Thoreau Bound, page 24
“Beatrice,” I said. “I’m not very good at saying goodnights or goodbyes.”
“Then I’ll teach you, Thoreau. First, you place your hands on my shoulders and say ‘Dear Beatrice, with your hair unleashed you look so beautiful I can’t resist kissing you goodnight. To do otherwise would deny your loveliness.’ And then you step closer to me, and let yourself fall forward towards my lips. But just as you’re about to kiss me, I place my hands in front of me and stop you. Like a proper Englishwoman, I gently but firmly push you away. I remind you that I’m a married woman, older than you by six years. Then, as we shake hands with the epitome of chilled politeness, we say goodnight.”
To the letter, I followed the instructions and I spoke the words. But when I leaned towards her, instead of pushing me away, Lady Loverly let me fall forward and my lips touched ever-so lightly against her lips.
“Don’t you ever dare kiss me like that!” shouted Lady Loverly.
Then the woman wrapped her arms around my neck and whispered:
“Kiss me like this!”
Beatrice pressed her body against my body, crushed her lips against my lips, then kissed me slowly, sensually, with feverish passion and rapturous tenderness. She rubbed her breasts against my chest, then gently chewed my lip, then stepped back and pushed opened her door.
“I hope that the next time we meet, Mr. Thoreau,” she said, with a winsome smile, “you will do a much better job of controlling your impetuous passion.”
She placed her hand over her heart and aimed her dark-eyed glance into my eyes.
“Odysseus, will you play with me tomorrow?” she asked.
“We can — ”
“Play whatever I want to play!”
“We can take a walk tomorrow night, Beatrice.”
“I love to hear you say my name.”
“Beatrice.”
“Love?”
“Kaleeneekta, Beatrice. Goodnight.”
Before she disappeared behind the door, Beatrice raised my hand to her lips, nipped it with her teeth, blessed my fingers with three kisses, then said goodnight with a wildly tender glance from her enticing eyes.
The moon shined bright as I walked back along the sandy beach. The thrilling sounds of night were lost beneath a blaring introspection.
“What is right? ... How could I hurt another man, by making love with his sacred wife? ... It could destroy the relationship. It could wipe out years of commitment, burning those years into ashes of bitter regrets. I’ve always been amazed how other people, how other women mostly, forgive their husbands for these betrayals of trust.”
I lay down on the sand, looked up at the sky, listened to the stirring sounds all-trembling in the night. My lips still burned with the forbidden kiss.
“But suppose Lady Loverly’s husband doesn’t love her anymore? And suppose he has a dozen other women and a closetful of clandestine affairs? Then should the woman-wife do the same? Of course she should. ... But even if her husband doesn’t betray, even if he’s perfect — why should I deprive this woman of her happiness with me? Is real happiness a common thing in this brief life, so common that a man can close his eyes and let it go? What man is rich enough for that? ... ”
Many footsteps later, carrying the bag of food from Lady Loverly, I returned to the garden of Kosmos and nearly walked into the body of Prudence. Naked as a nymph — her long brown hair flowing behind her, her face aglow, her wild laughter ringing through the night — Prudence chased Kosmos across the garden grass. Not Prudence the prude: this was a new woman, a woman reborn, transformed by three great ecstasies: laughter, lust, and love.
Kosmos, too, looked like a different man. Naked and laughing, his round white belly and his large untanned buttocks shined under the moonlight like three more moons. He too, transformed by happiness, had grown young again through the kosmic dance of love. Now and again the man would stop moving to let the woman catch him and embrace him. The upcoming lovers would hug, then kiss, then sing to each other, then whisper secret things, then begin again the game of running and chasing and laughing through this sweetest night.
Once more my eyes turned to the night sky, glad to see the winking stars. After watching these stars I walked into Kosmos’s library, made a pillow by stuffing clothes into my pillow case, then lay down on the floor amidst the books. Screams of joy and laughter, ringing from the garden, made me smile.
