Katie Kitamura - A Separation

I ordered a second glass of wine and then asked Maria if she had eaten dinner, I assumed she had not, it had been one in the afternoon when I had seen her in the lobby with Stefano and it was now past eight. She shook her head and I asked the waiter if he could bring another table setting, which he did, although he did not bring a second menu. Patiently, I asked him to bring a second menu but Maria said it wasn’t necessary, she knew what she wanted.

She proceeded to order at length, in Greek, she was obviously familiar with the menu. The waiter, as she gave her order, listened impassively with his hands folded before him. He made none of the small movements and gestures waiters make to show their continued attention—the carefully inclined head, the murmured very good or excellent choice , the small nods here and there, all of which he had employed extensively when serving me before.

Nor did he write down her order. Instead he simply stared at her, hands folded in front of him, evidently affronted by her assurance. Even with my limited comprehension, I could tell that she was speaking to him as if he were there to serve her, not as if he were a colleague who happened to be temporarily placed in the role of server. He said nothing, even when she fell silent, and she said something sharply, still in Greek. He turned to me without saying anything in reply and asked in English if I had decided what I would like.

I ordered salad and a pasta, it was not the most inspiring choice, the pasta was nothing wonderful but I was tired of grilled meats and cheeses, the heavy Greek food—even the relatively cosmopolitan version that was served in the hotel restaurant—was not to my liking. The waiter nodded and said he would be back with the wine. He smiled as he took the menu and then left without looking at Maria, his rudeness was so pointed that I wondered if there was anything in it, some history of animosity between the two of them, he had seemed until then a thoroughly inoffensive man.

After the waiter left we fell silent, there was now nothing obvious to say, the business of ordering our meal having been got out of the way. I made several attempts at conversation, admittedly they were banal topics. But Maria appeared to have no intention of launching into the heart of the matter, the reason why she had asked to sit down, perhaps it had been a mistake to invite her to dine with me—perhaps she did not have enough conversation to fill the length of the meal and intended to sit in stony silence until the final course, whereupon she would finally unburden herself and say what she had sat down to say.

The waiter brought the wine. After another extended silence, I decided to broach the matter, I was now feeling certain that she had sat down not because of the earlier incident, but because she had something to tell me about Christopher—perhaps she needed money, perhaps she was pregnant, perhaps she wanted me to relinquish my rights to the man, she would tell me that they were in love and I was the only impediment, the thought passed through my mind—in which case I would tell her that I was neither liable nor an interested party, that I would be asking Christopher for a divorce, as soon as possible, as soon as he returned.

I asked Maria how long she had known Christopher, how it had come about, the phrasing was a little callous, I didn’t like referring to whatever had happened as it , but didn’t know what other word to use. I didn’t know if it was as formal as an affair (that seemed unlikely given the relative brevity of Christopher’s stay, it had been, I thought, less than a month), I didn’t even know if anything concrete had taken place—by which I mean anything material, anything physical, it might have been only hope and innuendo.

But she immediately bristled, she looked at me as if I were pointlessly mocking her and I suppose it might have felt that way to her. After all, I was the wife, I appeared to hold all or at least many of the cards in this situation, despite the fact that I couldn’t currently locate my husband, having traveled to this remote locale in the hopes of finding him. However much he might have betrayed me (and going by appearances and the information that she had, I would have been in a very desolate position indeed), no matter how threadbare the reality it represented, that title and position still had its symbolic power.

I thought she might not respond, and was about to signal to the waiter and order another glass of wine, it seemed like it was going to be a very long meal. But then she relented, as if remembering that she had been the one to create the situation by asking to sit down at my table in the first place, and she muttered something about having met Christopher on his very first day, upon his arrival. She was speaking in a low and virtually inaudible tone, I would need to ask her to raise her voice, a request that could be taken badly, luckily she seemed to be aware that I hadn’t been able to hear her. She raised her eyes to meet my gaze and repeated, I met him the day he arrived, I was working at the front desk.

She said it as if she thought the timing gave her some greater claim to him, three weeks or thereabouts, the entirety of Christopher’s stay in Mani. Compared to whoever it was he had been seen with in Cape Tenaro, it was virtually an eternity. Sitting across the table from her, I wanted to tell her that nonetheless, it was nothing compared to five years of marriage and three years of courtship before that, which again was nothing compared to a decade, two decades, the lifetime that could be spent in the company of one other person.

Now and again, over the course of our marriage, Christopher and I had seen or even spent time with elderly couples in their seventies or eighties, couples who had passed the entirety of their adult life together, and we had idly wondered if our own marriage would endure so long. Of late, we had known this was not going to happen. More to the point, we had known that even if we were each to fall in love again, it was unlikely that we would reach a fiftieth wedding anniversary with this new person, our probable life spans were against it, we had already failed in that respect.

For a moment, as I sat across the table from this strange woman, that mutual failure was like a bond that remained between Christopher and me, despite his absence and the vast distance between us, in the end we had experienced our mortality together. Perhaps because I did not respond, Maria continued, He was very friendly, very kind, most guests at the hotel treat the staff like trash or even worse, like nothing—as though you don’t exist, as though you are thin as air. He arrived alone, she added defensively, although I had not said anything, he arrived alone and when I asked how many guests were staying, he made a point of saying that it was only him, that he was by himself.

Of course, he would have. But on the other hand, what was to say that this was not a matter of interpretation? Perhaps he had merely been making conversation, or perhaps he was even being practical (if he was alone, he would only require one key, one place setting at breakfast, for example). But it seemed cruel to point this out and I could see the scene clearly enough, Christopher had always known how to make an entrance, it was his departures that needed work. I wondered how long it had taken for him to bustle the woman up to his room, had it been the work of days rather than weeks, hours rather than days, how efficient was he now in these matters. In my case it had been, I remembered, one week exactly.

The waiter brought our first courses, mine was a small mesclun salad topped with some very pale grated carrot, the vegetables flown in from some distant place and then transported by truck no doubt. There was nothing native about my plate and I felt depressed just contemplating it, these vegetables in the aridity of a landscape that allowed only for olives, prickly pears, it was my own fault for ordering the dish.