Cast in Doubt (26 page)

I pull the typewriter paper out of the machine.

The Gypsy’s desire to look at his genitals is something I’d never come upon before in a folktale. It could be, in a sense, derived from the Narcissus myth, but it’s base; rather its base is focused lower. It could also have to do with masturbation. My hand settles on my crotch, and I speculate, lazily, about whether they obey the same laws and prohibitions that oppressed me. I close the typewriter case, though I would prefer to linger and wander in the luscious maze Roman’s interest in me has provoked. But I can’t find the energy. Fully dressed, I lie down and fall into a blessed, restorative sleep.

After my nap, I wash, shave, splash cologne on my face, and change into clean clothes. Refreshed, I walk in the direction of the restaurant the little virgin mentioned. I have some anxiety that this might be the night I find Helen, and though I have been planning for this, or at least praying that it would happen, I haven’t the faintest idea what I will say to her. In truth I am unprepared, for what in the world should I say to her?

When I enter the restaurant, I find no one I recognize, just a few Greeks and several Germans.

I order taramosaláta, grilled fish, salad, and wine. The view is not spectacular, not mind-blowing, as John might say. I’d nearly forgotten him. I am relatively calm and eat the bread, which is fresh, and fish-roe spread, downing every mouthful with a gulp of cold, dry wine. My appetite is back. Just as the grilled fish arrives, the door opens. I stiffen, expecting it to be Helen. But it is not. I open my book and try to read, but a disquieting idea invades my overwrought brain.

If I don’t accept the Gypsy’s prophecy, or prophecy in general, ought I to continue to read about or study them? If I reject their ways and ideas, can I learn anything?

I drink more and continue along this mental path, which now engrosses me. For perhaps this is what the old Gypsy woman meant. If so, I tell myself, I am accepting at least some of her wisdom and ought to be allowed to go on. But didn’t T.S. Eliot become an Episcopalian, an Anglo-Catholic? Don’t most medievalists eventually convert to Catholicism? Jews, Protestants, all? It is a conundrum.

I make my home, my bed, in a rational world, but I awaken in an irrational one. That might be a good line for Stan Green, though perhaps too refined. Is it any less rational to consider accepting this, the Gypsy’s prophecy, for instance, than Eliot’s acceptance of God, his submission to faith? Perturbed, I rub my eyes. How is it possible to think about something one cannot or does not understand? Prophecy? The writing on Helen’s wall? My experience with the Gypsies has affected me. I hope it has made me a better person, a more human one. I sigh audibly. The Germans glance in my direction.

My dinner finished, and my exhaustion acute and abiding, I pay the bill. But courtesy demands that I meet the owner of the restaurant and his family. I explain where I am staying; at the mention of Partheny’s name, the owner’s wife lifts her head up sharply, indicating, in a Greek gesture, a strong no. I cannot inquire why. Probably she dislikes Partheny. Of course, a young and attractive widow is always feared in a small village. But that is not the story I wish to pursue. I do let them know I am pursuing Helen and describe her. They too think they have seen her, so I am certainly on the right track.

Partheny welcomes me back as if I were Odysseus. I hope she is not matchmaking. It is a lonely life she leads. I smile and return to my subterranean abode where she has placed a vase with flowers. It sits on the cheap dresser, inadequately providing beauty to an undistinguished, indeed dismal, room. But in Partheny’s small gift is such richness that I sit on the bed and weep. I do not know why. The events of the last days have weakened me. I sit motionless on the bed.

Her gift of daisies and narcissus dislodges a buried incident from my days in college, when a friend with whom I had had a quarrel and to whom I no longer spoke left flowers in my room. In just the same way. Then too I wept, uncontrollably, and yet we never again were friends. Pride, I suppose, or callow youth prevented my making the rapprochement. I wonder if he is alive. Life is endlessly sad. To be sad is to be human. To be human is to be sad. With such bathos do I nearly slip out of consciousness. But just before I do, for which I am oddly glad, I hear Roger’s bawdy voice. He shouts gleefully, Blow it out your asshole, Horace.

