Short Story on Greek Island

This happened on one of the Greek islands. It doesn’t matter which one because they are all becoming pretty much alike—in the same way and for the same reasons that cities became alike. Angus Stern settled back in the canvas chair and crossed his bare feet on the wicker one. The wasps attacked his baclava. When one grounded itself in the honey, he merely carved around it. He hadn’t yet acquired the courage to catch them in midair and crush them in his fist, the way the waiters did. He was sure that skill would come.

The tourists squeezed out of the port side of the Nereida. Proprietors of empty beds greeted them with smiles and prices quoted in American currency. Donkey men stood silently, apparently considering their beasts advertisement enough. An embarrassed middle-aged woman fought with a six-year-old child who, unbidden, had managed to get his shoulder under a rather large valise. She had to give him silver to get it back and satisfy her notions about child labor. The bright crowd bobbed down the quay. This was Angus Stern’s parade and the highlight of his morning—his morning which did not quite correspond to the mornings of less fortunate people. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and the baclava was his breakfast. He was watching for a girl with unbound hair who didn’t carry a camera or a plastic bag and who probably wore slacks and sandals. There was bound to be one in this load because there hadn’t been one for several days. A group of young Athenians passed him, their heads bandaged under straw hats in last year’s Riviera style and their radios tuned to three different stations. Yorgo charged into the procession and tried to snare a party of watercolorists by waving a red crayfish in their faces and shouting the word wonderful in three languages. It didn’t look too promising. Angus Stern was a connoisseur of the type he awaited. He had trained in the coffee shops of New York, Montreal, and London. They were usually surprised when they learned he was a businessman and he used the surprise to his advantage. All the other men were small and kind of caved in and working on a masterpiece. The Greek island was a glorious extension of the Carmen, the Figaro, and the Troubadour.

And the girls that came this far were definitely committed to adventure. The crowd, deserted by those who decided to eat, shop, or sightsee, moved toward the concrete bathing platforms. The slaughterhouse formerly stood here but it had been removed to a less valuable location. Very early in the morning, out of habit, many of the natives still dumped their garbage from this point. Oh well, he could always struggle with the Athenian shop girls. Maybe they knew French. The Beat Generation had failed him for over a week. Maybe he’d hit Rhodes. He’d heard there was quite a colony down there. He clapped his hands louder than necessary. A woman sat down close by who was dressed just the way he hated. He hated her way more than the plastic shoes and iridescent blouses of the economy class. He associated it with something unwholesome like soiled elaborate lingerie. She was wearing a rather old-fashioned white dress with lace trimming on the collar, sleeves, and hem. An area of the hem had been burned by careless ironing. Women who think that frills make them feminine. A second glance informed him that she wasn’t a woman but a girl very pale and even beautiful if you like T.B. heroines. But there were wrinkles on her neck which showed even though she held her head high to stretch them out. How old was she, anyway?

“I guess you live here,” she said.

“What?”

“You’re staring at me, so I asked you if you live here.”

“Yes. Yes, I live here.”

“I guess you’re a painter or writer or anthropologist, or what?”

Her voice was charming. The innocence was practised but well practised. He recovered quickly.

“Actually, I do nothing. I’m retired.”

She laughed, and her teeth could have been whiter.

“I passed a very strenuous adolescence,” he explained his old joke. “What do you do?”

“I’m a kind of whore.”

He was almost caught off-guard a second time. It was a long while since he’d been shoved around in an opening.

“What kind?”

“The kind people would never call one.”

“Oh, just a woman.”

He believed he was back in form. His pastry dish was studded with drowned and struggling wasps. One detached itself and gained the air. He snatched at it, gave it too much room in his fist and cried in pain. The woman stood up and by the way her dress remained creased, even in his discomfort, he could swear she wasn’t wearing underwear. She wanted to help.

“I’ve got something in my house. Want to see my house?”

“I hope you don’t have to go through this ordeal every time you want to take someone home.”

