The Names

across the street, Americans, walking, single file along the high wall, lost tourists, students, expatriates.'Travel is a kind of fatalism,' Charles was telling her. 'At my age, I'm beginning to sense the menace ahead. I'm going to die soon, goes the refrain, so I'd better see the bloody sights. This is why I don't travel except on business.”'You've lived everywhere.”'Living is different. One doesn't gather up sights in quite the same way. There's no compiling of sights. I think it's when people get old they begin to compile. They not only visit pyramids, they try to build a pyramid out of the sights of the world.”'Travel as tomb-building,' I said.'He listens in. The worst kind of dinner companion. Chooses his moments.' He made a fist around his cigarette. 'Living is different, you see. We were saving the sights for our old age. But now the whole idea of travel begins to reek of death. I have nightmares about busloads of rotting corpses.”'Stop,' she said.'Guidebooks and sturdy shoes. I don't want to give in.”'But you're not old.”'My lungs are shot. More wine,' he said.'I wish I could see a merry twinkle in your eyes. Then I'd know you were kidding.”'My eyes are shot too.”Lindsay was in some ways the stabilizing center of our lives together, our lives as dinner companions, people forced by circumstance to get along. In a way, despite her age, it was logical.She was the one most recently removed from a fixed life. It said something about the world of corporate transients that we saw her as a force for equilibrium. No doubt she gave David the latitude he needed. She would enjoy his moments of dangerous fun and be uncritical of the corollary broodings.Second wives. I wondered if there was a sense in which they felt they'd been preparing for this all along. Waiting to put the gift to use, the knack for solving difficult men. And I wondered if some men tore through first marriages believing this was the only way to arrive at the settled peace that a younger woman held in her flawless hands, knowing he'd appear one day, a slurry of blood and axle grease. To women, these men must have the glamour of a wrecked Ferrari. I could see how David would be one of these. I envied him this reassuring woman, at the same time not forgetting how much I valued the depth of Kathryn's resolve, her rigorous choices and fixed beliefs. This is the natural state.The German, named Stahl, was talking to me about refrigeration systems. Below us a slack tide washed against the narrow beach. A waiter brought melon, whitish green with spotted yellow rind. These mass dinners had shifting patterns, directional changes of conversation, and I found myself involved in an intricate cross-cut talk with the German, to my right, on air cooling, and with David Keller and Dick Borden, at the other end and other side of the table, on famous movie cowboys and the names of their horses. David was going to Beirut the next day. Charles was going to Ankara. Ann was going to Nairobi to visit her sister. Stahl was going to Frankfurt. Dick was going to Muscat, Dubai and Riyadh.Two children ran through the room, the guitarist started singing. At the far edge of auditory range, through all the cross-talk, I heard Ann Maitland, in conversation with this man Eliades, switch briefly from English to Greek. A phrase or short sentence, that was all, and she probably had no motive except to clarify or emphasize a point. But it seemed an intimacy, the way her voice softly closed around this fragment, it seemed a contact of some private kind. How strange, that a few words in a foreign language (the local language, spoken at surrounding tables) could float through to me, suggesting the nature of a confidence, making the other dialogue seem so much random noise. Ann was probably a dozen years older than he was. Attractive, bantering, sometimes unsure of things, drawn taut, with a self-mocking imperial way about her and beautiful sorry eyes. Did I begrudge her a sentence in Greek? About Eliades I knew nothing, not even which one of us he was connected to, or in what way. He'd arrived late, making the customary remark about normal time and Greek time.'Topper,' Dick Borden said. 'That was Hopalong Cassidy's horse.”David said, 'Hopalong Cassidy? I'm talking about cowboys, man. Guys who got down there in the shit and the muck. Guys with broken-down rummy sidekicks.”'Hoppy had a sidekick. He chewed tobacky.”David got up to find the toilet, taking a handful of black grapes with him. I drew Charles into the colloquy with the German, deftly, and then went around the table to David's chair, sitting across from Ann and Eliades. He had bitten into a peach and was smelling the pit-streaked flesh. I think I smiled, recognizing my own mannerism. These peaches were a baffling delight, certain ones, producing the kind of sense pleasure that's so unexpectedly deep it seems to need another context. Ordinary things aren't supposed to be this gratifying. Nothing about the exterior of the peach tells you it will be so lush, moist and aromatic, juices running along your gums, or so subtly colored inside, a pink-veined golden bloom. I tried to discuss this with the faces across the table.'But I think pleasure is not easy to repeat,' Eliades said. 