Chapter VI: At the Gates of Paradise

Having finished our tea and madeleines, we quit the veranda , and the grand prince gave us a tour of the Petit Louvre which ended in his rooftop gardens planted in the stacked terrace style of Semiramis' pleasure grounds. A fountain on the upper level watered the parterres and small orchard of fig trees that supplied both shade and fruit for the midsummer custard. On the lower level, where we presently stood, there was a large pavilion with a Bechstein raised on a dais and a central nymphium filled with lotus flowers. A sundial was at the four corners of the pavilion, each positioned a little beyond the four fluted columns supporting the canopy.

A young woman was seated at the piano. She was the one playing Lyszt, her hands moving with the grace and rapidity of hummingbirds in a flowerbed of concerti and peonies. On the floor below her, a number of men dressed like a merry band of swashbuckling bandits, booted and ruffled, fought with one another, their parries and ripostes stylized in a mock battle, since each man maneuvered his sword for the effect of a picturesque profile or a reverberating collision that seemed to complement the piano music. This fencing display with the Lyszt accompaniment continued until half of the swordsmen fell to their knees during the decrescendo while those who were in possession of the field formed an archway with their blades under which the young woman and one of the victors passed.

"Very good," Raphael said, walking midst the kneeling or standing fencers. "Very good indeed. In future, we may include more parades and flunges and decrease the simpler counter ripostes. But otherwise, it was excellent, what think you?" The grand prince directed the question to Corinne and me.

"It was magnificent!"

I surveyed the motley crew, the girl arrayed like a bride, the hilts of the swords bedecked in gems. "I agree. Magnificent is apt, but I am not sure what it is supposed to be."

"Oh, how negligent I am," Raphael said. "I almost forgot you Parisiens forsake the city in the summer and do not do anything interesting in the capital."

The countess shrugged "As if we do something interesting anywhere else. Whatever we do in the city we do in the country but with less originality."

"Be that as it may, I present you, Monsieur, Madame, the Moreska dancers," the grand prince announced with a flourish. "If you should still be in Greece in the coming days, I invite you to the Bal Blanc et Noir where they will perform for you."

Smiling, members of the company sheathed their swords and dusted off their breeches. Some exited the pavilion after consulting a timepiece, inclining their head toward us or doffing a cap when they filed passed Corinne. Others occupied themselves collecting the blades and scabbards and stacking them in two piles by the dais ere they took the paved pathway to the stone stairway which descended to street level in the vicinity of the Grande Galerie. The girl and the triumphant fencer who had processed with her beneath the archway of swords were the only Moreska dancers left stationed by the nymphium, and together the pear advanced to the three of us waiting nearer the stairs.

"Madame, you al beautiful," the cavalier declared, dipping into a low bow, his hand catching Corinne's finger tips which he kissed with such gravity and such reverence that I was almost led to scoff. "They call me the Monsieur le Duc de Tilgovina, but you, chère dame, may call me Dlaco le Blanc." Upon straightening his posture, he swung his sword to the side and hacked off a white rose from the brush adjacent the railing. "You would lender me the gleatest kindness if you consent to accept this flower with the entilety of my chivally at your behest. I live only to selve you."

"A translation, if I may?" Raphael asked.

"Oui, you may."

The grand prince shook his head with a sigh. "Monsieur le Duc de Tirgovina or Draco le Blanc, scion of an old phanariot house from Rumania, manners like Don Quixote. He is in the habit of mispronouncing his rs."

"Laphael is pelfectably collect. I detest the letter."

"And Mademoiselle la Duchesse, Tabitha de Tirgovina, his sister, the fairest maiden of the Carpathians."

Impelled by instinct which only well-breeding can instill, I paid my devoir to the young woman, my arm stretching out to its fullest extension to create the widest gap between myself and the girl whose hand was fragrant with the civet pastilles from Arabia. It later occurred to me, when I smelled the bouquet of the Pinot noir, peering over the rim of the glass across the table set for supper, that the duchess was the white witch who danced with me at the masquerade. She had villainous blue eyes, as cerulean and metallic as her brother's. Monsieur le Duc himself waxed poetic, no doubt due to the wine, on the bill of fare: the capons in milk sauce sprinkled with violet petals he called his "beautiful nude food portrait," the soft boiled eggs with meringue-topped orange quarters and truffles his "equator plus North Pole," and the variegated bars of marbled soup stuffed with chocolate liquor his "candied atmospheric electricities," lisping in that provoking way of his, so "portrait" sounded like "poltlait" or "atmospheric" as "atmosphelic."

