The Blood Oranges: A Novel Page 10

  “All right.”

  Did she take a breath? Was she turning her head in my direction? Had I heard the first welcome shades of laughter in her voice? I shifted knees, waited. And then she spoke softly, matter-of-factly: “Your wife really meant you’re the perfect man. I didn’t have to ask what she meant. I knew.” “Another heart-stopper,” I said as softly as I could, and heard the sweetness thickening. “Thanks for the heart-stopper. But how did you know?”

  “I knew.”

  A fresh surprise, more pauses, the low sound of her accent poised between invitation and resignation, a suggestion of despondency balancing the brief hint of pleasure. Could she have meant what she had said? Seen what she had claimed to see? At the very moment of wading from the absurd and dangerous canal had some vague recognition of the headless god lolling in the guise of my composure overcome her mortification and fear for her children? I could not be sure. But at least we were turning the pages at a swifter pace. And was I about to subject us to the test of the children? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Carefully I reached through our small wall of darkness and filled her glass.

  “So you think you see me as Fiona sees me,” I said, and laughed. “The perfect man.”

  “Yes. But it doesn’t have much to do with me.”

  “Not even now?”

  “Not yet.”

  “There you go again. More disappointment.”

  “Why should I be disappointed?”

  “Of course Fiona exaggerates. I’m a lot more ordinary than she’d like you to believe.”

  “You asked for a secret. I told you.”

  “Good. Let’s have another.”

  “No. It’s your turn. What’s in your pocket? What did she give you a moment ago?”

  Wrong, I thought, I had been admirably wrong, and I allowed myself to shape one gigantic, tremorless ring of smoke and then set it free and watched it swell, widen, disintegrate heavily in our night of the untasted grapes. Apparently she had witnessed something of Fiona’s playful exchange after all, had been aroused by being in the presence of Fiona’s swift act of partially denuding herself. But did I wish to hazard a discussion of Fiona’s simple and private gesture, or resort to it? Might I not better keep at least this relatively insignificant example of Fiona’s sex-language to myself? Was the risk too great, the ploy too easy? I made my choice.

  “Just Fiona’s panties,” I said under my breath. “They’re not important.”

  “Why did she take them off?”

  “Who knows? Do you really care?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Trust me.”

  “You remind me of my father.”

  “Listen,” I said then, as if our heads were inches apart, “listen a moment.” I waited, holding out my hand for silence and knowing that it was in fact time to act, and then carefully I uncrossed my legs and stood up so that the hard cool globules of the lowest grapes spilled onto the top of my head and brushed my ears. I was relaxed. I was crowned with fruit. And then under my breath: “Listen. I knew they’d wake the children. Let’s go.”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “We’d better look.”

  She moved, she too must have felt the passing weight of the grapes. I led the way, she followed. I heard the sound of her breathing, strolled on. At the far side of the funeral cypresses I glanced at the dying eye of my cigarette and waited while the trailing woman slowly extricated herself from the thorns and brittle twigs that lined the opening through the tall black cypresses. Beneath the clothesline that I had rigged at dusk we paused among the silhouetted trousers, dress, miniature dresses, stockings, all greater than life size and still dripping with the waters of the black canal. As we approached the villa that Fiona had opened up for them, I noted the high silver grass, the broken tiles, the listing shutters stuffed with rags and impacted with the earthen ceramics of transient wasps, the small gothic niche near the doorway where birds had raised their young and no candle burned, no icon glowed. And entering the cold corridor, I in the lead and she following, I smiled at the sound of the snoring dog and at the feeling of wet stone beneath my hand and the smell of the old kerosene lantern that was smoking in one of the cell-like rooms ahead of us. Once again I knew that a ruined villa was even more appropriate to passion than was a silent grape arbor filled with stars.

  “Come on,” I whispered, “let’s look at them.”

