Curious Affairs

by Mary Jane Myers

  This was not going to be easy to explain, even to herself. She didn’t know the first thing about ancient Greek, but these strange babblings somehow must be connected to that language, to that tradition of chanted poetry. How was it she intuited the English? And who thought or talked like this nowadays? How thrilling to have received this spiritual gift from unknown gods, but how alarming. Barbara had enough knowledge of Greek mythology to be wary of becoming involved with esoteric powers. She expected that Marsha’s negative reaction was typical, and a good indication of how the world would judge her. She must hide this precious treasure away in a sealed Pandora-jar and guard the jar closely, unlike the feckless mythic girl who had released uncontrollable energies into the world.

  Odyssey Tours, specialists in Mediterranean travel, had slashed prices during the recession. The photos in the brochure had excited the sisters, who were both college graduates stuck in low-paying jobs, Barbara at San Francisco State in the dean’s office (her major had been business) and Marsha at John Hancock Insurance in Chicago (her major had been art history). The sisters could have been poster children for a Norman Rockwell two-sibling nuclear family. They had been propelled into college by the grim discipline imposed by their G.I.-Bill–college-educated accountant father. Their mother was leery of the idea of college, as she suspected higher education of shaking the faith instilled in her by strict bewimpled nuns during her growing up years. Her birthplace was a small town in the Kentucky Holy Lands, populated by the descendants of English Catholics who had formed a league and migrated in the 1780’s from Maryland to the wildwood frontier.

  Only imagine, the sisters had enthused to one another on the phone, they could sail the wine-dark seas like Italian principessas. Two days in Athens, and then a magical cruise. The Calliope was a reconditioned yacht, spliced and diced to carry thirty passengers instead of one aristocratic couple. Neither sister had ever traveled overseas. Nor had they traveled together. This trip was meant to bring them closer, to repair the damage to their sisterhood that long distance and all their adult years apart had wrought. They never alluded to the vicious fights during their growing-up years, instead chirping to each other about how impossible their parents had been.

  The two had flown on different flights, and checked into separate rooms at the Athens Plaza hotel. At the opening reception, they had twined their arms together and giggled like schoolgirls. However, after the first hour of meet-and-greet exclamations: “You don’t look like sisters,” Barbara began to wilt a little. The comparison deflated her spirits. Marsha expanded to fill Barbara’s vacuum. During the next day of pre-cruise sightseeing in Athens—given over to the major sights—they were already drifting apart, Barbara always on the fringe of the group, taking careful notes in her Moleskine, Marsha amusing the others with racy comments: “Would you check out that nude statue’s equipment, now there’s an Apollo I wouldn’t kick out of bed.”

  While meandering around the Acropolis, Barbara had exchanged tentative confidences with Robert, a seventyish man with a lanky six-foot frame topped with a shock of gray hair, bereft because his partner had died. Like her, he remained aloof, absorbed in his century-old, leather-bound Murray’s Handbook to the Mediterranean, which, he boasted, he had picked up for a song at The Strand in Manhattan. Even though retired with the title of college professor emeritus in the department of English and American Literatures at Middlebury College, he continued his workaholic habits of nonstop writing and lecturing. He had disclosed that the purpose of this trip was to “get away” (from what, she didn’t know exactly, something to do with a brouhaha that was roiling a gender studies section of the Modern Language Association) and that he avoided gay cruises because younger men were “brutal.”

  That evening there was no group event, and dinner was on their own. The two sisters walked around the block and ate in a small restaurant together. As they waited for their food, Marsha leaned in toward Barbara.

  “Can we talk?” Marsha said.

  Uh, oh, Barbara thought. Do I have to hear all this again? Marsha’s mind moved in circles, always revolving around how to land a new husband.

  “My stingy ex, sure he was generous to Amanda, she graduated without any student loans, but what about me? I’m the one who had to put up with his crap.”

