Turning Back the Sun(9)
“What do you mean “unsuitable to marry?” “
Rayner was ashamed of this. But he blundered on. “They”ve been much older, or had a different education—or were married already …” He disliked the person saying this. Even at the outset of these affairs, he”d been dogged by this betrayal, the knowledge of their transience. Yet he had gone on with them. Several of these women had come to love him, as he cooled towards them. In a town like this, they continued like ghosts: the secretary in the office window whose eyes still followed him in the street; Xenia, greying now, turning her face feverishly away from him at parties; Myra, who still sold scarves on the mall.
The man said, “Have you ever felt committed to anyone?”
“I fell in love in the capital. But I was only nineteen.”
He had known her since childhood. She was one of the small band with whom he”d grown up: children marked out by a modest privilege of which they were scarcely aware. The letters from these friends had petered out years ago, but he sometimes wondered what had become of them: the gifted and melancholy Leon, who must surely be an artist or writer by now (although he”d heard nothing of him); and Gerhard, pushy and handsome, a friend of Ivar”s. The girls were such close friends that they seemed to partake a little of one another”s aura, of the same optimism and clarity. At least in retrospect, they were beautiful, with their blue and hazel eyes and blonde or fair-streaked hair. They emanated laughter and trust, and a little vanity. Even Adelina, whose features were so irregular, partook of this mutual glamour with her long, slender legs and innocent haughtiness.
But Miriam”s attraction was different. She had dark hair and dark eyes. Even as a boy he”d known why the other girls appealed to him; but with Miriam he was unsure. While the others were expressed by their faces—pretty, even beautiful faces—Miriam”s personality stirred in her whole body, which was vigorous and full.
In the brief months between his car crash and his transfer from the capital, he had fallen in love with her. Later he wondered if this love had been ignited by her radiant health, viewed from his sickbed through weakened eyes. But they never slept together. The capital was a puritan city. They lived under public scrutiny, in clubs and restaurants. In the gang of their friends, they did not noticeably pair off. The group held its members in common. Now he could not even be sure how exclusive he had been to her, but remembered their lovemaking as a glory of nervous, adolescent exploration in the evening in parks during autumn.
They used to go diving together on the coral west of the capital. After his discharge from hospital he forced himself to do this again, but one morning he found to his horror that he could not squeeze his damaged foot into his flipper. For several minutes he stood up in the boat, furious with humiliation, while the others went overboard; and when at last he dropped into the water and descended the anchor chain behind Miriam, the divemaster never noticed that he was barefoot.
Rayner did not know it then, but this would be the last time he would see her. He felt a little sick. The rasp of a strong current clouded the water with a dust of coral fragments. Miriam swam ahead of him with languid undulations of her flippered feet. The compressed-air cylinders obscured her back. All familiarity seemed gone from her, because she had dyed her dark hair pale—a smoky gold color, which flowed out behind her. Even when she turned, her face floated enigmatic behind its mask and regulator, washed by this flaxen strangeness.
He came alongside her with strenuous thrusts of his unaided feet. The others were ahead, oblivious of them. The current had eased now, and the water cleared. In a dreamy unison they glided together abreast, as if flying, while the coral steepened into miniature crags around them.
Then came the moment by which he remembered their love. He reached out and took her hand. Behind its mask her face looked startled for a moment, then she pulled his hand towards her and held it clenched against her breast. The next instant, teasingly, she had taken the regulator out of her mouth and was holding it towards him. So he removed his own and gave it to her, and childishly, a little dangerously, breathing from each other”s cylinders, they swam on for a full two minutes, locked side by side. It was a moment of perfect trust. They went in slow motion, weightless. They might have been breathing through each other”s lungs. She still clasped his hand. They must have looked like one creature, he later thought—but an inept mutant, doomed to perish. Yet it was an instant of such eerie, unaccountable union that he imagined it afterwards more complete than the sexual coupling they had never known, and as if to illumine the moment”s strangeness, great drifts of damselfish, confined in the coral valley, came flickering and brushing against them like cold gems.
“When did you leave?” The analyst”s pen shifted over his notepad.
“Just three days later. I”d been assigned here after my exam results.” He laughed a little bitterly. “The results weren”t good. The car crash interfered with my studies.”
His friends had gathered on the station platform to say farewell and fill his arms with small gifts. But the conventional words of parting—”Until next year!” or “Come back and see us!”—never reached their lips. There was no such hope of return. So they spoke about small, immediate things: the appearance of his fellow passengers, the sudden rain. Nobody could face forever. Their ebullience had shrunk to helplessness. Jarmila and Adelina cried a little, and Leon was biting his lip.