Chapter 1: Angels

When she goes to the city she leaves me lounging in the swing underneath the oak tree. She visualizes me as a shadow, as her car zooms around the curves that take her rapidly down the mountain. She is listening to a music I have not heard in many years. At first I think it is Portuguese fado; then I realize it is flamenco, which is also characterized by passion and profound sadness. She moans along with the woman who is singing--wailing, really--her hands gripping the steering wheel to the plangent cries of the singer and the sobbing of violins. The momentum of her flight sets the old swing to rocking. Her car is old and black. It was another expression of my effort to contact her.

She was not even aware at the time of my death that she missed me. Poor child. She did not cry at my funeral. She was a stoic spectator. Her heart, she thought, was closed. I watched her looking down at me, the father who gave her life, with the passivity of one who has borne all she intends to bear. She did not even bother to smirk as platitudes about me--most of them absurd--filled the church around her. When an especially large falsehood was uttered--that I would never have hurt a fly, for instance--she merely closed her eyes. At the gravesite she clutched the arm of her Greek husband, with his hard curly hair and black mustache, and, leaning as if to whisper in his hairy ear, discreetly yawned.

She did not know of my sorrow, dying. Poor child. How could she know?

That night, eating a pomegranate seed by seed beside the fire, she did not miss me. She felt rather as if something heavy and dark, something she could never explain, had rolled away, off her soul. Shameless, curious, forsaken somehow, I watched her and the Greek husband, late into the night, make love.

The recent stirrings that intimated my presence began with her desire to know about angels. Where they come from in the imagination, why people in all cultures find it difficult if not impossible to live without them. Is the angel in the imagination a memory of a loved one who has died? Is the angel an earth spirit existing in its own right, touching us with the benign blessing and direction of Nature? Why was she dreaming of angels every night?

She and the Greek went to Kalimasa. This was before tourists exhausted the public Kalimasan spirit, and there, everywhere, in everyone's home, flew an angel. Watti-tuus, as they were called. Some of them were simply winged women, with a woman's hands and eyes and feet. But some were winged mermaids, their bronze scales dusted with gold. Some were white as apples; others as brown as shining earth. She was--my daughter, Susannah--enchanted.

The Greek, Petros, was charmed by her passion. I watched as he fed himself full meals from the store of her enthusiasm. She was radiant and sensual. I saw that first time in Kalimasa that she was, as a woman, someone I truly did not know.

Petros bought an angel for her, a watti-tuu, as a surprise. It was a dark-haired, dark-skinned, full-breasted woman, with a belly filled with small people, tiny houses, birds. Its wings were painted shimmering green. She laughed gaily, as she had as a child. She clapped her hands. Joy radiated from her eyes. This was the spirit I had not seen for decades. I recognized it, though. And drew near to it, as if to a fire. I saw her frown, suddenly, as if aware of my shadow, and I hastily and regretfully withdrew.

The second time she went to Kalimasa, Petros did not go. She had lost him back in the States. This time she traveled with a woman who dressed inappropriately for the culture, and wore her bathing suit all day long, and accepted motorcycle rides from the local village males, who were losing their modesty and learning to take whatever pleasure came their way from the shameless tourist women. This woman, though good in bed, so irritated my daughter that she remained in the guest house they shared, day after sultry day, a blue linen sheet drawn taut over her head.

But when she did venture out onto the two streets of the tiny village of Wodra, more touristed than she would have dreamed possible the last time she was there, she did so feeling there was something drawing her. Of course she did not know what it was.

Damp, perspiring, though it was only eight or nine in the morning, she found herself at a jeweler's.

The Kalimasans are famous for their graceful aesthetic sense. For their innate appreciation of balance and proportion. This sense of what is just right can be seen in their architecture, in their canals, in their waterfalls. Even in their hairstyles. It is often said by visitors that everything in their landscape, except the mountains that frame most villages like spectacular stage props, is artificially constructed, yet looks totally natural. The fineness of the Kalimasans' eye is pronounced in the jewelry and clothing they make.

