That last one kind of threw me. At first. And I wrote my wife about it — who wrote about it in a poem I read later.
At various times I believed all of Heidi’s assertions. But not all three at once.
“I don’t know whether to kiss David or never to speak to him again for getting me this job — baby-sitting for the children of rich Greeks is just not that wonderful.”
“The parents want them to learn German. And French.”
“And English!” she declared. “Believe me, that’s the important one for them. Are you still mad at John — ” who was this English electrical engineer — “for taking that job away from you at the Language Institute?” Heidi’s French, Italian, and English were about perfect; her Greek was better than mine. And one evening I’d sat with her through an hour conversation in Arabic with the students we met at one in the morning in the coffee shop in Omoinoia.
“I was never mad at him,” I told her. “He thought it was as silly as I did. His Cockney twang is thick enough to drown in, and he can’t say an ‘h’ to save himself. But they wanted ‘a native English speaker’; as far as they were concerned, I was just another American who says ‘Ya’ll come’ or ‘Toidy-toid Street’. John would be the first one to tell you I speak English better than he does.”
“And you’ve written all those beautiful books in it, too. He said he’d read one.”
“Did he? English John? He never told me.” We were halfway along the pier.
“I really don’t know which is worse. Rich Greek children, or that museum stuff I was doing…” Suddenly she closed her eyes, stopped, and shuddered. Pharaoh sat and looked up, slathering. “Yes I do. I hate German tourists. I hate them more than anything in the world — with their awful, awful guidebooks. All they do is look at the books. Never at the paintings. I used to be so thankful for the Americans. ‘Well, that’s reeeal perty, Maggie!’ ” Heidi’s attempted drawl on top of the Germanic feathering of her consonants produced an accent that, I knew she knew, belonged to no geography at all. But we both laughed. “Even if they didn’t know what they were looking at, they looked at the paintings. The Germans never did. If I’d been there another week, I was going to play a trick — I swear it. I was going to take my dutiful Germans to the wrong painting, and give them my little talk about an entirely different picture — just to see if any of them noticed. You know: in front of a Fifteenth-century Spanish Assumption of the Virgin, I’d begin, with a perfectly straight face: ‘And here we have a 1930 industrial landscape painted in the socialist realism style that grew up in reaction to Italian Futurismo…’ ” She started walking again, as though the humor of her own joke had rather run out. “Rich Greek children it will be.”
“Heidi,” I said, “I think I’ve spotted a German national trait: you Germans always talk about everybody, even yourselves, in terms of ‘national characteristics’. Well, it got you in trouble in that war we had with you when you and I were kids. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up getting you in trouble again.”
Heidi took my arm. “It isn’t a German trait, dear. It’s a European trait — and you Americans, who are always fighting so hard against generalizing about anyone, look terribly naive to the rest of us because of it. I’d think you American Negroes especially, with your history of oppression from white people, ought to realize, of all Americans, just how suicidally — no, genocidally, there’s the nasty word — naive that is. If you pretend you can’t know anything about a group, how can you protect yourself from that group — when they’re coming to burn crosses in your yard; or to put you in the boxcars.” She seemed suddenly very unhappy — as if that were just not what she wanted to talk about.
“Well, I like the Greeks, myself. There’s a generalization. Is that okay for you? Did I ever tell you that story about David and me, when I first got back from the islands? You know how David is, every time he spots a new internationaclass="underline" coming over to say hello and have a glass of tea. Then, somehow, he was going to show me where something was, and the two of us ended up walking together down Stadiou Street, him in his jeans and t-shirt, and that blond beard of his. And me, right next to him with my beard.”
“A cute little beard it is, too.” Heidi leaned over to ruffle my chin fuzz with her knuckles.
With one arm, I hugged her shoulders. “Cut it out, now. Anyway, I didn’t know how the Greeks felt about beards back then — that the only people who wore them — here — were the Greek orthodox priests — ”
“Yes, I know,” Heidi said. “David’s told me — they all think that bearded foreigners are making fun of their priests, which is why they get so hostile. Frankly I don’t believe it for a minute. Greece is only two days by car away from the rest of the civilized world. And there’ve been foreigners coming through here — with beards — for the last hundred years. If you’d have cut yours off just for that, I’d have been very angry at you. Remember, dear: David is English — and the English love to make up explanations about people they think of as foreigners that are much too simple; and you Americans eat them up. The Greeks are just angry at foreigners, beards or no. And a good deal of that anger is rational — while much of the rest of it isn’t. I’d think you were a lot cleverer if you believed that, rather than some silly over-complicated English anthropological explanation!”
“Well, that’s why I was going to tell you this story,” I said. “About the Greeks. We were walking down Stadiou Street, see — David and me — when I noticed this Greek couple more or less walking beside us. He was a middle-aged man, in a suit and tie. She was a proper, middle-aged Greek wife, all in black, walking with him. And she was saying to him, in Greek (I could just about follow it), all the while glancing over at us: ‘Look at those dirty foreigners — with their dirty beards. They mess up the city, them with their filthy beards. Somebody should take them to the barber, and make them shave. It’s disgusting the way they come here, with their dirty beards, dirtying up our city!’ Well, even though I knew what she was saying, there was nothing I could do. But suddenly David — who’s been here forever and speaks Greek like a native — looked over and yelled out, ‘Ya, Kyria — ehete to idio, alla ligo pio kato!’ Hey, lady — you have one too, only a little further down! Well, I thought I was going to melt into the sidewalk. Or have a fight. But the man turned to us, with the most astonished look on his face: ‘Ah!” he cried. ‘Alla milete helenika!’ Ah! But you speak Greek! The next thing I knew, he had his arms around David’s and my shoulder, and they took us off to a cafe and bought us brandy till I didn’t think we could stand up, both of them asking us questions, about where we were from and what we were doing here, and how did we like their country. You know ‘barbarian’ isn’t the only word the Greeks gave us. So is ‘hospitality’.”
“No,” Heidi said. “You never did tell me that story. But I’ve heard you tell it at at least two parties, when you didn’t think I was listening — for fear I’d be offended. It’s a rather dreadful story, I think. But it’s what I mean — about the Greek women having no style. If someone had yelled that to me in the street, I would have cursed him out till — how might you say it? — his balls hoisted up inside his belly to cower like frightened puppies.” She bent down to rub Pharaoh’s head and under his chin. “Then — ” she stood again — “maybe I’d have asked him to go for a brandy. Ah, my poor Pharaoh.”