Thoreau Bound, page 4
“Vogliate perdonare il mio ritardo,” he humbly said. “My apologies for being late.”
A curious crowd of about one-hundred persons — more than half of them women — gathered excitedly around the two barely-dressed men. Amused by Panzano these women gaped on the verge of laughter; enchanted by Thoreau they stared adoringly on the verge of love. They admired his body, they enjoyed his face, they smiled at the kind fire in his brilliant eyes. Some of these women desired him to quench their hearty lust. Others needed a sympathetic friend to talk with. And others prayed that he might be the one at last to cure their heartfelt loneliness. Depending on their courage, age, and circumstances, each woman imagined in Thoreau the perfect lover, the perfect brother, or the perfect son.
Thoreau scanned the crowd and looked into the eyes of scores of women, including a dozen nuns. He smiled back at every pair of glowing eyes that smiled. He knew what they wanted from him, and he was sorry for the little he could give. He felt compassion for the way all women and men lived on the stalest crumbs of future hopes and dreams. And he understood how he would treat each woman here: with sympathy, with reverence, with a brother’s unconditional good will. A pure Platonic friendship which to some of the women would be a heartbreaking disappointment, and to others would be a thrilling victory.
A woman who had opened her blouse to breast-feed her baby — a lucky baby who would never starve, thought Thoreau — stood up and shouted to the young man.
“Are you married?”
This supreme question silenced the horde of women in the audience — all ripe to hear the answer — who soon cheered wildly after Thoreau held up ten fingers without one ring. More questions spurted from the prying audience: What are your names? Where are you from? Where are you going? Where are you sleeping tonight? Have you eaten anything today? Do you have a sweetheart? If you do, are you in love with her?”
The need for action — the rush to reach the boat — had distracted and absorbed Thoreau’s keen mind. Now that there was nothing urgent to be done, he remembered the woman he had learned so much from, admired so deeply and lost so soon. Staring at the sea, envisioning her rising from the waters, he cried for the flowers of his future that would be born to blush unseen. The handsome young man wept like an old god, now powerless, just-booted from the fun-filled Mount Olympus, forced to retire to that tedious rest-home known as Earth.
Watching Thoreau, many of the women wept as well. His bared heart made him even more attractive, for every woman knows that a man who cries is a man who feels, a man who needs, a man who cares. Thoreau wanted to apologize for his outbursts. He tried to say some words, but instead of speaking his great body shivered as fat tears sparkled on his well-tanned cheeks. Romantic heartbreak is a colossal misery, far too great to be expressed in such minuscule vessels as words — though thousands and thousands of cheap novels have tried.
From the crowd a child came forth, and did in deed what all the women only dared in thought. The child hugged Thoreau and kissed his forehead. Then she raised her skirt-hem and wiped the teardrops from his good-looking face.
In one deep breath Thoreau recovered his fearless confidence. He breathed slowly, he breathed deeply, he kissed the child then thanked her for her hug and kiss. His ends, he reminded himself again, would have the best chances to be accomplished if he acted with cheerfulness and calm.
A loud grumble roared from the stomach of Panzano. Ever since Thoreau had mentioned that the small rectangular can of beans could keep a man from starving for twenty-four hours, Panzano had doubted the truth of that implausible nutritional fact. And now he could not wait nearly that long to find out. He twisted the metal key, ripped open the can, then filled his mouth with the salty soybeans.
Murmurs flowed through the crowd and a few moments later the women passed food to Panzano and Thoreau. One man thanked the donors as the other attacked the spoils. Bread, goat cheese, and fruits were now disappearing as quickly and magically as they had appeared.
The ship’s assistant captain, dressed in a wrinkled sailing uniform, raised his left hand. The watch on his wrist gleamed under the morning sunlight with such a bright flash that many passengers shielded their eyes with their hands. He announced that the captain had been delayed, and the boat would not be leaving for another three hours at least.
“Tell us your story!” one woman shouted to Thoreau. “Tell us! Tell us everything!” echoed other voices. “Why should a manly face like yours be overcome with tears?”
Thoreau popped two figs into his mouth, then untaped the bag of paraphernalia from around his waist. He grasped the blue notebook and the red notebook, mused for a moment, returned the blue book to the bag, then looked up at the eager crowd. Before speaking, he glanced down at the inked spots on his fingernails which were used to mark the passing of the weeks.
“If I’ve counted the moons right then today is the first day of April,” said Thoreau. “The story starts six months ago, at the beginning of October, on this coast of Crete.”
Panzano, who for a long time to come would be filling his paunch with food, stopped for just a blink to shout, “Adesso viene il bello — now comes the best bit!” — then continued his binge unabashed.
These story-loving Greeks! Smiling, Thoreau glanced at the faces of the ecstasy of women, who spread their tender sighs and opened wider their delighted smiles. He turned to the first page of the book and then began to read aloud. One voice entranced two hundred eyes and ears. The men listened, hoping for practical advice. The men heard the words, but the women listened deeper yet. The story transported them like music, like a passionate song about the mysteries, the struggles, and the sweet joys in this brief life.