“Shut up, shut up,” he felt like telling her, as they began the whitewashed steps. He hoped the lady who ran the little grocery wouldn’t rush out with a gardenia, as she did every time he passed her store with a woman. They couldn’t find the stinger. She dragged him by the finger to the window, so she could have a good look. He kissed her hair. She threw his hand down violently.

“Don’t touch me! I’m pregnant.”

She relaxed immediately and sat down in the carved Samos chair.

“Can I stay here tonight? My name is Martha.”

“Lots of room,” he demonstrated with his swelling hand. The pathetic part of her appealed to him.

Like many young Americans, Angus Stern saw his revolution in terms of idleness and an infinite number of female bodies. He managed the first part by having very cautious parents who habitually took out flight insurance from those machines in the lobbies of airports. As for the second, he worked on the theory that imaginative people were promiscuous. His new money enabled him to graduate from espresso bars to Art Colonies and everywhere that wasn’t the U.S. was an Art Colony. It seemed to him that all the young Americans in Europe were artists or intellectuals or oddballs. He was the only straight man left. He still described himself as a businessman, although he had no plans for the next two years, at least, and when a young German, who spoke English with a hillbilly accent, asked him if he was a writer he said, “No, thank you, I’m a reader.” Sometimes he felt America was speeding somewhere without him. This was usually when flesh was too plentiful or too scarce. He had a good memory and comforted himself with visualizations of the rat race. American opportunity looked better from the outside. He wouldn’t have missed this for anything. The kook of a girl was taking off that dress right in front of him.

“I’m hot. Can I lie down? Isn’t everybody supposed to go to sleep this time of day?”

“That’s a bed.” He took her hand to lead her there.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “When a girl is pregnant, she has to be treated like a sister.”

“You don’t look pregnant,” he justified himself.

“Well, stop looking.”

One for the books, he congratulated himself as she began faintly snoring. She didn’t look pregnant at all. She was thin, but her skin hung loosely on the long bones of her limbs like a flag whipped by the wind around the pole. And there were funny marks on her shoulders and buttocks. Suddenly, all the desire she provoked changed to pity. What kind of life did she have, anyway, drifting from one bed to another, guarding her pride by a bold show, hoping for shelter here and there. Not him. He wasn’t going to take advantage. He covered her with a fresh sheet and himself with the cool antiseptic of a resolution. He would salvage her. His life wasn’t such a mess, he wasn’t such a bastard. Purpose wasn’t confined to America. She wasn’t very pretty when you saw her naked. He changed his mind when he gave her a shower on the terrace. Goose pimples tightened up her skin and breasts. Her hair became dark and clung to her high-boned face like the hood of a Madonna. He found himself wielding the bucket with unnecessary vehemence.

“Be careful,” she cried. “I don’t want to slip. Oh, listen!”

She took his hand and held it flat against her wet stomach. He couldn’t feel anything. A wave of anger against her openness swept through him. Sister, my ass. I’m only human if she goes on this way. But he had made a resolution and he was anxious to prove that hot countries didn’t eat a strong man’s will.

“Blokes have made my wife before, but I don’t like The Enemy up her pants. You’re The Enemy, Master Angus. I’d forgotten about them, but they sent one right into my parlour all dressed up as a human. Being.”

This was quietly spoken by the Australian writer, Sidney Gearston, as he opened the door of the courtyard for Angus Stern two nights before.

“But you said it happened before, Sid, so you can’t really hold . . .”

“Get out, Stern.”

Oh, well, they drink too much anyway, he consoled himself on the way home. He was frankly surprised that Gearston would take it so hard. After all, look at the stuff in his books. Nevertheless, in that part of the mind, where guilt extends hospitality to insult, the stinging final three syllables remained. That was the first time he’d be thrown out of a man’s house and even if the man happened to be a dipso. The episode was fresh enough to influence his answer when Martha asked him for a loan.

“Two hundred dollars? Is that all it costs?”

“It was even less in Havana. But that’s all over now.”

“How many have you had?” he said casually.