  And then I was holding high the lantern by its rusty wire loop and we were standing shoulder to shoulder and peering down at the two large and almost identical heads lying side by side in the smoky orange light at our feet. The faces were square, the curls were tight and dark, the lips were thick. Could these be the faces of small girls? I could understand their size (the mother was large, the father now silently romping with my wife was large) but it was difficult to account for their expressions of sexless power.

  “That’s Dolores,” I heard my companion whispering, “that’s Eveline.”

  Dolores, Eveline. Together we studied the sleepers, Catherine and I, and even these children were beginning to make a difference, were already strengthening nameless bonds between us, as I had thought they might.

  “And somewhere over there,” she whispered, so that I lifted the lantern and swung it loosely in the direction she appeared to be pointing toward with her restrained and contented voice, “is Meredith.”

  Together we felt our way among the piles of clothing, piles of blankets provided by Fiona, suddenly bulky articles of luggage (opened and ransacked or still locked, bound tight with archaic leather straps, but each piece smelling of the polluted water), until our slow elbow-knocking search at last revealed the girl called Meredith curled in naked sleep on a hasty pallet of Fiona’s pink sheets spread on the cold stones on the floor.

  “She doesn’t like me,” I whispered, and leaning closer saw that one of her thin fingers was in her mouth.

  “Of course she does.”

  “Fiona always wins the confidence of children. No such luck for me.”

  And slowly, again attempting to point through the darkness with her whispering voice: “We’re going to sleep in there. Hugh and I.”

  We waited, she made no further comment. It looked to me as if Meredith wanted to cry out in frail anger, but thanks to the sleep of children was unable to move, to make even the smallest sound. The hair across her brow was wet, one little sharply pointed ear was white.

  “They’re all safe,” I said. “No nightmares.”

  “No. They won’t wake up.”

  “Fiona and that noisy husband of yours may do their best,” I whispered as if I myself were rolling over casually on a soft bed in the darkness. “But I’m glad we looked.”

  “So am I.”

  Already I was groping behind me with my free hand while probing forward with the hot lantern toward the room they had chosen for themselves. Already we were moving forward together into the darkness empty and silent except for the dismal snoring of their old dog. Even by then I knew that the poor wretched animal was deaf, and both of us knew that otherwise the room was empty and that there was no longer any danger of stepping on an unsuspecting child. And yet our breathing was becoming shallow, in unspoken accord we were wary, both of us, of stumbling against an alpine pack or one of their swollen leather bags.

  “The lantern’s smoking,” I whispered. “Can you see?”

  “You know I can.”

  Once more I swung my arm solemnly and it all leapt to view—the dog, the scattered shoes, a tall medieval chest that smelled of iron spikes, the broad and sagging wooden bed whose tight percale sheets and a little hasty bouquet of hyacinths again revealed my wife’s impulsiveness. At the foot of the bed and on his scrap of dark blue carpet, the dog was sleeping on his back with his paws in the air. Carefully I lowered the lantern, the smoke rose between us, side by side we were standing in the midst of their transient lives.

  “You’re thinking of your children.”

  “Yes. My children.”

&nb
sp; “Tomorrow,” I whispered, “we’ll teach you and Hugh to play the grape-tasting game.”

  “All right.”

  She did not move, together we waited. And I knew again that it was time to act and slowly, distinctly, and gesturing about the room with my upraised chin: “In all this confusion,” I whispered, “can you find your pajamas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Put them on. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes.”

  “All right.”

  Elation? Tenderness? Guilt? Had I, who did not believe in trivial, tedious seduction, maneuvered her after all into a kind of uneasy submission? It was possible that hers was a troubled or low-pitched acquiescence or even worse a defensive gesture motivated more by the lyrical sex-play in the lemon grove than by her internal needs and the attention I was interested in giving her. By dawn would she feel nothing but distaste? Or would I return to find her deep in sleep? But no, I told myself (walking with careful step and heavy purpose past the grape arbor and on toward our own dark villa) no, I could not have been so very wrong, could not have so underestimated the flesh of her womanhood or so mistaken the sound of her voice. Small fears, perhaps, but no disappointment. No unfortunate deception or painful aftermath. Could anything be more unquestionable than love undertaken in the presence of her sleeping children? She had passed the test of the children, I told myself, surely had forgotten the cries coming from the lemon grove even before we had strolled away from the grapes.

