The Blood Oranges: A Novel
Page 22
“You don’t know what you’re asking, boy. You couldn’t.”
“Besides,” I said slowly, “I’m not going to let you destroy it.”
Within arm’s length of each other? Trapped at last? Hugh listening to reason? Wiping wet beard and wet head of hair with the back of his hand? The empty bench, the empty settee, the darkness in which we faced each other, the sand like powdered bone, the clusters of invisible and uneaten grapes, the nearby sea, the silent villas, our two wives waiting for something or nothing out there in the night—standing quietly in front of Hugh I was aware of it all and of how little I was asking and how much it meant Catherine accepting a few roses, Fiona smiling, Hugh rid of his unhappy load, I spared any further need to talk us out of our blue moods and free, disinterested, enjoying myself —why not? Why shouldn’t it be? But Hugh was no longer dodging me and gulping air. Hugh was as close to me as I was to him. Perhaps there was already no further need to talk.
“If you think I don’t know what you’re feeling,” I said, “you’re wrong.”
“Don’t touch me. Keep your hands to yourself.”
“Of course Fiona can be hurt like anyone else.”
“What does Catherine sec in you anyway?”
“What’s Fiona see in you?”
“I’m not worth it, boy. Not worth it.”
“Fiona feels otherwise, that’s all.”
“Maybe I’m too damn idealistic. What do you think?”
“Fiona’s idealistic. She’s just as idealistic as you are. That’s why this impasse of yours is so unfortunate.”
“I’m losing out all around, don’t you see?”
“Fiona’s idealism isn’t prohibitive. It’s receptive. It doesn’t preclude sexual affection. It starts with it. That’s the difference. Everything she feels for you is genuine. She has a lot more to regret than you do.”
“I’ve deprived myself of the wife of a man who’s already taken mine. That’s plenty to regret. Plenty.”
“Shout if you want to. But stop hissing at me, Hugh. You don’t need to hiss.”
“Your lust is fulfilled. My lust isn’t. And between your lust and mine I’m going up in smoke, burning away.”
“You don’t feel any lust for Fiona. The idea’s ridiculous.”
“How do you know what I feel, boy? How?”
“I’ve seen the way you look at her. I’ve heard you laugh. I’ve seen her hand on your knee. I’ve seen your exhilaration. You’ve been pretty good to Fiona, as far as you’ve gone.”
“She’s on my mind. You and Catherine are on my mind.”
“Anyway, I have never experienced simple lust. You haven’t either. But of course there’s nothing wrong with lust if there’s nothing else. Fiona has known a few purely lustful men. But you’re not one of them, Hugh. Believe me. As a matter of fact, if it turned out you were, she might be pleased. But you don’t even feel any real lust for your peasant nudes.”
“Listen, you’re trying to force me into your bed so you can stay in mine.”
“If you manage to benefit from this discussion,” I said slowly, “the four of us will be better off. I won’t deny it. On the other hand, if you don’t learn anything from this talk of ours, if you can’t free yourself from these crippling fantasies, naturally your dissatisfaction is going to rub off on the rest of us. I won’t deny that either. Your clenched teeth would spoil anybody’s idyls. Darkness can come to Illyria. It’s possible. But even so, Catherine and I will continue to meet alone together just as frequently as we’ve been meeting until now. We will continue because of the clear emotional basis of our relationship. We will not stop because of the reasons I’ve already given you. Harmony is something all four of us can enjoy. I’d like to see Fiona happy. But that’s your affair. Catherine’s fondness for me is mine. It can’t be changed.”
“There’s always the belt. There’s always that damn chastity belt …”
“Yes,” I said slowly, “the belt.”
We swayed, we tottered. I released Hugh’s shoulders, I heard Hugh sink to my vacated place on the stone bench. And was it finished? Were we done? But to what end? Was Hugh relieved or only more silently inflamed than ever? Was Hugh’s poison draining or collecting? Who could tell?
With my usual care I fished for a cigarette, produced a flame, inhaled. And by the light of that little momentary point of flame I saw that Hugh’s seated figure was bent and slack but that his thin and stony face was turned up to mine. In the next instant it had disappeared, but not before I noted the expression on Hugh’s face, noted the upper teeth clamped over the lower lip and embedded in the blackness of the pointed beard. The flame died, the face disappeared.
