"Calypso," a story by Alexis Levitin

 

He called her Calypso because he was bewitched. She was a modern dancer. Every move she made tingled in his nerves, leapt across his synapses. When she shifted weight from one hip to the other, while drawing out a cigarette and placing it between her lips, he felt like melted wax.  He stood and stared. He had no volition. If she gave him a glance and a nod, he followed.

On those late summer weekends they would scour the backroads for honkey-tonks. A string of year-round Christmas lights, a smoke-filled embrace of darkness, cheap beer, easy music, shadowy bodies letting go on a Friday night. As Calypso danced, every particle of her body, of her being, was in consonance, resonating to the music, at home in the beat. Even the Texas Two-Step became a sensual intrigue as it passed through her body. And he would follow, drawn along by her spell. She was so good that strangers in cowboy hats would come up to their table between dances, put a callused hand on Jim’s shoulder and, with conspiratorial warmth, intone: “Say, now, young fella, you’re a professional dancer, ain’tchu?” That’s how good she was. She smiled whenever it happened. She knew who the pro was. And so did he.

In bed, Jim felt like Odysseus returned to Ithaka, home at last. He ignored the obvious contradiction, that Ithaka was his hero’s real home, with patient Penelope, his long-suffering wife, and domesticity about to reclaim him. For Jim, the cradle of Calypso’s hips felt like destiny, and entering her was like arriving where all lines meet, that impossible realm beyond which lay nothing. He understood that had he been Odysseus, he would never have left Calypso’s magic, unreal island. For him it would have replaced the Ithaka of mere daily life. Intellectually, he admired his hero for his sturdy resolve, his final insistence on returning to reality, but knew that he himself would never have renounced the illusory gift of the shimmering immortal. In any case, dismissing the obvious contradictions from his mind, he would sink with utter bliss into an unbearably remote and exquisite arrival, though the bed in which they lay stood firmly in unremarkable Ohio. Such was their life together.

Then his wife returned. She had in fact been planning to leave him for some time and had gone off on an exploratory trip, during which, high in the beauty of the Sierra Nevada, with its remaining patches of late summer snow in the highest north-facing granite clefts, she had found her next love. Now she was back to arrange affairs, set up a new house, install her new man. It was a bit awkward, but not unexpected. They both knew their passion was spent and would not return. It was just one of those embarrassing transitional moments one has to go through. They did their best to behave properly. Jim never mentioned Calypso. She never mentioned her new man.

One evening they attended a piano recital by a local talent. They had seats in the front row, below the pianist, who, with eyes shut tight, was swaying, mesmerized, through the painful enchantment of a Chopin Nocturne. Everyone loved it. Jim had tears in his eyes, the audience applauded at length. Then it was intermission. Suddenly a tiny princess appeared before them. It was Isadora, the dancer’s seven-year-old daughter. She stared at Jim and ignored his wife. Standing with the unperturbed erectness of the very young, she said: “I know who you are. You are the man who left his toothbrush at our apartment.” And having delivered her message, she disappeared into the crowd. Jim’s wife gave him an amused look but accepted his silence. Their house was big enough to accommodate the two of them and the silence that lay heavy between them. A month later she was gone.

And life with Calypso continued, like an impassioned dream. One weekend they made it all the way to the Cumberland Gap, left their car at a grassy parking lot, and hiked up and over a misty mountain range. Hitching back to their car at the end of the day, they got a ride with a charming blonde in a convertible. They spoke of their long autumnal hike and how they were trying to get back to their car at the trail head. They praised the beauty of the mountains, the softness of the haze. They praised the beauty of local Blue Grass and asked her to play some on the radio. She gave them a frightened look and said: “I’m sorry, but we don’t listen to music none. It ain’t right. Except, of course, we sing in church. We praise the Lord. That’s the Lord’s music. That kinda music is OK.” She gave them a timid smile and a gaze, of sunshine and dew, from china-blue eyes. She was beautiful and to Jim she seemed sad, like a yearling alone in a wide, empty field. Touched, they said nothing more about Blue Grass or Country Western. Somehow Jim felt tainted, worldly and almost ashamed. But that evening they found a remote honky-tonk and danced till closing time. There in the bar they didn’t feel guilty. They just felt alive. They just felt joy.

And then, a few months later, Calypso was offered another job, with a dance troupe three states away. She had to go. She had no choice. Jim had to stay, but he looked forward to visits, despite the distance. What's 450 miles to a man in love? And so she packed her car, she and Isadora gave him a kiss good-bye, their hound-dog licked his face, and they were gone.

The weekend they had chosen for his first visit was not auspicious. A snowstorm swept down on the Midwest, but Jim figured he could push his way through. After two hours, he found the Interstate closed down by ice. He called Calypso to explain his delay and went to a local dance club in a near by town to wait it out. It was a gay joint and the supple dancers looked at home. Bereft of Calypso, Jim found himself embarrassed, unsure, perhaps even fraudulent, a feeling he sometimes had had in the past, before meeting her, when he would wander casually into a remote Black juke joint in the back country, where all the homefolk danced better than he did. Calypso could usually pull him out of his sense of inferiority, sweeping him into her aura of animal harmony, body and beat, sound and soul. But this time Calypso was not with him and the few women on the dance floor were clearly there for the superior grace of their gay friends. Jim asked a few to dance, he did his best, but he was kidding no one. He kept calling the highway patrol, and at 3 A.M. the Interstate had been cleared for traffic and he was off.

