A Room in Athens Read online

  “We allow them to be free. We think they should be able to move their arms and legs naturally.” (Although who had ever thought it out? It just seemed natural.)

  As Katie interpreted this for Rosa, several other girls came in the room to chat. Doubtless they had heard of the Americana’s strange behavior. They had never questioned, either.

  “Rosa says they are wrapped up because they don’t know what to do with their hands. They keep themselves awake with their waving arms and they scratch their eyes.” Katie translated for me.

  “And how,” asked Frieda, the plump, pretty girl whom I had spoken to just as I went into the delivery room, “how will their legs and back be straight if they are not wrapped?”

  Marina came back and Katie put my question to her. “Silly,” she said, “they would catch cold.”

  “Well, how long are they kept wrapped up?” I asked.

  “Oh,” said Katie, “for some months. Until it is warm and they have knowledge of how to use their hands.”57

  Once again, I was encountering the peculiar logic of the Balkan lands. I had not been positive before, but now I was sure. I remembered Miss Elleadou telling me to take my medicine or not, as I chose. Or saying she would show a film and shrugging it off lightly when she had forgotten (although this was, perhaps, more the Mediterranean off-handedness about promises). I recalled our friend Tonka, a high school English teacher, in Yugoslavia.

  “Come and see me,” she had said. “I want to show you my city. You must see it. Your trip to our country is not complete without a tour of Kotor.”

  We made a special trip to visit her in her lovely, ancient city on the Adriatic coast. It was a fascinating town within whose walls—which staggered up the mountain—a tough citizenry had held off the Turks for centuries. Tonka sweetly had her landlady rent us a room and then seemed to forget about us. When, after several days, we finally asked her outright for a short tour, she had asked a friend of hers to take us around the Maritime Museum. Later that day, after our sixth unpleasant meal at one of the town’s two restaurants, Tonka said, “That place is dreadful. I must take you to the hotel dining room across the bay. We must go there tomorrow.”

  “Why?” we asked. “Is it better?”

  “Oh no!” she had replied earnestly, “It is, if anything, worse.”

  Fortunately, we left Kotor the next day; but we had had similar conversations with Yugoslavs, and now, I was afraid, it was happening in Greece.

  I decided to follow my instincts. I couldn’t bear to see my baby’s arms pinned to his sides (even in the womb they have greater freedom), and I had not finished my inspection of him. The next time he was brought for feeding, I unwrapped him and peeled him down to the nub. Only after a good look at his frontside, his backside, and after I had counted his toes, did I feel the whole, long process of birth was over.

  At every feeding, I continued to unwrap his arms at least, although the girls stared somberly and shook their heads as if they’d found me performing a perversion, and Angela and Marina always marched him off with clicking tongues.

  Rosa had changed to a private room, and Maria, a new girl who had been put in Rosa’s bed—an emotional girl who had had a hard delivery—watched me intently, then seized her two-day-old daughter, tearing off her leg wrappings in a frenzy.

  “My husband’s foot is deformed,” she said to the startled Katie. “And I must look! Oh, thank God it is normal!”

  As Maria fell back with tears of relief in her eyes, I felt pleased that by my “rebellious” act I had given her the courage to go against her own docility, relieving herself of what must have been nine months of dread.

  The six days passed pleasantly enough. Each day, I felt stronger—and each day’s diet marked my progress. For each of the six days of our stay at the clinic, a different meal was prepared. The first day was the yogurt and fruit and egg-lemon soup. On the second day we had boiled chicken, deliciously prepared; cold zucchini in olive oil served with lime; potatoes, grapes, and yogurt. The third day it was fish, the fourth, meat, and so on. Each day, the same meal was served twice, at lunch and dinner. Each girl was on a different meal, depending on which day after her delivery it was. It seemed to me the cook would save a lot of work if we all could eat the same food, but strong belief must have gone into the carefully planned menus so geared to the stages of our recovery. There was something medieval about it, I thought, as though someone had figured out the delicate balance of humours and had prescribed chicken for Second Day Vapours and chopped meat for purging of Fifth Day Black Bile.58 (I have since found out that the meal-planning is an ancient practice dating back to Hippocrates and possibly earlier. In the light of new research, it may prove quite sound.)