2
Goddesses Have Glowing Eyes
I first met her at the Meteora — the ‘rocks in mid-air’ — in the loveliest valley in Greece. The raw beauty of this Meteora can hardly be described. Wondrous stone formations, shaped like strong arms, burst from the earth then reach up to grasp the rapture of the infinite.
“What a perfect place for a paradise!” I murmured, admiring again the mountains, valley, vista, pillars of protuberant stone. But even this colossal rock garden was not immune to the machine. The self-revealing silence shattered as a squad of jet planes roared over the monasteries, and everything below them trembled under supersonic booms. Out from the doorway of a stone outhouse darted a monk wearing a black robe down to his ankles and a white beard almost as long as the robe. He flung a tomato into the morning sky, and then — holding a racy paperback romance novel in his left hand — he shook his fist and swore vociferously at the passing planes.
It was at that moment, as I was laughing at the lively monk, that I first met her — the most ravishing, elegant, heavenly, earthy, feminine, passionate woman in the Milky Way.
We were approaching each other by walking on the same road, about fifty yards apart. Barefooted she walked with the confident posture of a dancer. Her white silk chiton — the Greek predecessor of the Roman toga — revealed the body of an athlete that had strength, vitality, and grace.
When I looked up at her dark-haired head I realized that she had been studying me, and as we walked closer to each other I could see her face beaming smiles into my surrendered eyes. She was wearing a straw hat — a good idea, because everyone who enters Greece for the first time underestimates three things: the heat of the Greek sun, the light of the Greek sky, the warmth of the Greek heart. The sun-heat makes you weary, dreamy, idle; the sky-light lets you see how beautiful the world can be; and the heart-kindness fills your soul with gusts of courage that transforms your life.
As she walked, her hands swept across the air, gestures that accompanied her honeyed voice reciting a passage from Plato.
“And who is Love? ... On the birthday of Aphrodite, Zeus gave a feast for the gods, and the god Plenty was one of the guests. When the feast ended, a goddess named Poverty came around to the back doors to beg. Plenty, having drank too much nectar, fell asleep in the garden of Zeus, and Poverty decided to improve her circumstances by lying down beside him and making a child. So on that night, on the birthday of Aphrodite, Love was born, the child of Plenty and Poverty. And as his parentage is, so also are his fortunes. In the first place he is always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imagine him to be. He is rough and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in; on the bare earth exposed he lies under the open heavens, in the streets, or at the doors of houses, taking his rest; and like his mother he is always in distress. Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, he is constantly plotting against the beautiful and good; he is bold, enterprising, strong, a mighty hunter, alertly weaving some intrigue or other, keen in the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources; a philosopher at all times, terrible as a sophist, deceiver, enchanter.”
How beautifully her broad breasts bounced beneath that braless bedgown! As we closened and then walked past each other, the woman coyly removed her hat from her head and held it to conceal her chest. And as she moved this way she nodded with the most enchanting smile. Still in motion, still with gazes locked together, the woman handed me a small package. Her skin felt charged with warmth as we touched fingertips.
Passing her, I took ten steps more — as if this chance encounter had become a duel, a duel in which the woman held all the best weapons: the man was defending himself with a hairpin, and the woman attacking with King Arthur’s sword.
I stopped walking suddenly and then I turned around. The woman had stopped seconds ago, at the point we passed each other, and there she stood still gazing at me, smiling all the time. And when I looked into her face and eyes she smiled more brightly, and my new life began that very moment, trembling with fearless happiness.
I heard the thunder of an engine, I saw a pink bus drive up beside her, and then the woman turned around, walked a few hip-swaying paces, climbed the bus’s steps without looking back, and vanished from my sight.
That wordless encounter left me with two souvenirs: a memory of her smile and eyes, and a chunk of goat cheese — the gift that she passed into my hand. I searched the gift for her name and address, but I could find nothing at all except one strange word handwritten on the paper wrapped around the cheese: WANDERBORE.
One fleeting meeting is all it takes to magically advance your life. I promised myself that I would find this woman. This new fiery purpose — not the noblest but not the worst — renewed my spirit with a joyful energy.
3
Confessions of A Shy Librarian
Hours later I was sitting at a round wooden table inside the Kalambaklava Kafe. That morning I had asked dozens of Greeks and tourists about WANDERBORE and a pink bus — everyone knew nothing and said less. I had no clues, no grasp of the native language, no vast library of electronic resources to begin the search. Sudden sounds made me forget WANDERBORE — a little scream, a bump, shoes shuffling, an exaggerated gasp. A stack of paperback books tumbled on top of me; a young woman fell into my arms. Although less gorgeous than the goddess from the Meteora, this woman I had rescued was good-looking in her own way. Her long red hair ponytailed behind her head; her clear face looked intelligent; her legs were slender and not skinny; and her zaftig chest had been bounded by a T-shirt with the words: ‘Librarians Know Where To Find It’.
“You’re American,” I said, breaking the silence.
“How did you know?” she replied.
“I could tell by your accident. My name is Thoreau.”