The shop, like all the shops on that end of the street near the restaurant and the river, was quite small. Only a few feet deep, after you climbed three steep steps up from the road. There were four rows of trinkets: rings, bracelets, necklaces. Nothing costing more than fifty U.S. dollars. Susannah began to try on bracelets, the ones that are made of brass and look a hundred years old, though they might have been made yesterday.

And then her eye fell on the ring she'd been looking for without knowing it. Black onyx, an oval shape. Its sides splashed with gold. Though, since the ring cost only eighteen dollars, perhaps the gold was something else. The ring fit her finger perfectly. Happily she paid the young Hindu shopkeeper, continued on her way through the village of Wodra, and was even inspired to go as far as the Elephant Walk, a mile and a half from the village, before giving in to the desire to return to the guest house.

"What is the meaning of this ring?" the woman asked at dinner, in the whining, bossy voice my daughter had come to dread.

"It is beautiful," said Susannah. She raised her hand to her cheek and rested it there. The light from the candle made the gold splashes beside the onyx glow red.

"I wanted to give you a ring for that finger," the woman pouted.

"But I have nine others," said my daughter. "All vacant."

"You know what I mean," said the woman. Her name was Pauline. Dressed in a billowy native "costume"--for indeed, the villagers themselves rarely wore their traditional clothing anymore--she seemed plump and steamy. I read her as someone cutthroat in her intention to have, as an adult, the childhood she missed as a child. I did not see how Susannah could bear her.

My daughter sipped her drink thoughtfully. "You are looking very lovely yourself, tonight," she said.

The woman was instantly distracted by this compliment, as my daughter knew she would be. She began to puff herself out, across the table. To look for her image in my daughter's eyes.

My daughter's dark eyes were wide open. Frank. She allowed them to be mirrors for Pauline. Behind them, of course, she was deep in thought.

Of what is she thinking? Certainly not of me. Perhaps she is thinking of the Greek husband who ran off with a blond airline hostess. Of his discovery that the woman's hair was as dark as his own, naturally. And of his complaint. Whatever a woman was, was never enough, or right enough, for him. They'd quarreled because she loved wearing high heels, which indeed made him look quite short, and she'd often remarked that his taste in clothes--he admired tweeds and plaids, which she associated with squareness and recent immigration--was bad.

But maybe not.

The woman across from Susannah is flirting with the young boy who is the waiter. When he brings a tray on which there are flowers as well as satay, she finds a reason to brush his brown arm with her own. The heady scent she wears rises full-blown into the sultry heat. All around her tension builds. She is the kind of woman who could provoke rain.

Later in the night, to show my daughter that she is indeed desirable, she and the young waiter will stand entwined in the shadow of the giant banana tree just off the wide, plant-filled verandah. My daughter will hear the sultry rustle of the woman's clothes. The pitiful, hopeful breathing of the young boy. Nothing will come of it, she knows. Pauline is too afraid of germs. Except in fantasy, she is also sexually indifferent to males.

Boys in Kalimasa still, for the most part, look innocent to Susannah. She imagines them as her sons. Their wide, dark eyes, easily perplexed, enchanted her. Their shy speech, in an English carefully learned. It disturbed and hurt her to see, over the years of her many visits, the first signs of envy creep into their dark eyes. Their parents' eyes had not had it. But rather bemusement at the pale (mostly) foreigners poking their damp heads everywhere, surprised that so much life existed in a part of the planet they knew so little about. They marveled at the architecture, the vegetation. The paintings--paintings were everywhere--the music, and, of course, the dance.

Do they not dance and paint where they are from? the old women asked each other.

Do they not have tasty food?

Have they no remaining vegetation?

