My parents had presented me with a new opera cape with white fox-fur trim for this trip .sx I feared that as it had ruined my dancing , my disastrous case of strabismus would totally ruin my life , that the scar on my chin and also the size of my nose precluded any chance of happiness I might have .sx No beautiful new cloak would help in the slightest .sx Finding it almost impossible to concentrate or even stir myself from the apathy that had settled over me , I could not even comb my own hair or dress myself .sx Miss Weaver was afflicted with a case of shingles .sx I was being treated by the famous Professor N. Ischlondsky , and expert on regenerative gland treatments who had published a tract in Russia on the gonad glands for a new diagnosis of glandular imbalances , a deficiency in adrenalin secretion .sx Two lukewarm , two-hour baths were the treatment .sx I needed help into both baths and might have spent the entire day underwater if the nurse hadn't returned to pull me out , dry me off , dress me and help me back to the couch .sx My hands and feet were wrinkled like an old prune .sx The nurse reported to Miss Weaver that I had threatened to buy two pistols .sx Miss Weaver reported this to Father .sx I reported to Mother that marriage was the only salvation offered to Hindu girl-children because Hinduism said that females arrived on this earth with no souls .sx But what of me ?sx I was not Hindu and couldn't in good conscience convert !sx .sx My hands , I further told Mother , were so distant from my body that I didn't know any more if they were connected to my body .sx Were they ?sx Because my own thoughts were being broadcast in my head , I waited until Miss Weaver was out on a business appointment and the nurse was down in the kitchen , feeding her always famished appetite , when I grabbed my opera cloak and bolted from the house .sx I went as far as I could on a bus .sx I found myself far from Gloucester Place when I was overtaken by fatigue .sx I slept where I was , under a street-lamp .sx When the police found me the opera cape was in shreds .sx Miss Weaver came to the police station to fetch me , and brought me back home .sx I told Miss Weaver to keep her rules to herself .sx I demanded to do as I pleased - after all , my father was a famous man .sx The doors and windows all now contained locks .sx Father was determined to resist any persuasion to put me back into another maison de sant e .sx The year was 1935 .sx I was twenty-eight years old .sx He swore to Mother that their only daughter's mind was lightning quick and what might be construed as incomprehensible nonsense to others were flashes of imagination and wisdom .sx That I threatened suicide put Father into a terribly low state ; he too suffered terrible lethargy with his own work .sx The book he had been working on for fifteen years - his masterpiece , he hoped- seemed not closer to completion .sx Perhaps , he mused , if he could complete his book , then I too would be freed .sx 34 .sx The strategy was :sx complete and total freedom .sx Mother shopped for weeks and prepared two trunks for me .sx At the same time she bought eleven mirrors for the new flat on rue Valentin .sx The opera cloak was mended .sx My strategy was to effect a reconciliation between my father and the entire country of Ireland .sx I would travel with my favourite aunt , Aunt Eileen , Father's look-alike sister .sx Edgar would join me , my father agreed .sx Aunt Eileen's strategy was- Irish eggs , Irish air .sx Edgar told Lyo , his boss , that he would be going away for a trip .sx He did not know where , but he would need to eat a salmon that had swallowed a hazelnut before he went .sx Mother and Father accompanied me to the boat-train for London .sx There was no scene at the station , the trunks were loaded , I was the Lucia of old - sweet and laughing at every wry comment made by either Father or Mother .sx My mother thought to herself that I looked too chic to be going to dirty old Ireland , that I should be going to a horse race instead .sx She didn't say this out loud , having become , she believed , the world champion walker-on-eggs , always alert lest a chair come flying across the room aimed at her head .sx Father slipped an Irish pound into Edgar's pocket for luck as Edgar stood off to the side of the tracks , trying as best as he could to adjust his trousers which seemed to have unequal leg-lengths .sx After the train had departed , I went to find Edgar .sx I found him squeezed between two French schoolchildren in a second-class car with all their school-books on his lap .sx I brought him back to my compartment .sx There I presented him with a hatbox .sx He held the hatbox and slowly turned it with appreciation .sx I laughed , " Ouvrez la bo i-circ te !sx " He did not understand .sx I laughed again and pulled off the top .sx Edgar peered inside .sx He liked what he saw .sx " Charlie Chaplin !sx " I laughed and removed a black bowler - hat from the box .sx I placed it squarely on Edgar's large head .sx Though just slightly too small , it made him so happy that he felt salt in his eyes .sx In London , Aunt Eileen met me and brought me by boat to Dun Laoghaire and then twelve more miles further along the coast , to the seaside town of Bray where she had rented a half-bungalow on Meath Road quite close to both the railway station and the sea .sx I arrived on St Patrick's Day , I carried a long walking-stick like a sceptre and wore a grand camel-hair coat .sx Once Aunt Eileen had installed me and gone back into Dublin , I rearranged all the furnishings in anticipation of Edgar's arrival .sx I put the bottle of Veronal under the mattress , then changed into an oriental kimono with nothing on underneath and lit the