using an iron that you fill with hot coals to use. I have never
seen such an accident or such an iron. The only running water
is outside. There is a pump. M ’s fam ily is rich but he lives a
vagabond life. He was a Com m unist w ho left the party. His
fam ily has a trucking business. He went to university for tw o
years but there are so many books he hasn’t read, so many
books you can’t get here. He was the first one on the island to
wear bell-bottom pants, he showed up in them one day all
puffed up with pride but he has never read Freud. He w orks
behind the bar because he likes it and sometimes he carries
bags for tourists down at the harbor. O r maybe it is political, I
don’t know. Crete is a hotbed o f plots and plans. I never know
i f he will come back but not because I am afraid o f him leaving
me. He will never leave me. M aybe he flirts but he couldn’t
leave me; it’d kill him, I truly think. I’m afraid for him. I know
there is intrigue and danger but I can’t follow it or understand
it or appraise it. I put m y fears aside by saying to m yself that he
is vain, which he is; beautiful, smart, vain; he likes carrying the
bags o f the tourists; his beauty is riveting and he loves to see
the effect, the tremor, the shock. He loves the millions o f
flirtations. In the summer there are wom en from everywhere.
In the winter there are rich men from France w ho come on
yachts. I’ve seen the one he is with. I know he gets presents
from him. His best friend is a handsome Frenchman, a
gunrunning from Crete for the outlawed O . A . S. I don’t
understand how they can be friends. O . A . S. is outright
fascist, imperialist, racist. But M says it is a tie beyond politics
and beyond betrayal. He is handsome and cold and keeps his
eyes away from me. I don’t know w hy I think N ikko looks
Russian because all the Russians in the harbor have been blond
and round-faced, bursting with good cheer. The Russians and
the Israelis seem to send blond sailors, ingenues; they are
blond and young and well-mannered and innocent, not
aggressive, eternal virgins with disarming shyness, an
ingenuity for having it seem always like the first time. I do
what I want, I go where I want, in bed with anyone who
catches my eye, a glimmer o f light or a soupcon o f romance.
I’m not inside time or language or rules or society. It’s minute
to minute with a sense o f being able to last forever like Crete
itself. In my mind I am doing what I want and it is private and I
don’t understand that everyone sees, everyone looks, everyone knows, because I am outside the accountability o f
language and family and convention; what I feel is the only
society I have or know; I don’t see the million eyes and more to
the point I don’t hear the million tongues. I think I am alone
living m y life as I want. I think that when I am with someone I
am with him. I don’t understand that everyone sees and tells M
