S TOR Y

COming to an islandlike this was Alice's idea."We should spend our oldage together," she said, "youand me and Eva and whoelse?" I had several sugges-tions. And soon there was awhole network of us talkingacross the phone lines ofAmerica-my friends, theirfriends, like a tree full ofbirds. We'd buy a placesomewhere without winter,we said, and we'd each livein a separate house, andwrite our novels, becausewho isn't writing a novelthese days? And the menwould come and visit, butthey'd go away again, ha ha,the children as well.

I joined in. But the idea never real-ly appealed. Living among womenseems like a dangerous thing to do.Sooner or later, we'd be getting oneach other's nerves. Eva's laugh, forinstance, like a strangling chicken,which iswhat I'd find myself saying toAlice: Don't say anything, but-

Lynn Freed is the author of four novels. Herlaststory for Harper'sMagazine,"The Mir-ror," appeared in the October 1994 issue.

Illustration by Susan Saas

TWILIGHTBy Lynn Freed

Anyway, the life would be barrenwithout men. And with men we'd beback where we started, talking onthe phone when the men were out ofearshot. In all the talk, we never ad-mitted that we were one way witheach other and another with ourmen. But that's how we are, everyone of us.

And now here I am without them,without my man either. He was be-coming a shadow, robe and slippers

in the spare-room closet,and the TV remote next tohis chair. My chair. Oneday, I walked in as he waswatching the news, and de-cided to sell both chairsand the couch that wentwith them. After that itwas easy-piano, clocks,pictures, the house itself.It was a kind of intoxica-tion, selling my life likethat, and all the friendswatching, holding theirbreath as I jumped.

"Perhaps," says Dr.Weimann, "it takes

a shock to shake onefree of one's fears?". He is guessing, but he is

wrong. The shock onlycame the day I arrived on this island.That night, and every night since,I've been shaken out of sleep by theold questions coming to the surface.What will become of me? Who will Ifind to love?

Weimann lives in the annex atthe back of the hotel. He has tworooms there, one of which is his of-fice. Every morning, we go down tothe water together. He swimsstraight out, stroke after stroke, right

STORY 71

up to the reef, and then back again. Ifloat just beyond the waves, andeven then I look down to see whatmight be swimming below me.

"The sharks have quite enough toeat without considering you," hesays. But still, I don't venture anyfarther.

Every evening at six, he comesdown to the bar, which is really anold veranda, glassed in. The new ve-randa has been built around it like afan, and doubles as the dining room.The whole hotel is built like that,rooms beyond rooms. It must oncehave been a house, plain and mod-est. The guest rooms themselves areplain and modest. They are spreadalong the front road like barracks,with each door opening onto a nar-row veranda.

Before I came here, I thought I'dfind a cottage on the beach to livein, two rooms with tiled floors, per-haps, a hammock slung across onecorner of the veranda. There wouldbe morning trips to the local market,fish just caught, island spices. Andsometimes I might stroll over to thehotel for dinner. I might meet some-one there or I might not. It wouldn'tmatter. It has always been easy to seethings this way before seeing them,easy to write them too.

But now three months havepassed, and I'm still here in my littleroom at the end of the barracks. Ex-cept for the hotel beach, the coaston this side of the island is wild andsteep and rough. Most of the localslive in squalid little shacks up in thehills. There are no cottages to rent.

"Shall we dine together tonight?"Weimann says.

People stand around us, a few ofthe more affluent natives, a couple ofexpats and their wives, who run ayacht for hire. It sits out in the baylike a castle. No doubt Weimann hasslept with one of the wives. I can seefrom the way she avoids catching hiseye and then listens as he asks meabout dinner.

When I thought up this idyll, Imight have considered dinners, andthe long nights afterwards. AlII hadto do was remember Crete, or Mauri-tius, or Papeete: sitting at a table forone, my bottle of wine corked for to-morrow, waiters offering themselves

72 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I MAY 1999

with a wink. But I never rememberloneliness. From a distance, it alwaysseems like peace.

The first week here, I sat in thehotel dining room with a book, or Iwalked down to the Harbour Cafeand ordered curried chicken. Ithought [ might walk along thebeach afterwards, have a swim, per-haps, or sit out on the veranda towatch the last of the sun. But whocould have imagined the eveningshere? Half an hour of twilight, andthen the dark comes right in.

