They made love in the morning, sometimes twice, before getting up. They went to bed soon after the evening meal, and if making love made them too wide-awake, which it often did, they would get up, go out again and eat another supper. Then they'd make love again. In the country, they'd often 'find some water' in the middle of the day. Apparently that was a euphemism they liked.
Edith's first short story was a thinly disguised version of leaving Piraeus for a drive in the country. (This was before they went island-hopping.)
The story begins with the fish market in Piraeus.
I knew when I first heard them cutting the fish that they'd be sold out and gone by the time I'd see the cobblestones. I made love in the morning and got up late. The fishmongers had packed up, but the hotel's man with the hose hadn't rinsed the cobblestones, which were wet with fish-blood and slime, phosphorescent with scales, flecked blue with intestines. It wouldn't do, our head waiter told us, to leave the mess until evening when potential guests might be alarmed at the gore and think that this slop was the remains of some unfortunate suicide from the fourth floor, or the ritual slaying of a wronged lover caught and ripped apart at the scene of his indiscretion.
I was discreet myself and made him drive me into the country, because though our stone room was cool in the daytime, the hotel maids would listen outside our door. At night and in the morning it was fine to use the room, but by midday we were on the road. It was apparently an underpowered car. We were often stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle - even horse-drawn carts - because it didn't have the necessary kick. The roads were curvy, his arms and the back of his neck were very brown. We were driving toward the ferry crossing at Patras. Where there was a ferry, we knew there was water, and we were looking for water. Though I read somewhere that a girl was rushed to the hospital with severe cramps from making love underwater - an air bubble in one of her Fallopian tubes. Is that even possible? I didn't believe it.
It seemed that wherever we drove in Greece, we drove into the sun. He had his shirt off, I had unbuttoned my blouse and rolled it up under my breasts and tied it in a knot. My breasts were small but they stayed up; my stomach was very brown. It was an old-fashioned, unslanted, glass windshield, which magnified everything a little. In the back, on the floor behind my seat where there was some shade, we kept a watermelon cool in a bucket of water which had been icy cold when we'd filled it; it was turning tepid now. I would slice pieces of watermelon in my lap; the melon was cool and wet and felt lovely against my stomach. I sprinkled water on his shoulders as if I were baptizing him. It was watermelon country; in the villages and on the roadside stands, melons and eggplants competed. He said the watermelons were the winning size, but the eggplants won the color prize.
In an unappealing, dry-looking landscape with short hills spiked with olive trees, we discussed how far away the sea was, and whether we would smell it before we saw it, when we came up on a large, swaying truck full of watermelons. We had to slow down fast. In the back of the truck a teenage Greek boy sat on a mound of melons with a grin on his face which suggested that his mental age was four. From his vantage point, my breasts and bare belly must have looked wonderful to him, and when we pulled out to pass, he didn't want to lose his view. He leaped up and poised an enormous melon over his head; if our wretched car tried to pass, the boy's demented grin implied, we would regret it.
For thirty-four kilometers, until the ferry at Patras, that boy on the pile of watermelons sat displaying himself to me. There was nothing we could do. Except for his disturbed face, he was interesting to look at. I sliced more watermelon. We talked about stopping and letting the truck pull ahead, but I confessed that I wanted to see what the boy would do.
Just before the road widened to four lanes to handle the ferry traffic, the boy fell moaning on his back on the watermelon pile and lay writhing among the green globes until he ejaculated into the air. His stuff struck our rigid windshield like bird-dribble, a thick whap! against the glass on the passenger side. My head snapped back as if I'd been slapped.
Then the road widened, the road ahead was free, and we pulled out to pass. The boy didn't even try to threaten us; he slumped sulkishly on his pile of melons and didn't even bother to watch us pass. I had expected him at least to spit. I turned my head and saw the truck's driver: an old man with the same shocking face as the boy's, grinning obscenely at me, twisting in the driver's seat, trying to raise his lap to window level to show me his.'
