I Sing the Body Electric

The Women

It was as if a light came on in a green room.

The ocean burned. A white phosphorescence stirred like a breath of steam through the autumn morning sea, rising. Bubbles rose from the throat of some hidden sea ravine.

Like lightning in the reversed green sky of the sea it was aware. It was old and beautiful. Out of the deeps it came, indolently. A shell, a wisp, a bubble, a weed, a glitter, a whisper, a gill. Suspended in its depths were brainlike trees of frosted coral, eyelike pips of yellow kelp, hairlike fluids of weed. Growing with the tides, growing with the ages, collecting and hoarding and saving unto itself identities and ancient dusts, octopus-inks and all the trivia of the sea.

Until now—it was aware.

It was a shining green intelligence, breathing in the autumn sea. Eyeless but seeing, earless but hearing, bodyless but feeling. It was of the sea. And being of the sea it was—feminine.

It in no way resembled man or woman. But it had a woman’s ways, the silken, sly, and hidden ways. It moved with a woman’s grace. It was all the evil things of vain women.

Dark waters flowed through and by and mingled with strange memory on its way to the gulf streams. In the water were carnival caps, horns, serpentine, confetti. They passed through this blossoming mass of long green hair like wind through an ancient tree. Orange peels, napkins, papers, eggshells, and burnt kindling from night fires on the beaches; all the flotsam of the gaunt high people who stalked on the lone sands of the continental islands, people from brick cities, people who shrieked in metal demons down concrete highways, gone.

It rose softly, shimmering, foaming, into cool morning airs.

The green hair rose softly, shimmering, foaming, into cool morning airs. It lay in the swell after the long time of forming through darkness.

It perceived the shore.

The man was there.

He was a sun-darkened man with strong legs and a cow body.

Each day he should have come down to the water, to bathe, to swim. But he had never moved. There was a woman on the sand with him, a woman in a black bathing suit who lay next to him talking quietly, laughing. Sometimes they held hands, sometimes they listened to a little sounding machine that they dialed and out of which music came.

The phosphorescence hung quietly in the waves. It was the end of the season. September. Things were shutting down.

Any day now he might go away and never return.

Today he must come in the water.

They lay on the sand with the heat in them. The radio played softly and the woman in the black bathing suit stirred fitfully, eyes closed.

The man did not lift his head from where he cushioned it on his muscled left arm. He drank the sun with his face, his open mouth, his nostrils. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“A bad dream,” said the woman in the black suit.

“Dreams in the daytime?”

“Don’t you ever dream in the afternoon?”

“I never dream. I’ve never had a dream in my life.”

She lay there, fingers twitching. “God, I had a horrible dream.”

“What about?”

“I don’t know,” she said, as if she really didn’t. It was so bad she had forgotten. Now, eyes shut, she tried to remember.

“It was about me,” he said, lazily, stretching.

“No,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, smiling to himself. “I was off with another woman, that’s what.”

“No.”

“I insist,” he said. “There I was, off with another woman, and you discovered us, and somehow, in all the mix-up, I got shot or something.”

She winced involuntarily. “Don’t talk that way.”

“Let’s see now,” he said. “What sort of woman was I with? Gentlemen prefer blondes, don’t they?”

“Please don’t joke,” she said. “I don’t feel well.”

He opened his eyes. “Did it affect you that much?”

She nodded. “Whenever I dream in the daytime this way, it depresses me something terrible.”

“I’m sorry.” He took her hand. “Anything I can get you?”

“No.”

“Ice-cream cone? Eskimo pie? A Coke?”

“You’re a dear, but no. I’ll be all right. It’s just that, the last four days haven’t been right. This isn’t like it used to be early in the summer. Something’s happened.”

“Not between us,” he said.

“Oh, no, of course not,” she said quickly. “But don’t you feel that sometimes places change? Even a thing like a pier changes, and the merry-go-rounds, and all that. Even the hot dogs taste different this week.”

“How do you mean?”