  Three times a day our temperatures were taken in the armpit with a short, flat, metal thermometer which for some reason always made me think of A Farewell to Arms.59 But on the underside was stamped in English, “Made in the USSR.”

  I kept seeing, without really noticing, Marina or Angela fussing in the cabinet part of my bedside table, and I didn’t bother to investigate for the first few days. When I did get up and open the table, sometime around the fourth day, I was stunned to find a four-day accumulation of soiled diapers. Unfolding one or two, I found them just as they had come from my son, unrinsed.

  Sputtering, I asked of Katie, “What is this?” And she replied in her calm, round-eyed way, “Why Frances, those are your baby’s diapers.”

  “Yes, I know, I know. But what are they doing here?”

  “Our families come and take away our babies’ soiled clothes and bring back clean ones each day.”

  I said with utter exasperation, “Madame Kladaki and Miss Elleadou know I have no family. Why do those girls just let the things pile up and not even tell me I’m responsible!” I raged on. Katie was calling Angela.

  Angela brought Miss Elleadou. “We will get you a laundress. Do not worry,” said Miss Elleadou.

  That night, I sent Arno to get another dozen of the triangular diapers with the patch of toweling sewed into the middle and another bunch of the swaddling sheets.

  Despite my irritation about the diapers, I had never seen such doting nursing care. I knew Marina and Angela best, but there were two other nurses, a maid, and a cook, for only six patients. The food was excellent, the rooms cheery and immaculate; if we needed something, we never had to wait. And yet when the girls spoke to the nurses their voices almost always sounded harsh or scolding. Marina continued to be amused by me. Although we couldn’t speak a word, her affection was direct—so direct that I was sometimes taken aback by it. She was only about eighteen—robust and bursting with energy. She would come up to me and pat my face, smiling merrily at me. Sometimes she would give me a hug. Of Joshua she often said “Kalo, kalo,” or “good.” She seemed to think him unusually good or untroublesome. To be sure, he had developed not only my husband’s mouth, but a look of rare sweetness during his few waking hours. And I was aware that unlike some of the other girls, we did not have problems getting adjusted to one another during nursing. This seemed to be going with the same remarkable smoothness and compatibility as my pregnancy.

  Often these days it was easy to imagine what it must feel like to be an infant. Three times a day the nurses came in to bathe us, as we all bled profusely now and would continue to bleed for about six weeks. They placed strange-looking pans under us, then poured warm water in a stream, washing the healing birth canal. After this, they powdered us with antiseptic powder and then made a kind of diaper out of a Kleenex-like tissue worn instead of pads. Over this “diaper” they pulled our fresh underwear. The feel of the gentle, warm cleansing and the fresh, dry clothing was wonderfully pleasant. Marina and Angela never jarred or poked. When they removed our stained underclothes there was not the slightest hint of distaste. I gave myself up to this bathing and changing three times daily, each time aware of how a baby must feel when its diapers are changed. I must be so careful to have gentle hands; and never, never show anything
but matter-of-factness or pleasure on my face. He would be watching me. From my expressions he would learn how to feel about himself.

  As I lay in the room, I listened to the voices of the girls, the nurses, the families. Out of the swift flow of sounds, often loud and torrential—not unlike Italian—but with many little softnesses of the lisping th, certain words kept bobbing up, and after awhile I came to recognize them. Agori. Koritsi. Gala. (Boy. Girl. Milk.) And most often, entaxei, which was almost always said twice: “Entaxei, entaxei.” Mostly you heard “taxei, taxei”; it meant all right, or enough, or stop. I asked the girls what the sounds meant, and then how to say certain words. In a few days I was saying yes and no, thank you and please, and had a growing list of words for fruits and vegetables, meat and fish written in my notebook, in Greek and transliteration.

