A Separation

6.

That evening, on what was to be my final night in Gerolimenas, I had dinner with Maria. It happened very naturally, although it was hard to think of a situation more awkward—the wife and the mistress, sitting across the table from each other, making conversation. The awkwardness was compounded by the fact that she was still working, she wore her uniform and said before she sat down that her shift would not end for another thirty minutes, and that staff were not to fraternize with guests, not under any circumstances.

Her words had the quality of a formal announcement and for a moment she merely stood before me. It had not turned out well, the last time she had consorted with a guest of the hotel—neither of us said this but it was as if we both had the thought at the same time, her forehead creased and she stood immobile, staring down at the table, one hand on the back of the chair. She had asked if she could join me, but she now looked as if she might change her mind. She didn’t, and at last she pulled the chair out and sat down.

I waited for her to say something. She must have had something to say—why else would she have asked to sit down, her manner when she did so was deliberate, as if she had been considering the action for some time, for some hours if not days, perhaps she was going to reprimand me for having eavesdropped on her conversation with Stefano—but she simply sat on the edge of her seat and looked around, she seemed anxious, perhaps she was worried that Kostas or someone else would appear and ask her what on earth she was doing. The waiters seemed not to notice her arrival, as if the sight of an employee sitting down to dinner with a guest was too bizarre to acknowledge.

I asked if she would like a glass of wine. She looked as if she were going to refuse, then shrugged and nodded. A glass of wine would be nice. I motioned to the waiter, who came to the table at once. He stood before me without looking at Maria, although they were colleagues and must have known each other.

I ordered a second glass of wine and then asked Maria if she had eaten dinner, I assumed she had not, it had been one in the afternoon when I had seen her in the lobby with Stefano and it was now past eight. She shook her head and I asked the waiter if he could bring another table setting, which he did, although he did not bring a second menu. Patiently, I asked him to bring a second menu but Maria said it wasn’t necessary, she knew what she wanted.

She proceeded to order at length, in Greek, she was obviously familiar with the menu. The waiter, as she gave her order, listened impassively with his hands folded before him. He made none of the small movements and gestures waiters make to show their continued attention—the carefully inclined head, the murmured very good or excellent choice, the small nods here and there, all of which he had employed extensively when serving me before.

Nor did he write down her order. Instead he simply stared at her, hands folded in front of him, evidently affronted by her assurance. Even with my limited comprehension, I could tell that she was speaking to him as if he were there to serve her, not as if he were a colleague who happened to be temporarily placed in the role of server. He said nothing, even when she fell silent, and she said something sharply, still in Greek. He turned to me without saying anything in reply and asked in English if I had decided what I would like.

I ordered salad and a pasta, it was not the most inspiring choice, the pasta was nothing wonderful but I was tired of grilled meats and cheeses, the heavy Greek food—even the relatively cosmopolitan version that was served in the hotel restaurant—was not to my liking. The waiter nodded and said he would be back with the wine. He smiled as he took the menu and then left without looking at Maria, his rudeness was so pointed that I wondered if there was anything in it, some history of animosity between the two of them, he had seemed until then a thoroughly inoffensive man.

After the waiter left we fell silent, there was now nothing obvious to say, the business of ordering our meal having been got out of the way. I made several attempts at conversation, admittedly they were banal topics. But Maria appeared to have no intention of launching into the heart of the matter, the reason why she had asked to sit down, perhaps it had been a mistake to invite her to dine with me—perhaps she did not have enough conversation to fill the length of the meal and intended to sit in stony silence until the final course, whereupon she would finally unburden herself and say what she had sat down to say.

The waiter brought the wine. After another extended silence, I decided to broach the matter, I was now feeling certain that she had sat down not because of the earlier incident, but because she had something to tell me about Christopher—perhaps she needed money, perhaps she was pregnant, perhaps she wanted me to relinquish my rights to the man, she would tell me that they were in love and I was the only impediment, the thought passed through my mind—in which case I would tell her that I was neither liable nor an interested party, that I would be asking Christopher for a divorce, as soon as possible, as soon as he returned.

