Various Positions (12 page)

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COHEN ARRIVED
in Athens on April 13, 1960, visited the Acropolis, then spent the night in Piraeus, where he was flattered by a homosexual advance (which he rejected) from a hotel floor sweeper. The next morning he began the five-hour steamer journey to Hydra, which took him
first to Aegina, Methana, and Poros, and then to Hydra. (Since the seventies, the Russian-built Flying Dolphins hydrofoils have replaced the once-elegant steamers, reducing the traveling time to one and a half hours.) The trip was an opportunity to relax, drink, and meet women.

At Hydra, the small semicircular port is flanked by white houses rising steeply in an orderly manner, like the seats of an amphitheater. A cobbled esplanade runs along the waterfront, harmonizing the cluster of homes that surround it and reach up the hillside. Only the bell tower of the cathedral attached to the Monastery of the Virgin’s Assumption disrupts the horizontal tableau. The structure of the town emulates the classical theater of Epidauros, with the port the equivalent of the orchestra. Access to and from the port follows the theatrical frame of the
parodos
(side entrances and exits) with the houses mimicking the stepped seats of the
theatron
. Towering above the port is the two-thousand-foot Mount Ere, and on a high hill just below it, the Monastery of Profitis Elias (the Prophet Elijah).

In the morning the port is the commercial center where boats are unloaded, where fish and vegetables are sold, and donkeys are hired. At midday and into the evening it becomes the social center, the focus turned toward the restaurants and cafes. During religious or public holidays, it is the site of celebration. When Cohen arrived in 1960, only four coffeehouses and one bar ringed the waterfront.

Tradition, rather than a master plan or building code, determined the urban layout and architecture of Hydra. When a child married, a new house was built within the uncovered space of the family lot, treated as a separate unit, and given direct entry from the public street. The result was odd lot shapes and dead ends (most houses are rectangular or “L” shaped and composed of stone walls, timber or tile roofs, and tile floors.) The doorways are unique in that they face downwards to the port, rather than horizontally to the street. Offsetting the whitewashed walls of the homes are the orange tile roofs and the weathered cobblestone steps. It was the anarchy of the homes that prompted Henry Miller to remark on the “
wild and naked perfection of Hydra.”

The narrow island was named for water though it actually has little. Rain is rare, the average yearly precipitation being only an inch and a half. When the first home with a swimming pool was built by a Greek
American in the late sixties, the owner had to pay for barges of fresh water to be brought in and pumped up the hilly streets. It is little more than a barren rock, four miles wide and nearly eleven miles long, about four miles off the southeast coast of Argolis.

There are no cars or trucks on Hydra, since the land is too steep and the streets too narrow to permit them. Donkeys, which bray in an agonizing manner throughout the night, and occasionally horses, are the only transportation on the steps and ramps. The widest streets were originally designed so that two basket-carrying donkeys could pass each other; secondary streets provide passage for only one. An important site is
Kala Pigadia
, the Good Wells or Twin Wells. Situated above the port, this is where water was drawn and people gathered to trade news and stories; the two small wells are shaded by several large trees.

When Cohen first arrived on Hydra there was limited electricity, few telephones, and virtually no plumbing. Kerosene or oil lamps lit the homes; cisterns were used to collect water, and no wires obstructed the views. One of the few discos used a battery-operated record player, since the small electrical plant generated power only from sundown to midnight. Except for the kitchen, which was heated by the stove or Turkish copper braziers, rooms were heated with a three-legged tin filled with charcoal embers. Many of the homes were run-down and in desperate need of repair. In 1960, half of the homes were uninhabited, and virtually no new homes had been built for nearly a century.

When Cohen arrived he found temporary accomodation with writers George Johnston and Charmian Clift before renting a house for fourteen dollars a month. After he was settled, Cohen decided to introduce himself to Jacob Rothschild’s mother and hired a guide to take him to Ghikas’ estate. Jacob Rothschild’s sister greeted him but made it clear that no one had heard of him, that her brother hadn’t written, and that Cohen’s type of Jew was not really welcome. Angered by this reception, Cohen left, casting a curse upon the house. Late one evening in 1961, while wandering back and forth on the terrace of his own house above the port, Cohen was startled to hear an explosion and see a fire high up on the mountain. The Ghikas home had exploded! He felt his curse had taken effect. He later learned that a careless watchman, guarding the empty estate, misplaced some kerosene, which had ignited.

