Thoreau Bound, page 25
The woman stared at my face once again.
“Goddamnit! Life dies, then you’re a bitch! Why didn’t I meet a man like you when I was twenty-one? What fun we would have had together! There’s a man in my life now but he doesn’t know it. Goddamn him, I’ve been sleeping with him more than twenty years and he won’t marry me! And I’m still in love with that garbage-rat! When Cupid shoots a woman with a real love-arrow it never comes out.”
The moonlight lit her face, her naked shoulders, her flabbergasting breasts. I studied the sparkling reflections in this woman’s eyes.
“Tell me something,” I asked. “Did you ever tell the father of your daughter that you were in love with him?”
The woman in my arms laughed.
“You don’t know the secret of being a woman, do you? She may have all the best-looking equipment, but if a woman needs words to tell a man she loves him, then she’s not much of a woman at all.”
The tough-talking woman began to cry. And this surprised me. I had read books about many subjects, about all the mysteries of the universe, about all the ideas that the greatest thinkers had ever dared to dream. Yet never had I discovered any words of wisdom about this one subject: how to respond to a woman’s genuine tears.
I handed her the scarf-gift that Beatrice had given me. After wiping her eyes with that silk cloth, she tied it around her neck.
“Goddamn it! I’m a woman, aren’t I? Why doesn’t anybody ever treat me like a woman? Do you like my boobs?”
“You have lovely boobs,” I said. “You have the best boobs in Greece.”
“They’re all natural, nothing plastic in there. Here, feel them. Then you’ll know if I’m a liar, and you’ll get good luck, too.”
Throughout the whole journey the intoxicated woman talked this way. As quickly as I could walk, I carried her over the dirt streets and through the small alleyways to the haven of Kosmos.
When I arrived outside the doorway, all the lights were lit. The sounds of laughter from one man and many women rang heartily from inside the cheerful house. Still carrying the half-naked woman, I pushed aside the doorway’s blanket and softly stepped inside.
As I watched the faces gathered around the table, I thought: “So many of my days have been lived wandering, alone, or with people who never feel or think about the deeper things in life. But here in this simple house are true friends who I care about, and care about me, and whenever we are together we share the profoundest of all the joys.”
Around the table I saw the friendly heads of Kosmos, Prudence, Beatrice Loverly, Becca her daughter, and Julie, her daughter’s friend. My gaze was drawn to the face of Beatrice: in that moment how perfectly beautiful she looked! How could it be that no painter had ever captured that kind of living beauty, and no painting could move me with even a fragment of that much force? I stared at her radiant face with fascinated reverence, with breathtaking awe. Moments like these — glorious! magical! ripe with ecstasy! — were the moments that the mystics lived for, moments that the greatest poets had sought to feel and then immortalize in words sublime. Yet even the electrifying words of these great poets faded to nothing beside real beauty in the flesh.
Kosmos filled everyone’s glasses with tea or apple cider, then passed around a plate of cakes.
“Tell me, Beatrice,” he said. “How did it go with Irene’s first lesson in ars amore, the art of love?”
Lady Loverly answered with a beaming smile.
“It went smashingly, Kosmos. I told her: ‘Irene, babies are made this way. The man inserts his penis into the woman’s vagina.’ ... Irene sat silently, then her face lit up with astonishment, and then she shouted — tell us what you said, Irene dear.”
Irene stood up and told us “I said: ‘Ewwwww! I’m not going to do it that way! Do you have to do it that way!’”
Everyone laughed, including the delighted Irene, who — dressed in white shorts and a white peasant shirt — was kissed on the cheek then hugged with one arm by Lady Loverly, her compassionate mentor.
“So you see, Kosmos,” Beatrice said, “at that point I realized that it would be best to proceed with these lessons slowly. Very slowly. Because it’s not too little knowledge which is the dangerous thing, it’s too much knowledge too quickly that confuses us, and makes us disoriented, hurried, forgetful and afraid.”
With her left hand that bore a silver ring, Beatrice brushed her hair from her eyes.