I asked Maria how long she had known Christopher, how it had come about, the phrasing was a little callous, I didn’t like referring to whatever had happened as it, but didn’t know what other word to use. I didn’t know if it was as formal as an affair (that seemed unlikely given the relative brevity of Christopher’s stay, it had been, I thought, less than a month), I didn’t even know if anything concrete had taken place—by which I mean anything material, anything physical, it might have been only hope and innuendo.

But she immediately bristled, she looked at me as if I were pointlessly mocking her and I suppose it might have felt that way to her. After all, I was the wife, I appeared to hold all or at least many of the cards in this situation, despite the fact that I couldn’t currently locate my husband, having traveled to this remote locale in the hopes of finding him. However much he might have betrayed me (and going by appearances and the information that she had, I would have been in a very desolate position indeed), no matter how threadbare the reality it represented, that title and position still had its symbolic power.

I thought she might not respond, and was about to signal to the waiter and order another glass of wine, it seemed like it was going to be a very long meal. But then she relented, as if remembering that she had been the one to create the situation by asking to sit down at my table in the first place, and she muttered something about having met Christopher on his very first day, upon his arrival. She was speaking in a low and virtually inaudible tone, I would need to ask her to raise her voice, a request that could be taken badly, luckily she seemed to be aware that I hadn’t been able to hear her. She raised her eyes to meet my gaze and repeated, I met him the day he arrived, I was working at the front desk.

She said it as if she thought the timing gave her some greater claim to him, three weeks or thereabouts, the entirety of Christopher’s stay in Mani. Compared to whoever it was he had been seen with in Cape Tenaro, it was virtually an eternity. Sitting across the table from her, I wanted to tell her that nonetheless, it was nothing compared to five years of marriage and three years of courtship before that, which again was nothing compared to a decade, two decades, the lifetime that could be spent in the company of one other person.

Now and again, over the course of our marriage, Christopher and I had seen or even spent time with elderly couples in their seventies or eighties, couples who had passed the entirety of their adult life together, and we had idly wondered if our own marriage would endure so long. Of late, we had known this was not going to happen. More to the point, we had known that even if we were each to fall in love again, it was unlikely that we would reach a fiftieth wedding anniversary with this new person, our probable life spans were against it, we had already failed in that respect.

For a moment, as I sat across the table from this strange woman, that mutual failure was like a bond that remained between Christopher and me, despite his absence and the vast distance between us, in the end we had experienced our mortality together. Perhaps because I did not respond, Maria continued, He was very friendly, very kind, most guests at the hotel treat the staff like trash or even worse, like nothing—as though you don’t exist, as though you are thin as air. He arrived alone, she added defensively, although I had not said anything, he arrived alone and when I asked how many guests were staying, he made a point of saying that it was only him, that he was by himself.

Of course, he would have. But on the other hand, what was to say that this was not a matter of interpretation? Perhaps he had merely been making conversation, or perhaps he was even being practical (if he was alone, he would only require one key, one place setting at breakfast, for example). But it seemed cruel to point this out and I could see the scene clearly enough, Christopher had always known how to make an entrance, it was his departures that needed work. I wondered how long it had taken for him to bustle the woman up to his room, had it been the work of days rather than weeks, hours rather than days, how efficient was he now in these matters. In my case it had been, I remembered, one week exactly.

The waiter brought our first courses, mine was a small mesclun salad topped with some very pale grated carrot, the vegetables flown in from some distant place and then transported by truck no doubt. There was nothing native about my plate and I felt depressed just contemplating it, these vegetables in the aridity of a landscape that allowed only for olives, prickly pears, it was my own fault for ordering the dish.

Meanwhile, Maria was calmly cutting into an extravagant plate of food, a lobster dish that had been set on the menu in what had seemed to me an unnecessarily complicated prose description, several lines at least, all of which was almost certainly intended to justify the inflated price that accompanied the dish, one of the most expensive on the menu. She was eating with relish, unlike my salad, her dish looked delicious, the meat rich and glossy, a lobster claw, partially disemboweled, rose out of the pile of meat and butter like an upraised fist.

It was hard not to be distracted by the sight of this woman, who ate her expensive dish with such deliberate pleasure. Perhaps she had every right to the little luxury, I might have been the one paying, but if Christopher had wronged her in some way—and how could he have not—wasn’t it right that as his wife, I should pay recompense? I waited for her to continue and wondered if she had sat in this restaurant, perhaps at this very table, with Christopher. She might have ordered the same lobster appetizer, he would have appealed to her appetite, to her desire for carnal satisfaction, encouraging her to be expansive.

