Collected Novels and Plays (51 page)

O.: Wrong? Of course not. But my dear Sandy, you understand what you
are
saying, don’t you?

S. (after thinking): That I’m sick now because I want to go home?

Delighted by his pupil, Orestes develops the theme handsomely. Tuberculosis is the 19th cent, disease—smog of conventions, lungs failing for lack of a purer, fresher air. Asthma. Then comes cancer—20th cent, disease: gnawing of GUILT. Homesickness would naturally express itself by upset tummy & bowels.

Sandy (recapitulating): So I’m not really sick at all?

O.: Of course you are. I never said that.

S.: But only in my mind?

Orestes reassures him; there can be more talk. It is a subtle point, though, & he may never fully grasp it. More & more he
is like the oyster who can’t feel the grit for the pearl
loses faith in phenomena uncolored by the imagination’s powerful dyes.

Some days pass. Sandy turns vivid yellow to the very eyeballs, thus facilitating a diagnosis. “What did I say?” joked Orestes, after expressing concern.

“That I wasn’t sick.”

“No—that you were a gilded youth!”

July. Sandy leaves the hospital. His father has cabled him to fly home; out of question to proceed, as planned, to Egypt & the Orient. At first S. means to ignore it, to travel by freighter, working his way if need be. As he has known no hardship, the prospect intoxicates. Also, he has gathered from Orestes that sons must
rebel
against their fathers. O., however, is shocked. Learned doctors have prescribed rest & proper
food; a diet of amoebas & ghee would be “suicidal.” They compromise. Sandy will travel through Italy & France with his brother & (Dora), & sail for New York when they do. This pleases everybody.

Dora’s house in Athens. Rents frozen since the war, no income from it. She worries about having money in America. She decides to sell

She decided finally to travel wrapped, as it were, like Cleopatra, in one very fine Oriental rug which, sold, would keep her for the rest of her stay. She wanted not to be a burden to Orestes.

It relieved them both that Sandy was to travel with them. While he was in the hospital, (Dora) & Orestes had begun to miss the company of a 3rd person. By themselves, their talk broke out at strange levels, painfully, as if a device to regulate pressure had been damaged. (“Dora, you went ahead and sold that mirror! Ah, that makes me very cross with you.” Or: “I think I’ll plan to stay on in Paris with my friends there.
You
go
to N. Y.; I’m too old for the New World.”)

In saying that their crisis was over, Orestes was mostly correct. Certainly it would never be repeated. But what neither took into account—fancying themselves too civilized, too enlightened—was the sediment of shame & resentment on her side, and on his a blitheness left over from having been found desirable by a woman he
idolized

a blitheness that emerged as the issues receded. One never minds having been found desirable.

With this one secret of Dora’s captured & tamed, O. assumed wrongly that it had no jealous mate. It did, though—a 2nd secret that circled round them both for some time, unperceived. It was that Dora disliked him.

During these last weeks in & out of Athens Orestes met the Hollywood producer: a Greek American, like himself, sitting at the next table in a café. They fell into

(This will be a strand running throughout the book—O.’s relations with Greek intellectuals, as gleaned here & there over the years. On 1st arriving he naturally seeks them out—men of letters, painters, etc. There is great warmth on both sides. They have felt, what with the war, extremely isolated. O. sets about correcting this state of affairs. He collects their books with a view to translating them, placing stories & poems in American
magazines. Before leaving Athens he persuades 2 or 3 painters to ship some of their best work to him in N. Y. where he will arrange for it to be shown. And he does what he has promised. In time there is an exhibition, the stories
Sc
poems do get published. What goes wrong? Well, the pictures don’t sell; the magazines are small, ephemeral, do not pay. Shipping costs actually cause the artists to lose money. Certain British philhellenes, perhaps more out of spite than
taste, have things to say about the quality of O.’s translations. None of it, really, is his fault. He has done his best. But several years will have to elapse before Greece is chic, & it will take a more persuasive figure than Orestes to make it so—Mrs Kennedy, for instance, or Melina Mercouri. In any case, he returns to find this chill on the part of men who had once clasped him to their hearts. Those who remain loyal aren’t the most distinguished. With
one exception. The poet & novelist V—who with his English wife found O. brilliant & charming from the 1st, & never revise their opinion. Voici pourquoi. Along with his immense, mystical odes, at once symbolic and “folkloristic,” V. was the author of an historical novel, a picaresque 19th cent, version of the
Agamemnon
in which the hero, back from a campaign against the Turks, is murdered by his wife & her lover, then avenged
by his children. In this book, admired by every imaginable reader, Orestes saw the makings of an excellent film. He suggested it over coffee to the Hollywood producer, the latter took fire, read the novel & asked O. to do the screenplay, giving him a contract to sign the day before he & Dora
leave Greece. Poor O.! If he had paid his usual attention to myth, he would have known that Hollywood destroys the artist. The process takes years: private
planes, costly dinners, conferences leading nowhere. At the end his script is discarded, but the film made. It can still be seen in Greece. O. is left with the taste of ashes in his mouth, and V., left rich & famous, will not hear a word against O.)