“They taste old. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve lost my appetite, and I wish this vacation were over. Really, what I want to do most of all is go home.”

“Tomorrow’s our last day. You know how much this extra week means to me.”

“I’ll try,” she said. “If only this place didn’t feel so funny and changed. I don’t know. But all of a sudden I just had a feeling I wanted to get up and run.”

“Because of your dream? Me and my blonde and me dead all of a sudden.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t talk about dying that way!”

She lay there very close to him. “If I only knew what it was.”

“There.” He stroked her. “I’ll protect you.”

“It’s not me, it’s you,” her breath whispered in his ear. “I had the feeling that you were tired of me and went away.”

“I wouldn’t do that; I love you.”

“I’m silly.” She forced a laugh. “God, what a silly thing I am.”

They lay quietly, the sun and sky over them like a lid.

“You know,” he said, thoughtfully, “I get a little of that feeling you’re talking about. This place has changed. There is something different.”

“I’m glad you feel it, too.”

He shook his head, drowsily, smiling softly, shutting his eyes, drinking the sun. “Both crazy. Both crazy.” Murmuring. “Both.”

The sea came in on the shore three times, softly.

The afternoon came on. The sun struck the skies a grazing blow. The yachts bobbed hot and shining white in the harbor swells. The smells of fried meat and burnt onion filled the wind. The sand whispered and stirred like an image in a vast, melting mirror.

The radio at their elbow murmured discreetly. They lay like dark arrows on the white sand. They did not move. Only their eyelids flickered with awareness, only their ears were alert. Now and again their tongues might slide along their baking lips. Sly prickles of moisture appeared on their brows to be burned away by the sun.

He lifted his head, blindly, listening to the heat.

The radio sighed.

He put his head down for a minute.

She felt him lift himself again. She opened one eye and he rested on one elbow looking around, at the pier, at the sky, at the water, at the sand.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said, lying down again.

“Something,” she said.

“I thought I heard something.”

“The radio.”

“No, not the radio. Something else.”

“Somebody else’s radio.”

He didn’t answer. She felt his arm tense and relax, tense and relax. “Dammit,” he said. “There it is, again.”

They both lay listening.

“I don’t hear anything—”

“Shh!” he cried. “For God’s sake—”

The waves broke on the shore, silent mirrors, heaps of melting, whispering glass.

“Somebody singing.”

“What?”

“I’d swear it was someone singing.”

“Nonsense.”

“No, listen.”

They did that for a while.

“I don’t hear a thing,” she said, turning very cold.

He was on his feet. There was nothing in the sky, nothing on the pier, nothing on the sand, nothing in the hot-dog stands. There was a staring silence, the wind blowing over his ears, the wind preening along the light, blowing hairs of his arms and legs.

He took a step toward the sea.

“Don’t!” she said.

He looked down at her, oddly, as if she were not there. He was still listening.

She turned the portable radio up full, loud. It exploded words and rhythm and melody:

“—I found a million-dollar baby—”

He made a wry face, raising his open palm violently. “Turn it off.”

“No, I like it!” She turned it louder. She snapped her fingers, rocking her body vaguely, trying to smile.

It was two o’clock.

The sun steamed the waters. The ancient pier expanded with a loud groan in the heat. The birds were held in the hot sky, unable to move. The sun struck through the green liquors that poured about the pier; struck, caught and burnished an idle whiteness that drifted in the offshore ripples.

The white foam, the frosted coral brain, the kelp pip, the tide dust lay in the water, spreading.

The dark man still lay on the sand, the woman in the black suit beside him.

Music drifted up like mist from the water. It was a whispering music of deep tides and passed years, of salt and travel, of accepted and familiar strangenesses. The music sounded not unlike water on the shore, rain falling, the turn of soft limbs in the depths. It was a singing of a time-lost voice in a caverned seashell. The hissing and sighing of tides in deserted holds of treasure ships. The sound the wind makes in an empty skull thrown out on the baked sand.

But the radio on the blanket on the beach played louder.