Dearest E-This hotel must once have been very

grand, with its foyer and ballroom andbalustrades and nymphs around thepool. 1 love that pool, halfway down thecliff, cracked, green with algae, over-grown. 1 go down there in the after-noons, quhen the wind picks up on thebeach. This afternoon 1 saw a snakeslither into the vines, brighter green thananything around it. 1watched the vine,hoping it would come out again, andwind itself around my wrist or my an-kle, and bite. This isn't morbid, it'slanguid. It's content with the present atlast. Which is what 1am.

Weimann's skin is hairless, eventhe backs of his hands. And the fin-gernails are strangely convex,strangely purple. When he makeslove to me, I have to shut my eyesagainst him. I try not to hear themoans he makes. He is moaning forme, not for himself. They are moansof encouragement, sound effects.And they revolt me.

So why go through with it? Alicewould be the first to ask this."What's in it for you?" she'd say.

I've never been able to answerAlice's questions. She wouldn't un-derstand the sight of an old womanwith a basket at the market thismorning. Even as a young girl, I sawthat old woman everywhere beforeme. She stood beside every manwho raised a glass to me across arestaurant, beside Weimann him-self, sending the waiter over withhis card.

Eva would be easier. She'd say, "Itmakes one feel alive." And I'd begrateful for that. Eva is too beautifulto survive among women without

such generosity. And anyway, sheloves a daring act, she who is stillone foot in and one foot out of mar-riage. Not that sleeping with a manlike Weimann is daring, but that thetrip itself delights her. She counts onme for daring.

Dearest E-The boatman came from the main-

land about twenty years ago, they tellme, using his hands to say that he want-ed work. To me, his hands are hisbeauty-large-boned, lovelier than aface. I watch them smoothing andsmoothing the satin edge of the blanket,as if he's finding the words to say he hasto leave me, leave the island for good.He could play that part, Odysseus theWanderer. Without speech, he couldplay any part 1 give him. His voicewould be buoyant and lyrical, like at!the others on this island. Weimann saysit's unusual, being able to hear but notto speak. He seems to pose this as aquestion, leaning across the bar. "Thesepeople are clever with words," he says,"and also without them." He thinks 1't!tire of the mute and come over to him.But Ihave a dull time with words when1 talk to Weimann. Ineed to go lookingfor them, and, when I do, they hide.

At dinner, Weimann does theordering, but he makes sure thatthe waiter charges the orders to ourseparate accounts. Even if he didpay for me, would this tiny act ofgallantry have me walking to hisroom with a lighter heart? I don'tthink so. It would take some levelof deceit to pull me along that cor-ridor, quick and sharp, like thatwoman at the bar. I have been thatwoman, I know the appeal of roomsdarkened in the afternoon, a manto leave behind and another to goback to.

"Weimann," I say, "I find yourmoaning in bed revolting."

He arches an eyebrow, continuesshelling his prawns with his knifeand fork, laying the shells neatlyaround the edge of the plate.

"What is appealing in a man isreal desire," I say.

He looks up."Animal desire.""And in a woman too," he says.Alice was right. She was the one

who came up with the quote Ipinned above my desk: "The less youinvest emotionally, the more youstand to lose."

I turn to look out at the last of thelight over the sea. Down on thebeach, a family is pulling in theircatch. The father stands in the surf,the mother at the water's edge witha boyan either side.

"They seem happy," I say toWeimann. What I mean is thateverything from which I've con-structed a life seems like the baggageof nomads. Men, children, house,work. And yet, had I started outhere, like those boys in the water, I'dhave gone north as soon as I could.As they will too.

"You feel at home with this sort ofhappiness?" Weimann asks. Heknows the answer, the old Nazi.Leave home long enough, and youfind it again only in moments.

The dining room has the slightlysickish smell of seafood and sweet is-land fruits. Except for us and aBrazilian couple on honeymoon, thehotel is empty. Only the bar seemsto keep it alive.

The main port is on the other sideof the island. Cruise ships stop there,and there are shops and nightclubsand petty criminals. You have totake a boat to reach this town, ordrive for eight hours over roughmountain roads. I chose it for thisreason. I wanted to replenish, I said.Only Alice rolled her eyes. "Lan-guish is more like it," she said. Andeven then I knew I should have cho-sen the port, and stayed in the grandhotel, and gone down to the shops inthe afternoons.

