A House Like a Lotus

by Madeleine L'engle

  “I’m not selling my property,” Zachary said. “You needn’t worry about that. Just in case, I’ll hang on to what I have.”

  “You can’t take it with you.”

  “I’ll keep it till the last second. I’ve got five thousand dollars in traveler’s checks with me right now.”

  I did not like this aspect of Zachary. I’m realistic enough to know the possibilities for the future, but there are some positive ones, too, as I reminded Zachary. There are people like Sandy and Rhea whose work is about diametrically opposite to Zachary’s father’s, though I didn’t mention that. A lot of doctors are refusing to take part in emergency medical-disaster planning, making it clear that it’s unethical to delude people into false beliefs that there are any realistic mechanisms of survival after an atomic war. More and more people are rising up against nuclear stockpiling. At home. Abroad. We don’t have to blow up the planet.

  Max said once, ‘We do make things happen by what we think, so think positively, Polly, not negatively. When you think you are beautiful, you are beautiful. If you believe in yourself, you will do well in your life’s work, whether you choose acting or writing or science.’

  It was a warm summer evening and we were out on the verandah upstairs, off Max’s room, watching night fall. The sky over the ocean was rosy with afterglow, which Max said was more subtle than the sunset. The ceiling fan was whirring gently. In the purply sky above the soft rose at the horizon a star came out, pulsing softly so that it was more like the thought of a star than a star, and then there it was, followed by more and more stars.

  Max pointed to the sky. ‘The macrocosm. Stars beyond countless stars. Galaxies beyond galaxies. If our universe is finite, as many astrophysicists believe, there may be as many universes as there are galaxies, floating like tiny bubbles in the vastness of space.’

  ‘Tiny bubbles?’

  I was sitting on a low stool at Max’s feet, and she reached out her fingers and massaged the back of my neck gently. That’s where I get tired when I write a lot, and I’d just finished my last long paper of the year for Miss Zeloski.

  ‘The last time Urs and I were at your house, Rosy and Johnny were blowing bubbles, lovely little iridescent orbs floating in the breeze. And when one thinks of the macrocosm, and then the microcosm, size makes no never-mind, as Nettie would say.’ She laughed gently. ‘Is a galaxy bigger than a quark? I lean more and more on the total interdependence of all creation. If we should be so foolish as to blow this planet to bits, it would have repercussions not only in our own solar system but in distant galaxies. Or even distant universes. And if anyone dies—a tree, a planet, a human being—all of creation is shaken.’

  How different that was from Zachary. Frightening, but in a completely different way, because it gave everything meaning.

  ‘Never think what you do doesn’t matter,’ Max said. ‘No one is too insignificant to make a difference. Whenever you get the chance, choose life. But I don’t need to tell you that. You choose life with every gesture you make. That’s the first thing in you that appealed to me. You are naked with life.’

  And wasn’t that what drew me to Max, that abundant sense of life?—pointing out to me the fierce underside of a moth clinging to the screen; fireflies like a fallen galaxy on the dunes in front of our house; the incredible, pulsing life of the stars blooming in the night sky, seeming to cling to the Spanish moss on the old oaks.

  I looked at the crumbling golden columns near Zachary’s picnic spot, the chipped pediments, and thought that Max would see in them not the death of a civilization but the life. I got up and walked slowly toward the temple, and Zachary followed me.

  He dropped his doom talk. “When am I going to see you again?”

  “Uncle Sandy has plans to take me to various places for the rest of the week, and then I’m off to Cyprus.”

  “I like Cyprus. I’ll come see you there.”

  “No, please, Zachary. I’m there to do a job, and I’m not going to have time for anything else.”

  “How long is this job?”

  “Three weeks.” We’d reached the temple, and I sat on the still-damp stone of a pediment with a lotus-leaf design. Did the Greeks think of the lotus as flowering into an entire universe?

  Zachary counted off on his fingers. “Three weeks, okay, I may go to Turkey for a while, then. How’re you getting home after the conference?”

  “Cyprus Airlines to Athens, then on to JFK in New York, and then to Charleston.”

  “You change planes in Athens?”

  “Of course.”

  “How long do you have between planes?”

  “Nearly three hours.”

