Page Four
PER S PE CTIVES
MOMENT IN LONELINESS
..Continued From Page Three
thought. Beauty is not wolf, it is a slow
-eel with odor of salt that binds itself
wrod the arms and will not let the
chest take breath. "Beauty came to me
in the shape of an eel." The piers
stretched long to the town, infinitely
far. The light-house flashed red warn-
mgs.
She looked at Arthur, bent over the
-od, dark-haired and intent, his shirt
light against the dark wood of the
'barrels, his rod light against the dark
side of the ship. He was as much a
part of the beaity as the pier, the
ships, the salt limy barrels full of fish.
She looked at them all and breathed
them deeply in. Yet, even as she did
so, she felt the loneliness of her watch.
To share this beauty . . . "Arthur," she
said.
"Watch it," he cried, "I've got an-
other one!" and pulled it up suddenly.
hitting it against the pier-house so
that it fell off the hook onto the.pier.
The silver upward flash hung in the
air for seconds, even as the mackeral
beat against the hollow wood. Karen's
breath came quicker. The silver struck
across her eyes like a slap.' Arthur then
could not be reached. He was part of it
and could not see it. Red warnings of
the lighthouse were not for him. She
was completely alone then in the fog and
trailing mists, facing alone the judg-
ment row of gulls and battered alone
by flecks of beauty in the sky and the
sea. Her throat tightened at the
thought of the dark wise loneliness. She
moved ,herself to Arthur on the pier
without standing, and pressed her thigh
against his to feel reassuring closeness
and reality of flesh, closing her mind
'to the darting swimming silver flashes
'of anxiety and watching the slow far-
moving boats on. the high dark rim
of the bay.
'They had seen the boats come in with
six-hundred pound tuna, wide-bellied
and stained with dark blues and gleam-
ing black, larger than a man, with eyes
as bulging as overturned soup-plates.
'Then later when they were looking for
mussels where the tide had gone down,
wading near the rocks in water up to
'their thighs to pull the clustered sea-
weeded shells from the crevices and
shove them into the pockets of their
damp dungarees, a tuna-head had been
washed in.. Only the bone of the mouth
was left and the bone of the head
picked dry by the sea, empty, the eye-
sockets hollow, all the rich blue and
yellow gone and tbrned to whited skel-
'eton. Love, she thought in the lonely
'moment, has only this left, this mute
pressure of thigh on thigh, the color
gone, the fullness vanished, just the
bare head of love, slant and clean, hold-
ing no future but reminders of the past.
She shuddered a little. He felt it and
turned to ask, "You cold? Take my
jacket. We can leave as soon as I get
an even dozen."
"Sure," she sai. "I don't mind. Is
nice out here."
She looked at him when he turned
again to the water. He was a dark fig-
'ure, his face young and high-cheeked,
sullen. She had been drawn by that
young sullen look. She had been caught
by the strong swells of the shoulders,
by the clean line of thigh to foot, by
'the curves of the back. The surf-casters'
'bait is silver-tailed and sails high-
whistling through the air, curving
cleanly over the roar and crash of surf,
landing at last in calm heavy clear
green water beyond. She had followed
the curve of the silver-tailed bait. She
har, been caught by the silver flash in
the sea and dragged through the alien
waters.'
The 'first time they had seen the ships
come in with whiting mounded on the
deck;she had remembered a quotation
dimly:'
"But when a man poured fish into
a pile
It seemed they raised their little
silver heads."
The words had been so right for the
whiting, but Arthur had looked at her
queerly when she said them as if he
was pained at not being included in her
enjoyment. His annoyance made the
poured heaps of silver lose some of their
brightness. She could not help feeling
slight anger at his impatience. He re-
sented what he could not understand.
She had become more resentful and
apprehensive. Then the tensions and
the arguments rose, tossing them on
wave-crests of emotion and flinging
them at last apart on the sand, wrecked
as the curved sea-eaten .skeleton of
the ship they had seen at the inside
bay lying slant with sand filling its
deck and sand swelling its sides. Till at
last she turned to him and he to her
on the bench, leaning against the pier-
house. "I've been waiting for you to
come to me," he said, kissing her
cheeks. "Don't leave me alone like that
again." He put his arm strongly about
her and sat for a moment in the dark-
ness. "I love you, sweet." he said. She
could feel his heart beating under her
ear and feel his hand beginning to out-
line a small warm space on her arm.
The space grew. "It would be lonesome
here without you, Karey," he said ten-
derly, warmth enveloping her. "Lone-
somer than I could stand." He pulled
her to him roughly, reaching under the
thick shirt and under the soft silk one
beneath to put his hand warmly on her
flesh. Karen felt heavy surf pulses be-
gin to pound in her ears and on her
temples. She looked up at him. Moon-
light shone on his face, highlighting
the cheek-bones, hiding the eyes. Kar-
en tried to push soway the thick airthat
Lyric
Since...
Diamond-cold, the wind wavers
Among dry thorns, scythe-like,
And night, darkwind-blown
Moves about the Gothic door-
Above the boulder-studded hills
One larger constellation sways:
Perseus on the sky's chatelain
-Proud, above the stubbled plain
Where monstrous, your image
Slants through artic shadows:
In awareness, Mercator's projection-
Leans-contour to that star;
His lips were tender on her forehead
and down down to her neck and under
her ears. I was wrong, she thought.
