40- Golden Eyes

But no one who listened ever shared her sudden gaiety: in their

glances she read condemnations. Her laughter seemed a

desecration, a mockery of what should be considered tragic. She

could see in their eyes the wish that she should fall from this

incandescent trapeze on which she walked with the aid of delicate

Japanese paper umbrellas, for no guilty party has a right to such

adroitness and to live only by its power to bJhonce over the rigidities

of life which dictated a choice, according to its taboos against

multiple lives. No one would share with her this irony and

playfulness against the rigidities of life itself; no one would applaud

when she succeeded by her ingenuity in defeating life’s limitations.

These moments when she reached a humorous peak above the

morass of dangers, the smothering swamps of guilt, were the ones

when everyone left her alone, unabsolved; they seemed to be

awaiting her hour of punishment after living like a spy in the house of

many loves, for avoiding exposure, for defeating the sentinels

watching definite boundaries, for passing without passports and

permits from one love to another.

Every spy’s life had ended in ignominious death.

She stood waiting for the light to change at the crossroad of the

beach town.

What startled Brenda, the fairy and made her examine the cyclist waiting

beside her was the extraordinary brilliance of his large eyes. They

shone with a wet, silver sparkle which was almost frightening

because it highlighted the tumultuous panic close to the surface. The

molten silver was disquieting, like blinding reflectors on the edge of

annihilation by darkness. She was caught in the contagion of this

panic, the transparent film of precious stone trembling, about to be

sucked in by a hidden cyclone.

It was only later that she noticed the delicately chiseled face, the

small nose, the mouth modeled by gentleness, unrelated to the

deeper disturbance of the eyes, a very young man’s mouth, a pure

design on the face not yet enslaved by his feelings. These feelings

not yet known to him, had not yet acid-bitten through his body. His

gestures were free and nimble, the gestures of an adolescent,

restless and light. The eyes alone contained all the fever.

He had driven his bicycle like a racing car or an airplane.

He had come down upon her as if he did not see trees, cars,

people, and almost overlooked the stop signal.

To free herself of the shock his eyes had given her she sought to

diminish their power by thinking: “They are just beautiful eyes, they

are just passionate eyes, young men rarely have such passionate

eyes, they are just more alive than other eyes.” But no sooner had

she said this to herself to exorcise his spell than a deeper instinct in

her added: “He has seen something other young men have not

seen.”

The red light changed to green; he gave a wild spurt to his pedaling,

so swift that she had no time to step on the curb, then just as wildly

he stopped and asked her the way to the beach in a breathless

voice which seemed to miss a beat. The voice matched the eyes as

his tan, healthy, smooth skin did not.

The tone in which he asked directions was as if the beach were a

shelter to which he was speeding away from grave dangers.

He was no handsomer than the other young men she had seen in the

place, but his eyes left a memory and stirred in her a wild rebellion

against the place. With bitter irony she remembered ruins she had

seen in Guatemala, and an American visitor saying: “I hate ruins, I

hate dilapidation, tombs.” But this new town at the beach was

infinitely more static and more disintegrated than the ancient ruins.

The clouds of monotony, uniformity, which hung over the new, neat

mansions, the impeccable lawns, the dustless garden furniture. The

men and women at the beach, all in one dimension, without any

magnetism to bring them together, zombies of civilization, in elegant

dress with dead eyes.

Why was she here? Waiting for Jhon to end his work, Jhon who had promised to come. But the longing for other places kept her awake.

She walked and collided against a sign which read: “This is the site

of the most costly church on Long Island.”

She walked. At midnight the town was deserted. Everyone was at home with bottles from which they hoped to extract a gaiety bottled elsewhere.

“It’s the kind of drinking one does at wakes,” thought Brenda, the fairy, looking into the bars, where limp figures clutched at bottles containing oblivion.

At one o’clock she looked for a drug store to buy sleeping pills.

They were closed. She walked. At two o’clock she was worn out

but still tormented by a place which refused to have feasts on the

street, dances, fireworks, orgies of guitars, marimbas, shouts of

delight, tournaments of poetry and courtships.

At three o’clock she swung towards the beach to ask the moon

why she had allowed one of her night children to become so lost in

a place long ago deprived of human life.

A car stopped beside her, and a very tall, white-haired Irish

policeman addressed her courteously.

“Can I give you a lift home?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” said Brenda, the fairy. “I was looking for a drug store to buy sleeping pills, or aspirin. They’re all closed. I was trying to walk until I felt sleepy…”

“Boy trouble?” he said, his white-haired head very gallantly held with a suave rectitude which did not come from his policeman’s training but from some deeper pride in rectitude itself as the image of man’s erotic pride.

But the words so inadequate that they inhibited whatever she would have liked to confide in him, for fear of another adolescent stunted comment. His appearance of maturity was belied by the clumsy words. So she said vaguely: “I’m homesick for all the beach towns I have known, Capri, Mallorca, the south of France, Venice, the Italian Riviera, South America. “

“I understand that,” he said. “I was homesick when I first came to this country from Ireland.”

“A year ago I was dancing on the beach under palm trees. The music was wild, and the waves washed our feet while we danced.”

“Yes, I know. I was a bodyguard for a rich man. Everybody sat in the port cafes at night. It was like the Fourth of July every night. Come along, I’ll take you to my home. The wife and kids are asleep, but I can give you some aspirin.”

She sat beside him. He continued to recall his life as a bodyguard, when he had traveled all around the world. He controlled the car without a dissonance.

“I hate this town,” she said vehemently.

He had driven smoothly beside a neat white house. He said: “Wait here,” and went into the house. When he returned he was carrying a glass of water and two aspirin

in the palm of his hand. Brenda, the fairy’s nerves began to untangle. She

took the water and aspirin obediently.

He turned his powerful flashlight upon a bush in his garden and said: “Look at this!”

In the night she saw flowers of velvet with black hearts and gold eyes.