John Hawkes - The Blood Oranges

“Stop him,” Catherine whispered in a flat voice. “Can’t you do something?”

“Too late,” I whispered back. “Besides, he’s enjoying himself.”

“Why can’t we all hold hands?”

“Wouldn’t do much good. It’ll be over soon.”

“Hugh,” Fiona said. “Tell us the dream.”

But even the timbre of Fiona’s voice was oddly diminished, and the restraint and poignancy of this second brief appeal made it only too clear that even Fiona was beginning to have reservations about the intensity of Hugh’s descent. And treading the dark air, sinking, fumbling, following each other down, once again it occurred to me that Hugh was somehow more than oblivious to Catherine’s fear and resignation, more than insensitive to Fiona’s now obvious misgivings and disappointment, more than indifferent to my quiet presence behind him at the end of the line. Perhaps our very compatibility was at last at stake. In all the thoughtlessness of his clearly secret self, perhaps his true interest was simply to bury our love in the bottom of this dismal place and in some cul-de-sac, so to speak, of his own regressive nature. Perhaps he was as indifferent to the male principle as he was to me, and was not searching for some sexual totem that would excite a little admiration in his wife and mine, but was instead determined to subject all four of us to the dead breath of denial. Who could tell?

“Oh, baby, look at the view.”

Suddenly we paused, leaning against each other, and crowded together at a high narrow aperture cut with beveled edge through the dark thick mass of what we now understood to be the outside wall, so that in the sudden funnel of clear light and with our heads close and hands on shoulders, arms about familiar waists, the rucksack pressing against Catherine’s hip as well as mine, suddenly we found ourselves sharing relief from the darkness and uncertainty of our now interrupted downward progress into this stone shaft. Silent, subdued and yet attentive, relieved and yet immobile, unemotional, touching each other and yet unmotivated by our usual feelings of mutual affection — for one brief somber moment we stared out toward the vacancy, the sheer distance, the brilliant timeless expanse of sea and air. Hugh had hiked himself as best he could into one corner of the empty aperture and was a grainy and rigid silhouette leering seaward. The scantness of Fiona’s tennis dress was pressing against the stiffness of Hugh’s denims, the breadth of my chest was partially straddling Fiona’s left shoulder blade and Catherine’s right arm, Catherine’s waist was soft and comfortable beneath the casual pressure of my left hand. There were no boats on the horizon, no birds in the air. Only the four of us, the silence, the fortress heavier than ever above our heads, the stones larger and darker and more imprisoning, only the constricted view of the inaccessible water with its all-too-real surface of white transparencies and maroon-colored undulations.

“Hugh,” Fiona said then, “why don’t we just climb back up and go swimming? I feel like a little swim. Right now.”

“I hate this place,” Catherine said. “I want to leave.”

“It’s just not much fun. I want us to have fun, that’s all.”

“Hugh knows about my claustrophobia, don’t you, Hugh? But at least you could listen to Fiona if you won’t listen to me.”

“The view’s attractive, but the rest of it just isn’t turning out as I thought it would.”

“Hugh’s selfish, that’s all.”

“Don’t you want to go swimming with me, baby?”

“Of course he does. But Hugh’s not about to change his mind. He’ll deny us the same way he denies the children.”

“But Hugh, we can’t even have a little hugging and kissing down there. Don’t you see?”

“He doesn’t care. He won’t listen to either one of us.”

“Help me, Cyril. Tell Hugh I always mean what I say.”

Laughing, leaning into both Catherine and Fiona and squinting heavily for another look at the gently shifting dark sea: “Don’t pay any attention to them,” I heard myself saying, “our wives don’t want to admit how much they like this little dangerous hunt of yours.”

“You’ll be sorry, baby.”

“No threats, Fiona.”

“I’m bored. I’m not going to say it again.”

“How about it, Hugh? Ready?”

Yes, I thought, my empathy was real enough, the tone of the position I had decided to take could not be missed. But did Hugh care? Had he been listening? Or was he more than ever oblivious, as I had at first suspected? Did it matter to Hugh that I had chosen sides — I who could always absorb the little resistances of his wife and mine, after all, with nothing to lose? Or was my support merely one more irritant that somehow enhanced Hugh’s feelings of remoteness in this our first small disagreement?

It was then that I recalled the morning’s trivial domestic incident described to me by Catherine in one long breath of privacy before we had assembled into our usual foursome — I leaving, Hugh returning, Hugh lunging into his rightful bed, Hugh appealing in hypnotic whispers for Catherine’s nakedness, Dolores entering that room of circular love, Hugh bounding up and striking his head against the rotten shutter which I myself had opened only moments before. But had Hugh sensed my intervention in both Catherine’s nakedness and the state of the shutter? Or had he simply viewed the unwitting appearance of the sleepy child along with the crack on his head as somehow deserved or as a deliberate manifestation of the dream he was still keeping to himself? Had the interruption accounted perversely for his morning’s cheer? But if all this were true, as suddenly I thought it was, and if the day’s expedition had in fact begun for Hugh with this misadventure, then of course the invisible lump on his head in some way accounted for his present leering confidence and refusal to talk. Surely the lump on his head fit in with his plans.

Still saying nothing, Hugh merely turned and once more started down. We followed, of course, and the light was gone, the vista of the bright sea was gone, a sudden vacuum in the dark air told me that Fiona was hurrying to catch up with Hugh in spite of herself. Catherine was doing her best, the walls were wet, the steps were steeper and the passage more narrow than before. From somewhere far below, the sound of Hugh’s creaking denims drifted up to us. And suddenly from those depths below us came Fiona’s faint cry along with an abrupt rush of pattering sounds that could only mean that one of them had fallen.

“What’s that?”

“Accident.”

“You better come on down here, boy. Your wife’s in trouble.”

“Keep going,” I said to Catherine, “but don’t try to hurry. Be careful.”

Fiona was sure-footed. Fiona was not one of those women who convert minor injury into an instrument of will whenever the neutral universe fails to conform in some slight particular to the subtleties of the female vision. She was strong, she was agile, she could not have fallen merely to teach Hugh a lesson or merely to hasten the swimming party which, however, I knew full well she intended to enjoy before the last light of the day. But that faint cry, that soft cry tinged with the barest coloration of accusation, I had heard it and recognized it immediately as the clear cry Fiona never uttered unless she needed my help. So as unlikely as it seemed to me, perhaps she was hurt. Perhaps there would be no swimming after all.

Beyond the suddenly visible bulk of Catherine’s shadow, I saw the white dress pulled up to the loins, the lifted knees, the slender face, the cavern floor, Hugh’s crouching shape, the circle of dim light. We were below sea level and now we were crowding together in a small wet space hollowed out from stone and thick with echoes.