Hydra 1/Aug. — 1960
It has been an extremely difficult period for Marianne, Axel Joachim and me. The rumours are already buzzing around at home, that’s unavoidable, people have mouths to talk with so there will be a whirring of rumours and talking with mouths. And I have surely enough committed a series of necessary irresponsibilities, our marriage hangs by a thin thread, and time will tell whether or not the thread will snap. The whole thing is naturally my “fault,” as usual, if we’re going to use the word “fault” or blame, etc.
Marianne, who was slowly being initiated into this dangerous world beyond conventions, has grown into a complete little person. The process has been a little painful at times, but that’s true for all of us.…32
Axel asked his father not to worry too much: they were young and their only way of gaining wisdom was to do foolish things. Patricia, who was being talked about as the serpent in Paradise, would be back from Chicago as soon as she could hobble along: then they’d see what rabbits fate would pull out of its top hat.
Shortly after Axel mailed this sign of life to his father, Marianne receives a letter from John in Mexico. He writes that he wishes Marianne were there with him, so they could discuss everything that’s happened. John thanks her for the photograph of Axel Joachim and asks Marianne to send his date and time of birth, which Axel has neglected to give him. John wonders where “the wreck” Axel is now — he was in total chaos when he arrived in Mexico, but the bird had regained his wings by the time he departed.
It must be Godawful to be married to a man who is a genious in unhooking other people’s psychis — Godawful and wonderful at the same time. I imagine you’ve learned to be very calm and wise. ARE you? Or are you putting on masks?
If you are, let me give you some advice: no masks. I should know. I donned hundreds of them and they don’t work.33
John is very happy to have received a poem Marianne had sent to him: he’d had no idea that she was a poet, he writes. He hopes the light of the Aegean Sea dwells in her, and that Axel has returned to her.
* * *
The very last time Marianne saw Axel on Hydra was in 1962. Marianne later learned that he’d been expelled from the island because, in a drunken state, he’d pushed a policeman into the sea. Axel later described this himself as a sad exit.
It had been a long way to the bottom. Or, as Leonard Cohen would later write: Yes it’s come to this, and wasn’t it a long way down.34
Chapter 6
* * *
AUTUMN OF LOVE
* * *
When Marianne and Axel had boarded the train from Oslo that November night in 1957, they’d planned to spend a year in Greece. Two years had passed and much had changed. Axel and Marianne, now twenty-five years old, had parted ways. Even as her bond to Leonard grew stronger, she saw no other option than to return to Norway with her six-month-old child.
Miraculously, the Karmann Ghia, which had come close to ending Patricia’s life, was virtually unscathed. The car had been registered in Sweden in Marianne’s name the year before, and now she needed to get it back to Scandinavia to avoid having to pay import duties that she could scarcely afford. She didn’t look forward to driving with Axel Joachim in the backseat for mile after mile all the way through Europe, and she wondered how she might send the boy to Norway ahead of her. Leonard was thinking of returning to Canada and he offered to make the long drive together with Marianne before flying home to Montreal from Oslo. The stipend he lived on was almost exhausted and he had to recross the Atlantic to earn money.
When Leonard proposed accompanying Marianne all the way to Oslo it began to sink in for her that she meant something to him. They spent more and more time together, were friends and lovers, and the tension of the recent turbulent months seeped out of her body.
One morning when Marianne had been at the port with Axel Joachim they stopped in at Katsikas’ shop on the way home, as usual. Nearby on the port, one of the brothers in the family that ran the business had started a taverna where he offered simple fare. As Marianne and the baby were passing the little restaurant, a cap on one of the tables caught her eye. It was emblazoned with the logo of the Scandinavian Airline System — SAS. Hearing the lively chatter, she went over and asked if they were from Norway. An entire airplane crew sat around the table. Marianne introduced herself and explained that she’d been living on Hydra for two years, but was soon returning north.