Oh dear, I’ve met Byron.

I broke off & went swimming. Then, from the café, watched the boat from Athens come in & him get off, and thought no more of it until, looking up 20 minutes later, there he was returning along the waterfront, with packages, & talking to of all people the Enfant Chic. The latter smiled venomously at me (George had joined me on the beach, refusing to budge when the E. C. called him) & said something to Byron out of the corner of his
mouth. B. looked, stopped, abandoned the Enfant, came over to my table.

“I know who you are. My mother’s so fond of you. I’m Byron. Will you let me give you another ouzo? I’m afraid I’ve been remiss about doing the honors of Diblos.”

He is very handsome, very much a man. Slender, well-preserved for over 40 (just Orson’s age?). Beautiful hands, knuckles & wrists, tanned, manicured. A flat gold watch, a blood-red seal-ring he removed to show me. “It’s a good one, isn’t it? Actually it was my mother’s engagement gift to my father.”

He wanted to know where I was staying, where I ate, whom I knew. An anecdote at the expense of the N.’s. But I
was
comfortable, &
liked
Diblos? Good! His relief just skirted megalomania: the island was his, it had better be run properly.

About Orson:

“How’s your brother? He’s in Athens, I’ve heard. Will he be joining you here? I see. Well, it’s of no importance. He’d left some books & things on the place, but there couldn’t be less rush, he can pick them up
any weekend. Tell me, what’s he done since that film? Published lots of things? Brilliant chap. The talks we used to have!”

I gather B. & his wife are separated. “I usually bring a girl along. The house is conveniently inconvenient. No, this weekend I’m a bachelor, brought reports to read instead. In fact I’ll be off now, I’ve a putt-putt waiting. Look, come for a drink tomorrow—sixish? Splendid. Cheerio.”

Well, Orson doesn’t get his cottage, I’m afraid.

B. bubbles over with charm & good will. What a disappointment! My own (Bryon) I’d seen more as the type of heavy, petulant, weak young man so often found in the wake of a powerful mother (Frau Doktor & son in Tangier).
My
Byron would greedily have examined those “books & things” of O.’s, hoping for something to use against him.

(A scene—the Enfant Chic present. The photograph is shaken out of a book.
Yes.
)

Or is the real Byron, in the last analysis, weak? For all his charm, a point keeps recurring when every woman—mistress, wife, mother—rises & tiptoes out of his life, as from the living room of an irksome host, to tear her hair & ask the mirror in the guest John “
How
will I ever get through this evening (or marriage or whatever)?” Doesn’t he feel this? And what need has he to be so British in Greece? The vogue
nowadays is for Americans & Scandinavians. (This last after 2 more ouzos.)

13.vii.61

A package has come for me but no one can find it, Chryssoula is at home, unwell. The pyjama’d manager says it has gone back to the P. O. which is shut now, as of noon. And tomorrow’s Sunday—Bastille Day. Seeing my face, he cries placatingly, “That’s all right!”

One last scene in Athens. The Hat on the Acropolis.

(The contract is signed, they sail that evening, Orestes decides he needs a hat.)

Sandy: I thought you didn’t like hats.

Dora: We’re leaving the worst heat behind us.

Orestes: Won’t they be wearing hats in Rome & Paris?

D.: In midsummer! Do they in New York?