This is not the drying tuna headon the
beach but the full-bellied sau er-eyed
tuna still intact, rich and plentiful, yet
lying on the sand witout nourishment
or water to continue its life. Whatever
I could want of love and affection he
will give me, she thought, yet without
the ocean the splendid beast will die,
will wither without nourishment until
it matters not if the body was once full,
or the tuna proud. The sun will bake
the blues and greens to dullness and
the ill-smelling meat will fall from the
bones till the whited skeletonis indeed
left drying on the beach and theannoy-
ances and pettinesses, like drying grains
of sand, fill the skull's eye and lie in the
bones and all that is left of loveis cov-
ered by the blown sand andvanishes,
vanishes beneath it.
Arthur moved to look at her'and the
fishing rod at his side fell'from the
bench with a clatter.
"Do you, Karey?" he said. "Do you?"
"Do I what?" she asked.
He tried to laugh, shaking her a
little.
The silence grew all around them, an
electric dampness flecked with tensions.
A white bird with red feet swooped and
swooped pecking at Karen's knowledge,
breaking it away bit by bit. His hand
was warm at her waist, up and' under
her arm. I must go down to the sea
again, Karen thought. She put her arms
around the thick chest. "You know I
do," she said. "You know I do."
She could almost feel his relief and
then the skilled fingers caressing her,
the mouth hold on her breasts, the
quick rhythm of his breath and hers
in answer almost without her volition.
Thrills throbbed in her stomach. He
bent to her ear. "Let's go home, dearest,
dearest," he said. "Come home to bed."
She stood with him. He picked'up the
rod. She was jolted for a moment by
the sight of the silver-backed' fish that
had beat their fool heads on the pier
and flapped their bowed bodies into
the air lying inertly in a string-ed pile
on the pier. The moon made their tails
shine, all but one. "But when a man
poured fish into a pile." She scooped
them up suddenly and carried ahem
under one arm, her other arm around
him.
They walked down the pier together,
their legs out of step so that their inner
hips moved together. He kept bending
to kiss her flushed face even as they
were walking, smiling in anticipation.
She too could see the wide sheeted
double bed that did not squeak and
Arthur coming to her clean and nude
like a child, sea-born and unashamed,
one small lamp dimly behind him light-
ing his shoulder and his hair and the
curve of his thigh till he came down
to her. She reached her face up to
kiss him. It would be enough, she
thought, it would be enough to 'live by.
The sensuous flesh aroused and satis-
fied; it was worth a great deal.
"I love you, Art," she said and the
glow on his face and in his almost-
hidden eyes thanked her.
"Dearest," he said.
It will be enough she hoped trying
to escape the loneliness. But the taste
of the drying salt burnt her lips though
Arthur leaned to kiss her again, fully
on the mouth and moistly. She: stopped
thinking, giving herself only to her de-
sire for him and the fleshly bond that
united them, till her ardor made him
drop the fishing rod again and stand
there on the pier with her 'and the
string of fish clasped tightly "ntohis
grateful arms. Her last thought in the
moment of loneliness was for him. She
prayed he could not taste the alt o.
her mouth.
I can go nowhere -
In dream or in acclaim
Past this pause,-past this hoaer-
This margin: your name.
-Jeannette Haie"
out of their alonensss and he stroked
her damp face with fingers softened
with love and she aching, turned to
him losing her fingers in his hair.
A motor purred somewhere infinitely
far on the sea and the throbbing came
mist-laden to them. Arthur turned to
her. "They aren't biting much any
more," he said, pulling in the line. "Well
I got ten anyway." His voice was
smothered. He bit off a piece of the wet'
line and strung the fish through their
msouths on it, tying the line at the top.
He handed them to her. "Do you mind
carrying them,' lion'?" he asked. He
broke the fragile rod at the joints and
folded it up. "Let's go," he said. "I'm
hungry as anything."
He walked in front of her with strong
steps that sounded hollowly on the
wood. She followed him. Her face was
flushed with the warmth of the 'ough
wool blue shirt of his buttoned up to
her neck. She watched him walking,
his long careless stride, the shift of his
hips in his khaki pants. He stopped
abruptly at the end of the pier and
stood stiffly looking into the water,
his head bent forward, until she came
to him. "Arthur," she said.
He turned a.nd grabbed her as she
came by and, laughing,-forced her down
kept her alone as if she could deny her
loneliness merely by willing herself close
to him.
At the Point thst day walking on the
beach, feet in the surf, they had gone al-
most to the light-house following the
surf - casters without carrying any
water. The sun had been hot on their
heads and backs and bare arms. Karen
had become thirsty, only slightly at
first, then terribly, with a dryness that
made her panicky. The whole ocean
had stretched before them blue and
liquid, looking as refreshing as water
from a spring, as cooling as water bub-
bling near spring trout in the shade of
trees. So they had gone in to swim
again, unable to resist, hoping to
quench the thirst and cool the heat
and the dryness. But the water that
had looked so cool and lovely turned
to parching salt on her lips and body.
Even knowing that, she had plunged
into the surf again and again, hoping
to be laved of the dry salt that crusted
her 'legs, her arms, her face, her tongue
and died like a heavy crust on her eye-
lids. She had tried to forget the salt
looking at the deceiving blueness, but
it had been torture on her mouth.
"Do you love me, Karey?" he said.
"Please, do you love me?"