by Edna O'Brien
I have no doubt but that we will be alone, because we both want it. I shall whisper. I may even touch her elbow or her wrist. I shall ask if by any chance she has smelling salts or a tranquillizer in her bag, and once she has appraised the question, and felt my shiver, she will ask me why. I shall tell her in all truth that I doubt if I can get through the dinner. Again she will ask me why. She will look at me, and when I say, “The usual,” she will know that my trouble is man trouble. I can already see her eyes—dark eyes becoming potent with curiosity—and her blood will quicken, and it will not be long before she asks me who he is, what he does, and I will tell her so much and yet so little. I will describe to her her own husband and any other woman’s husband, because do they, do they, differ so radically, those men in dark suits, white shirts, and tasteful silk ties, who want peace in their nests and excitement on their forays? I will say that he gives me pleasure, that he gives me pain, that I never know when to expect him and when not, and that I mean to give him up but I lack the necessary strength, the determination. Then comes my coup. I will ask her to have lunch with me in my favorite restaurant. I will tell her that I long to talk to someone whom I don’t know—someone who can help—and with every word I say suspicion will redound in her womb. She may hesitate, but she will not refuse me. I will pin her to a day, and the sooner the better. Nor will he be able to force her to cancel, since that would show him to be implicated, show his culpability. I can hardly wait for tonight to be over, so that I can get on with the proceedings. Their unknown world will gradually unfold to me. I may even meet their twins. She and I may become friends, or getting to know him through her, I may be cured of this passion or together we may overthrow him and send him out into the world stripped of his duplicity. I scarcely know what will happen. All I know is that I cannot endure it alone, and as they have become part of my life I shall become part of theirs; our lives, you see, are intertwined, and if they destroy me they cannot hope to be spared.
The Return
The light is stunning, being of the palest filtered gold, and the clouds are like vast confections made of spun sugar, ruminative orbs that seem to stand in the air, to dally, as if they were being held and willed by some invisible puppeteer. Streams of sunshine issue over the fields and the earth far below—fields that have been mown, others that have been harvested, and still others exuding a ravishing, life-giving, ocher color. Sometimes a range of mountains comes into view and the peaks covered with last year’s snow shine with an awesome silver-white brightness. The little houses, the winding rivers, and the ordered fields seem detached from the currents of everyday life, like objects planted in an unpeopled world. All is suspended, and I think how harmonious a life can be. “I do not want to land,” I say, and wonder if the force and fierceness of the airliner as it mows through the air has the same impact as the plow piercing the earth and slicing a passage through it. As I wend my way home, all sorts of thoughts come to mind, idle and drifting like thistledown. For no reason I think of a peculiar and timid woman who featured in my childhood and who used to sit at her piano and sing whenever visitors descended on her. Though they complained about her screeching voice, they were glad that she performed for them, that she allowed for no gaps in the conversation, and that she gave them something to mock. One year she acquired a pair of peacocks, of whom she was absurdly proud, even boastful. The female contracted an ailment by which she kept her eggs embedded inside her, and though wanting to, she could not give lay. The mistress was childless, too, and this caused her to cry when she saw the girls decked out in their gauzy veils and the boys, like little men in new suits, in the chapel at their First Holy Communion. Suddenly I think of a peacock’s feather and in its center an eye so blue, so riveting, that I am reminded of those china eyes that they sold on my holiday island, supposed to keep evil away. This blue is metallic and belongs to a zone in the bowels of the sea, where the spirits of the Nereids are said to dwell. The sea by which I sat and lulled myself on my holiday did not seem at all ominous. It was always inviting, and in the scorching town it was as soothing and beneficial as a baptismal font. Life there would have been intolerable without it. The town itself was seething with heat and the small houses were like white cubes that bristled in the heat. The only haven was inside the Byzantine church, whose dun-gold quiet suggested dusk—a dusk in which moths flew about and the faces of saints carved on burnished wood looked out at visitors with a resigned and temperate beauty.
A gnarled old beggar woman presided at the church door and upon receiving a coin she ranted in ecstasy, delivering a mixture of dirge and song. The narrow cobbled streets were free of automobiles, and in the square thin well-bred donkeys were tethered to the one tree, ready to cart the scalding visitors up the steep hill to the acropolis, and if necessary down again. Once, I went there at evening time and it was as if its pillars, its spaces, and its buff stone fragments looking out to sea defied every other standard of beauty and composure. I did not do much sightseeing. It was the harbor to which I veered—the harbor with a life that varied with the hours, so that in the morning breeze its ripples were like minnows on the surface, and later on, its blue was so hard, so glittering, it resembled priceless jewelry. I used to love to watch the liners gliding in, suave and white in comparison with the ferry, which looked clumsy, like a two-decker bus. Then there were the pedal boats with their sedate passengers, and all of a sudden there would be the single sail of a surf boat, like the tom wing of a giant butterfly, dipping down as some embarrassed novice lost his bearings. Two rival groups of children made sand castles.
