I don’t easily cry. I have cried my heart out just a few times in my far away, young past and that was all. Unless I peel onions, my eyes remain as arid as sun dehydrated figs; not even at the attendance of funerals, whether for beloved or near-beloved people, I cry. That doesn’t mean I’m emotionally detached or indifferent to others’ woes; but my tears have no desire to flow from my eyes.

The last time I remember pouring my eyes out, was when Eric left me. That is, when the realization of rejection hit me, which was also when I knew I was mad in love with him—terribly, hopelessly, unhappily in love. Now that I think of it, it was more than being in love. I was infatuated with him in perhaps a unique, unexplained, and possibly unhealthy manner. Just, six months after my twenty-first birthday and I felt like ninety, as if I had lost my precious self somewhere within drugs and misery. Not that I knew how ninety years old would feel, but bitterness and despair added to my longing for him, debilitating my coolness.

So, for some time, some few, long years after he had left, I would suddenly start crying with no apparent reason, become depressed, and stay at home to be alone, not wishing to see people. Eating masses of comfort food and daydreaming was my remedy against distressed feelings and thoughts of regrets and loss.

There were also times when I was with other boyfriends, and as recent as last year, I would sense Eric nearby—or rather feel his presence nearby, sometimes next to me. So, I would turn my head to see whether he was actually there, momentarily being disappointed for not seeing him. Not that I’d ever believed in any of the spiritual crap of presences or spirits, but my logic considered them to be a direct effect of our wishes to relive the physical and emotional moments with the opposite sex.

The so-called world of metaphysical or supernatural had ceased to scare or interest me after I had grown out of those cumbersome and clumsy teen years, through which one assumes impressions and fears, despite logic or evidence. There was that time when checking under my pillow to make certain the little crosses would still be there, was a regular personal ‘ritual’. Made earlier out of foil or cigarettes’ silver paper, they were laid there as a sort of psychological deterrent, against resuscitating vampires who’d aim at me while I slept; these were impressed on me from a few Dracula films I happened to watch in the cinema. Scary films were a la mode at the time, as I suppose more of the sophisticated types are fanciful today.

***

Eric used to come home at eight promptly each evening. He would kiss me, sit on the couch smiling, and wait for me to get ready. He would always take me somewhere nice; to a restaurant, a theatre play, a club for dancing, or his house for a meal he had cooked himself. Eight o’clock in the evening became a routine for togetherness, which seemed promising for the prospect of a more permanent relationship in the future. I would imagine then living together, or perhaps marriage and family, in the end.

But I couldn’t see it happening soon, and not because I wasn’t sure of whether I cared about it happening. I was more flattered by his attention than I was aware of my own developing emotions, and the habit of seeing him each evening became a pleasant routine to spend time. I utterly was ignorant of myself and my innermost needs.

I would always struggle for something nice to wear, something other than what I had in my wardrobe. My wardrobe featured a thin bulk of clothes, and its contents were as poor in taste and quality as that of an impoverished refugee. Of course, my judgement had been based on the current prevailing societal attitudes and prejudices of what was trendy or in and what were not fashionable to wear. Plus, I have never been endowed with any sense of elegance or style and fashion, in particular in clothes, apart from choosing the most expensive, which my wallet could not afford, and were not always classy or suitable for my figure.

My perception of my body didn’t help the choices of clothing either. Opting for garments one size larger that would cover the excess flabby shape of my thighs, had been the usual choice; but luckily, Susan, my flat mate, was kind and willing to share blouses and cardigans against mascaras and makeup powders, the large quantities of which were of very little use to me, yet I was addicted to buying.

Then, it was my face. I believed my eyes were the only nice feature on me. Big and brown, with thick, natural lashes, they would appeal to men who wore myopic glasses and possessed nothing of the male-modelling features I admired in the glossy magazines. Eric, with his large but not necessarily overweight body, his dark hair, and full lip that I sort of liked to think as being acceptable, seemed to better fit an Arab than a Greek God. Still, something in his voice and his skin’s natural smell and the way he would hold me in his arms and kiss me would oblige my heart to tremble and my body to become limp and unconsciously be ready.