“And after we talked a little more about the theory of sexual activity, then we — Julie, Becca, Irene and I — began chatting about the practice. We were all perishing with curiosity to find out what was happening or not happening between you and Prudence! We knew that underneath those accountant’s glasses there was a tigress waiting to devour some lucky man — and we wondered if that lucky man could manage her! And the four of us women missed the company of Mr. Thoreau so much, so very much, that we decided to come back and visit your happy house.”
“This is so much fun, Mother!” shouted Becca. “I can’t wait until he sees the pomegranates!”
“Mr. Kosmos,” asked Julie. “When do you think Thoreau will be coming back?”
The question fell unheard. Still laughing from the story about Irene, Kosmos called her “papaki” — duckling —as he kissed her forehead. He looked tenderly into her luminous eyes, and together they laughed more.
Suddenly he sensed that more warm bodies filled his house, and as he looked up at his doorway he met my gaze with his smiling eyes. But the instant he saw the woman in my arms his face dropped in the middle of a laugh. There ensued a brief fierce battle inside his colossal heart. When the battle had finished, general Kosmos had been demoted to a private; and although he had lost his warm cheer he quickly recovered his cool poise.
“Thoreau, my boy!” Kosmos yelled. And the table of women turned their heads and shouted joyous welcomings. The three youngest women — Julie, Becca, Irene — ran to me and kissed my cheek. They explained how they had found a grocer who opened his store at night, just so they could bring me four baskets filled with a hundred pomegranates, symbols of love and desire.
In his scheming brain, Kosmos had already worked out how he would save the evening from catastrophe. He had envisioned three different scenarios; at last he decided that he would bring into light all the darkest imaginings that lurked in the women’s minds. Tell the truth and keep skating. And this plan seemed to his mind the best.
“Zeus and his thousand consorts, Thoreau! What the hell happened to you? You smell like fifty-cent wine, your hair’s meshed with a wilted flower, your chest is scratched, your torso’s smeared with lipstick, your legs dripping with wet sand. You look like the last man on Earth, lost at sea, shipwrecked on an island, just escaped from the foreplayground of a hundred savage Amazons.”
The women around the table laughed, and Kosmos continued his narration.
“And you’ve brought us a present named Penelope, may the gods have pity and protect me from her smiles and guiles and wiles! If Shakespeare had known her, then that shrew Katharina would have tamed her husband Petruchio, and walked him through the Padua dogpark on a very short leash.”
Penelope started to say something but Kosmos jumped in.
“In Crete we have a saying: The cup drinks the first wine; the second wine you drink; and the third wine drinks you. How many have you had, Penelope?”
“I lost count after the fourth,” she said.
The face of Prudence looked mesmerized, as if she’d been reading a mystery novel and had just now reached the chilling denouement. Prudence stood up, slapped her hands onto her hips, then addressed Kosmos in a sweetly irritated voice.
“Kosmos, love,” she said, glaring at Penelope. “Do you know this woman?”
Kosmos calmly replied.
“Of course I know this woman, Prudence,” he said. “I am a man, and this woman is known by all the men in Dembacchae, and half the men in Crete. Her name is Penelope and she is the mother of my daughter. For the past twenty years, we have spent every Friday night together: what man could resist a woman with a body like that? And then on Saturday mornings we talk, and I read to her from the best books. At noon she goes home, and on Saturday nights she gets drunk and makes herself wild like this. On Sundays and for the rest of the week she is a hard-working woman, and as perfect a mother to my daughter as any man could ever dream for.”
Prudence crossed her arms and tapped her foot against the floor. Kosmos placed his right hand over the left side of his chest.
“Dear Prudence, listen with both ears and you’ll hear the truth. I know what you’re wondering. I swear on all my books that Penelope to me is like a sister. You think, everyone here thinks, that Kosmos has a nice disposition? Whenever I’m in the same room as Penelope, just count to five-Thessaloniki — and then I turn into a monster, and we’re fighting like Turkey and Greece. I would rather live with one hundred Xantippes than one Penelope! So you see, Prudence, one day Penelope and I put our brains together, and we agreed on an ingenious compromise. Unless one of us cancels the rendezvous in advance, we stay together Friday nights and Saturday mornings, and then we part at noon. And let me tell you, that’s more than enough time! Any longer than that and we’d be murdering each other like tragic heroes in Sophocles.”
