On the Beach

As much for Sweden as for Thelma, it was hard to believe that he had
never felt the sea above his waist. Between fits of laughter, for he
could but laugh at himself, which made Thelma laugh, he floundered
hopelessly. Thelma tried to teach him to co-ordinate his arms and feet,
but he was a boat taking on water, and after a while he told her simply
to go ahead and swim.

In her absence of him, she became as playful as a dolphin, as if truly
this was an element to which she was born. He thought how unnatural it
seemed, and yet how natural it was. It had in it something of the
impossibility of the aeroplane, of some thing that was not supposed to
happen. But it was simply that he had never tried to swim, or watched
the mechanics of how it was done, but for that he was still a rock. And
soon he came out of the water, wondering whether it mattered if he
learned to swim or not.

Thelma stayed in a while longer. And for a time he was content just to
watch her, before being drawn to the squall of seagulls overhead. He
then lay with his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes closed,
feeling the strong rays of the sun on his face when suddenly, having
fallen asleep, he felt Thelma's hand move across chest and stomach, and
he knew that she was trying to kindle him.

"You never did say what made you decide to stay," he said, noting as
he had that morning, that this was the final day of her vacation, but
that now she wasn't leaving.

"Isn't it obvious," she said, looking down over him.

He opened his eyes and looked at her

"Obvious how?"

"Like this," she said, and kissed him on the lips. She wanted him to
kiss her back, looking deadpan into his eyes, but he was disinclined to
do more than look at her. He looked at her for a long time, a deadpan
stare that matched her own.

"Have I got this straight," he said finally. "You're saying its because
of me that you're staying? Someone you don't know from Adam?"

"That much I do know," said Thelma conspiratorially.

Sweden saw exactly what she is getting at, and he tells her the story
of a man who lived with things in his head, and how always they managed
to come to perfect conclusions, but when he tried to execute them in
life, they invariably fell apart.

"Are you saying you don't want me?"

Sweden's gaze softened on her.

"Listen," he said, genuinely groping for the truth of what he was
driving at. "Last night was great fun. I mean it was nice, really it
was, but its nothing to come to any conclusions about one way or the
other. It's one thing to have a nice holiday and enjoy yourself, but
you shouldn't think that it necessarily spills over into real
life."

"Thats not your way of saying you're married, is it?"
Married, he thought silently, grasping something he hadn't, until now,
fully understood. And it was a realization that surprised him, this
fact that he was indeed married, or a best still betrothed.

"Yeah. I suppose in a way I am," he said finally."Though technically,
perhaps not."

"Technically?"

"I know it sounds strange," he said, "but really there's no other way
to explain it. It was when I was in Magendo. I became involved with a
young peasant girl. I grew very fond of her, and I had every reason to
believe when I left that that would be the end of it, even though that
wasn't necessarily what I wanted. But when I found out she was
pregnant, that more or less decided it. There was no question then that
there was going to be an end to anything. I decided that I was going to
marry her.
"Before that I knew exactly who I was, or rather it didn't matter. I
had but one purpose. That was to do a return trip to Tandika. I wanted
to make more of it than I had the first time I was there. You might say
that was a thin ambition, but still it was one for which I was willing
to burn all my bridges behind me, it was the source of all the fire I
had, a real poet's kind of fire if you like. I had got as far as
Magendo, which was always going to be a stepping stone into Tandika.
But all of that was suddenly changed when I learned that I was about to
become a father. I mean, somehow everything just fell into place.
Tandika didn't mean anything after that. It was just a place where I
had been unhappy before, and was only returning to because I couldn't
think of anything better to do."

"So you are married," she said, more intrigued than disappointed or
hurt.

"Magendo is in another part of the world, okay," he said. "To take a
wife, all you need are two cows, and any father will willingly sell you
his daughter. But that doesn't necessarily mean you're married. It
means she's yours as long as you want her."

"Like a piece of furniture," she said sarcastically.

He glanced at her, then looked away.

"I can see how you might look at it like that. And I suppose if I was a
woman I'd probably see it the same way. But really it wasn't like that.
In any case, I didn't get to Tandika, but nor did I end up marrying her
either, even though I did pay the two cows. Oh I had every intention of
doing so, and not just because of the child either. I mean the reality
of that was like icing on the cake. It was like here was something in
my hands, something concrete and real, and something I didn't know I
could want. Its like all your life you've wondered what certain things
were for, or how something tasted that had never before been placed on
your plate. Then suddenly there it is, I mean you taste it and you just
know that's what your palette has always craved for."

He fell silence.

"So why didn't you marry her?"

"Funny thing about being hit over the head, " he said, looking at her.
"It can do all kinds of things to your memory. But in answer to your
question, I didn't marry her because I never got the chance. When I
left Magendo I was evacuated out on a plane with foreign nationals, and
I didn't have much of a say in it. For some days I had been in the
hospital with a head wound, and I was only half-conscious when they
hauled me onto the plane. The last thing I remember was a lot of rain,
and the two of us returning to Magendo Town by train. Everything else
is a blank."