Once a woman is behaving in a way that is other to herself, once she is acting in a manner out of the ordinary, unlikely things become possible, and that is half the task of seduction. Perhaps now, as she sucked the meat out of the lobster’s claw, her chin growing slick with butter, she was reliving her own seduction, to which my presence was a mere ancillary. As if her emotions had been softened by the succulent dish, she began to speak of Christopher, without anger, almost dreamily. I thought he was very handsome, she said, men don’t look like him around here. His manner was completely different too, he was always laughing, most of the time I didn’t know what he was laughing at, but there was nothing mean about his laughter, I never felt like he was laughing at me.

All the women in the hotel were instantly attracted by him, she continued, from the moment he arrived they were talking about how handsome he was, how sexy—this was embarrassing and I averted my gaze, it was as if a girlfriend had referred to my own father as sexy, the word sounded jejune coming out of her mouth, so childish as to be utterly divorced from the act of sex itself—everyone had noticed that he had come alone, very few men come to the hotel alone, and none as young and handsome as he.

She lowered her eyes modestly to her plate, where they contemplated the ruin of the lobster dish. She had made short work of it. I never expected that he would notice me, she continued, of all the women working at the hotel. I hadn’t noticed so many female staff at the hotel, the way she said it you would have thought there were absolute hordes, all of whom she had succeeded in beating off with a stick, but in any case I got the point, I understood that Christopher was a trophy. But, she continued, he took an interest, he kept stopping by, whenever I was working he would come and talk to me, he was obviously a busy man but he seemed to have plenty of time.

Christopher is always very good at finding time for the things he is interested in.

I tried to sound neutral, I wanted to keep my bitterness out of the conversation, but she barely seemed to notice that I had said anything at all, she continued almost without pause. And he was so interesting, I can say with my hand on my heart—she did pause this time, to lift her hand and place it on her bosom, which heaved with emotion, a gesture I thought Christopher would have found endearing, even enchanting, for all its apparent gaucheness—that I had never met such an intelligent man in my life. This was hardly surprising, the bar did not seem to be set especially high, Stefano, for all his merits, was not obviously an intellectual force.

But that was unkind. As the waiter took our plates away—mine still bearing a large portion of the salad, Maria’s wiped clean—she continued. He knew about so many things, but he talked about them in a way that didn’t make you feel bad or small, he wasn’t an arrogant type, even if he had so many privileges. Here, she paused to look at me, as much to say that I, on the other hand, had been ossified by my privilege. I nodded grimly and ordered another glass of wine for both of us, she had nodded in a cursory, almost dismissive way when I asked if she would care for a second. After a moment, she added, Christopher is a gentleman, I saw that at once.

All right, I said, Yes, I suppose you are right.

I almost laughed, it was an absurdity, he was no more real to her than a prince in a fairy tale, a hero from a novel, and this despite the fact that he had treated her badly. Still, as she continued to speak, I thought she must harbor hopes of holding him to account, I listened and waited for her to reach the point, the reason why she had asked to sit down in the first place. But this seemed to elude her, and as she continued to tell me about Christopher’s virtues, about his appealing manner, his kindness, without going into any detail about what had actually taken place between them, I thought again that perhaps nothing had happened, she had simply fallen in love with him, his small and rather nonspecific attentions having been enough.

She was younger than I had initially thought, perhaps as young as nineteen or twenty, a mere child, with a child’s audacity. The waiter brought our main courses, she had ordered the steak, the most expensive entrée on the menu, I suppose once I had invited her to dine with me, she had thought she ought to make the most of it.

How old are you? I asked abruptly.

Twenty. My birthday was in August.

She said this with some pride, perhaps because twenty was a milestone, you were no longer a teenager once you reached that age. Or perhaps the pride came from the fact that she was so much younger than me, she must have been aware of what that was worth.

