Rocks, The

by Peter Nichols

  “How would you know?” said Aegina. “You haven’t even tried it.”

  “I don’t need to. Ça pue.”

  “I love it,” said Aegina.

  “You’ll stink of it,” said François.

  “I hope!”

  When they finished eating, they descended to the dark quay and climbed the stone steps to the top of the breakwater that sheltered the fishing boats and the few small foreign wooden sailboats that found their way to Cala Marsopa. They walked single file out to the end of the wall and sat beneath the tower that held the port’s one blinking white light. At the tower’s base, they were in the shadow of its large stones. They were untouched by the light and could only see its intermittent loom above them.

  Aegina sat between Luc and François, lying back against the wall, pleasantly high on the wine, her legs spread open, knees moving side to side. She wanted Luc or François to kiss her. To put their hands on her breasts. To maul her. Neither had touched her. She knew they both fancied her and that something was going to happen, but it hadn’t yet. François was the more relaxed around her. With his French haircut like Jean-Pierre Léaud, he was the better-looking. Luc was moody this summer. And there seemed to be several versions of him going at once: when he spoke to her, about food, boats, people, plans, his large eyes seemed to belong to someone behind him, looking at her from over his own shoulder.

  Natalie sat next to Luc, and Teddy was on the other side of Natalie. They passed Teddy’s bag back and forth, drinking the wine. None of them spoke, rendered mute by the engrossing sound of the waves that pulsed over the rocks below and their own thoughts.

  Natalie was only a year older than Teddy and Luc and François, but she was already in the other room with the grown-ups. She’d brought her boyfriend Marc down from Paris for two weeks last summer and she and Marc had occupied her room at her parents’ house as if they’d been married guests. After Marc had left, she’d gone out with a German businessman who drove a Porsche whom she’d met at the Miravista. So far this summer Natalie was on her own. Marc wasn’t coming down; they were no longer an item.

  Craning his head around her, pretending to look for the bag, Teddy inhaled her unmasked odor of soap and perspiration, and looked down her shirt. He supposed she spent time with them as she was doing tonight because they’d all known one another for years, as she would with brothers and sisters, mates, while she waited for this season’s mature, hirsute, chain-smoking, car-driving, financially independent lover to appear.

  Aegina’s swinging knees were knocking into François’s and Luc’s. It was annoying Luc. Abruptly he stood up. “I’m going. Are you guys coming to hear Jackson later?”

  “Yeah, I’m coming,” said Teddy. “What time’s he start?”

  “Ten.” Luc started off along the wall.

  “Why are you leaving?” Aegina called after him, sounding petulant.

  “I’ve got stuff to do.”

  He had nothing to do, but he didn’t like wordlessly sandwiching Aegina with François, waiting for something to happen that couldn’t happen when they were all together like this, and her slamming her knee into him.

  The other half of him kept seeing Arabella Squibb coming through the door into his toolshed, looking—maybe it was the rain earlier in the day—just a little like Dorothy Lamour in The Hurricane.

  • • •

  Just before ten, Jackson Rale set himself up beside the pool. Almost invisibly, with great economy of movement for a big man, he brought a barstool up the steps, ran an extension cord from the bar to his amplifier. He got the girl—Sally—behind the bar to make him a Cuba libre. He set it on top of his amplifier, sat on the stool, and plugged in the Gretsch. Soft muted notes floated out over the patio, the bar, the outdoor dining area, like soap bubbles that popped unnoticeably in the bushes and behind the ears. The tunes so well-known that they sounded as natural and subliminal as the waves breaking gently on the rocks across the road. “Mona Lisa,” “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “I Cover the Waterfront,” “Cuando Caliente el Sol,” “Perfidia.”

