The Blood Oranges: A Novel Read online

  I knelt beside him, I was concerned. But my life had not attuned me to medical emergencies and now, kneeling at Hugh’s side, large but at the same time trim with an excellent health I was unable to share, I did not know whether to touch him, to seize his gigantic deformed shoulders in my own enormous gentle hands, or leave him alone. Or should I shoot into his dry mouth a jet of the dark wine? Raise him to a sitting position? Go for help? Carry him in my two arms back to our wives?

  “Heart attack,” I whispered. “Is it a heart attack?”

  He moaned, licked the small wispy wings of his mustache with the tip of his tongue, finally glanced up at me. “Hand of death inside my chest, that’s all. But it doesn’t last…”

  He winked, I felt relieved, already the shadows were massing in interesting patterns once more down the length of his rock-colored grainy face. He sighed, pushed himself up with his good arm. And yet for all my relief, and even as I was helping myself to a long curving drink from the wineskin, I could not help thinking that my preoccupied friend was dangerously ill and that this kind of collapse, along with his collection of “peasant nudes,” probably did not bode well for Fiona. If mere photographs had led in some devious way to this kind of prostration, what would happen to him when Fiona finally managed to gather him into her lovely arms? And did Fiona know already what she was up against? It would be my lot, I knew, to warn her.

  When, blinded and laughing, Hugh and I stumbled out of the barn together, Hugh’s good arm resting powerfully and in unadmitted necessity on my own broad shoulders, and the straps of all three cameras and the alpine pack held firmly in my own left hand, I noticed that the girl was once more fully clothed and at work in the field. I knew that I would see her again, but also knew more immediately that in only a matter of minutes Hugh’s black flapping dog would race out yapping to welcome us back to villas, children, wives already involved in the pursuit of nudity, passion, love.

  But when I finally did return alone to the little ceramic farm and to Rosella (for of course it was she), I returned only to procure for myself a silent companion willing to cook my meals and clean my cold villa. Thanks to Hugh, Rosella became mine, so to speak, along with the best of the photographs. And Hugh? Better for Hugh had he died at a blow of his black fist or whatever it was. Much better.

  IN THE MIDDAY BRIGHTNESS, LYING NEAR OUR LITTLE WELL house on an old settee over which she had tossed one of her white percale sheets, and with her feet bare and her torso also bare, dressed only in her sky-blue slacks that she pulled on like a pair of dancing tights, and looking up at me with one long finger marking her place in the slender book and her other hand thrust into the open slacks—in this attitude she appealed to me with somber eyes, low voice, unhappy smile: “Baby, he says I’m Circe all over again and that he’s the only man left in the world who can resist my charms. What’ll I do?”

  “I warned you a long time ago. Remember?”

  “I remember.”

  Hands in pockets, standing over her, smiling down at Fiona stretched out in one of her rare half-hours devoted to a kind of personal cessation that came as close as she was capable of coming to inertia, suddenly and with my lips so much thicker than hers I made a few silent kisses and sat down on the edge of the settee so that our hips rolled together and I could smell her breath. On the other side of the cypresses all was even more quiet than usual at this time of day, and I wondered what Hugh had done to muzzle the dog, the twins, the constantly accusing and complaining Meredith. I heard the little desolate rustling sound of the book landing beside the settee.

  “Cyril is virile. Remember when I told him, baby?”

  I nodded, slowly removed my eyeglasses and folded them, stuck them under the settee for safekeeping.

  “And it’s so true. Oh, it’s so true.”

  One of her rare half-hours of self-surrender. And yet the casualness of bare feet and partially unzipped slacks, the personal disregard expressed in the naked breasts, stomach, arms, the thoughtless and candid position of the hand thrust into the little blue open mouth of the slacks—all of this was rare and yet characteristic too, almost as characteristic as the familiar sight of Fionda smothering or sculpting her breasts in hands whose supple grip and long white fingers never failed to excite my admiration.

