A Separation(11)

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As soon as I hung up the phone, it rang again. It was Yvan. I had called him from the airport in Athens but it had been a rushed conversation—I was looking for the driver, the arrivals terminal was chaotic, the tannoy making a constant stream of announcements in both English and Greek—and we had not spoken since. The time difference between England and Greece was minimal but the journey was long, causing a palpable lag in our communication, some kind of delay between us.

He asked how the journey had been, how I had found Christopher—he hesitated before he asked after Christopher, and I said at once that he was not here. That in fact he was nowhere to be found. Yvan was silent, and then said, What do you mean he’s not there, was Isabella wrong? It’s not like Isabella to be wrong. I said, No, she wasn’t wrong. He was here, but he’s not here at the moment, I’m waiting for him to return. Then Yvan was silent for a moment longer, before asking, How long will you wait?

I said, It makes sense to wait, doesn’t it? And after yet another pause, Yvan said, Yes, it makes sense. But I don’t like the idea of you there alone, I’m not going to lie, it makes me nervous. This was unusually blunt for Yvan, he was not the kind of man who liked to make demands. Even as he spoke his voice was mild, there was not a hint of reproach. There’s nothing to be nervous about but I understand, I said, it’s an awkward situation. Then Yvan said, Why don’t I come out and join you?

When I ran into Yvan three months ago—in the street, literally in the middle of a crossing—he suggested that we go into the coffee shop on the corner rather than stand in the cold. Even now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can’t say for certain that he made the invitation with anything in mind apart from the wind and light rain. Neither of us was dressed for the weather, the temperature had dropped out of nowhere, he said, in exactly the same tone he used to ask if he shouldn’t join me in Gerolimenas.

At any rate, I accepted the invitation. I had always liked Yvan, he was handsome but in a manner that was unassuming, there was nothing demanding about his good looks. In this sense he was different from Christopher, who was aware of his appearance and knew too well how to exploit its effect—toward the end of our marriage, only at the very tail end, it became clear to me that he knew the angles from which he appeared most distinguished, and that over time he had perfected a series of appealing looks, glances, expressions and gestures, a trait that was absurd and essentially unlovable.

Yvan was better-looking than Christopher, but almost certainly did not give that impression, you had to look quite hard to discern the handsome man behind the shambling exterior. I had never thought of him as handsome. And yet as we sat across the table from each other and he inquired, in his very kind manner, as to the facts of my life and how I was doing, it was evident that it was because I found him attractive that I told him, rather abruptly and in confidence, that Christopher and I had separated. He was the first person I told.

This was before Christopher had extracted from me the promise not to tell anyone about the separation. If Yvan was surprised, he didn’t show it, he only said that he was very sorry, that we had always seemed happy together, we had been one of the couples he had enjoyed spending time with. Then he laughed in a self-conscious way, he didn’t mean to speak about himself, regarding a matter that had nothing to do with him—but then, of course, it ended up having everything to do with him, his words presaged the arrangement that would follow, for which he did and would continue to feel guilty, perhaps he had a sense of it even then.

Yvan was a journalist and a friend of Christopher’s first, they had known each other very slightly at university. Christopher—Yvan later told me, Christopher and I had never spoken of Yvan as anything other than a present-day acquaintance, although I was aware that they had been at Cambridge together, I suspected that Christopher had only the vaguest memory of Yvan from those days, he was a born amnesiac—had been charismatic, a prominent figure on campus, one of those students of whom the entire student body is aware.

This was entirely in keeping with what I knew about Christopher, what was then more revealing was the manner in which Yvan described Christopher, as though he were recounting the experience of seeing an actor on a stage, observed not from the audience but from the wings. Yvan was in some ways still the same man, essentially shy, preferring to be on the margins rather than in the center of things. And yet he had been drawn into Christopher’s orbit, Yvan told me that for a time, Christopher had made a concerted effort to befriend him.

He hesitated a little before he told the story, perhaps he thought that it might not be in the best taste, it was early in what was to become our relationship and it was a strange intimacy to assert, a reminder of the fact that the two men had known each other before either had known me, that Yvan would always know this youthful version of Christopher better than I could. Experience accumulated in haphazard places, the wrong bits of knowledge residing with the wrong parties. But I insisted, I was amused and a little intrigued, I hardly needed to be protected from Christopher, whether in his old or current incarnations.

Although by Yvan’s own account he was not a popular student on campus—he did not come from good family, or display unusual wealth, nor was he exceptional in any obvious way, he did not possess charm or style or wit in externalized form—Christopher had pursued his friendship with the intensity that is particular to collegiate relationships, often between men, but also women. Perhaps he did so because he sensed that Yvan naturally possessed the one quality that Christopher respected, but lacked the discipline to truly seek out and embrace: that is, a genuine indifference to his charm.