There was already a small community of foreign writers and artists on Hydra. The principal figures were the Australian writers George Johnston and Charmian Clift, the English painter Anthony Kingsmill, and the Norwegian writer Axel Jensen, who headed a small Norwegian contingent. Other writers came and went, including John Knowles, William Lederer (author of
The Ugly American)
, Irish poet Paul Desmond, Swedish poet Goron Tunstrom, Israeli journalist Amos Elan, and numerous dancers, artists, and academics. Allen Ginsberg stayed for several nights with Cohen after Cohen hailed him in Syntagma Square in Athens, recognizing him from a photograph. After a lengthy conversation, Ginsberg accepted Cohen’s invitation to visit. Don McGill, Canadian broadcaster and director at the Mountain Playhouse, and American sociologist Rienhart Bendix also visited Hydra. Film stars, including Sophia Loren (who filmed
Boy on a Dolphin
there) and Brigitte Bardot, began to appear. Jackie Kennedy would visit, and later Edward Kennedy, as well as Jules Dassin, Melina Mercouri, Tony Perkins, and Peter Finch, who was a good friend of the Johnstons. In several of his letters from 1961, Cohen complains about the influx of movie crews, which upset the peace and quiet of the island.

George Johnston and Charmian Clift were Australian journalists who had moved to Hydra in 1955 to write.
Peel Me a Lotus
is Charmian’s engaging account of their survival on an isolated and uncomfortable island with two small children. By 1958, two years after the birth of their third child, their relationship had begun to fall apart. In his 1960 novel
Closer to the Sun
, Johnston recounted the jealousies and liaisons of island life. The couple returned to Australia in 1964 after George contracted tuberculosis, shortly before his novel
My Brother Jack
was published. It was hailed as an outstanding and significant Australian novel. In 1969, Charmian committed suicide, shocking everyone. George died a year later.

Cohen first met George and Charmian at Katsikas’ Bar, which consisted of “
six deal tables at the back of Antony and Nick Katsikas’ grocery store at the end of the cobblestoned waterfront by the Poseidon Hotel.” Amid flour sacks, olive jars, and strings of onions, an artist’s club of sorts flourished. Evenings were spent arguing, drinking, and entertaining one another. George, the writer-in-residence, held court, often speaking “
in a wild spate of words, punctuated with great shouts of laughter and explosions of obscenity.” Members of the foreign community appeared,
withdrew, and reappeared. The port became a “
horseshoe-shaped stage” and the Johnston’s circle “
the actors of some unbelievable play the intriguing plot of which unrolled in front of the eyes of a totally flabbergasted audience—the locals, who watching it all commented on the side like the chorus of an ancient Greek tragedy.”

Cohen soon joined in, absorbed by the discussions, social relations, and sexual maneuverings of his new crowd. He gave his first formal concert at Katsikas’ grocery and formed an important and lasting friendship with the Johnstons. They gave him a big work table that he used for writing and eating, as well as a bed and pots and pans for his new house.

Cohen and Johnston made a playful bet occasioned by the spring 1961 upheavels in Iran: in May the Shah had dissolved the representative assembly and senate; by July, he imposed new restrictions on political freedom, while arresting generals and civilans for corruption in preparation for rule by decree. The wager reads:

Prophetically, what was proposed in the wager nearly came true as land-reform brought major riots causing the Iranian prime minister to
resign in April 1962 and allowing the National Front, briefly allied with the radical, religious opposition, and labeled reactionary, to gain power.

For better or worse, the Johnstons provided both a literary and domestic model for life on the island. The difficulty of the Johnston marriage, with its threats of breakup and numerous affairs, was intensified by George’s illness and Charmian’s problems in bringing up three children. George shared his ideas, encouraged others, and understood the labor of writing, even if he had difficulty putting it into practice. Charmian was gifted and quite beautiful, but she needed the attention and love of men and her husband was ill and impotent. Cynthia Nolan, wife of the painter Sidney Nolan, remembered there was “
a lot of writing talk in the air” around the Johnstons. The island nourished art and destroyed relationships.