Kosmos, studying the skeptical face of Prudence, gleaned that his two lovers could not be peaceably together in the same place.
“Let’s get Penelope a tall mug of coffee,” he said. “We’ll sober her up, then send her home for a good night’s rest.”
Lady Loverly looked hot as the chowder and cool as the New England clam.
“Puck is here,” she said, “that merry wanderer of the night! Mr. Thoreau, why don’t you and your new friend sit down here and drink something hot or cold with us?”
I had been so astonished to see Beatrice here that I forgot to explain how and why I’d come to be holding half-naked Penelope so intimately inside my arms. But how to explain it and be believed? There was the rub.
Lady Loverly spoke again.
“You’ll be pleased to learn that we’ve been making splendid progress with Irene’s sexual education. And we have been curious about your own, this evening, Mr. Thoreau. Would you like to tell us about it?”
I let go of Penelope and when she stood up on wobbly legs she nodded her head at me then pointed her finger at Lady Loverly.
“You nosy bitch!” shouted Penelope. “Adam and me have been rolling in the sand together!”
She tried to kiss my mouth, but gently I pushed her body back from mine. Penelope gripped my shoulder.
“And he liked me so much he paid me by giving me this.”
The drunkenly loose-tongued woman raised Lady Loverly’s scarf then twirled it in her hand around and around and around.
Beatrice stood up. Even wearing a humble T-shirt she looked ravishing. The words on her T-shirt caught my eyes:
‘Stare at my breasts ecologically —
Enjoy the view, but leave the landscape untouched.’
Lady Loverly was not afraid of truth. As she told me what she was thinking, her words were spoken in a cheerful tone and an ever-present smile.
“Ah, so now we know your modus operandi, Mr. Odizziness Thoreau. To seduce a woman you make up a name and then you get her drunk. Or should we call you Adam, the first man, a tortured man because for less than twenty-four hours he knew paradise then lost it when he acted like a fool?”
Books about nature will explain that, on a dark night, if you shine a bright light into the eyes of a rabbit, that rabbit will be stunned, unable to run away. The thorough disorientation keeps him frozen motionless on the same spot. ... Mystified by Beatrice’s beauty, dumbfounded by the tall tales Penelope had told about me, and confused about the meaning of Lady Loverly’s cool response — why hadn’t she reacted jealously? — I was now too overwhelmed to speak. Love was the light that made me mute.
Penelope had no trouble dispelling the solemn silence that poisoned the evening air. She glanced at Lady Loverly then back to me.
“Is that your girlfriend?” Penelope asked.
“Not yet,” I murmured. “And the chances are diminishing very fast.”
“She’s too good for you!” Penelope said. “She’s a lady. If she wasn’t a lady she would have pulled all my hair out by now and I’d be bald. That wouldn’t be the first time I was bald by a lady. But for your girlfriend, Adam, you don’t need a lady. You need a woman of the earth like me. Hey, baby, tell my good friend Kosmos about the purro that will make him purr.”
My bone-deep sincerity pulled me straight down into the trap.
“Penelope wanted to thank me so she gave me a purro, and she said that she wanted to give one to you too, Kosmos.”
Kosmos picked up a cigar-sized burning candle. Using broad gestures, he placed the candle into then out of his mouth like a cigar. Thus, dramatically, he explained to my awestruck eyes that a purro, in the beautiful language of the Greeks, was a slang word for what tenderer mouths have called ‘fellatio.’
I reached into my waistband to show the real cigar. But there was no cigar, it had fallen long ago onto the Dembacchae streets.
Lady Loverly looked tranquil and composed as a sonnet about enduring love.
“Isn’t this all something out of a book by D.H. Lawrence?” she said, smiling. “Kosmos, will you pass me some of that honey-walnut baklava? A large helping, please. There’s no longer any need to count calories and watch my figure.”
Penelope flung her arms around my neck.
“I have my dessert right here!” she said. Before I could squirm away she kissed my cheek.
