Authors: James Merrill

Collected Novels and Plays (57 page)

“Ftáni, putana!” shouted an angry voice at the foot of our gangplank. It was George. The E. C. (who had been addressed) smirked & looked debonair.

Orson was not looking our way, though close enough to have seen us on the shaded deck. Soon he was abreast of the caïque. His face was calm & exalted.

I rose from my chair. I felt the N.’s glance at me.

I cannot make this sound as if it happened.

He was passing us by, keeping to the water’s edge. He was clearly heading nowhere—hadn’t he
become
his destination? (But 50 yards more & he would hit the path to the slaughterhouse.)

I felt my eyes sting—L. at Epidauros, surprised by the turn of events. I ran down the gangplank, caught up with him, could not speak, took his arm, & led him onto the caïque.

The dimness under the awning dazed him, otherwise he was in complete possession of himself. Even with my beard he had known me. I turned to him now, arms open. We said each other’s names & embraced.

“This is what I meant in my letter,” he said, stepping back, hands still on my shoulders. “What I have wanted & never had from you.”

I turned away confused.

Part of me is still glowing with pleasure at those words. Part of me is still running away from them.

He was still Orson, in any case. In a moment he too had turned & was replying to the N.’s offers of rest, refreshment, medication in his familiar “teacher’s” voice—the voice that says, “I understand these things far better than you. They are useful but irrelevant.” Mrs N. made him accept a glass of cognac. He sipped it & set it down. Then Mr N. took him below to bathe his face. Out of sight, Orson could be
heard suddenly exclaiming, “But, pardon me, haven’t we met before? Long ago, wasn’t it you who, etc.”—in tones of amazed discovery, & Mr. N.’s replies, too melodious to make out, until a door clicked shut.

Mrs N. went to the rail & said something into the crowd below. Several boys made a dash for the café. Whoever got there 1st, it was George who returned carrying O.’s knapsack. He stood at the top of the gangplank, holding it. Mrs N. thanked him & asked him to put it down. I forget what distracted her; when she looked again he was still there, radiantly waiting, so she thanked him again & he went away.

They were going to take Orson to Athens. Good.

Before she could include me in the assumption, I approached Mrs N. & said I would have to leave them now. I held out my hand. Like an automaton’s hers rose, hesitated, came to rest in mine.

I’ve promised to call on her in Athens this week. She absolutely did not understand. But then, to do justice to the moment, neither did I.

I went up into the hills behind the town. I climbed & climbed, stumbling, not stopping, wanting to think. I felt excited and confused over the way I was acting.

I saw at least how little any of it had been my doing—for better or
worse. Orson hadn’t known I was on Diblos. No one had drawn him here but himself, his life. Betrayal & rejection are what he has always needed in his dealings with people. When Dora didn’t answer his letters, what could he do but seek satisfaction at her son’s hands? He hadn’t deserved his whipping, rather he had all but made it happen,
acting, as he had, in good faith as in bad taste, out of his own
blind
hopeless allegiance to this country of his dreams. And he had carried it off, made it seem like justice. Even I, in the notebook’s blackest depths, would never have dared to construct such a denouement—coincidence, melodrama, every earmark of life’s (the rival’s) style. Il miglior fabbro!

How not to admit admire

How not to envy him the total experience? With courage or cunning or luck he had paid

O. had found a currency in which to pay the full price for what he believed. His view of things, his “tragic” view, would never be wholly an illusion, once having interlocked so perfectly with his suffering. I ought to have felt by contrast as I did when the Army rejected me, or like the saints who died painlessly in bed, not complaining really, only whispering the dry fact that they hadn’t been found worthy of the martyr’s crown.

Instead, I kept breaking into smiles—of pure aesthetic pleasure? Not entirely. I
had
been part of it. I had even paid a little price of my own: that of “missing” Lucine. Missing her, as Mrs N. had implied, by sitting here, doing whatever I was doing. Missing
in
her something I could or should have had, or have wanted at least enough to go after. What I hadn’t missed by sitting on Diblos was my moment with Orson. All of
it—the running after him, & his words, his hand on my shoulder;
and the
running away, while my heart was still full.