“Listen,” I said, “anything you want me to say to Catherine?”
I waited. The cigarette hung down and glowed. In the darkness I heard Hugh’s breathing which had become no more than the timeless drift of air in and out of a small orifice cut in stone.
“It’s easy,” I murmured. “Give it a chance.”
I turned, withdrew deliberately from my dark and silent arbor where Hugh now sat alone repeating my arguments, pondering my advice. There was a sweetness on the night air that engulfed my cologne, Hugh was behind me, I had done my best for the four of us. After all, if dawn did not find Hugh with his head in Fiona’s lap or Fiona dozing with book and terry-cloth robe discarded and Hugh at her side, if dawn brought no harmony for the four of us to share, at least none of it would be my fault. I had done my best.
Dawn would tell. And already the seeds of dawn were planted in the night’s thigh. For a moment I thought of diverting my single-minded intention from Catherine to Fiona, for a moment considered changing my direction and looking in on Fiona who even now was no doubt lying amidst the little illusionary halos of her thin candles and concentrating on the book in her hands. But no, I told myself, it would be better to return to Fiona after rather than before the whole thing was settled, better for me to let Fiona wait and leave Hugh on his own and trust to the dawn. My place was with Catherine—for her sake and mine. Clarity had never been more essential. My next step was clear.
“Well, I’m back.”
“Where have you been?”
“With Hugh.”
“He hates the whole thing.”
“I talked with him. It’s not so bad.”
“We can’t go on.”
“Hugh’s coming around. He’s probably with Fiona right now.”
“Whatever he does, it’s over between you and me.”
“Listen,” I said slowly, “I told Hugh I’d never give you up. What you and I have together hasn’t changed.”
“We can’t have any more … sex. But we don’t need it, do we?”
“Of course we need it.”
“I’ve hurt Hugh as much as he’s hurt me. I can’t face it any longer.”
“You can forgive him for what he did tonight. So can I.”
“It’s over. That’s all I can say.”
“You know why I talked with Hugh. You know why I’m here.”
“Don’t touch me. Don’t ask me to move.”
“Catherine, I want you to stand up.”
“Hugh made me put it on. He’ll have to tell me to take it off.”
“I’m speaking for Hugh. For his good and yours and mine. Now stand up, Catherine. You’ll feel better.”
Had I persuaded Hugh only to lose Catherine? Was what Hugh had said about losing out all around now going to apply not to him but to me? Because I realized that never had it occurred to me that Hugh’s influence over Catherine might be as strong as mine, and now I could only admit my error since Catherine’s tone was suddenly Fiona’s tone and Catherine’s argument was Hugh’s. Apparently all the time I had been grappling with Hugh in the arbor Catherine had been aligning herself with her missing husband in this very room. Not from the start had Catherine ever pushed my hand away or allowed any thoughts of Hugh to come swimming into the picture of our nights together. Or not for long. Not seriously. And
now? Was this the case?
Once again I removed my golden spectacles and deposited them in their usual place of safekeeping beneath the bed. Again I untied the silken sash and removed my decorous old dressing gown and shook it loose, draped it carefully across the front of the bed. Pajama top followed dressing gown, my chest was bare. I smelled the scent of the night dust and felt the warmth of the coming dawn already flowing in the walls around us and in the silent ranked overlapping tiles above our heads. Dry armpits, expansive chest, lingering acrid taste of the cigarette in my moistened mouth—here I stood, a mental and muscular presence prepared for love. Only this silent woman’s aging but youthful lover composed and half undressed and ready once again for love.
“Catherine,” I said in my clear low voice, “give me your hand.”
I groped for Catherine’s hand in the dark. And when at last I took hold of it, I understood all too well the limp fingers and unresponsive hand. I had expected no abrupt change of mind, no suddenly fierce grip. I understood her desire to be rid of the belt but also her reluctance to expose herself to the shame of it—even for me. No woman was less deserving of such abuse than Catherine, no woman less able to throw it off.