But if I were to pack up now andtake the boat back around, I'd flyout for good. And if I flew out,where would I go, unreplenished?These are the questions I ask myselfevery morning after a night withWeimann.

Eva-Weimann knows that the boatman

comes up to my room by the backstairs. Everyone here knows, Isuppose.There was never a question of his com-ing in through the front door, wiping hisfeet on the mat, smoothing down hishair. He arrives like a cat, like a leot»

74 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I MAY 1999

ard. I hardly hear the door handle, andthen there he is, smelling of a day in theboat. He's order than I thought, proba-bly forty-five or so, the body thick withmuscle. Unless he's taking the boat out,he never hangs around the dock. Theremust be a woman in the hills, childrentoo, probably. The delightful thing is,he's not interested in leaving the island.That's not what he's after.

Tonight, Weimann doesn't un-dress, nor does he invite me to takemy own clothes off. He sits in hisarmchair, smoking, and I am grate-ful for this. His room gives nothingaway. Double bed, wardrobe, twoarmchairs, stereo, TV, VCR. Onlyhis medical instruments seem spe-cific to him. Clean, spare, mis-shapen to a purpose. When he re-moved the sea-urchin spine frommy foot, his face lost all its mock-ery, its boredom, its lust.

"I have a surprise," he says. Hegets up to pour us each a whiskey,stands waiting as I drink mine downlike medicine, refills the glass. Sud-denly I suspect he's been readingmy e-mail, that he has the boatmanhidden somewhere. That the boat-man is to be my punishment. I be-gin to stand, but no, he's slipping acassette into the VCR, switchingoff the lamps, coming back to hischair with the remote.

The show starts with a woman,facedown on a lawn, naked. At firstshe looks dead, but really she's sun-bathing, she's sleeping. Weimannhas the sound turned off. All I canhear is the buzz of the TV, the surfoutside.

A Great Dane comes up to herand starts licking her buttocks,licking and licking until she wakesup. She turns, annoyed, a hopelessactress. But then she opens her legsa little, and the licking continues.She raises herself in the air, rises onall fours, and he mounts her, tryingto find the way in, ducking andthrusting the way dogs do. Thecamera is underneath them now,you can see the pinkness of thedog, and of her too.

Weimann cannot know how I goabout making his smooth, womanishskin desirable, the dead weight of hisflesh on top of me. And yet here it

is, this dog ducking and thrusting,this baboon, this donkey, this beastof desire. Helpless with it, blind,deaf, mute.

But now I have seen the dog, andit is as sad as a circus lion. When Isaw the hotel for the first time,when the boatman carried in mysuitcases, and stared at me in thatway of his until I gave him a tip,when I stood at the front desk,wondering what I would do in theheat of the afternoon, and all theafternoons that lay ahead-I lostthe peace of those two rooms withtiled floors, and the hammock, andthe little desk in one corner with aview out over the water, even ofthe water itself, the way it has al-ways seemed to stretch one life intoanother.

"Weimann," I say, standing up,"I'm not your woman for this."

Alicia Preciosa-Would you remind me what was so

boring about Peter? He made me laugh,didn't he? Ineed you on this, my dear,don't let me down. And don't worryabout the boatman. It was safe. Andit's over.

The day after the Great Dane, awoman arrives at the hotel. She isthick and gray and spectacled, andher clothes are too heavy for the cli-mate: socks and lace-up shoes,slacks, a jacket. I watch the boatmanstand behind her, waiting for his tip.But there's an argument with themanager. She won't abandon herpassport, not even overnight.

The manager looks at me for help.And so I step up and tell her that

it's all right, it's the law, she'll gether passport back tomorrow. That Iwas worried too, but it was all right.

She hands it over then, and turnsto me, and says, "I don't know why Icame here."

"Tip the boatman," I whisper."What? Ah! Yes! Here-""Would you like to come down to

the beach this afternoon?" I say."Ah. Well. I work in the after-

noons. See.you later, then?"But I don't see her again for six

days. Even though it is impossibleto disappear in this place, she hasdone it. She is not in the dining

room in the evenings, nor is she atthe Harbour Cafe, nor on thebeach. At one point I thinkWeimann must have her roped tohis bed. At least, this is what I writeto Eva. The arrival and disappear-ance of this woman has cheered meup somehow. Why don't we allmeet at the port in April? I suggestto Eva. I'll book us into the hotelthere. It'll be like a trial run.

