The Blood Oranges: A Novel

by Hawkes, John

  “Are they all about the singing phallus, baby?”

  “I guess they are.”

  “Don’t you know, for God’s sake?”

  “I’ll read them to you another time, Fiona. OK?”

  “Hurry,” Catherine said then, “Hugh’s alone in there.”

  “Well,” I said, gripping Fiona’s hand and Catherine’s elbow, “it’s too bad we can’t all share Hugh’s rather boyish interest in old fortresses and so forth. But on we go.”

  “I love these old masculine places,” Fiona said. “You know I do.”

  Still I hung back, surveying the light that shone only at sea, the incongruous mustard-colored stone walls which on three sides descended at a steep angle into the dark random tide, the entrance that was low and rounded and deep. And I noted what I suspected Hugh had failed to note in his characteristic haste and determination to see it all at a glance and to find his own lean shadow wherever he looked: the briars clotting the entrance way, the ringbolts and fallen rock, the iron bars driven into the rounded arch and now bent aside. Yes, I thought, herding Fiona and Catherine into the dark mouth of the fortress, yes, the gates were gone and the marble monsters no longer stood on their sunken pedestals. But nonetheless the mouth of the fortress remained guarded, oddly protected, within its own matter-of-fact condition of disuse, and only a man like Hugh could rush through this brief tunnel unaware of ancient armaments and present obstacles to passage. Catherine stumbled, I gripped her arm, Fiona’s uncertain voice echoed down the wet walls.

  “Look,” Hugh shouted then, “burned!”

  Chin high, legs far apart, rucksack lying brown and lumpy in the weeds at his feet, there stood Hugh waving us into the hot and empty courtyard and at the same time indicating with his long good arm the high walls, the blackened doorways, the cracked tower, the vacant blue sky overhead. I saw immediately that he was right, because all four walls had been deeply and viciously scorched by some devastating blaze so that they were streaked and seared with enormous swatches of unnatural color—intestinal pink, lurid orange, great blistering sheets of lifeless purple. And everywhere the weeds and fallen pediments were encrusted with the droppings of long departed gulls.

  “Burned clean, boy. There’s nothing left.”

  “No juice of the growing fruit, “I murmured, “that’s for sure.”

  “Don’t be cryptic, baby. Please.”

  “You can’t even smell it, boy. No ashes. No smoke. Nothing. It’s just a reflection—a reflection of some fiery nightmare. Don’t you see?”

  “Sure,” I said and laughed, “if that’s what you want. But I prefer a little more than weeds and discoloration. How about it, Catherine?”

  “Oh, Cyril, stop arguing.”

  Everywhere I turned I could see that these burned walls were punctured with small charred doorless entrances leading no doubt into a labyrinth of pits and tunnels, cells and niches for birdlike archers. Never had the four of us been so starkly confined, starkly exposed. Hugh and Catherine and I were dressed appropriately for whatever ordeals might come our way (Hugh in his castoff Navy denims, Catherine wearing her gray slacks with the patches, I dressed in sweatshirt and chocolate-colored corduroys), whereas Fiona had disregarded Hugh’s instructions and was wearing only her eggshell sandals and mid-thigh tennis dress of shocking white. Stark, alone together, exposed, self-conscious. But despite my predisposition in favor of the lyrical landscape or any of those places conducive to my own warmer inclinations, and despite my conversational reluctance of only a few moments past, nonetheless I too was beginning to understand Hugh’s feeling for the condemned courtyard and gutted fortress, was already partially willing to forego my kind of pleasure for his.

  “Well,” I said, and picked up Hugh’s rucksack, “what now? The tower?”

  “No, boy, the dungeons.”

  “Treasure,” Fiona said. “What fun.”

  “OK,” I heard myself saying pleasantly, “I guess you know what you’re doing. Let’s go.”

