John Hawkes - The Blood Oranges

“Cheer up, Cyril. Please.”

Had I glanced at her book? Had she dipped her fork into the broken shell of my cold crab? Had she stared into her tall goblet while I drank from mine? Had I missed her in the midafternoon and then glanced up to see the hand on her hip, the slow consoling smile on her distant face? And had this dying sun waked the two of us and driven Fiona to an endless toilet and me to a hot cup of coffee ground from a handful of dead and blackened beans? Yes, this was how the day had passed, true to form.

Once again I found myself observing that while the first night of adventure was always sober, despite darkness and excitement and fresh uncertainties, the first day was inevitably somnolent and oddly drunken, despite the sun overhead and the return of what I thought of as private consciousness. And once again I found myself observing how different we were, Fiona and I, and yet how similar. Because if it had taken her all day to arrive at the white frock, whereas I had climbed into the old white linen jacket without thinking and as soon as I had drunk my coffee, still my slightly rumpled white jacket and beige shirt unbuttoned at the throat revealed precisely the same taste and motivation as Fiona’s frock. Unspoken traditional decorum was always the handmaiden of unconfessed anticipation. At least our new-found friends on the other side of the funeral cypresses would appreciate if not understand the significance of the way we looked. Unless this was to be another one of those rare first days that sometimes ended, as they began, in silence.

“Oh look at them. They’re all dressed up.”

“Pretty formal, don’t you think?”

“But sweet, baby, sweet.”

So time was leaping out of the shadows after all and I was standing, Fiona was hiding one hand behind her back and hitching at a fresh pair of panties beneath the frock. The diffusion of the sunlight was already jumping into the clarity of approaching night. And simply because of a powdery blue jacket, a necktie obviously tied by a woman’s hand and a gray dress with a bright red sash at the waist? That’s all it took, I thought, a few twists of clothing and a few shared memories of a night that was not dead and only lengthening, starting over.

“Found this in the luggage,” Hugh said. “I thought you’d like it.”

“Oh, Cyril. Cognac.”

“Let’s try it.”

“No, thanks, boy. Not me.”

“Hugh’s been sick.”

“But Hugh, what’s wrong?”

“Cramps. Diarrhea. Weakness.”

“Feeling better?”

“Ask Catherine, boy. She’ll tell you.”

“Hugh’s all right, baby. You can see he is.”

“Yes,” I said and laughed, “great Pan is not dead.”

Meeting. Mingling. Greeting each other. And I shook Hugh’s hand, Hugh shook Fiona’s hand, I put my arm around Catherine’s waist, Fiona took a sudden firm grip on my white linen sleeve. And the day? Gone. The night? Deep. The sunlight? Green. We admired the bottle of cognac, we glanced from face to face, Hugh assured us of his recovery. We told Hugh that the weakness would pass, Catherine admired Fiona’s frock. Fiona suggested that I open the bottle of cognac covered with black mold, but I suggested we wait.

“But, baby, what shall we do?”

“Well,” I said, “before it gets too dark, let’s look at the grapes.”

“Oh, Cyril, the grape-tasting game …”

“Want to play?”

I turned, led the way. I stepped inside the arbor and waited for Fiona to join me at a run and for Catherine to notice the empty stone bench and empty glasses, waited for some sign of Hugh’s obvious disappointment. The trellises of thick green leaves, the sandy floor, and overhead the dry and silent clusters of purple grapes — for me this was clearly the place for the bedding down of lovers. Whereas Hugh’s initial reaction, I expected, would be distaste for the grapes and impatience at what now amounted to his sudden confinement not only with Fiona but with wife and presiding host as well. But he would wait, I thought, we could all wait. Never had the grapes been this heavy on the vine, never had the fat clumps been this brown, this blue, this purple. Here even Hugh might awaken to the smaller joys of my harvest.

“All right,” I said quietly, cheerfully, “come close.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“You’ll see.”

“Cyril is a pastoral person. Aren’t you, baby?”

“Sure I am.”

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Catherine said in the shadows, “but I could stay right here forever.”

“But it’s a little silly, boy, isn’t it?”

“Oh,” I said from somewhere in the center of my chest, “it’s not so silly.”

I looked from face to face and noted with satisfaction that Hugh was somber and was buttoning his ill-fitting jacket while Catherine, despite her soft words, was glancing about the darkened arbor in a large vague gesture of shyness, uncertainty, apprehension. But for once Fiona was standing still, perfectly still, and was studying my collected features with bemused and yet unfeigned admiration.

“Come on, come on,” I said again. “Closer.”

I had been careful to position myself where the weight of the grapes was greatest. And to this spot I now drew my wife and Hugh’s wife and Hugh, so that in the green light and in oddly appealing discomfort we were all four of us standing shoulder to shoulder with the lowest grapes nesting in our four heads of hair. I felt myself warming to mock seriousness, I knew that each one of us was witness to the other three, I knew that individual and group self-consciousness was mounting as Hugh attempted to dislodge a flat green leaf from the side of his head and Fiona gave me her bright level stare and Catherine shifted slowly from foot to foot. For a moment I allowed myself to concentrate on the distant scent of orange blossoms and the nearby complacent song of some little member of the thrush family.

“It’s easy,” I said then in low tones of solemn confidence, “we just keep our hands behind our backs and go after the grapes — with our mouths.”

“No grapes for me, boy. No thanks.”

“Oh,” I said and laughed, “you don’t need to eat them. Just try to catch them in your lips and pull them down.”

“Why not pick a couple of bunches with our hands,” Hugh said, “and go sit under a tree?”

“Let’s do what Cyril says, Hugh. Please.”

“Baby, I want to be first. OK?”

“No, Fiona,” I said slowly, “I’m first.”

For a moment longer I took all the time I wanted — adjusting spectacles, letting arms hang loose, cushioning the backs of both clasped hands against upper thighs and lower buttocks, unlimbering the torso inside the old white linen jacket. And then I rose on the balls of my feet and simply stuck my face up among the grapes. But strain? No. Exertion? No. Yet Hugh and Catherine and Fiona could hardly help but be aware of my lifted chin, the soft open planes of my tilted face, the heavy and tightened flesh of my bent neck. And was Fiona fidgeting? Hugh grunting? Catherine sighing in disbelief? I heard them, I too was amused at their vision of my bulky athletic figure sporting with playful aesthetic hunger among the grapes. Yes, I told myself, my large head poking for no apparent reason into the symmetrical fat clumps of purple grapes was no doubt an amusing sight, as I intended it to be. But more, much more. And now the grapes were sitting on my round lenses, rolling down my nose, bobbing against my hard closely shaven cheeks, lolling and falling across the tops of my ears. I set one in motion with my tongue, I reached out for another with ready lips, it popped away. But I persevered, methodically I sucked in that single plump dangling grape and gave a tug, closed my mouth, split the skin, began to chew.