Thoreau Bound, page 31
“J is for the Jerk in all your guises
A for Athens summons you: ‘Appear!’
IL is for ILlegal enterprises
BI is for the BIgamy, oh dear! (oh dear!)
R is for Rejecting your appeal, unheard,
D is for the Demijohns of tears
Put them all together they spell JAILBIRD
The only bird you’ll see for twenty years!
— Ten for each wife ... —
The lonely bird you’ll be for twenty years!”
Yelling “Bravo! Bravo!”, Kosmos applauded then reached into his pocket to find some coins. But a furious Penelope, swinging a corn broom, swore at the messengers then chased them out of the yard. Then she took Irene’s hand, and mother and daughter scurried toward the kitchen inside the house.
Kosmos’s gaze followed their bouncing bodies with the smile of an artist studying a masterpiece. He asked to see my wisdom-book; and after I retrieved it Kosmos began to read aloud the quintessence of my literary studies, the most interesting passages from the greatest authors, heroes, artists, philosophers.
“Do you know why we need books, Thoreau? Books remind us to be ourselves: to be fearless, to be noble, to live on fire. A simple idea, but without it we can’t be happy, we can’t do anything worth doing. It’s strange, isn’t it, how often we forget the most important things.”
The soul of Kosmos was a Spring of joy. At times, the plights of friends or strangers could stop it up for a few minutes, but the joy always burst through and ever stronger than before. He closed the book, kissed its cover, then spoke aloud, as much to himself as to me.
“Why are we sitting out here gabbing and farting like a couple of tired old men? Is this really my last night in Crete for the next twenty years? Come on then, wake up, Kosmos! Wake up, Thoreau! Contact, contact, touch, touch, touch! Bust out of your selfish shells and connect with the people in front of your eyes! ... I don’t need a chubby little baby with wings to shoot love-arrows at innocent women: my whole body is a love-arrow. And everyone I touch feels warm, then laughs with me and falls a little more in love with life!”
He rushed though his blanketed doorway and made the women laugh when, supercharged with ardor, he waved his arms and shouted the inspired words of Maurice Maeterlinck.
“If you knew that you would die tonight, or merely that you would have to go away and never return, would you, looking on women and things for the last time, see them in the same light that you have previously seen them? Or would you love now as you never yet have loved? ... Eh, eh? ... Or would you love now as you never yet have loved!”
Kosmos hugged the back of Penelope, and the woman — so moved! — turned around to face him and wiped tears from the cheeks beneath her sparkling eyes.
“How can we get any cooking done?” she said, laughing as she cried.
The man’s hands kneaded the top of her shoulders then creeped down to the woman’s chest.
“Penelope, did I ever tell you how divine you look when you’re sleeping and the first gold rays of Saturday morning sunshine light your face? And did you know that in the evenings, when the candlelight flickers and you’re talking to me, I don’t hear anything you’re saying because all I can think about is how beautiful you are?”
As a blind man feeling a beloved face, his hands caressed her generous breasts.
“Thoreau, my boy!” he shouted. “Don’t waste that magnificent voice of yours: sing something! Sing something suitable for this eternal moment which will never come again! Sing us a story about how it happens that unenlightened men want to make war against the whole world, but the beauty of women turns them into love-slaves, changes their battle-plans, and saves their foolish lives.”
With my body being undressed and massaged sensually by the warm hands of Irene, I could not concentrate on the task of composing something original. Instead, I barely managed to remember two stanzas from Byron’s unfinished satiric poem, Don Juan. I chanted the passages exuberantly, with all my histrionic power.
“Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade —
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.”
“A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth and love,
And beauty, all concentrating like rays
Into one focus, kindled from above;
Where heart, and soul, and sense in concert move,
And the blood’s lava, and the pulse a blaze,
Each kiss a heart-quake, — for a kiss’s strength,
I think it must be reckon’d by its length.”
Kosmos gently kissed his woman and Penelope responded by pressing a long hot kiss against the man’s flattering lips.
“Zeus and Hera!” shouted Kosmos. “That kiss could melt an iceberg!”
He stroked her hair.
“Penelope,” Kosmos said, his eyes smiling into her smiling eyes. “Did I ever tell you how, because I can see the present so clearly, I can foresee the future?”
After a nod and a gesture from Penelope, Irene remembered to run into the bathroom and arrange to protect herself from pregnancy. Penelope slid her hands down her man’s body then expertly removed his pants. Hoarse with desire for the woman, Kosmos could barely murmur to his friend: “Sing us our future, Thoreau. Sing!”
And just before Irene returned and laid her naked body over mine, I chanted a prognosticating song.
“The four lovers forgot the food:
A feast of lovemaking ensued.
Even the gods, with all their might,
Envied the mortals’ long sweet night.
“Soon after the envy the gods unleash their wrath!
Voyeurs and destroyers of all who cross their path.
Now we must fight these gods who meddle from the mist —
For nights with you and perfect love like this!”