By the time I see the new womanwalking along the hotel front oneafternoon, I've found out from themanager that she has her meals sentto her room, and that she moved tothe annex because of the noisealong the front. "Always, always,"he says, making typing motions withhis fingers.

I hurry to catch up to her. She isstorming along in a pair of nativesandals and a lurid muslin beachdress she must have bought at themarket. "Hello!" I say.

She stops dead. "Oh! You! Hi!"She holds out a hand. "Lettv," shesays. "Hi."

She's wearing a baseball cap withgreen sequins on it, and there's a lit-tle moustache, wide nostrils, sallowskin .

. "Want something cold to drink?" Iwalk ahead to the cold-drink standbefore she can answer. "let's go outonto the jetty."

But she stops at the bottom of thesteps, staring into the surf. "I can'tswim," she says.

"You won't have to. You'll be safe.Come on."

And she does. She climbs thesteps and walks close behind, obedi-ent, like a child. I find a place for usto sit, and she takes the Fanta,drinks it greedily. The sun on rhewater is blinding. No one except theboatman is out, and even he is trawl-ing about lazily in the dinghy.

"What do you write, letty?""Gothic. Like my name: letitia.

Mysteries mostly. You?" .HMe?""Oh. I saw you with the laptop,

and I thought, oh, you know, youmust be at it too, and I can't talkabout it, specially when I'm in themiddle. Anytime, really."

"I've been writing e-mail," I say. "Iplug it in at the office."

"Oh. E-mail. Can't cope with anyof that."

I'd planned the e-rnails even be-fore I came here. Calypso on her is-land. Or Scylla and Charybdis, bothas men. Or Persephone. Or some-thing. Every day I print them out,thinking that sooner or later I'll beready, I'll want to start. Every nighta story seems possible, and everymorning I go down to the beach fora swim. And then, when I comeback, the words are nothing, they areless than nothing. They cheat andthey lie. And now, sitting here withLetty, I don't want anything to dowith them anymore.

"Met our Goebbels yet?" I ask.She stares at me."The doctor. Weimann."She throws her head back in a

roaring laugh. "Oh! Dr. Weimann!"She swings her legs over .the water,peers to one side, then to the other,as if she's having a conversation withherself. "Keep a secret? I'm puttinghim into the novel. Well, not him somuch as that glove collection."

"Glove collection?" I am back atschool now, laughter at the far endof the hockey field that stops when Iwalk up. "What sort of gloves?" I say.

"Haven't you seen? Dozens ofthem, all wrapped in blue tissue!Beautiful ones with fur, and laceones, and lots of long kid gloves.Oh, and a tiny pair of children'sgloves with the fingertips cut off.And a gauntlet with the bloodmarks still on it. And one with nothumb on one hand. Wouldn't yousay Goring? Rather than Goebbels?"Another roar.

Weimann and I still dine togeth-er, though I don't go back to hisroom anymore and he's never on thebeach when I am. When I asked himabout the new woman, he shrugged."Perhaps she's at home with her ownhappiness?" he said.

I throw my straw into the waterand watch it float in, up, over."What about the boatman?" I say.

"Huh)""For the novel. The mute. Out

there in the dinghy. He carried yourbags up?"

She seems to consider this for amoment, sucking in the last of herFanta. "Na. No blacks, no Jews, no

Germans. I had to make the doctorDanish, a Danish count."

"Has he shown you his porn?""Pornography? Really? Oh,

goody!""Letty," I say, "wouldn't you like

to come to the dining roomtonight?"

She cocks her head. "Would Inot, no? Or would I not, yes? Yes, Ithink I would, yes. Why not? I

can take a little breakrJ"' now."

.1hat evening, she arrives at thebar in a dirndl with a frilly whiteblouse underneath. She has partedher hair in the middle and tied itinto a ponytail. People turn towatch her, to watch us as I lead herout to the dining room. I have cho-sen a table next to the window, farfrom Weimann's. When the waitercomes to take our orders, I tell himto charge them both to my account.I glance quickly at Weimann, whois still at the bar. The yacht peoplehave brought in some tourists, andthey are all drinking together. I or-der a bottle of claret and, when itarrives, send a glass over to him.