  So I slung Hugh’s clumsy burden from an easy shoulder, commiserated with Catherine in a long good-humored meeting of eyes, grinned at Fiona, trudged off across the courtyard toward the most distant and least inviting doorway in the northeast wall. Hugh leapt gaunt and spiderlike into that charred darkness, Fiona ducked after Hugh, Catherine entered head down and heavily, I whistled softly to myself and then pushed my way out of the sunlight and through the cold, tight, irregular doorless opening. There followed the typical moment of disorganization, confusion, pretended panic, while the four of us stood in single file and bumped together, enjoyed the last noisy sounds of indecision before starting down. I attempted to rummage inside the rucksack and dig out the torch, and discovered without surprise that Hugh’s torch was a nickel-plated, long-handled affair that was obviously filled with greenish and partially corroded batteries. I flicked on the weak beam and passed the torch from hand to hand to Hugh. Catherine had turned her back to me and appeared ready, now, to undergo Hugh’s childish adventure to the end.

  “Cyril? Are you there?”

  “Sure I am.”

  “Steps, boy. They’re pretty steep. Careful now.”

  The darkness was like the water in a cold well, the roof of the narrow corridor became the sounding board for Hugh’s loud voice. With slow shoulders and spread hands we felt our way along the slick invisible walls and occasional gritty patches of leprous masonry. In single file and breathing audibly, on we crept toward the diffused beam of Hugh’s torch which he was flashing in all directions now to indicate, as he said, the beginning of the steps. Above Fiona’s strong jasmine scent and the smell of the throbbing seaweed there drifted the unmistakable smell of human excrement—an undeniable fresh smell that could hardly help the tone of our quest, could not help but make Catherine uncomfortable and Fiona displeased. For a moment I allowed myself to muse on the odor of human offal, thinking that men inevitably relieved their bowels in all the ruined crypts of the world and that the smell struck some kind of chord in other men but to women was merely distasteful. What then of Fiona’s earlier asssertion of her love for the places of masculinity? Was that particular love of hers unqualified? The smell of the offal and Fiona’s sudden silences were the first indications that it was not.

  “Well,” I heard myself saying, “we’re like a bunch of kids.”

  “Speak for yourself, boy.”

  “At least you could shine the light this way once in a while. Might help, don’t you think?”

  “I’m cold, Cyril. What’ll I do?”

  “There are a couple of sweaters in the rucksack, boy. Why don’t you pull one out?”

  “No,” I said. “We’ll wait until we reach the bottom.”

  I heard our three pairs of spongy rubber-soled shoes making soft contact with the first half dozen steps, distinguished the hard leathery sound of Fiona’s tissue-thin sandals on the stone. I saw Hugh’s haste registered in the jerky disappearance and reappearance of the light of the torch. I hoped that Hugh would find something to make this expedition of his worthwhile, I hoped that whatever he found would please Fiona and prove to be of interest, at least, to Catherine and me. I hoped that the last hours of the day would find Catherine and me alone together in one of those dense harmonious places of my choosing rather than Hugh’s, and would find Fiona once again running free and nestling with a more appreciative and agreeable Hugh.

  “If there’s nothing down there,” I called, “what then?”

  “It’s there, all right. I dreamed about it.”

  “Stop him,” Catherine whispered in a flat voice. “Can’t you do something?”

  “Too late,” I whispered back. “Besides, he’s enjoying himself.”

  “Why can’t we all hold hands?”

  “Wouldn’t do much good. It’ll be over soon.”

  “Hugh,” Fiona said. “Tell us the dream.”

  But even the timbre of Fiona’s voice was oddly diminished, and the restraint and poignancy of this second brief appeal made
it only too clear that even Fiona was beginning to have reservations about the intensity of Hugh’s descent. And treading the dark air, sinking, fumbling, following each other down, once again it occurred to me that Hugh was somehow more than oblivious to Catherine’s fear and resignation, more than insensitive to Fiona’s now obvious misgivings and disappointment, more than indifferent to my quiet presence behind him at the end of the line. Perhaps our very compatibility was at last at stake. In all the thoughtlessness of his clearly secret self, perhaps his true interest was simply to bury our love in the bottom of this dismal place and in some cul-de-sac, so to speak, of his own regressive nature. Perhaps he was as indifferent to the male principle as he was to me, and was not searching for some sexual totem that would excite a little admiration in his wife and mine, but was instead determined to subject all four of us to the dead breath of denial. Who could tell?

