T. Boyle - The Women

It took him a moment — he was, as she was soon to learn, rarely at a loss for words — and then he spoke the truth, the gratifying truth, quite plainly: “I’ve never seen anyone like you.”

She let her smile bloom again and then — had she ever felt so free, so magnetic? — she began quoting Rimbaud in the accent of the transplanted Parisienne she was, and of course he’d never seen anyone like her, how could he have? “ ‘Mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré! Les Aubes sont navrantes. / Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer: / L’âcre amour m’a gonflé de torpeurs enivrantes.’ ”

He was smiling too, smiling so hard it looked as if his face would rupture, but this was most definitely not a smile of comprehension. Could it be that her hero, this arbiter of taste, this passionate artificer, the Hephaestus to her Aphrodite, did not speak the language of romance? Of civilization?

“Comprenez vous?” she tried, leaning forward now.

An awkward moment, the first in this enchanted encounter, passed between them before she switched to English. “It’s a poem,” she said. “Meant to soothe you in your suffering because you must know that others have experienced desolation too. You’re not alone, that’s what I’m trying to convey. Not alone.” She leaned into the desk. “Listen,” she said, dropping her voice lower still, “the poet says: ‘But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking. / Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter.’ And now the last line, which applies perhaps more to me in my present state than to you, though I know you’ve felt deeply and felt the hurt of it: ‘Sharp love has swollen me with heady languors.’ ‘Swollen me!’ Isn’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, taking up one of the tools on his desk — a triangle, was that what it was? — and turning it over in his hand. “It’s quite beautiful. The French especially. You recite so, so evocatively.” He set down the triangle, took up something else now — a T-square. “I’m more of an Emerson man myself. Longfellow. Carl Sandburg — he’s a personal friend. Terrific man. Great soul.”

And now he was reciting for her, his face lit with the pleasure of it, the music of him, his eyes: “ ‘You will come one day in a waver of love, / Tender as dew, impetuous as rain, / The tan of the sun will be on your skin, / The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech.’ ”

She sat perfectly still a moment, letting his words resonate till they were alive inside her, till she felt them like a rhythmic pulse that beat along with her own. “Magnificent,” she said. “Bravo! You recite so exquisitely I would have thought you an actor. And your voice—”

His smile showed the perfection of his teeth. He tapped one hand on the glowing surface of the desk as if to keep measure with the lines still flowing in his head. “It’s the poet,” he said. “Give Carl the credit. Speaking of poets, would you happen to know of Taliesin, by the way? Has he come into your purview over there in Paris?”

He hadn’t. She’d never heard of him. She composed her face, all seriousness and a bright eagerness to know. “Is he Italian?”

“No, no, no: I’m talking of the legendary Welsh bard and shape-shifter, the man whose face was so beautiful it was said to radiate light. 94Richard Hovey — do you know Richard Hovey? He wrote a masque called ‘Taliesin’ some years back? No? First-rate. I think you’d appreciate it. Very delicate and deep. Like you.” He paused, as if he’d gone too far, his eyes dodging away from hers for just an instant. “Well, anyway, I’ve named my house after Taliesin — my estate, that is. In Wisconsin. After the poet. And you must see it, absolutely, you must — when, that is. .” he trailed off.

“I know what you’re feeling,” she said, with fervor, real fervor. “You poor man. How you’ve suffered. You have. I know that perhaps better than any soul on this earth, because we’re attuned — we’re twins, that’s what we are, twins. ” She was so excited she very nearly jumped out of the chair to run to him, clutch him to her, heat and heal and solace him with a passion so perfect and deep he’d put all the tragedy and ruin behind him forever. But not yet, not yet: the moment was too delicious. She slid forward till she was perched on the very edge of the chair, her hands in motion, her eyes speaking for her. “But listen,” she said, “listen to Gérard de Nerval, just listen: ‘I move in darkness — widowed — beyond solace, / The Prince of Acquitaine in a ruined tower. / My star is dead…’ ”

Her eyes were full. She couldn’t go on. If she were to look back in that instant on all the heightened moments of her life, all the intensity, the passion, the quarrels and turmoil and transcendent flights of sheer spiritual grace, nothing could have compared to what she was feeling in those precious minutes since she’d walked through his door. She couldn’t seem to breathe. She felt faint. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “Forgive me. I’m just — it’s just that I am so. . deeply. . moved. . ”

And then he was there at her side, offering his handkerchief, the finest cambric, faintly scented, and she was dabbing at her eyes. “Here,” she said, impulsively snatching up the pamphlet she’d brought him, “here, take this as the smallest consolatory gift from me to you in your time of need — and take it to your heart. The scriptures heal— Jesus heals. I know. I’ve been down that road.”

He looked puzzled. Son of a preacher, nephew of Jenkin Lloyd Jones, who was one of the great pulpit orators of his time, and he was doubtful? Reluctant?

“Here, take it,” she said again, her voice reduced to a kind of sob, and she had to get hold of herself, had to bear down here a moment, or the mood would evaporate, the whole shining room with its glitter of art and hope and beauty dissolved like a vision out of The Arabian Nights , and she felt the pressure of his hand in hers and then the book — Mary Baker Eddy’s sweet, sweet revelation — passing from her fingertips to his. 95“You’ll heal,” she whispered, her voice steadier now. “Trust me. You’ll heal.”

Somehow they were both standing. His arm was round her shoulders and his hand— his hand —was unconsciously massaging the short thick sturdy hairs the seal had once worn in the polar sea to fight back the chill of the world. It was perfect. It was exquisite. And what was he saying — murmuring — in her ear? “There, there, it’s all right. I’ll be fine. I will. And you, you kind, beautiful and spiritual woman, you’ll be fine too. I’ll read the book. I’ll read it because it’s from you.”

She raised her eyes to him. She was trembling. Her voice was a whisper. “Has anyone ever told you you have the most magnificent head?”

Again he looked puzzled.

But she went on, the words coming in a rush now: “You must sit for me, I won’t take no for an answer, and though I prefer hands — hands are my special interest, and feet too, hands and feet, but no matter — I’ll mold a bust of you and it’ll be magnificent, the grandest thing I’ve done. But you will sit for me? Won’t you? Promise?”

The next two weeks were a tourbillion of dinners, dances, museums, art exhibitions and automotive visits to the houses he’d built and of which he was as preening proud as a child with his first assemblage of wooden blocks. He would pull into the drive at one domicile or another without announcing himself, spring out like an acrobat to rush round to her side of the car and wait impatiently while she prepared herself for the blast of the wind, then march her round and round the place, expatiating on every last detail — right down to the origin of the copper in the downspouts — before waltzing into the house as if he owned it and starting all over again with the interior details. All the while, the inhabitants standing patiently by as he criticized the style and placement of the furniture or some element of his conception that didn’t seem sufficiently appreciated, he never took his eyes from her. And despite the cold, despite her aching feet and the strain of bursting into the homes of total strangers who looked at her as if she were something between a captive and an invader, his gaze — awestruck, appreciative and undisguisedly carnal — made her glow.