The Lying Days by Nadine Gordimer Page A

I waited for him to kiss me again, while the tepid stagnant water of the pool touched with a terrible softness against the inner sides of my thighs. I think it was from the touch of the warm water that I suddenly stood up. Yet I wanted him to kiss me again, I wanted to prove to myself the reality of the feel of his lips, smooth and dry, the secret—so it seemed to me—of the deep, soft pressure of moisture, the astonishing warmth that, seeing his mouth move in talk, could never be guessed. I waited but, with the unexpectedness that quickened my pleasure with the continual threat of small disappointments, we went into the sea instead, though he did not swim away from me, but kept near, so that I could talk, shout to him, and we would bump against each other,strangely buoyant with water, each feeling the touch of the other’s limbs like the blunt contact of air-filled rubber shapes. There was a joy for me in tumbling about Ludi; I must have jumped around him like a puppy inviting play. But if he was not swimming seriously, he liked to float with his eyes closed, lonely on the water.
    We stayed in too long—perhaps I had been in the sea too often altogether, that day—for when I came out and lay on the rough sand I had the feeling of air pressing inside me against my collarbones, and a swinging in my head. Water kept closing over my hearing and as I got up to shake it out of my ear, Ludi lifted my wet hair up on top of my head and pushed me to him with his elbow. He began to kiss me again. This time he took the whole of my mouth into the warm wet membrane of his mouth and his tongue came into my mouth and was looking for something; went everywhere, shockingly, pushing my tongue aside, fighting my cheeks, resisting my teeth. I was afraid and I did not want him to stop. I clung to the flesh behind his shoulder as if I were in danger of slipping down somewhere and as we stood together in the sultry afternoon the cool film of water dried from our bodies, and the warmth of our skin came through, into contact. Against the bare patch between the brassière and the shorts of my bathing suit I felt the steamy wet wool of his trunks and in the hollow of my neck, the slight liveness, as if it was capable of certain limited movement, of the hair on his breastbone. A drop of cold water fell from his hair onto my warm back, and another, and in the soft bed of my belly, as if it were growing there, I became conscious of another warmth, a warmth that grew from Ludi, from a center of warmth that came to life between his thighs. Nobody told me love was warm. Such warmth—I seemed to remember it, it seemed like something forgotten by me since I was born. Nobody told me it was warmth. How can it be understood, accepted, cold? I should have remembered—how? from where?—that it was warmth. All the fires were here, and the warmth of my mother’s bed long ago, and the deep heat of the sun.

Chapter 8
    By Monday afternoon a railway bus service was circumventing the fallen bridge and carrying passengers to meet the train at the next station. But Ludi didn’t go. I seem to remember that it appeared to be Mrs. Koch’s idea that he should apply for an extension of leave; perhaps it was the one time in all his devotion to her that he made use of her gentle blindness of love for him? At any rate, he stayed. He telegraphed to his Commanding Officer and was granted an additional week, until the following Monday.
    This is a simple statement of fact to relate now, but like all reports, all accuracy of happenings in terms of comings and goings, dates and times, its bareness is not the bare truth. The truth about humans is always inaccurate, never bare; the nearest one can get to it is to remember its confusion, and complicatedness. It was not a telegram sent and an answer forthcoming; nor three people waiting. I only remember that I, alone, not yet eighteen and a novice to anguish, waited for the granting of that week