Atlantis: Three Tales

  “I know,” she said. “Costas told me: you have a dog on a rope in the city. They think you’re probably taking him off somewhere to kill him. They run up and kick him, they throw a stone or a bottle at him—and think it’s great fun! They give him meat they’ve spent twenty minutes carefully sticking full of broken glass! I take him on the subway, and the police say I have to put a muzzle on him!” She made a disgusted sound. “You see somebody with a dog on a leash like this—you would have to be stupid not to realize it’s a pet! They don’t like foreigners; they don’t like dogs. It’s just their way of getting back at both. And even so, on the underground out here this morning, you saw how everyone cowered back from him—they think my little dog is a terrible and vicious beast! I had to put that awful muzzle on him. And he was so good about it. Well, you don’t have it on now—my darling Pharaoh!”

  Pharaoh wasn’t a big dog. But he wasn’t a little one either. He was a broad-chested coffee-colored mutt with some white patches as though a house painter had picked him up and maybe shaken one of his forepaws before washing his hands. Heidi’d had him about six months—which was twice as long as she’d known me. One of his ears and the half-mask around his left eye were black.

  “They’re just not used to dogs, and he makes them uncomfortable.”

  “They’re uncomfortable with him because he’s a dog. They’re uncomfortable with you because you’re a Negro—”

  “They’re uncomfortable with you because you’re German.”

  She smiled at that. “Well, that’s barbaric! When I go to David’s silly baby-sitting job, are you going to be all right?”

  “I told you, DeLys said I could stay at her place up in Anaphiotika, while she’s away. I’ll be off to England the day after tomorrow. And then back home to New York.”

  “That odd old Englishman, John, from Turkey, is staying at DeLys’s too, isn’t he?”

  “He’s not that odd. When I was in Istanbul, DeLys gave me his address so I could look him up. After Jerry and I hitchhiked there, I hadn’t had a shower in a week and was a total mess—he was just as nice to me as he could be. He fed me all one afternoon, till I was so full I could hardly walk. He told me all about places to see in the city, the Dolma Bocce and the Flower Passage. And what Turkish baths to go to.”

  “Did he feed Jerry too?”

  “No. Jerry was scared of him because he knew John liked guys. DeLys had told Jerry about him before we left. So Jerry wouldn’t go see him.”

  “You like guys. You like Jerry, I think.”

  Which was true. “But Jerry,” I said, “and I are the same age. And we were already friends. I told Jerry I thought he was acting silly. But he’s a southerner, and he’s stubborn.”

  “That was a lovely letter Jerry wrote you.” She quoted: “ ‘Don’t step on any low flying birds.’ I always thought he was just another stupid American, too tall, and too awkward, with nothing very interesting to say—even though you liked him. But when you read me his letter, I really began to wish I’d gotten to know him better while he was here. You’re very sensitive to people, in ways I know I’m not. But sometimes, I suppose, we just miss out. Because, as you Americans say, of our prejudices.

  “But he is odd,” she went on, suddenly. “Turkish John, I mean—isn’t that a funny name, for an Englishman? Cosima says he gives her the creeps.”

  “He’s a little effeminate—he’s a queer,” I said. “But so am I, I suppose.” Though I didn’t really think I was—effeminate, that is.

  “I wonder why so many women like you.” Pharaoh went around behind her and, when she jerked him, came back between us, drawing black and white felt one way and another across her shoulder. “DeLys, Cosima, me . . . Even Kyria Kokinou likes you.” (Kyria Kokinou was the landlady Heidi had decided not to risk angering by having me stay in the room while she was away with her Greek children.) “Do you think there’s any particular reason for that?”

  “Probably because I’m queer,” I said. Then: “I wonder why we didn’t have more sex, you and I?”

