The Bay of Foxes: A Novel by Sheila Kohler

Author:Sheila Kohler [Kohler, Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101588772
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2012-06-26T04:00:00+00:00

XVIII

THIS MORNING, WHEN HE COMES BACK FROM HIS RUN TO THE beach, he finds M. already awake and out on the terrace, sipping coffee in her white silk robe. “You’re up early,” he says, surprised. Usually he has the morning hours, at least, to himself and can make his escape to the tennis club undetected.

“I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t work,” she says, looking up at him accusingly, tears in her pale eyes.

It is a hot, still, late August day, the sky a transparent blue, only the monotonous sound of the cicadas, the smell of bitter herbs in the air.

“Shall I bring you some breakfast?” he asks in a conciliatory tone. She purses her lips but nods her head. She eats with him in silence on the terrace, eating from a tray, nibbling at the thin slices of grilled German black bread with a little butter that she eats every morning for her breakfast, and sipping cappuccino from the blue-and-white terra-cotta cups made in the factory on the island. Dawit slathers his bread with butter and delicious Sardinian honey the couple brings them from their farm in the interior of the island as well as the olive oil and the olives they cure themselves. M. is saying something to him, but he is not listening. He imagines the curve of Enrico’s spine, the sweet lift of his buttocks. He can feel his body pressed close. He becomes aware that she is watching him closely while he eats. “You know, you have changed. I don’t know you. I feel you’re not really listening to me at all. You don’t hear me. I don’t even hear you play the piano anymore,” she says with a little catch in her voice. He just looks out at the horizon shimmering in the heat of the day, wondering if he will see Enrico that afternoon.

She goes on, “You have marks all over your body—do you know? Scratches, bites—signs of someone else’s lust.”

What can he say? Has she not told him herself to go out and enjoy himself? He looks at her pale, thin face, with its pointed nose. She looks back at him, and now he sees an empty look in her blue-gray eyes, something he has never seen there, as though she has withdrawn from him. He remembers how she looked at the busboy who brushed against her accidentally in the restaurant. She is looking at him without seeing him. “You are making me suffer, and I warn you, I don’t like to suffer. Unnecessary suffering is distracting and finally just plain stupid. I can’t sleep or work, or even eat when I feel like this.”

“The last thing I want to do is to make you suffer,” he says sincerely, putting down the slice of bread he holds in his hand.

“Well, act accordingly, make sure I don’t, then,” she tells him with a flash of rage in her eyes. “Don’t jeopardize something so precious.” She gets up and walks stiffly, awkwardly across the terrace, through the living room, and up the steps, toward her room.

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