I intend to read and sunbathe. Then I will go for a swim. Ten laps would be fine. It is so far south here, the sun beats mercilessly upon my head. I put on my blue yachting cap and sit up. I look out as far beyond the horizon line as I can. That is an old game — trying to see how far one can see. But how does one know? After a while — it is extremely hot — I walk to the water and rush in, determined not to be cautious. I do not want anything to stop me. The water isn’t cold. I swim ten laps, I think. It is exhilarating to be in nature in this way.
I return to my blanket and towel off. It is an utterly peaceful site. I am oblivious to everything but the luxurious lassitude physical exertion and sun cause. I peer through my telescope but see no one in the distance. I douse myself again with oil, lie down, and place my arms over my eyes. I am close to sleep. The air is still. Jupiter and Poseidon must be holding their breath. The waves lap sweetly, blissfully, at the wet sand. I drift off. I am not sure how many minutes go by.
I become conscious suddenly of something that is near. It rouses me. It is present. Opening my eyes but temporarily blinded by the noonday sun, I perceive a human form. Gradually I can see, but I can hardly believe my eyes. More strange than my chancing upon the Gypsies, who had been in my mind and on my map, as I had wanted to chance upon them — a matter of controlled randomness and, therefore, not unaccountable — is what happens now. Rather, who happens now. That this meeting occurs on an obscure beach in a town not important enough to be on a map makes it all the more improbable. But, for all of that, it happens.
Standing above me is Stephen the Hermit, the ex-child-movie star, the lunatic, the man who loves electricity. Details of his biography mount one on top of the other as he smiles down at me. Tall and thin, he looms over me. I have not seen Stephen since that night when he ran away from the harbor, humiliated by Roger, Wallace, the Dutchwoman, and me, too, I suppose, his meal left behind uneaten.
Stephen lopes over to the space beside me and throws down his towel. He positions it not too close to mine, providing us a wide berth. As I remember it, be suffers from claustrophobia and fears all manner of intimacy, which to him must promise and threaten suffocation. Imprinted on his oversized towel is a salmon-pink flamingo and the words “Miami Beach.” The colorful and incongruous souvenir towel is in marked contradistinction to Stephen, who is in no way like the tourist who might sunbathe on beaches there. It is unimaginable — Stephen the Hermit strolling on Collins Avenue, traipsing into a hotel catering to the nouveaux riches.
Is there a meaning to his appearance? My mind races along these lines — he is an apparition, then a presentiment. A ghost, someone who has come back from the dead. He has, in a sense, been dead to me. To the Gypsies he would be a mulo! But frankly and quite simply, his presence is first, to me, were I to be completely honest, intensely annoying and implicitly a rebuke. There is something about his accidentally turning up in the place I desperately and urgently needed to find that is irksome.
I glance at him casually, I hope. Stephen is settling himself down innocuously, patting his shoulder bag — a striped and shabby cloth affair — and placing it neatly on his towel. The bag bulges. What could he — of all people — be carrying in it? Still, taking him in anew, and seeing him thus, I scold myself for my initial lack of charity. At least he has not been consumed by fire. He is safe and, from the look of him, eating well.
Stranger to say, once I have gone through a compendium of negative responses, I am happy to see him. I have always liked Stephen and have maintained a genuine if distant affection for him. But one would think he were a long-lost brother, so pleased do I become to have his most unexpected and unusual company. Of course I know from my reading about the Gypsies that to them we gadje are brothers, sedentary brothers. I smile to myself — and we are sitting! Normally, as I’ve already mentioned, I do not espouse or experience brotherly feelings. I dislike my brother intensely. Stephen, though, is nothing like my brother. I suppose, also, I am somewhat guilty about not having chased after him that night. It was unconscionable of me. What could I have been thinking?
Stephen bounces up and again smoothes the creases and wrinkles in his blanket, for rather too long a time. Will it ever be right? It seems that it never will. Perfect, perfect, he murmurs. His sounds are more like purring than speech. At last satisfied, he stations himself at the edge of my blanket and stares down upon me again. He is grinning. It is disconcerting, but then one expects bizarre behavior from a hermit. I sit up. Obviously he is pleased to see me, too. He is in much better shape. He has washed recently. He is wearing cut-off blue jeans, faded but not in ruins, and he has trimmed his unruly beard. Actually one can now recognize how handsome he is or was, how nature once endowed him generously. Stephen had the kind of looks that could kill, as Stan Green would put it. His looks surely brought him an early fame and caused an equally precipitous fall. His looks may have killed only him.
“Welcome, welcome,” he exults. Up until this moment, no words had passed between us. After this hearty salutation Stephen flings his arms out as if to embrace me. He doesn’t, as I am sitting. It is merely a gesture. I stand up and embrace him, which surprises him. Perhaps this is somewhat uncharacteristic of me. Nevertheless, he doesn’t run away, which is good. In unison we both sit down again upon our respective blankets and remain so, side by side, for quite a while. The uncanniness of his appearance in this lonely spot forges my silence. And also it is pleasant to be with an old acquaintance to whom one does not have to speak or to explain. Stephen does not, and would never, ask me why I am here, what brought me to this place, and why should I inquire it of him?
He is scooping up sand with one hand and depositing it into the other. He does this over and over, compulsively repeating the same action in the same way and in the same rhythm, until I feel on the verge of nausea. It could be hunger. Or it could be the sun beating down upon me. Like me, Stephen may be at a loss for words or without any pressing need to converse. That is typical of him. No polite colloquy for Stephen. With him, as far as talk goes, it is feast or famine.
Sweat pours from him. The English, I believe, have difficulty taking the sun. He is turning beet-red. Stephen leaps up and races toward the sea. As a child might, he swings his arms exuberantly and runs crazily — his legs going this way and that — then he flings himself headlong into the water. I marvel at his joyousness and strangeness. And to think, we are here together.
I change position, so that my back is to the sun. I clasp my knees to my chest. Stephen has always loved swimming and diving and will be in the water a long time. I watch him frolicking. He may think he is a dolphin. Such a harmless soul, now, but when he was younger and eminently presentable, men and women alike flocked to him. He toyed with them and cast them off and about with nary a care. I watch him swimming back and forth — he is shouting and singing ecstatically. I look again at his absurd beach blanket. Where did he get such a thing? And his shoulder bag. What does he have in that silly bag? I could, I think playfully — without his ever knowing — search it. I could go through its contents. This mischievous idea plants itself inside me and takes root. He would never know. How would he know?