Courtship of the Blue Widow: An Atlantic Story

SOMETHING happened to me the first time I saw the Widow Angela in the grocery of old Mantaris. More than just the restless stirring of flesh a man feels in the presence of a lovely woman. I was bothered as I am often bothered when I see a woman I like I cannot at once touch. After she walked out with the bread and cheese she had bought, I asked old Mantaris about her.

He rubbed his big knuckled fingers across the leathery skin of his cheeks. He shook his head sadly. He drew a long breath and sighed.

“She is a woman, that one,” he said. “She was born and reared in the mountains of the old country. A grown woman at fourteen. She came to this country and married a giant of a man who worked in produce. Then her man died.”

“How long has her man been dead?” I asked.

He shook his head slowly, trying to remember.

“Two years,” he said. “Maybe a little longer. He was a Spartan. A big man with the arms of a wrestler. She has been in mourning ever since.”

Two years and maybe longer. Too long for a woman built as the Widow Angela was built to set a seal upon her heart.

Then I understood what had bothered me about her. She was tall and dark with dark hair pinned back into a prim bun. Her face was pale and clean of powder or rouge. Her lips were full but untouched by lipstick. The black dress she wore was a plain dark folding of cloth high across her breasts and full across her thighs. She was without any of the artifices women use to point up their womanliness. In some strange way this made her more beautiful than any woman I had ever seen.

“She sleeps in a widow’s bed,” Mantaris said, and his voice shook with woe. “Her good husband sleeps in the cold earth.” He paused and licked his thin dried lips. “I saw her once at a picnic with him some years ago. She danced in a line of women, taller than any other. That day she was not pale-cheeked as she is now but hot with life. Not one of your withered city women but a mountain woman wild with the flow of heroic blood.”

“You are a patriarch now,” I said. “A recorder of history and a recounter of legends. Stop bagging your bread and slicing your cheese long enough to advise me where she lives.”

Suddenly one of his big long fingers pointed straight at my head like a gun. His leathery cheeks quivered and his eyes burned. “I know who you are,” he said. “You are a Turk bent upon pillage and rape!” He clenched his fist and beat his chest. “You do not see the tragic nobleness of her grief. To see her now and remember her as she was hurts me here.” He touched the region of his heart. His voice sharpened with contempt. “You are touched much further down.”

“My friend,” I said gently. “Yon do me an injustice. I too believe in the nobility of grief. Remember, I too am a Greek.”

He shrugged and rippled noise through his lips. “It is true you are Greek,” he said. “But there are Greeks and Greeks. Some are the descendants of lions, and others . . .”

I put my finger expectantly to my nose.

“Others come from goats,” he said.

“She is a lovely woman,” I said.

The hard lines of his face softened. “Yes . . .”he said. “Yes.”

“A face like Helen to launch a thousand ships,” I said.

He shook his head approvingly. “Yes,” he said.

“She has breasts like great cabbages,” I said.

He almost leaped to the ceiling. When he came down with his face flaming he slammed his open palm upon the counter. “Your head is a cabbage!” he yelled. “You have no respect!”

“You are right,” I said. “My old dried-up friend, you are right.”

He looked at me scornfully.

“What can you know,” he said. “What can a young goat know of dignity and beauty?”

“A woman is going to waste while you call me names,” I said. “I leave you to your cabbages,”

“Then leave your head!” he shouted. “I’ll weigh it with the rest.”

I waved back from the door.

THE NEXT day was Sunday. All the night before I had tossed restlessly with dreams. I dreamed of the pale-faced Widow Angela whose body looked long asleep. There were fine cabbages in my dreams and an old toothless lion who guarded the gate to the patch.

In the early morning I shaved carefully and dressed and left my rooms. I crossed the square past the closed stores. I went to the church beside the Legion hall. I waited outside. From within I could hear the full deep tones of the organ and the chanting of the priest.

I waited there until the services ended. Until the doors were opened and the first men and women came out. When I saw Mantaris I called to him. He looked about and blinked in the sunlight and then saw me and came closer.

“Watch for her,” I said. “Watch for the Widow.”

He looked at me in shock and surprise. “You are a crazy man!” he said. “Is your head on straight or do I call for help?”

“If you don’t introduce me,” I said, “I will accost her myself, here in front of the church.”

“You would not dare!” he said, and then breathing hard he shook his head slowly. “You would. You arc part Turk.”

Then I saw her and my fingers tightened again around his arm. She came out into the sunlight and the black dress she wore saddened my heart. She wore a small dark hat over her dark hair and her cheeks were still pale and she walked stiffly without notice of those who walked around her.