Much as I appreciated dining with the grand prince, and sampling the outlandish cuisine, specialty of the Italian chef once a soldier under Garibaldi, I believed I would become either supremely drunk or supremely homicidal. Digestifs are inimical to compromise.

Eyes closed, leaning back in his chair, that lout Draco, seated to the left of Corinne, sipped his Cointreau with relish. His mouth caressed the snifter, lips kissing the glass, palm tenderly cradling the bowl, a smiling, content countenance suggesting lechery long since appeased, one of those Mephistophelian leers smirking at a memory or a dream which still throbbed and rang with screams induced by spasm. Every minute he spent on imbibing his liqueur, he spent an hour reliving a night dedicated to philosophy in the boudoir, an epicurean at the four-poster and his proofs, intercourse over discourse, synthesis over analysis, a happy dialectic flavored with orange bitters.

"Madame, I have need to tell you that these snifters lemind me of Malie-Antoinette's very own milk bowls, the jattes tétons," the duke remarked, fondling the foot of the vessel. "Thelle is something about the etheleal culves, so baloque, so olganic ... I am moved to the edge of plose and must convelse in poetly. Do you understand, in poetly!"

Taken aback, the countess nodded helplessly. "But of course we agree on that."

All the while, the duchess was half murmuring, half whispering about a girl she knew who found herself suddenly besotted with a foreigner of recent acquaintance, rather taciturn, aloof, engaging, no doubt a romantic egoist in secret, as witty as he was elegant. She was the kind who resorted to absurd ultimata, her suicide or his from boredom.

"You must have a recommendation for her, Monsieur."

I offered her the Gallic shrug. "Mademoiselle, you betray disdain for my intelligence. I do not advise. I analyze and have concluded that your charming friend should realize there are things more tempting than Turkish Delight."

She opened her mouth to retort to this pert and altogether vacuous statement but was prevented when her brother proclaimed, "There is no delight in Tulkish Delight, no poetly. The Tulks are anything but delightful. Their leligion folbids the consumption of alcohol which I find vely balbalic, so how can thelle be poetly without wine, which is even more balbalic? It is because we have wine that we have these snifters, these verres tétons, as you Flench would say more exactly. Pelhaps, Madame, you should have a set of velles tétons made. I am sule dlinking Cointleau flom them would be heavenly. The shape and ample size of the bowl, you understand, would bling out the bouquet wonderfully."

I reached with one hand for the wrist of the other and then noticed the silver threads in the lace bordering the cuff. Corinne took note of this action but was silent, removing from her breast a corsage of verbena and a white rose, which I discovered--upon disrobing her in the guest suite that our cousin, ever gracious, ever hospitable, insisted we occupy for the duration of our holiday--was bloody, the petals smeared with red, fading to pink toward the center. I held the rose in my palm, my arm encircling the countess, and looked between the woman and the flower, trying to convince myself that the bloom I held could not be called an eglantine, since I wore eglantines and the rest of the world briers, however sweet. They were still brambles, and a finger could prick itself on one of the thorns, long, sharp, and hard. At least, such was the explanation Corinne advanced for the sanguinary aspect of the white flower. She assumed it would be soft and satiny as my eglantines always were. Indifferent to whether I believed her or not, I crushed the rose in a fist, making the countess fret over my bleeding hand when she pried my fingers apart.

"Oh, Raoul! Why did you do that?"

"Because you should never have to shed your blood. And if you do, it is fitting I mingle mine with yours."

Startled, she pulled away, relinquishing me. "Then I fear for the day when you cannot."

"Cannot? I can, and I shall. Every breath of air, every drop of blood, every trace of my essence belongs to you, chérie."

"Non!" she cried, placing her finger tips on my mouth. "I would never make you promise that."