  Barbara had always admired Kevin, and wondered how he had survived Marsha’s theatrics for fifteen years. Males were attracted to Marsha like insects to the sweet sticky moisture of the carnivorous sundew plant. Her slim figure was Elliptical-toned, her fingernails French-manicured, her toenails an iridescent bright pink, her hair professionally blonded and coiffed, her make-up applied over Botoxed skin, perfect as if camera-ready to do the weather on TV. A stern internal voice warned Barbara: stop this carping negativity. Be nice to your sister, she is all the family you have. She has her good points: self-discipline, social finesse, the occasional spasmodic generous impulse. Marsha had already presented her with a lovely gift, a pair of pricey gold Greek-key earrings. Marsha was thoughtful that way, always with an eye for workmanship, and eager to share her finds.

  “I’m so sorry about your divorce. It’s like a plague, everyone I know… .”

  Marsha interrupted. “I’m just saying. My alimony checks have stopped, the deal was ten years, there’s nothing to do, what am I supposed to live on? My ridiculous job pays me nothing.” She was casting about for a lifeline, telling her troubles to some imaginary legal advisor in the middle distance.

  “But you live such a glamorous life, I’m quite jealous.”

  “I’ve given myself a deadline—one year from now, I’ll take my best offer, I’ve got three proposals, but every guy has a downside. The two with money can’t get it up anymore, though that’s minor, nothing a vibrator won’t take care of….”

  Barbara was half-listening. She was mulling over why it was that they were so mismatched. What a waste Marsha’s education had been. There was no sign of art history classes, other than an obsession with pulling together both her “outfits” and her “rooms.”

  At noon the next day, the Calliope sailed from Piraeus, the Athens harbor. Ever mindful of her budget, Barbara was squeezed into a lilliputian cabin on the Daphne deck, in the bowels of the ship near the bone-rattling vibration of the engine room. She had applied a scopolamine patch, which her doctor had assured her was fail-safe protection against seasickness. Marsha, who liked her comforts, and who, Barbara feared, had nothing saved for the future (“the future” terrified Barbara) was two levels up, on the Leto deck, in a spacious cabin with a large window, a queen bed, and a dressing table with a lighted cosmetic mirror.

  Yannis, a muscular bearded crew member native to Mykonos, showed Barbara to her cabin. Flashing two gold teeth, as he lingered outside her open door, he had exclaimed that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Startled, beginning to panic, she firmly closed the door, mumbling a polite “thank you.” At age fifty-six, a plump 165 pounds with a rosy complexion, Barbara never attracted men back home. Even when she was younger, she had never mastered the art of coquetry. This was one of her regrets, that she had failed utterly to learn a skill that came naturally to Marsha, and to most women, that art that began so early, of four-year-old Shirley Temples dandled on the knees of doting fathers and uncles, of prepubescent Lolitas teasing smitten, bewildered boys.

  That afternoon, the two sisters attended tea on the upper deck, a Greek interpretation of the traditional British affair: unfiltered black coffee instead of tea, baklava in place of scones, yogurt a stand-in for clotted cream, and wild thyme honey replacing marmalade. Yannis hovered nearby, coffee briki in hand.

  “This is unreal,” Barbara said. “It feels like a dream.”

  Marsha was nibbling on a flake of filo pastry and paying no attention to Barbara, but smiling vacantly at the other women, and with effervescent come-hithers to the men.

  That first night aboard, at Marsha’s insistence that social hours are the whole point of a cruise, Barbara had drifted over to the lo
unge after dinner. The slightly aggressive drunken conversations disturbed her. Lots of fishing for personal information, sizing up relative status, raucous jollifications. It also made her nervous to be signing drink tabs. She suspected the prices were inflated, and to settle the bill at the end would be a shock. Since then, she had settled into her cabin directly after dinner, snuggling into the minuscule bed, studying, preparing for the following day. She wanted to know everything, to understand everything, though she could not say exactly what her goal was. Marsha had huffed, why are you so antisocial, no wonder you never find anybody, but by the second day she had given up. It was just as well; there was no help for their lack of harmony. The two made a pact to sit at separate tables at meals, agreeing that this was a good strategy to mingle with the other passengers.

  And now, Barbara remembered breakfast. She descended the short flight of stairs to the dining room. Marsha was nowhere in sight. She must have finished eating already. Yannis, in his white uniform with black shoulder stripes, grinned at her. Averting her eyes, she concentrated on the selections at the buffet. She piled scrambled eggs, cantaloupe slices and two poppyseed rolls on her plate, and dolloped plain white yogurt into a small bowl. Robert was sitting alone at a corner table, and she made a beeline for a chair next to him. Starting in on her eggs, she broached the topic now uppermost in her mind.