  Dinner over, the diners drifted to the bar. They took drinks to the tables that had been moved to the edge of the patio. Jackson turned up the beat: “Come Fly with Me,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “I Get a Kick out of You,” “My Funny Valentine.” A few couples, those old enough to know how to fling and be flung, began to dance. Then, touching the guitar’s volume knob, Jackson let fly some well-mannered rhythm and blues: “I Got a Woman,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Maybellene.” More dancers came onto the patio, frugging and shaking and waving their hands. White folks dancing like that, they always reminded Jackson of the night years ago in New Haven, opening with another band, he’d caught Pat Boone convulsing his way through “Tutti Frutti.” It was something he’d never forget.

  Dominick approached the table where Lulu sat with Tom and Milly. “Lulu,” he said, pulsating before her in a floral shirt by Mr Fish; white, tropical-weight hipster bell-bottoms; his awful white Gucci loafers, snapping his fingers and gyrating slightly, “may I have the pleasure?”

  “Certainly, Dominick.” Lulu rose, smiling directly at him, giving every indication of being elevated by pure charm.

  Dominick lifted her hand gallantly in his own, and led her onto the patio as if preparing to join a quadrille. As soon as he let her go, Lulu slid easily into the music. Dominick crouched, flapped his arms, and began to circle her like a bird of paradise targeting a mate. He closed in, shimmying upward to his full height and back down again.

  Lulu laughed. “You’re so funny, Dominick.”

  As Jackson’s number finished, she said, “Thank you, Dominick. You’re very entertaining. I’m going to sit down now. Do join us.”

  She returned to the patio table. Tom grinned companionably at Dominick. “Have a drink, Dominick!” His smile was always wide, white and confident. Tom never suffered any doubt that an unsightly shred of spinach might be lodged in his teeth for he’d had them all knocked out in a motorcycle accident when he was nineteen, and had been fitted with full sets of increasingly better dentures.

  “Thank you,” said Dominick, “I will. But no, let me get you all something. What will you have to drink, Lulu?” Lulu of course could drink for free, but guests could indicate a particular attentiveness by purchasing her request.

  “How sweet of you, darling. I’d love a sherry. A fino, please.”

  • • •

  Luc came up the pool steps. He stood near Jackson and watched him play. They made eye contact as he entered the musician’s field of vision, Jackson acknowledging him with a slight upward nod. At the end of a number when Jackson took a sip of his Cuba libre, Luc said, “Can you play ‘Perfidia’?”

  “I did that a little while ago. I’ll do it later for sure.”

  “Thanks, Jackson.”

  “Sure, man.”

  As Jackson began playing “Tuxedo Junction,” Luc turned and saw Aegina rushing toward him. She didn’t stop as he anticipated but pushed him backward into the pool. Jackson kept on playing. Aegina skipped back down the steps and ran between the dancers across the patio.

  Luc climbed out of the pool and ran, squishing and dripping over the tiles, after her.

  Outside the gate, he looked up and down the shore road where it disappeared against the lights of the port to the left and the pensions on Son Moll beach to the right. Then he saw her at the edge of the rocks right in front of him, her glossy hair and back and legs lit by the houses on the shore, standing against the heaving black sea. He walked across the road, squelching in his sneakers.

  “Aegina,” he called. The waves sucked noisily below, retreated, and came in again louder as Luc came toward her.

  “Aegina—”

  His call seemed to propel her into the air.

  Luc ran to the ledge above the water. “Jesus Christ, Aegina!” he called to her when he saw
her head surface in the confused chop below. “What are you doing?”

  She didn’t look at him. Her head began moving out to sea.

  “Aegina! Come back!”

  She wasn’t coming back. Very quickly her small, dark head moved away into the jumble of glinting black water.

  Luc kicked off his sneakers and jumped.

  The water felt unexpectedly warm. He surfaced and couldn’t see her for a moment. Then he saw her head silhouetted against the fluorescent glow of the town. He caught up with her quickly.

  “Aegina.”

  She continued swimming seaward. Not fast. Luc paddled beside her.

  “What did you do that for?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Why did you push me into the pool?”

  “I wanted to.”

  “Why?”

  She swam on.

  “It certainly is a lovely night for a swim,” Luc said.

  A few minutes later, he said, “You know, I’m not sure I can save you, if we keep going.”