Depleted, she sank to the bed, gathering the covers about her, averting her eyes from the pinkish striations in the vervain water into which I had submerged my injured hand to wash away the gore. She slithered farther to the middle of the mattress and burrowed herself into the sheets. I was tentative as I slipped in besides her, sensing it would be somehow indecorous if I were to touch her. But, much to my surprise, she came nearer and wrapped her arms around my neck, intertwining her legs with mine, her warm breath on my breast, the butterfly flutter of her eyelashes tickling the hollow of my throat, a gentle heat between us. Though the light was douched and we were in a state of undress, we were not intimate with each other, because, for some reason, I felt stroking her hair was more satisfactory. I had no desire but to comb my fingers through the thick, long locks, so dark that the stars would die there.

And when I could not caress her hair, I caressed the amber which Corinne and I gathered along the beach in Corfu. The smooth, aromatic resin I had organized about me and placed in a draw string bag of silk once filled with emeralds and vanishing hope and a childhood ruptured by time. My hand within the bag toying with the amber, I went to Piraeus, to a reputed jeweler's shop where the finest komboloi, made from coral and pearls, were sold besides a copy of the bracelet the Princesse Aline wore when she played polo at Marathon. I had seen that bracelet and the fountain pen with the golden nib the Prince Nicolas used to sign his name at the bottom of his sketches later destined to become paintings.

Corinne did not accompany me to the harbor. She could not. She was unwell, complaining of a dizzying, nauseous sensation originating in the depths of her abdomen. Huddling in the vicuna cloak, coughing from time to time, she said she could not abide the sight of food nor the cardamom I mixed for her morning chocolate, the only thing, with considerable coaxing on my part, she would consent to take for her petit déjeuner while sitting in bed. It appeared, midst the pillows and sheets, she was thinner, smaller, her attitude indicating exhaustion. I was worried but then a little cheered.

"Are you ..."

She waited for me to finish the question, her eyes inquiring.

I sighed. "Are you enceinte?"

A blush suffused her cheeks. She set down her cup of chocolate on the saucer lying in her lap. "Perhaps. I do not know."

"Perhaps?"

"I am indeed two weeks late." She smiled. "But it could just be a delay."

"A delay?" I echoed stupidly.

Her smile broadened. "It is possible. We should wait. I recommend you ask me again next month. Right now is too soon."

"I shall that do."

"Now begone with you, Monsieur. I am very tired and wish to sleep."

Having traipsed into the toilette, I shrugged, my hand hovering above my razor. In silence I shaved, listening to my wife turning about in the bed trying to find a comfortable position. My reflection was ridiculous and blank.

When I replaced the shaving brush to its holder on the scuttle, my arm connected with a tall glass bottle that I did not remember putting there. Curious, I picked it up to read the label and discovered the greenish liquid was absinthe; and behind the wash basin filled with my citron water, I located a second bottle of the liquor adjacent a bowl of sugar and stirring spoon used for tea. I wanted to ask Corinne about the absinthe in our bathroom, but of course she slumbered deeply. Rather than awaken her, I bent down by the headboard and kissed her, then made my departure.

At Piraeus, the jeweler, whose bright, airy shop smelled of the ocean and patchouli-scented cushions, pronounced my amber exquisite. The honey, chartreuse, green-blue, and brownish wine-purple pieces were as fragrant as jasmines wafted by a mountain wind on a spring day when the snows melted into water, large enough to be cut into sundry shapes, whether ovoidal or pear, and contained intriguing, rare inclusions. The dragonfly was divine, but the spiraling snail shell ... Ah, but the snail was priceless. I was lucky to have visited Corfu and happened upon all the marvelous amber along the beach. And when I narrated the story with the dolphins, I was told that some god from the ancient Greek pantheon, some Olympian deity to whom the playful whales of the Aegean were sacred, watched over me.

I did not know the amber was as valuable as it was, but looking at the solidified resin through a lens under the light of a lamp I was pleased. It was a collection to rival the panels of the amber room in Catherine's palace in Petersburg.

So may I have a komboloi fashioned from the rounder pieces? I know someone very well who has a habit of fidgeting.

But of course!

And jewelry made from the rest? She, the individual with whom I am acquainted, adores trinkets.

Most women do. And if I would be so good, I should return to this shop after a fortnight for the amber set which would be the envy of Greece. I could expect only the best.

I thanked the jeweler, leaving the glittering, treasure chest interior of the boutique, the chimes on the door ringing as I stepped from the threshold onto the pavement.

