Anthony's Paradise

Thelma, who had come into the studio to catch the sun that spewed
from the giant window, wasn't interested in Anthony's work. His
paintings had long become one and the same to her. It was always fruit,
and she only ever gave them a cursory inspection. If they were books,
chances are she would never have read beyond the first one, and then
only to satiate a curiosity about what he did. His paintings her mother
collected were part of the furniture. She grew up with them, and merely
thought of them as Uncle Anthony's fruit paintings.
The subtle changes they had undergone over the years went unnoticed by
her, and if she wondered anything about them at all, it was what nature
of people bought them that he should continue to produce them. to her
they were like things churned out on an assembly line, though in fact,
she now realized, he took great care in producing them.
Yet almost instantly, suddenly being asked her opinion, she could say
unequivocally, as though this conclusion had come after years of
consideration, that she did not necessarily like them, for however much
they were worth they did not appeal to her.
The painting in question was indeed more fruit.
The only addition that she could see was the cornucopia, and the fruit
spilling from the mouth of it onto an oddly angled table tilting down
in a great slide. Only when she noticed that it somehow transformed
itself into a bridge, did she understand that what he was painting was
the village as it spilled down from the mountains. With the exception
of an apple with an obvious bite in it, the fruit was clearly
demarcated to the opposite side of the bridge. The apple was to the
other side of the bridge, away from the village.
"What does it mean?" asked Thelma.
"That's the great secret," said Anthony. "But the key is in the apple.
You know the story of Adam and Eve. Eve bit the apple and that was the
whole problem, never mind the serpent. It was the apple that was
forbidden. Bite from it and you destroy everything. Paradise goes down
the drain. So what do you do? The answer is you don't do anything about
Paradise. You do something about the apple, the forbidden fruit."
"So you're expelling the apple from Paradise," said Thelma
dubiously.
"That has yet to be seen," said Anthony. "Who knows, tomorrow I might
change my mind and bring it back to the other side of the bridge. But
one thing is certain, it won't ever mix with anything. It's a
destructive element."
Thelma saw a different connection. It was the fact that he had named
his house Casa Paradisio. In her minds eye it had conjured nothing
other than a streak in him that said somehow he was a romantic, and
that it took a certain kind of ordacity to call one's house by so
ludicrous a name. And now this whole business about expelling an apple
from paradise. She found it all quite interesting, but for that she
still could not say that she liked it any more for the explanation he'd
given. What was interesting was that she should have recognized the
village, and in a way she supposed that that made it more than just a
painting of fruit. Now he had gone back to working again. But just yet
he didn't want her to leave.
"So what do you think?" said Anthony, talking to the canvas, "about
the conception I mean."
"I think its kind of up in the air."
"Oh dear, oh dear. Up in the air is it?"
"Well, the story of Adam and Eve is more than just about the apple.
And in any case the apple, or rather the apple tree, wasn't expelled
from Paradise. It was Adam and Eve. And you've got that big bite in the
apple. Symbolically, I'd say Paradise has already been lost, otherwise
the apple would have gone untouched, wouldn't it?"
"Go on, I'm listening."
"That's it, I would think."
"Oh, surely there's more to it than that. You're not thinking very
hard. But no matter. Oh, by the bye," he said, as she moved to the
other side of the studio, " I think Sweden of the Maghreb is likely to
have a visitor pretty soon."
Thelma looked at him, at his aspect partially hidden behind the
canvas.
"You will insist in calling him that, won't you," she said.
"Well what else do we know about him, other than he came here from the
Maghreb?"
"You mean what else do you know about him."
"Factually, nothing at all. I'll grant you that. But you seem to
forget. I have an intuitive sense. What certain people are is written
all over them."
Thelma laughed.
"Anthony, why don't you admit it," she said "What really bothers you
is that you can't phase him."
"Oh no? What about that little blow-up in the Indalo? I would think
that was a fair amount of phasing."