I woke up to the sizzle and the smell of pancakes in a frying pan. Time in the mind had completely disappeared. Outside, a crow cawed, and the morning skies seemed unable to decide whether to rise forward to the lightening dawn, or rush back to the darkness of the night. Inside, the living room glowed with warm candlelight, and the timeless peace that only women bring. Irene lay sleeping in my strong arms. Forty, fifty, sixty times she had climbed the screaming peaks of ecstasy. Through the night she had chirped like a parakeet, cooed like a dove, swore like a parrot, gobbled like a turkey, moaned like an owl, warbled like a nightingale. Now her fine lips smiled like the canary who just swallowed the cat.
Penelope set the table with four plates and four cloth napkins as she tried to recall on which side of the plate she should place the spoons and knives, and which side gets the forks.
Meanwhile, Kosmos, standing near the wrapped-together bodies of me and Irene, had been sketching our pictures on a white drawing pad. When I asked to see the steamy scenes, Kosmos explained that it was not yet ready. Penelope interrupted by asking me to carry the half-asleep Irene to her dining-room chair. Around the table our hearts were one as we looked at one another and joined hands.
With his left hand Kosmos squeezed Penelope’s hand, and his right hand gently held Irene’s.
“It is fashionable in books these days,” he began, “to be cynical about love, ironic about life, skeptical about even the faintest possibility of happiness. The miserable intellectuals — who get paid to think and write, which is why they do both so badly — say that every man is alienated, families are always in conflict, and the dining table is the bloody battleground. How much nonsense is written in the modern books! For thousands of years even the humblest peasants on Crete have known this: There is no greater joy than to gather with your family for a meal.”
Sleepy-eyed Irene climbed onto my lap, called me her ‘beautiful baby’, then fed me as if I were one. Penelope jumped onto the lap of the man she admired and loved.
“Here, my god of garbage,” she said to Kosmos. “Try a bit of this and a bite of that.”
Kosmos tasted the samples then smiled with great delight.
“What do you call this food for men favored by the goddesses?” he asked.
“Greek love-pancakes,” answered Penelope. “Oozing inside with figs and walnuts and feta cheese.”
“And this miracle of taste?” said Kosmos.
“That’s popeyed salad,” she replied. “Spinach and sweet peas in olive oil.”
Kosmos licked his lips.
“For Thoreau, fill up an urn, and for me, a whole barrel! Penelope, I didn’t know that you could cook like this!”
She pinched his ruddy cheek.
“There are lots of things about me that you do not know.”
She giggled like a fairy hiding in the woods.
“Here,” she said. “Have more.”
The temptress waved a large plate of the food near his face, but when he leaned forward to bite it, she pulled it away from his mouth then laughed and laughed. Penelope melted in his arms, kissed him lasciviously, and then whispered: “One more time, lover, just one more time! Take the food later and take me now.”
Poor Kosmos! Worn out from his earlier fiasco with the maid Ligeia and his delightfully-sleepless night with Penelope, the ravenous man wanted to eat a large meal, immediately and undisturbed.
“Penelope,” he said, beginning to lose his humor and his calm. “I am not named Tantalus, I am Kosmos. In the last twenty-four hours I have satisfied two insatiable women. And right now I am very very hungry.”
Still straddling his lap with her naked thighs she teased him again with the receding food. Instead of the pancakes she fed him her succulent lips.
“Penelope,” he said, shaking his head. “There are a few times in a man’s life — maybe twice every fifty-five years — when he would rather eat than make love with a woman like you. Did you hear those six bells? If we eat now, we can have another hour this morning to worship Aphrodite by playing her favorite games.”
Penelope stood up then grabbed his beard like a kitchen sponge.
“It’s our last morning together!” she cried out. “You want food more than me? Here, Casserolenova! Eat this!”
She smushed a chunk of feta cheese onto his face, then decorated the hair on his chest with the oily trimmings of spinach and peas.
“Penelope,” he pleaded. “Why should you get mad at me for saying what I think? Will that encourage honesty in our relationship?”
Tears in her eyes, Penelope stood up then thrust her hands against her shapely hips unclad.
“You remind me of that donkey in the Greek fable. He jumped up on top of a rock and started braying: ‘I’m an ass! I’m an ass!’ He told the truth, it’s true, but that didn’t turn him into a stallion! He was still an ass, no matter how much he admitted to the truth. ... Do you know what your problem is, my dear Kosmos? You believe that honesty excuses everything!”
Kosmos filled his plate with piles of popeyed salad and Greek pancakes.
“But we must have honesty, my dear Penelope, or we have nothing at all. Let’s see how a real man holds up under the heavy hammer of truth.”
Stuffing his mouth with food, Kosmos turned his face toward me.
“Thoreau, last night — after many hours of intimate activities too wild to be imagined and too glorious to be described — Penelope and I were talking and we agreed on this: Today you and I should change women.”
“Change women?” I shouted. I gripped my arms protectively around my half-awake Irene.
Kosmos swallowed some food then waved his hands as he replied.
“Thoreau, am I speaking English, or am I speaking Gondi, the Dravidian language of the Gonds? I said change women and that’s exactly what I mean. I am now with Penelope, and you are with Irene. Now I will take Irene with me and you will take good care of Penelope. Without the least bit of reservations, Penelope is agreed. And Irene? Irene has the heart of a child with the body of a woman. She will resist at first, but it’s all for her own good. Someday she’ll realize this, and then bless us with her deepest gratitude.”