The SAS crew were friendly and seemed trustworthy. Marianne made a rapid judgement call: she set the six-month-old baby on the table and said, “This little boy is going home to his grandmother in Oslo, and he can’t travel alone.”
The crew were to fly back to Norway as passengers, and without hesitating they agreed to deliver the boy to Fornebu Airport in Oslo. For her little boy’s sake, Marianne thought it was better for him to fly home to Norway than to sit in the backseat of the car as they drove all the way across Europe. She telegraphed home at once and asked if her mother would meet the child at the airport.
Mother stood at the ready to receive her grandchild and help her daughter the best she could. “If you need anything, you know where I am,” she’d said to Marianne the evening she departed Norway with Axel. Marianne needed her now. Her mother quickly made the necessary preparations at home and dispatched a telegram back to Marianne saying that she could send “Micro” — the baby’s Greek nickname — to Norway whenever she was ready. While Marianne’s mother was at work, her cousin, who lived near the offices of the national broadcasting company, would look after him. The crib was ready, and all she needed to know was what kind of milk Axel Joachim took — the rest she knew.
Marianne’s mother was glad that she wouldn’t be making that long drive alone, and she assured her daughter that she could have her pick of well-paid office jobs when she came to Oslo.
A few days later, together with Leonard, Marianne went to the airport with her baby, clad in hand-me-downs from George and Charmian’s children. Marianne was allowed to carry Axel Joachim all the way into the plane, where she turned him over to the purser and the stewardess she’d met at the taverna near Katsikas’. Marianne kissed her little boy goodbye and checked that his bottle, diapers and a change of clothing were all there. She felt that the baby had been in the centre of a maelstrom ever since he’d come into the world: what he needed was to settle into a stable situation.
When Marianne received the cable that let her know that the boy was safely in Oslo she could finally relax. For the first time in a long while she felt unencumbered and could think of herself. She broke down and let the tears flow. Having held herself together so long, she’d nearly forgotten what it was like to breathe freely. With the baby in the good hands of her mother in Oslo, Marianne and Leonard enjoyed a few weeks on their own.
Leonard rented a small house near the port and spent most of his time writing. He hammered away from early in the morning until late in the evening on the green typewriter he’d bought for forty pounds the day he’d arrived in England. Leonard had come to Hydra both to write and to study Greek culture and history. He was an avid student and took private lessons in Greek.
On the 27th of September, six days after his twenty-sixth birthday, Leonard bought himself a house on Hydra for one thousand five hundred dollars. He’d inherited a small sum and had enlisted the help of a friend — the Greek-American painter Demetri Gassoumis — to make the investment. Leonard hung his blue raincoat on a hook in the entry and placed his green typewriter in his workroom.35
Marianne divided her time between the eagle’s nest in Kala Pigadia and Leonard’s house. She felt secure and no longer held her breath as she had done with Axel. He had always demanded more of her than she could give, yet she had bound herself to him. Like an anxious animal, Marianne was ever on the alert for the next attack. She’d been walking on eggshells, but now she could feel the ground beneath her.
Their days together on Hydra were tra
nquil. Marianne was relieved that Axel Joachim was in her mother’s safe hands and she wouldn’t have to cart him across Europe. Whether she was going to return to Greece or what she would do with the little house in Kala Pigadia she didn’t know. For many of the foreigners on Hydra, the barren island was just a stop on their journey. They migrated onward, always seeking new places in which to better realize themselves and their art.
Marianne and Leonard lived a simple, quiet, predictable life. A disciplined man, Leonard awoke with the dawn to work. In the middle of the day they shared lunch and a siesta, and on the warmest afternoons of that autumn they took their swimsuits to the little pebble beach in Kamini.
Daily life involved a lot of work. Just filling a pot with water demanded effort. They knew that every drop of water came from the rain. They brought it up from the cistern under the floor or bought water that was delivered on a donkey. It was a nourishing kind of toil that they enjoyed doing together.36
The days she arose early Marianne observed the Greek women, in full mid-calf skirts, on their way to the bakery to buy their daily loaves. In her way she was one of them, despite her Bohemian lifestyle — so remote from the traditional Greek Orthodox existence. She enjoyed making food, finding comfort in the day’s routines and rituals and losing herself in the practicalities of maintaining a household.
