John Hawkes - The Blood Oranges

“Are they all about the singing phallus, baby?”

“I guess they are.”

“Don’t you know, for God’s sake?”

“I’ll read them to you another time, Fiona. OK?”

“Hurry,” Catherine said then, “Hugh’s alone in there.”

“Well,” I said, gripping Fiona’s hand and Catherine’s elbow, “it’s too bad we can’t all share Hugh’s rather boyish interest in old fortresses and so forth. But on we go.”

“I love these old masculine places,” Fiona said. “You know I do.”

Still I hung back, surveying the light that shone only at sea, the incongruous mustard-colored stone walls which on three sides descended at a steep angle into the dark random tide, the entrance that was low and rounded and deep. And I noted what I suspected Hugh had failed to note in his characteristic haste and determination to see it all at a glance and to find his own lean shadow wherever he looked: the briars clotting the entrance way, the ringbolts and fallen rock, the iron bars driven into the rounded arch and now bent aside. Yes, I thought, herding Fiona and Catherine into the dark mouth of the fortress, yes, the gates were gone and the marble monsters no longer stood on their sunken pedestals. But nonetheless the mouth of the fortress remained guarded, oddly protected, within its own matter-of-fact condition of disuse, and only a man like Hugh could rush through this brief tunnel unaware of ancient armaments and present obstacles to passage. Catherine stumbled, I gripped her arm, Fiona’s uncertain voice echoed down the wet walls.

“Look,” Hugh shouted then, “burned!”

Chin high, legs far apart, rucksack lying brown and lumpy in the weeds at his feet, there stood Hugh waving us into the hot and empty courtyard and at the same time indicating with his long good arm the high walls, the blackened doorways, the cracked tower, the vacant blue sky overhead. I saw immediately that he was right, because all four walls had been deeply and viciously scorched by some devastating blaze so that they were streaked and seared with enormous swatches of unnatural color — intestinal pink, lurid orange, great blistering sheets of lifeless purple. And everywhere the weeds and fallen pediments were encrusted with the droppings of long departed gulls.

“Burned clean, boy. There’s nothing left.”

“No juice of the growing fruit, “I murmured, “that’s for sure.”

“Don’t be cryptic, baby. Please.”

“You can’t even smell it, boy. No ashes. No smoke. Nothing. It’s just a reflection — a reflection of some fiery nightmare. Don’t you see?”

“Sure,” I said and laughed, “if that’s what you want. But I prefer a little more than weeds and discoloration. How about it, Catherine?”

“Oh, Cyril, stop arguing.”

Everywhere I turned I could see that these burned walls were punctured with small charred doorless entrances leading no doubt into a labyrinth of pits and tunnels, cells and niches for birdlike archers. Never had the four of us been so starkly confined, starkly exposed. Hugh and Catherine and I were dressed appropriately for whatever ordeals might come our way (Hugh in his castoff Navy denims, Catherine wearing her gray slacks with the patches, I dressed in sweatshirt and chocolate-colored corduroys), whereas Fiona had disregarded Hugh’s instructions and was wearing only her eggshell sandals and mid-thigh tennis dress of shocking white. Stark, alone together, exposed, self-conscious. But despite my predisposition in favor of the lyrical landscape or any of those places conducive to my own warmer inclinations, and despite my conversational reluctance of only a few moments past, nonetheless I too was beginning to understand Hugh’s feeling for the condemned courtyard and gutted fortress, was already partially willing to forego my kind of pleasure for his.

“Well,” I said, and picked up Hugh’s rucksack, “what now? The tower?”

“No, boy, the dungeons.”

“Treasure,” Fiona said. “What fun.”

“OK,” I heard myself saying pleasantly, “I guess you know what you’re doing. Let’s go.”

So I slung Hugh’s clumsy burden from an easy shoulder, commiserated with Catherine in a long good-humored meeting of eyes, grinned at Fiona, trudged off across the courtyard toward the most distant and least inviting doorway in the northeast wall. Hugh leapt gaunt and spiderlike into that charred darkness, Fiona ducked after Hugh, Catherine entered head down and heavily, I whistled softly to myself and then pushed my way out of the sunlight and through the cold, tight, irregular doorless opening. There followed the typical moment of disorganization, confusion, pretended panic, while the four of us stood in single file and bumped together, enjoyed the last noisy sounds of indecision before starting down. I attempted to rummage inside the rucksack and dig out the torch, and discovered without surprise that Hugh’s torch was a nickel-plated, long-handled affair that was obviously filled with greenish and partially corroded batteries. I flicked on the weak beam and passed the torch from hand to hand to Hugh. Catherine had turned her back to me and appeared ready, now, to undergo Hugh’s childish adventure to the end.

“Cyril? Are you there?”

“Sure I am.”

“Steps, boy. They’re pretty steep. Careful now.”

The darkness was like the water in a cold well, the roof of the narrow corridor became the sounding board for Hugh’s loud voice. With slow shoulders and spread hands we felt our way along the slick invisible walls and occasional gritty patches of leprous masonry. In single file and breathing audibly, on we crept toward the diffused beam of Hugh’s torch which he was flashing in all directions now to indicate, as he said, the beginning of the steps. Above Fiona’s strong jasmine scent and the smell of the throbbing seaweed there drifted the unmistakable smell of human excrement — an undeniable fresh smell that could hardly help the tone of our quest, could not help but make Catherine uncomfortable and Fiona displeased. For a moment I allowed myself to muse on the odor of human offal, thinking that men inevitably relieved their bowels in all the ruined crypts of the world and that the smell struck some kind of chord in other men but to women was merely distasteful. What then of Fiona’s earlier asssertion of her love for the places of masculinity? Was that particular love of hers unqualified? The smell of the offal and Fiona’s sudden silences were the first indications that it was not.

“Well,” I heard myself saying, “we’re like a bunch of kids.”

“Speak for yourself, boy.”

“At least you could shine the light this way once in a while. Might help, don’t you think?”

“I’m cold, Cyril. What’ll I do?”

“There are a couple of sweaters in the rucksack, boy. Why don’t you pull one out?”

“No,” I said. “We’ll wait until we reach the bottom.”

I heard our three pairs of spongy rubber-soled shoes making soft contact with the first half dozen steps, distinguished the hard leathery sound of Fiona’s tissue-thin sandals on the stone. I saw Hugh’s haste registered in the jerky disappearance and reappearance of the light of the torch. I hoped that Hugh would find something to make this expedition of his worthwhile, I hoped that whatever he found would please Fiona and prove to be of interest, at least, to Catherine and me. I hoped that the last hours of the day would find Catherine and me alone together in one of those dense harmonious places of my choosing rather than Hugh’s, and would find Fiona once again running free and nestling with a more appreciative and agreeable Hugh.

“If there’s nothing down there,” I called, “what then?”

“It’s there, all right. I dreamed about it.”