Cast in Doubt Read Free Page A

cold and dry, much needed after a frustrating afternoon of work on Household Gods. It is so difficult to understand the mind of a woman of that time, perhaps a woman of any time. Like Helen. Though my Helen is, in so many ways, sympathetic and, of course, present. But trying to conceive and fashion the sense and sensibility of a nineteenth-century feminist abolitionist temperance reformer, and fold her character into a modern novel—it’s Great-Aunt Martha who drives me to drink.
    That miserly Roger has taken a table near me, not with me; we are cautious about possible presumptions. Yannis hardly glances at him, the other American with whom he once lived, very briefly. Roger sucks on his cigarette, looks toward Helen’s house, and through his small teeth hisses a distasteful remark about her. I declare him a Nelly, and he waves me off with his hand, as if it were possible to banish me. He is not alone in his contempt for Helen. Of the expatriates I am the only one who spends time with her. She doesn’t seem to mind and has indicated that she finds the others very uncool, which is how she put it. When someone speaks like that, uses words such as cool and so forth, I think of the forties and fifties and clubs in New York and Boston where I heard jazz played by excellent musicians, Negro musicians, who seemed indifferent to their white audiences. Black musicians. When it came into existence not so long ago, the phrase “Black is Beautiful” delighted me. It still does. Black is beautiful.
    Roger shifts in his chair and pretends to write in his journal. We are, unfortunately, almost all of us here, writers. This is a curse at times though relatively amusing at others, especially after I’ve had a few glasses of wine. Roger had a minor success with his first novel, set in the South, a coming-of-age drama that elided his homosexuality, masking it through other characters that the cognoscenti recognized. Then he received a good advance for his next, which is what he’s still working on, and left the States. Years ago. Even in this place he lives somewhat in the closet. I don’t know why he is here. The Greeks don’t care, not about us. I’ve even seen him flirting with Helen as if he might actually want her.
    It was late one night in Christos’ restaurant and one of the waiters had taken out his guitar and was playing bouzoúiki music. There were very few people about. Bouzoúki music has an insistent, demanding sound, and its nervous rhythm set the tone that night. Roger bowed to Helen and fairly lifted her out of her chair, waltzing her around the room while gazing ardently into her eyes as he moved her this way and that. It was quite a performance. That was in the first month she was here.
    I don’t know if Helen was taken in. He can be charming and has the foulest mouth. Again Roger says something about Our Miss Helen and The Sailors. Roger gets so Tennessee Williams, more Tenn than Tenn. He’s not from the Deep South, but from North Carolina only, yet he taunts me with his Southern drawl. When he feels he’s scored a point—Roger surely keeps score—his bright blue eyes flash triumphantly. His eyes are much more beautiful than my own, which pale by comparison. So bright shines our Roger. Oh, shut up, I hiss back. Tsk, tsk, Roger responds. I close my eyes, like a turtle in the sun, and turn away to show my disdain. But now Alicia arrives and walks our way. Her presence has an immediate salutary effect. Around Alicia, we keep our gloves on, so to speak.
    Alicia has had affairs with a few important literary men, who have deigned to write about her, one salaciously, in fact, and though well past fifty, I’d say, Alicia moves like a much younger woman. She is subtly sensual. Her operatic past surrounds her, and she’s dramatic without being oppressive. A tall, athletic woman, Alicia nevertheless gives the impression of fragility, a fragility that is generally contradicted by her rough-minded, though gently spoken,