Atlantis: Three Tales (28 page)

—John Keats,
The Fall of Hyperion
, Canto
I

“I may be bringing someone home with me,” [Turkish] John said. “A man, I mean.” John had a long nose. “You won't mind, will you? We'll use the bed in the kitchen; I promise we won't bother you. But . . .” John's blond hair was half gray; his skin was faintly wrinkled and very dry—“it probably isn't a good idea to mention it to DeLys.”

“I won't,” I said. “I promise. By the time she's back, I'll be gone anyway.”

“I meant in a letter, or something. But believe me,” he said, “I only pick up nice men. Or boys. There won't be any trouble.”

And later, on the cot bed in the front room of the tiny two-room Anaphiotika house, set into the mountain behind the Acropolis, I went to sleep.

In 'Stamboul, just off Istiqlal, John had had a sumptuous third-floor apartment, full of copper coffee tables, towering plants, rich rugs and
hangings. When I'd been staying at the Youth Hostel, one afternoon he'd fed me a wonderful high tea at his place that had kept me going for two days. A pocketful of the leftovers, in a cloth napkin, had—an hour later—even made dinner for timid, towering Jerry.

I woke to whispered Greek, the lock, and two more Greek voices. One laughed as though he were coughing.
Shhhing
them, John herded two sailors, in their whites, through the room. The squat one halted in the door to the kitchen (in which was DeLys's bed that John used), to paw the hanging back. He had a beer bottle in one hand. He laughed hoarsely once more. Then the tall one, towering him by almost two heads, shoved past, with John right after.

I turned over—then turned back. Frowning, I reached down and pulled my wallet out of the pocket of my jeans where I'd dropped them over the neck of my guitar case sticking from under the bed; it was also my suitcase. I sat, slipped the wallet behind the books on the shelf beside me. Then I lay back down.

John came back through the hanging. All he wore now was a blue shirt with yellow flowers. He squatted beside me, knees jackknifed up, to whisper: “There're two of them, I'm afraid. So if you wanted to entertain one—just to keep him busy, while I did the other one—really, I wouldn't mind. Actually, it would be a sort of favor.”

“I'm sorry, John,” I said. “Thanks. But I'm awfully tired.”

“All right.” He patted my forearm, where it was bent under my cheek. He smelled drunk. “But you can't say I didn't ask. And I certainly don't mind sharing—if you change your mind.” Then he said: “I haven't spoken Demotiki with anyone in more than a year. I'm surprised I'm doing as well as I am.” Chuckling, he was up and back into the kitchen, thin buttocks grinding below blue and yellow shirttails. He disappeared around the hanging, into the lighted kitchen, Greek, and laughter.

I drifted off—despite the noise . . . 

Something bumped my arm. I opened my eyes. The little lamp in the corner was on. The squat sailor stood by my bed, leg pressed against my arm. Looking down at me, with one hand he joggled his crotch. Then he said, questioningly,
“Poosty-poosty . . . ?”

I looked up. “Huh . . . ?”

“Poosty-poosty!”
He rubbed with broad, Gypsy-dark fingers. A gold ring hugged deep into the middle one's flesh. Pointing at my face with his other hand, he began to thumb open the buttons around his lap-flap. Once he reached over to squeeze my backside. Hard, too.

“Aw, hey . . . !” I pushed up. “No . . . No . . . !” I made dismissive gestures. “I don't want to.
Dthen thello. Phevge! Phevge!”
(I don't want to! Go away! Go away!)

“Ne!”
Then he repeated,
“Poosty-poosty,”
emphatically.

The flap fell from black groin hair, that, I swear, went halfway up his belly. His penis swung up, two-thirds the length of mine, but half again as thick. His nails were worn short from labor, and you could tell his palms and the insides of his fingers were rock rough.

“Hey, come
on!”
I pulled back and tried to sit up. “Cut it out, will you?
Dthen thello na kanomeparea!”
(I don't want to mess around with you!)

