So Long, Marianne

by Kari Hesthamar

  In Way’s Mill, they cooked meals, read poetry aloud and discussed art and politics until late at night. They began work on a film under the direction of Derek May, a Briton who worked for the National Film Board of Canada. Dressing up in lacy dresses and other old clothes yielded by the trunks in Morton’s attic, they improvised for the camera. Afterward they went to the river, stripped and swam naked.

  Marianne was twenty-seven years old and Leonard twenty-eight. He’d given her a round silver pocket mirror, telling her that never before had a human face given him such joy. She saw Dr. Zhivago at the cinema three times and cried no less at the last than at the first. Meanwhile, Leonard and Axel Joachim were home in the bathtub, banging away on the typewriter under water. The experiment ended badly: this was the only occasion the faithful machine broke down in all the years he’d had it. They had dinner in Chinatown and went to Le Bistro on Mountain Street. When they had a babysitter they drank beer and danced at the dancehall. They strolled hand-in-hand down Montreal’s Greek street, its small tavernas and bouzouki music reminding them of their days on Hydra.

  * * *

  In Montreal there was a constant round of parties, stimulated by drugs and alcohol. The quietude that Leonard needed to write eluded him. The free, pure life under the Greek sun beckoned. When Leonard was awarded a new grant, they finally had the means to go back to Hydra and resume their lives there. It was considerably cheaper to live on a Greek island than in Montreal. Leonard was eager to concentrate on his writing again, and for Marianne life on Hydra was simpler — a social network for herself and her child was already in place.

  Chapter 10

  * * *

  FAMILY LIFE ON HYDRA

  * * *

  When Marianne, Axel Joachim and Leonard returned to Hydra it had been a year and a half since they’d last been there. There were still only a few cafés and one bar at the waterfront. The Johnstons and other old acquaintances were there, along with more recently arrived artists and adventurers. Marianne and her son stayed for a short time in the old house in Kala Pigadia, which had been rented during Marianne’s absence, bringing her a small income.

  Being back in the home she’d shared with Axel felt odd to Marianne. Photographs on the walls, Axel’s books, tiny yellow flowers growing on the terrace, the view down to the house where Göran Tundström had lived during his stay on the island — these were all as before. There were still stacks of Axel’s novel and short story drafts in the study on the second floor. Marianne didn’t disturb the fine layer dust that lay protectively over these relics from the past.

  Marianne and Axel Joachim moved in with Leonard. She took the dark brown writing desk that Axel had commissioned from Francisco, the carpenter: now Leonard would write his songs and poems on the smooth Greek tabletop. Marianne also took a wooden fishing winding board that a storm had washed ashore as well as an old carved cradle, a little black table and a handsome chair with a woven seat and carved back. With his eye for small, unusual details, Leonard noticed an old wooden toy train, which he tucked under his arm as they closed the door behind them in Kala Pigadia.

  Marianne imparted her womanly touch to Leonard’s house. Against the backdrop of a whitewashed wall sat the rattan rocking chair that had rocked the baby to sleep in Kala Pigadia — at two and a half years of age, Axel Joachim was now a big boy who ran around the house. In the entry, they hung the large mirror before which Marianne and Leonard would stand together, considering their reflections. A cross of candle soot marked the main door alcove, where the priest had blessed the house in accordance with local custom when Leonard bought it.

  A short time after the little family’s return to the island, a letter came from Axel, who was alone in Athens. He’d been banished from the island, he wrote, and he missed his son. Axel thought it was strange and painful that they couldn’t see one another, but

  … don’t you think it’s best for him if I stay in the background until he’s capable of deciding for himself? These little guys may ruminate more than one remembers oneself doing, and in their own way they take their problems as seriously as we do. Now he’s gotten used to Leonard, that there is a man in the house, and it doesn’t take much fantasy to imagine the confusion and uncertainty my appearance as “Pappa” would create for him on top of the travelling, language difficulties, adjusting to a new place and a new climate, etc. Since I haven’t seen you or heard anything from you since you got back to Greece I assume you share my view. How the boy will handle this situation in the future no one knows. We’ll be damned no matter what we do. I must also get used to the thought that he will have the sad fate of seeing his father through his mother’s eyes — and in his own imagination. An impartial picture can’t be expected under such circumstances.

  By the way, I think you’ve gotten a good handle on things and by all accounts the boy is thriving and growing and is bright and clever and is no way aggrieved with the world.

  As you know, I’m travelling north now. It’s as if everything down here has fallen to pieces for me. Maybe it has to do with the fact that one has finally turned thirty, that one sloughs the skin like a snake and wants to move on …

  I haven’t seen anything of Patricia. The capacity of the heart to open and close is peculiar. Like a mussel. Like a tortoise. I feel I can write this to you, like an old friend and confidant with whom I once shared some years of life.… Give my regards to Leonard. I have never tried to conceal my admiration of him, and I wish him the very best with the book. The thing about Leonard is that he possesses the secret of getting people to idolize him, and precisely for this reason I will keep myself lurking in the background. It would so very humiliating if I also found myself the victim of his never failing sufferance. Cheers!

