Read Online The PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson - Free Book Online

off, to pace the distance between the jumps. This was to be a timed event; fastest time and fewest faults wins.
    You said how great it would be if we all got a chance to walk the course before we had to compete.
    I said we were walking the course all the time, but when the moment came to jump we still refused.
    You glared at me.
    Swan Lake
was abruptly switched off. The judges assembled in the box, the commentator told us that the first rider was Swiss.
    The bell rang. Out came horse and rider and, after a doff at the box, they were off, in a curved canter that sent the sand flying in flurries.
    You were sitting right by the first jump, five feet high, and I heard your intake of astonishment at the effort of beauty and the beauty of effort, as the horse cleared the jump.
    There’s no such thing as effortless beauty—you should know that.
    There’s no effort which is not beautiful—lifting a heavy stone or loving you.
    Loving you is like lifting a heavy stone. It would be easier not to do it and I’m not quite sure why I am doing it. It takes all my strength and all my determination, and I said I wouldn’t love someone again like this. Is there any sense in loving someone you can only wake up to by chance?
    Mister Archie, the Swiss horse, had a clear round, if a slow one. I was going to speak to you, but you were totally engrossed in the jumping.
    The risks are interesting: do you aim for speed and a correspondingly greater risk of knocking off the poles, or do you take it steady and try for no faults?
    The best riders manage both, but all riders are subject to the same rule: if a horse refuses to jump, he must be made to take it again. The rider must coax him round and convince him to do it. Horses have sudden fears.
    So do I, but in this life you have to take your fences.
    Later, walking home through the alleys as thin and black as the cats on every corner, you put your arm around me and asked again.
    ‘Will you always follow me?’
    ‘Who’s following whom?’
    ‘That’s what I’m beginning to wonder.’
    ‘There are two marks on a circle. Which is ahead? Which is behind?’
    ‘Neither.’
    ‘Then we’re tailing each other.’
    ‘Do you believe in fate?’ she said, in that nervous way that people say it.
    ‘Ye-es.’
    ‘You don’t sound so sure.’
    ‘Fate isn’t an excuse to let go of the reins.’
    ‘OK, but what if you find you’re riding a completely different horse?’
    We were soon back at the place I had rented and I asked her if she was staying the night.
    ‘So this time I don’t have to beg?’
    ‘I was the one who was the beggar tonight.’
    She took me in her arms. ‘I wish I could explain.’
    ‘Explain what?’
    ‘Oh, I know what you think of me.’
    ‘What I think of you and what I feel for you are different things.’
    ‘Do you usually sleep with people you despise?’
    ‘That’s not what I meant.’
    ‘I want you to be my lover not my judge.’
    She’s right. I’m the one who’s muddling things up. How she lives is her decision. If I don’t like it Ishould stay out of the way. If I don’t like it I should say so and close the door.
    Her arms were warm and tight.
    ‘What is it you want?’ she said.
    I want to be able to call you. I want to be able to knock on your door. I want to be able to keep your key and to give you mine. I want to be seen with you in public. I want there to be no gossip. I want to make supper with you. I want to go shopping with you. I want to know that nothing can come between us except each other.
    We were lying together in the dark. The candle had burned out. Outside, the wind was whipping the canvas on the deckchairs. I could hear a plastic tumbler blowing round and round.
    You were sleeping.
    Why does nothing matter as much as this?
    How do you seem to write me to myself?
    I am a message. You change the meaning.
    I am a map that you redraw.

    Follow it. The buried treasure is really there. What exists and what might exist are windowed