...And Dreams Are Dreams

Persephone was lepidopterous. She made love like a butterfly that is pinned down by the collector and keeps fluttering until it surrenders its soul, that is to say its entire being. And she surrendered by bringing her inner world out, by turning inside out the lining of her purse and pouring onto the male all her gold coins.

For Persephone, that constituted giving herself totally.

Her jealousy of the American increased her potential.

The doctor noticed that and was glad: her jealousy was like his testicles, which got heavier with each consecutive woman who passed from his bed. Only one made them shrink. But unlike the butterfly, which, after surrendering its soul in one flutter, becomes a dead thing, Persephone, after a time of silence and stillness, returned to her drunkenness like the phoenix that is reborn from its ashes.

“Now I understand,” she said, “why all the women want you.”

She had forgotten about her husband and child.

(In any case, even though they still shared an apartment, she and her husband had long been separated.) And she felt happy with the doctor, whose very profession gave her a sense of security. But the air-conditioning annoyed her.

“It would be quite a joke if you passed on some kind of disease to me from the American,” she said, since she was unable to adjust the air-conditioning (it was controlled by the engine room), and she had to let off steam somehow. But the fact that she had thought of this afterward and not before was a clear sign of her remorse. The doctor handled her like a porcelain curio he wanted to keep from breaking.

“How was she?” Persephone asked.

“Thirsty, just like you,” he replied. “The good thing was she didn’t bring emotions into it. We had good clean sex for sex’s sake. She asked for my phone number in Athens, but I gave her a fake one. So she doesn’t find me. After all, it’s not as if the Tourist Board gives us a subsidy, right?”

It was true that he didn’t make all that much money from medicine. He did research; he didn’t have a practice. And he detested the way the health minister regarded doctors. You’d think he wanted to classify them as being either factory or farm chickens.

The yacht had dropped anchor in a protected cove, near another yacht that had its light on. They would spend the night there. Aristotle was still explaining the outdated structures of Greek society to whomever would listen. Arion and Eleni were chatting with Irini, who worked as a receptionist at a slimming center. The weight-loss classes were taught to teams, she explained, and the competition among them brought results. Arion and Eleni, who were members of a musical group and had recently taken part in a concert to benefit starving Ethiopians, kept asking, masochistically, for details about how a fat woman can lose weight.

“The center is making a mint,” Irini was saying.

“But they’re strict. If we employees put on more than one or two pounds over our original weight, we’re fired. It’s in the contract.”

The cook had taken the dinghy and gone ashore to the island port, where his home was. He would be back at dawn. The engineer was reading a newspaper by the light of a lantern. The sailor was listening to the customs officer, a friend of Elias’s, tell him pirate stories. And the old captain, on the bridge, wrapped up inside his solitude, dreamed of times gone by and glorious moments of the past. He had met so many people on this yacht…. big names in finance and international politics.

The sea was calm. So was the sky. The full moon consoled the sea and the sky on their mutual loneliness. Like a good host, Elias made sure everyone had everything they desired. He was touchingly attentive. Then he dove naked into the sea.

Irini, who worked at the slimming center, had been without a man for a long time. Having watched the doctor’s activities throughout the day, she became interested in him. The same way sheep follow the leading ram, without wondering why.

She saw him lying alone on the bridge, next to the main mast, and approached him. She asked him if he was tired.

“Not at all,” he replied· “Since I gave up smoking a year ago, I feel like a different person. My stamina frightens me.”

Irini was chain-smoking nervously.

“I heard your cabin is furnished in Louis XV

style,” she said.

The doctor laughed.

“Come and take a look. But let’s not go together.

I’ll go down first and you follow in five minutes.”

He went down to the cabin and waited for her.

When Irini appeared, she was flushed.

“Am I the third or the fourth you’re going to screw today?”

The doctor shook his head.

“The number is unimportant. What is important is that we both want it.”