The Blood Oranges: A Novel Read online

  “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.

  “What’s all this about the sunrise, boy?”

  But before I could answer: “Shut up, Hugh. For God’s sake.”

  I respected Fiona’s need for silence, always respected the stillness that contained her sudden electrical sense of purpose, and so refrained from remarking that dawn w
as Fiona’s hour and that everything about my wife suggested the flights of dawn and excitement of the first light, despite her admitted shivers of theatricality and the interference of Hugh’s crude temperament. Behind Fiona’s tight back I shrugged, glanced away from Hugh, and allowed this first clear chilly breath of morning to fill my chest. Fiona said nothing more, Catherine leaned forward and crossed her legs. Like Fiona, I tilted my head back into the rising light and contented myself with the paradox that while Fiona was concentrating on the sunrise Catherine was no doubt thinking of nothing more than the possibility of turning and placing a gentle hand on my bare chest. Again Hugh cleared his throat.

  So we sat together, waited together, on a fragment of stone wall in this sacred spot. At our feet lay the abrupt and nearly vertical and rock-strewn descent, and down there the windy darkness of the miniature valley contained one field of waist-high grass (remembered now from previous occasions rather than seen) as well as a single line of small pungent olive trees marching, so to speak, across the soft floor of that sheltered contour of darkness, gloom, silence. But beyond it all, beyond perfect valley and rock wall and Fiona, Hugh, Catherine and me (four witnesses seated flank to flank in the uninterrupted tension of Fiona’s rare feminine interest in natural phenomena), three low purple hills and a sweep of bare silvery horizon belied witnesses, lyricism, grape-bespattered joys of love, sleeping children, sleeping invisible village, belied the sunrise itself. Once more it occurred to me that the splendor of ominous distance reflected a side of Fiona and even an aspect of my own personality which Hugh, for instance, would never appreciate. After all, Fiona enjoyed the sight of moody colors and somber landscape—why not? Only Hugh’s compulsive interest in Fiona’s more obviously active life blinded him, I decided then, to the understandable necessity of Fiona’s silences. Fiona was sexual but hardly simple.

  “Look, baby,” she whispered clearly, “an eagle.”

  “Big one,” I murmured, “a real beauty.”

  “Where, boy? I don’t see any eagle.”

  “Take another look,” I said after a moment. “He’s there.” It was a small matter, of course, and yet the sky, it seemed to me, was empty except for rolling darkness and cold bands of silver. I looked, I squinted (seeing dark hills, inhuman sky, nothing more) and assumed that this was merely another instance of Fiona’s occasional inaccuracy for the sake of a deeper vividness, for the sake of an important mood. Between Fiona’s voice and Hugh’s sometimes brusque insistence on reality there was, for me, no choice.

  “I see him,” Catherine said, and pointed. “Up there.”

  “She’s right, boy. He’s unmistakable.”

  Nodding, suddenly identifying the crooked speck at the end of Catherine’s finger: “A sign,” I murmured deeply, agreeably, “it’s a doubly significant sign, Hugh, don’t you think?”

  “Keep quiet, baby. Please.”

  Correct and incorrect, I thought, right and wrong. And yet at bottom my sense of the situation was essentially true, and I felt only pleasure at the sight of this new justification of Fiona’s vision and my own supportive role. Unmistakably, as Hugh had said, the eagle was now hooked almost directly above us on bent but stationary wings in the black and silver medium of the empty sky. Stark, unruffled, quite alone, a featureless image of ancient strength and unappeased appetite, certainly the distant bird was both incongruous and appropriate, at once alive and hence distracting but also sinister, a kind of totemic particle dislodged from the uninhabited hills and toneless light. Here, I thought, was a bird of prey that would utter no cry, make no kill. And for some reason his presence brought to mind the handfuls of dark cherries which Fiona was carrying in the off-white woolen bag still slung from her firm shoulder.

  But was the bird descending, drawing closer to us, a deliberate herald of the rich desolation that lay before us, fierce bird of prey somehow attracted to large lovers and the cherries in Fiona’s bag? Was he singling us out as further confirmation of Fiona’s essential soberness and lack of fear, or even as a reminder of the terror that once engulfed the barbarians and from which Hugh, for instance, was still not free? At any rate the bird was descending and the hills, like distant burial mounds, were dark. Slowly I put pressure with my upper arms first on Catherine’s shoulder and then on Fiona’s.

  All eyes on the approaching eagle. Fiona began to shiver, Catherine returned the pressure of my affection. But Hugh, I thought, was growing impatient, was much too preoccupied with his own doubts and desires to realize that sometimes the faceless eagle heralds not only the breath of dead kings but the sunrise.

