I patted her raised knee and leaned down, untied my fresh white espadrilles and pulled them off. When I straightened I saw the lower lip caught gently between her teeth and the long first finger of her left hand tracing firm lines up and down the inside of her shining thigh. I laughed. Because she was right, of course, and I knew as well as she did that my own elasticized underpants and Fiona’s sky-blue slacks were in fact magical, as she had said. My shorts, for instance, were like the bulging marble skin of a headless god. But Fiona’s sky-blue slacks, which she never wore except when alone, or with me, or with some privileged lover, certainly that garment clinging low on her hips and riding high on her ankles was matched for magic only by Fiona’s own total and angular nudity. The little masculine gold-plated zipper in front, the slanted pockets, the blue webbing that left an attractive pink welt around her squarish hips and lower belly and the soft eyes of her buttocks were all the true signs of a woman’s sex-suit, Fiona said. And in her moods of self-surrender, when she felt like wearing the blue slacks and nothing more, these were the details that enabled her to lie reasonably still and smile and enjoy the magical vacancy at her finger tips. And at the moment, the zipper was halfway down and the welt was pink.
“I want to see your magic pants. Right now.”
I obeyed, of course, and with languor and pleasure stood up beside my prostrate wife and, smiling down into her open eyes, which made me think of two doves frozen in the hard light of expectation, slowly pulled off my shirt and trousers and, glancing at the empty heavens, for a moment enjoyed the statuesque weight of myself contained and molded, so to speak, in my brief but extra-large white magical underpants. I could feel that my broad sloping shoulders were a little soft. Some tiny living creature splashed in the depths of the nearby well.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Submit.”
I sat down again slowly and carefully. With her free hand, the hand with which she had been stroking her upraised thigh, she now suddenly began pulling at some of the long soft brown hairs on my own mammoth thigh. Then her hand slipped, a finger grazed the broad sloping front of my elasticized white shorts, and in mid-air the hand began to tremble while her breathing, suddenly, changed pitch.
“Kiss me, Cyril. Kiss me.”
Even while smelling the sweetness of Fiona’s breath and tasting the taste of her mouth, sucking on the marrow of Fiona’s life, and biting her teeth, her small lips, her tongue, and while feeling the sun sealing us once more together, it occurred to me that this particular kiss was unusually cannibalistic, even for us. It is not easy to force a pair of heavy lips into an expression of mock disapproval while involved in such a kiss, and so when I became aware that our time was dissolving, and that we were indeed struggling to devour each other’s mouths, jaws, cheeks, I simply raised my head, pulled loose, stopped, listened. As usual Fiona’s preliminary humming was food for us both.
“Cyril,” she whispered, “Cyril …”
Her free hand gripped the back of my head, she held my head exactly where she wanted it and nuzzled my face and stared at me with her eyes that were like dying doves. With all the care I could summon I rested my right hand on the wrist of the hand that was driven so beautifully into the tight blue pit of the open slacks. Slowly I propelled my own hand down until it very nearly covered hers, and for a moment I thought that even Fiona had become insensible beneath the pressure of her hand and mine. But then it became evident that Fiona, my ageless tree, was still willowy, rational, self-possessed, and I was proud of her. Because now with considerable strength and slow determination, she began to inch her hand from under mine.
“Wait, baby. Wait a minute. Meredith isn’t watching us again, is she? I don’t want her watching us through the cypresses. OK?”
“Of course she’s not watching us,”I whispered, though I knew that Fiona did not intend me to turn now and study the dark green wall of cypresses for the little flashing white signs of Meredith’s face. I merely answered Fiona’s question as she wanted me to and pressed on.
Fiona’s hand came loose, my own impossibly large weathered hand was stuffed once more inside my wife’s unzippered pants.
“Baby … oh baby …
I forced my hand down and suddenly, as if to achieve nothing less than absolute display of her presence of mind, Fiona tilted up her pelvic area to meet me, and in my wet palm I held her eagerness and felt the center of her life beneath the brief pattern of hair like sandy down. On my part it took some presence of mind, finally, to disengage my hand, pull down her sky-blue pants, toss them aside with my own white marble shorts among all the bright orange marguerites.
And later, much later, both nude, she on her stomach on the flimsy rattan settee and I seated on the ground with knees drawn up and cigarette lighted and heavy shoulders drifting to the slow massage of her strong hand: “Why can’t they all be like you, baby? Why?”
THEY HAVE GIVEN HER RABBITS. YESTERDAY I FOUND CATHerine not wrapped in her blanket on the silent balcony as usual but rather sitting on her heels before the cage of rabbits. It was the moment of transformation, the beginning of Catherine’s cure, the first hopeful sign of metamorphosis cast in the powdery blue light from the reflecting tiles. My guide, the small fat woman in dark blue apron and wooden sandals, led me to the balcony and pointed at the blanket, the empty makeshift lounging chair. Her little round face and upraised pudgy arm were bright with unconcealed pleasure, as she watched my own responses to the obvious fact that something had changed in Catherine’s life and mine. Then she pointed in a different direction, beckoned me on to a fragment of whitewashed walls, warm cobblestones, empty sky, the low cage raised on a slight altar of stones and pink succulents. Again the matron pointed and of course I knew before looking that the large woman sitting on her heels and peering without sound into the rabbits’ cage was Catherine.
She was unaware of the little fat woman and myself now standing side by side behind her, was obviously unaware of her own dark jersey and faded maroon-colored shorts and the strand of hair hanging from the bun she had fastened indifferently at the back of her head. She was resting with her hands on her bare knees and leaning heavily forward into the darkness of the wooden cage and sweet smell of the shadowy rabbits. The jersey, I noticed, had pulled loose from the elasticized waistband of the cotton shorts, and in a sudden return of poignancy I found my consciousness brimming with the sight of this brief once familiar strip of nakedness.
I smiled, thinking of my now ruined bicycle, my hot climbs to the sanctuary, my playful smoke rings and patient monologues, all the ingredients of my timeless fidelity which had accomplished nothing, after all, had not moved Catherine to a single word or even to tears. But thanks to what I could only assume to be the sudden emergence of primitive intuition in the little fat untutored woman at my side, and to the curative powers of two large sable-colored rabbits, now Catherine was kneeling with open eyes and heavy girlish concentration and was slowly reaching toward the rusty hook on the little door of the cage. The life I had failed to arouse was now being restored by two soft mindless animals and a woman who was perhaps unfamiliar with even the crespi fagag alternative in her own language. The cure was obvious, I told myself, since for certain temperaments the presence of gentle animals is magical. Yet I my-self could not have thought of it. I watched Catherine’s fingers touch the hook, heard the twitching and chewing sounds of the rabbits.
Yes, I thought, Catherine’s large amber eyes must now be meeting the fearless but vulnerable eyes of one of the rabbits. Catherine lifted her upper body away from the naked heels, waited a moment, and unhooked the sagging wire-covered door of the cage and swung it open. Her arms were moving, a rip in the side of the maroon-colored shorts still betrayed some small long-forgotten carelessness, the jersey rose another few inches on her bare back, the sudden new smell from the cage might have burst from the slit belly of a golden faun brought down by a loving archer.