DELPHI by Lucy Ives

DELPHI

LUCY IVES

Te air in Athens is soft. Animals twitter below Eleni’s mother’s apartment. Eleni has rented a car. She knows the agency in question, rents cars from time to time. Her call to confrm is protracted, laced with gossip. Dana and Meredith sit in the living room amid Dana’s bedding. Tough there are two beds in the second bedroom, the guest room, during the night Dana migrated to the couch.

Tey are going to Delphi, because it is autumn and the hillside will be deserted and the site will be visitable, calm.

Delphi is a series of terraces. Cut into an exceedingly steep hillside it is proximate to a number of ski resorts. Soon they are there.

On the lowest terrace, just of the highway, is a guardhouse. Above it stand the remains of an agora, and above the agora, temples. Dana has had no cofee. At one point on the way up, she has a conversation with Eleni and Meredith about television. Tere is a comparison she strives to draw. Te idea is that there could be moving images while spectators are still. She cannot quite articulate, it has something to do with the idea of living vicariously, not because this is necessary (to live vicariously), but because it is an idea that culture has for our behavior. Eleni and Meredith climb away. Tere is also an international tour on the hill. Tey would like to make use of the view.

Te temples are confusing masses of stone melted by military bombardment and the weather.

Perhaps because of lack of sleep Dana is having difculty identifying just what it is on this mountain that is sacred and worthy of note. Dana picks her way uphill, using her eyes more than anything else to touch the ancient lumps, littered with ground glass and miniscule tips of rubbish. Te temple of Apollo is a slab. An eroded pillar grouping has been pasted atop it.

Dana gets down on her hands and knees. She recalls she has been saying something to Eleni and Meredith about television.

Tis location supported the tripod of the Pythia, licked by tendrils of gassy air. Dana hunts around.

Dana perceives an opening. It is not large but, judging from the packed earth around it, has been employed by other humans. Dana is looking for guards.

Now there is a humming. Dana, who is penetrating an ancient holy site, the locus of mysteries, is nonplussed. She is not eager or terrifed, merely present. It comforts her to think that what is occurring could be representable, could recur as mere images. A brightness increases. She sees what she can only describe as a winged snake bathing its young, because this is what it is: a winged snake bathing its young with its gray tongue. Te wings of the snake seem infnitely soft, even at a distance. Around its neck is a translucent beard.

Next Dana remembers, she is seated at an outdoor cafe at Delphi’s base and there is an orange and white cat with a thick neck batting the face of a smaller cat. Eleni and Meredith are eating pastries and Dana is drinking cofee. Now

they are driving away. Tey consume a dinner of rabbit in a hillside town Eleni says was once a ski resort, previous to global warming.

Te next day Dana has slept on the couch and Meredith in the guestroom and Eleni in her own bed in the smaller bedroom. Everyone is awake. Dana says nothing of the snake.

Meredith has come to sit with Dana on the couch in the living room among the bedding. Dana is rubbing the back of her head. Tey are both coated in the residue of nearly painful sleep and should probably shower.

Dana wants to know how it is in Zurich, where Meredith lives.

Meredith says Zurich is extremely clean. It’s an orderly place. Meredith does not do much but travel between the apartment she shares with her new husband and her studio, between the studio and the university building where she teaches.

Dana expresses surprise that Meredith is teaching.

Meredith says that anything is possible when you are married to a faculty member.

Dana wants to know what the class is.

“Studio art,” says Meredith, who is a writer.

“Oh,” says Dana.

“Tere was some problem of translation. It’s always dark there.”

Dana nods.

Meredith is frowning. “I just didn’t know that I would be unhappy.”

“Oh,” says Dana.

“‘Oh’ is right!” Meredith’s face gets wet. Tears make a light slapping sound as they hit the comforter. Meredith seems to have been, unbeknownst to Dana, flled with water.

“Is it J____?” Dana says Meredith’s husband’s name.

“No, it has nothing to do with him, which is the worst part. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Have you been working?”

“Drawing, more like. I make stick fgures. I’m trying to appease some imaginary person by acting like an illustrator, which I’m not.” Meredith blows her nose in her sweater. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about work. Tat’s the whole problem.”

“Te problem?”

“I am stuck. And a year from now I’m going to be stuck. And I’ll be stuck three years from now, a decade from now. I’ll always be stuck because I’ve never managed to actually do anything.” Meredith shuts her eyes.

Dana is not a writer or artist. She is unusual among her friends in this sense. Dana is a person who participates in the running of New York galleries. She makes budgets and seating charts and purchases plane tickets for celebrities. She thinks about how she would, for once, like to have a boss who is sane.

Dana watches Meredith, who is shivering.

Eleni emerges, damp and golden, from the shower.

It is difcult to say what makes one person’s life “converge” with another’s. Also, the morning is thickening; it is something that can be paid attention to. Dana is checking her email because an acquaintance, a friend of the gallery where she works, who is Greek and who is the unique daughter of a shipping magnate, has told Dana to write to her while she is in Athens, so that Dana and her friends may have a tour of the shipping magnate’s museum. And Dana has written.

It is a surprise, the graciousness of this heiress’s reply. She is probably in SoHo.

Meanwhile, they are all three ignoring the propositions of the morning: breakfast, light. Tey lie around the living room. Dana thinks about how the apartment once belonged to Eleni’s mother, who came to this suburban hillside for some sort of respite. Tere is no rush. Here people don’t go to work; they detach themselves noncommittally from a modest suburban enclosure. Tey appear calm, if unsure. Tere is no talk from Eleni about exploring the surely forested edges of the suburb, whatever unexploited land is there. Te November sky is a white smear. A hidden god seems to desire something on earth, to be about to reach out.