  “Robert, did you ever learn Greek?”

  His thick gray eyebrows, smeared with reddish-brown hair dye ill-calculated to make him look younger, twitched. He focused his myopic hazel eyes directly on her.

  “Of course, my dear. In my undergraduate career at Harvard, a mastery of Greek was essential. Be that as it may, all those requirements have been consigned to the dustbin.”

  “Is there some way I could learn Greek quickly? Not living Greek,” (she glanced across at Yannis, who was circulating among the tables serving potent coffee, and who immediately saluted her with his briki) “but classical.”

  “I am afraid that would require a prodigious outlay of time and energy and money. And of course it would be necessary to possess an elevated intelligence quotient, a minimum of 140.” He examined her skeptically as he said this.

  Barbara hesitated. The question was urgent, and he could perhaps help her. The words spilled out, all in a rush. “Do you think it’s possible to channel ancient Greek poetic rhythms and somehow translate them into English?”

  Robert picked up a fat orange and began to peel it with his bony fingers. The blood-red flesh and pungent aroma evoked an ancient vista, a white marble temple on a hillside in Lesbos. How she longed to loll among the columns, sharing a tangelo with a bronzed, lyre-strumming Alcaeus.

  As he continued his methodical removal of the orange peel, she realized his words might wound her, and blushed slightly.

  “Really, my dear, these California ideas are delusional in the extreme. Channeling? As I say, a concept embraced by village idiots. I would hope you are at least intelligent enough to avoid such nonsense.”

  Barbara looked to her left out a large porthole window. A calm blue sea stretched to the horizon. In the near frame, a promontory of bare rock glided by. How comfortable she would feel living on that rock. If the sea could not understand her, at least it was uncritical, neutral toward all creatures.

  “Let fruit be crushed on fruit, let flower on flower, breast kindle breast.” A vivid image, a grove of almond trees in full fragrant blossom, languid bumblebees buzzing among the branches. Blue butterflies fluttered in a nearby field shimmering with yellow broom. A fantasy, of course, but so entrancing, so different from the daily grind back home, the tiny apartment in which she hunkered down alone, the bus ride to work, the monotonous routine of her deadend job.

  She rose from the table, muttered, “Excuse me,” and straggled out. She felt sick at heart. If even Robert, immersed as he was in literature, could not understand her, how could she communicate with anyone at all? In the corridor stood Marsha, studying the day’s schedule.

  “Hey, sis, there you are. Seems we’ll see a bit of Turkey today. How exotic is that?” Marsha’s smile flickered out as she looked at Barbara. “Hey, are you OK?”

  Barbara managed a shrug. “Oh, I’m fine, it’s nothing really.”

  “I’ll share my news, promise you’ll keep a secret. You know that lawyer, Steve, the one from Boston? I think I can land him—at most two more days. Of course, that witch from Philly, what’s her name Donna, she’s throwing herself at him. She’s been married three times, her family is loaded, posh office buildings.”

  Barbara recoiled. Really, they were completely incompatible.

  “I’m so happy for you. He sounds perfect. I’m going back to my cabin to get ready. See you in a bit.”

  She descended to her cabin. Her stack of books rested on the end table: two guidebooks and five books on Greek history and art (she had allowed herself to purchase them, at discount on Amazon) and also the Landmark Herodotus paperback. This collection had tipped her suitcase weight to two kilograms over limit, but the Lufthansa agent had waived the extra charge. She had also checked out two books from the ship’s library—a political history of the Mediterranean, with numerous maps and illustrations, and a recent book by Michael Schmidt, The First Poets: Lives of the Ancient Greek Poets. Was she the last remaining reader on earth not to embrace the e-book? but she enjoyed the physicality of paper, of bindings, of marking her progress with artsy bookmarks. The scent of books calmed her. She had spent countless childhood summer afternoons wandering among library stacks.