Yet I persisted and helped her up until she was on her feet and accepting if not returning my long embrace. I held her, again I smelled the faint smell of Catherine’s hair turning gray at the roots, I understood only too well the power of that invisible garment which was as ephemeral as Fiona’s panties but as forbidding as the cold fortress from which it had come. Bent as I was on removing that impediment to love, was I already the accomplice of he who had forced Catherine to put it on? Slowly and carefully I unbuttoned the phosphorescent top of Catherine’s pajamas.
“Now stand still a minute.”
Carefully and without urgency I pulled the tie-string of her pajamas and then sat down on the edge of the bed with my knees apart and Catherine rising tall and soft and passive between my spread knees. No emotionalism, I thought, no talking, no drama—only the open pajama jacket, the tie-string hanging loose, the pajama pants opened in front. The end of Hugh’s violence was only this brief and matter-of-fact procedure smoldering, so to speak, with eroticism.
“Stand still,” I whispered again. “Be patient. Trust me.”
There in Catherine’s room and seated on the edge of her bed in the heart of the night, aware of our breathing, our presence together, and smelling the bed linen which only yesterday or the day before I had helped Catherine hang on the line with Hugh’s wet sailor pants and Meredith’s sadly modest swimming suit, and conscious of myself as the quiet full-bodied lover who had made Catherine move a little more quickly through all this displaced banality, and conscious of the secreted dead remnant of Hugh’s hostility and of the fact that I had not touched my mouth to Catherine’s mouth all night—slowly I raised my hands, seized Catherine’s hips, inserted thick but tender fingers between the skin of her hips and the waistband of her pajama pants and drew them down until somewhere below the knees they fell of their own accord and dropped in a soft and useless heap around Catherine’s feet. But Hugh’s accomplice? Yes, I was Hugh’s accomplice. In all my strength and weight I was not so very different from Hugh after all. Because as soon as I pressed thumbs and fingers against the thin pitted surface of the iron band circling Catherine’s waist, I realized that Hugh’s despairing use of that iron belt must have occasioned a moment more genuinely erotic than any he had known with Catherine, with his nudes, or in his dreams of Fiona.
“But, Catherine, it’s tight, so unbearably tight …”
Now with my two arms around Catherine’s waist, and leaning forward so that my cheek was within inches of her bare stomach, slowly and deftly I gave that little brutal and rusted clasp the single expert twist that was all it took to pick the lock of Love and unfasten the belt. The belt came free, I peeled away the iron, I drew the short barbarous tongue from between Catherine’s legs. And now what on Catherine’s body had been Hugh’s chastity belt alive with tension and cruelly snug, in my two hands was only a pathetic dangling contraption withered and faintly rattling.
“Well,” I whispered, “do you still want me to go? It’s up to you.”
As if there had been no belt, no doubts, no problem, no anguished Hugh, no reason at all for hesitation, Catherine merely stirred herself within the limits of my embrace and took off her already unbuttoned pajama jacket and stepped out of the soft phosphorescent heap of her pajama pants and with one foot pushed them aside.
“Kiss me, Cyril … kiss me …”
Together we moved, together we sank down at last on that lumpy and earthen-smelling mattress until in time the fish began to flow, the birds to fly, the twin heavenly nudes of Love to approach through the night.
Would it stop? Would it ever stop? Catherine could not expel her breath forever, my emissions were limited in length and frequency. We could not go on. True radiance could only end in the dark. Then why was the tempest still exploring the storm? Why was I still bulging from head to foot? Why was Catherine still holding her breath, why hugging my buttocks more tightly than ever, why biting her own lower lip? Would it never end?
But of course at this very moment I found myself becoming aware of change, heard Catherine sigh, felt her two hands sliding away, knew that on either side of me her two feet were again flat on the bed, felt my shoulders sagging and knew with deep pleasurable regret that suddenly the naked twins of our invented constellation were gone. The bed was still.
“Listen,” I said at last, “remember that evening we saw the nightingale?”
“You’re so good to me … You’re so good to us all …”
“Or that time I spitted the lamb on the beach?”
“I love to hear your voice in the dark …”
“Tomorrow I guess we’ll have to get Hugh into the water.”
