And so it stands in that gentle half-demolished enclosure where three of us once frolicked and later, much later, two of us talked, and where Catherine and I may further contemplate it whenever we wish to view ourselves again in light of the handmaiden and youth combined.
Of course the cistern, with its resemblance to the squat church, and the little pink hermaphrodite, with its obvious resemblance to the yellow and vaguely female figure whose history is still fading high on the interior walls of the squat church, are merely two landmarks perused at random from our inexhaustible supply. There are other examples (the Byzantine grave marker on the beach beyond the pines, the table that still lies overturned in the lemon grove, the bend in a rocky path where I sponged the oil of roses onto Catherine’s soft back, a bed of crab grass) and some are more important, some less. And yet how can we choose, Catherine and I, what difference does it make which kiss we recover, or which single laugh or which faint cry we hear again in silence? The tapestry hangs down, the map is spread, one road is as good as the next.
Love beckons.
IDID NOT KNOW HOW LONG I HAD BEEN STANDING THERE with hands in pockets, legs crossed at the ankles, left shoulder slowly and heavily inclining against the flimsy and yet tightly fastened shutters, but I was quite aware of Hugh’s persistent silence and of the obvious fact that if I wished to open the shutters, as indeed I did, I had only to flip the hasp and give them an easy push with a finger or two. Still I waited, keeping my back to Hugh and preferring not to unfasten the shutters but only to lean against them with increasing pressure. I smelled the canal that lay outside at the back of the wall, I heard Hugh rattling his photographic equipment, I heard a solitary pigeon strutting above our heads on the roof. And I dismissed the sound of a liquid chemical slopping into one of his developing pans, I ignored Hugh’s silence, I asked myself what I was doing here with Hugh when I might just as well be embracing Catherine behind our favorite oleander tree. But then shoulder and shutters crossed some kind of threshold so that thanks to no apparent volition of mine they burst open, those ancient tightly secured shutters, and swung back on the light, the gray water, the stone embankment, the rusted body of the old motorbus now the color of red lead.
But I knew full well why I was here with Hugh, knew what Fiona wanted and what was coming, and perhaps should have been more ready than I was to enlist Hugh’s agony in dialogue. And yet I waited, allowing myself to wonder what had become of the woman I had once seen waving from this window where now I leaned, allowing myself to wonder again why the pitted and rusted vehicle down there in the water was more real, so to speak, than the one I remembered. But the lonely pigeon fell into view for a moment, Hugh moaned.
“What’s the matter,” I heard myself saying. “Something wrong?”
“I’m sweating, boy, can’t you see?”
“Chest again?”
“No, boy, it’s not my chest.”
“Well then,” I said, and paused. “How about Fiona?”
“Fiona?”
“Sure,” I said mildly. “Why not?”
“God, boy. Do you know what’s happening?”
“Let’s talk about it.”
But would I be able to bear down on Hugh’s problem? Could Hugh be comforted? He had not selected this room for nothing, it seemed to me, and I could not have been more aware of sagging floor, wet plaster, the crude and heavy bench covered with tin pans, blind cameras. Even the photographs scattered here and there on the white walls were stuck to the rancid plaster with thick and rusted nails that were more appropriate to beams, coffins, heavy planks, than to the glossy and curling enlargements of nude girls. And everything about Hugh himself bore out the nature of his purpose, the extent of his self-created pain, his determination to infect this hour, this day, our two lives and more with his despair. How could I miss the acid stains on the long and skimpy cotton shirt that clung to his chest? How miss the gray discolorations on his long cheeks, the beads of sweat in curling beard and knifelike mustache? How miss the black sailor pants on one side left unbuttoned from loin to waist? Or the fact that he had not even bothered to fasten the left sleeve with the usual safety pin, so that below what should have been the elbow there was merely the empty sleeve, the ghost unheeded but nonetheless in his way? How miss his eyes, his height, his agitation? And against all this I had only patience, tolerance, my systematic personality, Fiona’s silent prompting, the sun at my back. Was it enough?
“You just don’t know what’s going on. That’s all.”
“Do you?”
“I’m appealing to you, boy. Don’t let it happen.”
“Well,” I said slowly, “you’ve had your eye on Fiona since the beginning. Let’s reason from there.”
“She’s got a husband.”
“You’ve got a wife.”
“I’m talking about you, boy, not me.”
“And the torment,” I said and paused, “yours or mine?”
“You don’t know what’s going on in the shadows, boy. That’s all.”
“Tell me.”
“If we don’t work together, if we don’t stop this thing, you’ll lose her.”
“To you?”
“To me — to me. Don’t you see?”
I smiled, I shook my head, I waited. I leaned back in the frame of sunlight and glanced toward Hugh. And as I expected he began to pace, to stride from thick wall to wall, towering, lanky, disheveled, determined to keep us both captive in this little second-story dungeon of his and, in the bargain, to keep Fiona waiting. I watched him, wary and yet at the same time patient, and in that silvery monastic gloom his black bell-bottoms were flapping, his small black eyes were the eyes of a familiar saint. And he paced, he stopped, he tore down one of the photographs and stared at it with aching eyes. I took a long slow breath and tried again.
“Of course I care.”
“A dirty nest, boy. Is that what you want?”
“I suppose you’re trying to blame Fiona?”
“How about a little virtue, boy?”
“Fiona’s the most virtuous woman I’ve ever known.” “She wants me, for God’s sake.”
“Yes,” I murmured, “I think she does.”
“She laughs. She looks at me. She’s always talking about Catherine and me …”
The pigeon, I could hear, had returned to the roof and alone up there was pecking, scratching, fanning its tail. Now Hugh stood upright, and taller than ever in the right-hand empty corner of this oppressive room, reminded me in pointed ears, hard eyes, bitter mouth, that the face of Saint Peter was very like the narrow large-eyed face of Saint Paul. And were the ligaments beginning to part, the flesh to tear? Was his breathing under control at last? Was he beginning to appreciate the tone of my argument? For a moment I closed my eyes and when I opened them there he was, directly in front of me, legs spread, expressionless, with his good arm raised and all his long bony fingers rigidly extended and cupped to the little black pointed beard on his chin.
“It seems to me,” I said gently, “that what you’re really after is my permission.”
I sighed a low leonine sigh and waited, watched the black eyes turning red, listening for the next gagging sounds of his confusion. Would the stony fingers tighten on the pathetic beard? Would he extend his arm and place the full weight of his murderous stone hand against the fern-green field of my expansive breast? But he merely took a step closer and slowly, unconsciously, began to rake his long curving ribs with the spread and rigid fingers of his single hand.