By the Light of My Father's Smile Read online

  The oilcloth with a black background and cabbage roses of white, red, and pink on which all the delicious food lay. Remember this, she whispered. This tablecloth. It is a sign. Then, laughing, she made the motion of zippering her lips—a movement, a signal for secrecy they shared—that made them cackle loudly, as the ouzo hit the bottom of their jet-lagged bellies, and the old ones looked on in amusement and a little alarm.

  It was the beginning of the end, even so. Even though, that very night, in the small white bedroom next to his parents’ room, the room that had been his as a boy, they, with their firmly zippered lips, moved as silently against each other as two snakes. Kissing was not speaking and was therefore exempt from the ban. Slipping to the floor, at the foot of the bed, silently thanking her for loving his parents and not considering them grotesque, as he had feared, he took her small brown foot into his large pale hand and kissed its sole. Sitting on the floor beside the bed, tired, a bit drunk, he made not a sound as he brushed both her feet, back and forth and back and forth, with his thick mustache. The bed shook with her laughter, but she also did not make a sound. She felt herself warm, beginning to tingle inside, and thought: All play leads up to this moment.

  Through the wall they heard the old ones shifting their bodies. They heard them sigh, begin to snore. By then he had climbed up into the bed, was on top of her, was inside her, was soaking in her scent of lemongrass and cloves. He floated on her, his penis a rod, a branch of the olive tree, no, the very olive tree itself, whose olives she loved. The ancestral tree that fed all of Greece. Moving in her, to his parents’ snores.

  Long and sweetly they played, connecting worlds that rarely glimpsed each other, and then usually in travel brochures; continents foreign to each other as the moon. More foreign, because the moon at least could be seen. Cultures connected only by the warmth of a mother’s eye, a new daughter’s receptive look. A lover’s kiss. He could feel her orgasm coming. It was a shivering, like wind, around his tree. And as it blew downward he raised his trunk to greet it, his free mouth—with its wild mustache like a wreath of leaves—in silence growing wider and fuller over her own.

  He had thought she might become pregnant from that night. He had had the distinct impression of their being in the embrace of nature. Certainly he felt as if he had planted something in my daughter that would not cease to grow. Exactly where she was broken, in her willing response to him, to his parents’ sweetness, the delicious food and burning drink, to the balding, fading oilcloth on the table, to the little white room itself, he was not able to discern. And yet she had turned from him, finally, that sacred night, and had fallen asleep. Satiated. But incomprehensibly empty.

  The Reason You Fell in Love

  She was curious. A woman of curiosity. That was so American of her. She wondered why many of the old women wore black. Why they stepped aside with deference when men passed. What was that quality of resignation in their joy?

  She noticed that the leader of our country had a tall blonde from the American Midwest as his wife. And that all the little wifelets of his deputies had lightened their own dark hair by several shades. She asked me about the killing of the adulterous woman in Zorba the Greek. Did Kazantzakis tell the truth? And if he did, did such things still happen?

  As she forged ahead, I saw a shift occur in my mother’s look. Very odd. For I had known it all my life to be a face with a certain limited range of emotional expression. I did not recognize the looks she was beginning to give my inquisitive wife.

  I saw my mother begin to awaken, against her will. As if from ancient sleep. To shake herself, as an animal after hibernation might do. I saw her rouse her memory. I saw her look down at herself, as if for the first time since girlhood, over sixty years ago, and see all the black clothing shrouding her, and the kerchief, black, in all this Greek heat, tied under her chin. I saw that she feared what might happen to her, under Susannah’s curious questions. And that her solution was to entice Susannah into becoming a tourist.

  Go to the church, she croaked, pulling us toward the road. Take Susannah to see our precious sites, she said, grinning grimly so that her worn gold tooth showed.

  She had made a pun without realizing it. In America one went to see the sights. In Greece to see the sites. Susannah and I smiled as I explained it to my mother, who looked desperate. A look which actually made us laugh, even as we hoped our chuckles would not be perceived as condescending.

  The sun was hot. It seemed hotter even than when I was a boy. The stones so hot a glancing footstep caused them to shed their dust. I took Susannah’s hand. She was dressed completely in white, her hair lifted off her neck in one thick, coiled braid that accentuated her height and her elegant, gliding walk. In Greece I did not feel too short for her. Men were often short in Greece, and something in our psyches, Susannah said maybe it was an ancient memory of gods and goddesses, revered the stately woman. I felt instead only pride to be stepping out with her.

  And so they entered the small white church, the shrine of St. Theodore the Merciful with the tiny brown virgin at his feet, and witnessed a ritual Petros had not seen or even thought about since he was a boy: the local women entering the church, pulling their shawls over their heads, praying silently as they approached the large statue of St. Theodore, but then, prostrating themselves, furtively kissing the small virgin’s feet. Look, said my observant daughter, poking her husband in the ribs, as they watched the adoration with which the women did this. Look. Look. There (meaning the women’s kissing of the brown virgin’s feet) is the reason you fell in love with me!

  It was in the church that they encountered the dwarf.