  Axel54

  * * *

  Leonard set to work as soon as he was back in the old house. He arose, as usual, at seven in the morning and wrote until lunchtime. Listening to his fingers flying over the keys, Marianne recalled the first time she’d noticed his hands. It had been like looking at the blunt hands of her father. But Leonard typed deftly.

  Leonard preferred peace and quiet while he wrote and rarely took his manuscript out of his workroom — in contrast to Axel, who had carried his work with him everywhere. Writing claimed much of Leonard’s attention. His inner voice demanded, “Create something! Something beautiful or important or unimportant — just create something!” It had always been that way for him.55 He didn’t share much of what he wrote before it was finished. In any case, Marianne’s command of English wasn’t good enough to enable her to evaluate what he’d written or even to fully understand it.

  KYRIA SOPHIE AND THE SMELL OF HAPPINESS

  Not long after they came back they engaged a neighbour, Kyria Sophia, to help around the house. A small woman in her sixties, Sophia didn’t even come up to Marianne’s shoulders. She wore a grey and white checked housedress and a kerchief bound firmly over her hair. The older woman became like a mother in the house, coming long before they awoke in the morning and looking after them devotedly.

  Marianne took care of Axel Joachim and the daily chores while Leonard wrote. At lunchtime Marianne went to the port together with Leonard and the boy, who ran ahead, his body suntanned and his hair as white as chalk. At Katsikas’ shop, Marianne filled her shopping basket with vegetables and other provisions. Friends sat outside, around the small lopsided tables. Those with the stomach for it indulged in their first retsina of the day. By one o’clock, after the mail that had come on the boat had been sorted, they all hurried up the steps to the post office, many anxiously crossing their fingers that a cheque would be waiting for them — perhaps from a publisher — to sustain them on Hydra a while longer.

  Leonard received cheques from Canada for twelve dollars and fifty cents. Inheriting some stocks from her grandfather, Marianne started getting annual cheques for the equivalent of about two hundred dollars, which allowed them to settle their tab at Katsi
kas’ — they felt like millionaires. Leonard kept their accounts with care, recording in his small notebooks how much they had on credit. They used little money. Marianne sewed her own trousers and wore clothing passed along to her by friends, so there wasn’t much she needed to buy. Axel Joachim’s clothes were handed down from other children. These garments circulated until nothing was left of them.

  When the mail had been collected, everyone went his or her way, uplifted or downcast. Marianne, Axel Joachim and Leonard ascended the steps of the road nicknamed Donkey Shit Lane, through the crossroads known as Four Corners and past a little church until they arrived at the grey-painted wooden door of their house. They shared a meal and then napped through the hottest hours of the day. After the siesta, Leonard closed the door to his study and worked until twilight bathed the house in a blue tinge.

  Later they stood in the dusky light before the lovely gold mirror in the hallway and wondered who they were that day. Marianne’s round face and sun-bleached hair. Slender and small-breasted. Leonard was about her height, also slim, but black-haired. Neither of them appreciated their own looks. Marianne penned a little poem in her notebook:

  When I know who I am

  I know what to wear

  Till even that becomes

  irrelevant

  * * *

  Hydra was arid, with almost no rain from spring until late in the autumn. Marianne and Leonard collected every raindrop in the cistern, as the Hydriots did, using the water in moderation for cooking and washing. Kyria Sophia cleaned the cistern at regular intervals by lowering a bucketful of lime into the water. It hung there a few hours and killed the bacteria.

  They purchased their drinking water. Once a week the water man came plodding along with a donkey bearing two great square canisters of water. The old man made his rounds from morning to evening. In exchange for a few coins, he refilled the large ceramic pot — the kioupi — that stored drinking water in each household. The little wrinkled, bowlegged man hoisted a container from the donkey’s flank and set it on his hip, against a wide leather apron tied around his waist. He carried his heavy load into the house and poured the water into the enormous vessel, which was as high as Marianne’s waist.

  Kyria Sophia, who had been there since dawn, made a cup of Greek coffee for the old man to drink before he continued on his way. She had already washed the dishes and polished the glass shades of the kerosene lanterns, refilled the lamps and swept the writing room, kitchen and terrace. At ten-thirty in the morning Sophia left Marianne and Leonard and went around the corner to her own house to prepare lunch for her family. Once in a while she would pop in during lunchtime and set a napkin-covered plate of mashed potatoes or horta — boiled greens with olive oil and lemon — on their kitchen table.

  Life took shape around these routines. Kyria Sophia washed their clothes on the washboard in the marble sink in the basement. Later, she filled the old iron with hot coals and ironed their freshly laundered clothes with even, measured strokes. The smell of chlo­rine and warm, newly ironed clothes was like the smell of happiness diffusing through the house.56 Every couple of days, the old woman fetched them ice that came on a caïque from the mainland. Down at the port she tied burlap sacking around the ice block and carried her load up to the house. At home the ice was placed in a wooden crate, from which they tapped cooled water. The clump lasted for two days and cost a couple of drachmas. In the evening Sophia stopped in again to satisfy herself that all was well. The modest monthly salary she received was the equivalent of about fifteen dollars, sufficient to sustain her family.