  She shook off her sandals, and still in her windbreaker and jeans, nestled in the disheveled bed. An enigmatic child’s voice had urged St. Augustine “Pick up and read.” Something more interior than a voice—an odd, hard-to-place feeling, some kind of fleeting premonition—led her, absentmindedly, to pick up the Lives. The book fell open to Chapter XII, “Sappho of Eressus.” Fascinated, she began to read, at first skimming, then slowing down, savoring the blend of biography and analysis of the ancient poetry. All of it fragmentary—elusive facts, allusive lines of verse in an Aeolic dialect. She recollected, somehow, what exactly? It seemed to her the lines she was hearing must be those of Sappho. How she knew this, it was impossible to puzzle out.

  Fifteen minutes before schedule, at 9:45, the Calliope docked at the port of Datça, on the mainland of Turkey. The Greek guide, thirty-year-old raven-haired Ariadne, who resembled nothing so much as a willowy goddess on an Attic vase, shepherded her twenty-five charges off the gangplank and into a dented dusty red bus. Barbara and Marsha sat together in the front, Barbara near the window. One seat behind them slouched a pensive Robert, deep in corrections of the galley proofs for his latest article, “Sodomy Transformed: Aristocratic Libertinage during the South Sea Bubble.”

  The bus creaked slowly through the motor scooter-and pedestrian-clogged stone streets of Datça. Their destination, Ariadne explained into the microphone, was the site of the ancient Doric city of Knidos. The city experienced “a great flourishment” (Ariadne spread wide her arms)—renowned for the “pornographical” nude statue of Aphrodite by Praxiteles, and the “astronomical” observatory of Eudoxus. How peculiar, Barbara thought, that this place had ever been Greek. Signs in Turkish were jumbled one atop another, and numerous slender six-story minarets jutted into the sky like rocket ships poised to launch into the Muslim heavens.

  The bus clunked laboriously up a narrow blacktopped road through mountains that unfolded a vista of gleaming sea and pine forests. Barbara watched the panorama, and, spotting a huge soaring bird, touched Marsha’s shoulder.

  “See up there. Some kind of wondrous eagle. Maybe Zeus himself, come to reclaim this land.”

  Marsha was snoozing, her head limp against the seat back, and did not open her eyes.

  Barbara poked her head over the seat back and addressed Robert.

  “Did you see that eagle? A sign from the gods. This is miracle ground.”

  Robert said “mmm … uhhuh,” but remained engrossed
in his proofs.

  There was no point in addressing anyone else. She sank back into her own thoughts. The moving visual feast outside the window delighted her, all the details of the landscape were familiar, somehow, and she felt eerily that they constituted some originary place.

  The bus lurched into the entrance to the ruins, past a small stone guardhouse, and halted in a parking lot with a stone concession stand. The two sisters stepped out of the bus. A strong wind, the prevailing northern meltemi, pummeled them.

  “Yikes,” Marsha said. “This dreadful wind will totally nuke my hair.”

  Barbara was barely listening. She stepped away from Marsha, and yelled into the wind.

  “Elthe moi kai nun, chalepon de luson ek merimnan, ossa de moi telessai thumos imerrei, teleson, su d’auta summachos esso. Come to me now, the harsh worry let loose, what my heart wants to be done, do it!, and you yourself be my battle-ally.”

  Marsha scowled. “Okay, I’ve had enough. Whatever game you’re playing, stop it, please.”

  Ariadne motioned the group toward an amphitheater, a rubble of granite building blocks and marble pillar fragments. “I will organize the tickets. Meet me over there. I will give you directions, and then you may wander at your leisure.”

  Marsha grimaced. “I hope this doesn’t take very long. Where in this god-forsaken place are we going to get a decent lunch?”

  The group wandered over to the amphitheater, some perching on stones, others standing. Ariadne joined them, and began speaking into her microphone. It was difficult to hear her, as the blustery wind, combined with the crash of the waves on the rocky promontory of Cape Crio a quarter mile away, sounded like the roar of a Cyclops. The October air was chilly. A relentless sun beamed down, the tingling of a stealth attack of sunburn. Marsha fidgeted. As soon as Ariadne concluded her remarks (whatever they were, Barbara could not make them out), Marsha rebelled.