High life
Begging letter
Talc
When my first wife suddenly decided that an over-the-hill Mexican bullfighter was more fun to be with than an over-the-hill tennis player, I reacted like all Greeks do. I threatened to kill her and the bullfighter. Like all Greeks, however, I did nothing of the sort. The fact that he turned out to be less a bullfighter than a bullshitter helped a bit, but still I walked around for weeks moping and boring everyone with stories about how happy we had once been. That's when my father came to the rescue. My father gets bored easily, and nothing bores him more than having me walking about feeling sorry for myself. When my mother began worrying that I might end it all — I had hinted as much knowing well what was coming — my father telephoned me and told me to fly to England and buy myself a boat. This was 1968, and my only regret when I hung up was that I had not thought of threatening suicide before. I could have had a boat much earlier. (When my wife found out about the boat, she wanted to come back to me, but who needs a wife when he has a boat? In fact, a Greek proverb says that he who has a yacht can have a different wife every night.) So I flew to England and bought myself a cabin cruiser and steamed down toward Greece.
I named the boat Bushido. which means 'way of the warrior', or, translated more loosely, the Samurai's way of honour. There was only one problem. My Greek crew had never heard of Bushido, and their ideas of honour were confined to the principle of forcing anyone who goes to bed with one's sister to marry her. As soon as they realised that I knew as much about diesel engines as Anthony WedgwoodBenn knows about the common man, they began emulating their British brethren by refusing to work. Only they were subt ler. My engines simply broke down every Friday. After four consecutive Friday breakdowns — and free weekends for the crew — I had the second brightest idea in my life. I decided to take up sailing, like my father.
My father is, or was, the best sailor in Greece after the King. He and his boat the Nefertiti — that gallant 12-metre yacht that lost on the last day of the final trial for the right to defend the America's Cup in 1964 — had won every single off-shore race during the late Sixties and early Seventies. In fact, at times he won by such tremendous margins, that lots of yachtsmen simply gave up racing. He finally retired in 1974, and now everyone is happy. Back in 1972, however, I had heard about a boat as fabulous as the Nefertiti lying in Sweden. She was 72 feet long, with a flush deck, all wood and mahogany, a 90-foot mast, and a draft of ten feet. In other words, a world beater. But how to get her?
Soon afterwards, a newspaper refused to hire me because of my political views, and the fact that I had some money. I began moping around, blaming my father to my mother for having pointed out certain inequities in the communist system. I also intimated that a man who cannot work has no business to remain alive. Once again the trick worked. My father didn't like it, but he nevertheless sent me up to Sweden to sail her down. The few nobs that have sailed on board Bushido II will attest that she is probably the best looking boat in the world. I didn't race her, just cruised her around the flesh spots, showing her off. Her interior — she has a circular wooden staircase — is as beautiful as the outside, and I can't believe that any boat has given as much pleasure to anyone as Bushido II has to me. Even the crew fell in love with her, but one day a Toulouse-Lautrec-like figure (in stature only) made them an offer which they really could not refuse. I managed to sail Bushido for two summers with some incompetents, but this year, with a very heavy heart, I've put her up for sale.
So, for the last two months I have been lying around depressed, talking to my mother occasionally on the telephone, telling her that I really see no use putting up further with the futility of life. Oh, incidentally, last winter I ordered a motor boat to be built in Taiwan, and the Chinese assured me that the engines are so simple that even an Irishman can learn to operate them. It is a bit of a gin palace, and I am a bit ashamed to steam around like an Arab, but my main problem right now is that father is having none of it. When I called him and tried to tell him what hell my life had become, he told me that I needed some mountain air, and that the sea tends to make people depressed after a while. In the meantime, the Taiwanese are bringing Bushido III over next month, and I know what they do to people who don't pay on time. That is what really makes me depressed.
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