Outside, the sun was directly overhead. It seemed I had lost my shadow who had probably gamboled off to the beach to join a group of girls, a living colonnade of Nereids, at their hoops and laughter, with so many youths among them swimming in the water; and on the sands, a colony of those idle souls who deem the epitome of leisure to be reclining on a chair sipping apéritifs over several hours until Aimé, the maître d., brought the menu for the evening meal to them. The midday heat would have been oppressive, if it were not for the clinging white linen of my morning dress through which the Mediterranean breeze whispered from time to time. As much as the cloudless ether, its storms and gases swirling below the rez-de-chaussée of heaven, might have been burning above me, I was cooler as cool could be.

On my right were the windows of shops, bistros, and the casino. On my left was the flashing blue empire of the sea, azure-tinted opalescence frothy with silvered, turquoise foam, waves rising and falling in a dance, or a duel, the horizon standing in as second for both billow and whitecap, the agreed rendez-vous under the rainbow in the surf--triumphal arch for one, sepulchre for another. Once I chanced a glimpse of myself in the storefront window panes, a white figure, tall and slender, advancing quickly across the square, an elusive radiance set against the background of the ocean, rumbling and mumbling. The head tilted up at that poetic angle most would describe as proud, the hair the sort of gold redolent of the crown made from sunbeams. Now that my hands were free of the amber, I amused myself with a monocle which, like Corinne's scarf, escaped from my fingers, grabbing, grasping, prey to the impulse to play Handel's "Arrival of the Queen of Sheba" while the vivacious chase after the eyepiece lasted. And then I thought the ancient Greeks should have committed to statuary not only the pose in tennis the moment before the ball is served, but also a dandy sporting with his diamond firefly of a monocle at a watering-place where a count can act simultaneously like a gentleman and a young, blonde beast whose paws were velveted and whose roar was a mere pur.

My footsteps halted in front of a wide window whose clear glass lent the interior the quality of a dark aquarium in which an elegant species of Homo sapiens took their déjeuner, their movements slow and noiseless, their eyes staring at everything else but the spectator gazing from the other side. I read the lettering over the door: Hôtel Balbec. The door was perpetually open. A golfer emerged, surveyed the beach ahead of him, and made his way to the green passed a grove of olive trees. I fished out my pocket watch to check the time and decided to enter the establishment, my monocle preceding me with little leaps and bounds.

Traversing the dining room, I glanced at a pale, delicate invalid, handsome with the handsomeness of all anaemics, eating eggs and salad with an elderly woman, a grandmother or aging nurse. I heard someone addressed as "duc"; his wife, the duchess was absorbed in her poached scallops and red shoes which peeped out from below the tablecloth. A man with Hebraic features listened with all his attention to the pianist and violinist playing, just then, a sublime, luscious, arresting phrase of a sonata, both Homeric and Petrarchan, in the corner while his daughter was forever passing the tea between herself and a woman who was probably her mother. An adolescent, with the looks of a boy but the tastes and voice of a man, presented the gourmand across him a box of cigars, by accident knocking over a vase of orchids that spilled on the tabletop midst their mussels, pickled gherkins, and fried squid.

I was seated toward the back, close to the piano. A garçon served me cold turtle soup, tapenade, saltines, celery with spiced frog legs, and a plum parfait, in addition to a pitcher of orangeade and a bottle of retsina which I refused categorically to touch. A girl, dressed like a princess, sat alone at the next table, turning her ring around and around her middle finger. She appeared bored or lonely, as if she were expecting someone. Her eyes kept on wandering to the front door; and if they were not occupied searching for her lover, or whoever he was, they followed the waiter traveling up and down the dining room.

Soon, however, a smart blonde cadet circulated among the tables and, pausing to exchange a word with the gourmand, stepped over the banquette, by way of a shortcut, and jumped onto the carpet distinguishing the higher level of the chamber from the parquet of the lower level. He strode to the girl, alone at her table drinking her mineral water, and kissed her. I lay down my hand beyond my silverware, surprised to find nothing there. But of course, Corinne was not with me. Shrugging, I swallowed my confusion and returned to my parfait, knowing how well the countess liked to linger over dessert and drinks, so I devoted myself to postprandial languor.

"Monsieur?"