  “Then go back.”

  “I’m not going to do that . . .” Luc found it difficult to speak conversationally. He wasn’t out of breath, but his heart was pounding from Aegina’s actions, and the undoubted attention she’d paid to him, which was gratifying, though he wasn’t sure what it meant. “Aegina . . . I can’t stop you if you keep going . . . well, I can . . . but then we’ll just struggle without going anywhere . . . I’m not strong enough to haul you back to shore . . . if you resist . . . I don’t even think I can haul you back now if you don’t resist—”

  “Fuck off!”

  “Yeah, but . . . if I go back . . . and you drown . . . and later I say, ‘Well, I was out there, but . . . Aegina told me to leave her alone—’”

  “Aie-aie-aie!” she shouted aloft to the gods.

  He was a few feet away but he could smell her warm winey breath on the water.

  Aegina looked around, not at Luc, getting her bearings. She swam around him and headed slowly shoreward.

  When they reached the ladder cemented into the rocks, they both held on to it for a few minutes and caught their breath.

  “You first,” said Luc.

  Aegina climbed the ladder and disappeared above him. Luc followed and found her lying on her side on the rocks. He lay down next to her. When he’d caught his breath he began to feel the breeze from the sea on his wet clothes and he felt cold. He sat up.

  “Aegina.”

  She was asleep, but breathing quickly through her open mouth. Her black hair was plastered across her face.

  “Aegina,” said Luc. He pulled her upright. “We’re going inside. Come on, wake up.”

  She grunted.

  Luc knelt and bowed forward as if in prayer until his head touched rock and he pulled her over his shoulder.

  He staggered up the side street to the gate beside the garage, and then up the path to his toolshed. He knelt again and laid Aegina down on his bed. Light from the pool and patio below came through the little square openings the size of portholes at the top of the walls. He was desperately thirsty. He stayed in the shadows as he walked down to the house and found a stoppered liter bottle of water in the kitchen refrigerator. He drank three long icy gulps and took the bottle with him.

  When he returned, Aegina lay on the bed wrapped in a sheet, two small twisted bits of cloth on the concrete floor.

  “Aegina? Are you awake? Do you want some water?”

  “Yes.” She rose on an elbow and he handed her the bottle. He sat on the edge of the bed while she drank. When she finished she handed the bottle back to him. “Do you want to see my breasts?”

  “No, it’s okay, thanks.”

  “Look.” Aegina let the sheet drop. They were the size of plums, white where they had been covered from the sun, small dark knobs at the center. “They’ve just arrived,” she said.

  “I see.”

  “Do you like them?”

  “Yes, they’re nice.”

  “Do you want to touch them?”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  She snatched his free hand, pulled it to her chest, and held it against her. He felt the cold hard little buttons.

  “Aren’t they nice? They’ll get bigger.”

  “Very nice. They’re fine as they are.”

  “No, they’ll be bigger. I know, because I’m like my mother.”

  Luc had heard about Paloma from Francesca, who came and cleaned at the Rocks every day. Francesca only knew that Paloma was in the hospital at Manacor and that it was very bad. I’m sorry to hear about your mum, he’d said to Aegina a few days ago, and she hadn’t wanted to talk about it. But she’d been drunk or getting drunk ever since.

  “I’m going to take you home,” said Luc.

  Aegina leaned back, still clamping his hand to her breast, pulling him forward. “I want you to do it to me.”

  “Do what?”

  “Jódeme.” She pulled his hand down across her stomach, and then he pulled it away.

  “No,” he said.

  “Why not? Are you a virgin?” she taunted him.

  Luc had been asked this before, by boys and girls in Paris. He responded variously. But he didn’t mind telling Aegina the truth. “Yes. Are you?”

  “Of course I am! What do you think? I’m fourteen!”

  “Yeah, well, so you’re kind of young—”

  “No I’m not. I’m ready. It’s time. I want to lose my virginity. And you’re older, you should want to do it. What’s the matter? You don’t want me?”