“Apparently, an insufficient number. I’m still hopelessly fertile.”

“C’mon, it’s not so smart to talk like that.”

He hated her for a second, even if she was joking. Sometimes these people could profit by horsewhipping, it seemed to him.

“Hey!” He tried to look inspired as he commenced his work of salvage. “I got an idea: why don’t you have it?”

He couldn’t quite interpret the smile she gave him, but he wanted to wipe it off her face with his fist. It said something like: “I only deal with men.” The smile dismissed him with an arrogant invitation he couldn’t answer.

“Can you manage it or not?”

He considered kicking her out then and there.

“I’ll sign some traveller’s cheques. You can cash them on the port tomorrow.” He looked at his watch. “The bank closes in five minutes.”

“Do it now, Angus, please. I can make it.”

He blotted his signature and handed the cheques to her solemnly.

“I’d like to talk to you, Martha.”

“We have all night,” she laughed on the run.

His hand was beginning to hurt. Sure, you could call him a sucker, but he knew these people and you had to get their confidence first. She was very graceful when she ran, and she had left her hair free because it was still damp. He was sure he could straighten her out.

The mountain turned orange, then glowing amber, then dead rust, looking toward the port like a slow tidal wave as it changed color. In the midst of the last change, it was suddenly night. They were eating together at Yorgo’s and he wished she wouldn’t drink so much. He gulped down a large glass of retsina and emptied the rest of the flask into his glass to save her from it. He was going to tell her why she should go back home and tell her family and have the kid. Her dress appeared snowy and fresh in the light shed by a stand of weak electric bulbs. A yacht sneaked into the harbour and a hundred Greek teenagers screamed toward it with autograph books to ruin Elizabeth Taylor’s vacation. Yorgo explained that the returning fishermen had spread the word she was coming hours ago.

“I don’t know why I should, but I believe in you,” said Angus Stern.

“Of course, you do—I’m very believable in. Can I have some of yours?”

Then Yorgo was bending over the table with a full flask. For a fraction of a second, their hands wrestled over the glass.

“I didn’t order that.”

“I offer pedimu, I offer. To celebrate the American sputnik that comes over us tonight.”

He looked twenty-five, but Angus knew he was forty. Angus Stern didn’t want to hear about the American sputnik. Martha stood up and kissed Yorgo on both cheeks. A thin handsome man passing the table recognized her.

“Martha Prochert! I knew you’d find this delicious island eventually!”

“Lorrie, Lorrie, sit down!”

But before he sat down, this man, whom Angus considered the biggest pervert he’d ever met, was kissed by Martha. Lawrence Monderhan was supposed to be a painter, but he was on the island, not for the light or pretty scenes, but for the Naval School. Yorgo presented Lorrie with a full glass and a plate of olives and Angus Stern knew his evening was finished.

“You with him?” Lorrie asked with fake incredulity.

“Anything the matter with that?” Angus Stern said, with genuine belligerence.

“Angus is very sweet,” she answered the first question.

“He is, I know he is,” he said, with what Angus thought was a tone of lying familiarity. “But is he your type?”

“He will be. Oh, Lorrie, I haven’t seen you since New York and that was hell.”

“Well, darling, this is Paradise and I’m never going to leave. Even the police love me here, don’t they, Yorgo?”

Yorgo fingered the buckle of his wide belt.

“That’s supposed to excite me,” Lorrie explained.

Not only was his evening of salvage completely destroyed, but Angus Stern knew he was going to end up paying for the wine. Lawrence Monderhan was just the type of person she shouldn’t have anything to do with. He had fascinated Angus for a week or two and Angus had bought him a lot of dinners. Then, as a sort of reciprocating, Lorrie had invited him to a little session up the hill beside the cannon. Angus Stern was allowed to watch the young sailors beat Lawrence Monderhan until he could no longer embrace them. “They love us, they absolutely love us,” Lorrie roared to the port in general, and then confidentially to Martha, “You know, it’s the first time I’ve ever been popular at school.”