Walking by them, I would suddenly think of my lover’s children and wonder pointlessly what games they were playing on their summer vacation. I was trying to forget him, or at least to suspend the mixed memories of our times together. The two years I had known him had brought such an artful combination of pain and pleasure that I welcomed a rest, and while forbidding myself to think of him I settled for happy ruminations about his children. I imagined how I would woo them with boiled sweets and various small packets containing whistles and water pistols and other distractions. I wondered what they looked like and if they had his eyes—eyes that can be so piercing or so mild, depending on his mood, eyes that almost always contradict the cursoriness of his manner and lead one to believe that things are sweeter than he dares to admit. I shall not meet them. It is true that I have accepted all the rules and all the embargoes. Of course these rules have not been expressly stated, but one knows them, for they are in the air, like motes. It is the same with the future. He and I do not discuss it. It is as if we were prisoners—two cloistered people for whom each meeting is the only one they can count on. Once, he raised the question of our past. He said we should have met when we were both younger, both fresher. I do not agree. I believe we should have met when we met, but I did not voice this, because I have acquired the habit of saying little—at least, little of any moment. Perhaps because there is so much to say. Or perhaps we do not venture, lest our frail edifice should topple. I cannot help but think of the sand castles the children make with such resolve and such pugnaciousness, and yet when they are called in at dusk they know that the sea in all its vehemence will wash their efforts away. And yet the next day they commence again with exactly the same hope and the same gusto.
While I was on the island, I believed that I had become indifferent to him, but now as I head for home, I am not nearly so confident. As we fly across Europe, I can feel the chill in the air, and from time to time I put my hand up to lower the draft through the ventilator. I say to myself, “This is the air of Yugoslavia,” or “This is the air of Italy,” or “Soon it will be the air of Belgium,” and I think what a marvel to tread the air of several countries, to have one’s body borne forward while one’s mind harks back to another place. I did not want to leave my little villa. I felt such a pang, and I thought, Why abandon all this beauty and why jeopardize this hard-won harmony? The villa, though secluded, had a fine view of the bay, a terrace with splashe
s of bright bougainvillea in clay urns, and at night the smell of orange blossom was so strong and so heady that it was like another presence, pleasing and drugging the senses. Then, in the morning, the flutes of morning glory, so blue and so ethereal, were like heralding angels. Then, too, life in the harbor recommenced. The visitors would file down the dusty tracks and appoint themselves under the straw umbrellas, and soon there would be bodies, or, rather, heads, bobbing in the water alongside the pink buoys, as the sun became hotter and hotter and the sand began to glisten, then sizzle.
Down there, though I was among people, I had a sense of space, of aloofness. The sun shone with such a merciless dedication that even one chink in the straw umbrella could lead to a bad burn. It was a question of lathering oneself with cream, taking a dip, and then hurrying back to the shelter that seemed like a little ark redolent of straw. Across the harbor there were two mountains facing each other, and each in turn had the benefit of the sun. When one was bathed in gold, the other was gray and pitiful, like a widow gathering her weeds about her for the night. This contrast brought to mind his wife’s situation and my own: one in a state of happiness at the other’s expense, yet the happy one always knowing the precariousness of her situation, just as the mountains had to settle for alternations of light and dark. Still, I was able to banish those thoughts, to rout out those daggers and apply my eyes and thence my mind to nature. In the glaze of sunshine one could wrest one’s mind from thought, and it was just like pulling a blind down and shading a room. It was a sparse island, with no crops and with stunted trees that teetered on the barren slopes. There were no dogs, and the cats were thin and ratlike.
When evening came, I would sit on my terrace admiring the stars, so clear and so particular, like flowers on an immense soft navy-blue down. Music from the two rival discotheques and the ceaseless mechanical creak of the cicadas were the only jarring sounds. The lights from the other houses and the bracelet of lights from the three restaurants reminded me of the life of the town—a life that I could partake of had I the inclination. But I did not stir. I used to sit there and think that I was free of him, and tell myself that I had arrived at that sane and happy state of detachment. Indeed, had he sent a telegram to say that he was arriving, I would have sent one back to say that it was impossible. I did not want him there—not then. But now, as I near home and I see precisely the soft spill of his brown hair or one hand in his trouser pocket as he enters my house abruptly, or a look that for all its prurience is also priestly, I know that I am being dragged back to a former state, and it is as if the reins have slipped from my grasp. These forgotten gestures start up a rush of other moments that I can scarcely call memories, since they are more palpable and more real than the passenger next to me. I see the moment when my lover looked at my new dress on its hanger, looked at it with such longing, then reached out almost to touch it, as if imagining or dreading the delight that it would give others to see me in it. For some reason I am reminded of dull suburban gardens and how from packets of spring seeds so randomly scattered the hollyhocks come up tall and defiant, parading their strength and causing one to think that nature is indeed sovereign. In my garden last spring it was a tulip, a red tulip with a black center, and when the petals opened and I saw its fiendish black face, it was like seeing a caricature of a painted devil. “Oh, you little strange devil,” I used to say to it, and wonder how it came to be there—if the birds had planted it or if its seed was in the bag belonging to the Breton hawker who sells onions. He knocks on my door three or four times a year, and holding the bunches of onions aloft, he is like a bishop waving a censer. In the morning light the skins are a beautiful pink, like pearls that have been lightly tinted, whereas in contrast the garlic he carries is the color of raw dough. He always reeks of cognac, and out of embarrassment or pity I give him another, and then fret over his progress on his push bicycle. One time he asked me if he could leave an empty sack in the garden, and it is possible that as he shook it out the seed of the red tulip lodged there.