'Like father, like son,' I said, but my driver's arms were hard-flexed, his fingers white around the steering wheel, his face withdrawn, as if he'd suddenly seen such an appalling hunger in the world that he felt ashamed to reflect it.
He didn't feel like swimming. For something to do, we took the ferry back and forth across the Gulf of Corinth, standing on deck together, leaning over the rail, imagining history and civilization. I told him it excited me, but he said he felt as alone at that moment as he felt whenever he masturbated. I have never understood why men have such trouble with that.
For the first time in my life, I was shocked at myself. I knew I could make love anywhere. We glided back and forth across the Gulf of Corinth. My desire was excruciating; I touched him as much as he would let me and whispered that when we got back to the hotel, I would make him come before he was inside me.
Eventually, of course, he snapped out of it. He came around.
I'll bet! He always did. He used to sulk when the four of us were together, trying to make Edith and me feel guilty, trying to provoke Utch into calling a halt to the whole thing. Utch would beg him to tell her what he wanted. All right, she'd tell him sometimes, we'll stop if that's what you want, but you have to say something. But he'd be a stone and she knew what she'd have to do to bring him out of it. Of course; that's what he wanted her to do! Why didn't she see? I don't know how he managed to make self-pity so alluring.
'When he's in one of his moods,' Utch said, 'the only thing I can do is fuck him out of it.'
I complained to Edith, but she said, 'What's wrong with that? You can't worry about what's right until you know what works.' But sex is only a temporary cure.
We were an hour from home, both of the women asleep, when Severin stopped because he had to pee. Utch woke up when he got out and dashed into the short dark trees clumped along the roadside like soldiers. We were alone on the road now; it was as if no one else was returning from a weekend, as if around here they didn't take weekends off. I don't know exactly where we were.
When Utch woke up, I asked her to move in back with Edith; I wanted to talk with Severin. I sat quietly beside him until I was sure both Edith and Utch were asleep. Every town had a church, every church a lighted steeple. Finally I said, 'I think you're calling all the shots. I think everything's on your terms. But there are four of us.'
'Oh is that you there?' he said. 'I thought Utch's voice had changed.'
Ha-ha. 'We see each other as if we're registered for courses - same time, same place. That's your idea. If that's how you want it, that's fine for you, but a little of it should be on our terms, too, don't you think?'
'I have a recurring dream,' he said. 'You want to hear it?'
Oh, suffering shit, I thought, but I said, 'Sure, Severin go ahead.' I know that in sexual matters it is difficult to say things directly.
'It's about my children,' he said. I had heard him talk about them a hundred times, almost always in wrestling terms; he called them his weakness, his imbalance, his blind side, his loophole, the flaw in his footwork, the mistakes he would always repeat and repeat, his one faulty move. Yet he could not imagine not having children. He said they were his substitute for an adventurous, explorative life. With children his life would always be dangerous; he was grateful for that, the perverse bastard! He said his love for Edith was almost rational (a matter of definition, I suppose), but that there was nothing reasonable about the way he loved his children. He said that people who didn't have children were naive about the control they had over their lives. They
always thought they were in control, or that they could be.
I complained about how much 'control' meant to him; I argued that people without children simply found other things to lose control over. 'In fact,' I said, 'I think human beings find that control is more often a burden than not. If you can give up your control to someone or something, you're better off.'
I have seen how his wrestlers look at their opponents with a cold, analytical scrutiny, a dead eye. Severin Winter gave me such a look. Though he couldn't have been oblivious to the ridiculousness of his controlled behavior, he cherished the idea!
'God save us from idealists, from all true believers,' Edith said once.
God save us from Severin Winter! I thought.
His dream, as he called it, was not entirely fiction. Over and over again, he was stuck behind the watermelon truck, unable to pass, his life controlled and manipulated by the wilful, masturbating Greek on the melon pile - threatening him, forever holding him at bay, squirting his vile seed and more and more of his kind into the air, on his windshield, everywhere - until the mindless depravity of it forced Severin in his dream to pull out to pass. But the watermelons the boy held over the passing car would suddenly become Severin's children, and - too late to meekly fall back in the lane behind the truck - Severin Winter would see his children hurled down on him and splattered against the windshield.