“Naval School,” Angus Stern supplied, unnecessarily and bitterly.

Lorrie grabbed Angus Stern’s wrist and twisted it toward him so that he could read the time—a habit that annoyed Angus Stern from the beginning, but most especially because of the wasp sting.

“Lord! It’ll be in the sky any minute now. Let’s get up to the Gearston’s. Sidney will like you, Martha, won’t he, Angus?”

“Are they having another party?”

“Another party, are you mad? Sidney’s been talking about nothing else for days. Haven’t you heard him go on about ‘a new light to enflame the old constellations’? Everybody, you know, the old everybody, will be there. Sidney’s calling it The-Down-With-Spengler-Revival-Of-The-West-Satellite-Gazing-Party!”

“Any excuse to get drunk.”

“C’mon, Angus,” said Martha, “it sounds like fun.”

“You go for the experience. I can’t take another Gearston mob.”

“That’s right, Martha, you come for the experience. You really ought to get around more, you poor sheltered thing.”

Before she got up, she leaned forward and said softly, “But I’ll see you later tonight, won’t I, Angus, at home?”

Her face was beautiful, no question about it, a thin child’s face that he wanted to kiss, that he didn’t want Lorrie to take away. She was definitely worthwhile.

“Sure.”

He watched it sail across the sky, a new star with a fiery tail, impudent and innocent and majestic, and he held his breath, so it wouldn’t fall. It made its way through the ancient zodiac like a very young pilgrim, high above the calm yachts, the small songs of the port, the floating islands of the Aegean Sea and it caused Angus Stern to be proud and nostalgic. Yorgo watched it with him, and Savaz, who used to be carpenter, but was now a real estate agent selling white houses to foreigners. Angus Stern wished he could have seen it with people who spoke English.

Back at his house he studied drawings of the satellite in the Herald Tribune, to pass the time until she came back. Where was she, anyway? The Gearston’s parties never lasted that long. Two hours later, he was furious and wanted to wash his hands of all of them, the Gearstons, the Lorries, the Marthas, all the driftwood. Worse than driftwood: scum. It was insane to get mixed up with these people. He walked aimlessly down to the sea. The stars were still bright and huge, but the night had faded from its deep royal blue. An orange peel that someone had removed very carefully bobbed beside the bathing platform like a waterlily. He began to climb to the fortress because he needed perspective. He wanted a clear view. A hundred and forty years ago, brave men had won their freedom. He wanted to stand in the atmosphere of discipline and courage.

But don

step on my bloo svede shoos. . .

He ran toward the voices, knowing what he would find but unable to restrain himself. The young Greeks were shouting the song drunkenly and beating their belts against the rocks in time. Lorrie was naked, performing a bizarre dance with Martha. The sailors cheered as he pulled her brutally from their midst. There was no end to the entertainment the strangers could provide. He had a hold of her arm; he’d never let it go; he stumbled down the hill with her, telling her he loved her. They faced each other on the concrete platform, both gasping.

“You ruined a perfectly lovely evening,” Martha said, “but you’ll pay for it. It’s about time you started paying.”

“What are you talking about? I pay for everything! I paid for dinner, I’m paying for your goddam abortion, you people are the greatest spongers I . . .”

She extracted a roll of Greek bills from a lace pocket and held it to her lips.

“You really didn’t believe I was pregnant, did you?”

“Gimme that!”

He lashed out for the money, she tilted her face, his hand struck her jaw.

“Oh, I’m sorry!”

She didn’t wince, she smiled as she had in the afternoon. He didn’t want to understand it, but he did.

“You’re the same as . . .”

“And you!”

His heart pounded like waves in a cavern. The black was returning to the sky where the new star was lost like a kite he had let go. But doors were opening in the black and he’d always wanted to pass through them, all his life. But he was twenty-eight, and in twelve years he’d be forty. But vast doors were opening on to the deepest black ever as she stretched herself out on the platform like a patient.

“That’s it, that’s it, that’s nice,” she whispered in pain, as he aimed his swollen fist again and again.