Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides [66]
“But after that, what then?”
“Simple. Don’t sleep with your husband.”
At present, it was possible. Since the birth of the baby, my grandparents had taken a hiatus from lovemaking. Desdemona was up half the night breast-feeding. She was always exhausted. In addition, her perineum had torn during the delivery and was still healing. Lefty politely kept himself from starting anything amorous, but after the second month he began to come over to her side of the bed. Desdemona held him off as long as she could. “It’s too soon,” she said. “We don’t want another baby.”
“Why not? Milton needs a brother.”
“You’re hurting me.”
“I’ll be gentle. Come here.”
“No, please, not tonight.”
“What? Are you turning into Sourmelina? Once a year is enough?”
“Quiet. You’ll wake the baby.”
“I don’t care if I wake the baby.”
“Don’t shout. Okay. Here. I’m ready.”
But five minutes later: “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t tell me nothing. It’s like being with a statue.”
“Oh, Lefty!” And she burst into sobs.
Lefty comforted her and apologized, but as he turned over to go to sleep he felt himself being enclosed in the loneliness of fatherhood. With the birth of his son, Eleutherios Stephanides saw his future and continuing diminishment in the eyes of his wife, and as he buried his face in his pillow, he understood the complaint of fathers everywhere who lived like boarders in their own homes. He felt a mad jealousy toward his infant son, whose cries were the only sounds Desdemona seemed to hear, whose little body was the recipient of unending ministrations and caresses, and who had muscled his own father aside in Desdemona’s affections by a seemingly divine subterfuge, a god taking the form of a piglet in order to suckle at a woman’s breast. Over the next weeks and months, Lefty watched from the Siberia of his side of the bed as this mother-infant love affair blossomed. He saw his wife scrunch her face up against the baby’s to make cooing noises; he marveled at her complete lack of disgust toward the infant’s bodily processes, the tenderness with which she cleaned up and powdered the baby’s bottom, rubbing with circular motions and even once, to Lefty’s shock, spreading the tiny buttocks to daub the rosebud between with petroleum jelly.
From then on, my grandparents’ relationship began to change. Up until Milton’s birth, Lefty and Desdemona had enjoyed an unusually close and egalitarian marriage for its time. But as Lefty began to feel left out, he retaliated with tradition. He stopped calling his wife kukla, which meant “doll,” and began calling her kyria, which meant “Madame.” He reinstituted sex segregation in the house, reserving the sala for his male companions and banishing Desdemona to the kitchen. He began to give orders. “Kyria, my dinner.” Or: “Kyria, bring the drinks!” In this he acted like his contemporaries and no one noticed anything out of the ordinary except Sourmelina. But even she couldn’t entirely throw off the chains of the village, and when Lefty had his male friends over to the house to smoke cigars and sing kleftic songs, she retreated to her bedroom.
Shut up in the isolation of paternity, Lefty Stephanides concentrated on finding a safer way to make a living. He wrote to the Atlantis Publishing Company in New York, offering his services as a translator, but received in return only a letter thanking him for his interest, along with a catalogue. He gave the catalogue to Desdemona, who ordered a new dream book. Wearing his blue Protestant suit, Lefty visited the local universities and colleges in person to inquire about the possibility of becoming a Greek instructor. But there were few positions, and all were filled. My grandfather lacked the necessary classics degree; he hadn’t even graduated from university. Though he learned to speak a fluent, somewhat eccentric English, his written command of the language was mediocre at best. With a wife and child to support, there was no thought of his returning to school. Despite these obstacles or maybe because of them, during the forty-day mourning period Lefty