In the morning, Partheny knocks on my door and carries in a tray with coffee, a boiled egg, bread and jam. I thank her profusely. Behind her is a little girl with a ribbon in her dark hair. She has a child and is not alone, I tell myself. I eat and dress. I am in a common-sense sort of temper. I will walk to the beach this morning and see what’s what. I straighten my bed and march up the stairs. There is a young man—he is French, I believe—standing close to Partheny. He is nuzzling her neck. Suddenly they become aware of me. She smiles, with some embarrassment, but much less than one expects from a Cretan widow. Clearly he is her lover; it is no wonder the woman at the restaurant last night shook her head no. Partheny is breaking with the custom of her village, indeed, of Crete. She is either brave or foolhardy. She might, and this is Stan Greenish, yet not farfetched, end up dead. I am simultaneously relieved—I am not part of her marriage plans—and worried. The consequences of their actions could be dire. Does the young Frenchman know this? And will he behave responsibly?

I rid my mind of these concerns as soon as I shut the door behind me. Partheny must know what she is doing. But do I? That must be faced. I amble along the gravel-and-tar street. Pebbles stick between my toes, making walking a nuisance. I despise sandals—one’s toes stick out in such an accusatory fashion—and yet I refuse to ruin my tennis sneakers by wearing them on the beach. I do treasure the ocean and excitement mounts inside me, welling up in my chest. It is how I think birds feel when mating, or what nature intends for them in the winter when they puff themselves up to keep warm. I often compare myself with birds because of my thin arms and legs and slightly rounded stomach.

I pass the restaurant. The family is on the terrace. I call out to them—Yá sas—and they greet me by name. Then I continue on my way and, after not too long, perhaps another mile, I reach the path to the beach. It is down a rocky incline. I fall just once but do not hurt myself. There is no one in sight and I make my way to an isolated cove where the water is clear as glass. Tinted glass—it is the palest of aquatic greens. I drop the blanket which Partheny has lent me onto the warm sand and remove my trousers and shirt. I am of course wearing bathing shorts; nude sunbathing is for the French and Italians. I smother my skin in suntan oil. I pay particular attention to my face, to my nose especially. Now I gleam and glisten like a Greek god. I unpack my bag, which contains a towel, a flask of water, books, pen, paper, and a small but powerful telescope.

I intend to read and sunbathe. Then I will go for a swim. Ten laps would be fine. It is so far south here, the sun beats mercilessly upon my head. I put on my blue yachting cap and sit up. I look out as far beyond the horizon line as I can. That is an old game—trying to see how far one can see. But how does one know? After a while—it is extremely hot—I walk to the water and rush in, determined not to be cautious. I do not want anything to stop me. The water isn’t cold. I swim ten laps, I think. It is exhilarating to be in nature in this way.

I return to my blanket and towel off. It is an utterly peaceful site. I am oblivious to everything but the luxurious lassitude physical exertion and sun cause. I peer through my telescope but see no one in the distance. I douse myself again with oil, lie down, and place my arms over my eyes. I am close to sleep. The air is still. Jupiter and Poseidon must be holding their breath. The waves lap sweetly, blissfully, at the wet sand. I drift off. I am not sure how many minutes go by.

I become conscious suddenly of something that is near. It rouses me. It is present. Opening my eyes but temporarily blinded by the noonday sun, I perceive a human form. Gradually I can see, but I can hardly believe my eyes. More strange than my chancing upon the Gypsies, who had been in my mind and on my map, as I had wanted to chance upon them—a matter of controlled randomness and, therefore, not unaccountable—is what happens now. Rather, who happens now. That this meeting occurs on an obscure beach in a town not important enough to be on a map makes it all the more improbable. But, for all of that, it happens.

Standing above me is Stephen the Hermit, the ex-child-movie star, the lunatic, the man who loves electricity. Details of his biography mount one on top of the other as he smiles down at me. Tall and thin, he looms over me. I have not seen Stephen since that night when he ran away from the harbor, humiliated by Roger, Wallace, the Dutchwoman, and me, too, I suppose, his meal left behind uneaten.

Stephen lopes over to the space beside me and throws down his towel. He positions it not too close to mine, providing us a wide berth. As I remember it, be suffers from claustrophobia and fears all manner of intimacy, which to him must promise and threaten suffocation. Imprinted on his oversized towel is a salmon-pink flamingo and the words “Miami Beach.” The colorful and incongruous souvenir towel is in marked contradistinction to Stephen, who is in no way like the tourist who might sunbathe on beaches there. It is unimaginable—Stephen the Hermit strolling on Collins Avenue, traipsing into a hotel catering to the nouveaux riches.