  Eyes

  At first I honestly did not remember her, though I had seen her every Sunday the entire time I was growing up. She was a fixture of the church. In fact, she lived there.

  I felt Susannah poking me as the old women rose from their prostrations, placed their waxy white lilies in the urn left for them, crossed themselves, adjusted their scarves, and backed out the door. I thought she meant to ask about their backing out, a sign of respect to the virgin, as I saw it now, though as a boy I thought it meant deference to St. Theodore. But no, she was nodding toward the edge of the sacristy, where a very short woman, the top of her graying head just visible above what in America is called a pulpit, had already begun to sweep away the dust blown in by the worshippers, tourists, and other aimless travelers.

  Her name is Irene, I said to Susannah in a whisper. She lives here. She is the caretaker of the place.

  Irene appeared to hear my whisper, if not its content, and sent us a black, blazing look.

  Her look appeared to scorch Susannah. It was as if she and the dwarf shared a moment of recognition. What I had interpreted as a black look was in fact, according to Susannah later, a deep gazing into each other’s eyes. A joining. And why was this? Of course Susannah, the American, wanted to know. Why should an aging Greek dwarf look so intensely into her eyes? What about the eyes of all the other passionate-looking Greek women around? And come to think of it, in Greece it was easy to see why the word “passion” also denoted suffering. So many of the women, when they smiled, seemed to smile through tears. It was in the eyes, said Susannah, wondering aloud if even the women themselves were aware of this ancient, indelible grief.

  She wanted to be introduced. I explained it was out of the question. That no one actually talked to Irene. Susannah was aghast. How is that possible? she asked, staring. And of course she wouldn’t speak English, I added.

  Oh, murmured my wife, appearing to sink into herself, to actually become shorter, somehow. Oh, she said, as if to no one in particular, as if, in fact, to throw the words against the hot dry wind: Oh, but she has eyes, she finally said. And with these words, as we walked away, defiantly, she turned and looked back. But the dwarf was nowhere to be seen.

  Paradise

  After the experience of meeting Irene’s hot gaze in the small, cool church, Petros and I walked outside and began to climb the hill that r
ose behind it. As a boy he and Anand had played there; as a young man he had walked among the rocks with young girls. For them, at that time, the Fifties, the biggest experience of the week, quite frequently, and if you had a girlfriend, was the sunset.

  His mother had sent me to the church, a tourist attraction more than anything else, these days, to get rid of the questions about women that I posed. I had begun to embarrass her. And yet, she was responsible for connecting me with Irene. However, Petros cautioned that I should say nothing about her to his mother. That she had no doubt forgotten Irene would be there, and that I would be curious. His mother, he said, would shrug off my questions; she would have nothing to say.

  And you, I said, what do you have to say?

  Only what the old stories tell us, he said, holding my hand as we stepped along the narrow path. Irene’s mother was raped. Her father and brothers chose not to believe this. She was beaten. No one ever again spoke to her. When Irene was born, her mother died. Irene was a dwarf. God’s punishment for her mother’s sin. She was given at a very young age, as a servant, to the church.

  Petros pointed down to the church, which seemed almost a miniature in the distance. Off to the side, there, in a separate square, is where her mother is buried. See the flowers on her grave? They are always the same lilies that the old women bring.

  The ones from inside? I asked.

  Yes, he said.

  No one knows how or when Irene learned that that place was her mother’s grave. No one was supposed to tell her, just as no one is supposed to speak to her. But somehow, all these years, she has known.

  I will tell her that I also know, I said.

  Petros smiled at me. Whoa, he said, imitating an American cowboy, his favorite American hero. She knows. She does not need you to know. Don’t be an American busybody.

  Was it at that moment that I began to draw away from Petros? Suddenly I felt absent from the Greek landscape through which we walked so admiringly. Even the thought of his parents’ oilcloth, identical to one my grandparents in the South had had—a small square of which I had framed and hung on my college dorm wall—could not restore me. We stood watching Irene stomp out of the church’s back door, her arms filled with white lilies, reminding me of a painting by Diego Rivera; her short, stocky form, all in black, nearly hidden from view. She made her way to the most distant part of the cemetery, and then beyond it, until she arrived at a space that seemed empty—by comparison to the regular burial plots, their white tombstones glittering, all around. There in a large urn were the old flowers, which she plucked out. Then, thoughtfully—critically, it seemed, even from such a distance—she placed the lilies one by one in the receptacle. Finished, she ducked around the side of the church and returned with a bucket of water. After pouring the water through the flowers she stepped back, crossed herself, and backed away.

  We watched as she entered her own small room at the back of the church, and I heard Petros sigh, perhaps at the thought of her loneliness, as we watched the shutters come together—but not before we’d caught a glimpse, just before the final banging shut, of something that looked suspiciously like bright red window curtains inside.

  What was the life of this woman? This woman dwarf? How could she be so punished for what she was? For being her mother’s child? For being? And who had cradled her through babyhood? Comforted her through adolescence? Who had instructed her how to serve both her mother and the church?

  It is too much! I said in agitation to Petros as we walked home. Back to his mother’s beans, rice, salad, and lamb stew.

