Tourist
by Paul Kavanagh
We had escaped Malta. We had heard that Gozo was almost still. We were still plagued with the hangover from Paris. We had experienced those petite kisses, we had tried to share those romantic moments. But the price of drinks left us cantankerous and pugnacious. We had stood before the black marble of Proust and became dizzy looking at Oscar Wilde. Really it is otiose to talk of Paris. We were nothing more than tourists. It was my idea to leave London and sojourn in Paris. She said that she was bored of tenebrous streets and that we should fly to Malta. I felt her ennui and agreed. But once in Malta we desired to escape the tourists. A man named Joe, every man in Malta is called Joseph and Joseph’s wife is always called Mary, said that Gozo was the ideal place for us.
We were the tourists. For the last ten years we had been nothing more than tourists. When she went to Law School it was nothing more than a prolonged sojourn. We rented a home two hours away from the Law School. A catalogue of jobs I could easily recall. A litany of troubles I could describe, wounds experienced, triumphs won.
Splintered sunbeams danced iridescently upon the coruscating dank rocks. It had a kaleidoscopic effect. The rocks were beautiful. A strange metaphysical beauty. I can’t explain why. They were simply beautiful. The simulacrum before me was gesticulating. It was disturbing my newfound equanimity. Goya’s Polyphemus was vivified. Fear made me rotate. The boy was still there. The candle was in the boy’s hand. The flame danced tenuously upon the candle. Wax undulated down upon the boy’s hand.
- I don’t believe it! No way! I’m sick of all these European legends! It’s one big dirty lie! All myths are lies! Simple lies for simple people!
The candleholder looked perplexed and made manifest his diffidence. Her inimical words were lost on the boy. This was the boy’s job. My job had been in and out of museums and art galleries.
We had been fighting. This fight had been going on for ten years. What we were fighting about neither of us could state concretely. She hectored me and I went crazy with her devious ways. The armor that had once stood before us had now vanished. There was nothing there but still we fought. We fought in Paris over the price of drinks but still we drank. We fought in Saint Paul’s Bay because the music was too loud. We fought in London, Chicago, Athens, Albemarle, Manchester.
At times she could be infelicitous. The boy’s contrapposto stirred within me the ambience of Caravaggio. It was the different shadings of brown in the background. The candlelight exacerbated the darkness, where it did not illuminate, in the furthest recesses. The boy exposed the air of superciliousness that she could emanate periodically. The boy was wearing jeans cut at the knees. The bottoms were frayed. The naked legs were hairless and almond. The white jean strands juxtaposed against the brown skin caught my eye. The boy was shoeless. The toenails were dirty. The boy moved nervously, oscillating his eyes from the man to the woman. His eyes were grey and brown. She had that that effect upon people. She had that effect upon me.
- She could never have held him prisoner!
Is she complaining about the price of the candle? The boy moved slightly searching for a more comfortable stance. The cave was not a cave but a lacuna where once a tooth was located.
- This is not a cave!
We were on the island of Ogygia. It was a beautiful island. They had been too many beautiful islands. I heard the porter at the hotel, a dilapidated place, cheap with a bar, say that a nudist beach was at Ramla l-Hamra.
Kate had paid the boy. I didn’t know how much. I didn’t carry any money. I had rushed into the cave like a schoolboy into a toffee shop. I had not waited for Kate. The boy had pocketed the money before lightening the candle. The candle was a cheap white candle. It had been used before. The cave was desolate. Trade was slow. It was fiercely hot in the midday sun. The shops would be all closed. It was siesta time. In Gozo as with other Mediterranean islands the afternoon is for sleeping. We awoke in the afternoon.
- Wait for me bastard! Screamed Kate replacing soiled underwear. I had endeavored to surreptitiously slip out without her. She was still temulent. In my pocket was a bottle of water for I planned on walking to the beach. She quickly washed sleep from her and lagged behind me cussing all the time.
I could tell Kate wanted to go down to Ramla l-Hamra and swim. Ramla l-Hamra was beautiful, but there was no nudist beach. The porter had been mendacious. The sand was golden and the waters undulated softly. Kate liked to swim. I couldn’t swim. I fear drowning. The water would be warm. A soft azure it was. The water would cool us off. We had walked to Xaghra along the dusty roads and we were both hot and clammy. The roads were small and winding. Kate disliked the roads. I didn’t like to drive upon the roads. I felt as though the car would veer off at each turn. The locals had warned me against driving in the rain. It had not rained for four weeks. The dust was asphyxiating. But still I did not want to go to the sea.