Young and old alike were puzzled. Some were flattered. Most were, for the longest time, wary or indifferent. Few of them remembered the overthrow of their country's monarchy by Europeans in a distant century. Their beautiful country occupied. Their king beheaded, the queen raped. Their country stomped on, drained, for over three hundred years: a time of seeming amnesia, for survival's sake. Few dared to think too closely of the horrors the ancestors endured: of the leaden, pus-colored men on top of them who smelled of stale tobacco, sour sauternes, and rancid cheese. The near nakedness of the Kalimasans drove the sexually repressed Europeans to heights of cruelty as they vainly sought to deny their lust. So much beauty in a world indifferent to their ways, a green and gentle and supple world that was actually repelled by the mountainous thickness of the pale male body in its farty woolen underwear, black cloak, and ugly hat. The people had suffered, in silence, seemingly in a collective sleep. The sleep of shame. Then, as if a cycle had ended, collectively they woke up. They fought back. They became independent, at least in name.

She listens to the woman softly snoring beside her, and then, switching off her mind, she begins to stroke her awake. The woman is responsive instantly, as if she'd never really been asleep. She permits my daughter free-roaming access to her heavy breasts, hot to the touch, and to her furry belly from which the scent of sandalwood floats upward through the sheet. My daughter places her nose in the crease of the woman's neck, which, like her breasts, is incredibly warm. The woman rolls over and is suddenly the aggressor, on top of my daughter, straddling her. My daughter has wanted this. She widens her body on the bed and slips off the thin chemise she is wearing in order to permit full contact. The woman flings off her strip of a garment, something barely gathered around her loins, and begins to ride my daughter, hard, as if she would drive her into the mattress that sits on a delicate frame of bamboo.

Her tryst with the Kalimasan boy has left her savage. That, and Susannah's apparent indifference to it. Now she sucks her fiercely, Susannah's breasts full and brown and somehow pleading against Pauline's white teeth and insistent mouth. Between Susannah's breasts sweat flows, which Pauline laps like a dog. Between her legs where Pauline has insinuated her hand there is, already, a stream of wetness. She feels Pauline's fingers, first one, then two, then three, enter her with an authoritative firmness. She is embarrassed to hear herself moan and shamed to hear Pauline's grunt of conquest. Susannah's body starts to move against the woman's hand. Oh, she says. And oh, and oh, and oh. Pauline bites her ears. She laps her body everywhere there is sweat. She keeps her pinned and will not let her rise. When my daughter raises her neck from the bed so that the cords of her neck stand out, Pauline thrusts her long whining tongue into her mouth with such force she pushes Susannah's head almost underneath the pillow. Only her gorged mouth is visible, and Pauline's forehead rests on the pillow that obscures Susannah's face.

Pauline is conscious of the slightest tremor of my daughter's body but she is also venting her "lust" for the Kalimasan boy. She imagines him coming through the bamboo curtain at the foot of the bed, penis--a smooth and heavy one, she is happy to find out--erect, dripping in hope and shy anticipation. She imagines ordering him to the bed, to her backside. Imagines he is in her, driving her, as she drives herself against Susannah, as if she would kill her for distancing from her, slaughter her for her indifference. Bruise her for the days spent indifferent to Pauline, with her head under the covers in bed.

When she retrieves her tongue from my daughter's throat, she laps her armpits, her sides; she claims my daughter's body as she wriggles expertly backward, toward the slippery penis of the boy, whose heat she feels in her cunt, in her ass, in her ovaries and womb. This is not the moment to recall her own grandsons, half the age of the Kalimasan boy. But she does. Sex is like a stew for her, everyone in it at once. She imagines the thrust of the penis of the Kalimasan boy. She feels her own clitoris huge against the body of the woman with whom she is so angry. She wants her grandsons to know this kind of power over a woman, or over a boy. It is the only power over others she wants them to have. The power to give pleasure, ruthlessly, and to leisurely take it.

She is ready to burst. But refuses to do so. She lifts her body off Susannah. Rests on her knees, her hand busy between my daughter's legs. Legs that, though wide, are not wide enough. She pushes them wider. My daughter moans. Feels a wimp. How could she be like this with this woman who so often irritates her? It is a mystery she will not entertain tonight. She feels Pauline's fist, each knuckle distinct, raking her labia, sending heat waves to her womb. She feels fingers and then full warm lips on her breast. But there is a lessening of intensity, a flagging of energy. She peeks through her tangled hair to see what is happening with Pauline. It is as she suspects. Pauline is waiting for her to ask for it. To beg and plead for it. To thrash against her hand and moan. Oh please, please, go down on me.