The old man trembled at my side.

“God help me,” he said, and he crossed himself quickly and I gave him a little push and we started through the crowd. A short way down the stone steps we caught up to her and he called out her name and she stopped anti turned. He looked around once more desperately as if thinking of escape and then spoke quickly. “Good morning, Mrs. Angela,” he said. I stood close behind him, a somber look upon my cheeks. “It is a bright morning,” he said.

“Good morning, Mr. Mantaris,” she said. “Yes, it is a bright morning.”

I punched the old man in the back and he jumped. “Mrs. Angela,” he said, and he seemed to be having trouble getting the rest out. “May I present Mr. Larakis.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Angela,” I said, and I was very careful not to smile. One does not laugh before the watch fires of grief.

She looked from the old man to me and her face darkened slightly. The old man shifted in some sort of agony from one foot to the other. Then she nodded an acknowledgment slowly and turned to walk on.

I punched the old man in the ribs again to follow her. He turned on me snarling like he was going to take a chance and clout me. He would not budge. He stood like one of the pillars of the Parthenon. I left him spitting at me under his breath.

I had to run several steps to catch up to her. “Excuse me, Mrs. Angela,” I said. “May I walk with you to the next corner? We are going the same way.”

She turned again, and looked at me darkly. I think what saved me was the cool and impersonal expression on my face. A shadow of a smile would have whipped me right there. She nodded without speaking and I fell into step beside her.

We walked silently for a little way and the cars passed in the street and the spring sun shone brightly in the sky.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Angela,” I said. “I knew your husband, I was grieved when I heard of his death. I have been out of the city a long time.”

She looked at me with those deep dark eyes and there was nothing I could understand on her face. Then her cheeks loosened just a little. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “It was a terrible loss.”

I spoke softly and sympathetically. “A fine man,” I said. “Did he ever wrestle? I do not remember ever seeing a man with strongerlooking arms.”

She shook her head slowly. I was sorry for the remembered pain returned to her checks. I am not a sadist. But this initial surgery was necessary. “He was not a wrestler,” she said. “But he was very strong.”

“I believe he once mentioned to me he came from Sparta?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Kostas was a Spartan.”

“Of course,” I said. “Where else? Sparta stands for strength and courage.”

We had reached the corner and she stopped and looked at me again. “He would have been pleased to have heard you say that,”she said. “Thank you, Mr. . . .”

“Larakis,” I said. “Mike Larakis.”

“Thank you, Mr. Larakis,” she said. “Now I turn here.”

I took a deep breath. I had to proceed carefully. Whoso diggeth a pit might fall therein. “Mrs. Angela,” I said. “Please do not think I am disrespectful. It is only I have not been back in the city very long. My old friends are moved and gone. Can you understand what it is to be lonely?”

That one was a beauty. I could see the shaft of the arrow sticking out of her wonderful chest.

“I know what loneliness is,” she said. She spoke those words with real feeling.

I pushed my advantage. “Would it be too forward of me to think you might permit me to have dinner with you?” I asked. “Some quiet restaurant where we might sit and talk?”

She looked at me closely and I felt unrest under the intensity of her gaze. Those big dark eyes were more than ornaments on the Widow Angela. Her soul poured through them. “I do not go out socially,” she said. “Not since my Kostas died.”

“Forgive me,” I said. “I was too forward. I have offended you. I am sorry.”

I apologize very well. Frankly, it is not an easily acquired skill.

She shook her head. “Please,” she said. “I was not offended. Just that it has been so long.”

“A little food,” I said. “A little quiet talk with a friend. Surely to allow yourself that is not to show disloyalty to a sacred memory.”

I could see her making up her mind. Her skin without make-up gleamed cleanly. I felt a smarting in my fingers. Sweet is a grief well ended.

“All right,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said humbly. “You are kind to a lonely man.” I paused and looked thoughtfully into space. This needed a clincher so she would not change her mind. “I regret I cannot make it tonight,” I said. “There is a meeting of one of the church organizations I have just joined.” I paused again. “I would rather sit and talk with you,” I said.

“You must attend your meeting,” she said firmly. “We will make it another night.”

“Tomorrow night,” I said. “If you are free.”

“Tomorrow night,” she said.

“I will call for you,” I said. “Do you live close by?”

“The brownstone house,” she said. “That one across the street. I have the first-floor apartment.”

“At six?” I said.

“At six,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said.

