The Twyborn Affair by Patrick White

had been got by Aristide Pelletier behind Simone’s back; when it wasn’t TRUE , Simone insisted.)
    The fug inside the kiosk was intolerable: over and above the collaboration of methylated spirit, mildewed tobacco, damp news, salt air and rusty iron, there was a smell, or scent rather, of chestnut trees in flower, which only he could distinguish, Monsieur Pelletier liked to think. Or could Madame Réboa too?
    Anyway, he kept her out.
    And drew her attention seawards, where the swimmer was nearing rocks refurbished with their familiar porphyry by the increasing light. ‘ C’est une fille? Ou un gars? ’
    Again Madame Réboa was unable to give an opinion, but announced with seeming irrelevance, ‘ Elle est belle, hein? la femme du fou Grec—qui est elle-même folle—une espèce d’Anglaise—mais gentile … ’ and added as she stumped away, ‘ Ils n’ont pas un rond ’ thus declaring herself firmly against beauty, charm, and madness.
    Monsieur Pelletier was relieved to see her go, just as years ago he had been relieved when the outbreak of the ulcer gave him reason for ending a relationship which, though passionate enough, was inspired by lust on either side.
    Strangely, it did not occur to Aristide Pelletier that the emotions the swimmer aroused in him might have been occasioned by lust, not even taking into account the trickles of sperm still moist on his groin and thigh. Whether the swimmer were the young wife of the crazy Greek or some unknown woman or youth, neither physical passion, nor even a burst of lust, could enter into a relationship which presented itself as a tremulous abstraction, and which must remain remote from his actual life. In one sense disgusting, his regrettable act of masturbation seemed to express a common malaise, his own and that of the swimmer headed for the open sea, as well as a world despair gathering in the sea-damp newspapers.
    As the swimmer, as the light, as the colour returned, what could have remained a sordid ejaculation became a triumphant leap into the world of light and colour such as he craved from the landscape he knew, the poetry he had never written, but silently spoke, the love he had not experienced with Simone or Violette—or Mireille Femande Zizi Jacques Louise Jeanne Jacques Jacques Jeanne—a love he knew by heart and instinct, but might never summon up the courage to express, unless perhaps at the point of death.
    He had forgotten the swimmer, who had by now climbed out, glittering with archetypal gold and silver, of light and water—life in fact, before the flesh was doused in the sombre cape. Head bowed, hair swinging, the figure began traipsing up the shoulder of the hill and out of sight.
    At the same time as the anonymous being was lost in the fuzz of gold above the hyacinth sea, Monsieur Pelletier remembered, and hurried in to where the coffee was boiling over in a series of expostulatory ejaculations on to the resilient flame of the rickety little spirit lamp.
    18 mars 1914
    Have done my duty by Mrs Golson. The letter is writ, and delivered. Now we can forget about them.
    I find to my astonishment that the minutiae are what make life bearable. Love is over-rated. Not affection—affection is to love whatthe minutiae are to living. Oh yes, you’ve got to have passion, give way to lust, provided no one is destroyed by them. Passion and lust are as necessary as a square meal, whether it’s only a loaf you tear into, or devour a dish of beans, with a goose’s thigh, a chunk of bacon, buried in them.
    This is where I differ from my darling. He is nourished by coffee and cigarettes. He provokes passion, but doesn’t enjoy it, except its more perverse refinements. I doubt he has ever experienced lust, which is why he could appreciate the sainted Anna, and why he has created the aesthetic version of me—so different, far more different than he could ever understand. For all his