Thoreau Bound, page 59
“The beauty of women once more leads me astray,” he said. “This morning started with a noble plan and a strict timetable to achieve my literary dreams. And then all plans scattered when I saw a heavenly vision, a nouveau mermaid half female and half machine! The voice of the singer Dante rose up from the forest of my spirit, and bade me to follow Woman to the wondrous who-knows-where! But I lost sight of her, and the guiding voice fell silent just when I needed it most.”
“Before you followed your Bliss, Seaport, what were those noble plans?”
“I was going to the island of Melos,” he said, “to search for the missing arms of the statue of Aphrodite. Have you seen them?”
“I never noticed that they were gone. ... Maybe this officer knows something.”
A Tourist-Police officer approached us. As soon as he recognized me from the imbroglio on the boat he tipped his hat.
“Kalimera, Thoreau,” he said. “We have been looking for you for many days. Can you wait here for a few moments. We have a pouch with money that belongs to you.”
The policeman soon returned, asked me to sign a receipt, handed me my money pouch, and then explained. “On the last day of March,” he said, “a woman named Bliss boarded the boat from Agios Nikolodeonos to the island of Rhodes. When asked how much money she was carrying she showed your money pouch, but insisted that it did not belong to her, and that she would not spend any part of it. But her own resources were not sufficient to buy the new visa to Marmaris on the coast of Turkey. Thus her entrance was refused, and she was sent back here on the first boat. She claims that she is now waiting for money from home. When that money arrives, the police chief will return her passport and then permit her to depart.”
When the polite policeman had tipped his hat then left us alone, Seaport saw deeper than the facts.
“There are three kinds of travelers,” he said. “High budget, low budget, and no budget. As a distinguished member of this third caste, I not only understand her problem, I empathize. Bliss is too proud to accept money from strangers, and she can’t find decent-paying work. Forced to be so helpless and dependent, she must now be feeling downhearted, discouraged, demoralized, dispirited, dejected, and depressed.”
“And by chasing after her,” I asked, “you planned to provide her with moral and emotional support?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know why I followed her, Thoreau. For years I’ve suffered from kaligynophobia: fear of beautiful women. I have no eleutherophobia, peniaphobia, erotophobia, or phronemophobia — fear of freedom, poverty, sex, or thinking. But whenever I’m near women I desire, I get too panicky to talk. ... Join me for breakfast, will you?”
He untied the bandanna around his neck and then removed his last slice of bread. He tore that in two pieces, handed the larger half to me, and then held up a large plastic jar.
“Would you like some varmite with that?” he asked.
“Varmite? I’ve never made its acquaintance.”
“It’s a paste concocted out of brewer’s yeast that looks like shoe polish, smells like roofing tar, and tastes like cat food in a can. I keep it for emergencies when there’s nothing else to eat.”
The stale bread scratched my throat as it was swallowed down.
“Seaport, when was the last time you’ve eaten a real meal?”
He scratched his head.
“I think it was the last time we met, in the Café Lathera, when you bought me a king’s breakfast, and then ran from the café looking like the Moses who had just heard voices from the burning bush. That night I ventured to the hotel room of the waitress who so adroitly poured our cream. When her musclebound boyfriend answered the door, I unflappably pretended to be a traveling salesman selling penis-enlargement cream, and half of the island of Corfu. He didn’t want the real estate, but he bought two large jars of moldy varmite.”
I opened the large flap on his backpack then stuffed my pouch inside.
“Seaport,” I said. “I wanted to give this money to Bliss, and she wouldn’t take it. So now I want you to take it, along with this silver coin from a friend of mine named Hope. Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. Romance ain’t cheap. At minimum, you’ll need to buy a good-quality bike.”
Seaport removed the bills from the pouch, counted them, then rolled his eyes at the amount.
“I can’t take this from you, Thoreau. We’re friends, and more friendships are killed because of money than anything else.”
“Take it as a loan, then,” I said. “If I keep it now I’ll spend it in Greece, and I’ll have absolutely nothing when I get back home. If you take it now, you’ll be helping me to do something I’ve never been able to do efficiently: plan my financial life.”
He opened his notebook and wrote down the amount of the loan.
“Thanks, Thoreau. It’s a deal — if you’ll let me repay you with five percent interest, and if you’ll let me buy breakfast for us both.”
“I have a better idea,” I said, as we clasped hands. “When the markets open, buy yogurt, fruit, nuts and bread — enough to stuff the gullets of six starving artists — then meet me at the public beach. We’ll study the scenic beauty and have breakfast by the sea.”
Seaport walked to the market, and I returned to my favorite camping place in that niche above the beach. Minutes later, Bliss rolled her bicycle along the sand, stopped for a moment to look at the sea, and then removed her shirt and like a ballerina spun around three times. Bare from the waist up, she swam far out from the shore. When she returned she made a cooking fire, and placed a pot with water over the flames. Now she faced the sea and began to stretch, in movements that looked at first like yoga, and later like ballet.
With admiration and confusion I stared at Bliss. She was a traveler, a dancer, a vegetarian, an independent spirit who loved nature and music and all living things. Despite her youth she had good sense and high ideals. She had left her country to discover what she could do to make the planet better, and to bring about a world with less violence, and a more equal distribution of the wealth. For months she had lived in Italy, in a community of women, to support endangered species, and to protest the human war against the natural world. We had talked little when we first met. Instead, we spent one long fiery night making love together, an amazing night, as only the strong supple bodies of two indefatigable athletes could spend.
Why then, had I refused to travel with the gorgeous Bliss? ... I did not know. Maybe because she was younger than me by five years, and I wanted the companionship that, without being stuffy, would be more intellectual, and share my devotion to books and writers and ideas. Maybe because with her I would have been a follower on her journey, not an equal partner on ours.
The last words that Pateras had whispered now came back to me.
“There are three kinds of foolish men,” he’d said. “The man who thinks he can live alone; the man who gets involved with the wrong woman; and the man who doesn’t recognize the right woman after she and he have talked together for one hour. You know, Thoreau, I’m more than eighty years old, and my heart still leaps like a young heart whenever I see how beautiful these women are! ... But beauty isn’t everything! For every woman who tangles up your life, you must discover if she is your Calypso or your Penelope. Does she distract you and make you weak, or does she make you strong by helping you to do your own work? Too often, it’s impossible to tell the difference until you’re waist-deep in the relationship. And by that time it’s much too late. Beauty has so much power over a man! The only chance to save yourself is to learn how to make this fine distinction between three species of women: the woman who is wrong for you, the woman who is almost right for you, and the woman who is exactly right.”
I strolled down to the beach, ignoring the stares, hellos, and sighs from the barely-dressed women who were jogging by. Bliss was still facing the sea and stretching. Her sixth sense knew that I would find her here, and just as I approached her she gazed at the water and she began to sing.
“O mangiar questa minestra o saltar questa finestra — Either eat this soup or jump out this window.”
“Remember me?” I said.
“Somewhat,” Bliss replied.
“Are you mad at me for stuffing money into your bag?”
“I was mad when I found it. I’m not mad now.”
“Do you still have the same plans,” I asked, “for traveling around the world alone?”
“I’m leaving,” she said, “as soon as a letter gets here.” But the tone in her voice suggested that the letter might never arrive.
She stirred the rice in her pot, tossed in lentils and an onion, then covered the pot with a lid. I knelt down so that we would be speaking face to face.
“These days, in this world, it’s not safe for a woman to travel alone.”
“Then come along with me,” she said. “There’s plenty of room in my pack.”
“Bliss, listen. I’d like to travel with you, but it’s not the right time for me now.”
“Men are so male!” she said. “When men don’t want to do something, they never have the chops to say that they don’t want to do it. They find any old excuse that will have them, then they hide underneath the skirt of that excuse.”
