“I’m not sure. Tell me.”
“How about the day we met?”
Had I gone too far? Summoned too abruptly our missing shadows? Merely ripped open old graves, old secret bowers? Exposed myself to more conventional grief and unjustified accusation? Was she less perfectly healed than I had begun to assume? But no, her hands were on her womanly green hips, her head was turned in my direction, the immediacy of her amber-colored eyes was still undimmed. Yes, I thought, she was looking directly at my golden spectacles and into my warm eyes and the white boat was exerting more than ever its pull on the fringes of Catherine’s consciousness.
She spoke without insistence, without emphasis, clearly: “I never expected to talk to you again.”
“I know,” I murmured, lending her strength.
“But I’ve changed my mind.”
“Catherine. Doesn’t it remind you of a wedding?”
“Not ours.”
“Positive?”
As if my voice and the very depths of my broad chest were not enough, suddenly our heads were together. We stooped, splashing ankle-deep in the first slow reddish swell, stooped just in time to see the rounded bottom of the bow slide within inches of the red tile and the first clear drops of spray already trickling in a bright pattern of transparent bubbles down the steep curve of that thickly enameled white wood. Was Catherine gasping? Was I gasping too? But even as Catherine and I perceived the clear bubbles splattered like an ever-changing necklace on the lower portion of the gleaming and steeply pitched white bow, the bow itself moved forward and sank, obliterating the first signs of spray and foam at the very moment they leapt up and settled expressly, I thought, for Catherine’s pleasure and mine.
“Careful,” I said, “not too close.”
The men fell back. The boat was free. Catherine laughed. We were wading in soft water up to our thighs, and all around us the men were floundering, the villagers were wading in behind us, the golden fish on the bow of the boat was flashing. A figure leapt high (hair wet, face contorted in both grief and joy) and snatched away the white flowers and flung them off to float bereft and abandoned on the surface of the deep sea tinted with blood.
“Look, Catherine. There he is.”
“I see him.”
Yes, he was there. Yes, we saw him. Impish, angular, energetic, indomitable, immersed to his armpits but ready to spring, ready to take possession of what was his, dark head and narrow shoulders distinctly visible as the white stern twisted and rose above him and the orange sun came down, coagulated, turned time itself into a diffusion of thick erotic color.
“Help him,” Catherine said.
“Don’t have to.”
We waited. Our shoulders touched. The water that was saturating Catherine’s pea-green slacks was filling my pockets. Somebody shouted, the oars clattered, the white stern came down. And then the old man jumped and seized some fragment of glossy wood and in full view of ancient women, small boys, shouting friends, two strangers whose spiritual relationship he somehow shared, propelled himself upward so that in the next instant, as the now orange-white stern towered above us all once more, the old man also towered above us, balancing up there on his spread knees that were wiry, insensitive to pain, and naked. Yes, naked, because he had had the forethought to rip off his ragged trousers before committing himself to frenzy and determination, had kicked them off at the edge of the beach before the white boat had rolled, pitched, begun to float. The stern was at the top of its arc, Catherine and I were staring up into the orange brilliance of the old man’s aged nakedness, and his shanks were dripping, his buttocks were dripping, his obviously unspent passion was hanging down and rotating loosely like a tongue of flame.
We looked, we waved, Catherine’s eyes met mine.
“Starting over,”I murmured and laughed, straightened my spectacles, wiped the spray from my face. Catherine smiled. At last, I thought, we had come under the aegis of the little crouching goat-faced man half naked at the end of the day. What more could we ask?
WE BROKE, WE RAN, WE SCATTERED UPWARD ON THE FACE of our favorite hill like birds or like children, and because I was last in line, lowest figure in that bright pattern, and was holding back as usual (tail of the kite, conscience and consciousness of our little group), I found myself generalizing the visceral experience of the moment itself, found myself thinking that our days were idyls, our nights dreams, our mornings slow-starting songs of love. On my extreme right Fiona was already halfway up the hill (hands waving, large woolen bag slung over her shoulder army-style and bouncing on a lean hip), Hugh was angling in sly pursuit, off to my left Catherine was stumbling loosely and happily toward the bare crest of that familiar hill, while behind them all and on a clear tangent between Hugh and Catherine I brought up the rear heavily, gracefully, varying my speed, saving my breath, and wondering what effect this kind of dawn exertion might have on the ruthless fist lodged in the blackness of Hugh’s chest. The early morning trip to the hill was Fiona’s idea, of course, and I suspected that even had she known of Hugh’s secret ailment, which apparently she did not, there would have been no change in Fiona’s plans, no slacking of Fiona’s pace.
“Come on, boy,” Hugh shouted over his shoulder, “quit lagging.”
I waved him on. In the chilly air and on the tawny slope between two darkly nesting growths of small olive trees, the four of us constituted the four major points of the compass oddly compressed, distorted, oddly disarrayed, and Fiona sprinted girlishly toward the top where the silence had no direction and the sun in another moment or two would be rising.
Like birds, I thought, like children. In a glance I recorded Catherine’s dark brown slacks, Hugh’s black bell-bottoms, Fiona’s white shorts cut low on the waist and high on the thighs (tight elasticized garment winking above me in the dawn light), my own soft cord trousers hastily donned in semidarkness and stuffed into the tops of large and only partially laced chamois boots now slow and rhythmical on the stubbled surface that smelled of dead grass, sharp spice, sweet dust. My faded denim shirt still unbuttoned and flowing away from massive breast with its bronze luster and sleep-matted hair, Hugh’s black turtleneck, Catherine’s plain mustard-colored blouse, Fiona’s pink shirt unbuttoned and merely tied at the waist — even these simple details of careless dress reminded me of Fiona’s whimsical leadership and unaccountable energy. Thanks to a nudge from Fiona’s elbow and the sound of her voice, we were all four of us only minutes away from the twin villas and still sleeping children. A few details of clothing revealed at least to me our haste, our dawn dishevelment, our desire to please each other, our sense of well-being against that panorama of steepening hillside and wiry dark green trees.
“Don’t say anything, Cyril. Don’t spoil it.”
The top. The silence filled with the smell of thyme. And I who might well have been first came last, climbed over the crest and smiled at Fiona’s eager words and squeezed into my place on the fragment of stone wall between Catherine, who was out of breath, and Fiona, who was always breathless yet never out of breath. I drew up my heavy knees and wiped my mouth on the back of my arm and sighed. Hugh’s heart was pounding, Catherine’s dark hair was loose. From Fiona’s bare stomach came a faint brief purling sound of some internal agitation, Hugh cleared his throat, Catherine shifted audibly on the cold stones. And clasping my knees and leaning to the rear so that I was able to glance at Hugh behind Fiona’s firm curving back, for a moment I caught Hugh’s eye and smiled. Was he attempting to convey some kind of masculine detachment in the grip of Fiona’s enforced silence and rather theatrical poetic expectancy? I could not be sure. At least I could afford to nod and smile at the narrow sweat-drenched stony face and did so.