The Blood Oranges: A Novel Read online

“Here she comes,” Fiona cried. “Help her.”

  How many times had we sat on this same fragment of rocky wall composed of stones that certainly were the teeth of time, sat together on this hill of ours and watched the transformation of hills and air, hemlocks and clouds, roots and rocks into a clear and sunlit but always lifeless panorama that we never ceased to admire? And now eagle, goats, unlikely girl. Perhaps Fiona had appealed to the sylvan sources in a voice more winsome and undeniable than ever before. At any rate I could not begrudge Fiona the exhilaration that was now removing her, distracting her, from Hugh and me.

  “Don’t frighten her, Cyril. Please.”

  I stood. We all stood. My very posture acknowledged the voices behind my back and welcomed the girl. Like one of her charges she scrambled up to us, raising dust, clutching at loose stones and tufts of grass, discovering crevices with her bare toes, laughing at the ease with which she emulated the climbing ability of her silken goats. Her face was round, her eyes were dark, the enormous flimsy hat remained somehow on the back of her head, there was a faded pink bow fastened to the bodice of the threadbare gown that fell below the knees and yet swirled and mingled with the bright air and dust she raised. She clung to the hillside, laughed again, glanced up and took her bearings and then lowered her eyes and without hesitation scrambled the last few feet into our waiting arms.

  “Made it,” I said aloud, and placed the flat of my open hand on the small of her back, helped her over the wall, stepped aside for Hugh. We crowded around her shamelessly, Catherine took hold of a bare elbow, Hugh vied with Fiona for a closer look.

  “She’s mine, baby, all mine!”

  “Fiona saw her first,” Catherine said. “Let Fiona try to talk to her.”

  “That’s right,” I murmured, “Fiona’s more bucolic than the rest of us.”

  “Never mind. I’ll give each of you a little taste!”

  We laughed. In unison we lapsed suddenly into silence. With unnecessary delicacy and concern for her feelings we stood around her—and stared. Not so the girl, who wanted to talk and did, and who was young but by no means a child and large though not as large as Hugh, Fiona, Catherine and me. Yes, it was the girl rather than ourselves who was outspoken in curiosity and who began and sustained our conversation, wanting to know us, wanting to tell us about her life. She spoke in a constant uninterrupted rush of sound and gesture, assuming our comprehension of the barbaric syllables and girlish pantomime. Up went the soft arm shaded with faint hair. She shrugged in the direction of the valley. She sighed, she extended both empty hands. She smiled, held up six fingers. She smiled, shook her head, touched both breasts, clapped a small hand to her unprotected loins. But all this was unimportant, she seemed to say, because she was only a goat-girl. Whereas we, she knew, were men of mystery, women of beauty. And she recognized us, she seemed to say, though she had never expected the goats to lead her to the good luck of this encounter, which she did not intend to spend on mere self-preoccupation. Hardly.

  “Make her stop talking, baby. It’s time to eat.”

  But she would not stop, was unquenchable, even while I raised my eyebrows and smiled and demurred and Fiona, lovely tense barelegged Fiona, opened the widemouthed sack and passed around the cherries. No, hands laden with that suggestive fruit and mouth stuffed with cherries, lips pursed to spit out the stones, on she talked—singling out each one of us for analysis, glancing to the rest of us for confirmation of her judgment, her appreciation, her right to associate herself with our mystery, our beauty. She overlooked Hugh’s missing arm, was simply not interested in his missing arm, but concentrated instead on Hugh’s little black pointed beard, reached up and stroked it with fingers juice-stained and knowing. She had tousled with the horns of the largest goat, she knew that the affinities between certain men and certain animals were to be respected. She touched her bare foot to Fiona’s bare foot, giggled when Fiona giggled, then swung about and exclaimed over Catherine’s breasts and filled her wet hands with Catherine’s hair. And then? And then she turned to me.

  Or rather she glanced at Fiona, glanced at Catherine, and then once more gave me the sight of her perfectly round eyes which for the moment were certainly a match for the cherries. But no gesture of awe, no smile, no uncomfortable burst of shyness, no quickness of breath. Nothing. She did not care that by now half her flock was beginning to climb the further wall of the valley. She counted on Fiona and Catherine for tolerance.

