The Blood Oranges by John Hawkes Read Free Book Online Page B

and the large halter half-wadded, clutched, in one large hand in her lap, still at that moment I found myself tingling with the realization that Hugh’s wife had acted deliberately and in large part for me. And now, this instant, if Catherine had been able, say, to cup her breasts in her hands with Fiona’s thoughtless exhilaration, might not the sight of Catherine be as stimulating as that of Fiona? Then again, wasn’t the naturalness of Catherine’s slight lingering discomfort exactly as stimulating as the naturalness of my own wife’s erotic confidence? I smiled, I found that the ball of my right foot was pressed gently to the solid front of one of Catherine’s knees, I heard Fiona giggling and saw that Hugh’s blue-gray ankle was now trapped, so to speak, between both of Fiona’s energetic feet, and again I began to hope that I had not overestimated Hugh after all.
    But rolling onto my hands and knees, getting to my feet with a cheerful groan, lumbering to cut off the oldest girl who was running toward us out of the cypresses and shouting for Catherine, and stopping her and displayingfriendliness and knowing that when I turned to wave I would see distant gestures of busy hands fastening big and little halters once again into place—still I could only smile and do a few dancing bear steps for the angry child, because no sex-tableau was ever entirely abortive and because ahead of us lay an unlimited supply of dying suns and crescent moons which Fiona, and Catherine too, would know how to use.
    “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to,” whispered Meredith and shook off my hand. But after all, I told myself, her one poor sour note could never be any match for old Cyril’s song.
    Y ESTERDAY ROSELLA AND I WENT HUNTING FOR BLACK snails. And yesterday, for the first time, Rosella and I ate a meal together. Side by side on hands and knees, or squatting together, prowling about the walls of the villa, spreading the tall grass that grows in senseless clumps against the smoke-blackened walls of my crumbling villa, or poking one after the other in the flower beds nearly invisible now under thickets of crab grass, dead brambles, translucent yellow weeds that turn to powder at the slightest touch, or taking turns with a stick at the base of the little well house which is like a miniature chapel and in fact once wore a small flimsy hand-wrought Byzantine cross of iron on its conical stone roof—for some time Rosella has joined me in my pursuit of the snails, in silent accord has acceptedthe snail hunt as one of my simple activities safe enough, perhaps, to share. But then yesterday, filling the two hot bowls and with no change in her reluctant movements or empty face, pretending that our meal for two was a mere matter of course, Rosella sat across from me and ate her evening meal at the same time that I ate mine.
    Because of the way the birds changed the pitch of their singing, or because of subtle light changes where I sat under the low hand-hewn beams, or because I could tell by the smoke’s odor that the fire was out, and by the breath of air at my small lopsided window as well as the sounds that reached me from the dead gardens could tell that the day was fading, somehow I knew as usual that the time was right, that Rosella had put aside her broom of twigs, had emptied her buckets and left her scrub brushes out to dry, had once again come unstuck from the web of her crude and exhausting day. It was twilight and time to look for the silver trails. Rosella stood waiting for me beside the well house, and I was pleased to see the earthen pot in her arms, the worn-down wooden sandals on the naked feet, the thin earthen-colored dress worn with blunt indifference.
    “Here you are again, Rosella. The girl by the well.”
    I smiled, Rosella merely shifted the chipped pot in her arms. Did she yearn for my hand, did she sometimes wish that I might join her in the squat church of the wooden arm? Did she admire my shabby