children and how ill at ease he is in this house where he says he
lives and w hy aren’t there any photographs o f the wife and
children? Why is it so empty, so not lived in, with everything
in place and no mess, no piles, no letters or notes or pens or old-
mail? Is it how old he is— he’s a real adult, straight and narrow,
from the 1950s unchanged until now. Is it that it is hard to
believe he is a doctor? When he started talking to me on the
street he said he was near where I live taking care o f a Cretan
child who was sick— with nothing no less, just a sore throat.
He said it was good public relations for the military to help, for
a doctor to help. Is it that he doesn’t know anything about
writing or about novels or about his own novel or even about
that he is in the military, must be career military, he certainly
w asn’t drafted, and keeps saying he is against the War but he
doesn’t seem to know what’s wrong with it? Is it that he is an
officer and w hy would such a person want to talk with me? O r
is it that no man, ever, asks a woman what she thinks in detail,
with insistence, systematically, concentrating on her answers,
a checklist o f political questions about the War and writing and
what I am doing here on Crete now. Never. N ot ever. Then I
grasp that he is a cop. I was an Amerikan abroad in troubled
times in a country the C . I. A. wanted to run and I’d been in jail
against the War. I talked to soldiers and told them not to go to
Vietnam. I told them it was wrong. I had written letters to the
government telling them to stop. The F . B . I. had bothered me
when they could find me, followed me, harassed me, interfered with me, and that’s the honest truth; they’d threatened me. N o w a tall man with a square face and a red neck and a
crew cut and square shoulders, a quarterback with a Deep
South accent, wants to know what I think. A girl could live
her whole life and never have a man want to know so much. I
love m y country for giving me this unique experience. I try to
leave it but it follows me. I try to disaffiliate but it affiliates.
But I had learned to be quiet, a discipline o f survival. I never
volunteered anything or had any small talk. It was a w ay o f
life. I was never in danger o f accidentally talking too much.
Living outside o f language is freedom and chattering is stupid
and I never talked to Amerikans except to tell them not to go
to Vietnam; from m y heart, I had nothing else to say to them. I
would have liked to talk with a writer, or listen actually; that
was the hook; I would have asked questions and listened and
tried to understand what he was writing and how he was
doing it and w hy and what it made him feel. I was trying to
write m yself and it would have been different from regular
talk to talk with a writer who was trying to do something and
maybe I could learn. But he wasn’t a writer and I hadn’t