I still feel somewhat as if I had brought off a little raid on life, & escaped with my treasure intact.

I had reached the hilltop with its white chapel, door & window sliced
out of unbaked meringue, a baby’s confection—yet wholly itself, an innocent, arbitrary shape. I sat in the white shade, sweating, looking back. The wind blew. There below, at different points round the lagoon, were all my landmarks. I felt light & happy, & at rest.

I let the day’s events play themselves once more in my head. As they did, I had a sense of other, less personal elements, beauty, joy, truth, splendor—
things ideas
all whose ebbing over the years had been so gradual that I’d never registered it—flowing back now to their place at the heart of the scene, pure & compelling. In their light, Byron himself seemed not so much a spiteful neurotic as a proud

B. himself, in their light, stood forth in dark, glowing colors, velvet & gold braid, & dagger handle flashing—a costume from the vendetta country of Crete or the Mani. Banked like a coal, his pride had burst into flame at last. He raised

In my head he raised his beautiful clenched hand. The riding crop descended, once, twice, again, upon my

once, twice, again, inscribed its madder penstroke upon my brother’s face, at the tempo of
a slowly pounding tempo of a giant’s drugged pulse
—

of the dolphin’s progress through glittering foam

at the tempo of those 3 blows whereupon the curtain of the Comédie rises to reveal, as foreseen, that universe of classical unity whose suns blaze & seas glitter & whose every action however brutal is nobly, inflexibly ordered & the best of each of us steps forth in his profound dark spotlight with poetry on his lips.

Had anyone discovered me up there, I would have been caught in flagrante with a myth-making apparatus every bit as vigorous as O.’s & probably a trifle more depraved. I come back today to how little I cared for him, how much for the idea of him.

Today I tend, in my better moments, toward chagrin & scruple.
That
orgy must never be repeated!—as with a moistened cloth I dab primly at my mind, where there are telltale stains.

There is evidently
no
excuse for my having left the caïque.

From my vantage I could watch it sail. I walked down the hill & began to pack.

6.viii.61

My last day. Tonight I shall be in Athens. Tomorrow I’ll make peace with Orson. I’ve got to, I want to, before sailing home.

It has all been at one remove anyhow. Has the time come to tackle the Houston novel?

George looked in this morning. “You no go caïque? Why?”

“I go vapóri. Today.”

Again: “Why?” The palm turned out & up as if to catch a grapefruit from above, the face blindly smiling, shaken from side to side—I shall miss the Greek “Why?”

I’d left out the blue slacks he liked, & gave them to him. He printed his name & address for me. “Good my friend,” he said, leaving.

I have made peace with Chryssoula, too. We have held each other, foreheads touching sadly, reflectively. My photograph is tucked facedown in her brassiere. A young Englishman has arrived with whom she can laugh tomorrow. She will find a present under my pillow—some money & a little flagon of perfume.

(While in Italy Dora & Orestes & Sandy can stop in Urbino to see the Piero
Flagellation
which O. has greatly admired in black & white.)

Orestes’ disappointment was keen to discover that the punishment of the god, for all its monumental aspect in reproduction, was in fact quite small, and
unexpectedly
subtly, vividly colored.

I must be mad. I’ve given up this novel.

“The only solution is to be very, very intelligent.” Intelligence, it is implied, will dissimulate itself, will
lose itself
in simplicity. By the same token, any extended show of Mind may be taken as the work of some final naïveté.

On deck. We have sailed past the House. The Sleeping Woman has veered & reshifted into new, nonrepresentational masses. Diblos lies far astern. Here is the open water. A sun preparing to sink. Other islands.

*
far from mortal—here’s my mistake. My Dialogue pits 2 dreams against each other, instead of living antagonists. Life, Art—they are words. It’s on a lower level that the mongoose closes with the cobra. In a footnote. In the dust.

T
HE
P
LAYS