Another fixture on the island was the painter, drinker, and gifted conversationalist Anthony Kingsmill, who was to become a close friend of Cohen’s. The adopted son of the English writer Hugh Kingsmill, Anthony was plagued by the unknown origin of his biological father, whom he later discovered was not only Jewish but also named Cohen. Kingsmill ended up on Hydra after going to art school in London and spending some time in Paris. Dapper and short, with soulful gray eyes, he would frequently quote long passages from Tennyson, Wordsworth, or Shakespeare. He would also break out into a little softshoe shuffle whenever he was elated or drunk. To the colony of romantically damaged men on the island, he announced that all sex was metaphysical. “
Pull up your sex, and get on with it!” His other expression was “
Forget the Grace / Enjoy the Lace / Have some fun and carry on.”

He survived largely on charm and commissions of never-to-be completed work. When he did finish a painting, he would often resell it to someone else. Cohen commissioned a painting from Kingsmill but when he was away from the island, Kingsmill entered Cohen’s house, seized the painting, and resold it. Only years later did he nervously tell Cohen about the ruse. He was expecting the worst from his friend, but Cohen merely laughed. Cohen was constantly commissioning paintings that never materialized, even paying for one painting seven times.

Kingsmill was a difficult and at times exasperating man who drank too
much, womanized, and gambled whenever he could. He never had any money but he was always entertaining. By 1964 Kingsmill was having an open affair with Charmian Clift. Island life was intense, and romance was often seasonal: new partnerships would form over the summer, last through the chilly and rainy winter, and then reconfigure themselves in the spring.

But Kingsmill survived his various encounters with women and the bottle. Don Lowe describes Kingsmill as a man with whom you couldn’t win:

Cohen also forgave Kingsmill again and again, partly because he admired Kingsmill’s storytelling skill and talent for life. But Kingsmill also valued Cohen, remarking to Don Lowe that his voice was like a rabbi’s, resonant, complex, and full of history. “
I don’t think he’s my father, but he could be. I’ve tried to tell him that,” Kingsmill said. Kingsmill finally married an American woman named Christina in 1973 in Athens. He seemed reasonably settled until his wife left him for someone else and then suddenly died of cancer. He reasoned that he wasn’t cut out to be wed; it rhymes too much with “dead,” he told everyone. Kingsmill himself died in London in 1993.

George Lialios was another critical figure in Cohen’s island life. Several years older than Cohen, he had studied with the concretist musical movement in Cologne and spoke fluent English, German, and Greek. He came from a distinguished family from Patras and was principally interested in philosophy. He first visited Hydra in 1954 where among others he met Lily Mack, a Russian married to Christian Heidsieck of Reims champagne fame, and Patrick Lee Fermor, a novelist resident in the Ghikas house. Lialios decided to settle there by the fall of 1960, island life being like “
living in a past century or in different centuries simultaneously,” he commented. Cohen invited Lialios and his Norwegian girlfriend to his home in 1960, and an intense friendship followed. Lialios
explained their compatibility: Cohen’s “
origins are truly and deeply rooted in those ancient cultures which flourished in the eastern part of the Mediterranian basin. This, in part, is why we had such a perfect understanding … we could sit together in silence, a virtue which is rare with western people. We never spoke unnecessary words.”

Another Hydra friend was Alexis Bolens, a wealthy Swiss
bon vivant
who organized legendary poker games on the island. A friend of Brigitte Bardot, among others, he frequently gave lavish parties at his home in the hills. Kingsmill, Cohen, and Johnston frequently played cards there. Demetri Gassoumis, a Greek American painter; Bryce Marsden and his wife Helen, recognized American painters; Pandias Scaramanga, economist and banker; Bill Cunliff, the Englishman who would later run Bill’s Bar, a popular expatriate hangout; Gordon Merrick; and Chuck Hulse rounded out Cohen’s immediate social circle throughout the sixties.