On a sheet of notebook paper I scribbled my address.
“Will you write to me?” I asked.
Bliss took the paper and my pen, wrote the address of her parents’ house, ripped the page then handed me a half. She stood up then hugged me with twice as much affection as I expected, and three times as much as I deserved.
“I might write,” she said.
I could have argued more with her about her traveling plans, but what good would that have done? Reason rarely persuades: people do what they want to do, and then invent the reasons afterwards. I hugged the brave woman, and then walked back toward my campsite.
“Thoreau!” she shouted.
A flicker of hope filled me — maybe she had changed her mind.
“Thoreau, you forgot your pen.”
“Bliss, I will never forget you. Keep the pen for good luck.”
Seaport returned, arms laden with groceries, and found me on the beach. He arrived just as the first tourists were coming, carrying their beach umbrellas and blankets and sun-tan lotion and horrific modern novels and coolers crammed with icy drinks and artificial foods. A young woman wearing the latest-style bikini dropped her towel on the sand right beside us. She raised her sunglasses, then smiled at me with an enticing smile. Seaport examined the woman and then he sighed.
“It is a tribute to human inventiveness,” he said. “that anyone can take one pair of shoelaces, tie them around their naked body, and turn them into a fashionable bathing suit.”
The poet scanned the beach until his gaze stopped suddenly at a heartbreaking sight.
“Look, Thoreau! She’s here! She is perfection! At last I have found Bliss!”
For a minute Seaport studied the woman like a book, and then he turned his gaze from the woman’s body to my face.
“Thoreau,” he said. “What did you mean about romance and a bike? I have as much chance of getting to know that voluptuous woman as a firefly stuck on a spider’s web has the chance to survive past dinnertime.”
“That’s a good analogy,” I said. “But your feeling is not a fact, it is the world seen through the dark distorting glasses of irrational fears. What does a man need to accomplish a difficult task? Four things: courage, money, luck, and ingenuity. Usually, if you have any two of these it’s good enough. Let’s admit that the task is impossible, and then let’s decide what plan gives you the best chance to succeed.”
Bliss stood up again and stretched. Watching this beauty in motion, Seaport turned green with longing, red with desire and white with fear.
“Even if she were wearing an astronaut’s suit I wouldn’t have the nerve to talk to her,” he said. “But if she’s topless like that, my nine muses would turn into nine mouses. I would not know what to say or where to put my eyes.”
May the goddesses forgive us for stretching the elastic truths of love. Crossing my fingers, I laughed as I slapped the shoulder of my friend.
“Listen, Seaport. Let your eyes go wherever they want to go. As for what to say, let her do all the talking and you’ll be all right. Did you know that she is a graduate student majoring in the 19th-Century American writers? And she once edited a savvy literary blog called ‘Glorious Existence”, based on the inspiring words of H. D. T.”
He leaped into the air.
“She loves Emerson, Fuller, Whitman, Melville, and Thoreau!” he shouted. “Holy Aristophanes, she must be my missing half!”
I nodded.
“Seaport, sometimes a little chutzpah is all you need. Take all the breakfast food in these bags, then approach her as if you’ve been invited. Talk to her with Cyrano’s sang froid behind a sword or pen. Tell her that you have a problem: you’re stuck with too much perishable food. Ask her if she can help you to finish it off before it spoils.”
“And after that?” he asked.
“After that, you plummet alone. Everything depends on your courage, sincerity, and ingenuity.”
“Thanks, Thoreau,” he said, gripping my hand with both his hands. “Either I’ll never forget you for this, or I’ll never forgive you.”
“Probably both,” I replied.
Bliss was now lying on her belly on a blanket on the sand, beside her pot of lentils which had begun to steam. Writing in a notebook, she would often raise her head to look at the water and the morning light. Seaport took three deep breaths then approached her, almost stumbling over his own feet. He opened up a large bandanna then placed it near her on the sand.