Swinging my monocle from side to side, I was approaching the door, catching sight of the sea each time a croquet player or member of a yachting party entered or exited the hôtel. My wish was to locate a florist who could furnish me a bouquet for the evening and an arrangement for the night stand abutting the headboard of our bed.

"Monsieur?"

It was the cadet.

"Oui?"

"We are short one person for darts. We want to play with two teams of two, but there are only three of us. Would you like to join us? You may have the privilege of deciding with whom you would wish to be paired." He smiled.

"Darts?"

"Oui, oui. There is a little salon across the Pear Blossom room with billiards and a few card tables. The dart board hangs on the south wall."

On the fifth floor, I followed the cadet into a chamber with a row of high, Gothic windows, surmounted by fanlights, opening out onto the Aegean, the Mediterranean sky, and the sandy plain of the beach. Here and there, an island was visible in the water, a hazel dot floating in a sparkling, cyan expanse. The invalid, the cadet's best friend, and the princess, his mistress, who, the invalid furtively informed me, used to be in reality a taverna singer, arrived in the salon shortly afterwards. The cadet himself lost no time in introducing me to his intimates. Together, we spent an hour at darts, whose ends were either tipped with pigeon feathers or ribbons cut to resemble diminutive, swan's wings. I preferred the latter kind, held the thin shaft in my fingers, concentrated on the sunburst design of the board, angled the arrow so it was aligned with a ray streaming in through the window, and sent the dart sailing through the air. It always landed on the target.

"You have fair aim, mon ami," noted the cadet.

"Fair!" his mistress retorted. "I would describe it as incredible. Monsieur has never missed."

"Oh, I did not notice that."

The invalid contemplated the dart board, studying the distribution of the tiny arrows. "Oui, it is remarkable. I am led to think Phoebus plays with us."

I shook my head and released the final dart, launching it into the middle of the sunburst. The cadet and I had won that round. I stationed myself before the windows, watching the restless ocean below me. My hand touched the glass whose coldness, despite the hot day, was somehow unwelcome. I saw a wedge of white birds, reminiscent of snowflakes falling during a wintry dawn, advance toward Delos, a sinister, crystalline shimmer on the sea foam.

A servitor brought chilled vermouth and pink macaroons. I chose a drink.

The wedge flew into the sun. Then one of the birds fell behind, though it was at the tip of the formation. The double arch of the wings flapped once, twice. I took a sip of the wine, but the wedge had disappeared, and the straggler no longer soared with its pinions stretched flatly. Fearful, I referred back to the sea, churning, choppy, changeable. There was only foam.

"What are you staring at?" the mistress asked.

I withdrew from the Gothic windows. "The water."

"A lapis lazuli, Michelangelesque, virgin blue," the invalid said. "It is a sort of blue that could persuade an artist to renounce all the other colors and paint only in blue. The water, Monsieur, I agree is captivating. Oui, I understand why you focus on it."

I offered him a tentative smile, replacing my vermouth to the tray. "Believe me when I say it has been a pleasure, but I must go, mes amis. I have business, an engagement, in Athens. Someone waits for me there, and I am loathed to be late. You will excuse me?"

"Willingly," the cadet answered. "May we expect you at the Petite Tuilerie?"

I paused at the door.

"Tonight the grand prince is to have a masquerade for the opening of Médée. I am coming as a marquis, Mademoiselle as an actress."

"I? ... Very likely I shall not be present. But you may depend on my cousin who will certainly attend."

"I look forward to it, and I hope, Monsieur, we meet again."

"Rely on it. I shall not forget this charming afternoon."

In truth, I never did, though it had not been because of some peculiar agreeableness clinging about the game of darts nor the conversation between myself and the three, rich vacationers who took the sun and fine ouzo at that watering-place tucked behind the Piraeus. History is selective, perhaps unfairly so. But remembrance is worse. It is fickle. The most insignificant, trivial things remain with the mind, entrenched there in the corners of imagination and nostalgia. They insinuate themselves among thoughts, cast a spell over the sensibilities, conquer the mental realm, experience their awakening with a vanilla seashell of a cake dipped in a cup of tilleul whose steam leaves a smoking trail through the rooms, covered by tapestries and the canvases of David, in a grand palace hidden away from the Hill of Crosses and Algirdas Island. There, on the shore, the outline of which redraws itself after high tide, the wanderer, with all the medieval wisdom warning against permanence, prowls amid the ruins, gathering fragments to hold up to the candle light flickering in the wind blowing both from the ocean and the mountains. Memories are where the sands go when time, who is always a child, has constructed the castle with conches for turrets or driftwood for corbels, and the water has begun to wash away the foundations, causing the great north tower to kneel to the side until it collapses into the porphyry, periwinkle dust left by the wrecks from centuries ago.