Eric never said anything about my clothes, whether they were sexy or suited me, but he would criticize my smoking; he’d say he could taste and smell the tarty, acrid flavor on my lips and breath and sometimes on my clothes, and he’d make ugly faces to show his aversion. He would also fake a noticeable distaste, when I’d hold and kiss Mrs. Fudge, the ginger cat we kept as a fourth flat mate. He’d protest about the germs on the cat’s fur and debate about my unhygienic cat habits, despite my attempts to explain that the cat’s spittle was like a cleaning agent—sort of a natural antibiotic—and that she had just cleaned herself with it. Then he’d seize me in his arms and fervently kiss my lips. This debate was a constant argument in our relationship during the first ten minutes or so of him entering my home.

Sometimes Eric would arrive with his friend, Nikolas; the only one of his friends I have ever met. I didn’t particularly like Nik. I’m not sure what it was, other than the influence he had on Eric, and his sister, Sally, a year younger than me, had hung on Eric’s arm the few times she had come with them. She would pretend it was ordinary to support herself on him and squeeze his arm, as if he belonged to her. She was not a pretty girl; well, not to my standards of prettiness. I felt I was prettier, despite my own perception of myself. She was shorter than me and fat and tried to attract attention with her loud laughter, like she was the most important person present.

Both Jeanette and Susan, my home-sharing mates, said they thought she fancied Eric, and perhaps she believed hanging on his arm, pretending it was accidental, was a good way to show her affinity of him and stifle my amorous intensions. So did Mrs. Fudge, keeping her distance and revealing her hostile attitude to the girl.

Anyway, I thought she was ugly and fat and danced awfully bad; but she had known Eric longer than me, and she was more at ease with him than I was when we were in public.

***

The first time I saw them was at my birthday party. I had been dating David, Jeanette’s brother, who was thirty-two, divorced, and had three kids living with him. He was my first, but I wasn’t in love with him; I just had to have a boyfriend, as the other two did, and I didn’t wish to differ from the norm.

I was celebrating my twenty-one years of being in this world, which was supposed to be a landmark age; I was to be an adult, instead of just a senior adolescent. I have felt like adult since before I finished high school, but this would not count enough for my parents to allow me to party or socialize with boys.

Anyway, both were there with their bottles of wine, sitting on my couch, uninvited. They said they had heard about a party in the area from a friend, who heard it from another friend, and as it was Saturday night with nothing to do, they came cruising along the streets and landed on my doorstep, right into the festivity, as simple as that. I thought that was the way young people met other and had a good time in London. That kind of happening would have never occurred in Greece in the sixties, and even now it only happens in a club or some other public place where people invariably meet new people.

All that happened so long ago, when I was too young to understand the whims of love and sex, and yet I was still smart enough to recognize their spirited desire and attitude. So, I see him as we were when we had met at my party: I, barely twenty-one years old; he, a few years older, finishing his university degree in shipbuilding, sure of himself, and commandeering my attention with his confidence and his playful, warm smile.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well what?” I asked.

“Well, have you decided?”“Decided what?” I asked, repeating his words and looking at him puzzled, curious and thinking the shape of his glasses didn’t suit his face at all.

He giggled and asked who I would pick to befriend: him or Nick. I had a vague idea he meant to fuck instead of to befriend, but his easy, teasing manner and his innocent smile obliged me to dismiss the unpleasant thought and smirk amicably.

“Oh, of course, you,” I confirmed. “You’re taller and larger, and I love rounded bellies to lay my head on.”

He laughed heartily, like a child listening to a funny story.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Just your boyfriend.”

“Oh, are you? And your name is…?”

“Eric. Rare and full of meanings.”

“Like Eric the Eighth and his wives?”

“Could be, but he had an H in his name.”

“I see. Well my name is Diamantoula, which is rarer to find than yours, and it has just one meaning; that of a small diamond stone, always sparkling, as you see.”