"From what I hear it was the other way around. Honestly, running into
a door. How undignified can you get."
Anthony gave her a recalcitrant look, but she wasn't looking at
him.
"I'm glad to see I can still amuse you," he said, turning back to the
canvas. "Anyhow, we'll see how unphasable he is soon enough."
The intrigue in his voice made her look at his partial aspect, now
hidden behind the canvas.
"Anthony, what are you up to?" she asked.
"Up to? Why what am I ever up to?"
"Something mean spirited from the sounds of it."
"Never," said Anthony, as though she couldn't have given him a greater
compliment. "There's not a mean bone in my body."
"So who's the visitor to see Sweden?"
"Oh, that'll be the authorities," he said wistfully, with a casual
wave of the brush before bringing it to the canvas.
"But why should the authorities be interested in Sweden? He hasn't
done anything."
"That's as far as we know," said Anthony. "That doesn't mean he hasn't
done anything. I say he's probably guilty as sin. Pedro probably thinks
the same thing, though he wouldn't admit it, not Pedro. He has this
idea that they're brothers under the skin, soul-mates or some such
thing."
"You're doing this because of what happened in the Indalo, aren't
you?" said Thelma.
"The Indalo has nothing to do with it. And in any case I'm not
necessarily doing anything, and if he hasn't done anything, then he has
nothing to worry about. I'll admit one thing though, I'm curious to see
how he responds. I wouldn't be human if I wasn't. I mean, who doesn't
like a little drama every now and then. Take you, for instance. In
spite of all my efforts to convince you how marvellous it would be to
just let go for once, I was sure you were going to let me down and go
back to London. Then our Sweden of the Maghreb comes along, sweeps you
off your feet, and presto! Why, you'll practically a free spirit
already. Now that's jolly good I would think, even though.... Well,
it's all based on lust, my dear. I dare say our Sweden of the Maghreb
knows that too, but who can blame him? All men are tomcats, in one way
or another, and I reckon he's a real tomcat. But see, what you don't
understand is that we're a community here. We don't want just anybody
to walk in among us, especially not by some quasi-African who thinks
he's something he's not."
"Sweden gone, Paradise restored," she said derisively.
"What?"
"What you're painting there. Paradise spoiled by the apple. The
authorities interested in Sweden. It's absolutely sinister. Why don't
you paint a hat on the apple and be done with it?"
Anthony laughed.
"It takes you a little time, but you do come around to it. But don't
blame me, I'm just a fruit painter."
"It's just plain silly, Anthony."
"Well maybe, but nobody ever said this place was sane. In fact, my
dear, it is absolutely insane, otherwise I wouldn't have stayed here
all these years. But what can I say, this is my little covey hole, and
I don't mind saying it, I'm very jealous of it too."
Thelma knew better than to expect more of Anthony when it came to
Sweden. Like every one else, in spite of the fact that Anthony was her
uncle, she could see the funny side to what had happened in the Indalo.
And nor could she say it wasn't just dessert, even though she could
sympathize with the physical pain it caused him. Nonetheless, this side
of him repulsed her, and all the more so because he chose to make jokes
about it. She could never have imagined his views could be so utterly
subterranean, the way he seemed to rejoice in their presence. It said
how little she knew him. But then his life had always had its secret
side to it, something her mother had put down to the fact that he was
an artist, and that artists were not driven by the same desires as
normal people. Their lives had a special order to them. But that had
never fully explained his campiness, at least not to the extent that
that explained to her what an artist was. The reality of that, that he
didn't love women because he loved men, came not so much as a surprise,
but merely as a discovery of the odder aspects of life, something that
simply seemed to impose itself as a fact, like her own sudden growth
into adolescence, complete with sprouting breasts, periods and spots.
