Extract from Five Nights in Seville
THE BEACH SILVER BLONDE, the overhead sun making piercing white reflections on the sea. Such bright light, he could hardly believe it. This is a good time of year to come: hot and renewing, with your skin glowing and smelling of clean air and salt, but not too hot, not so hot you can do nothing other than lie and turn purple. Toes still white and cool on the warm sand, fragments of blue and even green in the dust if you look closely enough, like ash from a volcanic island. Maybe a planet like Jupiter, Hector supposed as he walked past the stone changing huts and down towards the sea. Dots of bright colour on the sand; red and blue and yellow bikinis. Nearer the water the ground banked steeply as if presaging something important, or unexpected, and his feet sank in the browner, wetter, thicker sand. He felt a mild, pleasurable burn across his neck and wondered if he had put enough suncream on. How distant his cold northern climate now seemed, and after just a few days, how impossible it was to believe he would go back. A gear or a cog or a wheel had changed inside him, and he now operated at a different speed, a different temperature. The image of Sally pursed her lips in front of him, and told him to get a life. He concentrated: she shimmered in the haze and vanished. He stood at the sea edge and sensed large, anvil-like clamps disappearing from his shoulders. Two thirds of the way to the horizon, a motionless tanker, its hulk appearing to list slightly because of the curve of the earth.
He focused on this horizon. The sea was utterly still, ruptureless; it was as if he could, if he chose to, pull the blanket of water back and experience what was hidden underneath. It had meaning, but he couldn’t quite grasp what that meaning was. Perhaps that is the meaning that it is trying to communicate. Perhaps it doesn’t matter that you can’t quite identify what it is, it is enough to know that it is there, that it exists. He turned and zig-zagged past the fluorescent marker buoys of bodies nestled in clumps, part-burrowed in the sand. Men in late middle age, wiry silver hairs contrasting with deep copper skin, the flesh beaten and hammered with age like the bottom of an old pot. Statues of young women, one leg bent, an arm across the face, breathing shallowly. Solitary skinny pale boys, concave thighs and bellies, large eyes watching hopefully and hopelessly at the same time. On a bright red mat, three girls mutating into women before his eyes. 18 or 19, maybe 20. One kneeling and pouring water into a plastic cup, one sitting, arms stretched behind her, fingers in the sand, legs crossed, the third rubbing lotion on her shoulders, her breasts lifting as her hand slipped behind her neck. Their thongs were turquoise, green and orange, matching triangles of bold colour. The girl pouring water sat awkwardly, one leg under her buttocks, spilling the water as she settled. Hector made himself not look. They are too young. Perhaps they’re older than they appear, he hoped, looking back towards them. |
|