  The stone-walled lanes reverberated with the shouts of Hydriots as they called to one another. Every morning the young nuns, leading four beasts of burden, came down from their high cloister to shop for food. The genial papas — priest — strolled by in his grimy old robes that were frayed at the hem. The children teased him and pulled his beard while the adults approached him to kiss his dirty hand.

  Waiting for Marianne

  I have lost a telephone

  with your smell in it

  I am living beside the radio

  all the stations at once

  but I pick out a Polish lullaby

  I pick it out of the static

  it fades I wait I keep the beat

  it comes back almost asleep

  did you take the telephone

  knowing I’d sniff it immoderately

  maybe heat up the plastic

  to get all the crumbs of your breath

  and if you won’t come back

  how will you phone to say

  you won’t come back

  so that I could at least argue

  Oslo,

  May 18, 1962

  [Previously unpublished poem by Leonard Cohen]57

  Marianne fell back into her old ways of doing things on Hydra and gradually gained more insights into the local culture. She saw that islanders whipped the old donkeys and mules to get them going but she also observed that they were on the whole well looked after — the animals were their transport and had to be maintained, like a trusty car.

  When Marianne and Leonard engaged workmen to put in a new terrace, Marianne offered them home-baked bread and plied them with cold water tinkling with bits of ice to compensate for the sun and heat. Pampered like this, after a while the men hardly bothered to do any work at all. Her old friend George Lialios shook his head at her good-hearted naïveté. “You can’t go on like this, Marianne!” he exclaimed. “They’re here to fix your terrace and you have to harangue them to get it done. When the job is done, offer them an ouzo.” Marianne learned that to survive on the island she had to become more Greek.

  In July and August came the strong meltemi wind from the north. The warm wind blasted from a cloudless sky for four or five days, dying at sunset and reviving with the rising sun. Under the meltemi sailing vessels put vast distances behind them as long as they weren’t heading due north. In the autumn came the southerly sirocco wind, bearing sandy dust whipped up from the Sahara. Marianne and Leonard secured the doors and windows, but the fine particles crept in everywhere. At their most severe, the sand storms turned the white walls pink. Marianne brushed the sand into a bucket and whitewashed the walls again, as she’d seen the Greek women do. Finally, she swept the stoop outside the house.

  In the wintertime the old windows put up a negligible defence against the wind and rain. Marianne and Leonard closed the grey wooden shutters and Kyria Sophia set out a metal tray heaped with glowing coals to warm up the rooms on the first floor. Later they acquired a gas heater, which had wheels and was covered in chicken wire, to warm up the whole house. Marianne often sat in front of the heater, watching the dance of shadows and light while she daydreamed.

  LIFE UNDER A LOUPE

  “We’re going to Bisti on Sunday!” said the women to one another, filling their picnic baskets and rounding up the children. The boatman Mikalis took them along the northern side of Hydra, letting them off at a beautiful secluded beach just short of the island’s western tip, from where the island of Spetses could be seen. They made themselves comfortable with cushions and blankets. The children played on the beach while the adults slaked their thirst with cold beer and retsina. They swam and ate and took siesta in the shade of the pine trees.

  Mikalis was accompanied by his son, who leaped overboard with the rope to fasten the boat when they approached land. The boatman smiled with pride. When the son grew up, he followed in his father’s footsteps and became a seaman. But as fate would have it, one day the young man was entangled in an anchor line and drowned. Mikalis became a shadow of himself and never recovered. Years later, Marianne and Leonard would hear him singing sorrowfully as he staggered home from the port late in the evenings. They stopped for a moment to listen as his dirges melted into the night.

  * * *

  More and more foreigners had come to Hydra d
uring the four years that had elapsed since Marianne and Axel first stepped onto the port. Artists interested in the simple life came from New York and other cities. A married couple had ambitions of farming organically on Hydra, but soon discovered that the stony soil was barely cultivable. Marianne met a Russian prince who lived in London and who gave her his visiting card: “Prince” it stated. People like the Johnstons and George Lialios had settled on the island for the long term, but most were there for shorter periods before going on to explore other destinations.

  Among the longest resident expatriates, the Johnstons were a natural social hub for the foreigners who gathered at the waterfront when the sun went down. There were rousing conversations, wild dancing and drunkenness as couples cleaved and hived off with new partners. The uninhibited expatriates were tolerated by the native islanders and provided a kind of live entertainment for them.

  George and Charmian drank heavily and often had to be carried home. Leonard and his Greek friend Demetri Gassoumis would go down to the port to check if George and Charmian were fit to return home on their own feet. The Johnstons’ marital problems were exacerbated when George was diagnosed with tuberculosis of the lungs. Beautiful and talented, Charmian desired the attention of men, while her husband was sick and impotent. The English painter Anthony Kingsmill was immediately smitten with Charmian when he first laid eyes on the dark-haired beauty, whom he asked to model for him. Their love affair was an open secret, with George relegated to the role of the jealous husband. New affairs and fresh threats of divorce were continual — Marianne and Leonard couldn’t keep count of the quarrels they’d involuntarily witnessed.