“Adam, are you one of those cunt-teasers? You’ve kissed me, now you have to go to bed with me again. Make it as good as the last time! Give me a thousand organisms!”
Beatrice looked deep and furious into my eyes.
“Isn’t it wonderful, in this advanced era of the Twenty-first Century, that all of us are all such psychosexually liberated human beings! We can sit here and eat cake and watch imperturbably — without getting the least bit upset — as an inebriated vamp throws her body shamelessly at the man we hoped we would be fortunate enough to throw our bodies at! You see, Becca, Julie, and Irene, how every moment in our lives is an opportunity for learning. And note well, young ladies, that even an educated woman can grasp valuable lessons from a woman with far less education and good breeding.”
Penelope, again, pecked a kiss against my reluctant cheek.
“I’m all for good breeding!” she shouted.
Slowly, Beatrice sipped her tea.
“Young ladies, would you leave us alone for a few minutes. I have something very private to discuss with the very public Mister Thoreau. You may first say goodnight to your knight in tarnished armor.”
Immediately, Becca, Julie, and Irene jumped out of their seats. They yelled “Goodnight, Thoreau! See you tomorrow! We’ll dream about you!” and then they dashed through the doorway with blushes on their faces and giggles on their lips.
Beatrice placed her teacup on the table then walked slowly across the room until she faced my face. From Penelope’s hand she snatched the silk scarf. She took a deep breath, she tied the scarf around my neck, she slapped me sharply on the left cheek. Wonderfully did her eyes flash.
“Mister Thoreau!” she cried out. “I’m so angry at you I could slap you!”
“Beatrice,” I said. “Give me just five minutes to explain.”
“You made me believe that you cared about me!” she shouted.
“Beatrice,” I said.
“You gazed into my eyes and shared my dreams!”
“Beatrice, let’s — ”
“I hate you!” shouted the woman.
“Bea!”
“I never want to see you again. Never! Never! Never!”
And as soon as she cried that final word — the word we often say and rarely mean — Beatrice vanished through the doorway like a fierce wind.
In a moment her daughter Becca came back, eyes reddened and wet with tears.
“You broke my mother’s heart!” shouted Becca. And she slapped me across the cheek.
Then in walked Julie, also teary-eyed.
“You broke my best friend’s mother’s heart!” she shouted as she slapped.
And at last in walked Irene, whose tears had fallen so copiously that they had soaked her blouse.
“You broke my Aunt Bea’s heart!” she said.
But when she reached up to slap me her hand changed its mind, and instead of hitting me she sighed and sobbed then turned and ran beneath the blanket and out into the night.
Hurricane Penelope had yet not finished wreaking blusters of destruction on the shores of her washed-up men. Penelope turned her Medusan gaze to Kosmos and then, swaying her hips, walked to the table where Kosmos was now sitting beside Prudence. She jumped onto his lap, flung her arms around his neck then kissed his lips.
“You singing goat-turd,” she began. “For twenty years I’ve been stupid enough to be in love with you! You’re the father of my daughter, and every week I wash your goddamn clothes and socks. Marry me and I’ll make an honest man out of you!”
Kosmos held her affectionately but shook his head.
“Us, married!” he shouted. “Penelope, you know that we fight too much. And here is something you may not know: legally I cannot marry you. I am married already. In Athens I have two wives.”
Penelope, thoroughly unruffled, rose from the lap of Kosmos, and then walked toward the kitchen to get a cup of strong Greek coffee. Prudence stood up, screamed like a wild bird, then ran to the bedroom to gather up her clothes. Kosmos let out a groan toasted with disappointment and buttered with grief.
“Thoreau, tell me something. Why does a little iota of truth get so many people so pissed off? Why is it so dangerous to speak your mind? In every culture we find proverbs such as: ‘Tell the truth with one foot in the stirrup!’ and ‘Tell the truth in the form of a joke!’”
Kosmos pointed his head toward the bedroom then shouted to Prudence in a warm but tired voice.
“Prudence, dhen eena teepota: it’s nothing! No problem! Don’t make Othello’s blunder and ruin a good relationship from unfounded jealousy based on faulty facts. If you had asked me if I were married, I would have told you, but you never asked.”
