Landscape With Traveler

by Barry Gifford

  Ilya was furtive in all things. Unnecessarily, for I would have forgiven him anything. He wrote and received many letters. When he received one, he would read it and rip it into minute shreds. One, however, he left on a table by accident as we were going out to lunch one day in Tangier. We ran into an old acquaintance of his, with whom I left him, pleading fatigue. Back in our room, I undressed and got into bed. The letter caught my eye, and I hesitated only a moment. The letter fertilized a seed in me, and in the time it took me to read it, I had conceived, gestated, and borne that most hideous of all babes, jealousy. I recognized the name on the letter—an old lover of Ilya’s. The pages told the boy’s joy at Ilya’s impending visit to spend Christmas with him in Kenya, that he would expect him on the twentieth—four days away.

  I replaced the letter. Ilya came back, and I pretended to be asleep. Whistling happily under his breath, he undressed, climbed into bed with me, and was soon asleep. I eventually slept and was awakened by Ilya’s ablutions. The letter was in shreds in the trash basket. At dinner that evening, Ilya was unusually charming and gentle. I was watchful, waiting—not without a certain detached interest—to see how he would do it. Over coffee, he began to talk of his tired old plan to own a string of bars around the Mediterranean, so that we could circulate among them as the season touched each one. He had never mentioned Kenya before. Now he told me he had been talking about Kenya with the man we’d met after lunch, indeed that he had decided to take a quick trip to look it over to see if a bar would go. I brightened and said that would be fun, that I’d always wanted to go to Kenya. His face clouded only for an instant. He thought he should go alone to save money. I was firm. If I was going into business in Kenya, I needed to see the place. This went on for three days, and I was beginning to enjoy it. Ilya was writing long letters every day, receiving none. We spent Christmas in Tangier.

  Paris was next. Ilya received fat letters from Kenya. He didn’t answer them. In Paris, that city of bitchery and intrigue, my jealousy reached adolescence. Ilya was unfindable from time to time, returning to bed just before dawn. He was tired. I was patient, on the surface. “At midnight tears/run into your ears,” wrote Louise Bogan. They really do. The winter was a sad molto adagio. The only fun was provided by Ilya’s explanations for his absences, which were, however, insulting in their implied assumption of a credulity on my part approaching idiocy.

  It was like recovering from an illness to get back to Greece. Mykonos in the spring can cure anything. Our isolation was, of course, helpful. The summer went well. My delusions bloomed anew. My hurts healed. I was learning about myself. I learned also what love is and is not, and that it is not what I felt for Ilya. I was sexually addicted to him, and there was nothing for it but to float on with the current until I was thrown up onto some shore.

  Ada was an angel. I believe she’d been “in love” with Ilya, too, and so she understood when I took my troubles to her. But though disaster might come with the end of summer, the summer itself was beautiful. Ilya seemed to sense that he must be good, without understanding exactly why, and he was very, very good. Even I almost believed in his sincerity. But I knew.

  Winter came. We returned to Paris. Jealousy reached full maturity. In the great battle that ensued, as so often happens in great battles, an unlooked-for hero emerged as my champion. My Self asserted itself, revealing its full splendor, like Krishna to Arjuna. I was rescued and carried off the field of slaughter. I gazed back at Ilya and puzzled over what the cause of the battle might have been. Ilya, too, was puzzled. I smiled at him, waved, and walked away. The smile was not a brave one, but a happy one.

  29

  There

  Was

  No

  Battle

  Royal

  There was no battle royal, of course, except perhaps inside me. Ilya was superbly unaware that any change was in the wind and lived his life from moment to moment as he had always done. I say that with a confidence that I don’t really feel, even now, because one never knew what Ilya’s perceptions were. I could always tell, or so I thought, when he was lying; I could never even imagine what he was thinking. I have observed him in subsequent love affairs (for want of a better term), and the sequence is always the same. He is like a little boy who, in the enthusiasm of the first flush of friendship, makes an unspoken but unmistakable offer of his most cherished treasure to his new friend, but who, when it comes down to it, finds he is unable to part with it. In Ilya’s case, the treasure is himself, and his difficulty is not an uncommon one. I had been wary in surrendering to such a strong passion for a man I could never know. That the passion blossomed into a consuming jealousy was not surprising, especially in retrospect, devastating though it was at the time. The surprise was the profound sense of self-knowledge that came out of it all.

  I believe now that only passion—and not love—can engender such possessiveness, and that in the compound of emotions which I felt toward Ilya passion was the predominant ingredient. This was not love—or not what I now mean when I say that word. At the time, I called it love, but at the beginning of the affair I was blissful in ignorance and hope. The fire that passion is smelted out the knowledge I needed. Through the same mechanism which made some see us as fallen princes, Ilya had appeared to me as my long-sought love. That is, he was a neutral screen on which I projected my fantasies. He promised nothing and offered only what he could give. He knew how I construed things because I told him, and if he did not contradict me it is possibly because he was hoping I was correct and could show him the way.

