The Blood Oranges: A Novel Page 15

  “Hugh, look what he’s done!”

  “Catherine, what do you think of what Cyril’s done to our little girls?”

  “They’re sweet, baby. They really are. But what about yourself? I want to see you wearing a great big floppy crown of flowers.”

  “I’ve got one.”

  “Well, put it on, baby. Let’s see.”

  I shrugged, reached down and slowly retrieved the wreath at my feet. The children watched, Hugh laughed. Cathernie’s eyes met mine. With both hands I settled that outspoken yellow mass into the heavy texture of my blond hair. I felt the tree at my back and slowly glanced up through the speckled light toward the clear sky that accompanied all our days of idyling.

  “God, boy, what a sight.”

  “Don’t ever take it off, baby. Ever.”

  IHAVE MADE IT PLAIN TO CATHERINE THAT IT IS A GOOD idea for the two of us to poke around, as I put it, in the remains of my tapestry. She agrees. She now understands my reasoning. My moody psychic organization is becoming hers, together we have been touring this landscape of old deaths and fresh possibilities. The lovers have become companions. We are equally inclined, at last, to share the pleasure of turning up the occasional familiar relic or of visiting one of the crevices or hollow enclosures once known to our foursome or perhaps threesome, or even to Catherine alone or to me alone. What else is my tapestry if not the map of Love? I know well its contours, its monuments, its abandoned gardens, its narrow streets, and Catherine is beginning to know them too. In an atmosphere of peaceful investigation we are traveling together from sign to sign, from empty stage to empty stage. We turn a blind corner, we hear a distant bell, we discuss a handprint on a fragment of stone wall, suddenly we recognize the featureless head of a small child sculpted in white stone. What we both know, we share. What Catherine does not know, I tell her. The monuments, the places to visit, are inexhaustible.

  For instance, not far from the squat church (within sight of its little mordant cemetery, as a matter of fact) stands a small aboveground granite cistern built by the barbarians in the same era as the construction of the squat church itself. Its mouth is open, a few crude steps lead down to pestilent green water, the vaulted ceiling reflects the greasy surface of the irregular clay tiles, the small and crumbling protrusions carved on the columns suggest a spiraling array of curling leaves, as the original artisan must have intended. Yet more important, a pear tree grows in this unlikely place, has taken root in the mud that lies beneath the polluted water and has flourished, has burst the masonry of the vaulted ceiling so that now it flowers high above the large ragged hole its green head once forced through the blanket of hard tile. It is a curious spectacle, this fusion of pear tree and ancient cistern. And sitting side by side on one of the low steps, hips touching and shoulders touching, elbows on knees and chins on clasped hands, smelling the stench and staring into the darkness of the cistern and the light let down by the heroic tree—what better spot, I told her, for concealing the wooden arm which had been stolen by Fiona and Hugh and retrieved just in time, I thought, by me. After all, the arm could not have been returned to the church, and our villa was not the place for displaying a religious theft. And so it was into this very water that late one night I flung the heavy arm, risking Fiona’s petulance but satisfying the dictates of my own good sense. At the time of our visit, Catherine and I speculated on the possibility that it must still be there, sunk in the deep fetid water toward the rear of the cistern, and waterlogged, still gaudy, still unattached to human form. Perhaps it is, though no hand rose to the surface when, that day, I tossed a few smooth stones into the echoing darkness and, in a sentence or two, evoked the past. But at least the tree stands, the cistern stands, while the shadows of love, as I told Catherine, are still flickering.

  Or, to take another example, not far from the church and the cistern and cemetery stands a perfectly simple and unadorned statue of a small nude figure which, at first glance, appears to be that of a young girl. The stone is disintegrating, the lower legs and feet have long since been destroyed, the slender arms are cracked, the head is gone. The figure is little more than a small torso standing somewhat higher than my waist and covered with a leprous pink skin of dust that is the residue of its own deteriorating stone. Unprepossessing? The very antithesis of voluptuous intention? A mere weed beside the fiery bloom of the conventional greater-than-life-size female nudes sculpted out of muscular marble or cast in bronze? Yes, at first glance the breasts are small and soft, nothing more than suggestions of latent womanhood, the hips are undistinguished, the belly seems to have been molded by the hand of a sexless creator. And at first passing glance the eye resists and then dismisses the one blemish, a disproportionately large and perfectly round black hole drilled upward between those small helpless thighs.

  Why then this decided sensation of erotic power? Why the implication of some secret design? What brilliant and, so to speak, ravaging guile could possibly be concealed inside that slender and merely partial form? Why did I smile immediately and Fiona cry out in happy recognition at the black hole driven so unaccountably into that small portion of the stone which, realistically, should have revealed no more than sexual silence?