Next I had planned for us to go to the fortifications that were below us. The Knights of St John had built the fortifications in the eighteen-century. They were old. The Crusades had waged war here. The Knight’s of St John. It was a bloody mess. Caravaggio had painted The Beheading of St John the Baptist for the Knights of St John. Caravaggio was on the run. Caravaggio had killed a man. The Beheading of St John the Baptist for the Knights of St John is an extremely violent painting. Kate’s ebullience overwhelmed me at St John’s Cathedral. That’s where she stood before the Caravaggio. I liked Valletta. She emitted a moan. It was incongruous. I was perturbed. She told him to lighten up. I was too serious. At times I was a bore. I had a proclivity for logorrhea. Valletta was not boring. It is what a Capital should be. I liked walking up the streets. They were steep.
The day before we have stopped the car at Gjantija. In the middle of nowhere I had asked her to get out of the car. All Kate could discern were rocks until I delineated man’s first edifice to his God. She didn’t believe in Gods. She made it clear as the sea that she did not want to see any more history. She had had her fill of myths. I had never really wanted to leave. I wanted to stay here in the cave that was not a cave but a lacuna. It was duty to marriage that made me leave here. She had illuminated a different world. Outside the sea of a thousand and one crushed dreams undulated like a lover caressing the soft rocks and the azure sky held the sun as in the palms of his hands and it was here that she last kissed me with the passion only Calypso possessed in those almond lips.
Three years we had lived in Canterbury. Kent with its undulating verdant hills, its Chaucer and busy pubs thrilled Kate at first, but the expense. She had had a perpetual cold. Letters arrived punctually from Chicago. It was good to talk on the phone. Under the shadow of the cathedral we had slept and awoke. The apartment had not been commodious. Kate liked roast potatoes and roast beef. She liked the smell of winter. On Guy Fawkes Night she would stand before the bonfire and sing. She had felt stagnant. From one dead end job to another she sojourned. What had he done? She could not answer that. He could not answer that. Where next? At Gjantija he had compared the structure to the Empire State Building. Kate had sighed. He was verbose. She wanted to go home. She would tell him. Tell him that she wanted to go back home. Home.
- It’s as crazy as throwing salt upon the land and expecting grapes to appear, Kate promulgated.
- He did, I answered superfluously. But it was olives that he expected to grow.
Was it puzzlement or exasperation that generated the grimace upon her countenance? The sun and the fatigue made her cheeks rubicund. Even though the candlelight endeavored to shed light on the dark recesses and the splintered sunbeams illuminated her, she was obfuscated. She was nothing more than Goya’s Polythemus vivified. From the chiaroscuro I pulled Calypso from the rocks and in the dank dark rocks I caught a glimpse of Odysseus pining for Penelope.
I wanted to show Kate the intaglio, but I wasn’t really sure it was there.
- I need to go home, Kate emitted making manifest the fatigue she felt.
I was cognizant of the exhaustion. The heat was debilitating. It had been a long walk. I liked to walk. She entreated him to drive. The car was at the hotel. Wasting money. Kate abhorred the way I squandered money. I was fatuous. But you miss too much in a car. The same with wearing watches, you spend half of the time looking down at your watch. She liked to wear a watch. She had petite wrists. She preferred to sit in a car than walk.
The boy rudely coughed.
The boy was still there. The candle was in the boy’s hand. The candle had burnt down. The boy looked agitated. Was the wax burning his skin? The flame danced tenuously upon the candle. Wax undulated down upon the boy’s hand in a myriad of veering trajectories.
In the rocks I became aware of Odysseus genuflecting, calling upon Athena to ferry him home. If the boy coughed again I would lose everything. Odysseus finally got home. But the desire. The desire obsessed him. Odysseus left home. Odysseus left behind Penelope. Odysseus could not be inertial. Africa we would go. It was to the south. I could smell that Dark Continent. Did he leave her for the Voyage? Was it the sea that called him?
March 9th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Now, where did I put that dictionary
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