“Odysseus Thoreau,” the woman said. “I’m Victoria, Victoria Stumble. I’m so sorry my books met you before I did — knocking a man unconscious is not the best way to get him to notice you. Are you noticing me now?”
Victoria had been gazing at me the way most women gazed at me: with that potent admixture of like and lust and fear and curiosity and admiration, and the promise of undying love.
“Are you feeling OK, Victoria? Your cheeks look rutabaga-red.”
“The gorgeous scenery,” she said, sighing, “always affects me like this. Did anyone ever tell you that you are the sexiest man on Earth?”
I carried Victoria to a seat at the other side of my table then gathered up her dozen fallen books. Her glowing eyes made me smile.
“We share a love for the world’s best literature,” I said. “What kind of librarian are you?”
“I specialize in the ancient Greek and Roman classics, and researching the Internet. In less than ten seconds, I can find anything in the world except a good man.”
“Women can’t find good men, Victoria. You have to find an ordinary man, and then teach him how to be a good one.”
“That’s depressing,” she replied. “Because for every hundred men you find, you get fifty sexist sports-nuts and fifty nifty nerds. My sister says that you have to kiss a thousand frogs before you meet one toad. And if you finally find a man who will talk to you for five minutes without staring at your chest then putting his grimy hands on you, what happens then? I read it on a sundial near the Acropolis: ‘Love makes time pass, and then Time makes love pass.’”
“Victoria,” I said. “All roads lead to romance. Let me buy you lunch and we can talk about rekindling your optimism and your belief in love. A Meteoran nun told me that this little restaurant has the world’s greatest vegetable soup.”
“The nun told you that?” Victoria said, moving her chair closer to mine. “Don’t you know never to believe one word a woman says when she’s in bed with you?”
I liked this young woman: she was funny and clever, and her eyes sparkled with a gentle fire.
“In bed,” I said, “is the only place and time when I believe what a woman says. There’s a song about that paradox:
“‘She only tells the true replies —
When lonely in my bed she lies.’”
Vicki blushed like a nectarine. The old-woman café-owner — who worked as the lone waitress and cook — put two cups and one pitcher of water onto our table, along with a plateful of free appetizers. With the help of a small dictionary, I placed an order in English then in Greek.
“I would like two soups without meat — Tha eethela dio soopas horees monos meatee.”
The face of the old proprietress relaxed into a smile then burst into riotous laughter, laughter that sounded like a henhouse crowded with cackling birds.
“You’ve just ordered two soups without a single nose,” Vicki gently explained. “Which sounds like my sister’s definition of Love: ‘Two minds without a single thought.’”
“Did you want your soup with the nose?” I asked, turning the pages of the dictionary.
“Do you mind if I try?” said Victoria. And then she ordered two soups hortofagos — vegetarian — with a yogurt-cucumber-dill dip named tzadziki and some fresh psomee mavro, the flavorful dark bread.
“Your Greek is perfect,” I said.
“The rest of me is great too ... but nobody knows it yet.”
“You mean that you’ve never — ”
“I’ve never.”
The young woman sighed. “Victoria is Victorian. The reference librarian that no man ever referred. No young Caesar has ever shouted: ‘Veni, vidi, vici, Vicki!’”
The old woman-chef arrived and cheered up the table with hot soup, cold tzadziki and fresh-baked bread. Victoria stared at me with two hungry eyes.
“So where in Greece have you already been?” I asked.
“I flew to Athens then got the train to Thessaloniki,” she said. “From there I disguised myself as a man and visited Mount Athos. Then I climbed Mount Olympus, and after that I took the bus here to the Meteora.”
“That’s an amazing coincidence, Victoria! Except for Athens, in that same order, I’ve been to those very same — ”
I now understood what I should have understood sooner; as usual, the female grasped things long before the male. Victoria slid her chair beside my chair, touched my hand, then pressed her knee into my thigh.
“I fell in love with you, Thoreau, when I first saw you at the youth hostel. I’ve been following you around, hoping that you would talk to me. I worshiped you too much to start the conversation, so I thought that I could get some attention if I dropped a load of books on top of your ignoring head. Will you blame the goddess of Love and forgive the humble me?”
Another woman had fallen in love with the mere looks of me, without getting to know my essence: my passion for freedom; my love of nature, books, and solitude; my quest for a simpler life; my rebellious inner self; my often-foolish faith in women, men, and Love.
“I forgive you, Victoria,” I said. “If it’s love, true love, then all’s fair. But don’t young women these days realize that it could be dangerous to follow strange men? How do you know that I’m a gentle man, and not some sickopath who would beat you then bury your bones in a forest, or fill your heart with promises in order to empty the life savings in your bank account?”
Gingerly, Victoria touched my forearm with her warm hand.
“I’ve been watching you, Thoreau. I watched you with the sex-crazed Danish woman, with the busty German girl, with the prim Dutch schoolteacher, and with those three silly sisters from the Australian coast. Every one of those lusting women threw their bodies at you like hurricanes. You could have sexploited them all, but you treated each one with sincerity and with respect.”
“And an extraordinary man like me can’t even qualify for a credit card. Tell me more, Victoria.”
She reached out and wrapped her fingers around my hand.
