Garden of Eden (30 page)

In
his and Catherine's room he took a shower, shaved, found a fresh shirt and
shorts and put them on, looked around the empty bedroom, the first morning he
had ever been in it with Catherine not there, and then went out to the empty
kitchen and found a tin of Maquereau Vin Blanc Capitaine Cook and opened it and
took it, perilous with edge-level juice, with a cold bottle of the Tuborg beer
out to the bar.

He
opened the beer, took the bottle top between his right thumb and the first
joint of his right forefinger and bent it in until it was flattened together,
put it in his pocket since he saw no container to toss it into, raised the
bottle that was still cold to his hand and now beaded wet in his fingers and,
smelling the aroma from the opened tin of spiced and marinated mackerel, he
took a long drink of the cold beer, set it down on the bar and took an envelope
from his hip pocket and unfolded Catherine's letter and commenced to reread it.

David,
I knew very suddenly you must know how terrible it was. Worse than hitting
someone, a child is the worst I guess—with a car. The thump on the fender or
maybe just a small bump and then all the rest of it happening and the crowd
gathering to scream. The Frenchwoman screaming écrasseuse even if it was the
child's fault. I did it and I knew I did it and I can't undo it. It's too awful
to understand. But it happened.

I'll
cut this short. I'll be back and we'll settle things the best we can. Do not
worry at all. I'll wire and write and do all the things for my book so if you
ever finish it only I will try to do this one thing. I had to burn the other
things. The worst was being righteous about it but I don't have to tell you
that. I do not ask for forgiveness but please have good luck and I will do
everything as well as I can.

Heiress
has been good to you and me both and I don't hate her.

I
won't end as I'd like to because it would sound too preposterous to believe but
I will say it anyway since I was always rude and presumptuous and preposterous
too lately as we both know. I love you and I always will and I am sorry. What a
useless word.

Catherine

After
he had finished it he read it through again.

He
had never read any other letters from Catherine because from the time they had
met at the Crillon bar in Paris until they were married at the American church
at Avenue Hoche they had seen each other every day and, reading this first one
now for the third time, he found that he still could be, and was, moved by her.

He
put the letter back in his hip pocket and ate a second small, plump, miniature
mackerel in the aromatic white wine sauce and finished the cold beer. Then he
went out to the kitchen for a piece of bread to sop up the liquid in the long
tin and for a fresh bottle of beer. He would try to work today and would almost
certainly fail. There had been too much emotion, too much damage, too much of
everything and his changing of allegiance, no matter how sound it had seemed,
no matter how it simplified things for him, was a grave and violent thing and
this letter compounded the gravity and the violence.

All
right Bourne, he thought as he began to drink the second beer, don't spend time
thinking how bad things are because you know. You have three choices. Try to
remember one that is gone and write it again. Second, you can try a new one.
And third, write on the god damned narrative. So sharpen up and take the best
one. You always gambled when you could bet on yourself. Never bet on anything
that can talk, your father said and you said, Except yourself. And he said, Not
me, Davey, but pile it on yourself sometime you iron-hearted little bastard. He
meant to say cold-hearted but he turned it kindly with his gently lying mouth.
Or maybe he meant it. Don't con yourself on Tuborg beer.

So
take the best one and write one new and good as you can. And remember, Marita
has been hit as badly as you. Maybe worse. So gamble. She cares as much for
what we lost as you do.

WHEN
HE FINALLY gave up writing that day it was afternoon. He had started a sentence
as soon as he had gone into his working room and had completed it but he could
write nothing after it. He crossed it out and started another sentence and
again came to the complete blankness. He was unable to write the sentence that
should follow although he knew it. He wrote a first simple declarative sentence
again and it was impossible for him to put down the next sentence on paper. At
the end of two hours it was the same. He could not write more than a single
sentence and the sentences themselves were increasingly simple and completely
dull. He kept at it for four hours before he knew that resolution was powerless
against what had happened. He admitted it without accepting it, closed and put
away the notebook with the rows of crossed out lines and went to find the girl.

She
was on the terrace in the sun reading and when she looked up and saw his face
she said, "No?"

"Worse
than no."

"Not
at all?"

"Nope."

"Let's
have a drink," Marita said.

"Good,"
said David.

They
were inside at the bar and the day had come in with them. It was as good as the
day before and perhaps better since summer should have been gone and each warm
day was an extra thing. We should not waste it, David thought. We should try to
make it good and save it if we can. He mixed the martinis and poured them and
when they tasted them they were icy cold and dry.