But he grabbed the back of my head to pull my face toward his groin—hard enough to hurt my neck. For a moment, I figured maybe I should go along, so he wouldn't hurt me more. I opened my mouth to take him—and he pushed in. I tasted the bitter sharpness of the cologne he'd doused himself with—and cologne on a dick is my least favorite taste in the world. Under it was the sweat of someone who'd been drinking steadily at least two days. While he clawed into the back of my neck, I thought: This is stupid. I tried to pry my head from under his hand and push him out with my tongue. And thought I'd done it; but he'd just moved, fast—across the bed, on one knee.

It was a hot night. I hadn't been sleeping with any covers.

He grabbed my underpants and, when I tried to dodge away, ripped them down my legs.

“Hey—!” I squirmed around, trying to pull them back up.

But he pushed me, hard, down on the bed. With a knee on one buttock and leaning full on my shoulders, he shouted into the other room—while I managed to lift myself (and him) up first on one elbow, then on the other.

I was about to try and twist him off, so I didn't see the tall one come
through; but suddenly he loomed, to grab my arms and yank both, by my wrists, forward. I went off my elbows and down. The sailor on top began to finger between my buttocks. “Ow!” I said.
“Ow
—stop! . . . 
Pauete!”
That made the sailor holding my arms laugh—because it was both formal and plural; and it probably struck him as a funny time for me to be asking him formally to stop.

The tall one let go one wrist and made as if to sock me in the face. He had immense hands. And when he did it, his knuckles looked like they were coming at me hard. I jerked my head aside, squeezed my eyes, and said,
“Ahhh . . . !”

But nothing connected—it was only a feint. Still, I hit my jaw on the bed's iron rim.

When I opened my eyes, the tall one grinned and said: “Ha
-ha!“—
then shook one finger, in a slow warning. Still holding my wrist with one hand, he moved to the right, grabbed my leg just above the knee, and yanked it aside.

The one on top got himself in, then. Holding both my shoulders, he pushed, mumbling in Greek.

The tall one moved back to take my free wrist again and squatted there, his face very close. He kind of smiled, curious. His breath smelled like Sen-sen. Or chewing gum. He had very black hair (his white cap was still on), hazel eyes, and tawny skin. (By his knee, the other's cap had fallen on the rug.) Cajolingly, he began to say, now in Greek, now in English: “You like . . . ! You like . . . !
Su aresi . . . !
Good boy . . . !
Su aresi . . . !
You like . . . !”

I grunted. “I
don't
like! It
hurts
, you asshole . . . !”

This pharmacologist, who'd first fucked me, told me that if I pushed out as if I were taking a shit, it wouldn't sting.

But not this time.

The one on me bit my shouder and, panting, came. The one kneeling glanced up at him, then sighed too, let go, stood, and grunted down at me, as if to say, “See, it wasn't
that
bad . . . ?”

The one behind got off the bed and stood, pushing himself back into his uniform. Once he said to me, in English: “Good! See? You like!”
like the tall one had. He picked up his cap from the floor—and (he'd missed two buttons on his lap) pulled it carefully over his head, then pushed one side back up to get the right angle.

I sucked my teeth at him and tried to look disgusted. Frankly, though, I was scared to death.

In Greek the squat one said:
You want him now? I'll hold him for you
—

The tall one said:
You jerk-off! Let's just get out of here!

The squat one bent down again, picked up my jeans, and began to finger through the pockets.

Then the tall one drew back his hand with the same feint he'd used on me:
Come on! Forget that, jerk-off! Let's get out of here, I told you!

The squat one threw my jeans back down, and they went through the kitchen hanging. There was a back door, but I don't remember if I heard it or not.

I lay on the bed a minute, without moving, propped up on one elbow. Then I reached back between my buttocks. When I looked at my fingers, there were little pads of blood on two fingertips. I got up and went to the stall toilet in the corner—

Urine covered the stone floor. On DeLys's blue rug, it had darkened an area three times the size of someone's head. John must have sent one of them in to use the toilet while I was still sleeping—before the first guy woke me.

I reached inside, holding the jamb with one hand, and got some paper from the almost empty roll. Still standing, I wiped myself, but with a blotting motion. It hurt too much to rub. When I looked at the yellow paper, there was a red smear, with some drops running from it, and slime on one side. My rectum stung like hell.

I felt like I had to take a crap in the worst way; but the other thing the pharmacologist had said was to wait at least half an hour before you did that.

