Garden of Eden Read Online Free

walked up to the girl and saw that she was asleep. He found his
wristwatch in the rucksack to check the time when he should wake her. There was
a cold bottle of white wine wrapped in a newspaper and with their towels around
it. He uncorked it without removing the paper or the towels and took a cool
draught from the awkward bundle. Then he sat down to watch the girl and to look
out to sea.
     
    This
sea was always colder than it looked, he thought. It did not really warm until
the middle of summer except on the shallow beaches. This beach dropped off
quite suddenly and the water had been sharply cold until the swimming warmed
him. He looked out at the sea and the high clouds and noticed how far the
fishing fleet was working to the westward. Then he looked at the girl sleeping
on the sand that was quite dry now and beginning to blow delicately with the
rising wind when his feet stirred.
     
    During
the night he had felt her hands touching him. And when he woke it was in the
moonlight and she had made the dark magic of the change again and he did not
say no when she spoke to him and asked the questions and he felt the change so
that it hurt him all through and when it was finished after they were both
exhausted she was shaking and she whispered to him, "Now we have done it.
Now we really have done it."
     
    Yes,
he thought. Now we have really done it. And when she went to sleep suddenly
like a tired young girl and lay beside him lovely in the moonlight that showed
the beautiful new strange line of her head as she slept on her side he leaned
over and said to her but not aloud, "I'm with you. No matter what else you
have in your head I'm with you and I love you."
     
    In
the morning he had been very hungry for breakfast but he waited for her to
wake. He kissed her finally and she woke and smiled and got up sleepily and
washed in the big basin and slouched in front of the mirror of the armoire and
brushed her hair and looked at the mirror unsmiling and then smiled and touched
her cheeks with the tips of her fingers and pulled a striped shirt over her
head and then kissed him. She stood straight so her breasts pushed against his
chest and she said, "Don't worry, David. I'm your good girl come back
again.
     
    But
he was very worried now and he thought what will become of us if things have
gone this wildly and this dangerously and this fast? What can there be that
will not burn out in a fire that rages like that? We were happy and I am sure
she was happy. But whoever knows? And who are you to judge and who participated
and who accepted the change and lived it? If that is what she wants who are you
not to wish her to have it? You're lucky to have a wife like her and a sin is
what you feel bad after and you don't feel bad. Not with the wine you don't
feel bad, he told himself, and what will you drink when the wine won't cover
for you?
     
    He
took the bottle of oil out of the rucksack and put a little oil on the girl's
chin and on her cheeks and on her nose and found a blue faded patterned
handkerchief in the canvas pocket of the rucksack and laid it across her
breast.
     
    "Must
I stop?" the girl asked. "I'm having the most wonderful dream."
     
    "Finish
the dream," he said.
     
    "Thank
you."
     
    In
a few minutes she breathed very deeply and shook her head and sat up.
     
    "Let's
go in now," she said.
     
    They
went in together and swam out and then played under water like porpoises. When
they swam in they dried each other off with towels and he handed her the bottle
of wine that was still cool in the rolled newspaper and they each took a drink
and she looked at him and laughed.
     
    "It's
nice to drink it for thirst," she said. "You don't really mind being
brothers do you?"
     
    "No."
He touched her forehead and her nose and then her cheeks and chin with the oil
and then put it carefully above and behind her ears.
     
    "I
want to get behind my ears and neck tanned and over my cheekbones. All the new
places."
     
    "You're
awfully