  Some people can wade slowly from the warm beach into the cold ocean, inch by inch, and swim away happily. I, however, must inflate my courage and dive in quickly, head first. This method was necessary, too, in breaking away from Ilya. I tried visiting friends in Monte Carlo and Paris to be away from him and collect myself, hoping that my feelings would somehow die. But I only thought with increasing anxiety of seeing him again. So I finally was forced to tell him good-bye and dive quickly into solitude. He was puzzled, but there was no making him understand. There was no need to place any blame.

  Back in New York, I saw him only rarely for the first few months, but saw no reason for discontinuing what could very loosely be called a friendship, and we have continued to see each other. The role he has given me, vis-à-vis his boys of the moment, is that of partner in past adventure, which is an easy and even a pleasant one to play. He is at an age now when verisimilitude profits from a support which I am happy to provide. I’ve grown rather fond of him over the years. He was, after all, my companion—perhaps even the catalyst—in one of the happiest and ultimately most enlightening periods of my life.

  30

  As

  To

  Ada

  As to Ada, Ilya not infrequently would sing the praises of America to her and tell her she should pull up stakes and move to that country of opportunity. When she would ask him, as she always did on these occasions, why, if it was such a wonderful place, he was so stubbornly eking out a bare existence in Europe, his replies were evasive and inadequate. However, by the time I had decided to give up my hopes (by then mere wishes) of conjugal bliss and return to New York, Ada also began seriously to consider America as a possibility.

  So I returned to New York. It was time, and the breakup with Ilya was not the only—not even the main—reason. Being a foreigner forever is not my idea of life as it should be lived. The people were all perfectly nice and charming, but in the end I kept having the urge to stand up and yell, “I’m Francis! Not just an American, but this American!” One does tend to think in groups—Italians, Greeks, Parisians—but not face-to-face (well, maybe with Parisians, but still . . .). I thought of my friends in Greece as Vienoula, Vangeli, Nicola, et al., not as Greeks, and I didn’t see why to them I was an American first and only secondarily me. Besides which, I like America.

  I found an apartment in the Village, a fifth-floor walk-up on Hudson Street. S
ince I lived in the rear, it was quiet, or would have been but for the family that lived above me. Down the airshaft I could hear everything that went on in their apartment. Actually, most of the time it was quite amusing. One afternoon I heard the two kids, Marie and Anthony, who were about eight and seven, teasing their mother, who was always after them about foul language. “F!” shouted Anthony from the bedroom. “U!” shouted Marie from the living room. “C!” shouted Anthony. “Marie!” shouted their mother from the kitchen between them, “if you say ‘K’ I’ll beat the shit out of you!”

  I got a job as a secretary in a hospital (all dancers should know how to type) and settled into a routine. It was good to be working. I had determined as always never to have another love affair—though I didn’t then suppose I’d really stick to that decision, and that I’d come to enjoy it—and so had wished Ilya well (he, too, had by this time returned to New York and was living not far from me). We were friends, Ilya and I. It was much better that way. All this I wrote to Ada.

  That sounds more clean and sudden than it was, as though I woke up one morning and said that’s it, no more, I am giving up sex. It happened, of course, simply as a progressive diminution of interest—the only way it could happen to someone as self-indulgent as I who satisfy even the vaguest of my desires. I go along full tilt until I notice that whatever it is doesn’t give me pleasure any longer, or that what pleasure I’m getting from it doesn’t outweigh the effort of doing it. So with school, piano, dance, guitar, and much, much more. “Dr. Schweitzer, we do not play with the same toys all our lives,” said Galli-Curci. So with sex. I’m no less interested in it than I ever was, but I’m not willing to pay the price. There is one exception to this, but he is not available, and we both agree that this is just as well. As it is, I believe in Socrates.

  For her part Ada was also primed for a change. She felt she had nothing really to look forward to in Greece and so, after several months of correspondence, I invited her to come and stay with me.

  31

  Ilya

  Had

  Advised

  Ada

  to

  Come

  Ilya had advised Ada to come on a tourist visa, assuring her that he could easily have some “contacts” in Washington change it to an immigration visa, which, if she tried to obtain it in Greece, might take years. I had been more cautious, telling her she ought to come for a visit first to see whether she liked New York before burning her bridges. But Ilya prevailed, and Ada arrived on a bright September day, the kind of day that presents the city at its best.

  It was a coup de foudre—Ada adored New York. Ilya was told to start his contacts working on the visa. He did nothing at all, as I had expected, and the six months passed. Ada had sold and given away all her furniture, given up her beautiful cheap apartment, and now it would be impossible for her to return to Athens unless she was willing (which she was not) to live off her family, who could ill afford to help her. So she needed an American husband in order to stay. I was unattached at the time, and was glad to help her, though I still felt she had made a mistake. It had not been my intention that we would live together, but there was no other way. All of Ada’s admirable independence vanished and she clung to me for company and guidance in her new home. There was a desperation in all this, but living with her was far from unpleasant, in fact it would have been almost ideal for me too, had I not, as always, much preferred to live alone.