  Now she leaned away with an ironic sneer, backed by her big, German smile. “I was certainly ready!” Heidi and I had slept in the same bed for two weeks; but we’d only made love twice. “I think you were just trying to prove a point,” she said. “That you were. . . ‘queer’, as you say.” Suddenly she straightened. “I’m really not looking forward to this trip. The ferry will have to go out by the paper mill; and it’s going to stink. And I won’t ever see you again, will I? Look, if you can stop for a day in Munich, you must visit the Deutsches Museum. I used to go there when I was little. It’s a science museum. And they have almost an entire real mine in the basement, that you can walk around in and watch it work—that was my favorite part, when I was a little girl. And wonderful mechanical toys from the Eighteenth Century—you can see actually functioning. I know you’ll love it. You like science, I know it. From your lovely books—that you write so carefully. I’d love to know I shared that little piece of my childhood with you. So go there—if you possibly can.” She looked around at the ferryboat. “Well, you have a wonderful trip home. And write me. You’ll go home—you’ll see your wife again. And everything will work out between you. I bet that’ll be so. It’s been an awful lot of fun. I hope you and your wife get back together—or something good happens there, anyway.” She leaned forward and gave me a kiss. I gave her a hug back, and she came up blinking. And grinned once more. Then she turned and went up the plank onto the deck, Pharaoh dashing first ahead, then suddenly back as if he’d forgotten something, so that, with a few embarrassed smiles at me, she had to drag him on board.

  At the gangplank’s top a man in a gray suit and an open-collared shirt, lounging against the rail like a passenger, suddenly stood up, swung about, and became very official, pointing at Heidi, at Pharaoh: an altercation started between them, full of “. . . Dthen thello ton skyllon edtho . . . !” (I don’t want the dog here) and much arm-waving on his part, with many drawn-out and cajoling “Pa-ra-ka-looo!” ’s and “Kallo to sky-laiki!”’s from Heidi. (Pleeease! and, He’s a good puppy!) It didn’t resolve until she went into her black leather reticule under her poncho to pull out first the John O’Hara paperback she was reading (it ended on the deck, splayed and spine up, by the rail post), some tissues, a pencil, and finally Pharaoh’s muzzle, waving the leather straps at the boat official, then stooping to adjust them over patient Pharaoh’s mouth and ears—while the other passengers stood close around, curious.

  At last she stood up to blow me a kiss.

  I waved back and called, “Get your book!”

  She looked down and saw the upended, thick black paperback, laughed, and stooped for it.

  “Ciao!” she called. “Bye!”

  “Ciao!”

  I walked back through the Piraeus market, under the iron roofs with their dirty glass panes above tomato and sea-urchin stalls, eggplant and octopus counters, through the red-light district (where, for a week, on my first return from the islands, I’d stayed with Ron and Bill and John), past blue and white doors and small wooden porches, to the subway that would return me to Athens.

  II

  “By all the gloom hung round thy fallen house,

  By this last temple, by the golden age,

  By great Apollo, thy dear foster child,

  And by thyself, forlorn divinity,

  The pale Omega of a withered race,

  Let me behold, according as thou said’st,

  What in thy brain so ferments to and fro.”

  —John Keats, The Fall of Hyperion, Canto I

  “I may be bringing someone home with me,” [Turkish] John said. “A man, I mean.” John had a long nose. “You won’t mind, will you? We’ll use the bed in the kitchen; I promise we won’t bother you. But . . .” John’s blond hair was half gray; his skin was faintly wrinkled and very dry—“it probably isn’t a good idea to mention it to DeLys.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “I promise. By the time she’s back, I’ll be
gone anyway.”

  “I meant in a letter, or something. But believe me,” he said, “I only pick up nice men. Or boys. There won’t be any trouble.”

  And later, on the cot bed in the front room of the tiny two-room Anaphiotika house, set into the mountain behind the Acropolis, I went to sleep.

  In ’Stamboul, just off Istiqlal, John had had a sumptuous third-floor apartment, full of copper coffee tables, towering plants, rich rugs and hangings. When I’d been staying at the Youth Hostel, one afternoon he’d fed me a wonderful high tea at his place that had kept me going for two days. A pocketful of the leftovers, in a cloth napkin, had—an hour later—even made dinner for timid, towering Jerry.

  I woke to whispered Greek, the lock, and two more Greek voices. One laughed as though he were coughing. Shhhing them, John herded two sailors, in their whites, through the room. The squat one halted in the door to the kitchen (in which was DeLys’s bed that John used), to paw the hanging back. He had a beer bottle in one hand. He laughed hoarsely once more. Then the tall one, towering him by almost two heads, shoved past, with John right after.