  “I’ll meet you at the airport, then, and we can have a bite together and a chance to catch up. When we get back to the hotel, write me down your flight numbers.”

  “Okay, that would be fun.” I tried not to let on just how thrilled I was that he didn’t want to drop me when Sandy and Rhea arrived.

  He touched my nose, then my lips with his finger. “I can’t imagine anything nicer than fun with you, Polly. You’re like a bottle of champagne just waiting to be uncorked. Or don’t you like that analogy?” I had turned away, and he pulled me back. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, sweet Pol. Since you haven’t told me anything, I can’t help blundering.” He pressed my face against his shoulder, gently.

  It was nearly seven when we got back to the hotel. Zachary insisted that I give him the Cyprus Airlines flight number, so I let him into my room just long enough to check my ticket and write down the information for him. He was looking around the room, and I’m sure it gave him the impression the O’Keefes are a lot richer than we are. But I didn’t explain.

  He kissed me goodbye, and electricity vibrated through me. But we don’t have to act out everything we feel. I’d learned that much.

  “I’ve got to call Uncle Sandy’s room. Thanks, Zach. These have been good days for me. Really good. Thanks.”

  “Believe me, the pleasure was mine. And this is not goodbye, Pol, you’re not going to be able to get rid of me this easily.”

  I hoped he would be at the airport to meet me at the end of my three weeks in Cyprus. But I thought I’d better not count on it.

  I rang Sandy and Rhea’s room, and he answered. “Polly! We arrived about an hour ago and got your message. Glad you were off doing something. Been having a good time?” There was both question and challenge in his voice.

  “Yes. I have. I met a guy from California—did Uncle Dennys tell you?”

  “He mentioned it.”

  “I’ve been off sightseeing and doing things with him.”

  “Not too much, I hope?”

  I laughed. “No fault of his, but no, not too much.”

  “My, you sound grown up.”

  “It’s about time,” I said. “I hope it’s all right that I went ahead and made a reservation for dinner on the roof at nine. I thought that might be easiest for you—”

  “It’s just right,” he said. “Rhea’s napping, but I’ll wake her up in time. See you at the restaurant.”

  I soaked in a warm bath. Zachary had been an escape route in many ways. I could forget that Sandy was likely to ask me questions. Some of the questions had no answers. But there were other ones which I was going to have to respond to, and I wasn’t ready. I felt as though a splinter of ice had lodged deep in my heart. While I was with Zachary I was able to forget it, but now it was there, chilling me.

  I stayed in the tub as long as possible, but it didn’t thaw anything. Then I dressed in the one dressy thing I’d brought with me, a soft, floaty geometric print of mauves and blues and lavenders, which softened my angles and brought out the blue of my eyes and made my hair look less orange. Rhea had given it to me for Christmas, and I’d worn it for the New Year’s Eve party at Beau Allaire, and for Zachary when we went to the Hilton for dinner. Rhea knew how to buy clothes which were just right for me.

  At nine sharp, I was standing in front of the elevator, and wh
en I got to the roof, Sandy and Rhea were waiting. I hugged them, rubbing my face against Sandy’s soft golden beard, smelling Rhea’s familiar, exotic scent, embraced by them both. For a fleeting moment Rhea reminded me of Max. They both had black hair. They were both tall. They both had fine bones. They knew how to dress. But that was it. Max’s eyes were silver, and Rhea’s like dark pansies. Max was thin, and Rhea was slender. Max vibrated like a plucked harp, and Rhea was serenely quiet. Max, with her acute awareness of life, was dying, and Rhea still had her life ahead of her.

  We were shown to a table with a good view, one of Aristeides’ tables. He greeted me like an old friend, and I introduced him to Sandy and Rhea.

  “You seem to have made yourself very much at home,” Sandy said.

  Rhea smiled at me approvingly. “We’re proud of you for managing on your own so well. Of course we knew you would.”

  Sandy and Aristeides spent quite a while discussing the merits of various dishes, and when Rhea said something in Greek Aristeides was delighted, repeated everything in Greek, rattled off a list of wines, and approved of Rhea’s choice. It was not retsina.

  During dinner, Sandy and Rhea told me that after they had visited some of Rhea’s relatives they’d been invited to tour the islands on a friend’s yacht, and then they had a job to do. They didn’t tell me what or where, but I was used to secrets. A lot of Daddy’s research was secret, too.