And Christopher, he was more than twice her age. Of course, at twenty girls do not care so much about age, a woman of thirty would think twice before embarking on an affair with a man more than two decades older, should the affair develop into something more serious—and the odds of a woman wishing for it to become something serious grew exponentially as she aged—then a gap of two decades would become critical, nobody wanted to marry a man who would soon be at death’s door.

But death is still abstract when you are twenty. The age difference would have meant nothing to Maria, this was possibly why men were attracted to women who were so much younger than they were. They made them feel young not because of their own youthful bodies, but because they were incapable of perceiving the meaning of their lovers’ aging flesh. The body of a forty- or even fifty-year-old man is not always so dramatically different from the body of a twenty-five-year-old—for this, we have the wonders of diet and personal trainers to thank—but the differences are nonetheless there, it is only that a woman needs to be of a certain age in order to understand their true meaning.

And for this understanding, I thought, Maria was too young. She chewed on her steak and then, almost reluctantly, began to ask me questions about Christopher. I realized that this was what she had sat down to do—to ask me about my husband, to learn more about the man who had captured both her hope and affections. But I also saw that it was difficult for her, in doing so she was ceding ground to me as his wife, anything I said, even the fact that I could say anything at all, had the potential to devalue her experience of the man, which it was evident she wanted to safeguard.

And yet she needed to talk about him—for example, she was filled with the desire to say his name, I saw that it gave her a thrill, just pronouncing the three syllables, Chris, to, pher, which she did again and again, a sign that she was truly infatuated, when you are infatuated even speaking the name of the loved one is excitement enough. It had also been like that with me once, I had mentioned Christopher excessively in conversation, expounding on his views, his small acts and opinions (which at the time I had thought highly individualistic, I was a fool), it must have been very tedious for those around me.

And it was now no different with Maria. It was only her desire for more—of him, I think—that had led her to seek me out, she wanted to know everything about him, no detail could be too mundane, even if the source from which she acquired this information was inherently troubling. She was willing to pay the price for that information. But at the same time, her desire was fragile, too specific, she did not want to know anything that might disrupt the fantasy she had created in her head. She began asking questions, very basic ones, where had Christopher grown up, did he have siblings, did he like animals, dogs, for example, did he like dogs, he was always carrying books, did he really enjoy reading so much?

Her questions were careful to exclude the life we had together—she never asked, for example, how we had met, where we lived, or if we had children, that was a dead zone as far as she was concerned—the entire exercise had been devised in order to allow her to elaborate on the image she already had of Christopher. Toward whom she appeared to feel no anger, despite the fact that he had upset her, reduced her to tears. I became more and more convinced that nothing concrete had taken place between them, she seemed to me more like a love-struck teenager than a scorned lover, a teenager was very nearly what she was.

But of course, it is possible to be both. We finished our dishes—although she did much of the talking, often talking over my responses to the very questions she was so keen to ask, she had eaten her steak with impressive rapidity, I was much slower to eat my plate of pasta. My answers were not especially illuminating, I was reluctant to say anything that might hurt her, she was a child after all. And although what she wanted was information about Christopher, the more I assented to her demand, the greater the reality of our marriage, the more painful the evidence of its history.

At one point she stayed her barrage of questions in order to say, with a nod at my plate, The pasta is not good here, you should have ordered something simple, they try to cook in the Italian way but it is not their strength, they don’t do it well. I nodded, she spoke in an admonishing tone of voice, doing so appeared to give her some small pleasure, I didn’t think it worth saying that I would have thought a salad and a plate of pasta were simple enough, as she was obviously correct and had managed to eat much better than I had, although, I couldn’t help but notice, at far greater expense.

I stood up without asking if she would like coffee or a dessert. It was childish but I had taken umbrage, it was something about the peremptory manner in which she had criticized my order—advice that came too late, her words would have been more useful at the outset, when we had been ordering our food for example. Of course, I knew even then that it wasn’t her order or the meal that I was going to pay for. This was all just a cipher for another infraction, whether she had intended to or not she had flaunted what was, at the very least, a flirtation between her and my husband, and she had done it as though I had no right to feel in any way nonplussed.