gas .sx Edgar arrived in the taxi which was bringing the trunks .sx He saw that the door was wide open and people from the neighbourhood were standing at their doors and staring boldly at the half-bungalow .sx He heard someone say , " She squints .sx " .sx He carried one trunk into the house and the taximan carried the other .sx Then he closed the front door .sx He had stopped along the way and purchased groceries and a bag of large pamplemousses which he now put into a glass bowl and placed in the centre of the table .sx First he sang a song he'd learned as a child in Genti Couli , the town outside of Saloniki , where he was born .sx And so ask our bride .sx What do you call a head .sx This is not called a head but .sx A round grapefruit hanging on a grapefruit-tree .sx Oh , my grapefruit in a tree .sx Of my spacious countryside .sx Long live the Bride and Groom .sx We began to eat and he told me about his childhood .sx He explained that all four of his older brothers had gone to the Transvaal gold-mines in South Africa before he was born .sx His mother had lit candles for their safe return but none had returned .sx Though he was a small boy during the Great War , Edgar remembered his own father going with a group of men from the village to work in French shipyards .sx His father was bearded with blue eyes .sx He recalled more lighting of candles .sx After the Great War Edgar lived with his mother , grandfather and last three unmarried sisters , in a tin house which had been an Allied troop barrack during the war .sx They waited for their father to return but he did not .sx The entire village worked in the shipyards .sx Quite young he would feed his mother's silkworms with mulberry leaves and tend to the bright-yellow silk loops which emerged from the kettles , winding themselves on to the wooden frames .sx At night he would fall asleep listening to the crackling , chewing of the silkworms .sx When his mother took the raw silk to the loom , Edgar would hold the soft curls carefully for her , reluctant to surrender them to the weavers .sx Like a sack of stone he had fallen head first from a fig-tree and died .sx In the family's tin shack a cloth covered the shard of mirror on the wall and an earthen pitcher of clean water stood at the door .sx Together the men carried the borrowed child's-size pine box to the cemetery .sx Women sobbed and moaned , prayers were chanted as the procession passed through the narrow streets and up towards the cemetery .sx When the noise of a funeral was heard in other parts of town , doors were shut .sx Behind these closed doors the women in their kitchens , in order to walk symbolically with the dead boy , walked three steps forwards and then , in order to return symbolically to normal life ( come back from the dead ) , walked three steps backwards .sx .sx On arriving at the cemetery a small grave had been dug .sx The body was removed from the borrowed casket .sx Edgar's grandfather took a handful of dirt , pulled Edgar's eyelids open , and rubbed the dirt into his eyes .sx Then the men lowered the body into the grave .sx The grandfather splashed the body with wine , thinking , " This boy will never drink wine .sx Never love a woman .sx Never sing a song .sx Never carry on my name .sx " The rabbi sprinkled the body with dry dirt .sx Immediately , then , all the mourners began to throw dirt down on the small body below , head and foot .sx Wailing , the mother covered her own face with dirt .sx It was at this moment that Edgar sat up and began to rub his eyes .sx Still covered in dirt , he was carried home to his grandfather's bed .sx His aunt fainted dead out when she saw him carried in through the door .sx His mother washed him from head to toe and tied a piece of potato with cloth on his head .sx She made pinholes in a sheet of newspaper and covered him front and back .sx His mother then mixed a glass of water with sugar and went to the fig-tree .sx She poured the mixture into the ground where the accident had occurred .sx His mother believed that Edgar had been smitten with the evil eye , perhaps from the dangerous blue eyes of his father .sx Daily she chanted seven times :sx All the evil eyes .sx all the stares , the pain and the evil eye .sx All will go to the bottom of the sea .sx And this created will be freed from the evil eye .sx Then , morning and night , and between , she would throw a handful of salt into the stream of his urine , and say :sx They are not from the sky , nor the earth .sx How they come , so should they go .sx When he got older his roaming ways began .sx Much of the city of Thessalloniki , as it was then called , had been devastated by the great fire in the summer of 1917 and still lay in ruins .sx Edgar would climb around the charred remains and up the slopes of Mt Khortiatis through huddled houses of the old town , close to the battlement walks of the old citadel where Mediterranean pine-trees had begun , through the charred woods , to sprout tender green shots again .sx Sometimes he would go to the Lefkos Pirg o s on the quay of the old port surrounded by trees which had been spared by the fire , sit down on the rampart swinging his legs over the gulf of Thermai , watching ships sail out to sea .sx In winter the eerie Vardas wind would freeze and whine in his ears but he wandered still .sx 35 .sx When I next opened the door to the bungalow both Edgar and I were fat as Christmas geese .sx Because this was my first time playing house , I had created my own recipes for food - raw meat and pamplemousse , buttermilk scones with cabbage , sweetbreads and porridge .sx Neither of us had ever been fat before and we decided that it was to our liking .sx It made noise seem further away , it made sleeping cosier .sx