  “Oh, baby, look at the view.”

  Suddenly we paused, leaning against each other, and crowded together at a high narrow aperture cut with beveled edge through the dark thick mass of what we now understood to be the outside wall, so that in the sudden funnel of clear light and with our heads close and hands on shoulders, arms about familiar waists, the rucksack pressing against Catherine’s hip as well as mine, suddenly we found ourselves sharing relief from the darkness and uncertainty of our now interrupted downward progress into this stone shaft. Silent, subdued and yet attentive, relieved and yet immobile, unemotional, touching each other and yet unmotivated by our usual feelings of mutual affection—for one brief somber moment we stared out toward the vacancy, the sheer distance, the brilliant timeless expanse of sea and air. Hugh had hiked himself as best he could into one corner of the empty aperture and was a grainy and rigid silhouette leering seaward. The scantness of Fiona’s tennis dress was pressing against the stiffness of Hugh’s denims, the breadth of my chest was partially straddling Fiona’s left shoulder blade and Catherine’s right arm, Catherine’s waist was soft and comfortable beneath the casual pressure of my left hand. There were no boats on the horizon, no birds in the air. Only the four of us, the silence, the fortress heavier than ever above our heads, the stones larger and darker and more imprisoning, only the constricted view of the inaccessible water with its all-too-real surface of white transparencies and maroon-colored undulations.

  “Hugh,” Fiona said then, “why don’t we just climb back up and go swimming? I feel like a little swim. Right now.”

  “I hate this place,” Catherine said. “I want to leave.”

  “It’s just not much fun. I want us to have fun, that’s all.”

  “Hugh knows about my claustrophobia, don’t you, Hugh? But at least you could listen to Fiona if you won’t listen to me.”

  “The view’s attractive, but the rest of it just isn’t turning out as I thought it would.”

  “Hugh’s selfish, that’s all.”

  “Don’t you want to go swimming with me, baby?”

  “Of course he does. But Hugh’s not about to change his mind. He’ll deny us the same way he denies the children.”

  “But Hugh, we can’t even have a little hugging and kissing down there. Don’t you see?”

  “He doesn’t care. He won’t listen to either one of us.”

  “Help me, Cyril. Tell Hugh I always mean what I say.”

  Laughing, leaning into both Catherine and Fiona and squinting heavily for another look at the gently shifting dark sea: “Don’t pay any attention to them,” I heard myself saying, “our wives don’t want to admit how much they like this little dangerous hunt of yours.”

  “You’ll be sorry, baby.”

  “No threats, Fiona.”

  “I’m bored. I’m not going to say it again.”

  “How about it, Hugh? Ready?”

  Yes, I thought, my empathy was real enough, the tone of the position I had decided to take could not be missed. But did Hugh care? Had he been listening? Or was he more than ever oblivious, as I had at first suspected? Did it matter to Hugh that I had chosen sides—I who could always absorb the little resistances of his wife and mine, after all, with nothing to lose? Or was my support merely one more irritant that somehow enhanced Hugh’s feelings of remoteness in this our first small disagreement?

  It was then that I recalled the morning’s trivial domestic incident described to me by Catherine in one long breath of privacy before we had assembled into our usual foursome —I leaving, Hugh returning, Hugh lunging into his rightful bed, Hugh appealing in hypnotic whispers for Catherine’s nakedness, Dolores entering that room of circular love, Hugh bounding up and striking his head against the rotten shutter which I myself had opened only moments before. But had Hugh sensed my intervention in both Catherine’s nakedness and the state of the shutter? Or had he simply viewed the unwitting appearance of the sleepy child along with the crack on his head as somehow deserved or as a deliberate manifestation of the dream he was still keeping to himself? Had the interruption accounted perversely for his morning’s cheer? But if all this were true, as suddenly I thought it was, and if the day’s expedition had in fact begun for Hugh with this misadventure, then of course the invisible lump on his head in some way accounted for his present leering confidence and refusal to talk. Surely the lump on his head fit in with his plans.