He giggled again and took my hand into his. “Let’s dance, little rock. I love this song.”

Eric led me to a kind of tango chick-to-chick embrace, as if we were to dance American blues. The song was Susan’s favorite: the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”

And, that was how it all started.

***

I remember how my life was before I had met Eric. In that basement apartment in Ladbroke Square, we had shortened the legs of the big mahogany table, forcing us to sit on large cushions when eating. Having low dining tables had been fashionable for people who had left the parental home—an inventive mode to mimic the way Indians and Muslims sit on the floor, but with our comfortable western modifications; knives, forks, spoons, and individual plates.

I was sharing the flat with Janette and Susan, and we had become close; never quarreling and always taking turns for the house cleaning, the washing, and the iron that was a big burden for me. We seemed to complement each other, and regardless of our varied backgrounds and cultures, we kept an open mind and a sense of tolerance natural only to the very young and innocent.

It was the middle of the young rebellion of the 60s, the age of the flower generation, the Hare Krishna people, drugs and free sex, the Beatles and their songs—my favorite being “All You Need is Love.”

When I first came to London in 1966, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t drink, I didn’t have sex. I was a bit awkward of being a virgin when I saw that sex was a theme openly glorified by people my age, barely past eighteen.

Initially, I shared a three-bedroom apartment with three more people in the Kensington area. One was Karen, a thirtyish fair woman of some sophistication, working for a government department, and the other one was a couple, Gerry, and her boyfriend, John. The latter occupied the largest bedroom and both were half-Irish/half-Scottish redheads who donned a lot of freckles. The living room, bathroom, and kitchen were common areas.

One afternoon as I was coming home from work, I tried to show my irritation to Gerry, who was singing loud and out of tune, while dancing half naked in the middle of our common room.

“I heard you last night. You kept me awake, and I didn’t like it.”

“It wasn’t us,” she said.

“No? Not you? Who then? The pope’s mates?”

“They do it too, you know, but in this case, it was the ghost of the house.”

“I couldn’t do anything except listen to your moaning and shrieking.”

“Yes, I know you did,” she said dismissively.

“You mean, I was meant to listen?”

“No, I meant you would have of, anyway. You know, we’re always having loud sex.”

“You mean, always having rough and screaming sex?”

“Right,” she said, tossing her dark orange curls from her pale brown eyes.

Usually natural reds and Irish reds have green eyes, but maybe that was a stereotype because even though Gerry’s hair was long, orangey, and curly, and her peachy face and arms carried thousands of freckles, her stare possessed a milky, weak coffee tint that was dull and zombie-like. Not to forget her foul mouth emitting obscenities and dirty phrases by the millions. So, I wouldn’t say I liked her or that she was attractive.

“We like it that way. John’s is this big, and he likes it stuck inside me, all the time. It widens my cunt and my pleasure enormously. Try it sometime!”

I wasn’t sure whether I was shocked or confused or angry, as that was the first time during my stay she had dared to be so utterly rude to me. I was aware of Gerry’s freckles grinning at me, her plump arms open as if there were ready to embrace someone—me or John or anybody.

“It’s all right, sweetie. You know it is. Try it sometimes,” John intervened, entering from the bathroom with a towel around his waist. “Gerry is right, you need to try it. Here, I’m available should you need me. Gerry won’t mind.”

Looking at him, I thought his long, reddish beard seemed filthy and disgusting to touch, let alone to kiss his mouth. Both claimed they were in love with each other—well they said it became better with a little pot sniffing and were revoltingly rude to me, which intensified my antipathy for them.

“Don’t call me sweetie,” I said irritated.

“I could instead find someone else, if you’d prefer. You know, to do it to you,” John added.

Gerry laughed. “What about Ian? You saw him three nights ago in the pub. He would, you know, if you like, and he’s got it big too, so no problem there.”

Stunned, I could not utter a single word but felt the color rising in my face, and not only from my increasing rage. Occasionally I had met gingers, as I used to secretly call them, but I had never seen a couple so alike in skin complexion, stout posture, and accustomed to advertising their beings through stinking body fumes and foul descriptions of their sexual acts.