  I turned over—then turned back. Frowning, I reached down and pulled my wallet out of the pocket of my jeans where I’d dropped them over the neck of my guitar case sticking from under the bed; it was also my suitcase. I sat, slipped the wallet behind the books on the shelf beside me. Then I lay back down.

  John came back through the hanging. All he wore now was a blue shirt with yellow flowers. He squatted beside me, knees jackknifed up, to whisper: “There’re two of them, I’m afraid. So if you wanted to entertain one—just to keep him busy, while I did the other one—really, I wouldn’t mind. Actually, it would be a sort of favor.”

  “I’m sorry, John,” I said. “Thanks. But I’m awfully tired.”

  “All right.” He patted my forearm, where it was bent under my cheek. He smelled drunk. “But you can’t say I didn’t ask. And I certainly don’t mind sharing—if you change your mind.” Then he said: “I haven’t spoken Demotiki with anyone in more than a year. I’m surprised I’m doing as well as I am.” Chuckling, he was up and back into the kitchen, thin buttocks grinding below blue and yellow shirttails. He disappeared around the hanging, into the lighted kitchen, Greek, and laughter.

  I drifted off—despite the noise . . .

  Something bumped my arm. I opened my eyes. The little lamp in the corner was on. The squat sailor stood by my bed, leg pressed against my arm. Looking down at me, with one hand he joggled his crotch. Then he said, questioningly, “Poosty-poosty . . . ?”

  I looked up. “Huh . . . ?”

  “Poosty-poosty!” He rubbed with broad, Gypsy-dark fingers. A gold ring hugged deep into the middle one’s flesh. Pointing at my face with his other hand, he began to thumb open the buttons around his lap-flap. Once he reached over to squeeze my backside. Hard, too.

  “Aw, hey . . . !” I pushed up. “No . . . No . . . !” I made dismissive gestures. “I don’t want to. Dthen thello. Phevge! Phevge!” (I don’t want to! Go away! Go away!)

  “Ne!” Then he repeated, “Poosty-poosty,” emphatically.

  The flap fell from black groin hair, that, I swear, went halfway up his belly. His penis swung up, two-thirds the length of mine, but half again as thick. His nails were worn short from labor, and you could tell his palms and the insides of his fingers were rock rough.

  “Hey, come on!” I pulled back and tried to sit up. “Cut it out, will you? Dthen thello na kanomeparea!” (I don’t want to mess around with you!)

  But he grabbed the back of my head to pull my face toward his groin—hard enough to hurt my neck. For a moment, I figured maybe I should go along, so he wouldn’t hurt me more. I opened my mouth to take him—and he pushed in. I tasted the bitter sharpness of the cologne he’d doused himself with—and cologne on a dick is my least favorite taste in the world. Under it was the sweat of someone who’d been drinking steadily at least two days. While he clawed into the back of my neck, I thought: This is stupid. I tried to pry my head from under his hand and push him out with my tongue. And thought I’d done it; but he’d just moved, fast—across the bed, on one knee.

  It was a hot night. I hadn’t been sleeping with any covers.

  He grabbed my underpants and, when I tried to dodge away, ripped them down my legs.

  “Hey—!” I squirmed around, trying to pull them back up.

  But he pushed me, hard, down on the bed. With a knee on one buttock and leaning full on my shoulders, he shouted into the other room—while I managed to lift myself (and him) up first on one elbow, then on the other.

  I was about to try and twist him off, so I didn’t see the tall one come through; but suddenly he loomed, to grab my arms and yank both, by my wrists, forward. I went off my elbows and down. The sailor on top began to finger between my buttocks. “Ow!” I said. “Ow—stop! . . . Pauete!” That made the sailor holding my arms laugh—because it was both formal and plural; and it probably struck him as a funny time for me to be asking him formally to stop.

  The tall one let go one wrist and made as if to sock me in the face. He had immense hands. And when he did it, his knuckles looked like they were coming at me hard. I jerked my head aside, squeezed my eyes, and said, “Ahhh . . . !”

  But nothing connected—it was only a feint. Still, I hit my jaw on the bed’s iron rim.