  But as I listened for the sounds I recognized, I thought, “this must be what it’s like to hear language, only I know what language is and he won’t.” But I could begin to sense how it would be for the baby; first, the flow of sound and then the recognition of the few commonest sounds bobbing up like corks. Always said the same way, always said once or twice or three times, like yes or no in Greek. (Three times rapidly for yes—nai, nai, nai—two times more slowly for no, okhi, okhi.)

  What was it like to be a baby? I kept trying to put myself in his place, but I couldn’t, for the human world, even though language and custom around me differed, was still my element. And it was not yet his. He was a baby animal about to find out what kind of creatures he belonged to, what kind of creature he was. The desire to understand what it would be like to be newborn was almost obsessive, and I searched around until I found an analogy I could make work.

  To get the feeling I had to leave the too familiar human world. I tried to imagine what it would be like if I woke up an amnesiac, trapped in a strange place, unable to move from the spot, remembering nothing of a former life. Suppose soon after I woke, a big dog, say a St. Bernard, came periodically every day bringing me food, licking me. After a short time I would become used to the dog, would come to know its moods, its expressions, would depend on it. If he were bothered one day and ran back and forth or barked loudly or whined, I would certainly sense that something was different. If he stood stiffly, I would feel that too and be uneasy. Before long, I would welcome him. And on and on. It was awkward, but it gave me some idea of what I wanted to know: how, without knowing the signs, or cues, do you come to recognize them and respond to them? Why would my baby respond happily to a smile, otherwise to a frown? Why did his own expressions, the ones he was literally born with, match so closely the expressions on an adult face—and expressions one sees, or thinks one sees, on animal faces? Why would stiff, tense arms make him uncomfortable and unhappy, and relaxed, easy motions make him feel at peace?

  I read light books, wrote in my journal, gossiped with the girls, and nursed Joshua four times a day. Arno’s daily visits were my only contact with my familiar life and self. As the days passed, I saw the various families come—parents, in-laws, uncles, and aunts. One day, I looked across the room in time to see a young, good-looking man kissing Katie repeatedly on each cheek with great elation. After he had gone I said, “So your husband finally came! What does he think of the baby?”

  “My husband!” said Katie with a flush, “Oh, no! That was my brother! My husband must study very, very hard for his exams. I will not see him until I come home.” She continued to seem flustered, as though the idea of such passionate public demonstration between a husband and wife had taken her aback. Puzzled, I returned to my book.

  As I watched the families come and go, I felt as though I never had a moment’s privacy. They were always there, aunts, great-aunts, grandmothers during the day, joined by fathers, uncles, grandfathers, and husbands at night. They were all very pleasant and friendly and considerate, in the special way that people are to roommates of relatives in hospitals, but I felt I was being watched by them, talked about, and simply intruded upon. I tried to concentrate on De Vries60 but could barely manage to finish the book. I tried to sleep, but the stitches were pulling dreadfully and I was uncomfortable in any position. We all suffered from discomfort in our bellies, distension, painful contractions of the womb, sore nipples, and swollen, painful breasts, hard with the great volume of milk that was pouring in almost continually and which the babies could not yet handle.

  It was the evening of the Third Day, and I was working on my Psari Plaki, or Baked Fish Dinner. Katie was having Ground Meat of the Fifth Day, and the new girl, Maria, was on the Second Day Chicken. Their families sat around watching us eat. I had no visitors and was trying to read the international edition of The New York Times which Arno had left me on his brief visit the night before. Usually, I read it avidly, but I felt stared at, found the words slipping out of focus, suddenly felt very lonely and depressed and tired. All day, I lay alone without company. I could talk to Katie but her English, good as it was, left something to be desired. Often I got peculiar answers to my questions, or she simply could not understand. She translated my words to the other girls and theirs to me, but no discussion could be sustained for long.

