The Receptionist (19 page)

By late March, Sara had stopped seeing Jamal and had begun to receive telephone calls and letters from an old beau in Macon. In May she went down to visit him. Not long after that, she wrote me that they were married, that she had started her own dressmaking-on-demand business, and that she was not going to be coming back. In July the following letter arrived.

Jan, Sweet One—

I’ve had so much to say that procrastination set in while I tried to determine how to say it . . .

If I touched the bottom of the creek, it would have to be admitted that your ex-roomie is less than content or thriving. On the surface of Lake-Loyalty-to-Marriage I could fake it and say that things are going along OK . . .

But that [they aren’t] may be a good thing. Now I sort of
HAVE
to make the sewing business work.

I do hope to come up to N.Y. for a few days . . . When are you leaving for Europe? . . . If very, very soon, please call and let me know so that I won’t have the shock of finding you . . . not
Th
ere . . .

I MISS YOU
—and hope that you’re doing very well. You deserve good things from life—so keep on pushing.

With loving good wishes,

Sara

We stayed in touch through the next year or so, after which Sara left on a trip to India, and though I know she came back, several efforts to reach her in Georgia came up empty. I, too, hope she is doing very well. She deserves good things from life also.

G
REECE:
T
HE
J
OURNEY
O
UT

S
ØREN KIERKEGAARD, THE CHRISTIAN
existentialist, held great sway over me, being both Scandinavian and Lutheran. So when he described the search for one’s true self as the primary task God sets us on earth, I took it seriously, all the more so since on that score I didn’t have a clue. Sara always seemed to know who she was. I was muddled, not only about who I was, but about what kind of person that person was: Nice girl? Sexpot? Slut? Crazy lady?
Th
e options were not attractive. I took a big step toward solving my identity crisis on a trip to Greece in 1965; it began with a Eurail Pass shuffle across the Mediterranean and wound up in Brindisi on the SS
Carina,
a night ferry to Piraeus.

I was one of only a few Americans aboard. Along with some English families and twenty or thirty Greeks, we circled like so many negatively charged ions around a nucleus of French nuns, priests, and students—participants in a national “renewal” movement they called L’Homme Nouveau.

Up on deck, I leaned on the railing and stared at the ship’s wake, wishing I could connect—fragments of myself, fragments of poetry.
Th
e line from Homer, for instance, about the “wine-dark sea.” Suddenly an elfin man in glasses and a green suit appeared at my elbow. Lifting an imaginary hat, he said in excellent French, “Bon soir, mademoiselle, je m’appelle Aristotle Caryannis.”

Aha,
I thought,
a Greek! Perhaps he can flesh out the line from Homer for me.
But Monsieur Caryannis did not recognize his poet in English, or in French either.
Th
e latter was not surprising, since the best I could manage was “la mer qui est la couleur d’un verre de vin,” which had the unfortunate effect of encouraging him to go on talking to me in French, with a little English and German thrown in. He would speak, he said, of Prometheus and Christ: “A story philosophers tell.” It was the story of the creation of the world. Here came the fishes
, poissons, Fische, beaucoup, beaucoup, beaucoup
. . .
Th
e moon was up. Monsieur Caryannis’s spectacles caught the light. It was the sort of moon—neither full nor new—that nobody dwells on, but seeing it broke my concentration and I lost what slender hold I had upon the narrative thread. Suddenly there was a camel, a
dromadaire
bemoaning his small hump—or was it his inadequate organ? I scarcely knew anymore what was being related. A religious parable? A sex joke? All I found it possible to do was to smile blankly until Monsieur Caryannis left me for his dinner.

It turned out that he was only the first of many would-be suitors I encountered on this trip. Mr. Phillip, first mate, was next. He spoke to me in English in the polite form—a form that, as far as I knew, didn’t exist. He told me that his four-to-eight watch was over, and while he had already dined, “If the young lady would be so kind as to accompany me to the bar, I would be pleased to present her with a whiskey and soda.
Th
ere will be no charge.” Sounded OK by me.

As we were finishing our drinks, he asked, “Has the young lady from America ever seen the sunrise at sea?”

I admitted that I had not.

“She will find it most agreeable,” said Mr. Phillip. “I will call for her at five o’clock.” He touched his cap and went off, presumably to attend to the social needs of the other passengers. I wondered why I hadn’t declined, then shrugged and thought,
Why not?
Th
e sun
would
rise, and I
would
find it agreeable to see it do so at sea.

