Read Online Turning Back the Sun by Colin Thubron - Free Book Online

sophisticated resort—a lake in the northern hills—because he imagined that she was urban. But during their few days” holiday neither of them entered the little casino or nightclub, and it was she who sank into a dream by the water, and seemed physically to imbibe its colors and changes. For hours she would paddle along the shore in one of his shirts and a straw hat, then lie spreadeagled on a rock under the flailing sun, with her hair swept over her face. She said that it reminded her of home, and certainly the lake was sohuge—on hazy days the farther shore vanished altogether—that it resembled some tideless stretch of the north coast where she was born.
    There was nothing like it for hundreds of kilometers. Through the naked hills it lay in a sheet of brilliant blue, death-still. Under its near slopes, fed by small streams, the littoral burst into a rain forest of mangrove and silkwood trees, where parasite ferns ran amok and hundreds of pale trunks leaned askew. The resort”s villas were nestled privately among them along a near-empty beach. Even in June it was silent. Out on the water only a few transparent-looking islands interposed themselves between the shore and the far hills, and occasional flights of duck gashed the surface.
    Rayner usually avoided such resorts. During the Great War the place had been reserved for the local government élite and senior army and intelligence officers. Now it was patronized by executives and businessmen. After a day dispersed along the shore or among the islands, they converged on the dining room with their wives or mistresses, and the place became a microcosm of the town. It drank and danced and gossiped. To Rayner, who couldn”t dance and scarcely drank, all the place”s pleasure lay in Zoë. If any medical colleagues happened to be here, he decided, they could think what they liked. He was not ashamed of her. He felt proud, rather, of her public face: the slightly arrogant beauty of her, which seemed to be defying the world to uncover any weaker woman beneath. People in the town were so various now—the strata of the old society breaking up all over the country—that you”d expect nobody to trouble any longer about who consorted with whom. But you would, of course, be wrong. And the dining room by the lake was riddled with a cross fire of stares and inquisition.
    So at evening, after their amphibious hours along the shore, they had to reenter the town”s orbit. Zoë prepared for this as if she were going to war. Sitting at her dressingtable, applying her fawn-colored foundation cream and diffusing over her eyelids the specks of rouge which mysteriously heightened her eyes” blue, she talked about creating her face as if none had been there before. Then came the matching lipstick and the small false eyelashes and the drawing-back of the hair from her highlit features. Without this, Rayner came to realize, she felt bared, whittled away. So each night she produced a version of herself which was at once emphatic, theatrical and a little poignant. He was reminded of the dancer who had gyrated on the nightclub stage, demanding recognition of herself, but only on her own terms.
    “Do I look all right? I think I look a mess.” In the long mirror the girl could not decide, and turned to Rayner.
    “You look good.”
    Then her chin lifted and she walked down the plant-lapped path to the dining room with a trace still of the ballerina”s turned-out step, and her hand on Rayner”s arm. As they threaded between tables toward one overlooking the lake, and people turned to assess them, Rayner felt bemused that her fear of crowds and her defiance of them went hand in hand. Her way of coping was to re-create herself for them. It seemed neurotically brave.
    A three-piece orchestra was playing Glinka and Borodin on a dais, and a few couples were dancing. The women”s hair was stuck with the little gold combs fashionable that year. The men”s white dinner jackets were buttoned