The phosphorescence, light as a woman, sank down, tired, from sight. Only a few more hours. They might leave at any time. If only he would come in, for an instant, just an instant. The mists stirred silently, aware of his face and his body in the water, deep under. Aware of him caught, held, as they sank ten fathoms down, on a sluice that bore them twisting and turning in frantic gesticulations, to the depths of a hidden gulf in the sea.

The heat of his body, the water taking fire from his warmth, and the frosted coral brain, the jeweled dusts, the salted mists feeding on his hot breath from his open lips.

The waves moved the soft and changing thoughts into the shallows which were tepid as bath waters from the two o’clock sun.

He mustn’t go away. If he goes now, he’ll not return.

Now. The cold coral brain drifted, drifted. Now. Calling across the hot spaces of windless air in the early afternoon. Come down to the water. Now, said the music. Now.

The woman in the black bathing suit twisted the radio dial.

“Attention!” cried the radio. “Now, today, you can buy a new car at—”

“Jesus!” The man reached over and tuned the scream down. “Must you have it so loud!”

“I like it loud,” said the woman in the black bathing suit, looking over her shoulder at the sea.

It was three o’clock. The sky was all sun.

Sweating, he stood up. “I’m going in,” he said.

“Get me a hot dog first?” she said.

“Can’t you wait until I come out?”

“Please.” She pouted. “Now.”

“Everything on it?”

“Yes, and bring three of them.”

“Three? God, what an appetite!” He ran off to the small café.

She waited until he was gone. Then she turned the radio off. She lay listening a long time. She heard nothing. She looked at the water until the glints and shatters of sun stabbed through her eyes like needles.

The sea had quieted. There was only a faint, far and fine net of ripples giving off sunlight in infinite repetition. She squinted again and again at the water, scowling.

He bounded back. “Damn, but the sand’s hot; burns my feet off!” He flung himself on the blanket. “Eat ’em up!”

She took the three hot dogs and fed quietly on one of them. When she finished it, she handed him the remaining two. “Here, you finish them. My eyes are bigger than my stomach.”

He swallowed the hot dogs in silence. “Next time,” he said, finishing, “don’t order more than you can use. Helluva waste.”

“Here,” she said, unscrewing a thermos, “you must be thirsty. Finish our lemonade.”

“Thanks.” He drank. Then he slapped his hands together and said, “Well, I’ll go jump in the water now.” He looked anxiously at the bright sea.

“Just one more thing,” she said, just remembering it. “Will you buy me a bottle of suntan oil? I’m all out.”

“Haven’t you some in your purse?”

“I used it all.”

“I wish you’d told me when I was up there buying the hot dogs,” he said. “But, okay.” He ran back, loping steadily.

When he was gone, she took the suntan bottle from her purse, half full, unscrewed the cap, and poured the liquid into the sand, covering it over surreptitiously, looking out at the sea, and smiling. She rose then and went down to the edge of the sea and looked out, searching the innumerable small and insignificant waves.

You can’t have him, she thought. Whoever or whatever you are, he’s mine, and you can’t have him. I don’t know what’s going on; I don’t know anything, really. All I know is we’re going on a train tonight at seven. And we won’t be here tomorrow. So you can just stay here and wait, ocean, sea, or whatever it is that’s wrong here today.

Do your damnedest; you’re no match for me, she thought. She picked up a stone and threw it at the sea.

“There!” she cried. “You.”

He was standing beside her.

“Oh?” She jumped back.

“Hey, what gives? You standing here, muttering?”

“Was I?” She was surprised at herself. “Where’s the suntan oil? Will you put it on my back?”

He poured a yellow twine of oil and massaged it onto her golden back. She looked out at the water from time to time, eyes sly, nodding at the water as if to say, “Look! You see? Ah-ha!” She purred like a kitten.

“There.” He gave her the bottle.

He was half into the water before she yelled.

“Where are you going! Come here!”

He turned as if she were someone he didn’t know. “For God’s sake, what’s wrong?”

“Why, you just finished your hot dogs and lemonade—you can’t go in the water now and get cramps!”