  “Kiss her, baby. She probably thinks you’re some kind of god.”

  “Of course she does,” I said, and bent down and obliged Fiona as always. My face was half again as large as the girl’s, my lips were full while hers were thin and remarkably pink in color. The kiss was a mere stitch in the tapestry of my sensual experience. The distance between the goat-girl and singer of sex could not be bridged by a single kiss, prolonged or not, agreeable or not. But I who had kissed how many girls at Fiona’s bidding now kissed this one, and beneath my hand I felt a sprig of clover, a spray of green growth snagged from the field. At least there was a pleasing moisture on my cheek and mouth, at least the goat-girl considered herself loved by the unattainable man whose name she would always try to remember and say aloud to her goats.

  “Hugh,” I said, turning away and glancing first at Fiona and then at Catherine: “How about it?”

  “Pass, boy. For me, one woman’s plenty.”

  “Oh, Hugh, kiss her just once, like Cyril. Catherine doesn’t mind.”

  “I don’t care if he kisses her or not.”

  “Doesn’t care, boy. You hear that?”

  “I mean it, Hugh. Kiss her, if that’s what you want.”

  “Cyril, baby, save us!”

  “No,” I said, laughing and taking hold of Catherine’s arm, “fun’s over.”

  “Oh, you’re just trying to spoil my morning. All of you.” And turning, laughing, staring at Hugh, pulling at the elastic of her tight shorts: “If you won’t kiss our little goat-girl, baby, kiss me instead!”

  “Anyway,” I said softly, “she’s gone.”

  Were they listening? Were they interested? I would never know because I had already waved at the tiny white figure once again watching us down there in the midst of her girlish vigil beneath the largest olive tree, had already begun to guide Catherine down the other and more gentle slope of our sunlit hill. We walked slowly and heavily, listening to the tread of my chamois boots and Catherine’s worn-out green tennis shoes, moved slowly down the hot pastoral grade with arms about each other’s waists and faces raised to the sun that was dissipated, invisible, yet uniformly present wherever we looked. Our bodies were free, our temperaments were in accord. And near the bottom of the hill we paused, and Catherine rested her head on my shoulder. Her voice, when I heard it, was low and sensible.

  “What was the trouble last night?” she asked. “Meredith again?”

  I nodded.

  “More nosebleeds?”

  I nodded.

  “She’s had them for years.”

  “Don’t apologize,” I said. “I’m fond of Meredith.”

  “Are you?”

  “Of course I am.”

  We kissed each other. The goat-girl and I had kissed each other. Surely on the hilltop we had just abandoned, Hugh and Fiona were kissing too. So my theory of sexual extension, I thought, was taking root, already new trees were growing from the seeds we had spit so carelessly onto that barren ground.

  “FIONA IS PERPLEXED, BABY. LISTEN A MINUTE.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We were standing together in the dark, like this. We were nude, like this. The whole thing was a duplication of us right now, but different.”

  “Well, I hope it was different.”

  “Please, baby. Be serious.”

  “I had an idea we might talk tonight. Tell more.”

  “I was giggling. Just a little.”

  “Sure you were.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Stop fencing. And you could contr
ol your delicious hands. I want to talk.”

  “Control your own.”

  “If I can’t talk to you, I’m lost.”

  “The difference, Fiona, the difference.”

  “It’s not just that he’s thin and bony and was trembling. I love all that. It was something else.”

  “Don’t stop now.”

  “God, you’re irritating.”

  “Sure I am. Why not?”

  “Baby, please.”

  “Start over, Fiona. My love can wait.”

  “I want you, baby.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “We were standing here in the nude, like now. About three o’clock in the morning, and I thought you were on his mind because he seemed taller than ever, bonier, and he was cold, baby, cold. I had my arms around his neck and crossed, like this. Loosely. I didn’t care about his hand on my behind. I hardly knew it was there. I guess I tugged on his beard a little bit with my teeth. But that’s all. I was just hoping that he’d know how good he made me feel and begin to relax.”