  I agree, he said sadly. And then, with a sudden violence he added, stomping on the ground: I hate this place.

  But it was paradise.

  Of Course

  Of course I speak English, said Irene, puffing on a harsh-smelling Gauloise cigarette. Cartons of Camels, Kools, Lucky Strikes were stacked against the back wall of her room. I speak German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, as well. Also Latin, but there’s nobody left to speak it to.

  Susannah was glad that, on principle, she rarely listened to men. Rarely believed, really, a word they said. No matter how much she might love them.

  My husband thought you … she began—but how to finish the sentence? It hung there between them. In fact, she realized now, Petros had probably thought Irene couldn’t speak at all, since no one was allowed to speak to her.

  Husbands, said Irene, with a shrug. I see very little of them. It is usually their wives, women like you, she said, with a slight nod, who are curious.

  But why are we curious? thought Susannah, as Irene continued to talk, the Gauloise hanging from full burgundy-colored lips, her brow furrowed as she worked on a piece of embroidery that looked like a tablecloth and covered both her knees.

  They used to stone women, here, said Irene into the silence, not so very long ago. Did your husband tell you that? That is what the men tell each other, you know, and whisper into the ears of foreign men, when they get the chance to talk together. Ah, women think they want to know what men talk about! Irene scoffed. You can be sure they stoned a great many, before they got their vaunted “democracy” in these parts. From my window I can see one of the stoning pillars. They say that even a hundred years ago, the base of it was still pink from blood.

  Susannah rose from her cushion by the door and looked in the direction Irene pointed. There, way in the distance, toward the sea, and glinting bone white against the royal blue, yes, there was a post of some sort.

  It goes on today, more than most Westerners would ever guess, said Susannah, sighing. And in some cultures they have written in their religious books the size and shape of the stones to be used. Some are of a special size and shape to break the woman’s nose, others to crack her skull. There had been many recent stonings in Saudi Arabia and Iran; a few brave women and men had risked their lives to tell the world about them.

  Irene made a face. She was sitting on a cushion also. Hers was maroon. Susannah’s green. It was an amazing room. Every inch of it, walls, ceiling, floor, covered with embroidery or needlepoint. One had the feeling of being small, the size of a fly perhaps, and of lying against the bodice of a very colorful, old-fashioned Greek wedding dress.

  I am impressed, said Susannah, that you know so many languages.

  I am nearly seventy, said Irene. I never leave this place. What is there to do but to know everything that goes on in the world? To know everything, I had only to learn other people’s languages, and, with television, learn to read their weary faces.

  Susannah glanced at the large television set in the corner of the room. Is it by satellite? she asked.

  Of course, said Irene. From here I can see everything, even into the heart of the modern Diana. She made a face. Princess Di. I can see what a mess she’s made of her life, but also how she tries very hard to rise to the meaning of her own name. Her name is a life raft, if she would only grab it. Irene shrugged. What would the goddess for whom she is named think of her? She pulled a thread that stuck up from her embroidery and snapped it between her teeth. She laughed, abruptly. Almost a bark.

  To be a princess must have seemed like being a goddess, though, said Susannah, thoughtfully. She had a fondness for Diana, whose stricken or glowing face always confronted one, in North America, from the covers of tabloids, at the checkout counters of supermarkets, anywhere you went.

  At the time of the courtship, yes, said Irene. She was so young. And after all, he was, her husband-to-be, a prince.

  Hmm, said Susannah. I remember when I got it about saints and goddesses. The difference, I mean. Saints are too good to be true, and goddesses insist on being both magical and real. It is because they’re good and bad and because with them, anything can happen, that they’re goddesses.

  Diana was a huntress, mused Irene. She knew everything about getting what she wanted; but as goddess she maintained the freedom to toss back what didn’t please her. A mere princess has trouble doing that. She grunted, and tugged the section of cloth she was working o
n so that it more snugly fit its frame.

  The evening was coming on; the afternoon had been hot and dry. Irene served tea festooned with fresh mint leaves and poured over slivered ice.

  Susannah sat limply on her green cushion, which she’d dragged away from the door; her back was now against Irene’s small wooden bed.

  There are also wonderful tapes, said Irene. But best of all are the soap operas. In every nationality they are the best way to learn a language.

  No kidding? said Susannah, sipping her tea.

  No kidding, said Irene, mocking Susannah’s tone, but with her own amusing, to Susannah, accent.

  But why do women come to you? asked Susannah. And, more important, why do you receive them?

  Myself, said the dwarf, pointing to her rounded chest, I think they are drawn by my red curtains.

  I certainly was, said Susannah, smiling.

  Why does it surprise you that I, even I, should have a thirst for life? said Irene. A woman living alone. A small woman. A very small woman. In a room in back of a white church. A very white church, because I whitewash it every year. In a room with red curtains.

  The very description is intriguing, you have to admit! said Susannah, laughing.

  And yet Petros had not been intrigued. Nor even interested.

  She’s a dwarf, she lives alone. She’s made her peace with it. Leave her alone. He had been saddened by Irene’s fate, Susannah thought now, without really knowing it.