Indeed, if it were not for the scent of the white gladiolus, whose sword-like petals paid homage to any maître d'armes, tasked to teach a king how to dance the pas de deux with his foil, I would have consigned the afternoon spent by the Grecian seaside to oblivion. As it was, I departed the Hôtel Balbec for the vineyards and hills located more inland, a rolling, green and gold country, eternally quiet, still, antiquity sleeping in the very air the present breathed, air which inspired the daydreams of a man on his desultory way while he captured and recaptured his errant monocle always trying to overtake its shadow on the grass.

I stood in the middle of the forest of vines, grapes surrounding me. The next instant, a little girl carrying a flower basket appeared at my feet. She proffered me a chaplet made of bay leaves and violets. Amused, I accepted the gift, reaching in my pocket for a few centimes, but at this action, the child shook her head adamantly, making a downward motion with her hands. I interpreted this gesture to signify I lower myself to her level, that is to bring my head to her height, which is what I did, receiving the chaplet on my curls in a solemn coronation in the vineyards far away from the beach and farther away from the high road leading back to the city. I almost half expected to be anointed with chrism and to have my name recorded besides the date, whatever it was, in a book featuring a gilded clasp to trap the illuminated pages between two, satin-bound covers. But the little girl performed the office and then vanished into the verdancy around us, the susurrant rustle of her skirt descending into a total and consummate silence within seconds.

Spotting a grasshopper jumping on the lawn in front of me, I watched the insect at its gymnastics, following its leaping, acrobatic progress till I found myself inside an olive grove. The dark, silvery foliage was thick, impenetrable, a sanctuary "under whose shade the wood gods love to be," as Marlowe once wrote when describing the tale of Hero and Leander, an amorous pair, each lover on either side of the Hellespont. I had to tread lightly. This was where the nympholept lost himself to frenzy. I knew not if I would want to return, let alone if I could, so every step was a step with unblinking eyes and ears alert.

A piercing scream rewarded my vigilance. I stiffened, inhaling sharply. The shout must have come from somewhere ahead of me. I discarded my caution, running through the vegetation into what looked like a private park. A woman, petrified, remained extraordinarily still, sparing a glance to the green snake writhing about the hem of her silver-white dress. A pair of shears and a toppled watering can lay on the ground between her and the serpent which hissed in evident displeasure. I emerged from the pendulous leafage of the weeping willow from whence I surveyed the scene and advanced with my handkerchief in hand. Holding my breath, I stole behind the snake and lunged forward, dropping the handkerchief on its head. Confused, the serpent began to thrash, and I tightened my fingers around its head, endeavoring to disorient it further within the silk.

"Hurry, Madame! May you have something heavy, a rock or tool, to restrict its movement?"

I did not have the opportunity to see to where the woman disappeared, but, summoning all her strength, she must have pushed a column off its plinth, for a perfect specimen of the Ionic variety fell on the serpent, pinning it to the ground. I released the reptile's head, surprised to see that it had ceased to struggle. I must have killed it when my hand closed about its triangular face, my fingers exerting a great pressure at the scaly neck until some bone, perhaps a vertebra, cracked with a sound masked by the crash of the column which probably broke the spine in a second place.

"It is subdued?" asked she in the silver-white dress.

"Oui, it is dead."

"You have rid me of a terrible python who has invaded my garden." She righted the fallen watering can, putting the shears away into the empty vessel. "Such snakes are not native to Greece, but I suspect one may have arrived to the coast as a stowaway aboard a ship from Egypt or Turkey. I must thank you."

Refolding my handkerchief, I gave my attention to making a lozenge shape with the fabric to distract myself. "Not at all, Madame. when I perceived you were in evident distress, I acted as any gentleman would."

"A gentleman, Monsieur? Why do you not look at me directly then?" She held my chin in her hand, with a cool palm and long fingers, and tilted my face to hers. "A gentleman would never avert his eyes as you do now."