Last night I was free. Last night I was certain that I had conquered rashness, and today I am proven wrong. Last night something happened to strengthen my conviction, to make me thankful for my independence. I wanted to buy some figs to bring home, so I went on an excursion to the town. You can’t imagine how I avoided the town for the whole week. It was like a furnace down there, with people bumping into each other and more people spilling from coaches and clamoring for cold drinks and souvenirs and shade. I found a shop away from the main square, where there were all kinds of fruit, including the figs that I had hoped for. There were two kinds of figs, and guessing my dilemma, the proprietor, who was pale and extremely gentle, told me to help myself. He touched my wrist as he gave me a paper bag, and the touch seemed to say, “Be generous. Take both kinds.” After I had paid him, I dallied for a moment, though I do not know why. Perhaps I was a little lonely at not having spoken to anyone for a week, or perhaps I was rehearsing my reemergence into the world. All of a sudden, he did a charming thing. He took a little liqueur bottle from a glass case and opened it with one wrench. It was a red liqueur, like a cordial, and we drank it in turn. As other customers came in, he weighed tomatoes or peaches or whatever, and spoke to them in English or German or Italian, then resumed his conversation with me. He spoke of the contrast between life on that island in the summer and in the winter. All or nothing, he said. In the summer he worked eighteen or twenty hours a day, and in the winter he did indoor tasks, such as painting or carpentry, and played cards with the men in the café. An old woman came into the shop, laughing and licking her lips. She was not the customary old woman in black, with a bony face and legs like spindles; rather, she was fat and lascivious. She turned her back to me and pointed to her open zipper, then gestured to me to do it up. I tried, but it was broken. She kept gesturing and laughing, and I think in reality she asked so that he and I could see her flesh. Her flesh was soft and brown, like a mousse. Some children came in and stepped behind the counter to help themselves to cold drinks from the refrigerator, and I assumed that they were his children or his nieces and nephews. He must have always avoided the sun to have a face so pale, and he had very beautiful smooth eyelids, which he kept lowered most of the time. He did not ask me to stay, but I felt that he did not want me to go just yet. I had already told him that I was leaving the following morning and that because of a bungle in my air ticket I had to go to another island, and he had smiled and said that with my coloring I would like the other island, as it was green and leafy. He liked it, he said. It was as if we had a bond, disposed as we were to a bit of shade, to tillage, and to fields. He pulled an airmail envelope from a new packet and started to draw on it in order to show me where the other island was. I had stepped behind the counter and was standing next to him, studying this funny little drawing, when a woman glided in and at once asked me sharply how the owner of my rented villa was. She was a small woman wearing canvas shoes, and everything about her was pinched and castigating.
“Your wife,” I said.
“My wife,” he said.
In an instant I saw their story; it was as if a seer had unfolded a scroll and told me how the man had come from the city, how he had married this thin woman, how the shop was in her name, and how he worked eighteen hours a day, had sired these lovely children, and was always watched. His wife gathered up a sheaf of the brown paper bags that were strewn all over the counter and started to put them in order, and by doing so she told him that he had no right to be slacking, that he had no right to be talking to foreign women. Then she sniffed the empty liqueur bottle and with a grunt tossed it toward the rubbish bin. Thinking that I would probably never see them again, I shook hands with them both and muttered something about the beauty of the island, as if to temper her spleen.
I went alone to the nearest restaurant, ordered a half bottle of white wine, and drank it slowly, and ordered grilled prawns, which I peeled and ate at my leisure, musing about this and that, thinking how lucky I was to b
e my own mistress, to be saved the terrible inclination of wanting to possess while being possessed, of being separated from myself while being host to another. I so relished my freedom that I even remarked to myself how nice it was that no other fingers dabbled in the glass finger bowl. I thought, I have arrived at a new state, a height which is also a plateau. To drive the matter home, as I walked up the hill to my secluded house I overheard an English couple having a ghastly drunken row behind an open door. Four-letter words were hurled from one to the other with such vehemence and such virulence that at each utterance the selfsame word carried different and mounting degrees of hatred; I was afraid they would come to blows, and perhaps they did. I went and sat on my terrace, and found to my surprise that a liner had anchored for the night Its tiny windows were like strips of gold, and all of a sudden I was reminded of the interior of the Byzantine church, and for some reason, alone in the hushed night, I genuflected and said a prayer. Never had the bay seemed so beautiful or so safe, with the pair of sable mountains enfolding it. Now at last they were identical, consumed yet distinctive, in the dark. I delayed going to bed, even though I knew I must be up at five.