beach of black stones.
Just as I had decided to return to the dark and echoing shelter of the pine trees, leaving the two of them to enjoy in peace whatever they had found together in that exposed and inhospitable spot amidst wind and sun, speculating to myself about the kind of passion that had driven them to strip off their clothes in all this shattering light and noise, suddenly it occurred to me that I could see nothing of Fiona’s brown arms and passionate hands which, even from this distance, should have been visible clasping Hugh’s thin white naked back or stony buttocks. I hesitated, turned again into the wind that now seemed to beat the motionless sunlight into my face, my hair, the depths of my yellowshirt. I took another look and, filled with a kind of voiceless compassion as well as a curiosity I had not known before, knew that Fiona’s invisibility was no longer a problem and that I could not retreat. Because Hugh was alone, I was convinced of it, and I could not abandon him there to sunstroke or aching muscles, certainly could not allow the reason for his lonely presence there on the empty beach to go unexplored.
But what was he doing? Sunbathing? Embarking on some kind of freakish photographic experiment? Reading one of his faded erotic periodicals hidden from my sight in the crab grass? What?
And then I stopped, leaning into the wind with legs apart, hands in pockets, head lowered, stood there frowning and trying to resist the temptation to lean down and shake him by the shoulder. He lay at my sandaled feet like a corpse, a long fish-colored corpse, or like some fallen stone figure sandblasted, so to speak, by centuries of cruel weather. Yes, an emaciated and mutilated corpse or statue, except that he in his oblivion was moving, while I, despite the compassionate concentration of all my analytical powers and alerted senses, had become immobile, only the immobile witness to this most florid and pathetic expression of Hugh’s reticence.
Because he lay there on his stomach embracing not Fiona but only his clothes, the twisted black long-legged sailor pants, soiled jersey and white shorts. No magazine, no camera, no living partner. Only the white shorts beneath his head and the pants and shirt bunched and almost out of sight now beneath his chest, his hidden loins, his rigid outstretched white legs of the Christ.
The motion in the pitted gray-white buttocks was intensifying, the shoulders were beginning to heave, the black grass was beating against his long meager thighs, the tight black curls on the back of his head were blowing, springing loose, were becoming drenched with black light. Was he moaning? Did he believe himself to be lying at midnight among our percale sheets a half mile away at my villa instead of sprawled out here in the grass with a few uninteresting broken sea shells and some large black ants that would soon be scurrying in aimless circles on his heaving back? I could not be sure.
Yet waiting, towering above him, watching the naked flickering gestures of his lonely one-sided prostration, I could only nod because suddenly I recognized that I had already lived whatever dream Hugh might be dreaming but also that without my presence Hugh’s agony did not exist. And yet, if he mistook rough cloth and patches of sand for Fiona’s life, flesh, firmness, did not the final agony of this discrepancy belong to Fiona, though she remained unaware of it, rather than to Hugh or to me? I thought so. But Fiona could take care of herself, of course. She always had.
Without a moment’s hesitation I decided to spare Fiona this sight of Hugh dreaming away their intimacy in the crab grass. Without hesitation I turned away from the now tightening and trembling white figure and waved, shouted back some cheerful greeting to the yet invisible woman (Fiona, my wife) who was now calling to me from within the gentle darkness of the long grove of pines. I reached her in time to keep her from stumbling on our
Just as I had decided to return to the dark and echoing shelter of the pine trees, leaving the two of them to enjoy in peace whatever they had found together in that exposed and inhospitable spot amidst wind and sun, speculating to myself about the kind of passion that had driven them to strip off their clothes in all this shattering light and noise, suddenly it occurred to me that I could see nothing of Fiona’s brown arms and passionate hands which, even from this distance, should have been visible clasping Hugh’s thin white naked back or stony buttocks. I hesitated, turned again into the wind that now seemed to beat the motionless sunlight into my face, my hair, the depths of my yellowshirt. I took another look and, filled with a kind of voiceless compassion as well as a curiosity I had not known before, knew that Fiona’s invisibility was no longer a problem and that I could not retreat. Because Hugh was alone, I was convinced of it, and I could not abandon him there to sunstroke or aching muscles, certainly could not allow the reason for his lonely presence there on the empty beach to go unexplored.
But what was he doing? Sunbathing? Embarking on some kind of freakish photographic experiment? Reading one of his faded erotic periodicals hidden from my sight in the crab grass? What?
And then I stopped, leaning into the wind with legs apart, hands in pockets, head lowered, stood there frowning and trying to resist the temptation to lean down and shake him by the shoulder. He lay at my sandaled feet like a corpse, a long fish-colored corpse, or like some fallen stone figure sandblasted, so to speak, by centuries of cruel weather. Yes, an emaciated and mutilated corpse or statue, except that he in his oblivion was moving, while I, despite the compassionate concentration of all my analytical powers and alerted senses, had become immobile, only the immobile witness to this most florid and pathetic expression of Hugh’s reticence.
Because he lay there on his stomach embracing not Fiona but only his clothes, the twisted black long-legged sailor pants, soiled jersey and white shorts. No magazine, no camera, no living partner. Only the white shorts beneath his head and the pants and shirt bunched and almost out of sight now beneath his chest, his hidden loins, his rigid outstretched white legs of the Christ.
The motion in the pitted gray-white buttocks was intensifying, the shoulders were beginning to heave, the black grass was beating against his long meager thighs, the tight black curls on the back of his head were blowing, springing loose, were becoming drenched with black light. Was he moaning? Did he believe himself to be lying at midnight among our percale sheets a half mile away at my villa instead of sprawled out here in the grass with a few uninteresting broken sea shells and some large black ants that would soon be scurrying in aimless circles on his heaving back? I could not be sure.
Yet waiting, towering above him, watching the naked flickering gestures of his lonely one-sided prostration, I could only nod because suddenly I recognized that I had already lived whatever dream Hugh might be dreaming but also that without my presence Hugh’s agony did not exist. And yet, if he mistook rough cloth and patches of sand for Fiona’s life, flesh, firmness, did not the final agony of this discrepancy belong to Fiona, though she remained unaware of it, rather than to Hugh or to me? I thought so. But Fiona could take care of herself, of course. She always had.
Without a moment’s hesitation I decided to spare Fiona this sight of Hugh dreaming away their intimacy in the crab grass. Without hesitation I turned away from the now tightening and trembling white figure and waved, shouted back some cheerful greeting to the yet invisible woman (Fiona, my wife) who was now calling to me from within the gentle darkness of the long grove of pines. I reached her in time to keep her from stumbling on our
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