“Stop saying such things to her,” Karen said to Gerry; the tone of her voice was heated and firm.

She took my hand in the same way she would have with a little girl, and we walked to her room to have a cup of tea and chat. Karen was always nice, steady, and well-mannered; indicative of being a lady because of her polite conduct. I used to listen to what she had to say, as if she was my older sister.

“They were vulgar, insulting,” I said to Karen.

“Sex might be vulgar, even when there’s love—”

“Love … is that what it was? Does love involve such sarcasm and vile language to others? I merely asked to keep it down. I can’t sleep at night, every night, you know, and I have to go to work the next day. Was that so bad?”

“You are too innocent, my dear,” Karen said and explained love and sex and hormones and intense desires, which seemed academic to me but not an excuse for insolence.

Yet, I felt I already had my beliefs shaken; beliefs and convictions my parochial thoughts were using to resist change and a more modern approach to life. Suddenly my virginity felt like a burden, that relations didn’t have to rely on preserving it, and I was too mature to keep thinking of purity before sex as a prerequisite to happiness.

***

Thinking back, I’m surprised I had never tried drugs nor shared joints or anything of the kind in London. Yet, it was the 60s, rock bands played in open spaces, masses singing brotherhood against the Vietnam War, miniskirts and casual clothes for most aspects of life were coated with free sex, and being stoned was a sort of must for young people. It was the freedom from social inhibitions that was so jubilant, and at the same time, so frightfully dangerous of getting out of hand.

I wasn’t the virtuous, monogamous swan, or the cowardly scared and insignificant woman hiding my small, egocentric self behind high-minded importance. Debauchery eluded me, as well as the lack of curiosity that obliged my logic to work a bit differently from all those who were trying and using the substances. Once, when I had been offered one such cigarette, the guy had said it was mild and would make me feel great afterward. I looked at his glistening and unfocused eyes, his drooping sticky hair, and his unnaturally drab face and felt disgusted and nauseated, as if a cloud of passive madness was threatening to consume me.

When David, a guy who had temporarily become sort of a boyfriend, proposed that his sister, Jeannette, and her friend, Susan, were looking for a third to share a flat in the same building but on the ground floor, I happily accepted to move with them to escape from Gerry’s ever-so-loud sex preferences, John’s drugs, and Karen’s boring complaisance to their habits.
And then Eric entered my life.

***

There is no warning when his big, sunshine smile invades my mind; the picture vivid as if he is near me, almost touching me with his breath. And I stand speechless as my heart speeds its pace, as if it wants to break into pieces from the longing; the few drops of blood and sorrow from the cracks leak into my tightened stomach.

Once it was very hard to keep a cool head and face. Once it was very difficult to fight the assault of feelings to my reality; to prevail and substitute his image; the experience of him with someone or something else. Sometimes sex was like an outlet, an exit from his grip, and my desperation felt by the lovers was taken as a manifestation of being hot—a hot cat with which they could enjoy lust, theirs and mine being merged.

What I’d give to experience that incredible sensation again that washed all over me and drowned my reason into deep feelings; he would look at me and I felt alive; truly alive. I could hear the blood running into my veins, hot and fast, asking me to go along. I could feel the heat approaching my guts, a blazed coal straight to my womb, urging me to fly and be crushed into his arms, to become his one and only log to consume. Having sex with him was a much-wanted and consuming fire, a blissful fire. Then loving, caressing, laughing, and being together would cement the flames that would keep the passion alive. With Eric, it seemed as if I was in Heaven.

***

Then, one day, after six months of being together, he left. He left me without explanation or excuse and never visited or called again. Sometime later, I tried to contact him, but his secretary said he was shopping with his fiancé; the marriage was to be the following Sunday. I don’t intend to be melodramatic, but this news felt like the moments I had heard the earth moving underneath my feet as a little girl, wearing my red shoes and sitting on the pavement of the long road lined with high buildings, moving against each other in the strong earthquake. And I had been alone.