As she had seen the Greek women do, Marianne prepared chicken by placing it in a round pan along with potatoes and vegetables. She carried the dish to the bakery, paid a few drachmas to have it put in the oven and fetched it a couple of hours later. Starting early in the morning, the baker fired the oven with bushes and twigs. Marianne inhaled the smell of juniper in the small room. Wielding his big wooden paddle with fluid movements, the baker filled the glowing oven with loaves of bread and dinner casseroles of various kinds, each with its slip of paper to ensure its return to its rightful owner.
Marianne learned how to keep food from spoiling in the heat. The butter was kept cool at the bottom of a brown glazed ceramic mug full of water. She made sure that Leonard had a fresh gardenia on his desk and the house had a woman’s touch. She was housekeeper and muse. She knew what each moment required of her, like Momo, who had sung so enchantingly that her voice teacher proposed to her.
EPIDAVROS
Their common friend George Lialios was a fountainhead of good stories as well as being a living encyclopedia. Marianne experienced all of this in English and her competence in the language grew, but she remained shy in spite of this. She was a woman of few words, listening more than she spoke. Together the little band of friends read the ancient drama about Hecuba, the queen of Troy who had nineteen children. Marianne worked her way through the Greek tragedy, in which Hecuba avenges the murderer of her youngest son by stabbing out the eyes of the king of Thrace and killing his sons. The life and death drama struck Marianne to her core.
The friends decided to visit the amphitheatre at Epidavros to see the drama performed in Greek. Besides Marianne and Leonard, there were George and Charmian and their children, the American author Gordon Merrick and his partner Chuck Hulse, and the Swedish woman Lena Folke-Olsson, who would later have two children together with Axel Jensen. None of them had much money, but they scraped together enough to hire a traditional caïque to take them over to Napflio, in the northeast Peloponnese. In Napflio they hailed a taxi and packed themselves into it for the thirty kilometre drive to the historic theatre.
Marianne had been at Delphi and had visited an old amphitheatre together with Sam during their sailing tour of the Turkish coast. Epidavros exceeded everything. The magnificent theatre dated from four hundred years before Christ, and could hold fifteen thousand spectators. The proscenium was lit by simple stagelights. In long white tunics, the chorus floated in from the wings as if their feet didn’t touch the ground, while their voices carried out over the amphitheatre.
The night was velvety warm. Marianne sat close to Leonard. Enveloped by the dark she heard Hecuba whisper to her and the hovering white figures who sang directly to her heart. Marianne didn’t feel the effects of sitting on cold stone until the performance was over several hours later. The little group tumbled out into the night with the rest of the audience, and rode in the taxi back to the blue and white caïque that awaited them in the harbour at Napflio. They unpacked food and wine from their woven baskets. Ate and drank under the stars while the night became morning and then sleep overtook them.
GOOD DAYS
One of the foreign couples that had settled on Hydra was Magda Tilche, who was Czech, and her Italian husband, who was nine years younger. Fleeing from Czechoslovakia, Magda had made her way to Paris with a French doctor. In Paris she opened a little club and met her Italian husband. Their son Alexander was a few years older than Axel Joachim. Magda was tall and gorgeous, with flaming red hair and colourful clothing. She wore exquisite stone jewellery around her neck and clinking silver bangles on her arms. The first time Marianne saw Magda she thought, That’s what I want to be. The Czech woman became like an older sister to her.
Marianne and Leonard spent many mornings and evenings sitting around the crooked tables at Katsikas’ with Magda. Leonard sometimes played his guitar while he and Magda sang beautiful Russian–Jewish songs. Leonard had played guitar for as long as he could remember and had collected and studied folk music since he’d been a teenager. He’d learned to play the songs himself and loved them. In high school he and his friends formed a country and western band and music became the centre of his social life. They played in churches and schools, in bars and town squares.37 On Hydra he played for Marianne and the little group of expatriates.