  “Aegina, it’s not that . . . you’re very attractive. And I like you. But maybe we should wait.”

  “For what? Now’s perfect. Come on.” She threw the sheet off her and raised one knee and glared at him. “You don’t want me?”

  Luc kept his eyes on hers, but he was aware of her small lithe, still damp body, the precocious dark triangle at the apex of her thighs and belly.

  “Maybe we should lead up to it, differently, sort of. Sometime when you’re not drunk.”

  “I’m not drunk. And anyway, so what?”

  “I’m going to take you home.”

  Aegina snatched the sheet back up to her chin and sat up on the bed. “I’ve got my moto.”

  “You can’t drive that now.”

  “How will you stop me?”

  “I’ll stop you, don’t worry.”

  “¡Coño!” said Aegina, sounding like an authentic fishwife. She looked down at her scraps of wet clothing on the floor. “I’m not getting back into those.”

  “You can wear these.” Luc put a pair of his shorts and a T-shirt on the bed, and left the shed.

  • • •

  Aegina, stop it!” he hissed at her.

  She sat behind him as they rode out of town on his motorcycle, one arm around his chest, repeatedly grabbing at his crotch with the other hand. At one point her fingers closed firmly around his erection and he twisted violently. “Stop it! We’re going to have an accident!”

  “Just drive,” she said.

  He stopped struggling, and they drove on quietly as her hand closed around him and she gently explored, and neither of them said anything.

  Both Gerald and Billie were on the terrace, alerted by the extended agonized whine of the Rieju as it came up the hill.

  “Go,” said Aegina to Luc as she hopped off.

  He turned and coasted quietly away down the hill, his mind and body filled with the touch of her fingers.

  “Aegina, where have you been?” asked Gerald. “Are you all right? Where’s your moped? Did you have an accident?”

  “No, I’m fine, Papa. I just didn’t want to drive home,” said Aegina. “Night!” She ran up the short steps immediately below them to her own room beside the cistern on the ground floor.

&
nbsp; On the terrace, Billie said, “Do you have any idea where she’s been?”

  “They’ve probably been out at the Miravista, dancing. That was Luc—Lulu’s son. He’s actually a nice boy.”

  “Those weren’t her clothes, Gerald.”

  “Weren’t they?”

  “Gerald . . . this has got to stop.”

  Eight

  Life goes on, however. Gerald needed to sell oil. Early in the morning, he set off to Artà to pick up fifty bottled liters of his olive oil to deliver to Comestibles Calix, the Hotel Castillo, La Fonda, and several other restaurants in Cala Marsopa.

  He had joined the Cooperativa d’Artà in November, which enabled him now to market his oil with the stamp Illes Balears Qualitat. The previous autumn had been wet, and his trees had produced more olives than he thought he’d be able to harvest by himself. The cooperativa sent two men to help him, and they’d driven the filled tubs of green and purple olives to the press for him. The fees to join the cooperativa and pay for the work of the men were more than offset by the larger size of his harvest and the few pesetas he was now able to add to the price of each litro bearing the appellation Qualitat. The old abuelo at the press, the grandfather of the olives they called him, whose gnarled index finger held under streams of new oil and raised to his tongue provided the cooperativa’s quality control, had advised Gerald to harvest two weeks earlier than usual. The resultant oil was the best he’d ever produced. It smelled of frutas del bosque. Gerald had initially been upset, thinking that this was because his olives had been mixed with superior fruit, but the abuelo had assured him that it was because the olives had been picked earlier and that only his olives had gone into his oil, and that his oil was very fine. There were more bottles than he could find room for at C’an Cabrer, and half of it, several hundred slightly cloudy green liter bottles, remained stored at the cooperativa. He drove to Artà and fetched them as he needed to.

  He first drove the fifty minutes to the hospital in Manacor. Paloma appeared unchanged, though with the respirator, her color was good and the bruised-looking shadows around her eyes that had appeared after the brain surgery were fading. In Spanish, Gerald told her that he was off to fetch more bottles from the cooperativa and that he would return later in the afternoon.