  “You're wearing your magic pants again,” I whispered, and her body rippled against me. She bent her outside leg at the knee and allowed her tight blue knee, bent leg, to list away from me slightly in the direction taken by the now disregarded book. With two long fingers of her free hand she began to stroke the white naked heel that she had just drawn into sensitive proximity to those hard blue buttocks which at the moment I could not see but only imagine. She pursed her lips and, despite the still considerable space between us, began to blow a deliberate breath up toward my weathered bland expectant face.

  “And you’re wearing your magic pants too, baby, aren’t you,” she said in that willowy voice which, no matter how soft, suggestive or dreamlike, never allowed for contradiction.

  “Sure,” I murmured. “Of course I am.”

  “Maybe I’ll steal your magic pants. For him. OK?”

  The shadow of the thin Byzantine cross of rusted iron on top of the conical well house now lay directly in the center of her naked chest, and it amused me to think that sometime within the next half-hour the cross would lie not on Fiona’s chest but in the middle of my broad back. All around us the little orange marguerites had never been more profuse, more deeply orange, more innocent.

  I patted her raised knee and leaned down, untied my fresh white espadrilles and pulled them off. When I straightened I saw the lower lip caught gently between her teeth and the long first finger of her left hand tracing firm lines up and down the inside of her shining thigh. I laughed. Because she was right, of course, and I knew as well as she did that my own elasticized underpants and Fiona’s sky-blue slacks were in fact magical, as she had said. My shorts, for instance, were like the bulging marble skin of a headless god. But Fiona’s sky-blue slacks, which she never wore except when alone, or with me, or with some privileged lover, certainly that garment clinging low on her hips and riding high on her ankles was matched for magic only by Fiona’s own total and angular nudity. The little masculine gold-plated zipper in front, the slanted pockets, the blue webbing that left an attractive pink welt around her squarish hips and lower belly and the soft eyes of her buttocks were all the true signs of a woman’s sex-suit, Fiona said. And in her moods of self-surrender, when she felt like wearing the blue slacks and nothing more, these were the details that enabled her to lie reasonably still and smile and enjoy the magical vacancy at her finger tips. And at the moment, the zipper was halfway down and the welt was pink.

  “I want to see your magic pants. Right now.”

  I obeyed, of course, and with languor and pleasure stood up beside my prostrate wife and, smiling down into her open eyes, which made me think of two doves frozen in the hard light of expectation, slowly pulled off my shirt and trousers and, glancing at the empty heavens, for a moment enjoyed the statuesque weight of myself contained and molded, so to speak, in my brief but extra-large white magical underpants. I could feel that my broad sloping shoulders were a little soft. Some tiny living creature splashed in the depths of the nearby well.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Submit.”

  I sat down again slowly and carefully. With her free hand, the hand with which she had been stroking her upraised thigh, she now suddenly began pulling at some of the long soft brown hairs on my own mammoth thigh. Then her hand slipped, a finger grazed the broad sloping front of my elasticized white shorts, and in mid-air the hand began to tremble while her breathing, suddenly, changed pitch.

  “Kiss me, Cyril. Kiss me.”

  Even while smelling the sweetness of Fiona’s breath and tasting the taste of her mouth, sucking on the marrow of Fiona’s life, and biting her teeth, her small lips, her tongue, and while feeling the sun sealing us once more together, it occurred to me tha
t this particular kiss was unusually cannibalistic, even for us. It is not easy to force a pair of heavy lips into an expression of mock disapproval while involved in such a kiss, and so when I became aware that our time was dissolving, and that we were indeed struggling to devour each other’s mouths, jaws, cheeks, I simply raised my head, pulled loose, stopped, listened. As usual Fiona’s preliminary humming was food for us both.

  “Cyril,” she whispered, “Cyril …”

  Her free hand gripped the back of my head, she held my head exactly where she wanted it and nuzzled my face and stared at me with her eyes that were like dying doves. With all the care I could summon I rested my right hand on the wrist of the hand that was driven so beautifully into the tight blue pit of the open slacks. Slowly I propelled my own hand down until it very nearly covered hers, and for a moment I thought that even Fiona had become insensible beneath the pressure of her hand and mine. But then it became evident that Fiona, my ageless tree, was still willowy, rational, self-possessed, and I was proud of her. Because now with considerable strength and slow determination, she began to inch her hand from under mine.