She turned and walked away and I watched with intense interest the fine great sway of her marvelous thighs and savored my small pleasure like a general who had won the first skirmish but needed yet to win the war.

ON THE following afternoon I stopped for a moment in the grocery. Mantaris was bagging warm bread from the oven in back of the store. As I walked in he raised his head and sniffed as if an animal had entered.

“Good evening, old man,” I said.

He stood glaring at me.

“I merely stopped by to let you know,” I said. “Tonight I dine with the Widow Angela.”

“You lie!” he said.

“This is a serious matter,” I said. “I never lie where love is involved.”

“Love!” The old man looked as if he might strangle on the word. “You would not know love if it had teeth and bit you in the ass.”

“I will let that pass,” I said. “Tonight I dine with a Queen and feel kindly toward the peasants.”

“Get out, boofo!” he cried. “Go and drop dead!”

I left the store smiling and went home to dress.

At six that evening I rang the bell of the Widow Angela. She opened the door and she was ready and we said good evening to one another and commented on the fine spring weather. She went to put on her hat and came back and we walked down the stairs. I led her toward the car. She shook her head.

“Such a lovely evening,” she said. “Let us walk. There is a little restaurant a few blocks from here that I often pass and have never entered. May we go there tonight?”

“Certainly,” I said.

The restaurant she had spoken of was a small one off Dart Street. A little bell rang over the door as we entered and we walked down a few stairs into a small room with a row of booths and candles on the tables. I could not have picked a better atmosphere myself.

A small dark man with a heavy mustache greeted us and ushered us to a booth. We sat down. I ordered a glass of wine. She hesitated, and finally nodded. We ordered another glass. I sat back and looked at her. Her face in the candled light of the booth was a page from an Old Testament psalm. David to Bathsheba. And Solomon’s song.

“You are very kind,” I said, “to take pity on a lonely man.”

She shook her lovely head. “You must not say that,” she said. “I have been lonely too. It was generous of you to ask.”

I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I caused the Widow’s heart to sing with joy.

“You are shy,” she said. “I understood that yesterday when we walked from church. You must try to make friends.”

I was trying to make friends. Angela, Angela, you have no idea how hard I was trying to make friends.

“I cannot help myself,” I said. “As a child I was shy. I have never fully gotten over it.”

The waiter brought the bottle of wine. He poured from it into our glasses. The wine gleamed dark red. “In wine there is truth,” I said.

She raised the glass to her lips. When she lowered it the stain of wine glittered wetly on her mouth. “What is the truth?” she said.

“That you are lonely,” I said. “That you mourn golden days that can never be again.”

A sob seemed to catch in her throat. “Never again?” she said.

“Not in the same way,” I hastened to add. “The past has its place. Memories remain sacred, but one must somehow live.”

I filled her glass again with wine. For a girl out of circulation for over two years she knocked off that wine like a champion.

“There are nights I cannot sleep,” she said. “Nights when I lie awake and hear strange noises in the dark.”

“Loneliness,” I said. “There is nothing more terrible than loneliness.” As an alternative, Larakis offers himself as chosen comforter. Lucky Angela.

We ordered a little food. I poured another glass of wine. In a little while bright patches of red adorned her cheeks and her teeth gleamed even and white when she smiled.

“It seems so long ago,” she said, “since I have sat like this and tasted wine and talked a little.”

“You are still young,” I said. “You have your life ahead of you.”

“And you?” she said. “You are young and have known loneliness. Is your life still ahead of you?”

“For both of us,” I said.

She paused and took another sip of wine and held her head a little to the side watching me intently. “I am glad,” she said.

There was a bright spring moon high over the city as we walked home together past the houses and the stores and I did not even try to hold her hand.

After she had opened the door to her apartment she stood in the doorway weaving just a little. The scent of midnight tables was about her body. Aroma of walnuts, wine, and fruit. “Will you come in for coffee?” she said. Her face was hidden in the shadows and I could not see her eyes.

I was tempted. But as an expert in such matters I knew it was too soon. Timing in these things is the principal thing. Therefore if thou would emulate the master, get timing. And with all thy getting, get understanding.

“It is too late for you,” I said. “You have been kind and I will not impose further upon your kindness.”

“You are a good and gentle man,” she said.

She was right. Only fools make a mock at sin.

“Tomorrow night?” I said.

“Tomorrow night,” she said. She closed the door.

