Constantin

Constantin is a simultaneous interpreter introduced to Esther Greenwood through Mrs. Willard. He becomes a brief but consequential possibility in Esther’s thinking: his perceptiveness and considerate company make her feel recognized, while the evening she imagines as a passage into adult experience unfolds without the seduction she anticipates. The episode links his restraint to Esther’s larger uncertainty about happiness, intimacy, and the boundaries she has been taught to observe.

Identity and Introduction

Esther first hears Constantin’s name in a voice asking whether she is Miss Esther Greenwood. She has trouble catching his surname, which seems full of S’s and K’s, and does not recognize him; only afterward does she remember Mrs. Willard and the simultaneous interpreter she had mentioned. The uncertain introduction gives way to an actual meeting that Esther had not expected Mrs. Willard to arrange.

Esther thinks of herself as someone who collects men with interesting names, recalling Socrates and Attila as other examples. Constantin joins that private catalogue, but he is not merely a name or an exotic curiosity: he is a working interpreter, and the proposed outing is to the United Nations in New York City. When he suggests meeting later that day, Esther answers with a joke that she can already see the United Nations. Her response establishes the dry, slightly hysterical humor with which she approaches him and the invitation.

Perception and Company

Esther describes Constantin as short, handsome in his own way, tan, and marked by light brown hair, dark blue eyes, and a lively, challenging expression. Though his appearance could almost pass for American, she immediately senses that he is not. What distinguishes him most in her account is intuition: he quickly guesses that she is not really a protégé of Mrs. Willard.

That insight creates an ease between them. Esther raises an eyebrow and gives a dry laugh; soon the two are openly criticizing Mrs. Willard. Esther imagines that Constantin will not judge her for being too tall, knowing too few languages, or not having traveled in Europe, but will see past those supposed shortcomings to who she is. The hope is significant because it makes their conversation feel, to Esther, less like an assessment and more like recognition.

Constantin drives her to the United Nations in an old green convertible with cracked brown leather seats and its top down. He explains that his tan comes from playing tennis. As they travel through the streets, he takes and squeezes her hand. Esther connects the moment’s happiness with childhood summers on the beach with her father, who died when she was nine. Sitting beside Constantin later in a hushed, plush United Nations auditorium, next to a stern Russian interpreter, she realizes that she had not been purely happy since that age. The outing therefore matters not simply as courtship: it prompts a painful measure of how long happiness has seemed absent.

Esther’s Expectations of Intimacy

Esther considers the possibility of being seduced by a simultaneous interpreter in New York City and sees Constantin as mature and considerate. She contrasts him with college boys who, as she describes them, boast to friends about sleeping with girls. She also finds a pointed irony in the possibility of intimacy with a man introduced by Mrs. Willard, as though Mrs. Willard might indirectly be responsible for Esther’s choice.

When Constantin invites her to his apartment to listen to balalaika records, Esther recognizes the invitation through her mother’s warning not to go to a man’s rooms after an evening out. Instead of refusing, she says that she is fond of balalaika music. Her response shows her testing the boundary her mother has drawn while presenting herself as willing to follow the invitation. Yet the episode is structured around expectation rather than fulfillment: Esther anticipates a decisive change, imagining that Constantin might remain like a small figure in her eye, a private sign of the experience she expects to have.

The Evening and Its Limits

For about an hour, Esther and Constantin sit in separate slingback chairs on his balcony while the record player plays and balalaika records remain stacked between them. Apart from holding her hand, he shows no desire to seduce her. Esther asks whether he is engaged or has a special girlfriend, wondering whether that might explain his restraint. He says that he is not and makes a point of avoiding such attachments.

The contrast between Esther’s imagined crossing of a boundary and Constantin’s actual conduct defines his limited but important role. He offers attentive company and a moment of closeness, yet does not become the lover Esther has pictured. His declared avoidance of attachments also places a limit on the possibility she had begun to invest in him. The scene closes not with a transformation but with Esther becoming powerfully drowsy after drinking pine-bark wine, leaving the evening’s anticipated change unresolved.