Perhaps from her perspective I did not, if I couldn’t keep my husband, that was my own fault, or some such logic. Or, more likely, the notion of my discomfort simply hadn’t occurred to her, she did not strike me as the most empathetic of women and she was still young, she lacked a certain kind of imagination. That would eventually be forced upon her. She sat and stared at me a moment, as if surprised that I hadn’t suggested coffee or a dessert. However, I was stubborn, I did not intend to feed this woman any longer, there was a brief standoff and then she relented and stood up.

As she accompanied me through the lobby, I asked, and I don’t know now where I found the nerve to pose such a direct and essentially ill-mannered question, So did you sleep with him or not?

I suppose I asked because I was certain that she would say no, not out of any instinct for denial, because for all her insensitivities she struck me as an honest woman, honest to a fault, but because it now seemed clear to me that, after all, nothing of substance had taken place between them. Once she denied the charge, I would simply apologize for the question, anyway I was a foreigner, capable of speaking all forms of rude madness.

But she did not deny it. Instead she blushed, her entire face changing shade. At first I thought it was her modesty, the question was abrupt and none too subtle, perhaps she was affronted, it was more evidence of my erratic personality, Christopher might have complained of it, it was not surprising that he was running away from his hysterical and irrational wife—but then, why would Christopher have mentioned me at all? She was still flushed when she spoke, but her voice and manner were very calm, her high color was the only giveaway, the only indication that something was wrong.

Yes. Of course, I knew he was married, she said, her color deepening further as she said the words, which she must have known were damning. I saw the ring, as he was checking in.

For a moment, I was too stunned to reply. I felt a wave of unexpected anger that was without clear object—I could hardly blame this girl, or even Christopher, they were perfectly within their rights to do as they wished. Still, I found it difficult to look at the girl, I swallowed and averted my gaze.

You saw his ring?

Of course Christopher would have slept with this girl, I should have known this all along. The fact that he was wearing his wedding ring was more surprising, I thought, the idea that Christopher would have dug out his ring and taken to wearing it, just as the marriage itself was irrevocably collapsing, was almost unbelievable. But Maria interpreted the inflection in my voice to be accusatory, she blushed again, even deeper, but continued in her calm, measured voice, I saw his ring, yes, I saw it.

The questions that should have followed, that she might reasonably have expected—questions as to the how and the when, the how many times, not to mention either anger or jealousy or most probably both, a coherent response to the news of your husband’s adultery—did not come. Instead, as we stood in the lobby, I continued to ask her about the ring, as if in order to not ask about the sex she’d had with Christopher, my husband, what kind of a ring had he been wearing, did she notice?

She shrugged and looked uncomfortable.

Silver, very plain.

Was it thin? Or thick?

Not too thick. Perhaps—

She indicated a width of about half a centimeter. It was hardly decisive but it sounded like Christopher’s wedding ring, or at least it didn’t not sound like it. There might have been a perfectly logical, practical reason for which Christopher had put on the simple platinum ring. He might have put it on in the way that single women sometimes wore a ring in order to give the impression of unavailability, so that they might avoid unwanted attention and harassment, the flash of metal on the finger was often enough to dissuade even an arduous admirer.

Of course, unavailability served a different purpose for a man, or at least a man like Christopher. For him, perhaps, the ring served to give him a longer leash, it was more difficult to make demands of a married man, however far things went, he could always say, You knew from the start that I was married, you knew what you were getting into, it was plain as the ring on my finger. Perhaps each time he set out to roam—and I knew there had been plenty such times, over the course of our short marriage—he had dug out his wedding ring, in order to feel more free. From the drawer in his desk, or from the leather case in which he kept his watches and billfold clips, I realized then that I didn’t even know where he kept his ring.

My breathing had grown regular again. But it was not nothing. I didn’t know that it would ever be nothing—what person contemplates the details of her betrayal without feeling some combination of regret and humiliation, however far in the past? Abruptly, I wished Maria good night. I said that it was probably good-bye, although perhaps I would see her in the morning. I was aware that I was distracted, my behavior was not appropriate to the situation. She shrugged, she did not say whether or not she was working the next day. I noticed that she did not thank me for dinner, I hadn’t expected her to, but I cared enough to take notice. The entire thing had been unpleasant, disconcerting, it was not an experience I hoped or expected to repeat, a tête-à-tête with a mistress of Christopher’s. She stood with her hands in the pockets of her uniform and watched as I retreated, up the stairs, to my room.