She tells me that she came herebecause she was stuck, and she hadread an article-warm places whereyou won't find tourists. "Everythingin it was wrong," she says, "exceptabout the tourists. But so what, hey?Here I am. Unstuck." She lifts herglass and slugs back the wine.

I don't tell her that it was I whowrote that article, wrote it withouteven coming here. That I often didthat, and no one seemed to knowthe difference.

"let's go swimming after dinner,"I say. "I'll teach you." A full moonhangs low over the water. Thenight is bright with it, the water isbrilliant.

But she shakes her head."We can stay in the shallows.""No, it's hopeless. It's like horses.

I'm terrified of them too, doesn'tmatter how many times I try. I writeabout them, but I can't go nearthem."

"In the e-mail, I write about an af-fair I'm not having," I say. "I write

Continued on page 78

STORY 75

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78 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I MAY 1999

STORYContinued from page 75

about a hotel I'm not staying at too.And about happiness I'm not feeling.It's easier than the other wayaround."

"You see," she says. "I knew we'dbe talking about it sooner

rJ"" or later." ,

~ here are no waves, just swells,the way I love it. And the water iswarm, black as ink under the moon,perfect. With her on the beach towatch, I plunge straight in, swim outwithout stopping. With her shout-ing "Careful!" I swim farther thanI've ever been before. I dive underand stay there for a while. When Icome up, she is at the water's edge,waving both arms. I wave back. Istart to sing. The water makes mehappy, it has always made me happy."That's because you're a water sign,"Alice would say, she holds with thatsort of thing.

But this is more than just the wa-ter. An old happiness is lifting myheart and voice and spirit all atonce, all with the lovely water, withthe lovely hymn I begin to sing."Praise my soul the King of Heaven,to His feet thy tribute bring." I amsinging for a future still to be had,and glorious things that will hap-pen, places to go, and, oh, people tocome back to.

I am out near the reef now, I canhear the water breaking there. Andsomething is swimming with me, itbrushes against my arm, light, al-most liquid, a jellyfish perhaps, aripple in the water. I stop singingand watch the water, but it is full ofshapes, silver and black, a few rip-ples beginning to crest with thetide coming in. Whatever it is-even finned, even toothed-it feelslike a lover. And if it came andtook me down with it, down anddown right to the bottom, thatwould be perfect too. I would behappy.

But then it is gone, and the tideis carrying me in, easy. There is Let-ty, still waving. I'd forgotten her fora moment. I swim in, swell afterswell. And that's when I seeWeimann on the sand with her,

waving too. Both of them are stillin their shoes. Standing side byside, they look like one of those oddGerman couples who take bus toursaround Europe, and sleep in cubby-holes under the bus, and live out ofa backpack.

As I come out of the water, sheruns at me, flaps her arms. She wantsto embrace me, perhaps, but I'm wet.

"Did you not notice that no onehas been swimming all day?"Weimann says. His voice is shrill, in-sistent. It has lost its slippery edge,the dip and rise over a question.

I prance a little before him, beforeher too, and go off to find my towelso that they have to follow.

"Are you not aware of the mantaray out there?" he demands. "Areyou quite mad?" He considers mybody as if he's never seen it, hiseyes very pale in the light. "Yourboatman has been trying to spear itall day."

"My boatman?""Oh," says Letty. "I told him. You

know. Your idea for the novel."

Alice of my heart-Goebbels collects gloves! He invited

me to see them this afternoon. And sooff Iwent, thinking, "Etchings," butno, my dear, nothing of the sort. Hisroom is separate from the hotel, right atthe back, and Gothic has a room theretoo. Coming dO't.vnthe passage, Ihearda sort of moaning, man or woman,hard to tell which, and I stopped, butjust then his door opened, and Gothictripped out, all dainty in her size lOs,down to her own door and slipped in.

They are coming in April, Aliceand Eva and a few of the others too.We will meet at the port and stay inthe big hotel. Until then, I'll stayon here, it's not long. And after-wards, we'll all go back together.Already, they're looking out for acondominium for me, one bedroom,with a gardening service includedand a lovely view of the water.There'll be lunches just for us, withasparagus and salmon and laughing.And, on the weekends, we'll bewith our men as usual, men out onthe patio with drinks in the longsummer evenings. Men watching uslaugh. Watching for danger. •