Seekers and dreamers, never despair, clues to life’s secrets are everywhere. The classic books, all the lovely landscapes and living things, and the great stars forever in the sky at night. And wild men like Kosmos who love life so much, they dare to follow their deepest voice. And glorious women like Beatrice and Prudence, who teach us foolish men by offering us everything — their bodies, their minds, their hearts all flowingover with the radiance of love.
Men, poor men! How dense we are! ... Why can’t we learn from women — each day anew! — to see, to touch, to feel, to understand?
24
No Man Can Serve Two Mistresses
“The night, October wildness, moon like a lemon pie, lovers’ laughter spreading a daffiness wail over the immortal nakedness of geese. Many are the joys of this world — women, women with fruit, women with ideas. But to slide your feet into new sneakers, lacing them up and murmuring the number of each eyelet, is to my mind the joy most apt to transport the body of man into paradise.”
It was just one hour before midnight when I woke up, dreaming of a memorable passage by Kazantzakis. I counted the eleven dongs from a nearby church steeple; I tried not to listen to the raucous mirth bellowing from the bedroom beside. I lit a candle, then unwrapped the gift that Lady Loverly had given earlier this evening. The gift was a new pair of sneakers and a new pair of socks: they fit perfectly, they felt marvelous, they inspired me to daring feats.
During the hour while I had slept, my erotic dilemma was solved unconsciously. Nature conquered conscience once again. I grasped that I had nothing to give Beatrice Loverly except my whole self, my laughter, my fiery love. Now I knew what needed to be done. I would get up immediately, walk across the beach to the hotel, knock on Beatrice’s door, then ask if I had correctly interpreted her subtle hints that she wanted me to share her bed. If she said yes, then I would give her a night she would never in a hundred years forget.
Would she say ‘Yes!’ ? Perhaps I had mistranslated the language of the heart: the woman’s eyes, her smiles, her touches, her voice’s tenderness. For each woman is unique: some women flirt with men who mean less than nothing to them, and other women hide their feelings from men they passionately love. And the only way to find out how she felt about me would be to quit playing games and simply ask.
The walls of Cretan homes were thin, and the singing voice of Kosmos scratched the night.
“Have some more krassi, m’lassie ...”
The lassie laughed and kissed Kosmos like a plunger in a toilet bowl.
“Shhhh!” Prudence loudly whispered, giggling between the words of the reprimand. “Be quiet, Kosmos, you’ll wake Thoreau.”
I had known many love-filled nights where quiet was required, and many nights where we could scream and freely shout. And I loved more the nights when man and woman played with shoutings and with screams.
“I’m awake, you lovebirds,” I said. “Don’t worry about making noise. Kosmos, I’m going for a walk. If things don’t work out, I’ll drown my sorrows with a swim, come back in a couple of hours, then sleep on the grass outside.”
Kosmos shouted back and his voice rang with humor and good cheer.
“Where could you be going at this time of night, Thoreau?”
His laugh was like a roar, and as he tickled Prudence, she laughed as well.
“Say hello to Beatrice from us. And if you need some love lessons, come and watch us for a while, and learn how the heir of Zeus makes love to the most beautiful woman on Earth!”
I heard the sounds of another plunging kiss, more loud whispers, then the lust-drunk voice of Kosmos calling to me again.
“Thoreau! Whatever time you get back, we’ll still be going at it!” Kosmos shouted. “And I’ll be ten years younger when you return!”
I threw on a sweatshirt and a pair of shorts. Mere moments later, Kosmos was snoring — snoring like an old goat bleating — and poor Prudence lay swearing at him, and then shouting: “Kosmos, wake up! We’ve just started! You promised me a hundred orgasms! Wake up, Kosmos! Wake up!”
I grabbed the scarf gift from Beatrice, tied it around my right wrist, then stepped outside to the quiet of the cooling night.