A WEEK passed. A week in which I saw the Widow Angela every night. Twice we ate in the little restaurant with the candles. Once we drove to an inn outside the city and ate beside a treeshaded lake. Once we went to a movie and it was a sad love story and she cried. Several times after taking her home I stopped in for a little midnight coffee. She showed me an album of family photographs. She had been a remarkably well-developed child. In later photographs I could not help being a little glad that I was not conducting this raid for plunder while her husband was alive. He looked a real brute of a man. I had no doubts, however, of my ability to equal or surpass his capacities in the main event.

All that week I never once tried to touch the Widow Angela. Several times in the past few nights I had the feeling she would not have objected too strongly if I had kissed her good night. I refuse to match for pennies when a chance for a gold piece is involved.

Late Saturday afternoon it began to rain. I stopped in the grocery with two bottles of dark wine that were wrapped as gifts. Mantaris stared at the bottles.

“Won’t be long now,” I said.

He glared at me and pulled fiercely at his nose. “Why don’t you leave her alone?” he said. “Why not a woman of the street or some other wench? Why the Widow Angela?”

“She is the Rose of Sharon,” I said, “and the Lily of the Valley.”

“You are a goat,” he said. “You hold nothing sacred.”

“You are a poor loser,” I said.

“In the end you will give up,” he said. “You will get nowhere with her.”

“I will not give up,” I said. “I am getting somewhere very fast.”

“Get out!” he said. “You are a Turk! I spit back to your father’s father!”

I looked around. “You have no fresh cabbages today?” I said.

He got red in the face and started to splutter.

“It does not matter,” I said. “Tonight I think I pluck my own. Tonight, old man.”

I heaped the coals of fire upon his head. He stood there and did not say another word.

On my way to the Widow it began to rain again. I ran from the car to the stairs making sure not to drop the wine. She stood smiling, waiting in the doorway. “Let me take your wet things,” she said.

I gave her my raincoat and my hat. I carried the wine in myself. “A bad night,” I said.

“It is very bad,” she said.

“A good night to sit inside,” I said. “The rain has chilled me.”

She stood for a moment without answering and the light of the lamp shone across her face. Her lips were red with a touch of lipstick and there were marks of rouge upon her checks.

“I don’t mind,” she said.

She brought a corkscrew and little decorative glasses for the wine. I opened one of the bottles. We sat together on the couch. We heard the whipping sound of wind and rain against the window.

“It has been a nice week,” she said.

“I have enjoyed it very much,” I said.

I refilled our glasses of wine. We sat without speaking for a little while with only our hands moving our glasses to our lips. The room seemed guarded like a valley between great mountains.

There was a record player in the corner. I got off the couch and walked to it and snapped the switch. The turntable revolved and the needle lowered upon a record. An old country mountain dance. Angela sat watching me from the couch.

“Come and dance,” I said. “I have seen you dance before.”

“Where?” she asked.

“At a picnic,” I said. “You were taller than any woman in the line. You were beautiful and full of fire.”

She stood up. The music rang the quick shrill melody. She came slowly to the machine. “I do not dance any more,” she said.

“Why not?” I said.

“It is not right,” she said.

I reached out and very gently touched the hair of the Widow Angela. I might have waited until she had more wine but I was not made of stone. Besides, there was something about that moment, something in the way she stood. I knew this was it.

She turned her head slightly and my hand fell away. For a moment I saw her face with the sad dark eyes and the full lips like moist fruit before a hungry man. “You must not touch me,” she said.

I touched the nape of her neck, feeling the slight teasing softness of her hair across my fingers. “I want to touch you,” I said, and I really meant that line. “Angela, Angela, all my body wants to touch you.”

I saw the first press of uncertain breathing stir her breasts. She knew I had seen and the moment tightened under her disorder. “It is not right,” she said. Her hand moved uneasily to her cheek. “It is not right that he should lie in the cold ground and that I should be warm and flushed.”

“You are not dead,” I said. “Angela, you are not dead. You are a living breathing woman. When you are dead you will be cold forever. Till then you must live.”

She turned from me as I spoke. She stood with her back to me, her face to the wall, and her hair glistened darkly.

I snapped off the phonograph. The dance died sharply and a quick silence took its place. There was wild anticipation in my belly. I knew I had her then. I knew by the way she stood and would not look at me. Weeping may endure for a day, but Larakis cometh in the evening.

I reached for her and when she felt my hands she wantonly turned to meet me. I heard her breathing as if breathing were a punishment. Her eyes were closed and hollowed above her rouged cheeks and as I pulled her to me she opened them and they were frenzied and uncaring.

