So Vast the Prison Read Online Free Page A

suddenly intimidated … In a moment he appeared, sleepy-eyed, barefoot, and wearing shorts.
    “I’m disturbing you! I’ll leave! …” I spluttered.
    “Not at all! Come in. I was asleep.”
    There I was, right next to him in this living room with all its windows shut. Full ashtrays on the couch, a sickly sweet smell of enclosure; the record player on the tiled floor and records out of their sleeves spread around in a circle.
    He left the room for a minute to get dressed. He kept on talking from the hallway in explanation:
    “You came at the right time! I didn’t feel like doing anything, not even listening to music.” (He came back and waved in the direction of the records strewn all over the floor and the bulky tape recorder that was still turned on.) “I was sleeping because I was bored.”
    I gazed at him, dressed now in white pants, thinner than usual, his face still tan as if summer lingered on in his buried-away house, his hair messy (my heart leaped with joy to see the way his beauty retained the carelessness of adolescence). I think I smiled at him, overcome by intense happiness. I went up to him. For the first time I took the initiative:
    “Do you know what we’re going to do? We’ll go out in the backyard and play Ping-Pong! … I told you last time I’d beat you!”
    He pouted lazily. Finally forgetting myself entirely, I went to take him by the hand to drag him outdoors.
    “Are you sure?” he retorted, “That’s what we have to do? Don’t you want me to fix you some coffee? I’ll bring it to you, I’ll serve you … courteously.” He smiled. “I’ll put some music on for you, whatever you choose. We won’t budge! …”
    I insisted, pushing and shoving him. Finally (I took him by the hand thinking as I did so:
What I really want is to embrace you, to
 …
!
)
    “First a game of Ping-Pong!” I persevered, pleased with my authority. “Whoever loses will fix the coffee.”
    We went out into the part of the yard where there were plane trees, and a scraggly-looking figtree at the end of a path. The Ping-Pongtable was dusty and a little wobbly. We found the paddles thrown in a corner against a border of wildflowers. We began the game.
    Even now I can hear the sound of our laughter, my bounding joy, my aliveness … Of course, in the half-lit room inside, what opaqueness awaited us: embraces, silences, two bodies coming together, a tension knotting tighter and tighter that would surrender to the flexing of a neck, to lips seeking each other out, to bites just barely felt, perhaps to the tears of release if I come, will I come? … Soon, a bit later, in the bedroom.
    Outside, however, I was not at all in turmoil. Only the present moment existed, hard in its innocence. What was it that was growing imperceptibly inside me and yet apart from me?
    In the yard, lit aslant by the pale sun, in the midst of these villas almost all deserted because their occupants had gone back to their offices, their social life, their protocol there in the capital, we two were survivors of summer … My laughter grows louder, my partner lets out a disappointed curse, because I’m winning, I’m triumphant. He goes after the ball; I sing to myself; we start our game again. We are almost equals. I save a shot, I keep up my defense, then I lose ground, I burst out laughing, I’m out of breath, I’m nearly beaten, I don’t want that! … He pokes fun, takes the lead, his game turns out to be the steadier, the game seems too long for me, I’m impatient, I …
    “How much fun it is, being children together!” I suddenly confess, taken aback by my discovery (with the result that I forget to parry, I lose, pretend to be sorry, I’m so far behind!) My surprise increases:
Am I going to relive a past I never knew? Find myself in childhood with you? Is that the whole mystery?
    I am making this truth glow in the hollows of my body, creeping all up and down my limbs (I run, I prance, my arm stretches high).