Excitedly I walked along the town’s dirt streets. Dogs barked in the distance, cicadas chirped nearby, dark clouds wrapped a veil around the feminine face of the moon. The thrill of going to the woman you adore! All I could think about was the woman, touching the woman, how she would first be shy and enchanting, how her eyes would tell me how much she loved me and desired me, how quickly we would leap the wall between friendship and intimacy, how she would then laugh and grow bolder, and then at last be lost to me completely, carried away — again! again! again! again! — by undulating waves of pleasure we would receive and give.
My newly-sneakered feet carried me to the end of the road and the beginning of the sandy beach. The barking of the dogs grew louder here. This was the double-edged freedom of country living: no police to harass you, and no police to protect you. Calmly and quickly I prepared for the unseen beasts. I pulled off my sweatshirt then wrapped it into a ball in my left fist. The dogs barked again — louder, nearer, more savagely. Then the owner’s whistle came, the danger ended, the barks grew fainter and the dogs ran home.
I walked along the sand thinking about Beatrice. The night wanted to be peaceful, but soon it was startled by a reek of perfume and the sultry voice of a woman in distress. When I looked up in the direction of the voice I saw a scene from a myth or a fairy tale.
Between the sea foam and the sea sand a woman was walking — not walking, staggering — along the water’s edge. Her right hand carried a wine bottle and her left hand held a flower on a long stem. No blouse concealed the plentiful treasures on her chest, and a splash of moonshine gleamed across her sweetly swaying breasts. From the waist down she was covered with gaudy golden pants, pants so tight they looked like they’d been sprayed on to her legs. Her long red hair, wet from the seawater, stretched down to the sacred temple beneath her curvaceous hips. From the back she resembled an Aphrodite being born from a seashell; or a sea-nymph praying for the new dawn; or a virgin mermaid searching for her two-legged lover on the land. But viewed from the front the lines on her face, like the rings inside a tree trunk, showed her age to be just a footstep over the hill of forty. Had she been younger she would have been a ravishing beauty; even now, even older, even drunk — even after whatever hard life had brought her here — she remained well-built, good-looking, provocatively brash, and as sexy as sexy could be.
The woman walked in the knee-high water and sang a medley of motley song lines in a strangely seductive voice.
“Get me to the church ... s’agapo ... j’taime ... buy you a mockin’ bird ... get me to the goddamn church on time!”
She stopped walking, teetered, tittered, shouted at the tattered man.
“Is that you, Ligeia?”
I stepped just close enough to the woman to smell the breath on her wine.
“My name is Thoreau. And your name, sea goddess?”
The woman shook her head. Still clutching bottle and flower, she held up the bottoms of her breasts.
“Goddess my assidopolis! Call me Siren. If you get too close to me I’ll eat you, I’ll beat you, I’ll dash your ship against my rocks!”
She drank a gulp from the wine bottle then stared at me curiously.
“Every man who sees me wants to fuck me. Are you a man?”
She staggered two steps towards me then lost her balance as she reached out to grab my arm. I caught hold of her before she fell.
“I’m a man. And I’m in love with a wonderful woman.”
The siren nodded.
“I’m in love, too. That son of a bitch!”
She tied strands of my hair around the long stem of her flower.
“That’s for you for being nice to me tonight.”
With Mediterranean passion she kissed my lips.
“And that’s for when you saved my sponge.”
Ah! From the Dembacchae tavern, this lusty siren was the cleaning maid!
“You look cold,” I said. “Put this on.”
She took my sweatshirt, but instead of putting it over her chest she tied it around her waist.
“When your ass is cold, your whole body is cold,” she said. Then she placed her right hand on my shoulder as her left hand patted my cheek.
“You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I have a grown daughter. She is eighteen years young. She is so good and so beautiful, and I love her more than I love myself.”
Having had very little experience with intoxicated women, I could think of nothing better to do than to ask a practical question.
“Is her father helping you to support her?”
She stuck her nose against my nose then patted my shoulder as she spoke.
“That son of a mongrel, he can barely support himself and all his onenight friends! He can go to hell, and then all the deceiving men in the world can follow him straight down! Except you. You’re too handsome and too nice. You stay here in the land of the living and take care of all the lonely women. Why don’t you kiss me? I bet you won’t kiss me because I’m drunk.”