  Rhea and Sandy were even more cosmopolitan than Max, and I was only Polly, the island girl, but I was completely at ease with them.

  Zachary came with the after-dinner coffee, appearing at Sandy’s elbow and introducing himself.

  “I thought you might like to see who it is who’s been escorting Polly these past few days.” He looked handsome in dark pants and blazer and a white shirt.

  Rhea invited him to sit down, and I could see they thought I’d done pretty well, until Zachary mentioned his father’s corporation, and something in Sandy’s eyes clicked, like the shutter of a camera. Then he switched the conversation to my job in Osia Theola, and the tension evaporated, and we talked comfortably. Zachary flattered Rhea without being obvious, and was politely deferential to Sandy. He shook hands with them as we parted, kissed me on the cheek, and said, “Be seeing you, Pol,” and left us.

  Sandy laughed slightly. “Your young man doesn’t suffer for lack of funds.”

  Rhea spoke gently. “You can’t blame him for his father.”

  “True. I’m glad you had a good time with him, Polly.”

  Sandy had rented a car big enough for the three of us and our luggage. As I left my room and my balcony I felt a sudden pang of homesickness for this place where I had been for only a few days.

  Sandy came to my room to see if I needed anything. “Set?”

  “I think so. The flowers are pretty well wilted, but I’ve put the rest of the fruit in a plastic bag—I thought we might want it while we’re driving.”

  “Good thought.” He sat down on the sofa. “I talked with your parents last night.” Sandy and Dennys must have astronomical phone bills, but still I was surprised. “Everyone’s fine, and I gave them a good report on you. They haven’t heard from you yet, it’s too soon.”

  “I’ve written every day, at least a postcard.”

  “They’re aware that mail takes at least a week or ten days. Should I have phoned when you could talk with them?”

  I shook my head, slowly.

  “And I talked with Ursula and Max. We could call again, if you like, so you could talk.”

  I shook my head again, bent to pick up my shoulder bag.

  “Max is weaker, Urs says, and in a good bit of pain.” It was more a question than a statement.

  I slung the bag over my shoulder. We’d had all the big conversations on Benne Seed. I had nothing to add.

  Sandy went to the door. “Someone will be up for your bag in a moment. We’ll meet you in the lobby.” His voice was even, not condemning, not judging.

  “Okay.” I sat down to wait. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to be going somewhere with Zachary. I’d been devastated when Sandy and Rhea were not at the airport to meet me. Now I’d be delighted if they were delayed for another week.

  A knock on my door. Time to go.

  Rhea insisted that I sit in front with Sandy since she was so familiar with the countryside. I told them what Zachary and I had done, where we’d gone, and they approved.

  “He wasn’t very thorough. One hour in the museum. And I’ll have to go back to Delphi, and Osias Lukas. It’s all so overwhelming—there’s far more than I can manage to see in a week.”

  “And you don’t want to get saturated,” Sandy said. “Just a sip here, a taste there, and you’ll know what you want to drink of more deeply the next time. And there’ll be a next time, Polly, maybe not for the next few years, but you have travel in your blood, and Greece will draw you back. Now, my loves, my plan for today is this. We’ll stop in Corinth for lunch and a little sightseeing, and go on to Nauplion for the night. Then tomorrow we’ll push on to Epidaurus. We’ll spend a good part of the day there, and then we’ll have to head back to Athens to get you on your plane to Cyprus.”

  “We’ll stick to a fairly easy pace,” Rhea added. “Sandy and I are in the mood to putter along, enjoy things without pressure. All right?”

  “Fine. Absolutely anything’s fine. Charleston is the farthest I’ve been from Benne Seed in years, and I’ve missed Europe.”

  Rhea leaned over the seat. “Have you read Robinson Jeffers’s play about Medea?”

  “Max had me read it, along with a lot of Aeschylus and Sophocles.”

  “How did you get along with all that classicism?”

  “With Max’s help, pretty well.” I didn’t want to talk about Max, but with Rhea and Sandy it was impossible not to.

  Sandy and Rhea were much more thorough sightseers than Zachary. “If we want to plummet Polly back thousands of years,” Sandy said, “Mycenae’s the place.”

