John Hawkes - Death, Sleep & the Traveler

“But, Peter,” I said, “why not let me help?”

“It’s nothing, nothing. This is the last of it. We may begin. But as a matter of fact, my friend,” he said, dropping the boots, hoisting the iron burner to the top of the large black rock where he intended to cook, “you are really going to do the hardest work. All right?”

“My happiness,” I said, “as always.”

“Yes, you’ve enjoyed your moments of repose. You’ve been sitting on the blanket with your wife, whereas I have no wife. But you and I shall prepare our meal for Ursula, for the goddess.”

“Well, as you can see,” I said, “she is dressed for the occasion. ”

Peter and I turned as one and smiled approvingly at Ursula where she sat on a blue blanket in a large space cleared of stones. A coil of golden kelp was reaching toward her bare feet, she was dressed in a simple yellow garment that was ankle length, that had no sleeves, that revealed with gauzy and intended clarity all the details of Ursula’s thick but shapely body.

“You see,” I said, “she is wearing her yellow nightgown. She is trying to provoke us, Peter.”

“Beautiful,” he cried, “beautiful! It is the dress of the goddess.”

We leaned against the black rock that was like a small iron steamer run aground. We smiled at Ursula propping herself on the blue blanket with her seductive arms.

“Please,” she smiled, “don’t make fun of me. Either one of you.”

“Never, never!” cried Peter. “We are simply going to make you drunk and give you a romantic time here on my rocky beach! But first we must have our little feast of the sea. Do you approve, my dear?”

For answer Ursula merely leaned back her head, stretched her legs, arched her back, spread wide her hands, closed her eyes. She was discreet, she was indifferent, she was in repose, she was ready, in near-nudity she had become the obviously contented and waiting naiad of Peter’s cove. She who was perpetually moist was now reclining in the full warmth of her languor. Slowly she shifted her naked thighs, and then allowed her head to sink back even farther, exposing still more the fulsome curve of her bare throat.

“But in the meantime, Peter, I may have some cold wine, may I not?”

He had already made three trips from the house to the cove, once interrupting a long kiss I was sharing with Ursula on the blanket, and now had accumulated all we needed for the meal. Six bottles of cold white wine in an enormous steel container covered and filled with great cakes of ice, several bottle openers, butter and herbs and olive oil, wooden spoons and sharp knives, and silverware, hot plate holders and a folded white tablecloth and the iron burner filled with coals now lighted and live — all this he had arranged on and about the shipwrecked rock so that in a mere instant he was able to put into Ursula’s hand the requested crystal glass of chilled wine. She accepted it without opening her eyes. He turned, squatted, waved one of the wooden spoons over his array of culinary lyricism spread out by the sea.

“Allert,” he said, “let’s begin.”

But it was a familiar ritual and I had already drawn on the rubber boots, which were too small for me, and waded up to my knees in the cold current. The day was warm, the sea was colder than Ursula’s wine. Somewhere a dog was barking while above my head circled an enormous white gull that was meticulously cleansed and sparkling. With great rusted bucket in hand, and legs moving stiffly through the current, and bent almost double, slowly I proceeded forward like some great fleshly crane. Thrusting down my arm even to the shoulder, I clawed up handful after handful of large mussels glued together in clumps and swathed in mud. Yes, Peter’s cove was famous for its mussels which were sweet and grew to maturity in large hard shells that were blue and black. Now in my clumsy way I was moving across a bed of mussels as large as some farmer’s garden. I could feel the tight masses of the boat-shaped shells beneath the soles of the rubber boots and, as I wobbled forward against the current, pushing down my red and dripping arm, I was filled with the sensation of walking across the bones and shells of the earth’s cemetery beneath the sea. I took deep breaths, the mud-covered clumps of mussels rattled into my sea-washed bucket. Out and back I went, with the horizon at eye level, the occasional wave against my thigh, elbow, cheek, and even chest, crossing and recrossing the hard living bed under the tide, until I clambered ashore dripping, cold, flushed with the pleasure of this accomplishment, and bearing the enormous crusted bucket into which not another mussel could be packed. It thrilled my entire self to emerge the wet ungainly harvester of what Peter called our feast of the sea.

At the shore’s dark edge I washed the mussels. I sat on the rocks and wet the seat of my pants and scrubbed each shell, watched the mud flow off, polished each shell with the old scrubbing brush and, tasting salt on my lips and smelling the summer light on the air, became once more conscious of the affinity every sturdy and middle-aged Dutchman is expected to feel with the moving sea. Behind me Peter was tending the glowing coals, I was beginning to feel intoxicated on the wine in Ursula’s cold glass.

How long then the feast? Hours, it seemed to me, a gift of time. Almost immediately I myself drank the entire contents of one of the cold bottles without intending to. I savored a few cigars. Once while the great blue pot was steaming on the whitening coals Ursula asked for my hand, climbed to her feet and unsteady but laughing walked to Peter, who was wreathed in the steam, and kissed him, while Peter put down his wooden spoon, reached his hands behind Ursula’s back and raised her yellow skirt until in the rear it was bunched into the small of her back while in front it still grazed her ankles. In that position Peter fondled Ursula’s nudity until she returned to the blanket and he, drenched in the best of humors, returned to the preparation of the meal.

He steamed the mussels, he seasoned them, I heard the clatter of a wire whip, I smelled the aroma of cold tide and aromatic herbs, and the day began to dissolve in butter, wine, steam, laughter, the clanging of the abandoned blue kettle rolling down the rocks, the hiss of the coals, the showering light of the wine as it fell in an are from the mouth of another opened bottle to a waiting glass. Together we sat on the blue blanket, dipping each opened shell into the little tubs of melted butter and sucking in the golden mussels and licking our fingers, smearing our cheeks with the rich butter, tossing empty shells and now and then a limpid mussel or chunk of bread to the white gull that was standing on a nearby rock like the fourth in our party.

Minute by minute the day dissolved into its bright shadows. Ursula insisted upon feeding us, first Peter and then me, by holding a slippery mussel between thumb and first two fingers and then thrusting it against our lips and into our waiting mouths. The mussels were sweet and flavored with the depths of the sea. Peter remarked that they were ovular. The gull stalked along the top of the shipwrecked rock amidst cloves of garlic, crushed barnacles, flakes of the rusty iron, kernels of pepper. Below him we were lying in the wash of our own debris.

“Where’s my romantic time, Peter? Is this all I get?”

Ursula lay on her back with her arms drawn loosely upward like those of a ballerina. One knee was raised, the lower edge of the yellow skirt was gathered so as to barely drape the pubic shadows. Her eyes were open and to me her stomach looked invitingly rounded as a result of her unstinting meal. Peter had provided chocolates and even these she had eaten.

“Peter? Is this all?”

I leaned forward and with my handkerchief wiped a large oily smear from Ursula’s cheek. The gull stood still, no longer pacing in stiff dignity the top of the rock. Peter rolled to his knees and unbuckled his belt. I smiled and climbed to my feet.