In my thirties, an apprentice writer myself, I was more concerned with figuring out how to express the truth of my soul than worrying about the suffering world and how I should respond to it. I was focused on that whole matter of serving the work. The burning question back then was whether my work was true to my voice and my vision. Was it real? I would go into small agonies about it. I’m sure that’s because unvarnished authenticity was always the conflict for me. It was easier and simpler to please the culture and the family that shaped me than to uncover and tell my own truth. When I wrote The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, however, that conflict was shattered. The old, burning question died away.
A new overriding question has surfaced now, I realize: What does my work serve? I suspect the impulse to find a purpose for my writing that’s larger than myself has grown out of my experience in the burial chamber in Gavrinis, France, when I discovered the need to identify with the “billion lights” and find a simple return to love. And yes, it’s accentuated by the grandmothering spirit that rises in the last third of life.
I write all this down in my journal with a certain trepidation. It could sound full of loftiness and heroic delusion to some. I don’t want to kid myself. There is wisdom in refusing the role of savior and accepting my limitations. Turning fifty involved making a severe peace with the fact that I cannot give birth to every egg in my ovaries or every potential in my soul. To say nothing of the way motives sometimes get mixed when the scheme is grand: what starts out as serving the world can easily turn into serving one’s self. The opposite side of it, though, is the long, slow retreat into indifference and cynicism.
The air gusts up again, and I hear a hollow, echoing sound like the clatter of a bamboo wind chime. Then it dies away, and the walled world is silent. Even my mind shuts down and I experience the silence that I’m always reading and writing about. And here is what rises in me: There is a time when you are simply seized by tenderness for the world, that’s all. When you come home to it, like Mary finding her way back to the tree and the wide world. When you decide you want your work to serve some part of that, too.
When the tree is deserted and everyone in the group has wandered off to visit the church or rummage through the shop where the nuns sell their lace, I open the gate on the iron fence that surrounds the tree. Am I trespassing? Stepping through, I look guiltily over both shoulders, then wade into the shadows around the base of the trunk. I pick my way over the arthritic old roots, circling around to the icon.
Staring at Mary through the plate glass, I’m arrested by how close and personal she feels without the fence between us. I’d forgotten the smoldering brown eyes. I stand there for a few seconds, staring at them, disarmed, self-conscious, listening for footsteps, for the nuns coming to haul me out.
I make myself think back to the prayer I uttered about becoming a novelist when I was here in 1993, back over the circuitous way things unfolded after that, and I get a whole tableau of pictures. The image of bees in the wall that wanted to become a story. The writing teacher pronouncing its potential small. The bee lighting on my shoulder in Ephesus like an epiphany, like a tiny cymbal crash, and all the determination this visitation set off in me. The moment in Rocamadour when I knew I had to send what I’d written out there. The phone call in the optometrist’s office. Then trekking from my desk to the dock through the summer as I finally finished the book.
I reach in my bag for the small jar of South Carolina honey I’ve brought as my thank-you offering, relieved the jar has actually made it over here in one piece in the plastic bag at the bottom of my suitcase.
I unscrew the lid and pour the contents across the tree roots. The air is flooded with the powerful scent of sweetness. I watch the honey ooze over the roots into the dirt, how it leaves dark, glistening stains on the bark. Dipping two fingers inside the empty jar, I scrape a little more from the side and dab it onto the glass over the icon, over the Madonna’s heart.
The padded steps of a nun intrude. Compared to the others, she is young and tall, though she’s got to be fifty and no more than five foot two. She carries a tubular loaf of bread and what looks like sticks of incense. When she looks at me, I freeze like I’ve been caught drawing a mustache on Mary instead of dousing her in gratitude. But the nun only nods and breezes by with a scruffy black dog traipsing behind her.