I got a sandwich at the buffet and took a book to the drafty port side of C deck.
Th
e airplane-style reclining chairs were lined up four abreast on either side of a narrow aisle in twenty rows. I chose one in lieu of the cabin I couldn’t afford. After a while my book fell limp in my lap and I began to dream.
Th
e boy was standing in a garden, pixie eyes sweetening the grave expression on his seven-year-old face. I had seen this child once, for a fleeting moment, in a photograph. It was Fritz as a child, and he had shown it to me when we were still living together.
Th
e boy had become my dream son, and in my dream we were a family. Fritz and I were married. We had a car. An ordinary, not new, family-type car, a Volvo. And he and I and our dream son were taking a Sunday drive, heading north on the Henry Hudson Parkway.

I was jolted awake by the touch of a hand on my thigh. I turned my head and saw Monsieur Caryannis’s spectacles glinting at me in the dim light of the
SORTIE
sign.

“I thought you had taken a cabin,” I said in icy German. To my mind this was a stinging rebuke that any right-thinking gentleman would take to mean “Get your hand the hell off my thigh and make yourself scarce.” But it did not have this effect.

“Madame Caryannis was not feeling well, and as there was a lady who wished to share, I gave up my space to her,” he explained.

“
Th
at was very considerate of you,” I spat out, removing Monsieur Caryannis’s hand to his own thigh.

He had begun to look very meek, almost stricken.

“I myself am feeling a slight chill,” I added in a mellower tone. “If you will excuse me, I’ll try to find a chair out of the draft.” I moved to the seat farthest away. When I glanced back, he was still hunched rather forlornly over the chair I had left. I thought,
It is so easy to make a man ridiculous. One has only to say no. I suppose that’s why they hate us so.
Now, gloomily, I began to feel guilt.

I must have dozed off, for the next hand on me was shaking me roughly by the shoulder. When I opened my eyes, Mr. Phillip was already vanishing. I ascended to the bridge through the grayness of slumbering bodies billowing over a cold sea.

A large wheel dominated the windowed enclosure. A hatless man in dark clothes stood behind it, feet wide apart. A steward handed around thick white cups of thick black coffee. I stood beside Mr. Phillip, looking out the window and sipping the sweet Turkish brew. Dark islands hulked all around us. Patras was to the right; Corfu, to the left and almost out of sight behind us. Somewhere up ahead a light was blinking.
Th
ere was some pink behind the charcoal hump to the left of us. How could the sun come up to the left of us? Mr. Phillip would explain. He gestured to the chart room just behind the man at the helm. New, specific instruments of ancient design gleamed out at me from various points around the walls. A large, sturdy table held an orderly profusion of navigational maps. I bent over them with serious eyes, but the neat lines before me remained a mystery.

Th
en there was nothing to look at but the face of Mr. Phillip. It had deep lines, none of which signified anxiety.
Th
ere were weather lines, squint lines, interrupted-sleep lines.
Th
ey charted a handsome, seafaring course across straight features, around deep-set eyes.
Th
ere was a flash of gold tooth in his smile as he brought his face down to mine. But his kiss was not kind. It was not even personal, and its urgency bore the pressure of haste rather than emotion. I broke away, with difficulty, and was propelled by my own momentum back into the other room. I subsided against the wall, breathing heavily.

Th
e man at the wheel grinned. “Americano?” he asked. How could I make him understand that my flight had been motivated by hedonism, not puritanism? I liked to be kindly kissed.

“Mr. Phillip,” he said, “is a good man. A very good man. I personally have never known him to be so moved by a beautiful woman as he has today shown himself to be.”
Oh, brother,
I thought. Mr. Phillip entered the room. No one spoke. I moved out of the enclosure onto the port-side bow. Mr. Phillip followed. His arms encircled the part of the rail against which I was standing, then dropped to his sides as two kerchiefed ladies in mackintoshes popped up from behind the small foghorn.

“Le soleil est très joli, n’est-ce pas?” the first head-scarfed lady asserted. Mr. Phillip bowed his assent. A mustachioed German bearing a telescope emerged from the wheelhouse, muttered, “Guten Morgen,” and stepped carefully over the sill.
Th
ere was an exchange of guttural formalities. Suddenly Mr. Phillip herded us all back into the wheelhouse and I had a vision of him stuffing us, mackintoshes, head scarves, telescopes, and all, into his bunk for a whirlwind orgy. But he did not stop until we were all through the wheelhouse and out the other side. A whoosh of sudsy water explained the maneuver.
Th
e decks were being washed down.
Th
e sun had blazed into brightness, obscuring itself.

I went to the saloon and fell asleep in a deep red chair under a picture of Delphi. Again I dreamed. I dreamed that Fritz was a potato. I was in the dream, too. And a knight in armor, who announced that he had come to woo me and to ask for my hand. But my potato-love said to him, “You will never win her. I will seduce her with my eyes.” I awoke and, disturbed by the linguistic trick my subconscious had played on me, slept no more but spent the morning at the deep tile-lined tank euphemistically referred to as the swimming pool.