"You
were right to try this morning," Marita said. "But let's not think
about it anymore today."

"Good,"
he said.

He
reached for the bottle of Gordon's, the Noilly Prat and the stirring pitcher,
poured out the water from the ice, and using his empty glass commenced to
measure out two more drinks.

"It's
a lovely day," he said. "What should we do?"

"Let's
go to swim now," Marita said. "So we won't waste the day."

"Good,"
David said. "Should I tell Madame that we'll be late for lunch?"

"She
put a cold lunch up," Marita said. "I thought that probably you'd
like to swim however work went."

"That
was intelligent," David said. "How is Madame?"

"She
has a slightly discolored eye," Marita said.

Marita
laughed.

They
drove up the road and around the promontory through the forest and left the car
in the broken shade of the pine woods and carried the lunch basket and the
beach gear down the trail to the cove. There was a little breeze from the east
and the sea was dark and blue as they came down through the stone pines. The
rocks were red and the sand of the cove was yellow and wrinkled and the water,
as they came to it, clean and now amber clear over the sand. They put the
basket and the rucksack in the shade of the biggest rock and undressed and
David climbed the tall rock to dive. He stood there naked and brown in the sun
looking out to the sea.

"Want
to dive?" he called.

She
shook her head.

"I'll
wait for you."

"No,"
she called up and waded out into the water up to her thighs.

"How
is it?" David called down.

"Much
cooler than it's ever been. Almost cold."

"Good,"
he said, and as she watched him and waded, the water came over her belly and
touched her breasts and he straightened, rose on his toes, seemed to hang
slowly without falling and then knifed out and down, making a boil in the water
that a porpoise might have made reentering slickly into the hole that he had
made in rising. She swam out toward the circle of milling water and then he
rose beside her and held her up and close and then put his salty mouth against
her own.

"Elle
est bonne, la mer," he said. "Toi aussi."

They
swam out of the cove and beyond into the deep water past where the mountain
dropped down into the sea, and lay on their backs and floated. The water was
colder than it had been but the very top was warmed a little and Marita floated
with her back arched high, her head all underwater but her nose, and her brown
breasts were lapped gently by the movement the light breeze gave the sea. Her
eyes were shut against the sun and David was beside her in the water. His arm
was under her head and then he kissed the tip of her left breast and then the
other breast.

"They
taste like the sea," he said.

"Let's
go to sleep out here."

"Could
you?"

"It's
too hard to keep my back arched."

"Let's
swim way out and then swim in."

"All
right."

They
swam far out, further than they had ever swum before, far enough so they could
see past the next headland and on out until they could see the broken purple
line of the mountains behind the forest. They lay there in the water and
watched the coast. Then they swam in slowly. They stopped to rest when they
lost the mountains and again when they lost the headland and then swam slowly
and strongly on in past the entrance to the cove and pulled themselves out on
the beach.

"Are
you tired?" David asked.

"Very,"
Marita said. She had never swum that far before.

"Are
you still pounding?"

"Oh
I'm fine."

David
walked up the beach and over to the rock and found one of the bottles of Tavel
and two towels.

"You
look like a seal," David said sitting down beside her on the sand.

He
handed her the Tavel and she drank from the bottle and handed it back. He took
a long drink and then on the smooth dry sand, stretched out in the sun, the
lunch basket by them and the wine cool as they drank from the bottle, Marita
said, "Catherine wouldn't have gotten tired."

"The
hell she wouldn't. She never swam that far."

"Truly?"

"We
swam a long way, girl. I was never out where we could see those backdrop
mountains before."

"All
right," she said. "There isn't anything we can do about her today so
let's not think about it. David?"

"Yes."

"Do
you still love me?"

"Yes.
Very much."

"Perhaps
I made a great mistake with you and you're just being kind to me.

"You
didn't make any mistakes and I'm not being kind to you.

Marita
took a handful of radishes and ate them slowly and drank some wine. The
radishes were young and crisp and sharp in flavor.

"You
don't have to worry about working," she said. "I know. That will be
all right."

"Sure,"
David said.

He
cut one of the artichoke hearts up with the fork and ate a chunk swirled in the
mustard sauce Madame had made.

"May
I have the Tavel?" Marita said. She took a good swallow of the wine and
set the bottle down by David putting its base firmly in the sand and leaning it
against the basket. "Isn't it a good lunch Madame made, David?"