where he lived, and he lived in strange, haunted places, far back along the stems of Darwin’s logic.
With her face buried in his neck and her skin against his, she could smell rivers and woodsmoke, could hear steaming trains chuffing out of winter stations in long-ago nighttimes, could see travelers in black robes moving steadily along frozen rivers and through summer meadows, beating their way toward the end of things. The leopard swept over her, again and again and yet again, like a long prairie wind, and rolling beneath him, she rode on that wind like some temple virgin toward the sweet, compliant fires marking the soft curve of oblivion.
And she murmured, softly, breathlessly, “Oh, Robert… Robert… I am losing myself.”
She, who had ceased having orgasms years ago, had them in long sequences now with a half-man, half-something-else creature. She wondered about him and his endurance, and he told her that he could reach those places in his mind as well as physically, and that the orgasms of the mind had their own special character.
She had no idea what he meant. All she knew was that he had pulled in a tether of some kind and wound it around both of them so tightly she would have suffocated had it not been for the vaulting freedom from herself she felt.
The night went on, and the great spiral dance continued. Robert Kincaid discarded all sense of anything linear and moved to a part of himself that dealt only with shape and sound and shadow. Down the paths of the old ways he went, finding his direction by candles of sunlit frost melting upon the grass of summer and the red leaves of autumn.
And he heard the words he whispered to her, as if a voice other than his own were saying them. Fragments of a Rilke poem, “around the ancient tower… I have been circling for a thousand years.” The lines to a Navajo sun chant. He whispered to her of the visions she brought to him– of blowing sand and magenta winds and brown pelicans riding the backs of dolphins moving north along the coast of Africa.
Sounds, small, unintelligible sounds, came from her mouth as she arched herself toward him. But it was a language he understood completely, and in this woman beneath him, with his belly against hers, deep inside her, Robert Kincaid’s long search came to an end.
And he knew finally the meaning of all the small footprints on all the deserted beaches he had ever walked, of all the secret cargoes carried by ships that had never sailed, of all the curtained faces that had watched him pass down winding streets of twilight cities. And, like a great hunter of old who has traveled distant miles and now sees the light of his home campfires, his loneliness dissolved. At last. At last. He had come so far… so far. And he lay upon her, perfectly formed and unalterably complete in his love for her. At last.
Toward morning, he raised himself slightly and said, looking straight into her eyes, “This is why I’m here on this planet, at this time, Francesca. Not to travel or make pictures, but to love you. I know that now. I have been falling from the rim of a great, high place, somewhere back in time, for many more years than I have lived in this life. And through all of those years, I have been failing toward you.”
When they came downstairs, the radio was still on. Dawn had come up, but the sun lay behind a thin cloud cover.
“Francesca, I have a favor to ask.” He smiled at her as she fussed with the coffeepot.
“Yes?” She looked at him. Oh, God, I love him so, she thought, unsteady, wanting even more of him, never stopping.
“Slip on the jeans and T-shirt you wore last night, along with a pair of sandals. Nothing else. I want to make a picture of you as you look this morning. A photograph just for the two of us.”
She went upstairs, her legs weak from being wrapped around him all night, dressed, and went outside with him to the pasture. That’s where he had made the photograph she looked at each year.
The Highway
With her face buried in his neck and her skin against his, she could smell rivers and woodsmoke, could hear steaming trains chuffing out of winter stations in long-ago nighttimes, could see travelers in black robes moving steadily along frozen rivers and through summer meadows, beating their way toward the end of things. The leopard swept over her, again and again and yet again, like a long prairie wind, and rolling beneath him, she rode on that wind like some temple virgin toward the sweet, compliant fires marking the soft curve of oblivion.
And she murmured, softly, breathlessly, “Oh, Robert… Robert… I am losing myself.”
She, who had ceased having orgasms years ago, had them in long sequences now with a half-man, half-something-else creature. She wondered about him and his endurance, and he told her that he could reach those places in his mind as well as physically, and that the orgasms of the mind had their own special character.
She had no idea what he meant. All she knew was that he had pulled in a tether of some kind and wound it around both of them so tightly she would have suffocated had it not been for the vaulting freedom from herself she felt.
The night went on, and the great spiral dance continued. Robert Kincaid discarded all sense of anything linear and moved to a part of himself that dealt only with shape and sound and shadow. Down the paths of the old ways he went, finding his direction by candles of sunlit frost melting upon the grass of summer and the red leaves of autumn.
And he heard the words he whispered to her, as if a voice other than his own were saying them. Fragments of a Rilke poem, “around the ancient tower… I have been circling for a thousand years.” The lines to a Navajo sun chant. He whispered to her of the visions she brought to him– of blowing sand and magenta winds and brown pelicans riding the backs of dolphins moving north along the coast of Africa.
Sounds, small, unintelligible sounds, came from her mouth as she arched herself toward him. But it was a language he understood completely, and in this woman beneath him, with his belly against hers, deep inside her, Robert Kincaid’s long search came to an end.
And he knew finally the meaning of all the small footprints on all the deserted beaches he had ever walked, of all the secret cargoes carried by ships that had never sailed, of all the curtained faces that had watched him pass down winding streets of twilight cities. And, like a great hunter of old who has traveled distant miles and now sees the light of his home campfires, his loneliness dissolved. At last. At last. He had come so far… so far. And he lay upon her, perfectly formed and unalterably complete in his love for her. At last.
Toward morning, he raised himself slightly and said, looking straight into her eyes, “This is why I’m here on this planet, at this time, Francesca. Not to travel or make pictures, but to love you. I know that now. I have been falling from the rim of a great, high place, somewhere back in time, for many more years than I have lived in this life. And through all of those years, I have been failing toward you.”
When they came downstairs, the radio was still on. Dawn had come up, but the sun lay behind a thin cloud cover.
“Francesca, I have a favor to ask.” He smiled at her as she fussed with the coffeepot.
“Yes?” She looked at him. Oh, God, I love him so, she thought, unsteady, wanting even more of him, never stopping.
“Slip on the jeans and T-shirt you wore last night, along with a pair of sandals. Nothing else. I want to make a picture of you as you look this morning. A photograph just for the two of us.”
She went upstairs, her legs weak from being wrapped around him all night, dressed, and went outside with him to the pasture. That’s where he had made the photograph she looked at each year.
The Highway
Similar Books
