The Pillars of Hercules

“This has become a very very fashionable part of Malta,” she said. We passed a low hill of square houses. And at a small row of shops: “This is a very trendy discotheque—all the young people in Valletta go here,” and “Major shops. Your Bata Shoes, your Marks and Spencer, your Benetton.”

After that she uttered the sort of sightseeing sound bite I had started to collect.

“The Germans dropped a two-hundred-and-twenty-eight-kilo bomb on that church, while five hundred people prayed. It did not go off. People said it was a miracle of the Virgin Mary.”

At Valletta, the busload was offered a choice of visiting another church or going back to the ship.

“Ship” was unanimous. The feeling was that Malta—magnificent from the ship, with a drink in your hand—was rather disappointing up close. Afterwards, no one had a good word for Malta, even after having given it a good five hours of thorough scrutiny.

That night, as the Seabourn Spirit crossed the Ionian Sea at twelve knots, I dawdled over my note-taking and went to the dining room late. On this ship, everyone had a right to eat alone, but the maître d’ said that if I wished he would seat me with some other people—providing they did not object.

That was how I met the Greenwalds, who were from Montreal. Constance was demure, Jack more expansive—the previous night I had seen him polish off two desserts.

“What did you think of Malta?” I asked.

“If you wanted to buy a brass door-knocker,” he said, “I guess you’d come to Malta. There are thousands of them for sale there, right? Apart from the door-knockers, it wasn’t much.”

“Did you buy one?”

He was a bit taken aback by my question, but finally admitted yes, he had bought a brass door-knocker. “I thought it was an eagle. But it’s not. I don’t know what it is.”

“Isn’t that a regimental tie you’re wearing?” I asked.

“Yes, it is,” he said, and fingered it. “The Royal Household Cavalry.”

“They let Canadians join?”

“We are members of Her Majesty’s Commonwealth,” he said. “Though as you probably know, there’s a secessionist movement in Quebec.”

“What sort of work do you do?”

He semaphored with his eyebrows in disgust and said, “Scaffolding.”

“Really?”

He smiled at me and said, “See, that’s a conversation stopper.”

“Mohawks in New York City are capable of climbing to the top of the highest scaffolds,” I said, to prove it was not a conversation stopper.

“I’m not in scaffolding, I was just saying that,” he said. “‘What do you do?’ is the first question Americans ask. But it’s meaningless. ‘I’m Smith. I’m in steel manufacturing.’ ”

He was a big bluff man, and his habit of wearing a blazer or a peaked cap gave him a nautical air, as though he might be the captain of the Seabourn if not the owner of the shipping line. He seldom raised his voice, and he took his time when he spoke, and so it was sometimes hard to tell when he had finished speaking.

The waiter was at his elbow, hovering with a tureen of soup.

“Oh, good,” Jack Greenwald said. “Now I’m going to show you the correct way of serving this.”

After we began eating the conversation turned to the cruise. Most people on the cruise talked about other cruises they had taken, other itineraries and shipping lines and ports of call. They never mentioned the cost. They said they took ships because they hated packing and unpacking when they traveled, and a ship was the answer to this. It was undemanding, the simplest sort of travel imaginable, and this sunny itinerary was like a rest-cure. The ship plowed along in sunshine at twelve knots through a glassy sea by day, and the nights were filled with food and wine. Between the meals, the coffee, the tea, the drinks, in the serene silences of shipboard, young men appeared with pitchers of ice water or fruit punch, and cold towels. And there was always someone to ask whether everything was all right, and was there anything they could do for you.

“I was on a Saga ship, cruising to Bali,” Jack Greenwald said. “Forty-one passengers and a hundred and eighty crew members. Can you imagine the number of times I was asked, ‘Is everything all right?’ ”

Over dessert—again Jack was having two, and being very careful not to spill any on his regimental tie—and perhaps because I had not asked, he volunteered that he had been the producer of a number of plays and revues. The names he mentioned meant nothing to me. Up Tempo was one. It rang no bells. The Long, the Short and the Tall? Nope. Titles of plays or musicals, because they were usually reworded clichés, sounded familiar but inspired no memories.

“Suddenly This Summer?”

“Rings a bell.”

“Parody of Tennessee Williams,” Jack said. “Did very well.”

“Before my time, I think.”

“I sometimes have problems with writers,” he said. “There was one that made problems. I had to pay him two-fifty a night for one joke he had written. Just one line.”

“What was the line?”

“Someone in the cast says, ‘Will the real Toulouse-Lautrec please stand up?’ ”