Tey are in a taxi, wending their way around the outskirts of Athens, going from one suburb to another. Rebar extends from upper stories.

RACHEL ROSKE, SITTING STILL, 2013, GRAPHITE ON UNPRIMED CANVAS, 37 X 28 INCHES

Eleni sits in the front seat. Tey come to an area containing big-box stores with perfunctorily landscaped parking lots. Tere are other square buildings behind these, presumably ofce space; international styles, colored metal and glass. Tey drive back into an alley. Eleni and the driver are engaged in rapid conversation. Eleni says, “He says he can just let us of and he’ll wait?”

Te driver drifts to a polite distance. Tey walk along the edges of small buildings that bluely line the alley. One building somewhat more closely resembles the building pictured — abstractly — on the private museum’s public website, and they approach it. It has sleek stairs. Tere is a black glass bulb surely flled with security cameras. Tey see a small number on the black glass door. Te glass of the building has been tinted in such a way that it is impossible to see indoors, and it even appears that no one is there, no light is on. Tey have the sense, all the same, that they are being watched, that they are observed as they fit awkwardly around the front steps, attempting to decide how to proceed. At last Eleni presses a button. Tere is a click. A voice in Greek. Female, very high. Tere is another click and a long buzz that indicates they are aforded access. Eleni goes frst.

Tey see legs: legs in clingy white pants, coming down an interior stair. Te legs are attached to a trim torso that supports a nominally pretty, given the carefully applied makeup, face. Te face blinks. She says Dana’s name and introduces herself as Daphne. Tey are both d’s, Dana and Daphne. Daphne is an administrator.

Tey are inside the box. It is clear now how visible their confusion, outside, must have been. No glare of bright sun enters, but there are foor-to-ceiling windows. Daphne is making small talk, but mostly she’s using her taut, manicured form to direct the three young women into an exhibition space at the center of the building.

Daphne’s arm is pointing to the right and here is a massive red dripping pirate-shaped item by Paul McCarthy next to a small Basquiat painting. Daphne proclaims that this is a show about modernism. Tat the show is about showing lesser-known modernist styles.

“Lesser-known artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat?” Dana blurts. Meredith’s face is a lovely mask. Eleni seems not to know what to do with her hands.

Daphne is saying that it is not the artists themselves who are, obviously, lesser known, but rather the particular styles and works on display. Tese works all have a concertedly “modernist” quality, even though they were created during what everyone knows is the post-modern era, or the beginnings of it, et cetera.

Eleni is staring at Daphne. Meredith takes a few steps closer to the Basquiat, which is a small painting but not really so small. Daphne makes a noise indicating her concern at Meredith’s proximity. Meredith recalibrates.

“So,” Eleni says, “you’re a curator?”

“And you’re Greek?” Daphne brightly inquires.

Eleni switches into Greek, presumably to say something about how she grew up mostly in an East Coast US suburb.

“Oh!” Daphne replies, in citric British tones. “I’m surprised you want to be here now! But no, you see, this show is curated by,” and here she names a mercenary international curator. “I am really only the director of the museum, functionally speaking.”

Tey pass an ofce occupied by three diligently typing, smaller and younger versions of Daphne. Two look up, manifesting white teeth.

Tey enter rooms containing artworks, in no particular order, by: Claes Oldenburg, Jean Dubufet, Frank Stella, Louise Bourgeois, Jiro Yoshihara, Willem de Kooning, George Condo, Marlene Dumas. Tey go all the way to the top of the building, walk back down again.

Later, in the cab, Eleni says, “You guys often do things like that?” She is possibly ofended. Tey draw nearer to the center of Athens, where they will view the Acropolis.

Te following day Meredith returns to Zurich. Tere are tearful goodbyes, self-recriminations, vows.

Eleni and Dana are alone. It is American Tanksgiving. Tey say nothing to one another of the holiday but take another taxi to the center of Athens, this time to the shopping areas, a plaza near the ofces of state, the true downtown.

Even before they come to the location of the marches, the low rumbling sounds of massed bodies are audible. Eleni points out signs in Greek. “Tey are against racism, the Golden Dawn,” Eleni says. “Tey want a safe place. We are all human.” Tey keep walking. Eleni says, pointing, “Tat building was on fre a few months ago.” Tey turn a corner into an avenue flled with people walking with banners. Tey are state employees, administrators. Tere are many teachers. Eleni walks in silence as chants transpire. Her hair rises in a reddish fn.

Later they ascend to the cafeteria of the city’s largest bookstore. Tey sit on a terrace under heating lamps and consume hot chocolate. Eleni seems fatigued by the task of being with another American. Dana looks into the square below.

Eleni begins to say, “I wanted to ask, it bothered you in that room? Tat’s why you were sleeping on the couch?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know, now that Meredith’s not here, I can tell you that I’m actually the one staying in the guestroom.”

“Your room is the guestroom?”

“Yes. Tat other room, where you were, is my mother’s old room. But you don’t want to sleep in it.”

“It must seem really rude.”

“It doesn’t. I admit something goes on in there. Tere’s a reason I don’t sleep there, though it’s arguably the nicer space. Like for example the door will shut in a certain way.”

“By itself?”

“It’s not scary. But I don’t want to, I guess, get in its way.”

“Do you think that it will ever stop?”

“I don’t know.” Eleni is staring out over the city. Its many roofs glitter. “All I know is I can’t sell the apartment right now. But I don’t know how any of this can end. Particularly when the private museums of the world could pay for it.”

“Could they?”

Eleni laughs. “We should go back to Delphi.”