O. (laughing): Don’t they? They do in all the ads.

S.: Well, you’re the one who lives there.

Orestes: Ah, Sandy, I’ve become so Greek. I think of America as a country known through
film
movies & magazines, where the sidewalks are made of gold.

They entered the shop. Orestes made his wishes known to the clerk who brought out hat after hat for him to try on. Dora & Sandy exchanged glances. A long time passed before O. said, “I think this one will be suitable.”

It was an expensive “young executive” model—gray green felt, snap brim, ribbon, feather, the works. On hearing that it was a Borsalino, imported from Italy, & that while he waited the shop would stamp his initials in gold on the inner leather band, Orestes’ joy knew no bounds.

His companions hardly knew where to begin.

Sandy: You look like a businessman.

Dora: It’s not a hat for warm weather. You’ll have a stroke!

S.: Is that feather real?

Dora: For summer, a straw hat—

S.: We’ll be in Italy tomorrow. You can buy a Borsalino there, probably at half the price.

D.: Tasso used to wear a gondolier’s hat, it was always cool & becoming. This looks like the Greek-American dream.

But no. Orestes wanted this hat, and at once. He
was
a G. A.; such a hat
was
his dream. “You are sophisticated,” he informed them, “but I am more sophisticated than you. I choose this hat precisely because to wear it means that I’ve arrived.”

“Arrived where?” cried his
friends
tormentors.

O. kept laughing. “It means you’re rich, respected, a big shot. Do you
want me to go to Hollywood bareheaded? My taste may be bad, but this isn’t a question of taste. I could never have
had
this hat a month ago. Now I deserve it.”

It was an odd moment. Both sides were, & were not, in agreement. The subject was dropped and never ostensibly

only to be resumed at a higher level.

Orestes wore his hat out onto the street. “Shall we walk up to the Acropolis? Will that tire you, Sandy? We ought to make a ceremony of our last day.”

(No one is seeing them off. Dora has been purposely vague about this, well, elopement. From her point of view it’s all to the good that Byron has been in Switzerland these past months—let his wife be
pregnant difficult
in a clinic, something glandular. O. has been more precise. A group of
his
friends, students, very motley, turn up at the sailing, with gifts. Disturbing Dora not at all. These young people will never
have entrée to her world.)

“Everything depends,” said Orestes cheerfully, “on the spirit in which one enters the arena. It’s a game.” He was speaking of Hollywood. “I can stop playing when I choose. And I’ll be left financially able to do my real work, the work that demands my total dedication.”

They nodded, swayed by the old refrain
.

They paused to admire the Tower of the Winds, then climbed a narrow street of pretty houses in disrepair.

“This may have vanished when we return,” said (Dora). “The Americans want to dig here.”

“How terrible,” said Sandy.

D.: When you think that it’s Byron’s Athens, after all, this district …

Orestes: Byron’s?

D.: The poet.

O.: Ah. Because I thought you meant
Byron
. Dora’s son, whom you haven’t met, is named Byron, Sandy.

S. nods.

O.: Well, let them dig. There may be treasures under these old houses.

D.: But the houses are so pretty!

O.: My dear Dora, prettiness can’t compare in ultimate value with a head—with an
elbow
—by Phidias. I don’t say they’ll find one, but more power to them for looking.

(Mention his underwater fragment?)

Dora: Ah, we shall never lack for masterpieces. We take care of them. It’s prettiness we’re forever sacrificing, sweeping away.

(To be felt in the foregoing: O.’s own past is the issue. A dream of poverty & rubbish swept away to reveal the meaningful plan of temple or market underneath.)

They arrive at the Acropolis, pass through the Propylea onto the blind, bald marble hill. Orestes makes for the Parthenon. Midway he pauses. Runnels of dampness the hot wind would otherwise have dried leak from inside his new purchase.

His eyes also are moist.

He has told them before, he tells them again: his first glimpse of this building, while driving that long straight road from the Piraeus to Athens. Constantly in sight, squat at 1st, more & more elevated as they neared it, stood this Thing, golden

honeycolored,
fingered by light

a lyre the sun fingered. How dispassionately he had eyed it, not recognizing his oldest dream until, with a cry, just as it vanished from his range of vision, he fell forward onto the taxi’s floor. It had been the Parthenon!