Yesterday, on the V train, I finished a book I was reading,→[More:]Lawrence Durrell's Reflections on a Marine Venus, a travelogue/memoir/novella of Rhodes just after WWII and just before the British administration handed the islands over to Greece.

It's a tremendous book, full of clear reminiscences and lyrical descriptions of place; perceptive, honest, and self-revealing portraits of people; and extremely evocative emotion and mood.

I finished it somewhere between West 4 and 2nd Ave, and sat with the book gripped tightly in my lap as I wrestled with the strong emotions the book left me.

It must have shown in my face or in my body, the effort to check my feelings for public display (if I was at home I might have cried), because the wrinkly little grey-haired woman in plain dark clothes sitting next to me put a hand on my wrist, and looked at me, and smiled; and we held hands like that until the train reached its terminus and we debarked.

I thanked her as we parted and she smiled with the wordless depth that replaces a common language, and I imagined she was Greek.