  “Wait, baby. Wait a minute. Meredith isn’t watching us again, is she? I don’t want her watching us through the cypresses. OK?”

  “Of course she’s not watching us,”I whispered, though I knew that Fiona did not intend me to turn now and study the dark green wall of cypresses for the little flashing white signs of Meredith’s face. I merely answered Fiona’s question as she wanted me to and pressed on.

  Fiona’s hand came loose, my own impossibly large weathered hand was stuffed once more inside my wife’s unzippered pants.

  “Baby … oh baby …

  I forced my hand down and suddenly, as if to achieve nothing less than absolute display of her presence of mind, Fiona tilted up her pelvic area to meet me, and in my wet palm I held her eagerness and felt the center of her life beneath the brief pattern of hair like sandy down. On my part it took some presence of mind, finally, to disengage my hand, pull down her sky-blue pants, toss them aside with my own white marble shorts among all the bright orange marguerites.

  And later, much later, both nude, she on her stomach on the flimsy rattan settee and I seated on the ground with knees drawn up and cigarette lighted and heavy shoulders drifting to the slow massage of her strong hand: “Why can’t they all be like you, baby? Why?”

  THEY HAVE GIVEN HER RABBITS. YESTERDAY I FOUND CATHerine not wrapped in her blanket on the silent balcony as usual but rather sitting on her heels before the cage of rabbits. It was the moment of transformation, the beginning of Catherine’s cure, the first hopeful sign of metamorphosis cast in the powdery blue light from the reflecting tiles. My guide, the small fat woman in dark blue apron and wooden sandals, led me to the balcony and pointed at the blanket, the empty makeshift lounging chair. Her little round face and upraised pudgy arm were bright with unconcealed pleasure, as she watched my own responses to the obvious fact that something had changed in Catherine’s life and mine. Then she pointed in a different direction, beckoned me on to a fragment of whitewashed walls, warm cobblestones, empty sky, the low cage raised on a slight altar of stones and pink succulents. Again the matron pointed and of course I knew before looking that the large woman sitting on her heels and peering without sound into the rabbits’ cage was Catherine.

  She was unaware of the little fat woman and myself now standing side by side behind her, was obviously unaware of her own dark jersey and faded maroon-colored shorts and the strand of hair hanging from the bun she had fastened indifferently at the back of her head. She was resting with her hands on her bare knees and leaning heavily forward into the darkness of the wooden cage and sweet smell of the shadowy rabbits. The jersey, I noticed, had pulled loose from the elasticized waistband of the cotton shorts, and in a sudden return of poignancy I found my consciousness brimming with the sight of this brief once familiar strip of nakedness.

  I smiled, thinking of my now ruined bicycle, my hot climbs to the sanctuary, my playful smoke rings and patient monologues, all the ingredients of my timeless fidelity which had accomplished nothing, after all, had not moved Catherine to a single word or even to tears. But thanks to what I could only assume to be the sudden emergence of primitive intuition in the little fat untutored woman at my side, and to the curative powers of two large sable-colored rabbits, now Catherine was kneeling with open eyes and heavy girlish concentration and was slowly reaching toward the rusty hook on the little door of the cage. The life I had failed to arouse was now being restored by two soft mindless animals and a woman who was perhaps unfamiliar with even the crespi fagag alternative in her own language. The cure was obvious, I told myself, since for certain temperaments the presence of gentle animals is magical. Yet I my-self could not have thought of it. I watched Catherine’s fingers touch the hook, heard the twitching and chewing sounds of the rabbits.

