table – disclosed a face so extraordinarily anxious that anyone looking at it could only feel anxious too on her behalf. As Paniotis had predicted, Angeliki was chagrinned by his choice of restaurant; she had only come in here in the first place, she said, to ask for directions to the venue Paniotis had chosen, not realising that this was it, and the waiter had had to take her outside and show her the sign to convince her; and even then she felt sure that a more suitable place must be trading under the same name nearby. But I chose it specially for you, Paniotis said, his eyes bulging. The chef is from your home town, Angeliki; all your favourite Baltic dishes are on the menu. Please excuse him, Angeliki said, placing a manicured hand on my arm. She then remonstrated rapidly with Paniotis in Greek, a tirade that ended with him excusing himself from the table and disappearing off towards the toilets.
I’m so sorry I couldn’t be here earlier, Angeliki continued breathlessly. I had to attend a reception, and then return home to put my son to bed – I haven’t seen all that much of him lately, as I’ve been on tour with my book. It was a tour of Poland, she added before I could ask, mainly in Warsaw but I visited other cities too. She asked whether I had ever been to Poland and when I said that I had not, she nodded her head a little sadly. The publishers there can’t afford to invite many writers to come, she said, and it is a pity, because they need writers there in a way that people here do not. In the past year, she said, I have visited many places for the first time, or for the first time in my own right, but Poland was the tour that affected me the most, because it made me see my books not just as entertainments for the middle classes but as something vital, a lifeline in many cases, for people – largely women, it has to be admitted – who feel very much alone in their daily lives.
Angeliki picked up the carafe and melancholically poured herself a teaspoon of wine, before filling my glass almost to the brim.
‘My husband is a diplomat,’ she said, ‘so we have travelled a lot, evidently, for his work. But it feels completely different to be travelling for my work, and to be travelling independently. I admit that I have sometimes felt afraid, even in places I’m quite familiar with. And in Poland I was very nervous, because there was very little there – including the language – that I recognised. But some of it, at first, was down to the plain fact that I was unused to being by myself. For instance,’ she continued, ‘we lived in Berlin for six years, but even going there alone, as a writer, it seemed somehow alien. Partly it was because I was seeing a new aspect of the city – the literary culture, which I was absolutely outside of before – and partly because being there without my husband caused me to feel, in an entirely new way, what I actually am.’
I replied that I wasn’t sure it was possible, in marriage, to know what you actually were, or indeed to separate what you were from what you had become through the other person. I thought the whole idea of a ‘real’ self might be illusory: you might feel, in other words, as though there were some separate, autonomous self within you, but perhaps that self didn’t actually exist. My mother once admitted, I said, that she used to be desperate for us to leave the house for school, but that once we’d gone she had no idea what to do with herself and wished that we would come back. And she still, even now that her children were adults, would conclude our visits quite forcefully and usher us all off to our own homes, as though something terrible would have happened if we had stayed. Yet I was quite sure that she experienced that same sense of loss after we’d gone, and wondered what she was looking for and why she had driven us away in order to look for it. Angeliki began to rummage in her elegant silver bag and presently pulled out a notepad
I’m so sorry I couldn’t be here earlier, Angeliki continued breathlessly. I had to attend a reception, and then return home to put my son to bed – I haven’t seen all that much of him lately, as I’ve been on tour with my book. It was a tour of Poland, she added before I could ask, mainly in Warsaw but I visited other cities too. She asked whether I had ever been to Poland and when I said that I had not, she nodded her head a little sadly. The publishers there can’t afford to invite many writers to come, she said, and it is a pity, because they need writers there in a way that people here do not. In the past year, she said, I have visited many places for the first time, or for the first time in my own right, but Poland was the tour that affected me the most, because it made me see my books not just as entertainments for the middle classes but as something vital, a lifeline in many cases, for people – largely women, it has to be admitted – who feel very much alone in their daily lives.
Angeliki picked up the carafe and melancholically poured herself a teaspoon of wine, before filling my glass almost to the brim.
‘My husband is a diplomat,’ she said, ‘so we have travelled a lot, evidently, for his work. But it feels completely different to be travelling for my work, and to be travelling independently. I admit that I have sometimes felt afraid, even in places I’m quite familiar with. And in Poland I was very nervous, because there was very little there – including the language – that I recognised. But some of it, at first, was down to the plain fact that I was unused to being by myself. For instance,’ she continued, ‘we lived in Berlin for six years, but even going there alone, as a writer, it seemed somehow alien. Partly it was because I was seeing a new aspect of the city – the literary culture, which I was absolutely outside of before – and partly because being there without my husband caused me to feel, in an entirely new way, what I actually am.’
I replied that I wasn’t sure it was possible, in marriage, to know what you actually were, or indeed to separate what you were from what you had become through the other person. I thought the whole idea of a ‘real’ self might be illusory: you might feel, in other words, as though there were some separate, autonomous self within you, but perhaps that self didn’t actually exist. My mother once admitted, I said, that she used to be desperate for us to leave the house for school, but that once we’d gone she had no idea what to do with herself and wished that we would come back. And she still, even now that her children were adults, would conclude our visits quite forcefully and usher us all off to our own homes, as though something terrible would have happened if we had stayed. Yet I was quite sure that she experienced that same sense of loss after we’d gone, and wondered what she was looking for and why she had driven us away in order to look for it. Angeliki began to rummage in her elegant silver bag and presently pulled out a notepad
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