John Hawkes - The Blood Oranges

Suspension, suffusion, peace for the four of us on that black beach. But it was all beginning to pass, I knew, and still I waited, now hearing the older girl shouting at the smaller girls behind the funeral cypresses. Shifting a little, growing mildly impatient myself, I waited, wondering if this momentary idyl would pass before the rose and golden metallic threads could begin to spin our separate anatomies forever into the sunset scene, would come to a sudden conclusion, incomplete, unbalanced. What was the matter with Hugh? Why was he not holding up his end?

I could understand Hugh’s affected lack of gratitude, could enjoy his efforts to conceal his feelings on seeing Fiona without her bra. And of course Hugh could not possibly know that I was well aware of the fact that he had already seen Fiona’s naked breasts, had already held her breasts in his good hand, so that in taking off her halter I knew full well that I was violating no confidence and was merely extending naturally the pleasures of a treat already quite familiar to the two of us. And I realized also that Hugh did not know that already I was as familiar with Catherine’s naked breasts as he was with Fiona’s, so that the baring of Catherine’s breasts would be no surprise for me. Was he then thoughtless? Selfish? Without even the crudest idea of simple reciprocity? Certainly he must have known that it was up to him, not me, to unfasten Catherine’s overly modest halter and take it off. What was holding him back? Could he not see that Catherine herself was puzzled, uncomfortable? Could he deliberately mean to embarrass his wife and to tamper with the obviously intended symmetry of our little scene on the beach? Hugh was unmusical, but I had hoped I could count on him for at least a few signs of romantic temperament. After all, how could any man love my wife and yet fail to appreciate simple harmonious arrangements of flesh, shadow, voice, hair, which were as much the result of Fiona’s artistry as of mine. But perhaps I had been wrong. Perhaps Hugh had no eye for the sex-tableau.

I yawned, glanced at the finely muscled music of Fiona’s breathing, began crushing another pile of shells. Back at the villas one of the smaller girls was now shrieking distantly in short monotonous bursts of pain.

And then, nearly too late, Catherine acted on her own behalf, brought herself to do what Hugh should have done, and out of feelings of exclusion or possibly pleasure or more likely irritable retaliation, managed to complete the picture that Hugh had almost destroyed. She frowned, tightened her lips, took a short breath and, crooking her elbows so that her bent arms became the rapidly moving wings of some large bird, reached behind her back and quickly, without help, unfastened her halter and pulled it off. It was an awkward, rapid, determined, self-sufficient gesture of compliance, and I was proud of her. And even though in that first moment of exposure she looked as if she wanted nothing more than to cross her arms and conceal beneath the flesh of her arms the flesh of her breasts, still she sat up straight and kept herself uncovered. I was proud of her.

And though I had already known what we would see when she finally bared herself, could visualize to the last detail the surfaces of Catherine’s nakedness, still it pleased me to see the round rising breasts and the nipples that resembled small dark rosebuds tightly furled, and to see all this, not at night in their villa, but here at sunset on the polished black stones born of the volcano’s chaotic fire.

How long would we manage to preserve this balance of nudity? For how long would we be allowed to appreciate the fact that the nude breathing torsos of these two very different women simply enhanced each other? I could not know. But here, at least, was the possibility of well-being, and though Catherine sat with eyes averted and arms straight and the large halter half-wadded, clutched, in one large hand in her lap, still at that moment I found myself tingling with the realization that Hugh’s wife had acted deliberately and in large part for me. And now, this instant, if Catherine had been able, say, to cup her breasts in her hands with Fiona’s thoughtless exhilaration, might not the sight of Catherine be as stimulating as that of Fiona? Then again, wasn’t the naturalness of Catherine’s slight lingering discomfort exactly as stimulating as the naturalness of my own wife’s erotic confidence? I smiled, I found that the ball of my right foot was pressed gently to the solid front of one of Catherine’s knees, I heard Fiona giggling and saw that Hugh’s blue-gray ankle was now trapped, so to speak, between both of Fiona’s energetic feet, and again I began to hope that I had not overestimated Hugh after all.

But rolling onto my hands and knees, getting to my feet with a cheerful groan, lumbering to cut off the oldest girl who was running toward us out of the cypresses and shouting for Catherine, and stopping her and displaying friendliness and knowing that when I turned to wave I would see distant gestures of busy hands fastening big and little halters once again into place — still I could only smile and do a few dancing bear steps for the angry child, because no sex-tableau was ever entirely abortive and because ahead of us lay an unlimited supply of dying suns and crescent moons which Fiona, and Catherine too, would know how to use.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to,” whispered Meredith and shook off my hand. But after all, I told myself, her one poor sour note could never be any match for old Cyril’s song.

YESTERDAY ROSELLA AND I WENT HUNTING FOR BLACK snails. And yesterday, for the first time, Rosella and I ate a meal together. Side by side on hands and knees, or squatting together, prowling about the walls of the villa, spreading the tall grass that grows in senseless clumps against the smoke-blackened walls of my crumbling villa, or poking one after the other in the flower beds nearly invisible now under thickets of crab grass, dead brambles, translucent yellow weeds that turn to powder at the slightest touch, or taking turns with a stick at the base of the little well house which is like a miniature chapel and in fact once wore a small flimsy hand-wrought Byzantine cross of iron on its conical stone roof — for some time Rosella has joined me in my pursuit of the snails, in silent accord has accepted the snail hunt as one of my simple activities safe enough, perhaps, to share. But then yesterday, filling the two hot bowls and with no change in her reluctant movements or empty face, pretending that our meal for two was a mere matter of course, Rosella sat across from me and ate her evening meal at the same time that I ate mine.

Because of the way the birds changed the pitch of their singing, or because of subtle light changes where I sat under the low hand-hewn beams, or because I could tell by the smoke’s odor that the fire was out, and by the breath of air at my small lopsided window as well as the sounds that reached me from the dead gardens could tell that the day was fading, somehow I knew as usual that the time was right, that Rosella had put aside her broom of twigs, had emptied her buckets and left her scrub brushes out to dry, had once again come unstuck from the web of her crude and exhausting day. It was twilight and time to look for the silver trails. Rosella stood waiting for me beside the well house, and I was pleased to see the earthen pot in her arms, the worn-down wooden sandals on the naked feet, the thin earthen-colored dress worn with blunt indifference.

“Here you are again, Rosella. The girl by the well.”

I smiled, Rosella merely shifted the chipped pot in her arms. Did she yearn for my hand, did she sometimes wish that I might join her in the squat church of the wooden arm? Did she admire my shabby black coat and vest and trousers, did she yearn sometimes to feel between her stubby insensitive fingers the golden watch chain that hung across all the breadth of my black vest? Was she beginning to need some physical gesture of affection? I thought she was.