  Frieda, with her round, pretty face and black, frizzy hair, drifted in and out; she smiled wanly and spoke a little, but she was suffering from milk that was coming in so fast that it was hardening, or so it seemed, and backing up to her arms. She moaned and winced between her attempts to be friendly, and finally went back to her room in tears. Rosa was the only one of us who was really feeling very good. She had been moved out when Maria came in and was sharing Frieda’s room. She danced in and out of our large quarters like Melina Mercouri, her elegant, maroon silk robe outlining her lovely body. The rest of us clumped around, thick in the middle, feeling old. I think I had expected to immediately become my former self (I found during pregnancy I had particularly missed my waist and was surprised to find how much of my identity—and vanity—lay there).

  I was reminded of a stay in a gynecological ward in a Jewish Hospital in Philadelphia once. The place was full of old women who had had hysterectomies. They would groan and shuffle and clutch their abdomens and wail, half-laughing, “Oi, my baby, my baby! It hoits!” Such discomfort was upon us that we might have all had hysterectomies those few days—except for Rosa. She was going home; I didn’t like her, partly because I was envious, partly because she seemed cold, and I would not be sorry to see her go.

  Maria, the unhappy girl who had taken her bed, was hard to look at. She seemed to be suffering terribly. She was a complainer by nature, and now she was in her element. I could tell that, without understanding a word she said. But I felt sorry for her. She and her baby girl were simply not getting along. Whenever the infants were brought in to nurse, Maria had trouble with hers. The baby opened a mouth that through some oddity of structure seemed shark-like; it even appeared to have teeth, although of course there were none. When she took hold of her mother’s still untoughened nipple, Maria always screamed with pain. She groaned and whimpered and prayed, tried not to thrash. Time after time, Marina and Angela came to help. The baby would finally settle down a little and get some milk, but not much. After each of these painful, unsuccessful nursings, Maria would hold her little daughter and look at her, murmuring sadly, then angrily. Confusion, disappointment, and resentment mingled in her dark eyes under the strands of brown-gold hair. Then the baby would yawn—I always shuddered when I saw that strange little mouth open—it was as though something primitive, not yet fully formed, had slipped through; a feature that belonged to another age, another time. A predatory mouth. I was always glad it wasn’t born to me. But the baby stopped yawning, and with her mouth closed she was another beautiful, dark-haired little Greek baby. Her mother moaned and kissed her and murmured as the girls all did, and gave her a hug. Then Angela came and took the infant and I knew next time it would be the same and Maria would suffer again. She seemed very young to be caught in the middle of love and resentment of her first baby.

  I hea
rd the word Americana from across the room from one of Katie’s guests and felt my gestures turn self-conscious under the stares as they talked about me. At the same time, Marina once again dropped a load of soiled diapers into my table. Still no laundress had come. Putting down my fork, I glanced into the cabinet; piled up were the stained, dirty clothes. Suddenly, it seemed like too much. I shoved the dinner away. I could barely wait for Arno to come.

  At seven, he appeared in the doorway. I came out into the waiting room. We sat where only a week ago we had sat for our lessons with Miss Elleadou. We talked about the novel, about the apartment, he showed me the mail. The heat, he said, was stifling. He always, he said, felt sleepy the moment he walked in. For the past three nights he had indeed come in, yawned for an hour, and left. No wonder I was so irritated by all the doting company the other girls had. But tonight, please, please, please don’t leave so soon. I’m alone all day. These people are strangers. I speak a different tongue. I need you.

  “I don’t know what happens to me,” he was saying for the fifth time. “I feel sleepy.”

  “Please don’t go so early. Stay a while.”

  “All right,” he said readily. We looked at each other, went and looked at the baby, sat. But we had nothing to say. As though our worlds were so different these days we couldn’t make a bridge between them. He was impatient to go, out into the coolness of nighttime Athens, back to the novel, or to sit and have coffee at Kolonaki Square and watch the Athenian world go by under the orange trees with the neon lights coming on in Greek.

  I felt I was keeping him against his will. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s the matter. I need some air. I’ll come tomorrow. By the way, Liesel is coming to see you tomorrow night.”

  I walked with him to the door, hating to hold him there, hating to see him go. I fought to keep my tears back.