GARDEN OF EDEN by Ernest Hemingway

Chapter Two

HE STOOD UP and looked up and down the beach, corked the bottle of oil and put it in a side pocket of the rucksack and then walked down to the sea feeling the sand grow cool under his feet. He looked at the girl on her back on the sloping beach, her eyes closed, her arms against her sides, and behind her the slanted square of canvas and the first tufts of beach grass. She ought not to stay too long in that position with the sun straight up and down on her, he thought. Then he walked out and dove flat into the clear cold water and turned on his back and swam backstroke out to sea watching the beach beyond the steady beat of his legs and feet. He turned in the water and swam down to the bottom and touched the coarse sand and felt the heavy ridges of it and then came up to the surface and swam steadily in, seeing how slow he could keep the beat of his crawl. He walked up to the girl and saw that she was asleep. He found his wristwatch in the rucksack to check the time when he should wake her. There was a cold bottle of white wine wrapped in a newspaper and with their towels around it. He uncorked it without removing the paper or the towels and took a cool draught from the awkward bundle. Then he sat down to watch the girl and to look out to sea.

This sea was always colder than it looked, he thought. It did not really warm until the middle of summer except on the shallow beaches. This beach dropped off quite suddenly and the water had been sharply cold until the swimming warmed him. He looked out at the sea and the high clouds and noticed how far the fishing fleet was working to the westward. Then he looked at the girl sleeping on the sand that was quite dry now and beginning to blow delicately with the rising wind when his feet stirred.

During the night he had felt her hands touching him. And when he woke it was in the moonlight and she had made the dark magic of the change again and he did not say no when she spoke to him and asked the questions and he felt the change so that it hurt him all through and when it was finished after they were both exhausted she was shaking and she whispered to him, “Now we have done it. Now we really have done it.”

Yes, he thought. Now we have really done it. And when she went to sleep suddenly like a tired young girl and lay beside him lovely in the moonlight that showed the beautiful new strange line of her head as she slept on her side he leaned over and said to her but not aloud, “I’m with you. No matter what else you have in your head I’m with you and I love you.”

In the morning he had been very hungry for breakfast but he waited for her to wake. He kissed her finally and she woke and smiled and got up sleepily and washed in the big basin and slouched in front of the mirror of the armoire and brushed her hair and looked at the mirror unsmiling and then smiled and touched her cheeks with the tips of her fingers and pulled a striped shirt over her head and then kissed him. She stood straight so her breasts pushed against his chest and she said, “Don’t worry, David. I’m your good girl come back again.

But he was very worried now and he thought what will become of us if things have gone this wildly and this dangerously and this fast? What can there be that will not burn out in a fire that rages like that? We were happy and I am sure she was happy. But who ever knows? And who are you to judge and who participated and who accepted the change and lived it? If that is what she wants who are you not to wish her to have it? You’re lucky to have a wife like her and a sin is what you feel bad after and you don’t feel bad. Not with the wine you don’t feel bad, he told himself, and what will you drink when the wine won’t cover for you?

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *