Read Online In the King's Arms by Sonia Taitz - Free Book Online Page A

her fluttering lids, pink under the rising sun. He sank his mouth upon hers, tasting hot berries. She bit him suddenly, knowingly, a small nip. Her legs kicked in tiny kicks in the air. She was half-heartedly searching for gravity. His arms felt strong.
    He took her to the brightening window; they stared outwards together. The brilliant seal of the horizon stretched across their silent, awed faces.

13
    A PART FROM LILY, Julian had few loyalties. He did nothing with resistance. He was very fickle, although this trait often came across as adaptability. He took advice from everyone, found something to imitate in everyone. He had all the time in the world to hear the other point of view. The other point of view never annoyed him; he was spongy; he could take it in capaciously. Little phased him. Though a certain passion shone from his eyes, it was not a passion for depth but for breadth. Nor did he tend to look within himself; Julian beamed outward, attracting the excavators all around him.
    He had been very happy to work with severely retarded adolescents. This era had been a peak in his short life. The project had been suggested by one of his public school tutors, who supposed it would teach him moral application. Julian was set to work among teenagers who, like all teenagers, wore T-shirts and sneakers and blue jeans, had young bodies and spotty faces. The girls, like all girls their age, had breasts and long, luxuriant hair. The paradox of nubility and malady might have unsettled some other novice, but not Julian. He had thrived.
    Once, during an outing, Julian had photographed them all, one by one. There was something chilling in the care these photographs betrayed. They reflected a concentration that could never
be reciprocated, a “love,” perhaps, that could never be returned in kind, it was so abstract, so combinative a love. Did the girl with the curly red tendrils (her name was Betsy) know that the bluebell Julian had given her to hold had matched her eyes? Julian had caught her as the bluebell grazed her lid; she was smiling as though she sensed the visual pun. But in fact she did not even know the word for eyes.
    There was also a photograph of Graham feeding the birds. A flock had descended, gathering around Graham like autograph seekers. Graham had time for every one of them, and the photograph showed this. It showed him on his hands and knees. There were birds on his head, birds on his ankle, and a huge bird-dropping on his shoulder. A beady-eyed bird on the outskirts who lacked several toes and appeared to have given up in the competition for crumbs. And Julian had caught this. Graham’s face was not too visible in the photograph; Julian, standing, had captured the scene from above. When the film was developed, Graham, completely apathetic to the picture of himself (perhaps because he did not recognize the top-view of his own head) smiled at the one of Anna, and would not let go.
    The photograph of Anna was an accident, really. Anna was the most “normal” looking of the group. Julian had daydreamed, often, of kissing her, sometimes of exploring her body with the most exquisite care. She would probably not have minded, either: she was sweet, playful and trusting. But on the day of the outing, Anna had been in a bad mood, perhaps because she had dripped chocolate ice cream on her new pink dress. One sign that Anna was more aware than many of the others was her sensitivity to dirt on her person. Her mother had successfully toilet-trained her. Anna could even apply the word “dirty” in a broad, metaphorical sense,
as an insult or expletive. Now she was muttering “dirty . . . dirty . . . dirty . . .” sometimes at her dress, and sometimes angrily at Julian, who tried to cheer her up.
    He had propped her against a tree, aimed his camera at her, and made her break into a smile by putting the camera down, running to her, and giving her a quick, tight hug. But when he returned to take the shot, her smile had