The Names

3

Awake. The pulsing cry of doves. I have to concentrate to form a sense of whereabouts. Up, into the world, crank the shutters open. The beekeeper in the garden of the British School marches in his hooded bo

Marriage is something we make from available materials. In this sense it's improvised, it's almost offhand. Maybe this is why we know so little about it. It's too inspired and quicksilver a thing to be clearly understood. Two people make a blur.Charles Maitland and I discussed this, sitting on a bench in the National Gardens, where it was fifteen degrees cooler than in the bright city around us. Kids walked by, eating rings of sesame bread."You're talking about modern marriage. Americans.”"Kathryn is Canadian.”"New World then.”"I think you're out of touch.”"Of course I'm out of touch. And a good thing too. Spare me from being in touch. The point is that the thing you describe has nothing to do with wedlock. “He produced the word like a gold coin between his teeth. Handsome battered face. Burst capillaries, streaked blue eyes. He was fifty-eight, a half shambles, broad, ruddy, silver-browed, racked by fits of coughing. Sundays he drove alone to a field outside the city and flew his radio-controlled model plane. It weighed nine pounds and cost two thousand dollars."True," I said. "Wedlock was the last thing Kathryn and I thought we'd entered. We hadn't entered a state at all. If anything, we'd broken out of states and nations and firm designs. She used to say this marriage is a movie. She didn't mean it wasn't real. The whole thing flickered. It was a series of small flickering moments. But at the same time calm and safe. A day-to-day life. Restrained, moderate. I thought if you didn't want anything, your marriage was bound to work. I thought the trouble was that everyone wanted. They wanted in different directions. Tap, coming along, reinforced the feeling that we were making it up day by day, little by little, but sanely, contentedly, with no huge self-seeking visions.”"I'm thirsty," he said."A drink would kill you.”"It flickered. It was a series of flickers. You were calm and safe.”"We had incredible fights.”"When the old girl gets here, we're going for a drink.”"I'm having lunch with Rowser. Come along.”"Christ, no. Christ, not him.”"Be a sport," I said.Shaded paths. Watercourses and stone fountains. A dense green place with towering trees that provided a fan vaulting, a cover against the enlarged-heart panics of central Athens. The landscape had a pleasing randomness. It was an enticement to wander foolishly, to get lost without feeling you were part of a formalist puzzle, a garden of hedge traps and designed escapes. A dozen men talked politics under a pine tree. Intermittently Charles listened, translating for me. He and A