I listened to her with my whole heart, and each moment I looked at her and listened, the woman seemed to grow younger and more attractive.
“If I drown, they’ll all be sorry,” she said. “Instead of wishing they were screwing me they’ll have nothing to do all day but jingle their worry beads and beat their souvlakis. You know what? If a man like you would really kiss me then maybe I wouldn’t need to drink anymore. Did you ever think of that?”
She wiped her hair from her face then looked at me up, down and up again.
“Hera and Zeus, you’re good-looking! I won’t be around forever, you know: I’m almost twenty-nine. Make a pass at me already. What are you waiting for, Easter? You can hide your eggs in my basket anytime. Why don’t you try to kiss me? Either I’ll turn into a princess, or you’ll turn into a frog.”
I kissed her forehead and the woman laughed.
“Don’t think I’m going to kiss you just because I let you fuck me. You know that the man I’m in love with, the father of my girl, thinks I’m good enough to sleep with once a week, but not good enough to marry.”
The free-spirited woman fell into the water onto her knees. When she stood up she announced “I’m going for a swim,” then right away fell down again.
I knelt down, raised her up, then lifted her in my outstretched arms.
“Listen, mermaid,” I said. “In my country we have a saying: ‘Friends don’t let friends dive drunk.’ ... I know someone who can help you and I’m taking you to his house. Kosmos is his name. He’ll give you a good meal, let you sleep on his couch, listen to your troubles then make you laugh when he narrates the troubles of his own. Whether you like him or hate him for it, he’ll tell you what you need to hear. And whatever is bothering you, he’ll help you to fix it and make it better. Trust me for a while, will you?”
The woman laughed, then beat my backside with the wine bottle. With sharp fingernails she scratched my chest — not quite deep enough to make me bleed — then threw her arms around my neck. She seemed calmed by the sense in my words, the sincerity in my voice, the strength in my supporting arms. Carrying her relaxed body, I walked out of the shallow water onto the dry sand.
She pressed her chest against my chest.
“Hey, Heracles, you want good luck? Rub my boobs and you’ll get good luck! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”
I walked on with the woman in my arms. Her honesty made me smile, her sensuality made me wonder, her earthy vitality made me laugh out loud.
“Here,” she said, waving the bottle before my lips. “I’m going to call you Adam because you look like that painting by Angelomichael. Adam, have a drink. It’s on me.”
I shook my head and told her, “I don’t drink.”
She poured the last ounces of wine onto my head then rubbed my hair.
“The drink was on me, and now the drink is on you. Hey, listen, I like you. I mean it. You’re not like the other pigdogs who think they’re men. You care about me. I know what I can do for you. This is the way a woman says thanks to a man. You like purro?”
Purro, I slowly remembered, is the Greek word for cigar. I shook my head.
“I don’t smoke.”
A spree of resounding laughter burst from the woman’s wine-soaked lips. Reaching into the pocket of her glimmering pants, she pulled out a cigar then stuffed it into the waistband of my shorts.
“Here’s one for you, and when we get to your friend’s house tell him I want to give him one, too.”
Her wine-soaked tongue licked the inside of my right ear.
“You don’t like the drink, you don’t like the smoke. But you like the women, yes?”
“I like all women and I’m in love with one of them.”
“Does she love you?” the woman asked.
“I don’t know.”
Playfully she slapped my cheek.
“You don’t know! Why you don’t know? There’s one way to find out: Make her jealous! Put some lipstick on your collar — where is your damn collar? ... Oh, it’s around my waist.”
My chest — like the cupboard of the old woman in the nursery rhyme — was completely bare. With lipsticked lips as red as raspberries, the woman kissed me ten times on my neck and cheek and chest.
“There! If she sees you with another woman and she stays calm, then you know she doesn’t give a fig about you, she’s glad to get rid of you. But if she gets mad, then she’s yours. The madder she gets, the more she loves you.”