I have never recuperated since, never cried again, and never forgot … never. Not even when I thought I was in love with someone else for a while. Not even in my best moments could I stop feeling alone without him. Instead, time behaved like water cleansing my feelings, bearing hope and patience. Waiting for him? My God, if you look onto us from up there, it’s been over forty plus years since.

And perhaps God heard me, and at last I’ve seen him in that hospital last week when I visited Martha.

***

The cool of the blue—the kind of color that seems to be smoking in parts of the sky and cobalt blue in others—would often rule on spring mornings in the village where I lived and make the sea surface shine silver. A weak, yellow-white sunbeam would escape from a puffy cloud, traveling leisurely before dissolving into the grey-blue in the distance. The rest of the sea would don a dark, azure tint, captivating my stare while I walked on the wave-battered shore.

My awe for that charming blue hue overriding nature’s other colors becomes dangerous if I drive on the narrow, paved road along the coastline; car could go astray and collide with whatever is in front of it if I didn’t let the blue out of my sight. Which is what had happened a few days ago, but I instinctively turned the steering wheel to the left. I found myself inside the sandbanks and hundreds of spiky—now brown—plants and embedded in the sand. In the height of summer, they would produce small, white flowers with a tiny yellow eye in their middle that turns and follows the direction of the sun; they are lovely to watch. Now they pricked.

I had opened the door but remained sitting in my seat, letting my legs daggle out of the car and above the brown spikes, trying to calm down. The image of Eric in that central hospital in Athens appeared in front of me.

***

I had gone to see and say farewell to Martha, a long-term friend I had not seen for some years, who was dying from cancer. She had asked me to say goodbye. Apparently, she remembered me with affection and that I had been part of her late youth when she had met her future husband and his four kids in Brussels. She said I had been a witness of their love and has been lucky to have known me and be friends.

Eric was in another ward. As I walked down the corridor toward the exit after seeing Martha, I carelessly glimpsed through an open door and saw him. He sat in a wheelchair, picking at his pink hives and vigorously scratching the skin on his arms, sometimes drawing blood, while a nurse prepared to administer an injection. I stopped breathing for a moment, looking at him, a bit shocked. He had no hair, his fat cheeks were sagging like empty bags from his face, there was saliva in the edges of his mouth and under his thick, black cherry lips; his once black, beady eyes now had the color of milky chocolate, and his face seemed patchy with a row of red and brown blotches, irregular in shape. But it was Eric.

I walked to the exit, trying to shake off the image, and then I turned and went back. I stood at the open door, hesitant to enter, staring. He looked at me, but no recognition registered on his impassive face. Something in his features I had known once would stir me deeply, and now it was back again, mounted with my pity and sadness of how and what he became to be. Life sometimes is so ungracious.

If I had married him back then, would I still be with him, love him and cherish him and care for him the way he is now? When he left me, I had turned to religion; to God and Jesus and St. Mary, begging them to send him back to me, even crippled so I could take care of him, serve him, and toil for him for the rest of my natural life. The obsession was just a bad dream—day in, day out, for the most part of seven years.

When the syringe containing the pale-yellow liquid had successfully entered his thigh, I heard the nurse urge him to lie on his bed for half an hour or so. She was probably used to his response of apathy, staring at nothing, as if he was in a trance. She covered him with a blanket and retreated to the window, where she sat at a little table, a book in her hands.

A private nurse, I thought and turned to leave.
A guy in the corridor passed on my left. “Poor man. Psoriasis, a stroke, and now galloping Alzheimer’s!”

Well, I thought, at least he won’t be feeling his suffering. The illness should gradually dissipate inside the oblivion his less-functioning mind will create, but he looked terrible.

Without giving Eric another thought, I went to my hotel to get dressed for the concert in the evening; Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the one the EE adopted as its hymn a few years after it was created.

***

I returned to my home in the north, near the sea. New Year’s Eve would pass and 2016 would fade into obscurity, with nothing grand or memorable happening in my private life. I sat on my couch in the living room and studied the grayness of the sky and sea; the oceanic waves were not visible, as the wind and storm diminished during the early hours of the night.

