a memory of the sea

An oblique ray fell across her sprawling hair. He was lying beside her, his forearm resting across her breasts. He wandered; yes, with all the courageous nerve of a traveller he wondered over her body- that which he had been told belonged to him. First, the pulse of her slender neck; like a foreign song, it was like a cave to some unknown and beautiful place. Then a delicate ear, her nipple. A blemish, an eyelash, but always resting here; his gaze upon her nose. This marvellous nose. You and I cannot understand how this delineation, so invisible to our world, so unnoticed in the monotony of day, contained for him an ethic, or some other inexhaustible idea; how in moments of profound anguish or uncertainty he found calm and beauty here, now,

a condition of complete simplicity

not the absence of a noise, but the reconciliation of all noises, the harmony of all other things

Because many faces appear beautiful when encountered in society, though invariably we notice, on coming to know the owner, that there is a conditional beauty; an appeal to sense alone. Because it is love that harmonises noise and unifies all other things. Natasha was to him beautiful because her face was the portrait of her soul.

And yet there was also the impression of the absurdity of time’s passage, as if he as some future self- unhappy, alone, but having understood something new- had momentarily stepped into a memory or a dream and was trying to remind him of impermanence. Our writer is, after all, only a human being, and so incapable of internalising a miracle.  

“What are you thinking about?” Natasha whispered, turning her face. The words seemed to fall from her mouth like dew, or a sigh, “it’s been so long since you took me to the sea.”

“Yes,” he smiled, his eyes falling into hers like a child’s, “let’s go tomorrow.”