Read Online Water Theatre by Lindsay Clarke - Free Book Online Page B

for us, she informed me that truffles were the fruit of lightning. We talked about the previous day’s storm, which had been the first of the season, but I said nothing further about my dream. I congratulated her on the beauty of her home and, more wryly, on its grandeur.
    â€œYes,” Gabriella agreed, “it is perhaps extravagant.” A gesture of her hand dismissed the thought. “Now we shall be serious. You will tell me all about your work. It interests me very much.”
    Over the years I had evolved various strategies to deal with such approaches, and could slip into whichever mode seemed likeliest to impress or deter, silence or seduce the questioner. But what I’d seen in Equatoria had left me finally sickened by all of them. I made evasive noises. She pressed me to say more. The Italian light dissolved around me, I frowned down into the dark of memory. The stench of the death pits hit my noseagain, and I was speaking about people driven to a frenzy by forces beyond their understanding and control, about the grief-crazed women and silent children; tormented and tormentors alike unprotected by ease and privilege, by the glib, talking-head culture that distances us from raw suffering and depletes us of an immediate sense of what is real on the earth. Mentally I ran through footage that would never be screened, the literally obscene out-takes which cannot be erased from the observer’s mind, yet slink out of history unshown. I told her about them as plainly as I could.
If you want to know what I do
, I was saying,
this is the bleak news I have to bring you on this bright afternoon
. It left me feeling ashen inside, as though a once ardent heat of moral passion had burnt itself out some time before, almost without my noticing.
    She was not looking at me directly when she said at last, “I believe there are more than fifty wars happening right now. Can you tell me why it is men love war so much?”
    â€œI’ve seen more of it than most people,” I answered, surprised to find her so well informed, “and I can think of nothing loveable about it.”
    â€œThen I wonder why you return to it so often?”
    I remembered the despair with which Gail had put the same question only a few weeks earlier. Even then I had not believed my answer. I had no better one now, for the truth was that on each return I’d found it harder to cleanse my thoughts, to be simply present anywhere, least of all inside the care of touch. Out of her rage and hurt, Gail had branded me a war-zone addict, accused me of infatuation with the evil in the world, of eye-fucking its horrors with such lust that nothing could ever hope to match the intensity of its hold on me. Under Gabriella’s patient scrutiny now, watching the dazzle from the water drift along a line of cypresses, I saw that I might already have passed beyond such virile craziness into a still more frightening condition.
    When I did not speak for some time, she said, “The question disturbs you?”
    â€œNot really. I’ve lived with it far too long for that.”
    â€œOf course,” she nodded. “And when a man is carrying the troubles of all the world, the taking care of his own soul does not seem so important?”
    â€œI wouldn’t say that either.”
    â€œThen what would you say?”
    â€œThat there must be better things to talk about on a hot afternoon.”
    Gabriella shook her head in mild exasperation. “You are such bewildering creatures.”
    â€œDo you mean foreign correspondents in general,” I smiled, “or men in particular?”
    â€œMen,” she answered. “Men! Yes, men. Men!”
    â€œSpoken with true feeling. So tell me about the Count. I’ve been wondering where he can be?”
    She considered me a moment, aware of the deflection. Very well, she too could be frugal with confession. “My husband lives much of the time in Geneva. He performs work