'How's that for a dream?' he asked.
How's that for a loophole? I thought. How's that for a flaw in the footwork? How's that for a faulty move?
'God save us all,' I muttered. He had turned off the dashboard lights again, but I knew he was laughing. What I wanted to say was, Spare me the allegory, just stick to the facts. Who's controlling this? All of us or just you?
The car stopped; we were home.
'I'd give you your choice of whom you'd like to remove from the back seat,' Severin said, 'but there's the awkwardness with the baby-sitter, and I'm anxious to see the children.'
'We've really got to sit down and talk sometime,' I said.
'Sure, anytime,' he told me.
I crawled in back to shake Utch, but she was awake. I saw at once that she'd been awake for all our talk; she looked frightened. I nudged Edith gently as I backed out of the seat and kissed her hair above her ear, but she slept soundly.
When Utch went up to Severin, he shook her hand - his idea of understatement? Utch wanted to be kissed. He said, 'Get a good night's sleep. We can sort out all the stuff later.'
I knew that our belongings intermingling - Edith's clothes in my suitcase, Utch leaving her gloves at their house - really pissed him off. One morning, Edith told me he opened his drawer and pulled out a pair of my underpants. 'These aren't mine,' he said indignantly.
'I just pick up what I find lying around,' Edith said cheerfully.
'They're his!' he roared. 'Can't he keep track of his own fucking underpants? Does he have to leave his goddamn laundry around?'
He stretched my underpants, snapping the waistband out wide enough to contain us both, then wadded them into a ball and kicked them into a corner. 'They like to leave their things behind so that they'll have an excuse to come back. She does it too,' he muttered.
To Edith, he simply wasn't making any sense. She brought back the underpants - to Utch - that morning. She and Utch thought it was very funny.
It wasn't long afterward that I pulled on what must have been the same pair. Something was wrong; the crotch had been slit through with a razor, so that it was like wearing an absurdly short skirt. One was left free to flap, so to speak.
'Utch?' I said. 'What happened to my pants?' She told me that they were the ones Edith had brought back. Later, I asked Edith if she had cut them - perhaps as a joke? But she hadn't of course. It was no joke; it was him. He was not one to be subtle with his symbols.
'Damn him!' I yelled to Utch. 'What's he want? If he wants to stop it, why doesn't he say so? If he's suffering so goddamn much, why does he go on with it? Does he like being a martyr?'
'Please,' Utch said softly. 'If anyone's going to stop it, we know it's going to be him.'
'He's teasing us,' I said. 'And he's testing Edith and me - that's it. He's so jealous that he assumes that we can't stop it, so he's trying to see how much we'll take. Maybe if Edith and I call it off, he'll see that nobody's going to hurt anybody else. Then he'll feel better about it and want it again.'
But Utch shook her head. 'No, please don't do anything,' she said. 'Just leave him alone, just let him have things his way.'
'His way!' I screamed. 'You don't like his way either - I know you don't.'
'That's true,' she said. 'But it's better than no way at all.'
'I wonder,' I said. 'I think Edith and I should say that we'll stop it right now, and maybe that will convince him.'
'Please,' Utch said. She was about to cry. 'Then he might stop it,' she said and burst into tears.
I was frightened for her. I hugged her and stroked her hair, but she went on sobbing. 'Utch?' I asked. I didn't recognize my own voice. 'Utch, don't you think you could stop it, if you had to? Don't you?'
She squeezed me; she pressed her face against my stomach and wriggled in my lap. 'No,' she whispered. 'I don't think I can. I don't think I could stand it if it were over.'
'Well, if we had to,' I said, 'of course you could, Utch.' But she said nothing and went on crying; I held her until she fell asleep. All along I'd thought that it was Edith and I who had the relationship which threatened Severin, though not Utch. All along I'd felt that Severin was disgruntled because he felt everything was unequal, that Edith and I shared too much - the implication being that he and Utch had too little. So what was this?