  32

  For

  Nine

  Years

  All

  Went

  Well

  For nine years, then, all went well. My friends welcomed Ada with open arms and loved her. The feeling was mutual. We saw a lot of them, and I presented her to my old ballet teachers, who hired her to accompany their classes. They loved her too. She discovered Bloomingdale’s, and another love affair began. I believe the two things she liked most about New York were Bloomie’s and the Riverside Drive buses, where she would have epic conversations with the little old ladies who ride them. Compared to these ladies, Ada was a little girl, and she liked that, but she also genuinely enjoyed listening to their tales, even their complaints, and they adored her. They got to know her and would fight to have her sit by them, asking strangers to move, vying with the others she knew on the same bus. Simple bus rides to midtown turned into riotous occasions.

  By now I spoke Greek, but it was still strange to use anything but French with Ada. English was used only when friends were present. Our language together became a mixture of French and Greek (Freek), which no one who spoke either of those two languages could understand.

  Then, after nine years, Ada became increasingly depressed. She was afraid to leave the house, even at high noon, because of all the muggings that were going on in the city. She resented my leaving her alone when I went out for an evening to myself. Almost nothing I did pleased her. When it became evident that this was not just a passing phase, I too became resentful. A year passed in this disagreeable fashion. Then on a stormy winter night that had been particularly trying, I took Zagg for his walk, came back, and told her in as reasonable a tone as I could manage that I thought the time had come for her to think things over carefully and decide whether she might not be happier back in Greece. One of her older sisters’ husbands had recently died, and no doubt she would welcome a companion. Ada, as I had known she would, interpreted my statement as meaning I no longer wanted her with me. This was not true, in the sense that I didn’t say it to get rid of her but to shock her into dealing with her situation. It is true, however, that the thought of living alone again was attractive. She began preparations immediately, and in a few months she sailed back to Greece.

  When Ada left it was a gray drizzly Sunday, which didn’t help anything but the general melancholy. I remember how empty and quiet the apartment seemed that day. I found myself paying exaggerated attention to everything, silly things like the action of turning off a light or blowing out a match and putting it in an ashtray. It was strange to think that everything I was doing was being done for nobody but myself.

  My interest in things flagged for a while, and I was haunted by the unattractive thought that I’d selfishly added to the suffering of a person who had already suffered too much in her life. I truly felt when I got home that day after she’d sailed that I’d just come from a funeral. Much of it I now recognize as self-flagellation, and just plain old natural sadness. It still saddens me, but it will all pass. And Ada, of course, is a big enough person to go on with her life and be happy, and to forgive me for any wrong she feels I might have done her (which I doubt she ever felt anyhow). Poor us, who think we know what we’re doing.

  33

  When

  I

  Finally

  Heard

  from

  Ada

  My

  Initial

  Sadness

  Had

  Passed

  When I finally heard from Ada after her departure my initial sadness had passed and I really felt all was well. Jim’s first son had been born on the day Ada sailed and that seemed a good omen. Ada’s voyage was without mishap—even her teacups arrived unbroken. That may not seem important, but dear me she loves those teacups. And the eleven-day voyage had given her time to think and sort things out, as well as to rest, which was not the least of her needs at the moment.

  If I am ever really sad at all it’s for all the people at cross purposes, Ada and me included, who hang onto them “gnashing away,” and never stop to let things be beautiful and simple. There is such distrust in everybody’s eyes! I came home just now slightly high on wine (nicely so) and walking here I was thinking about Jim and Ada and kept looking at people as they passed and they all turned away or frowned or got that “What the hell are you staring at?” disdainful look. That’s the sad thing.

  34

  I’m

  Goin
g

  Through

  All

  of

  This

  So

  Quickly

  I’m going through all of this so quickly! And it’s such a surprise what comes out. These days I mostly think “thoughtless” thoughts. I don’t look out the window at the river and think “river”—I just look at the river, or whatever. I like it. I see writing as conversation, more or less, and books, as the poet said, as “how we dead men write to each other.”

  Most of what goes on in the world is of little interest to me and I am most certainly of very little interest to anybody but myself, and even then I hardly matter. Which, the way I see it, is as it should be. The other evening when I returned home from work, I sat down on the couch to watch the sunset and the next thing I knew it was two o’clock in the morning. I hadn’t fallen asleep, I’m sure—it was a completely passive, tranquil trance of some sort. When I realized what had happened I was at first a little bewildered, but then I felt quite all right about it and went to bed. I am just slightly surprised, and not, I suppose, totally displeased, by the degree of my remove.

  It seems to me now that all I’ve ever really done with my life has been to drift through it. I doubt I ever seriously thought about it when I was younger, I certainly didn’t give much consideration to a “life’s work,” or worry about whether or not there ever would be such a thing as far as I was concerned. When I was a boy I was too busy growing up to notice anything beyond my child’s world, then school, the Navy, Maggie, Ilya, Ada, and all the minor ones in between. Even now it’s impossible, or seemingly so, for me to “plan” anything much beyond next week.