He reached Calypso’s new place at blue-gray dawn. No one answered the bell. He walked around, found the kitchen door out back, turned the knob, and entered. He walked through the kitchen into a dining room and suddenly she appeared, soundless, gliding like a ghost, accompanied by her hound Argos, whose nails clicked on the cold linoleum floor. She took his arm and said: “I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d make it through. My bed is occupied.”  Argos sniffed at his trouser leg and wagged his tail. Jim’s stomach felt filled with lead. An elfin creature, a delicate faun, drifted silently from the bedroom towards the front door. Calypso guided her new love forward and with a gentle pat on the very bottom of his buttocks, ushered him out the door. But it was over. The love of his life, Calypso, had moved on.

He staggered out to his car and got in. He drove back to the Interstate, its ice now melted, and eight hours later was safely back home. He parked in the carport, stumbled to the back, fumbled with his keys, dropped them, picked them up, entered the house, kicked off his shoes, threw off his winter coat, took a leak, mechanically brushed his teeth, fell into bed. He awoke sixteen hours later to a chill dawn, made some coffee and readied himself to start his new life.

But it wasn’t that simple. He was haunted. He feared he might be going insane. He had no one to talk to and, desperate, he called the number of a stranger in the Big Apple. It was Calypso’s former husband. He felt like an idiot, an idiot in despair.

 “Hello, is this Jake?  My name is Jim. You probably don’t know who I am. Forgive me. I’m a guy out in Ohio and I fell in love with your wife. Your ex-wife, I mean. Forgive me, but I’m going out of my mind. I just can’t stand it. I’m crazy about her and she’s left me. I think I’m losing my mind, you know what I mean?”

After a brief silence, a deep voice came from the other end of the line. “Yes, I know what you mean. The same thing happened to me, didn’t it?”  

Jim thought he even heard a chuckle. He swallowed and then went on, rambling, stumbling, repeating himself, begging forgiveness, talking of love, despair, anguish, entangled in a web of helplessness, making an utter fool of himself, he was sure. Jake just listened. Then finally he interrupted:

“It sounds to me as if you think you can justify your life through love.”

“Of course, I do, what else is there?” There was a pause on the line.

“It can’t be done, my man. Sorry. You can’t justify your life through love.”

Jim said nothing as he tried to take it in. Then he apologized again for the absurdity of the call.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Jake. “Let’s just call it a Mitzvah. Goodbye, good luck. You’ll recover. I did.” And there was a gentle but definite click on the other end of the wire.

And life, indeed, went on.

*                    *                  *

Forty years later, Jim was traveling, buying art in Ecuador. The best stuff was in Cuenca, but he decided to take a little break and visit a nearby mountain town with a tiny zoo and lots of horses. He ended up spending three or four days in Vilcabamba, walking along the river, feeding bedraggled animals at the much-neglected zoo, strolling around the town square, and playing chess with the locals. He also went on a day long ride high into the hills to visit a waterfall. He was old, but he could still ride. At a steep ridge the path narrowed and his horse suddenly shied. He kept his saddle and the guide was impressed. Jim was just relieved and felt lucky. The dip in the waterfall, when they finally got there, felt like a baptism. Jim had to lean on the guide as they descended from the grassy field where they left the horses to make their way down the steep drop to the side of the mountain stream. He was glad they had come. He knew he would never be able to do that simple hike again.

Wandering around the formal town square on the last day of his visit, he noticed a sign he hadn’t seen before. Modern Dance it declared in bold letters. He climbed the rickety stairs to the second floor. There sat a woman in her sixties with a well-sculpted face, a black leotard, her body still perfect. He said hello and discovered she was an American, settled years ago in Vilcabamba. She had been a modern dancer in New York back in her youth. Almost idly, Jim asked if she had known his Calypso, back in the day. He used her real name, of course.  The woman’s face lit up.

“Did I know her? We were friends for over twenty years. Where do you know her from?”

Jim told his story with the efficiency that forty years of perspective afforded him. He mentioned the new lover Calypso had found out there deep in the Midwest, the man who had displaced him in her heart, her bed.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “that must have been Carlo. She brought him along when she came back to New York. They lived together for years. They were a happy couple. It finally fell apart, as things do, but it was good while it lasted. They were together for something like eleven years. How funny that you should have known them.”

They chatted some more, then Jim took his leave. The stairs creaked as he made his way down. So, too, did his knees. He passed slowly through the small garden in the center of the square. He bought a chocolate ice cream cone and licked it round, as he strolled back to his room. How strange to meet a friend of Calypso’s here in the remote mountains of southern Ecuador. But how much stranger to discover that he was feeling an unexpected tranquility, a kind of mellow warmth, a kind of happiness, in fact. The news, so unexpected, about Calypso came as a thunderbolt, but a gentle one, if such a thing could be imagined. He was astonished, surprised, and yes, even happy, to hear that the faun-like creature who had displaced him had not just been a one-night stand, that in fact Calypso had fallen in love with the man who slipped into her bed while he, Jim, had been waiting out an ice storm. Indeed, St. Teresa was on to something when she said: “God writes straight with crooked lines.”

As he entered the gate to his hotel, he breathed in the early evening air and felt a quiet contentment. Though his joints ached, there was no ball of lead in his stomach. He knew that he was irretrievably imbedded in old age, in a realm beyond the searing ecstasy and pain of passion, but it was not a bad place to be. The companionship of ambiguous memories was neither hollow nor empty. Filled with a defuse sense of well-being, Jim looked back at the darkening mountains behind him and felt a soft flood of gratitude for the lingering twilight around and within.