Thoreau Bound, page 22
“Her eyes?” asked Kosmos.
“Was it that thief Prometheus?” I asked. “Who plucked two stars from the skies of night!”
“Her nose?”
“The perfect size, the perfect place, the center of a perfect face.”
“Her lips?”
“Sweeter than Hymettus honey.”
“Her teeth?”
“Oysters in the Sea of Crete would brag to have them as their pearls.”
“Her hair?”
“What magic calls me in its curls? Surprise! — When her hair falls, I rise!”
“Her arms?”
“Venus de Milo has none better.”
“Her legs?”
“Smooth roads with no stop signs, meeting in paradise.”
“Her breasts?” said Kosmos, just about to burst with laughter.
“Her breasts are the peaks of Mount Parnassus. Spend one night there and either you become divinely inspired, or you go mad.”
“Bravo, Thoreaukritos!” shouted Kosmos, applauding with his mighty hands. “Bravo and bravissimo!”
Lady Loverly seized my hand. She wiped two tears from her sparkling eyes.
“That was so charming, Mr. Thoreau! Thank you so much, really. And here I had been worrying if there was something you didn’t like about my breasts. You’ve hardly glanced at them all evening.”
“I was trying to be polite, Beatrice,” I said. “If I let myself go, then you’d be spending all evening fishing my eyeballs out of your cleavage.”
“My dear boy,” Loverly answered. “Don’t you believe in setting a good example? If all men in history had been as polite to all women in a similar manner, then the human species would have died out two million years ago.”
Prudence twirled a carrot stick between her fingers, then brushed it like lipstick across her lips.
“Imagine,” she said. “We’d all be swinging in banana trees today.”
Prudence, like the sister I’d never had, placed her free hand onto my shoulder. Her eyes, which had been staring at me, flickered with a pyrotechnic gleam. An unabashed admiration which at times means love, at times means lust, at times means a potent cocktail of these two unwieldy powers. In the eyes of a woman we desire, that ready gleam is the promise of enjoyment. In the eyes of a woman with less appeal, that same gleam is the guarantee of grief.
Carrying my cider-filled goblet, I walked around the table to stand behind Kosmos, then patted his grey-bearded cheek.
“Prudence,” I said. “While Kosmos and I were laughing in the kitchen, what were you and Lady Loverly whispering about?”
“Something my mother told me, Thoreau,” Prudence replied. “It takes a woman less time to decide which man she likes, than it takes her to decide which dress to wear for dinner.”
Despite her ordinary appearance — sitting beside Lady Loverly, only one woman in ten thousand would not look ordinary — I at last recognized a certain likable vitality in Prudence. Now it would be her turn to be complimented, flattered, and praised.
“A tale half-finished is a tale untold,” I said. “Moments ago, in that cosmic kitchen, where so many schemes are concocted and ideas are brewed, the body of Lady Loverly was not the only topic of our praise. Kosmos praised Prudence to Pluto and beyond. He told me how your darting glances made him quiver, and how he would be thrilled to glance your quiver with his darts. In fact, for you alone he composed a song.”
“Bravo, Kosmos!” shouted Lady Loverly. “Let her play Eurydice to your Orpheus. Extemporize! Dramatize! Satirize! ... But don’t look back!”
The eyes of Kosmos, as he stared at Prudence, glowed first with the cool glance of Apollo, then with Dionysus’s fiery leer. He sipped some coffee, laughed and shook his head.
“Thank you for reminding me, Thoreau,” he said, with a playful smile. “Just give me a moment to make — I mean, remember something about it.”
After another gulp of coffee, Kosmos began the risqué song slowly, then finished with a crescendoing flourish.
“It is called, ‘The Archers’,” he said.
“Sweet maid, thou art the target just —
Of the burning arrow of my lust.
Bold sir, how swiftly through the skies —
The target to the arrow flies!”
