“Don’t encourage him with your attention,” said Dr. Halstrom, turning a page harshly.
All along the beach people turned to look at the dark parka. The boy tramped with hard angry strides along the firm wet sand at the edge of the beach. Water slid over his boot-toes but he tramped splashing on the water, indifferent, wrapped in his rage. Sweat glistened on his dark cheeks. Two girls on a blanket exchanged smiles. A little girl in the water pointed at him and yelled with excitement. On a blanket crowded with teenagers a muscular boy in tight turquoise-blue trunks stood up with his fists on his hips, but did not move or speak.
Down by the water the boy in the parka tramped past. For a moment his furious black gaze swept the beach. Elizabeth saw his lips draw back in mockery, in disdain.
“Don’t stare at him,” said Dr. Halstrom.
“I’m not staring at him,” said Elizabeth, startled; angry. She was furious. Blood beat in her neck.
“It only serves to attract his attention.”
And suddenly an extraordinary thing happened. The furious boy reached back over his shoulders and put up his hood. He plunged his hands back in his pockets and stared out of his hood with black broken-glass eyes, mocking and furious. Sweat poured along his face and shone in the sun. He tramped past. Rage consumed Elizabeth. She was a black flame. She felt the hood over her head, she tramped on waves. Sweat poured down her cheeks. Sun-people on beaches: laughter in the sun. Glittering people on beaches laughing. She swept them with her furious black gaze. The beach glittered in the sun. Hate welled in her heart. It was all a lie. Out with the sun! People on beaches caught up in the lie of the sun. Deniers! She mocked them. She trampled the water. Hate raged in human hearts. The beach lied. She was alone in the dark.
“Beach like that.” Elizabeth was startled into her skin by her mother’s voice. Her heart was beating quickly, she felt a little faint. Sweat trickled along her neck.
“I find the entire subject—” her father was saying.
The dark, hooded figure was far down the beach. People lost interest in him as he moved farther away. The excited little girl was sitting down in the water, splashing about and laughing. Far down the beach he seemed a small, dark animal on a brilliant expanse of snow.
“But why would anyone behave like that?” said Mrs. Halstrom.
“He wished to attract as much attention as possible and he succeeded admirably. The subject is not interesting.”
When he reached the jetty he leaped up onto a rock and looked back at them: he was so far away that Elizabeth could no longer see his face. Then he climbed to the path at the top of the jetty and strode toward the parking lot. He was gone.
“I hope you locked the car,” said Mrs. Halstrom, turning her head and shading her eyes.
“The parking lot is policed. I suggest we drop the subject.”
“But why on earth,” said Mrs. Halstrom, still shading her eyes.
“He was clearly disturbed. I asked you to drop the subject.”
“I never saw anything like it. Never.”
“I said drop it.”
“He was mocking us,” said Elizabeth.
Dr. Halstrom turned to her angrily. “Just what do you suppose you mean by that?”
“There’s no call to be angry,” said Mrs. Halstrom.
Dr. Halstrom closed his book. “Well, my day is ruined by this constant squabbling.” His eyes were blue fire. Elizabeth felt tired.
“I meant he was mocking us — them — all this.” She raised her arm and made a slow, sweeping gesture, including the sand, the water, and the sky. For a moment she looked at her arm held gracefully against the sky. Far out on the water the barge had moved on, quite a distance.
“All this? I trust you can be a little more articulate.”
“All of it.” She dropped her arm. She looked at her hand lying on the blanket. “He was protesting.” It was impossible to go on. “Against all this. Against the sun.” She was a fool. She had no words. She felt drained.
“Good heavens, Bess,” said Mrs. Halstrom.
“Protesting against the sun, eh?” Elizabeth looked up. His voice was no longer angry. She didn’t understand anything. “Well by God he didn’t succeed very well.” He pointed. “It’s still there, I notice.”
“What a conversation,” said Mrs. Halstrom. She began to comb her hair.
“Though if it comes to that, I confess I agree with him. It’s hot as blazes.”
He laughed lightly, at ease, showing his boyish smile with the two handsome hollows like elongated dimples.
“Why don’t you take a little dip, if you’re hot?” said Mrs. Halstrom. “It’s a good time of day.” She pulled the comb slowly through her dark sunshiny hair.
“Your hair is so lovely,” Elizabeth said.
“Why, thank you, Bess.” She stopped combing. “What a dear thing to say. Yours is too.”
A line of low waves fell gray and green and white along the far edge of the sandbar. Low slow water fringed with white slid lazily forward, stopped in different places, and silkily slipped back. A little girl in a brilliant yellow bathing suit stood looking down at her feet.
“Oh, Daddy,” said Elizabeth suddenly, leaning back on the warm blanket and stretching out her arms along her sides, “do you know I can’t even remember what brand of bread it was? Isn’t that awful?”
“The tide’s coming in,” said Mrs. Halstrom, shaking out her hair. “You’ll feel much better, after a dip.”
“Silvercup,” said Dr. Halstrom decisively.
August Eschenburg
At the age of eight, August Eschenburg spent long summer afternoons playing with a cruel and marvelous toy. It had appeared suddenly one day in the field down by the river, and it was to disappear just as suddenly, in the manner of all delights which reveal themselves too quickly and too completely. A hollow paper figure represented a clown, or a fireman, or a bearded professor. When you put a captured bird inside, the poor creature’s desperate attempts at escape produced in the paper figure a series of wildly comic motions. August, who knew that the game was cruel, and who never told his father, tried more than once to keep away from the field by the river, but he always succumbed in the end. The other boys seemed to take pleasure in the struggles of the bird, but August was fascinated by the odd, funny grimaces of the tormented paper man, who suddenly seemed to come alive. This forbidden toy was far better than his music box with the slowly turning monkey on top, or his butter-churning maid who moved her arm up and down when you wound her up, or his windmill with sails that turned in a breeze. It was even better than his jointed yellow clown who all by himself could climb down the rungs of a little red ladder. August was relieved when school returned, and the cruel game in the field by the river disappeared as mysteriously as it had come, but he never forgot the sense of fear and wonder produced by those dangerously animated paper men.
He had always been fond of toys that moved, and for this love he considered his father in large part responsible. Joseph Eschenburg was a watchmaker by trade, and one of August’s earliest memories was of his grave, mustached father removing from his vest pocket a shiny round watch and quietly opening the back to display the mysterious, overlapping wheels moving within. August could not follow the patient explanation, but he realized for the first time that the moving hands of a watch did not just happen that way but were controlled by the complicated wheels hidden away inside. Not long afterward, when his father took him to the North Sea and he saw waves for the first time, he was hurt by his father’s gentle laugh when he asked whether the waves had wheels inside.