and with such meaningful pauses, that each of his removals seemed sacred.
She tried to help him untie the feathers from his hair, but he took her fingers and kissed them and put them in his mouth, all the while working on the feathers himself, until they were strewn around him like the colorful remnants of a pillow fight among concubines in a harem.
His body is lean but still strong, and his skin is surprisingly soft, worn smooth by the salt and sand, like astone. He’s gentle with her, and when he looks at her he smiles, and then his smile, not the smile of the gambler but the smile of the gentleman, the wild gentleman, his smile turns to tears.
She’s afraid of him at first, but then she realizes that like herself, he too has changed. They are still the pilot and the navigator, but they’ve forgotten their parts, their professions. They don’t have names, or memories, or words.
I want to tell you everything without saying anything, he says. And she agrees. And they do that, from now on, they tell each other everything.
That night, he stopped talking to the animals, although he continued to wear the feathers and the bracelets and the earring, and he began to share his body with her whenever she asked for it. He built himself a cabin on the more gentle, western end of the island, with a terrace that overlooked the sea and where the surf would sing itself to sleep on velvet winds. This was his hideaway, as he called it, where he would receive his visitor at any hour of the day or night, without asking questions or expecting anything in return because in his opinion it was the least he could do for the woman who had saved hislife. Sometimes he would accept a gift from her, a poem or some fried banana, but he never liked to feel that they were involved in any kind of barter. Only once did he refuse her, when he was feeling sick from eating too many handfuls of fish eggs, but otherwise he never turned her down, even if he wasn’t in the mood.
Ten
H E VISITS ME at night in my house by the lagoon. We are lovers. We love each other all night.
Sometimes he comes to me in the middle of the night, and we drench ourselves in the slick and perfumed waters of the lagoon, making folds in the wetness as if we are moving through a timeless and moonlit cave of space.
After so much loneliness, so long, so alone, the sound of another person’s voice or just their breathing is a feeling unto itself. It’s a deep joy in the body, like having water run through you. The sound of his breathing keeps me asleep for hours.
With all his experience, he tries to teach her the tricks he has performed or seen performed on others, but the lessons are unnecessary. She isn’t looking fordrama, she just wants to be satisfied. The truth is that she was bored by the limited coupling she had with her husband and she enjoys the unencumbered sex with Noonan, but in both cases she takes it lightly. She thinks of it like eating: sometimes she has a good meal, sometimes she has a bad one, but usually she’s just hungry and she eats. For a long time Noonan lives under the delusion that because she seems untheatrical in bed she is frightened or uncomfortable. But little by little he comes to understand that she can enjoy herself without telling him about it. In this way he comes to trust her. And he believes that they will be able to please themselves forever because they don’t protect each other from their selfishness.
They weren’t expecting or forcing themselves to be in love. He had given her the gift of an unconventional freedom, which she deemed more precious than love.
It happens at night, by the lagoon on the desert island. Every night the great heroine gives herself to the navigator, and every night he gives himself back. The rest of the world will never give up on them, will never stop looking for them. But there they are, alive. They’re living for each other now.
During the day she looks at the horizon, suspiciously. She doesn’t say
She tried to help him untie the feathers from his hair, but he took her fingers and kissed them and put them in his mouth, all the while working on the feathers himself, until they were strewn around him like the colorful remnants of a pillow fight among concubines in a harem.
His body is lean but still strong, and his skin is surprisingly soft, worn smooth by the salt and sand, like astone. He’s gentle with her, and when he looks at her he smiles, and then his smile, not the smile of the gambler but the smile of the gentleman, the wild gentleman, his smile turns to tears.
She’s afraid of him at first, but then she realizes that like herself, he too has changed. They are still the pilot and the navigator, but they’ve forgotten their parts, their professions. They don’t have names, or memories, or words.
I want to tell you everything without saying anything, he says. And she agrees. And they do that, from now on, they tell each other everything.
That night, he stopped talking to the animals, although he continued to wear the feathers and the bracelets and the earring, and he began to share his body with her whenever she asked for it. He built himself a cabin on the more gentle, western end of the island, with a terrace that overlooked the sea and where the surf would sing itself to sleep on velvet winds. This was his hideaway, as he called it, where he would receive his visitor at any hour of the day or night, without asking questions or expecting anything in return because in his opinion it was the least he could do for the woman who had saved hislife. Sometimes he would accept a gift from her, a poem or some fried banana, but he never liked to feel that they were involved in any kind of barter. Only once did he refuse her, when he was feeling sick from eating too many handfuls of fish eggs, but otherwise he never turned her down, even if he wasn’t in the mood.
Ten
H E VISITS ME at night in my house by the lagoon. We are lovers. We love each other all night.
Sometimes he comes to me in the middle of the night, and we drench ourselves in the slick and perfumed waters of the lagoon, making folds in the wetness as if we are moving through a timeless and moonlit cave of space.
After so much loneliness, so long, so alone, the sound of another person’s voice or just their breathing is a feeling unto itself. It’s a deep joy in the body, like having water run through you. The sound of his breathing keeps me asleep for hours.
With all his experience, he tries to teach her the tricks he has performed or seen performed on others, but the lessons are unnecessary. She isn’t looking fordrama, she just wants to be satisfied. The truth is that she was bored by the limited coupling she had with her husband and she enjoys the unencumbered sex with Noonan, but in both cases she takes it lightly. She thinks of it like eating: sometimes she has a good meal, sometimes she has a bad one, but usually she’s just hungry and she eats. For a long time Noonan lives under the delusion that because she seems untheatrical in bed she is frightened or uncomfortable. But little by little he comes to understand that she can enjoy herself without telling him about it. In this way he comes to trust her. And he believes that they will be able to please themselves forever because they don’t protect each other from their selfishness.
They weren’t expecting or forcing themselves to be in love. He had given her the gift of an unconventional freedom, which she deemed more precious than love.
It happens at night, by the lagoon on the desert island. Every night the great heroine gives herself to the navigator, and every night he gives himself back. The rest of the world will never give up on them, will never stop looking for them. But there they are, alive. They’re living for each other now.
During the day she looks at the horizon, suspiciously. She doesn’t say
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