Atlantis: Three Tales (27 page)

“Heidi,” I said, “I think I've spotted a German national trait: you
Germans always talk about everybody, even yourselves, in terms of ‘national characteristics'. Well, it got you in trouble in that war we had with you when you and I were kids. I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up getting you in trouble again.”

Heidi took my arm. “It isn't a German trait, dear. It's a European trait—and you Americans, who are always fighting so hard against generalizing about anyone, look terribly naive to the rest of us because of it. I'd think you American Negroes especially, with your history of oppression from white people, ought to realize, of all Americans, just how suicidally—no, genocidally, there's the nasty word—naive that is. If you pretend you can't know anything about a group, how can you protect yourself from that group—when they're coming to burn crosses in your yard; or to put you in the boxcars.” She seemed suddenly very unhappy—as if that were just not what she wanted to talk about.

“Well, I like the Greeks, myself. There's a generalization. Is that okay for you? Did I ever tell you that story about David and me, when I first got back from the islands? You know how David is, every time he spots a new international: coming over to say hello and have a glass of tea. Then, somehow, he was going to show me where something was, and the two of us ended up walking together down Stadiou Street, him in his jeans and t-shirt, and that blond beard of his. And me, right next to him with my beard.”

“A cute little beard it is, too.” Heidi leaned over to ruffle my chin fuzz with her knuckles.

With one arm, I hugged her shoulders. “Cut it out, now. Anyway, I didn't know how the Greeks felt about beards back then—that the only people who wore them—here—were the Greek orthodox priests—”

“Yes, I know,” Heidi said. “David's told me—they all think that bearded foreigners are making fun of their priests, which is why they get so hostile. Frankly I don't believe it for a minute. Greece is only two days by car away from the rest of the civilized world. And there've been foreigners coming through here—with beards—for the last hundred years. If you'd have cut yours off just for that, I'd have been very angry at you. Remember, dear: David is English—and the English love to make
up explanations about people they think of as foreigners that are much too simple; and you Americans eat them up. The Greeks are just angry at foreigners, beards or no. And a good deal of that anger is rational—while much of the rest of it isn't. I'd think you were a lot cleverer if you believed that, rather than some silly over-complicated English anthropological explanation!”

“Well, that's why I was going to tell you this story,” I said. “About the Greeks. We were walking down Stadiou Street, see—David and me—when I noticed this Greek couple more or less walking beside us. He was a middle-aged man, in a suit and tie. She was a proper, middle-aged Greek wife, all in black, walking with him. And she was saying to him, in Greek (I could just about follow it), all the while glancing over at us: ‘Look at those dirty foreigners—with their dirty beards. They mess up the city, them with their filthy beards. Somebody should take them to the barber, and make them shave. It's disgusting the way they come here, with their dirty beards, dirtying up our city!' Well, even though I knew what she was saying, there was nothing I could do. But suddenly David—who's been here forever and speaks Greek like a native–looked over and yelled out,
‘Ya, Kyria
—
ehete to idio, alla ligo pio kato!'
Hey, lady—you have one too, only a little further down! Well, I thought I was going to melt into the sidewalk. Or have a fight. But the man turned to us, with the most astonished look on his face:
‘Ah!”
he cried.
‘Alla milete helenika!'
Ah! But you speak Greek! The next thing I knew, he had his arms around David's and my shoulder, and they took us off to a cafe and bought us brandy till I didn't think we could stand up, both of them asking us questions, about where we were from and what we were doing here, and how did we like their country. You know ‘barbarian' isn't the only word the Greeks gave us. So is ‘hospitality'.”

“No,” Heidi said. “You never did tell me that story. But I've heard you tell it at at least two parties, when you didn't think I was listening—for fear I'd be offended. It's a rather dreadful story, I think. But it's what I mean—about the Greek women having no style. If someone had yelled that to
me
in the street, I would have cursed him out till—how might you say it?—his balls hoisted up inside his belly to cower like
frightened puppies.” She bent down to rub Pharaoh's head and under his chin. “Then—” she stood again—“
maybe
I'd have asked him to go for a brandy. Ah, my poor Pharaoh.”

