Geoff Dyer - Paris Trance

‘Nicole!’

In his panic Luke capsized the lilo and they both rolled under the water. When he bobbed up again, spluttering, he saw Nicole clinging to the lilo, reinserting the stopper. He stroked towards her. The lilo sagged but was still floating.

‘Fuck Nic.’ He rested his arms on the lilo, his face close to hers. ‘You’re crazy. What if you hadn’t been able to get the thing back in?’

‘Then you would have seen how stupid you are, thinking about drowning like that, little boy Shelley.’

His anger vanished immediately. ‘You’re right, I would have done,’ he said, leaning across the lilo and kissing her.

‘I wouldn’t have let you drown,’ she said.

‘I love you,’ he said, aloud, for the first time.

‘I’ve heard you before,’ said Nicole.

‘When?’

‘In the mosque was the first time. But I heard all the others too, my love.’ She put her arms round his neck, kissed him.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said.

‘It’s your loving me that makes me beautiful,’ she said.

Cycling home they stopped by an oak tree. Luke lacked a vocabulary of landscape. He didn’t know the names of trees or birds, could identify only the most rudimentary crops: wheat, rape, vines. As a result he saw the landscape only in the vaguest terms: trees, fields and colours. Yellow, shades of green, slopes and gradients, the shadow-drift of clouds. Even as he noticed the landscape he was, simultaneously, oblivious to it. He looked but could not listen. It appealed only to his eye. There was nothing for him to learn from it, it had nothing to tell. Perhaps the fact that he knew the name of this tree is why the scene struck him so forcibly.

They propped their bikes against the oak. The wheat had been taken in on either side of the road. The grass was scorched yellow: it had been months since there had been any rain but that did not matter. Life here had adjusted long ago to the huge thirst of summer. There were a few scars of cloud; otherwise the sky was empty blue. The light struck Luke almost as a moral force. Nicole was sitting on the grass at the edge of the road. Her hair was still wet. She took an orange from her bag and offered it to him. He nodded and she tossed it to him. Luke retreated a few paces and then threw it back. Nicole caught it easily and threw it to him again. Luke walked further back. Nicole stood up and clapped her hands. Luke threw her the orange which she caught, just. Then she stepped back and threw it to Luke who had to stretch to catch it, head tilted up to the sun. They continued throwing the orange back and forth like this, the distance between them increasing all the time. The orange looked like a planet as it hung in the blue sky. Neither of them dropped it but, as the distance between them increased, so the accumulated impact of catches made it leak. Snags and rips appeared in the peel. It became mushy and then Nicole’s fingers grasped the sky instead of the orange and it splatted on the road. She raised her hands, shrugged, smiled, wiped her hands on her dress. Began walking towards him. The road wound out of sight behind her. On either side of the road were fields of wheat. The oak cast a shadow across the road. She was wearing plimsolls, her white sleeveless dress, a single bracelet. Her hair was long, still wet, black. She walked towards him but, even as she moved, there was a stillness about the scene, something Luke recognized, something it shared with other moments from his life that he could neither recall nor anticipate. A windlessness, a silence. The landscape breathing and rippling. Time going nowhere else, staying.

Sahra and Alex had prepared dinner. As usual the table had been set in front of the house. Nicole sat down with them and Luke brought out two beers from the fridge. He tried to open one of the bottles Zimbabwe-style and, as always, failed. He passed them to Alex who flipped off the top and handed back the open bottle.

‘You’re going to break your thumb if you keep trying to do that,’ he said smugly. Luke rolled a joint and he and Sahra played a couple of games of Ping-Pong. Then they opened a bottle of wine and ate dinner. For dessert they each ate a grin of melon. Alex rolled another joint which only he and Luke smoked. The sun had sloped off somewhere else and they were waiting for the moon to show. Nicole was sitting on the floor between Luke’s legs, her eyes closed. Stoned, Alex watched Luke combing her hair with his fingers.

If you watch someone’s hands closely enough, can you feel what they have felt, touch what they have touched?

Alex became aware of a tightening in the atmosphere: an alertness. Feeling Sahra watching him, he shut his eyes, blanked off his thoughts.

The long curve of the days was marked by the movement of the sun, by the changing light. Every day was like every other: they worked on the house, ate lunch, played tennis, swam, went for cycle rides and walks, got stoned, cooked dinners. The passage of the weeks was marked by their deepening tans and the gradual improvement of the house. Luke finished cleaning out the barn. The house had been painted. Only odd jobs remained to be done. The house was still sparsely furnished but in every other respect it looked like a home.

Alex was cleaning paint drips from the floor in the living room. The window was open. Straight ahead was a view of the blue unclouded weather but the window itself reflected an angle of the exterior that he could not see directly. The reflection in the window was darker than reality, imparting a tint to the sky like a premonition of thunder. He went over to the window and opened it inward. As he did so the view in the glass panned round to reveal the gravel path leading to the barn. It was like a form of elementary surveillance and Alex felt as if he were spying. He opened the window wider, until he could see the barn itself. At the extreme edge of the window frame, he saw Nicole walking into view. With the window open as wide as possible he watched her lay a towel on the parched grass and take off her shorts and T-shirt. Underneath she was wearing her yellow swimming costume. She sat down and rubbed sun lotion on to her arms and legs and shoulders. She picked up a book but put it down again almost immediately and lay back in the sun. Alex heard the door open behind him. He glanced round as Sahra stepped into the room. She saw him silhouetted against the shock of light.

‘Hi!’ he said, moving the window slightly.

‘Alex?’

‘Yes.’ He stood up, giddy with the blood draining from his head.

‘Are you busy?’

‘Not at all.’ Sahra walked towards him, put her arms around him, kissed him. ‘What is it?’ He held her.

‘We’re still looking in the same direction aren’t we?’

‘At this moment, no. We’re looking at each other.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Yes, of course. I mean, we are still looking in the same direction.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise. Look,’ he said, moving so that they were both facing the open window, looking out at the blaze of wheat and sky.

One night, when Alex and Sahra had gone to bed, Nicole and Luke carried their mattress and bedding out into the yard. They made love, Luke manoeuvring, selfishly, so that he was underneath and could see the sky. Nicole moved slowly, pulling away from him until he almost came out of her, then sliding back over him, taking him inside her again.

‘Shoulders,’ she said. He moved his hands up to her shoulders, stroked them.

‘Shoulders,’ he said.

‘Back,’ she said.

‘Lovely back,’ he said, moving his hands down the steps of her spine and then back up again.

Next she said, ‘Waist.’ He repeated the word and moved his hands down to her waist.

‘Hips,’ she said.

‘I love your hips,’ he said, moving his hand over the angle of bone.