Later, much later, I awoke to the silence and bright light of the sun-filled room and sat up on the edge of the bed. I stood. I took my usual count of bottomless breaths of morning air. Smiling down at Catherine I decided to carry the pajamas but wear the old dressing gown. And then with chastity belt in hand and laces tied, eyeglasses adjusted, sash in place, pajamas carefully folded over my right arm, I left.
I paused in the open doorway of Hugh’s villa. I paused on our side of the funeral cypresses. I paused in the arbor which was empty. I found a safe hiding place for the belt. I took a few more long breaths of the sun. All of Illyria was a chalky and yet verdant landscape drenched in champagne.
Within a half dozen paces of our narrow doorway framed in vines I found myself smiling into the gray-green steady eyes of my waiting wife. There stood Fiona in that doorway of white mortar and sprightly vines, Fiona wide-awake and up and around like me. I did not move, I drank her in, she watched me with familiar pleasure. Over her right arm she carried her folded terry-cloth robe, and except for the loosely folded robe was naked. How alike we were, I thought, knowing that for the moment at least neither one of us would speak and that Fiona was reading, as it were, the pajamas on my arm exactly as I was reading the robe on hers. Our two separate but similar nights were evident in our appearances, each of us was perfectly aware of the other’s thoughts. I was exhausted but as fresh as ever, she was tired but tense. She knew that I had enjoyed my night hours, I knew that she could not possibly look the way she looked if she had spent those same hours alone. Her bright eyes, her obviously sore muscles, the somehow roughened texture of her hard and slender body—what else could they mean?
“Baby,” she whispered, “come inside …”
I let fall the pajamas just as Fiona dropped her robe, quickly I seized Fiona’s proffered hand and followed her through our vine-beribboned doorway and down the cool corridor to the room that was ours. Her slim bare feet were light on the stone, her trim buttocks were filled with purpose. Hand in hand and thigh to thigh we stood in the entrance to our sun-drenched eonnubial room.
“Baby,” she whispered, “isn’t he beautiful?”
“Cyril …?”
“Fiona …?”
“I want you, baby. I want you now.”
“We love each other. Agreed?”
“But he’s going to wake up any minute and I have to be here. I love him very much. I really do.”
“There’s always tonight.”
“We’ll just have to see. OK?”
“Listen,” I murmured, and kissed her cheek, “he can’t catch up. But God knows we’ll let him try …”
She gave me one quick glance, I smiled, she turned in girlish haste to the bed while I retreated down the corridor to the bright morning which in unaccountable silence was rushing faster than ever along the path of the sun.
Later, much later, though before the hour of noon, the four of us met again for a new first time at Fiona’s small rickety breakfast table set up in the arbor, Hugh and Fiona emerging from the narrow doorway framed in vines at the very moment that Catherine and I made our entrance through the wall of cypresses. Hugh and Fiona came out shoulder to shoulder and with their hands full of Fiona’s crockery, Catherine and I stepped forward with our arms about each other’s waists. Yes, openly and freshly we came together in the arbor which was sweet and shaded and bursting with hymeneal grapes, a quiet and appropriate place for our reunion. Catherine was wearing her white pajamas, I had all the clothing I needed or wanted in my comfortable old blood-colored dressing gown, Hugh had borrowed my red-and-white striped cotton shirt which he wore extravagantly and unashamedly with his own long gray undershorts. Fiona topped us all in one of her nearly mid-hip pale green transparent nighties. Yes, frankly, happily we sat around the perfect square of that small rickety table piled high with Fiona’s morning fare, sat smiling and eating and touching bare feet beneath the table. Catherine sighed and licked her fingers, Hugh coughed and put his hand on Fiona’s arm, Fiona shivered and caught my eye and stared at my bland contented features with a limpid smiling intensity she rarely displayed. Never had she looked more the faun, more the woman. Never had I loved her more or valued quite so highly this special hovering shyness now felt by us all. But the food, wasn’t there also something special about the food? Of course there was. How like Fiona on this morning of mornings to select from the garden of her imagination only those items which, according to superstition, were aphrodisiac. Just like Fiona to fuse in one stroke her feminine wisdom and my sensible view of sex.