MISSING CAVAFY

MISSING CAVAFY
B.Z. Niditch

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I saw her name in a used bookstore copy of Cavafy poems, in Greek and English. Her phone numbers and addresses were in Montreal and Boston. What intrigued me were her initials were Z. B., the opposite of mine. The voice was boyish and spoke in an idiosyncratic French and I hung up. I  wrote to her anyway after the Facebook contact.

She liked my hubris and exhuberance and said she already missed Cavafy. Her favorite writer was Queneau: “Cent Mille Millards de Poems“. She laughed when I told her the Cavafy cost seventy five cents. Such is the state of literature, genius and fame. I had brunch with Yvette at Le Petite Maison in Boston. She did not drink and hardly tasted her sole until she calmed down.

She was in a theatre production of Racine and I being the art director of a company now disbanded she read me her lines. Yev told me she was pregant and Charles had left her for her understudy. From her black shoulder bag she showed me Charles’s picture. I told her he was an actor in my play “One hour in the Life of Vichy“. I told her Charles had run out on me when he got a paying part Off-Broadway. We are still friends and I became a godfather to Jean.  

I am happy not to have missed Cavafy.

©2012 This work is the property of the author.