  “Sounds all right to me. What’s the problem?”

  “I wish you’d stop caressing me. God!”

  “Caressing stops.”

  “Kiss me.”

  “Let’s finish the seminar. What happened.”

  “You smell good, baby.”

  “You, too.”

  “That’s enough, now. Please.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Just stop being Cyril a minute, can’t you?”

  “You’re the one who’s puzzled, Fiona, not me.”

  “It’s just that he was doing something funny with that hand of his. I began to feel it. He was making me uncomfortable, and I didn’t know why. I was conscious of something a little different and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I was beginning to lose what you call my crispness, baby, I was beginning to smile the way I do when I’m not sure what’s happening. He was making me think, he was making me fish around inside for a little clue about what he was doing and how I was supposed to respond. It was such a small thing, and yet suddenly I couldn’t think about him or me but just about what he was doing back there with that hand of his. Not him, but his hand. Not me, but my behind. It wasn’t exactly a tickling, but it wasn’t sweet. I was uncertain, baby, uncertain. I whispered something to him, but he didn’t care. I tried to move, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t unhappy, just uncertain. Uncomfortable but interested. And then I got the idea, because he was pulling on me. Just pulling on me. He wasn’t rough, he wasn’t tender. Just holding half my little melon as hard as he could and pulling. He forgot me, baby. He forgot himself. And I did too. Because suddenly I got the idea that he must be working in collusion with some great big lovely satyr with hair all over his shanks and a lot of experience with little girls’ behinds. But he wasn’t. There was no satyr. Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No, baby. Nothing at all.”

  “Poor Fiona.”

  “Now I can’t think of anything else. Who’ll be my satyr —you?”

  “Shaggy shoulders, horns, a lot of experience. OK?”

  “You’re fun, baby, you really are.”

  AFTER ALL, I TOLD MYSELF, IT HAD BEEN A LONG HOTdawn, and emerging now from the dragon’s mouth of the dark green cypresses, I found myself once more in this mild extremity of a familiar mood. There was no longer any point in being dressed for the night, everything about me revealed the pointlessness of a garb that had already served its purpose. The dressing gown untied and hanging open like a pair of splendid maroon-colored silken sails bereft of wind, the carefully tended hair uncombed and rumpled, the clear eyes cloudy, the fresh mouth numbed with fading taste, the cord of the pajama bottoms no longer tied in a perfect bow but sleepily knotted, the feet unaccountably bare, and brows furrowed, hands in pockets, no message on lips that were nonetheless working together in sensual emptiness, not even a cigarette to prolong the vaporous moment —all this told me that the negative account was full and that my usual and fastidious preparations of only a few hours past were now used up.

  Catherine was no doubt sleeping. And Hugh? Fiona? The villa concealed on the other side of the wall of cypress trees behind me was dark, the villa lying directly ahead was also dark, concealing what contented faces or whispering mouths I could not predict. Would I hear them? Glimpse them? Join them? Or merely feel my way into a trysting place that would prove white and shadowy and empty after all? Was I, a lover, seeking the companionship of two more lovers or near lovers who might be thickly awake and just as interested as I was in a few moments of drowsy speech? I could not be sure.

  I felt the dew on the soles of my feet, I saw myself sitting on the edge of Catherine’s bed and fumbling, as I had, with spectacles but not with tennis shoes. I smiled to think that the spectacles were crooked on the bridge of my nose, smiled to think that for once I had deviated from my usual habits and had walked among the pines and beside the dark sea, had returned without special purpose to Catherine’s villa. I had pushed my way through the cypress trees, had strolled in the lemon grove that fanned out soft and silent at the edge of our lives. Why, I asked myself. Why? And replied with another smile, a keener appreciation of the weight of the silk now dragging down my shoulders and brushing my calves.