She was taller than I. In that forced vis-à-vis, I felt like a fairy tale little boy in her presence. It was a singular sensation, and a strange, prickling pain, weary and rueful, throbbed in my breast. "Non, he would not."

I thought myself foolish to stand before this graceful, queenly creature with my head in her hands, her wonderful, large eyes laughing at my befuddlement. I wanted to glance to the side, over where the weeping willows bowed their dusky, heavy foliage to the spring gushing forth water splashing on the colonnade enclosing the court from the olive grove and the vineyards. From there, deep in a thicket of dappled green sunlight, the fragrance of gladioli, white petals turning to a red-maroon toward the center, was strongest.

"Gentleman or no, you came to my aid because you love a woman very much. Am I correct?"

I swallowed, blinked, met her gaze without flinching. "It is true. I do love a woman very much."

"Ah! What bliss! And right now I make you unhappy because you miss her."

I gave a start. "Oui, I do miss her."

"Because she could not come with you to the Piraeus and accompany you along the coast. She is a little ill and sleeps in your bed. You are anxious for her, hoping she will be well in the evening, so you may take her into your arms and tell her, with the guilt of a man confessing his sins, that you met a capricious, lighthearted being such as I."

Bemused, I said nothing.

"Oui, and then she will be hurt, nurse a secret jealousy. You will soothe her since that is what you have always done, and you will never think of me until the eve of the birth of your first child, for, in your dreams, she will be as beautiful as I."

"Madame, how do you know these things? How can you?"

"Has no one told you that you have the most magnificent gray eyes? They are really quite expressive, so big, so open. Everything is written there in those argentine irides of yours." Her lips curved into an archaic smile. "Besides you have killed Python. That makes me the Pythia, and she knows."

"You must be acquainted with the future."

"I may be."

"You mentioned you were in my payment." I offered her an archaic smile of my own. "Oblige me. Let the oracle speak. Let her announce what the future promises for myself and the woman I love."

"Very well." Her hands were still on my cheeks, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "If you love as madly as I know you do, you will surrender your souls, but an act of generation will result in death. The diamonds will return to water, and son and father will see one another through the same window."

"Death?" It felt like my heart sank to my knees, which were on the verge of buckling from the effect of the dire words. Of course I could not make sense of them. They were as ambiguous as the prediction revealed to Croesus on the destruction of a great empire, and so I feared to formulate any interpretation. "It is sans merci what you say."

"I have frightened you. Forgive me. She whom you love--if I may ask it of you--who is she?"

"My wife."

"Oh Madame your wife ... I wish I could have known her. She must be a lovely, gentle woman with a charming little way of pronouncing your name when she is either very serious or very happy." The hands cradling my face fell away from me. "Go to her. I shall not keep you here. You need not tell her what the Pythia said, but give yourself to her. Adieu, mon ami."

And with that, the woodland empress in the silver-white dress bent down, kissed my cheek, and vanished into the willows, the rustle of her garments susurrating familiarly. I watched her quit the garden. And then I was alone with the babbling spring whose mirror-like waters moistened the toes of my shoes, the white gladioli waving their rapier petals in the zephyr. My monocle no longer darted ahead of me, but hung limply from my gloved wrist. I sighed, leaning on one of the Corinthian columns of the colonnade and forced myself to dispell the uneasy feeling still plaguing my breast, my eyes closed, my head bowed, my face buried in my hands. The willows had my wishes. I would let them weep for me because I could not.

Before long, I leaned against not a Corinthian column but a Doric one. I resumed my gloomy stance at the ruined Parthenon, the ancient marble dazzling, yet creamy, in the Athenian sunset after the blue shadow of my hand carved my name into the soft, orange stone, as Byron had done at the beginning of the century. Beyond the temple precincts, the city was bustling and pouring herself an apéritif to be taken with olives and walnuts. I, however, savored the serenity, the air about my head scented by the violets and laurel leaves from my chaplet which I had neglected to remove in my abstraction while returning to the metropolis, the low roar of the ocean a pleasant sonorousness left in my ears. Through my linen shirt, I could feel the cool marble on my back, and my eyes roved up and down the flutes of the columns to the dusty pavement or crumbling entablature whose frieze showed itself every now and then; I filled in the gaps, envisioning the frieze of girls I had seen at the beach.