Heidi pronounced “Pharaoh” as three syllables—Pha-ra-oh—so that, for the next twenty-five years, I really didn't know what his name was, even after I saw her write it out in a letter; only then, one day (twenty-five years on), looking at the written word for the Egyptian archon, suddenly I realized what she'd meant to call him. But because we were in Greece, and because in general her faintly accented English was so good, I always thought “Pha-ra-oh” was some declension I didn't quite catch of
pharos
—lighthouse.

“Here in Greece,” she said, “you really do lead a dog's life—don't you, dog?” She pulled the black leather leash up short again. The collar buckle was gleaming chrome—from some belt she'd found in the Mon-asteraiki flea market; she'd put it together herself on the black leather line. It was unusual looking and quite handsome. Under the poncho she wore black tights and black shoes, with single white buttons on the front. “I take him for a walk in the city—they run up on the street and kick him! You've seen them. Don't say you haven't. And he's so beautiful—” She grinned down at him, slipping into a kind of baby talk—“with his beautiful eyes. It was your beautiful eyes, Pharaoh, that made me take you in in the first place, when you were a puppy and I found you limping about and so sick in the back of that old lot. Ah,” she crooned down at him, “you really are so beautiful!”

“The Greeks just don't keep pets here, Heidi. At least not house pets.”

“I know,” she said. “Costas told me: you have a dog on a rope in the city. They think you're probably taking him off somewhere to kill him. They run up and kick him, they throw a stone or a bottle at him—and think it's great fun! They give him meat they've spent twenty minutes carefully sticking full of broken glass! I take him on the subway, and the police say I have to put a muzzle on him!” She made a disgusted sound. “You see somebody with a dog on a leash like this—you would have to be stupid not to realize it's a pet! They don't like foreigners; they don't
like dogs. It's just their way of getting back at both. And even so, on the underground out here this morning, you saw how everyone cowered back from him—they think my little dog is a terrible and vicious beast! I had to put that awful muzzle on him. And he was so good about it. Well, you don't have it on now—my darling Pharaoh!”

Pharaoh wasn't a big dog. But he wasn't a little one either. He was a broad-chested coffee-colored mutt with some white patches as though a house painter had picked him up and maybe shaken one of his forepaws before washing his hands. Heidi'd had him about six months—which was twice as long as she'd known me. One of his ears and the half-mask around his left eye were black.

“They're just not used to dogs, and he makes them uncomfortable.”

“They're uncomfortable with him because he's a dog. They're uncomfortable with you because you're a Negro—”

“They're uncomfortable with you because you're German.”

She smiled at that. “Well,
that's
barbaric! When I go to David's silly baby-sitting job, are you going to be all right?”

“I told you, DeLys said I could stay at her place up in Anaphiotika, while she's away. I'll be off to England the day after tomorrow. And then back home to New York.”

“That odd old Englishman, John, from Turkey, is staying at DeLys's too, isn't he?”

“He's not that odd. When I was in Istanbul, DeLys gave me his address so I could look him up. After Jerry and I hitchhiked there, I hadn't had a shower in a week and was a total mess—he was just as nice to me as he could be. He fed me all one afternoon, till I was so full I could hardly walk. He told me all about places to see in the city, the Dolma Bocce and the Flower Passage. And what Turkish baths to go to.”

“Did he feed Jerry too?”

“No. Jerry was scared of him because he knew John liked guys. DeLys had told Jerry about him before we left. So Jerry wouldn't go see him.”

“You like guys. You like Jerry, I think.”

Which was true. “But Jerry,” I said, “and I are the same age. And we
were already friends. I told Jerry I thought he was acting silly. But he's a southerner, and he's stubborn.”

“That was a lovely letter Jerry wrote you.” She quoted: “ ‘Don't step on any low flying birds.' I always thought he was just another stupid American, too tall, and too awkward, with nothing very interesting to say—even though you liked him. But when you read me his letter, I really began to wish I'd gotten to know him better while he was here. You're very sensitive to people, in ways I know I'm not. But sometimes, I suppose, we just miss out. Because, as you Americans say, of our prejudices.