When I went back to the bed, I saw the light in the kitchen had been turned out. As I sat down, gingerly, on the edge, on one cheek more than the other, from the dark behind the hanging, John asked: “Are you all right in there?” He sounded plaintive. For a moment I wondered if
he was tied up or something.

I called back: “I think so.” Then: “Yeah, I'm okay.”

A moment later: “Did they take anything from you?”

I pulled my jeans back across the floor toward the bed with my foot. Then I looked at the bookshelf. Between fat volumes by Mann and Michener was a much read Dell paperback of Vonnegut's
Cat's Cradle
, a quarto hardcover of Daisy Ashford's
The Young Visitors
, a chapbook of poems by Joyce Johnson, and Heidi's copy of
L'Ecume de jour
, which every few hours I'd taken out to struggle through another paragraph of Vian's playful French.

“No,” I said. “My wallet's safe.”

At the very end were the paperbacks of my own few novels—and the typewritten sheaf of my wife's poems, sticking up between two of them. Wherever I stayed, I'd always put them on a shelf so I could see them, to make me feel better. They were the books I'd stuck my wallet behind.

“Good,” John said. Twenty seconds later, he said: “I don't think they'll come back.” And, a few seconds on: “Goodnight.”

After a minute, I got up again, went to the kitchen door, and switched off the lamp. I didn't look behind the hanging. (The big light, still out, you had to stand in the middle of the room to reach up and turn on.) But John wasn't asking for help. So I went back and lay down.

I tried to think of all the reasons I hadn't called out. They might have beat me up, or hurt me more than they had. What would neighbors—or the police—have thought, coming in and finding me like that? Or thought of John? I might have gotten DeLys in trouble with Costas, from whom she rented the house. Or I might have gotten Costas in trouble with the police: he was a nice guy—a Greek law student at Harvard, home for spring break, who probably wasn't supposed to be renting his house out to foreigners anyway. But, lying there, I couldn't really be sure if any of those thoughts had been in my mind while it had been happening.

Again, I pushed out like I was trying to shit.

The stinging was just as painful. Then a muscle in back of my left thigh cramped sharply enough to make me cry out.

Oh, man is a god when he dreams, a beggar when he thinks; and when inspiration is gone, he stands, like a worthless son whom his father has driven out of the house, and stares at the miserable pense that pity has given him for the road.

—Friedrich Hölderlin,
Hyperion

At five-thirty, since neither of us was asleep, John got up to make coffee. The sun came sideways through the shutters. Birds chirped. John kept touching a bruise on his cheek with three fingers pressed together. “Now they were not nice boys at all!” In his light blue robe with the navy piping, he shook out yellow papers of grounds, of sugar, into the long-handled pot on the Petrogaz ring. “Why I brought home two, I'll
never
know! You'd think I hadn't done this before. But when I first met them, they were both so sweet.” He turned on the water in the gray stone sink. “One of them hit me.” He turned it off again. From the shelf he took down a jar of marmalade, examined the green and gold label, shook his head, then put it back. Again he touched his cheek. “Scared me to
death!
Once he hit me, though, I decided I'd just let the two of them do anything they wanted.” He fingered his bruise again. “He took money from me, too,” he said, confidingly. “I don't like it when a boy takes money from me. I don't mind giving a boy a few drachma, a few lira, especially if he's in the army—or the navy. Nobody could be expected
to live off what they pay you there. That's why the entire Greek army hustles.” He touched the bruise again. “You know, you really didn't have to clean the piss up off the toilet floor this morning.” The near corner of the bed with its ivory crocheted cover, the ancient refrigerator with the circular cooling unit on top, and the blue table with the three blue chairs with flowers decaled on their backs made a kind of crowded triangle on the red tile. “I would have done it myself if you'd left it. That was just rudeness. Believe me, they weren't
that
drunk! You know?” Moving about on bony feet, he pulled out first one chair, then the other. “I really thought, because you were colored, they weren't going to bother you and isn't
that
—” he went on, as though it were the same sentence—“the dumbest thing I could possibly have said this morning! But that's what I thought. Come, sit down now. And have some coffee.”