back on the
island temple and wandered slowly over the perfect lawn the rabbits had made,
toward the bridge. In front of her, illuminated by the lowering sun, was a
cloud of insects, each one bobbing randomly, as though fixed on an invisible
elastic string—a mysterious courtship dance, or sheer insect exuberance
that defied her to find a meaning. In a spirit of mutinous resistance, she
climbed the steep grassy slope to the bridge, and when she stood on the
driveway, she decided she would stay there and wait until something significant
happened to her. This was the challenge she was putting to existence—she
would not stir, not for dinner, not even for her mother calling her in. She
would simply wait on the bridge, calm and obstinate, until events, real events,
not her own fantasies, rose to her challenge, and dispelled her insignificance.
----
Eight
I N THE EARLY evening, high-altitude clouds in
the western sky formed a thin yellow wash which became richer over the hour,
and then thickened until a filtered orange glow hung above the giant crests of
parkland trees; the leaves became nutty brown, the branches glimpsed among the
foliage oily black, and the desiccated grasses took on the colors of the sky. A
Fauvist dedicated to improbable color might have imagined a landscape this way,
especially once sky and ground took on a reddish bloom and the swollen trunks
of elderly oaks became so black they began to look blue. Though the sun was
weakening as it dropped, the temperature seemed to rise because the breeze that
had brought faint relief all day had faded, and now the air was still and
heavy.
The scene, or
a tiny portion of it, was visible to Robbie Turner through a sealed skylight
window if he cared to stand up from his bath, bend his knees and twist his
neck. All day long his small bedroom, his bathroom and the cubicle wedged
between them he called his study had baked under the southern slope of the
bungalow’s roof. For over an hour after returning from work he lay in a
tepid bath while his blood and, so it seemed, his thoughts warmed the water.
Above him the framed rectangle of sky slowly shifted through its limited
segment of the spectrum, yellow to orange, as he sifted unfamiliar feelings and
returned to certain memories again and again. Nothing palled. Now and then, an
inch below the water’s surface, the muscles of his stomach tightened
involuntarily as he recalled another detail. A drop of water on her upper arm.
Wet. An embroidered flower, a simple daisy, sewn between the cups of her bra.
Her breasts wide apart and small. On her back, a mole half covered by a strap.
When she climbed out of the pond, a glimpse of the triangular darkness her
knickers were supposed to conceal. Wet. He saw it, he made himself see it
again. The way her pelvic bones stretched the material clear of her skin, the
deep curve of her waist, her startling whiteness. When she reached for her
skirt, a carelessly raised foot revealed a patch of soil on each pad of her
sweetly diminishing toes. Another mole the size of a farthing on her thigh and
something purplish on her calf—a strawberry mark, a scar. Not blemishes.
Adornments.
He had known
her since they were children, and he had never looked at her. At
Cambridge
she came to his rooms
once with a
New Zealand
girl in glasses and
someone from her school, when there was a friend of his from Downing there.
They idled away an hour with nervous jokes, and handed cigarettes about.
Occasionally, they passed in the street and smiled. She always seemed to find
it awkward—That’s our cleaning lady’s son, she might have
been whispering to her friends as she walked on. He liked people to know he
didn’t care—There goes my mother’s employer’s daughter,
he once said to a friend. He had his politics to protect him, and his
scientifically based theories of class, and his own rather forced
self-certainty. I am what I am. She was like a sister, almost invisible. That
long, narrow face,
island temple and wandered slowly over the perfect lawn the rabbits had made,
toward the bridge. In front of her, illuminated by the lowering sun, was a
cloud of insects, each one bobbing randomly, as though fixed on an invisible
elastic string—a mysterious courtship dance, or sheer insect exuberance
that defied her to find a meaning. In a spirit of mutinous resistance, she
climbed the steep grassy slope to the bridge, and when she stood on the
driveway, she decided she would stay there and wait until something significant
happened to her. This was the challenge she was putting to existence—she
would not stir, not for dinner, not even for her mother calling her in. She
would simply wait on the bridge, calm and obstinate, until events, real events,
not her own fantasies, rose to her challenge, and dispelled her insignificance.
----
Eight
I N THE EARLY evening, high-altitude clouds in
the western sky formed a thin yellow wash which became richer over the hour,
and then thickened until a filtered orange glow hung above the giant crests of
parkland trees; the leaves became nutty brown, the branches glimpsed among the
foliage oily black, and the desiccated grasses took on the colors of the sky. A
Fauvist dedicated to improbable color might have imagined a landscape this way,
especially once sky and ground took on a reddish bloom and the swollen trunks
of elderly oaks became so black they began to look blue. Though the sun was
weakening as it dropped, the temperature seemed to rise because the breeze that
had brought faint relief all day had faded, and now the air was still and
heavy.
The scene, or
a tiny portion of it, was visible to Robbie Turner through a sealed skylight
window if he cared to stand up from his bath, bend his knees and twist his
neck. All day long his small bedroom, his bathroom and the cubicle wedged
between them he called his study had baked under the southern slope of the
bungalow’s roof. For over an hour after returning from work he lay in a
tepid bath while his blood and, so it seemed, his thoughts warmed the water.
Above him the framed rectangle of sky slowly shifted through its limited
segment of the spectrum, yellow to orange, as he sifted unfamiliar feelings and
returned to certain memories again and again. Nothing palled. Now and then, an
inch below the water’s surface, the muscles of his stomach tightened
involuntarily as he recalled another detail. A drop of water on her upper arm.
Wet. An embroidered flower, a simple daisy, sewn between the cups of her bra.
Her breasts wide apart and small. On her back, a mole half covered by a strap.
When she climbed out of the pond, a glimpse of the triangular darkness her
knickers were supposed to conceal. Wet. He saw it, he made himself see it
again. The way her pelvic bones stretched the material clear of her skin, the
deep curve of her waist, her startling whiteness. When she reached for her
skirt, a carelessly raised foot revealed a patch of soil on each pad of her
sweetly diminishing toes. Another mole the size of a farthing on her thigh and
something purplish on her calf—a strawberry mark, a scar. Not blemishes.
Adornments.
He had known
her since they were children, and he had never looked at her. At
Cambridge
she came to his rooms
once with a
New Zealand
girl in glasses and
someone from her school, when there was a friend of his from Downing there.
They idled away an hour with nervous jokes, and handed cigarettes about.
Occasionally, they passed in the street and smiled. She always seemed to find
it awkward—That’s our cleaning lady’s son, she might have
been whispering to her friends as she walked on. He liked people to know he
didn’t care—There goes my mother’s employer’s daughter,
he once said to a friend. He had his politics to protect him, and his
scientifically based theories of class, and his own rather forced
self-certainty. I am what I am. She was like a sister, almost invisible. That
long, narrow face,
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