He scoffed. “Old wives’ tales.”

“Just the same, you come back up on the sand and wait an hour before you go in, do you hear? I won’t have you getting a cramp and drowning.”

“Ah,” he said, disgusted.

“Come along.” She turned, and he followed, looking back at the sea.

Three o’clock. Four.

The change came at four ten. Lying on the sand, the woman in the black suit saw it coming and relaxed. The clouds had been forming since three. Now, with a sudden rush, the fog came in from off the bay. Where it had been warm, now it was cold. A wind blew up out of nothing. Darker clouds moved in.

“It’s going to rain,” she said.

“You sound absolutely pleased,” he observed, sitting with arms folded. “Maybe our last day, and you sound pleased because it’s clouding up.”

“The weatherman,” she confided, “said there’d be thunder showers all tonight and tomorrow. It might be a good idea to leave tonight.”

“We’ll stay, just in case it clears. I want to get one more day of swimming in, anyway,” he said. “I haven’t been in the water yet today.”

“We’ve had so much fun talking and eating, time passes.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking at his hands.

The fog flailed across the sand in soft strips.

“There,” she said. “That was a raindrop on my nose!” She laughed ridiculously at it. Her eyes were bright and young again. She was almost triumphant. “Good old rain.”

“Why are you so pleased? You’re an odd duck.”

“Come on, rain!” she said. “Well, help me with these blankets. We’d better run!”

He picked up the blankets slowly, preoccupied. “Not even one last swim, dammit. I’ve a mind to take just one dive.” He smiled at her. “Only a minute!”

“No.” Her face paled. “You’ll catch cold, and I’ll have to nurse you!”

“Okay, okay.” He turned away from the sea. Gentle rain began to fall.

Marching ahead of him, she headed for the hotel. She was singing softly to herself.

“Hold on!” he said.

She halted. She did not turn. She only listened to his voice far away.

“There’s someone out in the water!” he cried. “Drowning!”

She couldn’t move. She heard his feet running.

“Wait here!” he shouted. “I’ll be right back! There’s someone there! A woman, I think!”

“Let the lifeguards get her!”

“Aren’t any! Off duty; late!” He ran down to the shore, the sea, the waves.

“Come back!” she screamed. “There’s no one out there! Don’t, oh, don’t!”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be right back!” he called. “She’s drowning out there, see?”

The fog came in, the rain pattered down, a white flashing light raised in the waves. He ran, and the woman in the black suit ran after him, scattering beach implements behind her, crying, tears rushing from her eyes. “Don’t!” She put out her hands.

He leaped into an onrushing dark wave.

The woman in the black bathing suit waited in the rain.

At six o’clock the sun set somewhere behind black clouds. The rain rattled softly on the water, a distant drum snare.

Under the sea, a move of illuminant white.

The soft shape, the foam, the weed, the long strands of strange green hair lay in the shallows. Among the stirring glitter, deep under, was the man.

Fragile. The foam bubbled and broke. The frosted coral brain rang against a pebble with thought, as quickly lost as found. Men. Fragile. Like dolls, they break. Nothing, nothing to them. A minute under water and they’re sick and pay no attention and they vomit out and kick and then, suddenly, just lie there, doing nothing. Doing nothing at all. Strange. Disappointing, after all the days of waiting.

What to do with him now? His head lolls, his mouth opens, his eyelids loosen, his eyes stare, his skin pales. Silly man, wake up! Wake up!

The water surged about him.

The man hung limply, loosely, mouth agape.

The phosphorescence, the green hair weed withdrew.

He was released. A wave carried him back to the silent shore. Back to his wife, who was waiting for him there in the cold rain.

The rain poured over the black waters.

Distantly, under the leaden skies, from the twilight shore, a woman screamed.

Ah—the ancient dusts stirred sluggishly in the water—isn’t that like a woman? Now, she doesn’t want him, either!

At seven o’clock the rain fell thick. It was night and very cold and the hotels all along the sea had to turn on the heat.