  When I opened my eyes, the tall one grinned and said: “Ha-ha!“— then shook one finger, in a slow warning. Still holding my wrist with one hand, he moved to the right, grabbed my leg just above the knee, and yanked it aside.

  The one on top got himself in, then. Holding both my shoulders, he pushed, mumbling in Greek.

  The tall one moved back to take my free wrist again and squatted there, his face very close. He kind of smiled, curious. His breath smelled like Sen-sen. Or chewing gum. He had very black hair (his white cap was still on), hazel eyes, and tawny skin. (By his knee, the other’s cap had fallen on the rug.) Cajolingly, he began to say, now in Greek, now in English: “You like . . . ! You like . . . ! Su aresi . . . ! Good boy . . . ! Su aresi . . . ! You like . . . !”

  I grunted. “I don’t like! It hurts, you asshole . . . !”

  This pharmacologist, who’d first fucked me, told me that if I pushed out as if I were taking a shit, it wouldn’t sting.

  But not this time.

  The one on me bit my shouder and, panting, came. The one kneeling glanced up at him, then sighed too, let go, stood, and grunted down at me, as if to say, “See, it wasn’t that bad . . . ?”

  The one behind got off the bed and stood, pushing himself back into his uniform. Once he said to me, in English: “Good! See? You like!” like the tall one had. He picked up his cap from the floor—and (he’d missed two buttons on his lap) pulled it carefully over his head, then pushed one side back up to get the right angle.

  I sucked my teeth at him and tried to look disgusted. Frankly, though, I was scared to death.

  In Greek the squat one said: You want him now? I’ll hold him for you—

  The tall one said: You jerk-off! Let’s just get out of here!

  The squat one bent down again, picked up my jeans, and began to finger through the pockets.

  Then the tall one drew back his hand with the same feint he’d used on me: Come on! Forget that, jerk-off! Let’s get out of here, I told you!

  The squat one threw my jeans back down, and they went through the kitchen hanging. There was a back door, but I don’t remember if I heard it or not.

  I lay on the bed a minute, without moving, propped up on one elbow. Then I reached back between my buttocks. When I looked at my fingers, there were little pads of blood on two fingertips. I got up and went to the stall toilet in the corner—

  Urine covered the stone floor. On DeLys’s blue rug, it had darkened an area three times the size of someone’s head. John must have sent one of them in to use the toilet while I was still sleeping—before the first guy woke me.

  I reached inside, holding the jam
b with one hand, and got some paper from the almost empty roll. Still standing, I wiped myself, but with a blotting motion. It hurt too much to rub. When I looked at the yellow paper, there was a red smear, with some drops running from it, and slime on one side. My rectum stung like hell.

  I felt like I had to take a crap in the worst way; but the other thing the pharmacologist had said was to wait at least half an hour before you did that.

  When I went back to the bed, I saw the light in the kitchen had been turned out. As I sat down, gingerly, on the edge, on one cheek more than the other, from the dark behind the hanging, John asked: “Are you all right in there?” He sounded plaintive. For a moment I wondered if he was tied up or something.

  I called back: “I think so.” Then: “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  A moment later: “Did they take anything from you?”

  I pulled my jeans back across the floor toward the bed with my foot. Then I looked at the bookshelf. Between fat volumes by Mann and Michener was a much read Dell paperback of Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, a quarto hardcover of Daisy Ashford’s The Young Visitors, a chapbook of poems by Joyce Johnson, and Heidi’s copy of L’Ecume de jour, which every few hours I’d taken out to struggle through another paragraph of Vian’s playful French.

  “No,” I said. “My wallet’s safe.”

  At the very end were the paperbacks of my own few novels—and the typewritten sheaf of my wife’s poems, sticking up between two of them. Wherever I stayed, I’d always put them on a shelf so I could see them, to make me feel better. They were the books I’d stuck my wallet behind.

  “Good,” John said. Twenty seconds later, he said: “I don’t think they’ll come back.” And, a few seconds on: “Goodnight.”

  After a minute, I got up again, went to the kitchen door, and switched off the lamp. I didn’t look behind the hanging. (The big light, still out, you had to stand in the middle of the room to reach up and turn on.) But John wasn’t asking for help. So I went back and lay down.