Brian’s mime had triumphed.
He was eloquent and inventive with a remarkable talent for externalising subtle perceptions through movement. Our Peloponnese trip was wonderfully enhanced by his ability to make contact with people and to elicit warm response. He got so good at his mime-dance creations, polishing them into mini entertainments, mini silent movies and was so inspired by the response they evoked that by the time we returned to Athens to board the ship for Lesbos, he had made a massive decision. He decided to give up talking. In one of his last verbal communications he explained that he wanted the discipline of expressing himself only in movement, the experience of internal meditation, of “noble silence.” He had a captive audience on the ship and communicated and entertained around the clock, developing his silence into a fine art. During the two day voyage all the passengers grew to love him. He was deluged with wine, cheese, sausage and inviting looks, accepted by the Greeks like a family member. Considering this was his first time with foreigners, he was spectacular.
Everyone grew to love him, that is everyone but me. Ronit enjoyed him, Ruth was amused and impressed, but I grew increasingly disenchanted and needy. At first I sympathised with his experiment, but when I realised he wasn’t going to talk even to me, I began to resent it.
He was high on a solo flight from which I was excluded. When he wasn’t performing, he was silent, absorbed in thoughts I couldn’t share, enjoying his internal meditation. Rather than appreciating his noble silence, I became increasingly jealous of it. It was like a devotion to a new love. I wanted him back. Ronit, on the other hand, went along with him, relishing his complicated communications, patiently interpreting his desires. “Brian says he’s not having lunch with us, he’s eating with that Greek family, you know the one with the little girl who wears that big bow in her hair. He says we should bring our wine and join them after we’ve eaten. The father is teaching him to play the bazouki.”
Besides, I became weary of the sympathetic looks and sad smiles which said to me “you have such a fine young man, what a pity he’s a mute.” When the boat docked I didn’t mind having to make all the travel arrangements, a taxi into town, bus tickets from town, food, schedules, while he entertained, but I did mind his total preoccupation with his new love.
By the time we got to Molivos, the small fishing village on Lesbos, I felt totally alienated by Brian’s refusal to talk, and hoped that meeting Irving, Rachel and Leonard, would induce him to give up his vow of silence. But it didn’t. He remained silent, preferring his art, foregoing the contact he had so looked forward to, for its sake. There were several Westerners in Molivos. Up until now he had performed almost exclusively for Greeks. Trying to communicate with Westerners through movement was a new challenge, stretching his capacities, making him even more remote from me. We stopped making love. I felt hurt and rejected as his silence consumed him, leaving little for me. I needed his attention feeling vulnerable after my separation from Shimon. There were longer and longer periods of silence as I stopped trying to decipher what he was thinking and stopped bothering to tell him what I was feeling. I spent more and more time with Rachel.
When Lloyd, a New Yorker, began to pay me attention, I found it a relief to detach myself from Brian. I began to disappear with Lloyd and brought him, instead of Brian, on our outings to secluded beaches and remote villages. It was a joy to have verbal contact. Brian seemed unconcerned. There were many people intrigued by him, Westerners who appreciated his experiment with silence and Greeks who, thinking he was mute, paid him special attention — they could never comprehend that his silence was deliberate. I spent more and more time with Lloyd encouraged by Rachel who resented Brian’s treatment of me.
Then suddenly a note appeared from Ronit. It read: “First daddy, then Brian, now Lloyd. What do you think I am?” I sprang to attention, shocked. I had been so entrenched in my involvement with Brian and Lloyd that I hadn’t bothered to see how it was affecting Ronit. I was forced into some serious considerations. I had to reassess my motherhood. After all I had a daughter to consider, a daughter whose feelings I had been blissfully oblivious to, concentrating on my problems, first with a husband, then with lovers. How ironic. I was always teaching Ronit to be aware of the needs of others. Thank goodness she was able to articulate her anxieties. She refused to be invisible. I made my own vow, vowing to devote myself to her needs. I was reminded of the cardboard carton incident many years before when I had vowed to be a more careful mother. That vow was in dire need of renewal. I had taken Ronit from the father she loved, from the love of her grandmother, from her friends, from everything familiar, and was bringing her to a strange land with people she didn’t know because it suited me. I suddenly appreciated the trauma I was subjecting her to. I decided to stop seeing Lloyd immediately and that once my relationship with Brian was ended, there would be no men in my life until Ronit was secure in hers. Affairs of the heart would be on hold. She would be my focus. That was her right. From the cardboard carton days I always tried respecting her rights just as I wanted her to learn to respect mine. I felt much better after sorting out my priorities.
That evening, fortified by the zeal of a new resolution, I announced to Brian that I didn’t want him to come to the Yeats Summer School with me. He said nothing, but slowly, very slowly, his eyes widened, the blue turning to black, and his mouth opened forming a great “Oh,” in the terrible sadness of a bewildered Pierrot. He rose to his feet and began to dance, slowly, intensely, his body vivid with regret. Then he took my hand and looked at me, his face a knife-edge of pain. And I realised I had no right to keep him from the thing he so much wanted, to spoil his dream. I was, in a way, using the Summer School as one parent, in the throes of rejection, uses a child, as a weapon against the other. Finally I struck a bargain. We would go to Ireland together but once he was ensconced in the Summer School, we would go our separate ways, have our own rooms, own schedules. His eyes filled with tenderness and he embraced me so completely my resolve was almost done in.
When it was time for Brian and me to leave Lesbos for London and Dublin, I made final arrangements for Ronit. She would remain with Rachel and David for most of August, then a friend would take her to the port, making sure she was safely aboard the ship to Athens. In Athens, Tamila, another friend would meet her, and take her to the airport. She already had a ticket to London. Ruth would meet her in London and I would be at Ruth’s several days later. The arrangements did not intimidate her.
She looked forward to travelling on her own. (Was it in the genes?) But I had some bouts with my conscience, defending the long-standing charge of irresponsible mother. I knew that neither Shimon nor my mother would approve. She was only thirteen. But I won the battle. She was armed with travellers’ cheques, hidden cash, telephone numbers and an incredible resourcefulness, besides she had learned enough Greek to make herself understood. The Greeks were honest, gentle and incredibly helpful. She would be fine. It was her psyche that needed protection and care at this time of her life. If she exhibited emotional dependency, fragility; physically, she was robust, independent, confident. Or was I breaking my vow already, putting my needs before hers? I walked a thin line. It was hard balancing, getting it right. She kissed Brian and me goodbye with a happy smile.
When we got to London I insisted that Brian organise our tickets for Dublin. If he didn’t want to talk that was his decision, I wasn’t going to serve it. He was no longer being indulged by a soporific Lesbos. This was the real world. I was determined to make him accountable. The fiasco at Heathrow strengthened that resolution. Although I had warned against it, he boarded the plane in Athens wearing almost see-through macramed shorts, made for him by a Greek admirer, a thin cotton shirt with an embroidered edge open at the chest and held together by a sash, and a pair of leather thongs — a great outfit for Greece but hardly appropriate for Heathrow. As he danced his way into the customs hall, I made sure to enter a different queue. When the customs officer questioned him he would make no verbal response but could produce no identification indicating he was mute. When the officer asked if he could talk, he nodded his head indicating that he could. Baffled and annoyed, the officer took him away. After a difficult search I discovered he was being held in the detention centre. When I was finally admitted, I found him looking bright and cheerful despite a body search and brusque officials. I explained