  Yes, I told myself (abruptly detecting Fiona’s absence from the now familiar darkness of this room we ordinarily shared together) and emptying my pockets, putting aside Fiona’s helpful talisman, removing my large white tennis shoes, undressing once again though not for sleep—yes, of course I had read the cues and inferences correctly because now I recognized once more those first sensations of inevitability, certainty, slow emotional assent that had characterized the early hours of my most vivid relationships throughout the years. And my companion? Was my soft and unexplored companion now pacing me on the other side of the funeral cypresses, I wondered (climbing into my cerulean pajama bottoms and adjusting the ties, buttoning the top) or was she already waiting for my return and the approval guaranteed in the slowness of my embrace? Waiting already, I decided (thrusting first one arm and then the other into the cool loose sleeves of my maroon-colored dressing gown) but selflessly, patiently, since this was our first time and even now she must know that my lengthy preparations were all for her. Tying the sash, tugging at the silken lapels of my dressing gown, feeling about for handkerchief, black cigarettes, tortoise-shell brush and comb, and brushing my hair and then rinsing my mouth at the round mouth of a small earthenware vessel that tasted of Fiona’s lipstick and timeless clay—in all this I found myself pleasurably confirming once again my own modest belief in the theory that, whenever possible, it was always best to make the gift of love intentional.

  At the last moment I decided that it was easiest to wear the tennis shoes on my naked feet as protection against the thorns that were bound to lie embedded in the dark path between the villas, and so took a little extra time and put them on.

  “Cyril? Is it you?”

  The sleepy voice was coming not from the lemon grove but from the grape arbor, though I could see nothing and did not know if they were sitting on the stone bench so recently vacated or on the ground with their knees drawn up.

  “I know it’s you, baby. Stop hiding.”

  I paused, allowed the cigarette to hang between my lips, and smiled at the sleepy quality in Fiona’s voice which meant more than that she was tired of running and that her feeling for the one-armed man was lapsing predictably but only momentarily into girlish grief. Fiona habitually imagined the death or departure of a potential lover within the first few hours of any unexpected passion. But generally such moodiness was short-lived.

  “It’s me,” I called softly and laughed. “You know it is. How are the grapes?”

  And then clear, sleepy, fading: “We’re going to sit up and watch the sunrise, baby. OK?”

  “Great idea, Fiona. Great.”

  I heard nothing more, no sighing, not even the solace of a deliberately noisy kiss, and I shook loose the skirts of the dressing gown, walked on. To me the sunset was always preferable to the sunrise, but there was no way I could help them back there in the arbor and of course Fiona was too good a woman, inside or outside of marriage, to brook any interference with her romantic views. It would have to be the sunrise then. But at least in a sense I had given her the secluded arbor, since apparently the lemon grove, like the night itself, was not enough.

  “Is it you?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “I’m over here.”

  The lantern was out but I had followed the sounds of the dog and in my absence she, my waiting partner, had forced open the rotten shutters so that now the same faint light that Fiona no doubt was noticing in the grapes was also turning my partner’s orderly white pajamas into a beckoning yet somehow modest concentration of mute phosphorescence. The old dog lay as before, still dreaming his way toward death, and still the villa was filled with the pleasing chaos of scattered children, scattered signs of temporary life. Carefully I nudged aside what appeared to be one of her husband’s shoes and half facing the head on the pillow, sat down slowly on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were turned toward mine, her legs were heavy, her arms were at her sides. With gentle fingers I discovered that in her nearest hand she was holding the stems of Fiona’s impulsive little gift of flowers.

  “Was I long?”