I laughed at this rare bard of the air. Lady Loverly was the first to realize that this tune could be sung harmoniously as a round — a rhythmical canon where each part enters in unison at equal intervals of time. We sang a few choruses, each of us starting one line after the other, my baritone voice followed by Lady Loverly’s mezzo-soprano, then Prudence’s alto pursued by Kosmos’s bass behind.
This fine performance, transforming doggerel into delightful song, was concluded with our laughter and applause. And now Prudence, still gazing with a dangerous glimmer at the two men, undid the bun of her brown hair and let it drop down past her shoulders. A woman who lets down her hair after dinner is more dangerous than a Western gunfighter pulling out his pistol at high noon.
“Kosmos,” said Prudence. “All the while you were singing that adolescent jingle you were staring blatantly at my chest. Might I infer that your song is hinting at some posterior motive that might be called disgusting?”
Roused by the woman’s hair and the prospect of a deep conversation, Kosmos leaned forward on the edge of his chair.
“What do you call disgusting, Prudence? The fact that a man finds you sexually attractive? Or the fact that a man has the courage to candidly express that feeling?”
Prudence leaned forward. Her eyes smoldered with feminist fire.
“What I find disgusting is the fact that you look at me as a woman to be utilized for sex, and not as a whole human being. Do you imagine that any intelligent woman would be seduced by those silly words?”
Kosmos snatched her twirling carrot stick, stuck it into a bowl of dip, then handed it back to her.
“Of course not,” Kosmos said. “I imagine that any intelligent woman would understand the poem as a go-ahead signal, a welcome mat that says she could successfully seduce the man who sang those words.”
Prudence stood up. Now she was shouting.
“What impudent blither-blather! How dare you insult every woman by insinuating that in the jungle of sex, women are the ferocious predators!”
Kosmos wagged his head.“The jungle of sex! I like that. But dear Prudence, I was not insinuating anything, I was simply stating a truth compressed into a pleasant song. Women chase men for many reasons: for love, to get children, for financial security, and for sex. These are well-known facts.”
Prudence’s reply, crisper than stale crackers, would have dried the throat of almost any man.
“Any man who believes those so-called facts,” she said sharply, “is an oppressor of women who seeks to increase his power!”
Kosmos replied straightaway.
“Any woman who disbelieves them is lying to herself about her own needs and desires.”
Prudence removed her glasses then slipped them into a flower-covered case.
“Ah, now I can see your lovely eyes!” said Kosmos. “Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.”
Prudence shook her fist at Kosmos.
“And girls don’t get crushes on men with big tushes.”
In between these two antagonists I softly stepped.
“Look, what a bizarre coincidence! We’ve all finished our tiny cups of coffees at the same time. Was it a Greek philosopher, or a college entrance exam, that said: ‘Car motors is to heavy-duty oil as good conversation is to strong coffee.’? ... Kosmos, can you help me in the kitchen for a moment?”
We gathered the empty cups then stepped into the kitchen. I placed my hand on his shoulder.
“Kosmos, you once told me ‘You can say anything to anyone, as long as you say it cheerfully.’ Do you remember?”
“I remember.”
“Well,” I said, smiling. “How goes the war, Casanova?”
“Read his autobiography, Thoreau. All twelve volumes. No man makes the right moves with women all the time. But at least —”
He glanced at me then poked his finger into my ribs.
“ — at least some men have pistachios enough to try.”
We returned to the dining table. I set down the coffee while Kosmos picked up the debate.
“Where were we?” Kosmos asked.
Prudence, with her ring-covered hand, brushed her long hair back behind her neck.
“We were swirling in the vortex of a vicious disagreement. I was telling you that men seduce women.”
Kosmos slapped his hands against the table.
“And I was saying that you have everything bass ackwards. The women seduce the men!”
“That is a myth,” shouted Prudence, “perpetrated by power-seeking males!”
“Kosmos,” I said, trying to lighten the mood of things. “It looks to me like you’ve met your match.”
Kosmos waved his arm.
“Thoreau,” he replied, “you are always wondering how to keep the fire alive in a relationship. And now I will tell you: ‘When you meet your match, strike her.’ ... That is a matchless metaphor: as you know, I would never hit a woman, even if she hit me first.”
