you have to hide away from the other artists, as if you were a shadow.’
‘I don’t mind. I meet Anthony sometimes for a drink and a chat and also John. He shakes so badly now that I think he likes to watch me paint, almost as if I am doing it for him. I bring him gifts from Athens that he likes: cocoa powder and cereal.’
‘Yes, you are kind, but you can’t be part of our Douskos group.’
‘I am willing to endure that for you. It is a small price to pay for your happiness. You make sacrifices, too. I want to be with you for ever, Frieda. I have never felt this way about anyone before. Whatever happens, we need to be together.’
‘But how? It would destroy Jack to break up the family. We will soon have to leave Hydra as his money will run out. It was only ever meant to be for twelve months.’