Weeks before, at a large and public party, I could sense that Severin was angered by the attention Utch was giving him, and by the attention Edith and I were giving each other - though we were always far more discreet than they were. Utch, a little drunk, was hanging on Severin, asking him to dance and making him uncomfortable. Much later that evening, when he came home and woke up Edith and me, he said as I was leaving, 'Take care of your wife.' I was irritated by the imperious tone in his voice and went home without saying a word. I thought he meant that I shouldn't let her drink so much, or that she'd confided in him about some act of neglect. But when I confronted Utch with it, she shook her head and said, 'I can't imagine what he's talking about.'
Now I wondered. Was he warning me of the depth of Utch's feelings for him? His vanity knew no bounds!
It was late at night when I carried Utch to bed and left her to sleep in her clothes; I knew I'd wake her if I undressed her. I called Edith. I didn't do it often, but we had a signal. I dialed, then hung up after only half a ring, waited and dialed again. If she was awake and heard the first ring, she'd be waiting to snatch the phone up immediately the next time. If the ringing persisted even for a whole tone, I'd know she was asleep or couldn't talk, and would hang up. Severin always slept through it.
When she answered now, she said, 'What is it?' She sounded cross.
'I was just thinking of you.'
'Well, I'm tired,' she said. Had they been arguing?
'I'm worried,' I confessed.
'We'll talk later,' Edith said.
'Is he awake?'
'No. What is it?'
'If he wants to stop the whole thing,' I said, 'why doesn't he?'
There was no answer. 'Edith?' I said.
'Yes?' she said, but she wasn't going to answer my question.
'Does he want to stop?' I asked. 'And if he does - and, Jesus, he acts as if he does - then why doesn't he?'
'I've offered to stop,' she told me. I knew this was true, but it always hurt me a little to hear it.
'But he doesn't take you up on the offer,' I said.
'No.'
'Why?'
'He must like it,' she said, but even without her face in front of me, I knew when she was lying.
'He has a strange way of liking things,' I said.
'He thinks
I have leverage on him,' she said.
'Leverage?'
'He thinks he owes me something.'
'You never told me,' I said. I didn't like the sound of leverage, of debts owed, at all. It seemed an important omission, and I had always believed Edith told me everything important for lovers to know.
'No, I never have told you,' she admitted. By her tone, she wasn't about to begin, either.
'Don't you think I should know about this?' I asked.
'There are lots of things you believe in not telling,' she said, 'and I've always thought that an attractive philosophy. Severin believes you tell wives and lovers everything, but you don't believe that, so why should I?'
'I tell important things,' I said.
'Do you?'
'Edith--'
'Ask Utch,' Edith said.
'Utch?' I said. 'What does Utch know about it?'
'Severin tells everything,' Edith said.
'I love you.'
'Don't worry,' she said. 'Whatever happens, everything will be all right.'
This wasn't what I wanted to hear. She seemed resigned to something I didn't know anything about.
'Goodnight,' I said. She hung up.
I tried to wake Utch, but she lay in bed as hard and round and heavy as a watermelon. I felt like biting her. I kissed her all over, but she just smiled. Leverage? Another wrestling term. I didn't like its application to couples.
In the morning I asked Utch what Edith had on Severin, or what he thought she had on him.
'If Edith felt good about it,' Utch said, 'she'd have told you herself.'
'But you know. I want to know too.'
'It hasn't been any help to me,' Utch said. 'Severin wanted me to know; if he'd wanted you to know, he'd have told you. And if Edith wanted you to know, she'd tell you.'
'If she didn't want me to know,' I argued, 'she wouldn't have told me I could find out from you.'
'Well, you can't,' Utch said. 'I promised Severin I'd never tell. Go work on Edith for her version.' She rolled away; I knew her position - knees drawn up, elbows in, hair hiding her face. 'Look,' she said; I knew what was coming. 'We're playing by your rules. You're the one who says, "If you see someone else, I don't want to know. If I see someone else, you don't have to know." Right?'