But the storm in my heart had been growing, gradually turning into suffocation and determination to see him again. Would he still be alive? Would he recognize me, remember me, talk to me if I spoke first?

So, I returned. I flew on January 2—a bitter cold Tuesday morning—to Athens, and at 11.30 a.m., I entered the gate to the hospital. My heart raced, my legs wobbled, and my stomach churned at the thought of the froth at the right edge of his lips.

“May I sit and talk to him, just for a few minutes?” I asked the nurse.

“No problem. But I’m afraid he won’t recognize you or understand what you say. He’s completely gone. But suit yourself. I’d be there.” She gestures at the farthest end of the room near the window.

I sat and looked at him and felt unable to say anything. I just stared and pitied him, silently cheering for my own good health and feeling lucky to be unconnected or unrelated to him; to that gone person that in fact I didn’t know. Then I hastily left, as if I had to run for my life.

***

I went shopping and was back at the hotel in the evening, carrying six or seven bags with clothes, shoes, and female accessories—most things I didn’t need but served as a distraction against gloomy thoughts and feelings about life and death. I ate supper in my room and decided to have an early night so I could visit the Acropolis museum in the morning before I had to catch the plane home. I watched the news and fell asleep shortly afterward.

Feeling exhausted, tearful, and soaked with perspiration, I woke suddenly and stumbled into the bathroom to pee. I looked at the mirror, still crying, and drank some water from the tap, unable to shake off the dream. Back, sitting in bed, I noted it was 3 a.m.

I shook my head in disbelief, as it had felt real. The dream wasn’t a dream; no, it had to be real. Eric was here making love to me for so long! He was rough and kind at the same time, passionately bringing all that pleasure to me, but also revulsion; he was both the Eric of the past and the Eric in the hospital. I shivered, remembering the intensity of the sex, while still crying. Where were all those tears then? Crying from pleasure, I decided to see him once again.

***

I arrived at the hospital at 8.30 a.m.., much earlier than most visitors. I found his door closed, so I sat on the stool in the corridor to wait until he became available. I tried to think about what I was going to say; perhaps I wanted him to know about last night and that I have never forgotten him.

When an orderly opened his door an hour later, Eric was not in his bed. He had died in his sleep at exactly 3 a.m. I sat, unable to move, stunned by the realization he had actually remembered me and unconsciously knew I was there both times, and that he had visited my bed to say goodbye and make love to me as though to compensate for all those times I had been missing him. Not his ghost, but him. I was sure of this. The sensation still ran down my spine, his terrific smile teased my sense of helpless adoration, exactly as I remembered him in London, saying, I am your boyfriend, your lover, your one and only partner…

Then someone sat beside me on the stool and offered a white handkerchief to dry my eyes and blow my nose. “Here, take this.”

I wasn’t aware I was tearful again.

“Thanks,” I said absentmindedly.

“Did you know him?” the man asked.

Something in his voice made me turn and look at his red eyes. Was he crying too? But his face was not familiar. He was lean, fair, and expensively dressed.

“I thought so. At first,” I said. “He looked like someone I knew a long time ago, someone I used to love in London. But he was not that one. Are you a relative?”

“He was my father,” he said, “but the last month or so he couldn’t recognize me.”
“It’s sad.”

“Well, I better go. Came to retrieve his tie pin; it’s small and out of brass, not of any worth, but it had sentimental value to him,” he said and showed me the tiny item.

It was my one and only gift to Eric, at our sixth month anniversary, in London.

***

Scanning the immense variety of blue shades in the sea and sky, I knew I was luckier than some people in my life to be able to enjoy the beauty of this mild winter weather in January. I was content and happy at the memory of that night visit; what would anyone say if they knew? I felt free from the longing and the painful regret burdening my being all those years.

He showed me he had always loved me.
Why shouldn’t I believe that ghosts exist? Why shouldn’t they come to visit?

-Diamantoula, 2017