“Excuse me,” said Seaport. “Is anyone sitting here? I seem to have misplaced my book of the complete essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
“Who?” Bliss replied.
Seaport unpacked his bag of yogurts, fruits, nuts, honey-filled pastries and breads.
“Ralph Waldo ... yeh. Well, my name is Michael Seaport,” he said. “Here I have some extra yogurts and fruits. My friends aren’t coming, and I need help with the work of eating this food before it spoils.”
Bliss glared at Seaport and made his heart quake with a piercing smile.
“We’ve heard that line before,” she said. “Another macho mucho-smoocho American male on the make.”
And Bliss returned to the writing in her notebook, and left the poet ignored.
Seaport later told me that he would have answered her the way a Zen master solves his koan: say nothing, just smile then devour the food. But Luck helped him, as Luck helps every man who tries his best. An old Greek man, dressed in a thick black suit, came wandering along the beach and stopped beside Seaport and Bliss.
“Kalimera,” said the poet. And now, in his excellent Greek language, Seaport spoke to the old man, who knew some German but no English at all. “Would you like to join us for some breakfast?”
“No, thank you,” the old man replied. “Just tell me, what are you cooking in that pot?”
“Try some,” said Seaport.
Bliss watched, annoyed and amused, as Seaport dipped his spoon into the pot, then handed it to the old man, who took a sip.
“It could use more garlic,” the old man said.
While Bliss chewed her lentil breakfast, Seaport talked with the old man. The Greek used his hands as he spoke, to show a man doing various kinds of work. At the end of the talk he smiled at Seaport, they heartily shook hands, and the Greek handed Seaport a scrap of paper with an address.
Bliss eyed the poet and then shook her wooden spoon.
“Nice of you to give away free samples of my breakfast!” she said. “What were you talking about?”
This would be the moment of nothing or everything. Seaport trembled like the sea.
“That man owns four restaurants and two hotels in town,” he said. “He has just hired me for two weeks to work at a dozen different jobs: cooking, painting, schlepping barrels of wine, translating Greek to English, and doing any other work that his business might need. He offered a good salary and a bonus of three full meals every day.”
“What did you say to that?” asked Bliss.
“I told him that you and I are married —”
“You what!” she shouted.
Seaport raised his hand.
“... and that it’s not efficient to work alone. If he wanted to have two strong workers instead of one, then he could pay triple the salary he offered, and hire both of us.”
That opened the emerald eyes of Bliss.
“What did he say to that?”
Seaport grabbed the wooden spoon, then ladled some spoonfuls of soup into his metal cup.
“Bliss, did anyone ever tell you, what goddesses rarely have seen — like Halkidiki olives, your eyes are amber-green?”
She stood up, grasped his shoulder with her hand, took a deep breath and then asked: “What did he say about the work?”
“He said that if we show up at his biggest restaurant tomorrow morning at eight, then we’ll both be hired for the jobs.”
With a great scream of joy, Bliss lunged her bouncing body into Seaport, crushing him in a passionately grateful hug. She lifted his poet-light body six inches off the ground, and then dropped him ever-so-gently onto the sand.
“You got jobs for us!” she shouted. “Decent-paying jobs! Bloody hell, I can’t believe it’s true!”
Her face brightened at this supreme good news, and now she snatched one of Seaport’s yogurts from his hands. She pulled off the lid, tossed in some grapes, dipped her wooden spoon into the creamy delight, then ate voraciously.
“She vacuums up food like a poet!” Seaport said. “If you keep eating like that we’ll have to change your name to Blintz.”
“And from now on I’m gong to call you Soup-pot,” she said, smiling.
“Soup-pot it is! Bliss, you remind me of Dervla Murphy. I’ve read every book she’s written, and last year I wrote her a letter to thank her for her work.”
Bliss’s face brightened even more, and she sat herself so close to Seaport that their hips and shoulders touched. As she sliced a banana into her second yogurt, she smiled into his eyes.