I kissed her full lips. My mouth hard upon her caught breath and the brazen scent of wine between us. The kiss broke and we shakenly drew breath and she stepped away for only a moment and then came back into my arms fiercely. I felt her fingers upon my face and on my throat and across my eyes. I quit goofing around. I started to pull her to the couch.

The buzzer rang a sharp shrill sound.

I felt her stiffen and I tried to catch my breath.

“We won’t answer,” I whispered. I caught her again. I reached for the great flowing hills of her breasts and felt them like fire beneath my hands.

Somebody pounded on the door.

We looked at each other. Her face, pale and shaken, reflecting my own.

“We must answer,” she said huskily. She stepped away pulling weakly at her dress.

If I had a gun in my hand at that moment I would have emptied it through the door without caring who it was. Instead I stumbled to it, cursing under my breath.

I flung it open and caught old Mantaris with his hand raised to pound again.

He looked startled and his mouth dropped open. The fierceness of my face must have scared blood out of him.

“What the hell do you want!” I roared.

He raised his hands in trembling defense. He stepped back and then looked around me quickly to where the Widow Angela stood. He spoke pleadingly to her watching me from the corner of his eye.

“Good evening, Mrs. Angela,” he said and he reached down beside the door and brought up a large bag of groceries. “I am delivering your groceries.”

I looked at him speechlessly. The Widow came closer to the door.

“Mr. Mantaris,” she said, and her voice was still shaken. “I did not order any groceries.”

The old man tried to look surprised and in his excitement and fear bounced up and down in the doorway.

“I was sure this was your order,” he said. “Mrs. Angela, maybe you forgot about this order.”

“Are you nuts?” I said, and a strange unrest bit at my belly. “She said she didn’t order any groceries. Now get the hell away from here.”

“Mike,” the Widow Angela said reprovingly. She had regained her composure.

“I am very sorry, Mr. Mantaris,” she said quietly. “There has been a mistake. I did not order any groceries.”

The old man stopped bouncing and the sweat crouched in little beads across his brown checks and forehead. “I am sorry. I am getting old,” he said. “I became mixed up. Forgive me.”

For the first time I looked at the bag of groceries. I almost choked. Right on the top as bold as you goddam please was a cabbage! That did it! I gave him a shove and slammed the door in his face.

I turned back to the Widow. I was confused but not discouraged. I had come so close I refused to believe I could not make up the lost ground. I went for her again.

She greeted me with her elbows and a tight dark face.

“Angela,” I said. “My darling, don’t turn me away.”

She shook her head. She stood like a stranger in the room. “It was wrong,” she said. “If that old man had not accidentally come at the moment he did, it would have been wrong.”

I watched her moist lips move as she talked and remembered them soft under my own.

“You can’t go to bed alone forever,” I said harshly.

She shook her head and her eyes were deep and clear. “Not forever,” she said. “When I find a man to love and marry who will love me, we will go to bed.”

I heard her with the hearing of my ear and saw her with the seeing of my eye. There was a roaring beginning in my head and a sense of outrage in my loins. “You are crazy,” I said.

“I was for a little while,” she said. “I am all right now.”

“I won’t give you up,” I said.

“I will not see you,” she said.

“I will make you see me,” I said.

“We can be friends,” she said.

“Friends!” That word nearly strangled me.

Her face was set into hard firm lines. She wore her virtue like a coat of armor.

I had enough. A man’s heart deviseth his way but the Lord directeth his steps. While I was missing from the couch, the fire burned out.

“Good-by,” she said.

I stood there a moment. Nimrod, the mighty hunter, returning with an empty pouch.

“My hat and coat,” I said haughtily.

She turned to get them and I took one last mournful look at her strong fine thighs and the slender turn of her trim ankles. She brought me back my things. She walked to the door and opened it. I walked past her and turned in the doorway standing in the same place that sneaky old bastard had stood a few moments before.

“Angela,” I said. “You are doing us both wrong.”

She turned and walked out of the room and left me in the doorway with the door still open. If she had at least closed the door or pushed me out, but she left me standing there with the door still open.

With what dignity I could muster I reached in and closed the door in my own face. I turned and walked down the stairs.

In the car I debated between throwing a rock through the window of the Mantaris grocery or going to Grotty’s bar. I decided on the bar. If I hurried I knew a cigarette girl there that I might talk into taking the night off. She had a squeaky giggle and an unfortunate tendency to cold feet, but any port in a storm.

An ass is beautiful to an ass and a pig to a pig.

To hell with the Widow Angela.