  Voices. One of the children demanding comfort from Catherine? But no, I told myself, walking squarely through the scented darkness that separated trees and villa, and feeling the irises growing large in eyes no longer as lackluster and heavy lidded as they had felt in the first portion of this wasted dawn—no, the voices were not high enough or querulous enough for the children’s. Thoughtfully I approached the rotten shutter locked open on the night and darkness within, avoiding stealth I approached so close to the irregular oblong of Catherine’s window that I might have peered inside, had I so desired. I stopped. I listened. I was close enough to see the morning-glories twining in the broken slats of the shutter, and yet even now the voices inside the familiar room were muffled, unclear, loud with intimacy but indistinct. I recognized the burden of the dialogue if not the words, and suddenly recognized the voices themselves because one was tired, insistent, reluctant, and belonged to Catherine, while the other was ingratiating, importuning, and obviously issued from a dry throat that could only be Hugh’s.

  But Hugh? Bare-chested? Fresh from his own trampled garden and wide-awake? Was that really Hugh in there, in this late hour sprawled across a sagging bed more mine than his? Hugh propped up on his one good eager arm and filled with clumsy confidence, talking to Catherine as he had never talked to Fiona, Hugh now singing his happy but constricted version of my sweet song? No doubt of it, I told myself, our paths were crossing, and I moved closer.

  I listened. I asked myself what was unusual about this pattern of sounds. I followed the rhythms of Catherine’s voice, the rhythms of Hugh’s, and then I understood. Even before I heard any actual words I understood that Catherine was employing a variety of defensive responses, whereas Hugh was saying the same words again and again as if the ease with which he had apparently shifted from Fiona’s stimulation to Catherine’s struggle justified his use of repetition. But why had Fiona let him go? Why must Catherine struggle?

  I could not make out any of Catherine’s negative phrases, and decided that she was hiding her face, speaking into the pillow. But no matter, I told myself, since Catherine’s declamations came readily to mind (those words and phrases of conventional denial), and since what most concerned me now, as a matter of fact, was the precise content of what Hugh was saying, the exact nature of those particular words which had borne the freight of his sexual needs for all the years of his marriage.

  For a mere instant he raised his voice. For an instant I heard him as clearly as if Hugh had popped his head out of the window and spoken not for Catherine’s benefit but mine.

  “Don’t be afraid of Daddy Bear,” he was saying, “don’t be afraid of Daddy Bear …"

  So this was what we had bargained for, Fiona and Cather
ine and I—this sad and presumptuous appeal from a man who had spent all the nights of his marriage fishing for the love of his wife with the hook of a nursery persona. The dew was a cold bath on the soles of my feet. My shoulders were heavy, my hands were more than ever resigned to the large pockets of the indifferent silk dressing gown. Instantly Hugh’s voice sank, subsided, once more rumbled along its subterranean road. The translation went hand in hand with the sounds of his voice, simple text and desperate message were one in my ear, and it took no great effort to identify the source of his words. Of course, I told myself, the honeymoon. What else if not a few words stolen in desperation from the vocabulary of the cheapest myth of childhood and spoken aloud unwittingly but successfully into Catherine’s ear in the first surge of crisis? Yes, I told myself, those words had worked, had carried Hugh with surprise and relief across that first rough spot of Catherine’s ignorance and thereafter had become the only lyrics to his monogamous song.

  But why deny the humor, I asked myself, why give way to pity for Catherine and contempt for Hugh? Was there any conventional privacy that might not yield up its unique embarrassment? While the morning-glories were straining to unfurl, while Hugh lay floundering in constricted speech, while Catherine struggled to interrupt his persistency and I stood listening—why not concentrate, I asked myself, on the consolations? At least Hugh still wanted to assume his sentimental bestial shape. At least the mode of his approach was nothing new for Catherine. At least their rituals and formulas of marriage were still in force. And whatever else might happen, I told myself, my insight of the moment and Fiona’s elegance would consort together to safeguard her from all the means of self-betrayal Hugh might devise.

  But Hugh was winding down at last, Catherine was beginning to give in to habit, or perhaps more than habit. I noted the first light in the sky, I moved one step closer to the window and assured myself that they would have a few minutes yet before all three children arose and came leaping into that shocked and harried bed. Yes, I thought, Hugh had slipped off one schedule but gained another. Their house was in order, so to speak, the roles had changed.