Possessing the Secret of Joy Read Online Free Page B

interrogated as a spy, my damp palms resting on top of talons that end the chair’s arms.
    I shrug. I certainly cannot speak of them.
    But I am instantly back in our bed, sharing the night and its terrors with my wife. She is upright, clutching her pillow. Her eyes are enormous. She is shaking with fear.
    There is a tower, she says. I think it is a tower. It is tall, but I am inside. I don’t really ever know what it looks like from outside. It is cool at first, and as you descend lower and lower to where I’m kept, it becomes dank and cold, as well. It’s dark. There is an endless repetitive sound that is like the faint scratch of a baby’s fingernails on paper. And there are millions of things moving about me in the dark. I can not see them. And they’ve broken my wings! I see them lying crossed in a corner like discarded oars. Oh, and they’re forcing something in one end of me, and from the other they are busy pulling something out. I am long and fat and the color of tobacco spit. Gross! And I can not move!
    I did not know I would finally marry Tashi. For many years she was like another sister to me; always about the parsonage, playing with my sister, Olivia, the two of them frequently going on outings with my mother. I teased her mercilessly, and tried to boss her about. Like Olivia, she always stood her ground. I liked her mealie row fan hairstyle and her impish, darting ways. I liked her self-possession. And her passion for storytelling.
    We became lovers partly because we were so used to each other.
    In Olinka society the strongest taboo was against making love in the fields. So strong was this taboo that no one in living memory had broken it. And yet, we did. And because no one in the society could imagine us capable of such an offense—lovemaking in the fields jeopardized the crops; indeed, it was declared that it there was any fornication whatsoever in the fields the crops definitely would not grow—no one ever saw us, and the fields produced their harvests as before.
    I am thinking of our lovemaking, as the doctor waits for more of a response about Evelyn’s dreaming.
    She dreams they have imprisoned her and broken her wings, I say into the suspense.
    They, who? the doctor asks.
    But this, I say, I do not know.
    She was like a fleshy, succulent fruit; and when I was not with her I dreamed of the time I would next lie on my belly between her legs, my cheeks caressed by the gentle rhythms of her thighs. My tongue bringing us no babies, and to both of us delight. This way of loving, among her people, the greatest taboo of all.

ADAM
    I COULD NOT BEAR the happiness of my father and aunt, who had decided they would be married during our visit to London. Nor could I stand the solicitude of Olivia, who empathized with me as I thrashed about, missing Tashi, though furious with her. I pounded the streets of London until my feet, in new hard leather shoes, were bruised. Only the weather made the days bearable. It was spring, and the beauty of the city was formidable. There were lilacs everywhere, and the air was filled with the sound of singing birds.
    The Missionary Society had put us up in spacious rooms near St. James’s Park, and Olivia and I spent hours underneath the ancient trees. We enjoyed watching the men and women who came out of their homes promptly at quarter to four, on their way to tea at other people’s homes, and who crossed in front of us, reservedly whispering. My window looked out right into the trees, and there was so much sky I often woke up thinking I was still in Africa.
    After the wedding, I took the boat train to Paris, hoping that the change of scenery would do me good. There was also a young woman I hoped to see, whose name was Lisette.
    Lisette had visited us in Olinka as part of the youth group of her church. We often entertained visitors, from all over the world, and this was rather perfunctory, even predictable and boring, but she and I had struck up a lively conversation about