"Bonsoir, Monsieur. I hope I shall not be intruding on your solitude if I sit here near the steps."

I studied the man who addressed me. He was a sailor, tatoos on his arms, flat white cap with a slim visor, three stripes bordering the characteristic collar. He carried a hemp rope with which he absorbed himself in making a series of slip knots while smoking a narghile.

"You are most welcome here, though I admit I shall be poor company and rather shall be disturbing your peace."

"Oui, you are pensive. I can observe that. But it does not mean a sad, thoughtful man denies another of his tranquility merely because the former has no tranquility in his mind."

I smirked. "What do you know of my mind?"

"Monsieur, I dare not hope to presume, but I am certain you do not wish to talk about whatever it is with a stranger."

"I have encountered so many strangers during my stay in Greece. Each seems to know more about me than I know myself." I crossed one leg over the other. "First it is the grand prince at his masquerade, then a gracile woman wearing a silver-white dress who speaks of my future as the spring water runs over the pebbles."

"It sounds like you have met a Nereid."

"A Nereid? And who are you, Monsieur?"

"I? I am Nereus, the old gentleman of the sea. I am a retired naval captain who lives for truth, virtue, and ganache."

"A bon vivant Socrates, how charming!"

"Oui, my life is very well."

"To be sure. You understand it all."

"Perhaps not all."

I raised my eyebrows. "The most important of all then."

"The most important of all, whatever that means ... That is more accurate, though it is difficult to think of it as such. I discovered it by accident."

"Those discoveries are best."

"Oh, not necessarily."

"Non?"

"Non. Since you compare me to Socrates, whom I admire, we shall, for the sake of a discovery, engage in one of those dialogues where I shall ask the questions and you provide the answers if you are able."

I swung my monocle back and forth. "Ask. I listen."

"Have you ever traveled to Florence?"

"Of course."

"Have you ever gone to the Baptistry across Notre Dame de la Fleur?" He threaded another one of his slip knots.

"Certainly I have."

"Ever looked upon the bronze doors of Ghiberti?"

"Indeed. Hasn't everyone?" I pictured the Sacrifice of Isaac and the Annunciation scenes embossed in alto and bas relief on the famous entry way.

"I am sure a good many have, but I am equally sure that they failed to realize they were looking at the Gates of Paradise. Did you, Monsieur?"

I gave a start. "The Baptistry doors?" For the thousand and first time that day, I was puzzled.

Nereus, pulling apart the hemp for yet another knot in a long sequence, trained his eyes on me, fixing me with a lazy stare. "We speak of the same, as did Michelangelo who knew he was looking at paradise when he saw the doors. But you did not. You, too, beheld paradise but did not know it was as such until I told you."

I shrugged, a little guilty for my lack of knowledge concerning that particular piece of Renaissance art and a little intrigued by the idea of standing before Elysium, if only for a moment. "Forgive me. I seem to be a rather negligent Catholic,"

The old gentleman of the sea smiled wryly. "As negligent as your Catholicism is, such ignorance is tragic, that you stand at the Gates of Paradise themselves and do not know where you are. You will cause Satan to weep for you."

"Does Monsieur Satan know how to weep?"

"He does in the face of great tragedy. It reminds him of his own."

I shook my head, wistful. "I do not stand at the Gates of Paradise."

"But you may."

"The gods do not favor one man so much."

"It is not impossible. You must be attentive. You must go to a florist and request a red valerian for your buttonhole."

To my surprise, I followed the advice, reviewing my conversations with the Nereid and the old gentleman of the sea as an owl hooted from its perch in a cypress tree. And at the Place de la Colonnette, among vases full of delphinia and asphodels, potted impatiences and amaranths, I watched the flower girl tie a bouquet of lemon verbena, marguerites, and red valerians. The latter were small, modest herbs with fragrant blossoms, either lavender-white or crimson. Their second name was the keys of heaven. I departed the shop holding a boutonniere of my usual eglantines with the addition of a white valerian and the bouquet for Corinne, thinking inexplicably, upon entering the Faubourg de Galais, striding up the Rue de Carraway, about eating escargots with golden forks in the Garden of Eden. The Old Testament was quiet about the matter, but I believed Adam must have done it, not realizing he would rather starve with Eve in a cave.