  Still saying nothing, Hugh merely turned and once more started down. We followed, of course, and the light was gone, the vista of the bright sea was gone, a sudden vacuum in the dark air told me that Fiona was hurrying to catch up with Hugh in spite of herself. Catherine was doing her best, the walls were wet, the steps were steeper and the passage more narrow than before. From somewhere far below, the sound of Hugh’s creaking denims drifted up to us. And suddenly from those depths below us came Fiona’s faint cry along with an abrupt rush of pattering sounds that could only mean that one of them had fallen.

  “What’s that?”

  “Accident.”

  “You better come on down here, boy. Your wife’s in trouble.”

  “Keep going,” I said to Catherine, “but don’t try to hurry. Be careful.”

  Fiona was sure-footed. Fiona was not one of those women who convert minor injury into an instrument of will whenever the neutral universe fails to conform in some slight particular to the subtleties of the female vision. She was strong, she was agile, she could not have fallen merely to teach Hugh a lesson or merely to hasten the swimming party which, however, I knew full well she intended to enjoy before the last light of the day. But that faint cry, that soft cry tinged with the barest coloration of accusation, I had heard it and recognized it immediately as the clear cry Fiona never uttered unless she needed my help. So as unlikely as it seemed to me, perhaps she was hurt. Perhaps there would be no swimming after all.

  Beyond the suddenly visible bulk of Catherine’s shadow, I saw the white dress pulled up to the loins, the lifted knees, the slender face, the cavern floor, Hugh’s crouching shape, the circle of dim light. We were below sea level and now we were crowding together in a small wet space hollowed out from stone and thick with echoes.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Are you all right?”

  “I slipped, baby. Me! I went down about twenty steps.”

  “Well,” I said, laughing, fumbling with the rucksack, finding the sweater, “let’s see if you can walk.”

  “I hope you’re satisfied, Hugh,” Catherine said. “Fiona might have broken her ankle.”

  “Climb into this sweater,” I murmured quickly and calmly, “and then we’ll check you out.”

  But was she indeed hurt? Catherine was kneeling beside Fiona, Hugh was crouching, in his one hand gripped the now dying torch. Fiona herself was still prostrate on the cold stone. For a moment I had the decided impression that Hugh had bolted into these ruins and dragged us into these wet depths of vaulted darkness for the sole purpose of discovering nothing more than Fiona herself lying flat on her back in the faint eye of the torch like the remains of some lady saint stretched head to toe on her tomb.
The expression on Fiona’s face seemed to bear me out, since her head was turned to the sound of my voice and since the slender construction of Fiona’s face and the willful eyes and thin half-smiling lips were raised to me in something more than mere personal concern for the immediate situation of unlikely accident. What else could that expression mean if not that she understood what I was thinking and was momentarily aware of her own body and expressly erotic temperament as the very objects of Hugh’s subterranean design? How else account for Fiona’s expression of puzzlement and appeal if not by knowing suddenly that Hugh was quite capable of attempting to transform my faunlike wife into a lifeless and sainted fixture in his mental museum?

  “Give me your hand, baby. Help me up.”

  But still no word from Hugh? No hint of his usually exaggerated concern for Fiona’s interests, pleasure, well-being, safety? Not even taking advantage of the darkness to thrust himself against Fiona who was now holding my hand and scrambling to her feet and was nothing if not responsive to Hugh’s slightest touch? But it was true, all too true. He must have known that today there would be no hugging and kissing, as Fiona had put it, long before Fiona had voiced that sad little conviction of hers, long before he had had his dream, long before he had banged his head on the rotted shutter.

  There was nothing to do, I thought, except to hold wide the neck of the sweater and help Fiona, however clumsily, to pop her head through the opening and feel her way into the sleeves so absurdly long and tangling. And then, quite simply, I would demand the torch from Hugh and lead us calmly back up to the limitless pastel light of the burned court.