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To be followed by beautiful Aqaba in the spring, the worn stones of Jerusalem in the summer and
flowering Jericho in the autumn when the evenings were turning cold on the heights. And Joe away
although he couldn't help it, and the terrible fear tormenting Maud as she gazed into the currents of the
Jordan flowing near their little house, the muddy river of miracles by then reaching the end of its brief and
steeply falling course from the rich slopes of Galilee down to the utter barrenness of the Dead Sea.
Fear that Joe would leave her. That this love would also go away. At her feet a rushing river and Joe too
young to understand the terrified silences that gripped her that winter beside the Jordan, Maud unable to
raise her eyes from the water and reach out and touch the man she loved.
So she had run away from the little house where Bernini was born toward the end of winter. She had left
before Joe had even seen his son, not leaving a note behind for him because there was no way then that
she could explain her dreaded memories of a barn in Pennsylvania and a castle in Albania, a daughter
dying when Yanni was away at the front and Yanni's death, all those restless demons that had returned to
shatter the dream of peace she thought she had found in the stillness of a crypt in Jerusalem.
Abandoning the little flowered house in desperation and going up to Galilee, where she rested until she
could travel with Bernini. And then in April sadly journeying on to the only sanctuary she knew in the
world, the lovely villa by the sea in Smyrna that was the home of Yanni's elderly half-brother, the elegant
and kindly Sivi.
Sivi was then nearly seventy. He was unusually tall for a Greek, as Yanni had also been, both of them
having inherited their large strong frames and deep blue eyes from their father, a famous leader of the
Greek war for independence who had come from an isolated corner of Crete where the people were
said to be direct descendants of the Dorians. The fierce old man had married twice late in life, fathering
Sivi when he was in his fifties and Yanni when he was well over eighty.
So nearly thirty years had separated the half-brothers and much else as well, Yanni a warring patriot who
had lived by the Cretan war cry against the Turks, freedom or death, Sivi a sophisticated arbiter of art
and society at his famous teas in Smyrna, where everyone seemed to turn up sooner or later.
In the past year Maud had written Sivi only once, soon after returning from Aqaba, a short note saying
she had fallen deeply in love in Jerusalem. But later when her fears had begun to paralyze her she hadn't
dared to write. So Sivi had no way of knowing who was at the door on that April afternoon when he
answered the bell and found her standing in the rain, thin and wasted with a baby in her arms, one
battered suitcase at her feet.
Maud had memorized what she was going to say but the words left her the moment she saw Sivi
suddenly towering above her. She couldn't speak. She broke into tears.
She didn't remember everything that happened after that. Sivi embraced her and swept her inside,
delivered the baby into the care of his housekeeper and helped her upstairs, called Theresa, his French
secretary, to draw a bath and provide new clothes, talking happily all the while in a warm excited voice
as if the visit had been planned for months, as if the only misfortune on that dark April afternoon was that
it had been raining when she arrived.
Later they sat with cognac in front of the fire, Sivi's deeply lined face all smiles as he wagged his massive
head and chatted on about Smyrna and his recent adventures, never once mentioning Bernini or alluding
to Maud's life during the last year, simply accepting her presence in his home and delving into ever more
elaborate anecdotes to distract her.
Constantinople, 1899.
While Sivi was entertaining a young sailor in his hotel room the sailor's regular lover, a hulking customs
inspector, had arrived and begun chopping down the door with an ax, shouting that he was going to kill
Sivi. The only escape was the window and the door was giving way so fast there was no time to dress.
With an open umbrella over his head to serve as a parachute, Sivi went sailing out the window in a long
red nightshirt and nothing else, the hotel room having been cold enough to warrant a nightshirt no matter
what activities were under way.
The nightshirt billowed up, revealing his nakedness to the pedestrians below. And what was worse, it
made it impossible for him to see where he was going.
To not even know, intoned Sivi, gesturing extravagantly, what manner of grave I was going to fall into? A
diabolical trick of fate.
As it happened he found himself landing on his bottom in a pool of water, raising a great spray, in the
back of a madly careening water wagon driven by an Armenian whose horses had gone out of control,
attacked by a yapping dog. As the customs inspector shook his ax from the hotel window the wagon
thundered away up the street followed by the noisy dog, Sivi sitting up to his waist in the water and still
holding his umbrella high, his nightshirt spread around him like a gigantic red water lily, smiling and
nodding pleasantly at the astonished spectators on the sidewalks who had seen him come sailing out the
window at precisely the right moment to make good his escape.
Or Salonika, 1879.
Being given to pranks in his youth, Sivi had not appeared in his box at the opera until just before the end
of the first intermission, when he presented himself dressed in an enormous red hat spilling with roses,
long red silk gloves and a flowing red gown complete with an impressive bustle, a fake ruby brooch of
extraordinary size fitted into the cleavage of his chest.
Whispers were rampant through the tiers of the opera house but Sivi kept his eyes fixed on the stage,
ignoring everyone, slowly stroking his thick moustache with a forefinger.
The curtain rose. Siegfried marched to the middle of the stage and spread his arms to proclaim a mighty
deed, whereupon Sivi swept dramatically to his feet and thundered out the first bars of the solo in a basso
profundo that not only shocked Siegfried into silence and stunned the audience but immediately brought
the curtain crashing down.
And Alexandria and Rhodes and Rome, Venice and Cyprus and Florence, Sivi recounting tales from
over the years to amuse her until Maud was laughing in spite of herself, whispering as he kissed her
goodnight that this was expected to be an especially beautiful spring in Smyrna, his way of saying she was
welcome to stay as long as she liked in his villa by the sea.
And later that night as she lay sleepless in bed, sobbing quietly in the darkness as the rain beat down on
the house, she marveled anew at this gentle courtly man who had somehow come to accept everything in
life, and everyone, without asking why it should be so.
At peace. She wondered if such serenity would ever be hers.
She met Munk for the first time in June and found him to be so close to Sivi as to be almost his adopted [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]