To know that he was like that opened a window on him, one which she
looked through without the blinkers that her mother would have her
believe were necessary, or with the raised eyebrow that her father
invoked at the mere mention of his name. Yet it made him no less her
uncle. Unlike her mother, she could have cared less about his sexual
orientation. In her world such things did not need to be spoken of in
secret, or excused on any special grounds. If anything it gave a colour
to his life that otherwise would not have been there. But it also made
his life irredeemably sad, for it seemed to her that he was what he was
with reservations. He could not rejoice in himself, or in others, and
yet he could not be anything other than what he was.
She understood this well enough when it came to Sweden.
Then that evening in the Indalo she had seen the look on Anthony's
fact when Sweden had promised to get her down the hill, even though at
the time all three of them knew that that was not at all what it was
about. It was hurt that had come into Anthony's eyes, where once there
had been a bubble of hope, and she could only imagine how often such
hurt had come there, though never that it was she who could cause it.
For a moment it had left her in two minds, torn between her own desires
and familial loyalty. In the end it was her own desires that won out,
but Anthony's, she knew now, had never had a chance.

She thought to go to Sweden and warn him, but of what? That Anthony,
in addition to everything else, was a cunning louse? But then again,
maybe he was simply making it all up, delighting in spinning a yarn for
the sake of it, of creating some drama where in fact there was
none.
She got her things together and started down to the beach alone, but
once there she didn't particularly want to swim. For a long while she
sat near the edge of the water with her arms clasped around her ankles
and her chin resting on her knees. Paradise? It was all a sorted thing,
she thought; Anthony in love with Sweden and wanting to destroy him;
herself suddenly fearful. Only Sweden was outside both of them, in his
own space. He was well out of it, except for that slip up in the
Indalo. A little blow-up, Anthony had called it. She wished she had
been there to see it, for she couldn't conceive of how Sweden could
look when he was angry. Did his nostrils flare? Was there wildness in
his eyes? But more to the point, why did she want to know these things?
She stretched out her legs so that now the water gently lapped at her
toes, and she watched the water as it caroused over them, enveloped
them in the sea foam and recede. It was almost like a kiss, she
thought, the tingle of the water endlessly caressing her feet. She
threw back her head and the sun splashed onto her face, and the sun too
was like a kiss she thought, and for a moment she held herself in the
two embraces, imagining the two sensations. Was this Eve's first whiff
of the apple, she wondered thinking of Anthony's painting. If so, how
else could she not but succumb? Suddenly she was glad to be alone in
her cove, glad even that Sweden wasn't with her, glad for these kinds
of kisses, and the feel of the sand beneath her. She slithered out of
the bathing suit and felt herself gloriously naked to the elements. At
that moment she didn't care what intrigue Anthony was or was not
brewing it, or about prying eyes. A small breeze swept up over her from
the sea, and she imagined Eve's awakening coming in so gentle a brush
over her, as she felt the kiss of the wind to her pudenda. She then
brought her hand to the crease between her legs and began gently to
stroke the tender flesh. When she came she felt mildly ashamed, and a
little deflated. She slithered back into the bathing suit and etched
into the shallow water. She wished now that Sweden was with her, as he
would have been, had not she allowed Anthony to so anger and confuse
her.
No, she did not want to see Sweden angry, to see his nostrils flare,
or wildness in his eyes. She thought of the first time she had seen
them, and how it seemed to her that they possessed a deep seated flame,
and yet more than a tinge of sadness. It was that sadness that gave
them something special, and his face its own particular form of beauty,
and in a way it frightened her, for maybe there was too much behind it.
There was no serenity in him, no calm.
Pedro had said as much.
"A man like Sweden," said Pedro. "Everything is inside. It is a
volcano churning away in there, and always he is searching for a way to
erupt it. He is stirring all these gases, churning them this way and
that. He wants to blow it sky high. That is the only way he can breathe
again. But first he must get it all out of him. that is why he cannot
come out of the mountains."
"And when he does?"
"Why then he will leave. Simple as that."
Yes. Simple as that, she thought.
She waded into the water and walked out until it came up to her
shoulders, then began to swim."