'Tomorrow you will eat a peach from the same basket and be disappointed. Then you will wonder if you were mistaken. A peach, a cigarette. I enjoy one cigarette out of a thousand. Still I keep smoking. I think pleasure is in the moment more than in the thing. I keep smoking to find this moment. Maybe I will die trying.”Possibly it was his appearance that gave these remarks the importance of a world view. His wild beard covered most of his face. It started just below the eyes. He seemed to be bleeding this coarse black hair. His shoulders curved forward as he spoke and he rocked slightly at the front edge of the chair. He wore a tan suit and pastel tie, an outfit at odds with the large fierce head, the rough surface he carried.I tried to pursue the notion that some pleasures overflow the conditions attending them. Maybe I was a little drunk.Ann said, 'Let's not have metaphysics this evening. I'm a plain girl from a mill town.”'There is always politics,' Eliades said.He was looking at me with a humorous expression. I thought I read a tactful challenge there. If the subject was too delicate, he seemed to be saying, I might honorably go back to cowboys.'A Greek word, of course. Politics.”'Do you know Greek?' he said.'I'm having a hard time learning. I've felt at a constant disadvantage since my first day in this part of the world. I've felt stupid in fact. How is it so many people know three, four, five languages?”'That is politics too,' he said, and his teeth showed yellowish in the mass of hair. 'The politics of occupation, the politics of dispersal, the politics of resettlement, the politics of military bases.”Wind shook the bamboo canopy and blew paper napkins across the floor. Dick Borden, at the head of the table, to my left, talked across me to his wife, who was on my immediate right, about getting on home to relieve the sitter. Lindsay brushed past my chair. Someone joined the old guitarist in his song, a man, dark and serious, turning in his chair to face the musician.'For a long time,' Dot said to the German, 'we didn't know our exact address. Postal code, district, we didn't know these things.' She turned to Eliades. 'And our telephone number wasn't the number on our telephone. We didn't know how to find out our real number. But I told you this, didn't I, at that thing at the Hilton?”The peach pit sat on Eliades' plate. He leaned forward to extend a cigarette from his pack of Old Navy. When I smiled no, he offered the pack down one side of the table, up the other. Ann was talking to Charles. Was this the point in the evening at which husbands and wives find each other again, suppressing yawns, making eye contact through the smoke? Time to go, time to resume our murky shapes. The public self is weary of its gleam.'It is very interesting,' Eliades was telling me, 'how Americans learn geography and world history as their interests are damaged in one country after another. This is interesting.”Would I leap to my country's defense?'They learn comparative religion, economics of the Third World, the politics of oil, the politics of race and hunger.”'Politics again.”'Yes, always politics. There is no place to hide.”He was smiling politely.Ann said, 'Do you need a ride, Andreas? We're about to leave, I think.”'I have my car, thank you.”Charles was trying to signal the waiter.'I think it's only in a crisis that Americans see other people. It has to be an American crisis, of course. If two countries fight that do not supply the Americans with some precious commodity, then the education of the public does not take place. But when the dictator falls, when the oil is threatened, then you turn on the television and they tell you where the country is, what the language is, how to pronounce the names of the leaders, what the religion is all about, and maybe you can cut out recipes in the newspaper of Persian dishes. I will tell you. The whole world takes an interest in this curious way Americans educate themselves. TV. Look, this is Iran, this is Iraq. Let us pronounce the word correctly. E-ron. E-ronians. This is a Sunni, this is a Shi'ite. Very good. Next year we do the Philippine Islands, okay?”'You know American TV?”'Three years,' he said. 'All countries where the U.S. has strong interests stand in line to undergo a terrible crisis so that at last the Americans will see them. This is very touching.”'Beware,' Ann said. 'He is leading up to something.”'I know what he's leading up to. When he says two countries fight, I understand him to mean the Greeks and the Turks. He is leading up to poor little Greece and how we've abused her. Turkey, Cyprus, the CIA, U.S. military bases. He slipped in military bases a while back. I've been wary ever since.”His smile broadened, a little wolfish now.'This is interesting, how a U.S. bank based in Athens can lend money to Turkey. I like this very much. Okay, they are the southeast flank and there are U.S. bases there and the Americans want to spy on the Russians, okay. Lift the embargo, give them enormous foreign aid. This is Washington. Then you also lend them enormous sums privately, if it is possible to call a bank the size of yours a private institution. You approve loans from your headquarters in the middle of Athens. But the documentation is done in New York and London. Why is this, because of sensitivity to the feelings of Greeks? No, it is because the Turks will be insulted if the agreements are signed on Greek soil. How much face could a Turk bring to such a meeting? This is considerate, I think. This is very understanding.' His shoulders curved forward, head hanging over the table. 'You structure the loan and when they can't pay the money, what happens? I will tell you. You have a meeting in Switzerland and you restructure. Athens gives to Ankara. I like this. This is interesting to me.”'Oh dear,' Ann said. 'I think you have the wrong man, Andreas. This is not David Keller. You want David. He's the banker.”'I