Is there a meaning to his appearance? My mind races along these lines—he is an apparition, then a presentiment. A ghost, someone who has come back from the dead. He has, in a sense, been dead to me. To the Gypsies he would be a mulo! But frankly and quite simply, his presence is first, to me, were I to be completely honest, intensely annoying and implicitly a rebuke. There is something about his accidentally turning up in the place I desperately and urgently needed to find that is irksome.

I glance at him casually, I hope. Stephen is settling himself down innocuously, patting his shoulder bag—a striped and shabby cloth affair—and placing it neatly on his towel. The bag bulges. What could he—of all people—be carrying in it? Still, taking him in anew, and seeing him thus, I scold myself for my initial lack of charity. At least he has not been consumed by fire. He is safe and, from the look of him, eating well.

Stranger to say, once I have gone through a compendium of negative responses, I am happy to see him. I have always liked Stephen and have maintained a genuine if distant affection for him. But one would think he were a long-lost brother, so pleased do I become to have his most unexpected and unusual company. Of course I know from my reading about the Gypsies that to them we gadje are brothers, sedentary brothers. I smile to myself—and we are sitting! Normally, as I’ve already mentioned, I do not espouse or experience brotherly feelings. I dislike my brother intensely. Stephen, though, is nothing like my brother. I suppose, also, I am somewhat guilty about not having chased after him that night. It was unconscionable of me. What could I have been thinking?

Stephen bounces up and again smoothes the creases and wrinkles in his blanket, for rather too long a time. Will it ever be right? It seems that it never will. Perfect, perfect, he murmurs. His sounds are more like purring than speech. At last satisfied, he stations himself at the edge of my blanket and stares down upon me again. He is grinning. It is disconcerting, but then one expects bizarre behavior from a hermit. I sit up. Obviously he is pleased to see me, too. He is in much better shape. He has washed recently. He is wearing cut-off blue jeans, faded but not in ruins, and he has trimmed his unruly beard. Actually one can now recognize how handsome he is or was, how nature once endowed him generously. Stephen had the kind of looks that could kill, as Stan Green would put it. His looks surely brought him an early fame and caused an equally precipitous fall. His looks may have killed only him.

“Welcome, welcome,” he exults. Up until this moment, no words had passed between us. After this hearty salutation Stephen flings his arms out as if to embrace me. He doesn’t, as I am sitting. It is merely a gesture. I stand up and embrace him, which surprises him. Perhaps this is somewhat uncharacteristic of me. Nevertheless, he doesn’t run away, which is good. In unison we both sit down again upon our respective blankets and remain so, side by side, for quite a while. The uncanniness of his appearance in this lonely spot forges my silence. And also it is pleasant to be with an old acquaintance to whom one does not have to speak or to explain. Stephen does not, and would never, ask me why I am here, what brought me to this place, and why should I inquire it of him?

He is scooping up sand with one hand and depositing it into the other. He does this over and over, compulsively repeating the same action in the same way and in the same rhythm, until I feel on the verge of nausea. It could be hunger. Or it could be the sun beating down upon me. Like me, Stephen may be at a loss for words or without any pressing need to converse. That is typical of him. No polite colloquy for Stephen. With him, as far as talk goes, it is feast or famine.

Sweat pours from him. The English, I believe, have difficulty taking the sun. He is turning beet-red. Stephen leaps up and races toward the sea. As a child might, he swings his arms exuberantly and runs crazily—his legs going this way and that—then he flings himself headlong into the water. I marvel at his joyousness and strangeness. And to think, we are here together.

I change position, so that my back is to the sun. I clasp my knees to my chest. Stephen has always loved swimming and diving and will be in the water a long time. I watch him frolicking. He may think he is a dolphin. Such a harmless soul, now, but when he was younger and eminently presentable, men and women alike flocked to him. He toyed with them and cast them off and about with nary a care. I watch him swimming back and forth—he is shouting and singing ecstatically. I look again at his absurd beach blanket. Where did he get such a thing? And his shoulder bag. What does he have in that silly bag? I could, I think playfully—without his ever knowing—search it. I could go through its contents. This mischievous idea plants itself inside me and takes root. He would never know. How would he know?