They pass their life together, they pass boys fishing, walking to the end of the pier with a small eel tied, doubled up, on the hook. The mute eye of the eel calls out, a black dot in his plain, silver face. They sit at the table where their grandfather eats, Nedra’s father, a salesman, a man from small towns, his cough yellow, the Camel cigarettes always near his hand. His voice is out of focus, his eyes are filmed, he hardly seems to notice them. He brings death with him into the kitchen; a long, wasted life, the chrysalis of Nedra’s, its dry covering, its forgotten source. He has cheap shoes, a suitcase filled with samples of aluminum window frames.
Their life is formed together, woven together, they are like actors, a group of devoted actors who know nothing beyond themselves, beyond the pile of roles from old, from immortal plays.
The summer ends. There are misty, chilly days, the sea is quiet and white. The waves break far out with a slow, majestic sound. The beach is deserted. Occasional strollers along the water’s edge. The children lie on Viri’s back like possums; the sand is warm beneath him.
Peter and Catherine join them, together with their little boy. The families sit separated, in the solitude and mist. Peter has a folding chair and wears a yachting cap and a shirt. Beside him is a bucket filled with ice, bottles of Dubonnet and rum. An eerie and beautiful day. The fine points of mist drift over them. August has passed.
At a pause in the conversation, Peter rises and walks slowly, without a word, into the sea, a solitary bather, swimming far out in his blue shirt. His strokes are powerful and even. He swims with assurance, strong as an iceman. Finally Viri joins him. The water is cool. There is mist all about them, the swelling rhythm of the waves. No one is in sight except their families sitting on shore.
“It’s like swimming in the Irish Sea,” Peter says. “Never any sun.”
Franca and Danny come out to them.
“It’s deep here,” Viri warns.
Each of the men holds a child. They huddle close.
“The Irish sailors,” Peter tells them, “never learn to swim. Not even a stroke. The sea is too strong.”
“But what if the boat sinks?”
“They cross their hands on their chests and say a prayer,” Peter says. He performs it. Like the carved lid of a coffin he sinks from sight.
“Is it true?” they ask Viri later.
“Yes.”
“They drown?”
“They deliver themselves to God.”
“How does he know that?”
“He knows.”
“Peter is very strange,” Franca says.
And he reads to them, as he does every night, as if watering them, as if turning the earth at their feet. There are stories he has never heard of, and others he has known as a child, these stepping stones that are there for everyone. What is the real meaning of these stories, he wonders, of creatures that no longer exist even in the imagination: princes, woodcutters, honest fishermen who live in hovels. He wants his children to have an old life and a new life, a life that is indivisible from all lives past, that grows from them, exceeds them, and another that is original, pure, free, that is beyond the prejudice which protects us, the habit which gives us shape. He wants them to know both degradation and sainthood, the one without humiliation, the other without ignorance. He is preparing them for this voyage. It is as if there is only a single hour, and in that hour all the provender must be gathered, all the advice offered. He longs for the one line to give them that they will always remember, that will embrace everything, that will point the way, but he cannot find the line, he cannot recognize it. It is more precious, he knows, than anything else they might own, but he does not have it. Instead, in his even, sensuous voice he laves them in the petty myths of Europe, of snowy Russia, the East. The best education comes from knowing only one book, he tells Nedra. Purity comes from that, and proportion, and the comfort of always having an example close at hand.
“Which book?” she says.
“There are a number of them.”
“Viri,” she says, “it’s a charming idea.”
9
IN THE RESTAURANT THEY WERE seated in the way he preferred, on adjoining sides of the table. The creases in the linen were fresh, the room filled with light.
“Would you like some wine?” he asked.
She was wearing a plum-colored dress, sleeveless—September is warm in New York—and a necklace of silver like foliage, like a swarm of i’s. He noticed everything, he fed on it: the ends of her teeth, her scent, her shoes. The room was crowded, brimming with talk.
He talked as well. He explained too much but he could not resist. One thing led to another, inspired it, the story of Stanford White, the city as it once had been, the churches of Wren. He invented nothing; it poured from him. She nodded and answered with silence, she drank the wine. She leaned with her elbows on the table; her glance made him weak. She was absorbed, hypnotized almost. She was intelligent, that was what made her extraordinary. She could learn, comprehend. Beneath her dress, he knew, she had nothing on; deBeque had told him that.
Her apartment belonged to a journalist who was away for a year. Books, sharpened pencils, wood piled neatly for the winter, everything one could need. There were copies of Der Spiegel, white Kneissl skis. She closed the door behind her and turned the lock. From that first moment, that cool and trivial act, it seemed a kind of movie started, silent, almost flickering, a movie with foolish sections which nonetheless consumed them and became real.
There was one large room. Photos of friends on the wall, of boats, parties, afternoons at Puerto Marques. A plastic radio with the cities of Europe printed on its dial. The Odyssey by Kazantzakis. Red and blue edges of air-mail envelopes. Vailland’s Écrits Intimes. In the sleeping alcove, a mirror set in hammered silver, carved birds, a hand-printed spread.
“It looks like Mexico,” Viri said. His voice seemed to lurch from him, it had no tone. “Are those your skis?” he asked.
“No.”
As if without reason then, she kissed him. He removed her shoes, one, then the other, they fell to the floor and rolled over. Her feet were aristocratic, well-formed. The faint sound of a zipper. She turned and raised her arms.
The wide afternoon bed, the dark of drawn curtains. He was escaping from his clothes, they fell in a heap. She lay there waiting. She seemed quiet, remote. He touched his forehead to her like a servant, like a believer in God. He could not speak. He embraced her knees.
It was an apartment in back facing courtyards with trees still in leaf. The sounds from the street had died. Her head was turned to one side, her throat bared. The newness of her drowned him. Somewhere near the bed the phone began to ring. Three rings, four. She did not hear it. It stopped at last.
They awoke much later, weak, reprieved. Her face was swollen from love. She spoke impassively.
“How do you like Mexico?”
He finally replied. “It’s a nice town,” he said.
He started her bath. In the dimness he saw his reflection like that of another man, a triumphant glimpse that held him as water crashed in the tub. His body was in shadow. It seemed strong, like a fighter’s or jockey’s. He was not a city man; suddenly he was primitive, firm as a bough. He had never been so exhilarated after love. All the simple things had found their voice. It was as if he were backstage during a great overture, alone, in semi-darkness but able to hear it all.