  Of course I knew the answers then as I know them now, knew them with as much warm pleasure as I knew them only weeks ago (or days?) when Catherine and I were standing alone in that same sun-filled abandoned place and talking together, contemplating the very same stone figure that had once so mystified my eager friend and aroused my wife. Observing Catherine’s hand on the little sloping stone shoulder and seeing Hugh’s bafflement in Catherine’s eyes and hearing Hugh’s questions in Catherine’s mouth, I could do no more than point out to Catherine that these two situations of discovery were dissimilar and yet similar, while no matter how many times the small pinkish torso gave up its little secret, the actual grace and power of this small figure remained undiminished. Because in the first situation, as I reconstructed it for Catherine, Fiona had verbalized the secret whereas I had relied on demonstration, Fiona putting her arm around Hugh’s waist and explaining in a lighthearted speech that the beautiful stone figure was really a little boy as well as a little girl, I searching about in the grass until I found the missing piece which, when inserted into that large and perfectly round black hole, demonstrated the statue’s double nature already defined in Fiona’s words. And searching in the grass again, at first with no success and then with good luck, once more finding the handy length of polished stone where I had apparently dropped it so long ago, and repeating the demonstration for Catherine, softly I filled in a few more details, recalled a few more instances of forgotten speech, forgotten sensation, describing how Fiona had enjoyed this human toy, had swiftly taken over the demonstration from methodical Cyril and had exclaimed repeatedly that the figure was a girl for Hugh and me but was always a boy, a beautiful little boy, for her. Fiona had been right, as Catherine agreed, and Catherine admitted that she too preferred the missing piece in place and yet understood my sympathy for Hugh who had repeatedly attempted to seize it from Fiona’s hand and yank it out so long ago, so far in the past.

  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.

  “You don’t mean it,” he whispered. “You can’t.”

  “Put it this way,” I murmured, “you want to play footsy with Fiona …”

  “No, boy, you’re wrong …”

  “And you want me to sanction the bare feet under the table.”

  “For God’s sake, I don’t.”

  “But why should I? Why won’t you play footsy with Fiona and leave me out of it?”

  “Don’t hurt me, boy. Don’t make it worse than it is.”

  “Look,” I said gently, “do we really have to have all this male camaraderie in matters of love?”

  But my confidence was exactly what he was fishing for, of course, and even as I spoke I realized that my last remark could do no more than goad him on to exactly the sentimentality I had hoped to avoid. Fiona was waiting, Catherine was waiting, the wine was chilled, the thick-lipped bell was tolling in its bird’s nest of iron on top of the squat church. Yet here I stood, drinking from the sack of Hugh’s bad conscience and knowing full well that there was no stopping him and that I could not deny his confusion, his deflating misery, his annoying dependence on Fiona’s bored but sympathetic husband. At least I was ready for him and did not flinch when the long arm rose, as it did then, and the hand fell and clamped itself to my shoulder.

  “I thought you’d listen, boy. I thought you’d get me out of this mess.”
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  “What more can I say?”

  “How much has she really told you?”

  “If you want to know what Fiona calls her little trade secrets—ask her.”

  “I don’t believe she’s told you a damn thing. There it is.”

  “Well,” I murmured, “the only problem is that Fiona’s afraid you don’t like her enough.”

  “Don’t like her enough.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You mean she’s unsure of herself? Fiona? And worried about me?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “I just don’t understand, boy. I can’t believe it. She couldn’t just confide in you like that. Manhood rebels at infidelity, it’s only natural.”

  “If you must know,” I said and laughed, “she calls you Malvolio. She says she loves her Malvolio best. Will you believe me now?”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Ask her yourself.”

  “She doesn’t love me best. She couldn’t.”

  “Oh well,” I murmured, “you know what she means.”

  I shrugged. Slowly and gently I dislodged his blind hand, and turned and carefully drew in the shutters, hooked them tightly closed. And above the sound of Hugh’s stony breath and the distant bell, was that of the voice of a young girl sitting somewhere in a doorway beyond the canal and pining in loud crude song for a lost love she was not yet old enough to know? I hoped that Hugh was not too preoccupied to catch a bar or two of that high song and plainly sexual refrain.

  “Feeling better?”

  “Do me a favor, boy. Don’t tell her about this … talk of ours.”

  “Fiona? I won’t tell her a thing.” I crossed the room, dragged open the warped door and waited for Hugh to follow. “And by the way,” I said, “I won’t tell Catherine either. OK?”