Their café table and its cloth were protected by a sheet of white paper. Leonard could spend nearly the whole night covering the paper with poems. One night Marianne took home one of the paper sheets. She read the line “Nancy wore green stockings” among the doodles and half-baked poems before she folded up the paper to the size of a napkin and tucked it away for safe-keeping among her diaries and other small valuables.
When Magda decided to turn one of the old boatbuilding workshops into a bar, everyone pitched in. They painted and sanded and sewed cushion covers, washed and polished and sang along as the radio blared and the workshop was transformed into the island’s newest bar: Lagoudera. Two dinghies, left behind by the boatbuilders, were hoisted up to the rafters as a reminder of the building’s former purpose. With Magda’s savings used up, Lagoudera was at last opened to great fanfare. The nightclub became a regular gathering place for foreigners and Greeks.
When they wanted a break from little Hydra Marianne and Leonard took brief trips to Athens and the mainland. They drank coffee at Zonar’s Café and at local dives, and let themselves be immortalized by the old photographer whose head disappeared under a black cloth as he snapped them with his big old-fashioned camera. Marianne and Leonard, smiling, arm in arm at Syntagma Square.
They collected their mail at the American Express office. Met Greek friends at a bar and stayed at their regular hotel, Niki 27, in Nikis Street, a simple and sparsely furnished hotel with two or three rooms on every floor. They picked up the key in the little brown reception area that reeked of sweat and rode the elevator up to their room, with its grey sheets that never saw the sun.
Usually they didn’t make it further than Piraeus, where they strolled along the quay, looking at the boats and feeling the sun on their necks. Leonard in a white shirt and dark trousers, sometimes a dark vest. Marianne in a cotton skirt or dress, sunbleached strawlike hair falling to her shoulders. They shopped for food at the large open-air market, and found rare little treasures among the stalls of second-hand wares and antiques. Drank coffee at a Formica table at their regular restaurant, under flourescent tube lighting. Lodging at a dark hotel in a street behind the harbour, they could hear everything that went on in the neighbouring room through the thin walls. They slid under the sheet in the bare room and caught the boat back to Hy
dra the next morning at eight.
Both Marianne and Leonard felt the island was their home. Hydra was the first place where they’d spend any length of time after leaving their hometowns. Besides Larkollen, Hydra was the only place where Marianne had put down roots. Leonard had bought his first house here and he felt that he belonged in the philosophical climate by the Mediterranean Sea. It was as if the island had been waiting for them.
* * *
Leonard: I remember Marianne and I were in a hotel in Piraeus, some inexpensive hotel. We were both about twenty-five and we had to catch the boat back to Hydra. We got up and I guess we had a cup of coffee or something and got a taxi, and I’ve never forgotten this. Nothing happened, just sitting in the back of the taxi with Marianne, [lighting] a cigarette, a Greek cigarette that had that delicious deep flavour of a Greek cigarette that has a lot of Turkish tobacco in it, and thinking, I have a life of my own, I’m an adult, I’m with this beautiful woman, we have a little money in our pocket, we’re going back to Hydra, we’re passing these painted walls. That feeling I think I’ve tried to recreate hundreds of times unsuccessfully. Just that feeling of being grown up, with somebody beautiful that you’re happy to be beside and all the world is in front of you. Your body is suntanned and you’re going to get on a boat. That’s a feeling I remember very, very accurately.38
* * *
Autumn was the most resplendent time of year on Hydra. The air was so clear that it seemed to Marianne, sitting by the sea and writing in her diary, that if she stretched out her hand she would touch the mainland across the water. Life was simple and was lived in the moment. Sex, love and the joy of being a human being sang within her as never before. She who had always felt so buttoned up was now untrammelled, walking freely. But it wasn’t long before she was to return to Oslo and Leonard to Montreal.
So Long, Marianne Page 10