  Yes, the sunrise. And now, quite suddenly, the sunrise was so immense, so hot and brilliant that Fiona found it necessary to respond in kind and leaped to her feet, all at once was standing upright between Hugh and me and taking swift athletic breaths of the golden air, apparently unconscious of my own hand steadying her right calf and Hugh’s her left. The black and silver sky turned orange and foamed for miles behind the stationary air-borne eagle, and the purple hills dissolved, reappeared, revealed on thick green slopes a clear pattern of thistle, clay, warped trees, a few abandoned stone huts. Mist filled the valley at our feet and then lifted. The cold air grew warm, the eagle suddenly glided downward to the east and was gone, simply gone. The day was ours.

  “What’s that, baby? Listen.”

  I listened, we all listened, Catherine’s ring hand was on my thigh. Across from us the large round sun had already outlived its bright circumference, its glorious round orange shape had already given up its enormous singular shape to time, had become only the light of our day, the undefined brilliance of our morning song. But that clear random tinkling sound from the valley? That metallic musical sound too unstructured for music and yet harmonizing, so to speak, with the sweet smell of our still unexplored valley?

  “Sheep bells,” Catherine murmured. “That’s what it is.”

  “By God, boy, do you see what I see?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” I said, and drew Fiona’s upright leg more tightly to my rib cage and with my other hand signaled Catherine through the brown cloth on her hip.

  Because cold dawn had given way to hot morning, the sun had yielded to light, the eagle had flown off only to return to us as a flock of long-haired semidomesticated animals.

  “Goats,” I said pleasantly, “not sheep.”

  “But the girl, baby. Look at the girl.”

  It was the new day’s gift to Fiona, nature’s final gift to my wife. Yes, the random tinkling sound we had heard was produced by bells fastened around the necks of goats, small rusty pear-shaped iron bells hand-forged by peasants oblivious to the sad melodies that unknown cultivated strangers might hear in their noise. And goats, an entire flock of them, wearing long brown shaggy robes the color of Catherine’s slacks but more shiny, and bearing bone-colored curling horns on the tops of their nodding heads, now suddenly filled our valley with motion, color and the sound of their bells. From where Hugh and Catherine and I sat and Fiona stood, we could see that these stately animals were attended by a young girl wearing a large white hat and running, slowly running, through the tall grass.

  “I want to talk with her. Right now.”

  “How can you talk with her?”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  “Don’t you worry about Fiona. She’ll do what she wants.”

  “Of course she will,” I said and laughed. “But there’s the problem of language. And the hill’s too steep for Fiona, Hugh. Believe me.”

  “Cyril,” Fiona said, and the calf of her leg was hard and trembling, the skin was cold, “she’s just a child.”

  “A young woman,” I heard myself saying. “About seventeen. But sit down, Fiona. You’ll fall.”

  “I’m holding her, boy. Don’t worry.”

  The moment passed. I made a low humming sound of affirmation in my nose and throat and said nothing. And who was to say which was the more remarkable, I asked myself, the girl or the goats? The goats were overly large, t
heir coats long, here and there were the obvious bell-carriers, the jangling sunlit leaders, and it was quite apparent that the entire flock had come in slow hungry pursuit of the tough little black leaves of the olive trees, was following some purely aesthetic instinct to feed at dawn on the resilient branches laden with dawn’s oldest and most meager fruit. We could hear the hooves, the bells, the grass, the rubbing of long hair which was either dry and regal or still damp from the recent discharging of white milk. And the girl? This girl who carried no crook and appeared to feel no responsibility for lost kids or straggling elders? How could her slight vaulting presence down there be anything if not more remarkable than the indifference of her ancient goats?

  “Baby. She sees us!”

  The girl was waving. Standing still and waving. And in this instant, the very moment of correspondence between the girl’s world and ours, Catherine returned her wave, Fiona suddenly tightened her fingers in my hair. Hugh laughed because the largest goat had discovered the largest olive tree and like some tall but malformed adventurer was standing on his hind legs and nibbling in tenuous balance at the dusty leaves. It was like Hugh, I thought, to care more about the rising, unnaturally distended old goat than about the girl.

  The goat chewed while the girl ran to us. Full of trust and candor she skirted a creamy boulder, she sped through the grass. On bare feet she raced toward the rocky, precipitous slope that separated the hilltop where we watched from the secluded green valley where her unsuspecting goats were feeding. But where had she gotten her clothes, the castoff garden hat and tattered dress so clearly unintended for rusticity? How could she be so unaware of girlhood, so unaware of the fact that the goatherd, in this lonely world, was usually a sullen boy or unshaven, unfriendly man?