This is the moment Pauline loves. In fact, if she thinks about how much she loves it before it happens she will go off and miss what is for her the crowning moment. That moment when all her terrible beauty is acknowledged, her awesome power bowed to, the sensuality of her daring to wear a bathing suit while riding motorcycles driven by Hindu boys in a country run by Muslims, forgiven.

The Kalimasan boy has her breasts now, as she waits, in what seems a royal, even imperial squat, for the plea she knows will come. She has given Susannah deeper orgasms than she has ever known; she feels she controls them. Pauline has the same breasts that she had at thirty. Strong, upright breasts whose slight sag only makes them more supple in the hand. Breasts that have never known a bra. The boy's mouth on her breasts is cool as a melon seed. Waiting for my daughter's surrender she rocks; my daughter's shudder against her clitoris almost sets her off. She moves slightly back from her. It will not do to come now and give up the moment my daughter bares herself.

Please, my daughter says.

Please what? says the woman, stopping the movement of her hand altogether.

My daughter whispers something.

Pauline says, loudly: Speak up!

Lick me, my daughter says, and looks her in the eye.

My daughter hears the sharp intake of the woman's breath. Still looking deep into her eyes, witnessing the lust and the victory, acknowledging it, she reaches up to touch Pauline's clitoris. It is swollen and tremulous, her cunt dripping. Her hand is a dancer in the woman's wet flames. Intoxicated, she raises her hand to her nose. The scent of a woman's sex is like nothing in the world. It is a scent she would crawl for, though Pauline, ever practical, has reminded her it is a scent she already owns.

Pauline pumps her hand slowly up and out of Susannah's body, which grieves its leaving by shivering and shuddering. Every fiber of her body is alert to what is coming to her clit.

Pauline would like to make her beg some more. She is in an arrogant, nearly hostile place few of her friends, colleagues, children, and grandchildren ever see. It is powerful there. She loves it. But if she doesn't get on with it, the sight of Susannah, laid out like a feast, will bring her to climax--and she is not ready for that yet. In truth, she can barely believe she has restrained herself for so long, and denied herself the taste of my daughter's core.

Now she is all gentleness, easing her sweaty body between my daughter's legs, ever so gently pressing them wider with the broad width of her own thick shoulders. She flings her lead-colored locks out of her eyes, and slithers down, and sinks.

It is her warm breath my daughter feels. Immediately she is calmed. She settles her body into the bed. Cradles her head exactly in the middle of the pillow. Sighs. At last. Touches briefly, gratefully, masterfully, almost negligently, the woman's shoulders and her wild hair. Surrendering, she is all but consumed by her own feelings of power.

Pauline flicks her clitoris with a tongue that seems made of suede, and Susannah begins to moan anew. It is a moan so animallike and guttural, so abandoned and shameless, so full of self-witness, a moan so unlike her day-to-day self, when a certain fastidious haughtiness is often commented on in her character, that it is comical. Leaving passion for just a moment, they both laugh. The bed shakes, as they giggle; a slender bamboo leg cracks. Shit, says Susannah. Pauline raises her head: Next time, she mutters, I'll have you on the floor.

Pauline's mouth captures the whole of Susannah's vulva. There is no little corner of it that at first escapes. It is as if she would suck out the womb and, indeed, she appears to dive for it with her long whining tongue. Only now, at this, the whining tongue sings, and Susannah feels herself mounting to the clouds, and tries to slow herself down from arriving there. Unbidden, in that moment, she thinks of me and of her mother, so often fighting, when she was a child. Only to emerge from our bedroom after a fight completely peaceful, tranquil, with each other. Our every movement one of indolence, our every utterance marked by an unfathomable calm.