  “I didn’t mind waiting.”

  Lifting my hand, leaning in her direction, knowing that she was as conscious as I was of my soft lips pressing together, parting and then pressing together again, slowly I slid up the bottom of her pajama jacket and exposed a few inches of her wide stomach and then withdrew my hand, leaving the soft broad belt of skin exposed. Her hardly audible vocal throb subsided, she did not move. I swung away and for a moment devoted precise fingers to the carefully tied laces of my tennis shoes.

  “I wonder if they’re lying in bed together right now,” she whispered. “Like us.”

  “Would it change anything?”

  “It might explain what I’m doing here with you.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “No.”

  I was standing barefooted beside the bed and untied the large bow I had made in the sash. “As a matter of fact,” I whispered, “they’re just sitting up to watch the sunrise. Is that better?”

  “That makes it worse.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Seated once more on the edge of the bed and laughing: “I can give you clarity,” I whispered, “but not understanding.”

  Only then did I remove my spectacles and for safekeeping put them inside my left tennis shoe beneath the edge of the bed.

  “Don’t be prudish.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Don’t worry,” I whispered, “just relax.”

  Eyes shut, mouth dissolving, oblivious to snoring dog and absent husband and little nearby unconscious witnesses but not to me, slowly she moved at last, waited, moved again. Her head had fallen to one side but she was listening to me, to all my voices, and watching me in the depths of her smothered eyes.

  “Your shoulder’s cold,” I said, and covered it with a soothing hand. Murmuring, waiting, stroking her hair, smiling at the thought that her soft arms were hardly able to reach around my back and that her hands had not been able to preserve their desperate grip on my enormous tough rump—beyond all this I the white bull finally carried my now clamorous companion into a distant corner of the vast tapestry where only a little silvery spring lay waiting to restore virginity and quench thirst.

  Later, and into my ear and softer, much softer than before: “I guess I wanted you all the time,” she whispered. “But I never thought we’d be in bed together.”

  “Glad you were wrong?”

  “Yes. I'm glad.”


  The sunrise, as later I happened to see for myself, was brilliant.

  STEADY WIND, HARD CLEAR LIGHT, THE FOUR OF US HOLDing hands on the rocks that faced the squat ominous remains of the fortress across the narrow crescent of dark water now harboring only four or five half-sunken wooden boats with high prows, broken oars, red chains. Moody, we were bound together by wind and light and hands. All eyes were on the ruined penitential structure just across the water that was apparently unchanged, unnourished by the sea crashing on three sides of us. All eyes were on the gutted shape of history, as if the clearly visible iron base and broken stones and streaks of lichen were portentous, related in some way to our own presently idyllic lives. But I for one was conscious of bodies, hands, squinting eyes, positions in line, was well aware that Fiona stood on my left and Catherine on my right and that Hugh was doomed forever to the extreme left and could never share my privilege of standing, so to speak, between two opposite and yet equally desirable women. Even on our promontory of sharp wet rocks it amused me to think that, thanks to Hugh, our sacred circle would remain forever metaphysical. Nothing more.

  But what was he saying?

  “That fort, boy … soon …”

  “Good idea,” I shouted and, nodding my head up and down, again I was struck with the perception that he was black while I was gold. But a ruined fortress was not a safe place for a man like Hugh, and though I did not yet understand the basis for so much oblivious intensity, still I admired his courage and was beginning to share his eagerness to undertake the expedition to that unwholesome place of bone, charred wood, seaweed.

  Suddenly I felt the pre-emptory childish tugging on my left hand and the cold lips against my ear. Fiona’s words seemed to lodge immediately and permanently in the still room of my brain.

  “Do you know where we are, baby? Tell me quick.” Surprised at her sudden and atypical desperation, but laughing and aiming my mouth toward the hint of white cartilage buried like an arrow in the now violent cream- and sable-colored hair: “Sure,” I shouted, “we’re in Illyria. Like it?”