Turning back to the icon, I press my hand onto the smudge of honey on the glass and think how funny that I ended up with Mary, with this devotion. As I look at her, though, I know she is not a figure in a tree or in a church, but a presence inside. She is a way to meet the divinity in myself. Even now she fuels the conversation that is trying to form in me about my writing, about Rumi’s sweet, cold water and the jar that pours it.
Ann
Restaurant-Delphi The Acropolis, Plaka, Electra Palace Hotel-Athens
Gathered at banquet-style tables, our group has just polished off dinner at a restaurant in Delphi. I am stuffed on dolmadhes—grapevine leaves filled with rice, lentils, and feta. As the servers clear away the dishes, we push our chairs into a horseshoe. There is no dance floor, but there will be dancing.
The columns around the room are the same burnt-orange color as the pyracantha that bloom all over town like burning bushes. Their berries have rained cinderlike onto the narrow pedestrian streets. Mom and I slogged through them on the walk here from the hotel, cutting through what seemed like people’s backyards, past tiny balconies where towels hung to dry beside the geraniums. In ancient times, Delphi was known as the center of the world. As we walked, I told Mom the story of how Zeus located it by sending an eagle from the east and an eagle from the west. They met in Delphi, and the spot was marked by a stone called the Omphalos, or the navel.
As the first notes of a clarinet pipe through the speakers in the restaurant, I push “record” on my video camera. The troupe—three women and four men—springs into the room, holding hands. Forming a circle, they skip—graceful, controlled, perfectly in step with each other. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a dance scene like this painted on ancient Greek vases in archaeological museums. I watch the dancers’ feet bounce off the smooth stone floor as the tassels on the men’s hose whisk the air and their pleated foustanellas flutter around their thighs. Costas, the leader of the troupe, is easy to spot in his bright red sash.
The music speeds up. Everyone, including me, sways in their seats. Camera flashes break across the dancers’ faces as the song ends suddenly and the women get in touch with their inner cheer-leaders, whooping as another dance starts.
Beside me, Mom claps, her camera dangling from her wrist. The sight revives the memory of our night out in Athens two years ago—dinner in the Plaka, the singer in the blue-sequined dress, the electric hurtles of the Greek dancers, and then the one who held his hand out, inviting me to dance. I had revisited the moment a million times in my mind. I thought the dancer’s face would become the marker of this memory, the way dismay spread like an inkblot across his bright expression, but it was his outstretched hand I’ve remembered. The whole incident lasted three seconds, but it’s three seconds I wish I had back.
Costas steps to the side of the dance floor as two of the other men make elaborate leaps, then twist themselves into limbo postures. Standing beside the Mythos beer crates stacked by the bar, he bounces on his heels, drums his fingers against his chest, and blows piercing whistles through his fingers. I focus the video camera on him, the Lord of the Dance.
As the two leaping men take their bows, I notice Letta, the Greek guide who’s traveling with us, applaud, and I remember what she said when we first started out in Crete: “People do not come to Greece to rest. They come to gain their days.”
I’d tried to shield myself from life and inhabit my own small, safe corner. But there is no immunity from life—that’s what I’ve learned. I will never be the kind of person to volunteer from the audience at Cirque du Soleil, but I won’t be satisfied being draperies either. I don’t want to miss out on what the Greeks cal
l zoe. Life. I want to live all of it, the whole glorious hazard.
Costas walks straight to me, and I see it coming. He holds out his hand.
I set the video camera on the table.
“You want to dance?” he asks.
I’m on my feet.
He pulls me into the center of the room. As we dance, I try to catch a glimpse of his feet, almost bumping into him. I rely on what Demetri taught me three and a half years ago—step, step, step, hop. When he raises our hands above our heads, my fingers accidentally brush against the dark stubble on his face.
The beat of the music accelerates. Costas yells for Trisha to grab on, and she takes my outstretched hand. Soon a long line snakes through the flame-colored columns in a mood of mild pandemonium. My mother is back there somewhere, but I can’t see her. Costas sings along to the music, our hands sweating together, and I feel the heat on my cheeks. On the next pass by the table, I see my video camera still rolling, its red light glowing, capturing me from the waist down as I dance at the center of the world.
