Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides [35]
On the eighth day at sea, Lefty Stephanides, grandly, on one knee, in full view of six hundred and sixty-three steerage passengers, proposed to Desdemona Aristos while she sat on a docking cleat. Young women held their breath. Married men nudged bachelors: “Pay attention and you’ll learn something.” My grandmother, displaying a theatrical flair akin to her hypochondria, registered complex emotions: surprise; initial delight; second thoughts; prudent near refusal; and then, to the applause already starting up, dizzy acceptance.
The ceremony took place on deck. In lieu of a wedding dress, Desdemona wore a borrowed silk shawl over her head. Captain Kontoulis loaned Lefty a necktie spotted with gravy stains. “Keep your coat buttoned and nobody will notice,” he said. For Stephana, my grandparents had wedding crowns woven with rope. Flowers weren’t available at sea and so the koumbaros, a guy named Pelos serving as best man, switched the king’s hempen crown to the queen’s head, the queen’s to the king’s, and back again.
Bride and bridegroom performed the Dance of Isaiah. Hip to hip, arms interwoven to hold hands, Desdemona and Lefty circumambulated the captain, once, twice, and then again, spinning the cocoon of their life together. No patriarchal linearity here. We Greeks get married in circles, to impress upon ourselves the essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back where you began.
Or, in my grandparents’ case, the circling worked like this: as they paced around the deck the first time, Lefty and Desdemona were still brother and sister. The second time, they were bride and bridegroom. And the third, they were husband and wife.
The night of my grandparents’ wedding, the sun set directly before the ship’s bow, pointing the way to New York. The moon rose, casting a silver stripe over the ocean. On his nightly tour of the deck, Captain Kontoulis descended from the pilothouse and marched forward. The wind had picked up. The Giulia pitched in high seas. As the deck tilted back and forth, Captain Kontoulis didn’t stumble once, and was even able to light one of the Indonesian cigarettes he favored, dipping his cap’s braided brim to cut the wind. In his not terribly clean uniform, wearing knee-high Cretan boots, Captain Kontoulis scrutinized running lights, stacked deck chairs, lifeboats. The Giulia was alone on the vast Atlantic, hatches battened down against swells crashing over the side. The decks were empty except for two first-class passengers, American businessmen sharing a nightcap under lap blankets. “From what I hear, Tilden doesn’t just play tennis with his proteges, if you get my drift.” “You’re kidding.” “Lets them drink from the loving cup.” Captain Kontoulis, understanding none of this, nodded as he passed …
Inside one of the lifeboats, Desdemona was saying, “Don’t look.” She was lying on her back. There was no goat’s-hair blanket between them, so Lefty covered his eyes with his hands, peeking through his fingers. A single pinhole in the tarp leaked moonlight, which slowly filled the lifeboat. Lefty had seen Desdemona undress many times, but usually as no more than a shadow and never in moonlight. She had never curled onto her back like this, lifting her feet to take off her shoes. He watched and, as she pulled down her skirt and lifted her tunic, was struck by how different his sister looked, in moonlight, in a lifeboat. She glowed. She gave off white light. He blinked behind his hands. The moonlight kept rising; it covered his neck, it reached his eyes until he understood: Desdemona was wearing a corset. That was the other thing she’d brought along: the white cloth enfolding her silkworm eggs was nothing other than Desdemona’s wedding corset. She thought she’d never wear it, but here it was. Brassiere cups pointed up at the canvas roof. Whalebone slats squeezed her waist. The corset’s skirt dropped garters attached to nothing because my grandmother owned no stockings. In the lifeboat, the corset absorbed all