  Yes, I thought, Catherine’s large amber eyes must now be meeting the fearless but vulnerable eyes of one of the rabbits. Catherine lifted her upper body away from the naked heels, waited a moment, and unhooked the sagging wire-covered door of the cage and swung it open. Her arms were moving, a rip in the side of the maroon-colored shorts still betrayed some small long-forgotten carelessness, the jersey rose another few inches on her bare back, the sudden new smell from the cage might have burst from the slit belly of a golden faun brought down by a loving archer.

  I felt the tugging at my sleeve and saw the large docile rabbit in Catherine’s arms. The sable-colored head was on her shoulder, one of the long soft ears was brushing against her neck. I nodded and retreated silently without disturbing this brief portion of my old tapestry that would now undulate forever, I thought, with gentle yet indestructible life.

  Had she known I was there? Had she in fact cradled in her arms the warm trusting rabbit for my benefit as well as her own? Might she have heard my breathing, seen my shadow, and busied herself with these simple mysteries for the sake of the large perspiring middle-aged man who was the only lover she had ever known? The plain shorts, the kneeling position, the silken animals—were these fresh omens, the unmistakable signs that Catherine had finally changed her mind and retracted her vow of speechlessness? Yes, I thought, unmistakable. And striding down the caramel-colored hillside path with its purple rocks and white streaks of dust, and far below, the vista of the slick dark village and empty sea, walking more quickly and hearing my own hot dusty footfalls, the heavy irregular sounds of my lonely but powerful descent, at that moment I knew at last that it was only a question of time and that my final visit to the sanctuary was drawing near. If Catherine had begun her metamorphosis and could play with the rabbits, she could also return to my villa among the funeral cypresses and share with me the still music of what I had already come to think of as our condition of sexless matrimony.

  After that, who knows?

  TWILIGHT WAS ALWAYS MY FAVORITE HOUR, AND SO IT remains. At twilight I stroll, I smoke, I hum to myself, I inspect my lemon trees which are at their peak of bearing, and inspect my arbor thick now with hanging tendrils of grapes no larger than small warts or the heads of pins, mere intimations of all the bunches of fat clear green grapes to come. I stroll among my trees and under the arbor and then say good night to Rosella and sink into the darkness, sleep alone. And my nights are never sleepless. My concentration is quiet and slow paced, after all, and filled with purpose. My large hand never shakes. The headless god? Perhaps. I eat my lemons as other men eat oranges. In my slow mouth the lemon pulled by Rosella from one of my twisted trees and thoughtfully sliced by me with my faded gold-plated pocketknife is sweet. I think, I chew, I suck my cheeks. My mouth hardly puckers. I sleep in peace.

  Catherine will have to learn to do the same.

  WHAT WAS HE DOING? SUNBATHING? OR WAS HE LYING in naked embrace with my equally naked wife at last? He was there, I knew, a prone white emaciated figure just visible through a low, dark green fringe of crab grass agitated by a sultry midday wind, a long low
sheet of green flame burning at the edge of the bed of black rocks about twenty feet from where I stood in the shadows cast by the thick growth of pine. Hands in pockets, freshly bathed, wearing my yellow shirt in the hopes of meeting Fiona on this dark seaside path, a path she often took alone, here I stood in the darkness on a blanket of dead pine needles, stroking my chin and wondering if I had indeed discovered Fiona but worn the yellow shirt in vain.

  With my usual presence of mind I had awakened from my dreamless midafternoon sleep, had rolled over, found Fiona missing, had assumed that I would meet her on the ocean path. And fresh from immersion and scrubbing in the clear water of my ancient stone bathing tank, scented, externalizing my mood in the special color of my bright shirt, slowly I had strolled past the second villa, had paused to listen, had drifted on, assuming that Hugh and Catherine and all their distracting daughters lay just beyond those tight shutters and thick white walls drugged in the heat. On both counts had I been wrong? Taking a soft step forward and catching another glimpse of his naked movements out there in the crab grass, it appeared that I had indeed been wrong. But those movements, of course, were what Fiona wanted, so that my trivial mistakes were righted, so to speak, by the richness of the vision and what I took to be the abrupt fulfillment of Fiona’s latest dream.