I guess the second time is the charm—the museum on the Acropolis is open. Finally, I’m going to see the relief that archaeologists have given two names—the Mourning Athena and the Contemplating Athena. Take your pick.
The whole museum consists of a few white rooms with accenting panels of Mediterranean blue. Every artifact here was found on the Acropolis, many of them offerings to Athena or adornments on the temples. Stopping before a carved owl, Letta explains its role in Athena’s mythical story: “It is one of her symbols—a bird with the ability to see all around. It points to Athena’s quality of seeing and understanding. She is the Goddess of Wisdom, after all.”
Letta tells us that when she was a little girl, there were still owls roosting on the Acropolis, small and gray, like the ones Athena is often depicted holding. I’m reminded of the owl feather that has sat on my desk back home. Before this trip, I dreamed about a gray owl that swooped through the doorway of my apartment and flew into every room. I woke, jolted. In my head I kept hearing what Athena said to me three years ago in an earlier dream: You can see me anytime you want. All you have to do is dream. But I never did. This dream, however, felt like a visit from her. The thrilling sensation I got watching the owl fly through my apartment stayed with me all that day.
I walk through the brittle afternoon light that slants through a large museum window, noticing how it illuminates the remnants of muted paint on the Korai, or maiden sculptures. At the end of the hall is the relief I’ve been waiting to see. It is taller than I expected, more than lifesize. Letta informs us the relief dates to 460 BCE, around the beginning of the Golden Age of Pericles. I stare at the way Athena’s forehead is bowed against her spear. She is barefoot, one hand on her hip and a pensive expression on her face.
In 1998, when I saw this image in a book, Athena looked as if the fight had gone out of her. I know now it was I who felt defeated. Today, two years later, I have a different impression. The cast of her face strikes me as contemplative rather than mournful. To me now, this is a look of contentment.
At 5:00 P.M. I wait in the lobby of the Electra Palace Hotel for Demetri. Swinging my bag onto my shoulder, I walk to the end of the lobby desk and look out the front door. I’m a little jumpy about meeting him, only because it has been so long since I’ve seen him and I don’t know what to expect—how much he will have changed, whether meeting him now as a friend is a reasonable idea, or whether, once a romance is over and done, it is better to just walk away. I’m pretty sure it’s the latter, but the relationship was significant to me in a way that went far beyond Demetri himself, and I cannot shake the feeling that what I wish for by this encounter is closure.
I glance again at the door. It occurs to me that he may not even show up.
During the past year, Demetri and I exchanged Christmas cards, Easter cards, and infrequent letters. I wasn’t accustomed to receiving Easter cards, and he wasn’t accustomed to Christmas cards depicting ice-skating nuns. “Your card was unusual,” he wrote.
Our letters were the efforts of two people trying to be friends, but stuck in pen-palish language: Hi. How are you? The weather here is . . . I continued to write because I wanted his friendship, and because I felt badly about what happened before—failing to show up or even answer the phone when he called. I wanted to make it right.
In my last letter to him, six months ago, I told him I was getting married and also that I was coming to Greece with my mom this fall. Months passed and I heard nothing back. Then in late August, a battered letter arrived, having endured an arduous, three-month postal excursion to our new apartment.
Dear Ann,
I have finished school. I took some time for holidays on Zakinthos and now I am in Athens and attend further courses. I will stay here until December when I will move. . . .
He wrote about his plans, his friends, his car. It went on for two pages. Then he closed with this:Congratulations about the wedding. I truly hope you are happy. I am glad you will be back in Greece in October. I would like to see you again, but because of what happened last time—it is up to you.
Demetri
P.S. If you decide to see me, bring your wedding pictures.
I wrote back suggesting five o’clock, October 19, in the lobby of the Electra Palace Hotel—it was the only free time I had in Athens.
I told Scott about the meeting and that I hoped I had his blessing, explaining how badly I felt for avoiding Demetri last time. “Besides,” I said, “how often is a person in Greece anyway?”
“Apparently every other year,” he joked, and then, “I’m okay with it.”
Scott did seem unconcerned, but I wasn’t sure Demetri was up for the meeting. When I left for Greece, I had not heard a word from him. Did he get the letter? Did he ignore it?
Demetri walks into the lobby ten minutes late, wearing a thin leather jacket. He looks taller. A more grown-up version of the lanky nineteen-year-old I met on a sidewalk in the Plaka.
“You look the same,” he says. “Your hair is shorter, but still . . . the freckles.”
“And you’re taller,” I tell him.
We walk toward Apollonos Street, into the sound of motor scooters sputtering like chain saws. He says, “The weather is nice.”
“It’s a lot like home,” I respond.
When we arrive at Mitropoleos Square, Demetri gestures to a table at an outside café near the cathedral, not far from where Mom and I were once besieged by hungry cats. After we’ve dispensed with the awkward small talk, he leans his elbows on the table and looks at me. “So, are you happy?”
“I am,” I say, and it’s not a pleasantry. I actually am.
As the server places two small cups of coffee in front of us, I think about Scott, how I could not imagine my life without him. About the puppy we want to get. The book I want to write. The trinity of Athena, Mary, and Joan, who travel with me now. I think how my experience in the underworld has brought me to a new sense of myself, the way my self-rejection has turned into acceptance and a new way of valuing myself. As painful as that was, I wouldn’t change any of it.
“What about you?” I ask.
“I’m studying this summer. It’s okay.” I listen as he elaborates, noticing more ways he has and has not changed. His hair is just as dark, his eyes as brown, his manners as courteous. But there seems to be a serious quality about him that I didn’t notice before. He throws a pack of cigarettes on the table, and that’s a marked difference from the person who told me cigarette smoke made his head hurt. Perhaps we both have a shorthand version of each other.
“Did you ever learn any Greek?” he asks.
“A little.”
“Let me hear.”
I toss out random phrases I remember from my language tapes. Ine oreo. It’s beautiful. Nomizo. I think so. Alithia? Really? Dhen katalaveno. I don’t understand.
“It’s good,” he says, and sips his coffee. “Did you bring pictures of your wedding?”
“A
few.” I reach for the envelope in my bag and spread the photos on the table. Me in my wedding dress, standing with my mom, then dancing with my dad, and finally Scott and I cutting the cake.
“He might look a little Greek,” he says, pointing to Scott. I laugh at that. I want to ask him if he knows the phrase “As American as apple pie.” Sliding the photos back into the envelope, I say, “Will you be getting married anytime soon?”
“I have a girlfriend, Helen,” he tells me. Of course, Helen—the face that launched a thousand ships. He looks at his watch. “I have to meet her shortly.”
After the bill comes, I pull out my map of Athens and ask him to pinpoint the restaurant where we danced. It has bothered me that I’ve forgotten its name and location. I want to always know the spot where I danced on a tabletop.
“I’ll take you,” Demetri says. “It’s not far.”
We walk to the corner of Mnisikleous Street. “The restaurant used to be up there,” he says, pointing. We stand beside kiosks of sunglasses and leather belts and stare at a narrow lane leading to a building painted antique gold.
I recognize it the instant I see it. “Did you say it used to be there?”
He nods and leads me up the steps, to the door. “It’s an art gallery now.”
I peer through the windowpanes, remembering how Demetri and I slipped outside after dancing. We kissed in the spot where we are standing right now, and where I’d looked up to see the Acropolis in the distance.
He is quiet. His hands find their way into his coat pockets.
“Signomi,” I say. I’m sorry. “I wrote it in a letter, but I wanted to say it in person. I never wanted to make you feel like you didn’t matter to me.”
He puts his hand on the back of my arm. “I know.”