  It was. As we drove steadily uphill, the sky clouded over, and as we approached Mycenae, the wild grey of the sky seemed to go with the stark and ancient magnificence. Max had shown me her sketchbooks of Greece, but they hadn’t prepared me for the reality. She’d taken me through a good bit of Sophocles, some of which I thought was absolutely fantastic and some of which was boring, and I knew that the Acropolis of Mycenae was the setting for his plays.

  We parked the car and walked through the stone gates at the top of the mountain. Sandy grasped my arm. “Do you realize, Pol, that these are the gates through which Agamemnon and Orestes walked? Come on, I’ll show you the place which is thought to be where Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon in his bath. You’ll read Sophocles differently after this.”

  I reached for his hand. “Why are human beings so violent?”

  “We can be tender, too,” he said, “and we can laugh at ourselves. Didn’t Max give you any comedies to read?”

  “I think we just didn’t get to them.”

  “Perhaps she thought they were too bawdy?” Rhea suggested.

  Sandy laughed. “I doubt that. Max is committed to opening Polly’s eyes.”

  But Max’s plans for the education of Polyhymnia O’Keefe had been interrupted before we got to the comedies.

  In the xenia in Nauplion, Sandy and Rhea had a large corner room, facing the Bay of Argos. From their balcony we could see a Venetian fortress. My room, next to theirs, overlooked the water, and the sound of wind and waves was the sound of home, but wilder, because here the sea beat against rock, not sand. But it was still the familiar music of waves, and I slept.

  I was in a small boat in the wide stretch of water between Cowpertown and Benne Seed Island. The waves were high and the boat was rocking, but I wasn’t afraid. I held a baby in my arms, a tiny little rosy thing, but it wasn’t Rosy, or any of my younger siblings. It had no clothes on, and I held it close to keep it warm. Above us a seagull flew.

  And then something seemed to be hitting at the wooden
sides of the boat, and I looked over to see what it was—

  —And Sandy was knocking on my door in the xenia in Nauplion and calling, “Wake up, sleepyhead. Come and have breakfast with Rhea and me on our balcony.” “Be right there,” I called.

  But I dressed slowly, still partly in the dream, which had been strangely beautiful. Bending down to fasten my sandal strap, I remembered, with somewhat the same windswept clarity as in the dream, that last evening with Max, when we sat drinking lemonade before dinner and she had talked about her baby again. Her little girl had been born in the same month that I had, and just the day before, though a lot of years earlier. Max’s voice as she said this was cool and calm, with the barest hint of sadness. Birds were chirping sleepily in the oaks, and the rolling of the breakers was hushed. The air was heavy with humidity, and heat lightning flickered around us. But Max seemed relaxed, and the pain lines which were permanently etched in her forehead seemed less deep than usual, and her grey eyes were not shadowed.

  She put her hand gently over mine as she said that sometimes when one gives something up completely, as she’d given up the thought of ever having another child, then God gives one another chance, and God had done that for her, in me.

  And she said that, said God.

  So that was what the dream was about, I thought, and perhaps it had come to me because I went to sleep with the sound of the sea in my ears. But why was I holding the baby?

  ‘Dreams are messages,’ Max said. ‘But don’t get faddy about them. Take them seriously, but not earnestly. It can be a form of self-indulgence if you overdo it.’ Nettie came and refilled our glasses. I think Nettie was always delighted when Ursula was away, but Nettie also loved Max, and knew that Max needed Ursula.

  When Nettie had withdrawn to the kitchen quarters, Max said, ‘Don’t be sorry for me, Polly. I’ve had a good life. I’m not a great painter, but I’m a good one, and I’ve had more than my fair share of success. I have few regrets. Not many people can say that.’ We were silent for a while, listening to the evening sounds around us. A tiny lizard skittered up the screen. Summer insects were making their double-bass rumblings. ‘There isn’t anything that happens that can’t teach us something,’ she said, ‘that can’t be turned into something positive. One can’t undo what’s been done, but one can use it creatively.’ She looked at me and her eyes were sea-silver. ‘I’m glad I had the experience of having a baby. I wouldn’t undo it, have it not have happened. The only thing is to accept, and let the scar heal. Scar tissue is the strongest tissue in the body. Did you know that?’