Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides Page B

chain for an appropriate amount of time, then crossed to port and returned aft. Desdemona, as arranged, was standing alone at the rail. As Lefty passed, he smiled and nodded. She nodded coldly and looked back out to sea.
   On the third day, Lefty took another after-dinner stroll. He walked forward, crossed to port, and headed aft. He smiled at Desdemona and nodded again. This time, Desdemona smiled back. Rejoining his fellow smokers, Lefty inquired if any of them might happen to know the name of that young woman traveling alone.
   On the fourth day out, Lefty stopped and introduced himself.
   “So far the weather’s been good.”
   “I hope it stays that way.”
   “You’re traveling alone?”
   “Yes.”
   “I am, too. Where are you going to in America?”
   “Detroit.”
   “What a coincidence! I’m going to Detroit, too.”
   They stood chatting for another few minutes. Then Desdemona excused herself and went down below.
   Rumors of the budding romance spread quickly through the ship. To pass the time, everybody was soon discussing how the tall young Greek with the elegant bearing had become enamored of the dark beauty who was never seen anywhere without her carved olivewood box. “They’re both traveling alone,” people said. “And they both have relatives in Detroit.”
   “I don’t think they’re right for each other.”
   “Why not?”
   “He’s a higher class than she is. It’ll never work.”
   “He seems to like her, though.”
   “He’s on a boat in the middle of the ocean! What else does he have to do?”
   On the fifth day, Lefty and Desdemona took a stroll on deck together. On the sixth day, he presented his arm and she took it.
   “I introduced them!” one man boasted. City girls sniffed. “She wears her hair in braids. She looks like a peasant.”
   My grandfather, on the whole, came in for better treatment. He was said to have been a silk merchant from Smyrna who’d lost his fortune in the fire; a son of King Constantine I by a French mistress; a spy for the Kaiser during the Great War. Lefty never discouraged any speculation. He seized the opportunity of transatlantic travel to reinvent himself. He wrapped a ratty blanket over his shoulders like an opera cape. Aware that whatever happened now would become the truth, that whatever he seemed to be would become what he was—already an American, in other words—he waited for Desdemona to come up on deck. When she did, he adjusted his wrap, nodded to his shipmates, and sauntered across the deck to pay his respects.
   “He’s smitten!”
   “I don’t think so. Type like that, he’s just out for a little fun. That girl better watch it or she’ll have more than that box to carry around.”
   My grandparents enjoyed their simulated courtship. When people were within earshot, they engaged in first– or second-date conversations, making up past histories for themselves. “So,” Lefty would ask, “do you have any siblings?”
   “I had a brother,” Desdemona replied wistfully. “He ran off with a Turkish girl. My father disowned him.”
   “That’s very strict. I think love breaks all taboos. Don’t you?”
   Alone, they told each other, “I think it’s working. No one suspects.”
   Each time Lefty encountered Desdemona on deck, he pretended he’d only recently met her. He walked up, made small talk, commented on the beauty of the sunset, and then, gallantly, segued into the beauty of her face. Desdemona played her part, too. She was standoffish at first. She withdrew her arm whenever he made an offcolor joke. She told him that her mother had warned her about men like him. They passed the voyage playing out this imaginary flirtation and, little by little, they began to believe it. They fabricated memories, improvised fate. (Why did they do it? Why did they go to all that trouble? Couldn’t