The morning light, winning its battle against the darkness, slipped its glowing fingers though the glassless windows of the stone house. I reflected on this proposition then shook my head to disagree. Irene opened her eyes, smiled at me, then showered my cheeks with delicious kisses.
Before this experiment with truth and morals could carry on, our ears were pierced by desperate shouts of “Kosmos! Kosmos! Kosmos!” screaming from the hectic world outside.
Coolly, Kosmos filled up four mugs with apple cider, one for himself and one for each of his three companions.
“Ladies,” Kosmos said, addressing Irene and Penelope. “I can see the future now as clearly as the breasts on your chests. Put something on to cover your splendid bodies. We are about to entertain a frantic guest.”
Laughing out loud, he held up a fifth cider-filled mug toward his doorway just as a burly Greek man dashed into the garden like a bull stung by a bumblebee.
30
Change Is Good
Penelope raised her arms then covered her tremendous breasts by draping them under a white T-shirt, a gift from Lady Loverly which in large red letters said:
Problems, problems, days and nights
If what you hold has balls or bytes.
Concentrating intensely, Kosmos regarded the woman’s form. Beauty always inspires. A brilliant new idea bedazzled his inventive mind.
“You know, Thoreau, when Pericles — the Greek version of your Thomas Jefferson — ruled Athens, the finest prostitutes in his city were never despised, they were honored and adored. What was the greatest danger to the stability of Athenian society? ... Adultery. And the solution to adultery? Prostitution. Whoredom relieves boredom: it preserves the family while satisfying the wandering lusts of men.”
Kosmos sipped the cider then carried on.
“How could an amorous man recognize our Hellenic harlots? Large wooden phalluses, even bigger than my own monster, protruded from the doors of the ancient brothels. As for the objects of desire themselves, many of the women wore sandals, carved on the bottoms so that they impressed letters on the dirt paths that spelled two words: ‘Follow me.’”
Glancing at Penelope, Kosmos took a deep breath then sighed.
“Have you noticed the way Penelope walks, without even thinking about walking, and the effect this motion has on men like me? From every pore of her luscious body — legs, thighs, hips, cheeks, back, shoulders — Penelope shouts ‘Follow me!’ every time she moves. Where did she learn to walk and talk like that, so full of meanings without any words! Maybe there’s a whore in every good woman, and a good woman in every whore. ... But Penelope is not a prostitute — she sleeps with men who love her and men she loves. Explain it all to me, Thoreau, this mysterious power called desire! It rules even the gods. And in this whole world, what man and which woman is immune?”
He laughed at his own wild thoughts.
“But here I go again, getting distracted by the first good-looking body that passes by, and never getting anything accomplished. We were discussing, my dear old-fashioned Thoreau, the subject of changing women. I will take Irene and you will take Penelope. Change is good, Thoreau. Change rejuvenates a man: it forces us to be alert, to think fresh, to solve new problems creatively.”
“Kosmos! Kosmos! It’s not too late!”
I wrapped a blanket around Irene at the same moment that a stout guest ran through the blanket-doorway and into the living room. Rakis was his name and he was built like Heracles. His height and his broad shoulders filled up the room, and suddenly the spacious dwelling seemed to shrink to dollhouse size. Bearing the body, neck, and head of a hard-working laborer — sailor, builder, miner, wrestler, piano-mover — this brute man had eyes that strangely glimmered with the depths of human misery.
He carried three suitcases in one hand and a fistful of Euros in the other. Ignoring the curvaceous Penelope and the slender Irene, he ran unswervingly to Kosmos. Rakis had a plan. Talking faster than an auctioneer and waving his arms like a drowning man, he explained how Kosmos could hide for a few weeks in Rakis’s wine cellar, then escape from Crete and live disguised as a shepherd in a small mountain village in the region of mainland Greece known as Arcadia.
Kosmos glanced affectionately at the face of his feverish friend.
“Seega, seega, Rakis! Drink the wine of courage, and then the deadliest Medusa looks like a lovely young maid! ... Maybe this predicament means the end of the old decaying world, and the beginning of a new and greater one. Change is good. What did you bring us besides your loyal self?”
Rakis placed everything he was holding onto the wooden table, then looked down at Kosmos solemnly.
“Here’s a few bags for you,” Rakis said, “to pack the necessities, so we can leave at noon before the bastards come and take you off. Here’s all my money, but if you need more I can sell my truck and get you twice as much.”
Thoreau admired this man who, without hesitating one instant, gave everything he owned to help his friend. Rakis unwrapped a large handkerchief.
“And here’s our breakfast for the road. One dozen eggs, freshly poached.”
Kosmos shook one of the eggs.
“The eggs don’t feel like they’ve been cooked, Rakis.”
“I said they were poached,” Rakis explained. “I stole them from the monastery henhouse this morning before dawn.”
Kosmos laughed.
“Sit down across from me, Rakis. Sit down, relax, and share some food with us. Shake hands with my friend Thoreau, but don’t crush his knuckles like you crushed mine when we first met.”