“But he is odd,” she went on, suddenly. “Turkish John, I mean—isn't that a funny name, for an Englishman? Cosima says he gives her the creeps.”

“He's a little effeminate—he's a queer,” I said. “But so am I, I suppose.” Though I didn't really think I was—effeminate, that is.

“I wonder why so many women like you.” Pharaoh went around behind her and, when she jerked him, came back between us, drawing black and white felt one way and another across her shoulder. “DeLys, Cosima, me . . . Even Kyria Kokinou likes you.” (Kyria Kokinou was the landlady Heidi had decided not to risk angering by having me stay in the room while she was away with her Greek children.) “Do you think there's any particular reason for that?”

“Probably
because
I'm queer,” I said. Then: “I wonder why we didn't have more sex, you and I?”

Now she leaned away with an ironic sneer, backed by her big, German smile.
“I
was certainly ready!” Heidi and I had slept in the same bed for two weeks; but we'd only made love twice. “I think you were just trying to prove a point,” she said. “That you
were. . 
. ‘queer', as you say.” Suddenly she straightened. “I'm really not looking forward to this trip. The ferry will have to go out by the paper mill; and it's going to stink. And I won't ever see you again, will I? Look, if you can stop for a day in Munich, you must visit the Deutsches Museum. I used to go there when I was little. It's a science museum. And they have almost an entire real mine in the basement, that you can walk around in and watch it
work—that was my favorite part, when I was a little girl. And wonderful mechanical toys from the Eighteenth Century—you can see actually functioning. I know you'll love it. You like science, I know it. From your lovely books—that you write so carefully. I'd love to know I shared that little piece of my childhood with you. So go there—if you possibly can.” She looked around at the ferryboat. “Well, you have a wonderful trip home. And write me. You'll go home—you'll see your wife again. And everything will work out between you. I bet that'll be so. It's been an awful lot of fun. I hope you and your wife get back together—or something good happens there, anyway.” She leaned forward and gave me a kiss. I gave her a hug back, and she came up blinking. And grinned once more. Then she turned and went up the plank onto the deck, Pharaoh dashing first ahead, then suddenly back as if he'd forgotten something, so that, with a few embarrassed smiles at me, she had to drag him on board.

At the gangplank's top a man in a gray suit and an open-collared shirt, lounging against the rail like a passenger, suddenly stood up, swung about, and became very official, pointing at Heidi, at Pharaoh: an altercation started between them, full of
“. . . Dthen thello ton skyllon edtho . . . !”
(I don't want the dog here) and much arm-waving on his part, with many drawn-out and cajoling
“Pa-ra-ka-looo!
” 's and
“Kallo to sky-laiki!
”'s from Heidi. (Pleeease! and, He's a good puppy!) It didn't resolve until she went into her black leather reticule under her poncho to pull out first the John O'Hara paperback she was reading (it ended on the deck, splayed and spine up, by the rail post), some tissues, a pencil, and finally Pharaoh's muzzle, waving the leather straps at the boat official, then stooping to adjust them over patient Pharaoh's mouth and ears—while the other passengers stood close around, curious.

At last she stood up to blow me a kiss.

I waved back and called, “Get your book!”

She looked down and saw the upended, thick black paperback, laughed, and stooped for it.

“Ciao!” she called. “Bye!”

“Ciao!”

I walked back through the Piraeus market, under the iron roofs with their dirty glass panes above tomato and sea-urchin stalls, eggplant and octopus counters, through the red-light district (where, for a week, on my first return from the islands, I'd stayed with Ron and Bill and John), past blue and white doors and small wooden porches, to the subway that would return me to Athens.

“By all the gloom hung round thy fallen house,
By this last temple, by the golden age,
By great Apollo, thy dear foster child,
And by thyself, forlorn divinity,
The pale Omega of a withered race,
Let me behold, according as thou said'st,
What in thy brain so ferments to and fro.”