Lolling in a deck chair under the bright sky, I made the acquaintance of a couple of drab female members of L’Homme Nouveau. Francoise and Claudine were from Amiens and would be spending the rest of the summer at Delphi. I would like to have known more about the religious aspects of their movement, but again language proved a barrier. Would they attempt in Delphi a synthesis of the pagan and the Christian?
Th
e Roman and the Byzantine? Or perhaps they were simply taking advantage of group rates. A strikingly well-built youth of eighteen or nineteen came by in electric-blue swim trunks. He greeted Françoise and Claudine and introduced himself as Pierre. He said that he, too, was a member of L’Homme Nouveau. Sitting down beside me, Pierre quizzed me charmingly about America. He was especially curious about New York, and Indians, confiding at one point, “Les Apaches sont pour moi très sympathiques.” When he couldn’t persuade me to join him in the pool, he asked me to please hold his watch. Soon he was cavorting in the liveliest manner with a girl in a bright yellow bikini and bright yellow hair. In between the shrieks and splashing of a water fight, I heard her cry, “Mach meine Haare nicht nass!” So it seemed she was German and was not engaged in any attempted renewal of French Catholicism.

Twenty minutes later the pair were still happily submerged, and I had tired of watch-sitting duty. I deposited the watch with Françoise and Claudine, reflecting that “L’Homme Nouveau”—the new man—was, to all intents and purposes, not so very different from the old.

At noon the
Carina
passed through the Corinth Canal.
Th
e delicate maneuver executed, the canal lined out behind us like a perfect punctuation mark—a dash of brilliant green leading to the next, and last, phase of our journey, through Greek waters to Piraeus.

BY MIDAFTERNOON I WAS
jouncing my way into Athens on the seat of an uncertainly sprung city bus. Suddenly, through the grimy window on my left, I glimpsed the Parthenon and it hit me that I was truly in Greece.
Th
e bandage around my heart loosened. I got off at Síntagma Square and crossed to the sprawling café outside the American Express. It was siesta time and the plaza was full of young coffee drinkers, scornful of sleep, even in the midday heat. I saw two who smiled at me. I realized that I was smiling already. I was happy to be in Greece and it showed.
Th
ey offered me a chair and I took it.
Th
ey told me that their names were Andre and Alex, but I didn’t really care what their names were. I was flattered. I was fought over. Alex moved in. He moved me out, out of the plaza, bag and baggage, into his blue Saab automobile.

“We must first find you a place to stay,” said Alex. “I know a fine old house here in the Pláka.
Th
at is what we call this area around the cathedral, you know. It’s just here.”

We went in. A large black-haired man with a black mustache came forward from the rear of the house. Introducing himself as Mr. Propopoulous, he showed me a big, squarish room, bright and clean, on the ground floor. In a moment it was settled. My bags were placed in the room and the key was deposited in my palm.

“Come,” said Alex. ‘’We just have time for a lemonade on Philopappos Hill—and your first good look at Athens.”

I was guided into the Saab once more and was soon being driven past ancient spots.

“
Th
at is the Temple of Jupiter,” said Alex. “And there is the prison cell where Socrates was kept until his suicide.” We swept past the small grated opening in a crumbling old wall, up to a hill facing the Acropolis. Leaving the car, we walked into an open, vine-shaded terrace and listened for a while to the cicadas.

“
Th
ey live only one summer, you know,” said Alex. “When we hear them begin to sing, we say in Greece, ‘Summer has begun.’ And when they have laid their eggs, they die.”

“How very sad,” I said, suppressing a smile. I wondered if this was the way Alex really saw things or merely his idea of how to talk to a woman.

“Now I must go back to my shop. And you must sleep. At nine, I will call for you, and we will go to the most beautiful beach in the world. We will have dinner on the terrace and listen to the waves lapping against the shore.”

Back in Andria House I discovered that I was very tired. Even so, I was too surprised to sleep. Having spurned overtures all over Europe all summer long, I had not the faintest idea why I had encouraged this one myself.

If you don’t know, then who’s minding the store?
I asked myself. I shuddered at the thought of all that undiscovered territory encased in my skull. How had I become such a stranger? It wasn’t only that I was in a strange country. Being clueless about my own motives and feelings was a prevailing condition with me, thrown into relief by the fact that I was no longer surrounded by people who insisted they knew me. I thought of my uncle Bill, back in Iowa, sitting at supper one Sunday with the people most familiar to him in all the world. He had sat considering us—his wife, brother, sister-in-law, sisters, nephew, and niece—then suddenly asked, “Who are these people sitting here?” He spoke in a normal tone of voice and at first he seemed to be addressing the lamp in the middle of the dining room table.
Th
en his eyes moved slowly over our faces once again. “I don’t know you,” he said. “I don’t know a blamed one of you.” Exhausted by the weight of this recollection—or just exhausted—I did, then, fall asleep.