Thelma didn't speak for a long time, and when he turned and looked at
her, she was very pensive, sitting with her hands clasped across her
knees.

"Do you love her very much?" She asked

"I love her enough," he answered.

"Enough to still want to marry her?"

"That I can't answer," he said. "I still get images of her, but
they're all mixed in with things I don't understand. I suppose its all
part and parcel of what happened to me. It's that missing part of the
puzzle that I still have to come to terms with, and I can't do that
until I understand what happened."

"Like how you came into the desert, you mean? But surely if you sat
down and thought about it the answer would come to you. Or better yet,
if you didn't think about it at all."

"Perhaps," he said. "But let's not talk anymore."

She never asked him directly what it was that impelled him to go into
the mountains each day. It wasn't the same as her coming to the beach,
for although he hadn't made mention of it, she did not think that it
gave him much pleasure. And nor could she see the duty in it either,
apart from the fact that he did it. But now she understood it. No
wonder he scoffed at all her bohemian stuff, her pretend artistry, she
thought. He was too honest by half, and too serious by half. She wanted
to make him laugh, make him smile, for now she saw how sad his eyes
really were, and that look of diplomacy that always came into his face,
that made him look contented and even, like a straight line -- it was
all a mask. In any case, she wasn't going to cry two days in a row over
a sad story, as no doubt there were many he could tell her.

Sweden stood up and walked off a little, stretching his legs. The
seagulls were no longer over head, then one flit into view. It skipped
over the water, just swiping it, before leveraging off in the direction
of the boat in the distance beyond them., it's portals, like hotel room
windows that caught and reflected the bright sunlight. Watching the
boat's slow, but now perceptible movement, he was reminded briefly of
the last boat he had watched with any interest, when his goal was no
more lofty, or indeed meritorious, than to increase his stamina
sufficiently to jog the Williamsburg bridge. It was after he had done
it, increasing his stamina over a slow accretion of weeks, and all that
was left to him was to do it again, that he began to notice the ships
against the backdrop of the bridge. And it seemed to him then that a
logical extension, after taking the bridge, for someone with money but
no job, was to take a boat to wherever it would take him. But then to
set sail blind like that, to then beachup somewhere in the world,
somewhere on the other side of the world, as he was now, was not his
idea of purpose, but rather the reverse. A better idea was to take a
boat to where ever you wanted to go. And it seemed ironic to him, even
though his sailing to foreign lands was never likely to be more than a
metaphor, a childhood longing for some fantasy as yet unfulfilled, for
in the end he had sailed no where, and perhaps knew he never would, but
had taken the convenient and simple option of buying a plane ticket, as
opposed to working his way anywhere on a boat. But now it seemed to him
that it had nonetheless less come to then same thing. He was beached up
on a beach in Spain.

"Its too bad you and Anthony don't get along," said Thelma, when he
rejoined her on the towel.

"I haven't lost any sleep over it. Does it bother you?"

"I was just thinking," she said, drawing configurations on his stomach
with her index finger, "I mean, if you two could manage to tolerate
each other, you could move into Casa Paradisio. There's plenty of
space."
"Now thats one hell of a jump," Sweden sat up abruptlysaid. Sweden
looked a her sharply, mindful of what had happened between himself and
Anthony only the day before. And the way he looked at her. She fell
back onto the towel, laughing.
"I imagine you don't know anything about fishing, do you?" he laughed.
"Because if you did, you'd know that just because you feel a bite at
the line, you can't just yank it in. That way you're sure to loose it.
It's a matter of strategy.

"Is that a lesson in how to catch Sweden?"

"It's a lesson in how not to loose a fish," he said.

"Okay, that's a wrong number," she said. "But just because I'm not a
part of your plans, yet, it doesn't mean you're not a part of mine."
And now she sat up again, looking at him with great intensity. "Now I
see how it'll happen," she said, smiling over him. "I'll teach you to
swim first. I'll teach you to swim perfectly, then I'll go after you.
That way you can't say you're not fair game."

"That's fair enough," he said, "but take it slow, all right?"
"Right."

Sweden now turned over onto stomach with his elbows pressing into the
towel. "It's really nice here," he said, looking about the isolated
stretch of beach that was partly surrounded by rocks, really looking at
it for the first time. "Is this were you always come?"

"It's my favourite place," she said, the index finger that a moment
ago drew configurations over his chest and stomach now traced along the
inside of his thigh.

"You're impossible, you know that?" He looked back at her.

"I'm just cultivating my fish," she said.

"Yeh, a fish that can't swim."

He stood up abruptly then and pulled her to her feet. "Let's get back
into the water," he said. "Come on, teach me to swim."