Prudence grabbed her purse and stood up as if to leave.
“Where are you going, my beauty!” Kosmos shouted. “One hour under the spell of my lovemaking, and you will clutch me in your tentacles like an octopus sticking to the rocks!”
“I understand you now!” shrieked Prudence. “You’re the kind of barbarian who thinks a man should never put a foot in the kitchen, and a woman should never get her feet out of the bedroom!”
Kosmos laughed.
“A man like me should spend more time in the kitchen. A woman like you should spend more time in the bedroom. Then you will understand all men, and especially men like me.”
Prudence clenched her fists.
“A woman is more than an animal in heat!”
Kosmos opened his arms.
“A woman is a very hot animal, Prudence. And whenever the animal in a person is denied, that person can never discover life’s higher and deeper things.”
“You are an impossible man!”
“You are an irresistible woman! All evening you flirt with me. And the minute I respond, you react with the innocent behavior calculated to fuel my flames, and to make me desire you one thousand times more! At last, you deny the first stubborn fact of muliebrity — a woman will do anything to snare her man!”
Prudence stamped her foot.
“Flirting with you! Mr. Kosmos that is utterly ridiculous! In what way was I flirting?”
Kosmos leaned forward. The tip of his nose and the nosetip of Prudence were so close together that the wing of a damselfly could not have squeezed between.
“You were flirting in a dozen ways. The way you didn’t look at me. The way you ignored me to stare at Thoreau. The way you laughed at my jokes. The way you tap-tap-tapped your foot under the table. The way your hair slid down your shoulders like a falling dress. The way you ate that cucumber. The way you admired that painting of the satyr. The way you licked your lips when you drank your wine. The way your fingers twirled that slice of carrot. Sometimes a carrot stick is more than just a carrot stick.”
Prudence screamed, stamped her foot, threw a glass, and then exhibited other symptoms of tempestuous behavior that indicated she was having — as the English-speaking Greeks called it — ‘a sheet-feet’. At last, when the emotional tornado untwisted into a full-blown storm, she smushed her dip-covered carrot stick between the two largest wrinkles on her admirer’s furrowed forehead.
“Mister Kosmos. You are a vile man. An odious man. A contemptible man. A despicable man. An abhorrent man. A devious man. A detestable man. A loathsome man. An offensive man. A repulsive man. An abominable man. A nauseating man. And I don’t like you at all!”
The bearded man’s eyes gleamed as he laughed a roaring laugh.
“That explains why it feels so easy to be with you, Prudence. With you, I have no lofty expectations to live up to!”
“Oh!” Prudence shouted. “I am fumigating! ... Mr. Kosmos, you are living proof of the radical feminist credo: ‘From the neck down, all men are animals. And from the neck up, all men are idiots!’”
Kosmos digested this skewed world-view with his typical exasperating calm.
“My dear Prudence, why should a woman hate all men because of what a few bad men have done?”
“Mr. Kosmos, a barrel of rotten apples with a few good seeds in it is still a barrel of rotten apples.”
“Tell the truth,” said Kosmos. “You hate me because I am a man.”
“Never!” shouted Prudence. “I hate men because of men like you.”
Kosmos, who had thoroughly studied Aristotle’s Rhetoric, knew that the effective sales pitch always concluded with a call for action.
“Prudence,” Kosmos pleaded. “Share one night with me. One wild inspired night! You have nothing to lose but your virginity. And you will wake up so inflated with love, that never again will you hate any man, or any human being on this new sweet earth.”
“You are a sex maniac!” Prudence screamed.
“No, dear Prudence,” said Kosmos coolly. “I am not a sex maniac, I am a love maniac. I love beauty, I love women, I love sex. If there were more men like me then the war between the sexes would be over in five minutes, because women and men would surrender in each other’s arms.”
“Oh, what egomania!” Prudence shouted. “Mr. Kosmos, you have a condition known to the medical establishment as satyriasis. I should have known it when I saw that taramosálata phallus. That was an abomination!”
Kosmos laughed. “That was an autobiographical work of art! A thing of beauty to enjoy forever.”
“If you were my husband, Kosmos, I’d give you poison!”
“Prudence, if you were my wife, I’d take it.”
At this repartee, Lady Loverly scurried to the doorway then slipped under the blanket to the cool outside. A slight nod from the head of Kosmos told me to follow. When I found her, Lady Loverly was leaning against a wall of Kosmos’s stone house, laughing like the muse of comedy.
“Aren’t they just wonderful together,” she said, laughing and laughing more.
“The quintessential blind date,” I said, admiring how beautiful she looked as she laughed. “But Beatrice, do you think we should intervene in the battle between Prudence and the Kosmic forces? Or at least try to distract them by talking about some neutral theme.”
She smiled knowingly.
“My dear Mr. Thoreau. It is not just your handsome face and virile body that women are attracted to, it is your simple goodness. If only those lovely eyes of yours could see when a woman and a man want to be alone together.”
The blanket swung back and a shouting Prudence rushed out of the house.
“That absolute idiot! That mindless chauvinist! That heartless Don Juan!”
One moment later, Kosmos burst through the doorway, carrying the tools of the seducer’s trade: in his left hand a flower and a guitar, in his right hand a box of chocolates and a bottle of the finest Cretan wine.
23
Ah, Love, Let Us Be True
The more we live, the more we learn that few things in life are indispensable. But there is one phrase which every tourist and traveler to the land of Greece must learn by heart: “Dhen eena teepota! Dhen eena teepota!” It means, literally: “It’s nothing! It’s nothing!” And whenever a Greek man shouts this phrase to you — when your luggage is late, your hotel room is cold, your bill is incorrect, or his hand is creeping up your thigh — then by a strange admixture of language and culture, you can be positively certain that this two-faced phrase now means: “It’s something, it’s something!”
In the garden, Prudence had sat down underneath a tree with orange blossoms, and Kosmos — shouting “Dhen eena teepota!” — followed her then sat down beside. Near the feuding lovebirds beneath the tree, Irene lay on the grass, a camera in her hand, sleeping deeply like a perfect child.
Lady Loverly touched my arm.
“Mr. Thoreau,” she said. “Shall we butter two bread slices with one knife? If we take Irene back to my hotel room, I can begin her sentimental education, and we can leave Prudence and Kosmos to conclude their quarrel by either reviling each other, or uniting in sexual bliss.”
Lady Loverly ran back into the house to get her purse, while I approached Kosmos to tell him we were leaving with Irene. Prudence and Kosmos — the irresistible object and the immovable farce — were still sitting under the orange tree. Kosmos smiled unconcerned as Prudence swore at him, as Englishwomen do, with a “Bloody!” this and a “Bloody!” that and a “Bloody!” other thing.
But Kosmos was a fire, and anything thrown at the fire — the kindest words, the coldest apathy, or even the most severe abuse — all served to feed the flames. The charismatic man strummed his guitar and chanted in his dreadful imitation of a Britishly-accented voice.
“Your vanity is ridiculous, your conduct an outrage, and your presence in my garden is utterly absurd.”
How could he have known, I wondered — what genre of genius is this? — that this irreverent line, from the great play by Oscar Wilde, would calm the woman down?
“Can you be serious for just a moment, Kosmos?” Prudence said, separating her hair in the middle, and tying it into two pigtails.
Kosmos observed this preening gesture with sparks of fascination glimmering from his delighted eyes.
“I can be serious for a moment, Prudence. But not much longer than that.”
Prudence shook a handful of chubby fingers at him.
“I never meant to say, Kosmos, that your opinions were immoral or obscene. I’m trying to explain that your ideas are irresponsible. If practiced they would lead to unhappiness and anarchy.”
Loudly did the voice of Kosmos laugh.
“More unhappiness and anarchy than we have now?” he said. “I can’t believe that, not at all. Give freedom a chance, dear one, and let’s see if freedom makes the world better or makes the world worse.”
