John Hawkes - The Blood Oranges

“Oh, baby, a flute …”

From a pocket in his open coat the shepherd had produced a short wooden pipe on which he now played his reedy tune for Meredith. The light faded, the rising wind blew through the open coat, his unfocused eyes were fixed on Meredith, the bony fingers rose and fell on the holes of the crude pipe. Had he known all along that he would stand here playing his shepherd’s pipe? Was this why he had joined us and taken up the shovel? Only to pipe his endless frail tune into the approaching night? At least Meredith would never forget those sounds, I told myself. Nor, for that matter, would Hugh.

He was still playing when I retrieved the shovel, still playing when once again we straggled back into the wall of trees. And still playing when from the darkness ahead, where Hugh and Fiona were quite invisible, I heard against the wind and that faint piping the clear tones of Fiona’s voice.

“He was attractive, baby. But not as attractive as you.”

IT IS ANOTHER ONE OF OUR MURMUROUS NONSEQUENTIAL midafternoons in Illyria. Together we lounge around the small white female donkey which only this morning Hugh discovered stock-still in the lemon grove. Hugh holds the donkey’s rope. Catherine ties back her hair, Fiona smiles, all four of us have taken turns at the makeshift shower.

“Listen,” Hugh says, “we can either pack the baskets on the donkey and walk. Or Cyril can carry the baskets and Fiona can ride the donkey. What do you say, boy, shall Fiona ride?”

“Sure,” I say, admiring the little trim white body and pearl-colored hoofs, “let Fiona ride.”

“Help me up, baby. OK?”

We face each other, we kiss, we look into each other’s eyes. I put my heavy hands on Fiona’s waist and lift and seat Fiona sidesaddle (though there is no saddle) on the donkey’s rump. I step away, Hugh gives the end of the rope to Fiona and puts his quick hand against the small of her back.

“I’ll hold her on, boy. Don’t worry.”

Fiona waves. Off they go at a fast walk through the lemon trees which soon give way to orange trees white with blossoms.

“Wait,” Catherine whispers, “they’ll see.”

“Can’t wait,” I say, and pull her into another full-length embrace, mouth to mouth with Catherine’s hands in my hair and my own two weathered hands pressing the warm flesh beneath the blouse and beneath the wide waistband of Catherine’s skirt. We hold each other, we erupt into a few choppy kisses, again we hold each other — Catherine and I who are too heavy to ride on donkeys, too large in each other’s arms to move.

And yet I lift my head, Catherine lifts her head, for a moment we see that all this while Fiona has been riding back and forth between the trees, Fiona with her bare legs thrust out for balance and steadied at the same time by her smiling Hugh. They wave, the air is sweet, the small white distant donkey carries its laughing and weightless burden through the orange trees.

“Baby,” Fiona calls, “we can do whatever we want to do. We really can.”

Remember?

OR IN THE SEA AND SWIMMING, ALL FOUR OF US SIDE BY side in an undulating line of naked bathers peaceful, untiring, synchronized, stroking our slow way out from the pebbly shore behind us and forward toward the little island rising ahead. And today Hugh is as naked as the rest of us. Today he lies in the low waves beside Fiona and his body rolls, his tufts and patches of black hair shine in the foam, his thin legs are cutting imaginary paper, his stump is pink, his good arm is doing double duty.

“Think we’ll make it, boy?”

“Sure we will. Only a few hundred yards or so to go. Nothing to it.”

Porpoises. Four large human porpoises similarly disposed and holding formation, laughing, stroking the waves, and Fiona is swimming on her side, like Hugh, while Catherine and I are riding heads down and on our bellies, though now and again we swing together and bump and touch. With every breath we see each other through pink spray and across green foam.

“Baby, it’s so beautiful. I could swim forever.”

It is Fiona’s idea, of course, these naked watery idyls to the little island that slopes up from the sea and gently turns like the bare brown sinuous shoulder of a young girl. And the idea corresponds somehow to Fiona herself and to the experience — in the idea as in the sea itself we snort, kick, float, swim on as if the less familiar shore will never rise to our feet or as if the freshening depths will never give way to the warm shallows.

But it ends. We drift against the island, and Fiona is out and running, and silvery wet-ribbed Hugh is gasping for the breath of paradise but giving chase. Sea to sand, obviously it is another moment of metamorphosis which Catherine and I, still dripping, still knee-deep in the pale tide, share at a glance. Her hair is plastered to cheek, neck, upper chest, and down her left arm. Her small amber-colored eyes are fixed on mine. She is large but I am larger, and side by side we climb from the pooling sea and walk together across the few remaining feet of dry sand to the privacy of the nearest convenient rocks behind which I draw Catherine into another full-length embrace. And suddenly Catherine is all mouth, all stomach, all thighs and hands, all salt and skin and hair, Catherine sliding between my heavy legs and I between hers until later, much later, our knees can spread no wider and the brass voice resounding in the oracle of Catherine’s sex and mine can sing no more. We extricate ourselves. We kiss. We smile. I strip the wet and partially graying hair from Catherine’s cheek. Hand in hand we walk back to the clear green shallows for a rinse and then strike off across the sand for our usual cool rendezvous with thin Hugh and slender Fiona in the little abandoned seaside chapel at the eastern edge of this small timeless island.

Hugh and Fiona are already inside when we arrive, their sandy footprints already shine on the stone floor when we join them within the whitewashed wall of the little chapel. There is a cross of sorts on the roof but no windows, no altar, no iron bell, no icons, no religious furniture, as if the chapel itself had once been drowned in the depths of our green sea and then hauled to the surface and left to dry out forever. We enter, Catherine and I, knowing that Hugh and Fiona are already there. In silence we greet each other with eyes and fingers, we who are now four naked figures instead of two. There is light in the narrow doorway, the white and shadowed eruptions of this room reflect the nudity of our four tall bodies congregating, so to speak, in reunion. And if we are all comparing notes, as it were, Fiona smiling at Catherine and squeezing my arm, Hugh glancing slowly in my direction, Catherine watching the movement of Fiona’s legs and thinking of me, I catching a glimpse of Hugh in Fiona’s steady eyes — still we are all unpaired selfless lovers agreeably reunited in the island chapel.

“Baby,” Fiona whispers, “I like us all bare together, don’t you?”

I smile, Hugh tucks the tip of his injured arm against Fiona’s ribs. We linger on.

Remember?

“YOU’RE WEARING YOUR NICE OLD DRESSING GOWN,” Fiona was saying. “Have fun, baby.”

“I could stick around here tonight just as well, Fiona. What do you think?”

“You’re feeling amorous, baby, and she’s expecting you. I can tell.”

“This blue mood’s not like you, Fiona. I’ll stay.”

“No baby. Go ahead. Please.”

Yes, I was feeling amorous, as Fiona said. All day long I had sat outside our villa and watched Fiona’s mounting silence, had sat with elbows propped on heavy thighs and blown halfhearted, stillborn, unappreciated smoke rings and watched Fiona walking back and forth with her head down and her two strong hands on her buttocks. We had stared at each other over the flashing rims of our wineglasses, we had had one of our love lunches, as Fiona called them, but had made no love. She had smiled, she had looked wan, she had made no move to walk beyond the villa. And all day long there had been no sign of Hugh. So now in the darkness there was no mistaking the message of Fiona’s hand on my silken sleeve, no use arguing against Fiona’s mood. She was determined that I go, that she stay behind, that she wait alone either for my return or Hugh’s unlikely arrival. But Fiona was wearing her white and tightly belted terry-cloth robe instead of her lisle negligee, which suggested that she would spend the night with neither one of us.