Swimming Tapa blanda - 2002

Primera línea

The house was waiting.

Extracto

1966

There is no such thing as silence in the woods. Vivian Silver trusted
this, as she followed the man she'd met only hours ago down the pine-dark
path of his property. She watched his lean figure and became hypnotized by
his uneven gait, the majesty of his long narrow back. He hadn't once
turned around to make sure that she'd kept up, and this did not surprise
her. Just as she knew that there was no such thing as silence in the
woods, she also somehow trusted that as carefully as she was watching him,
he was listening even more carefully for her quick footfalls and the
high-pitched swish of her navy blue windbreaker. She could feel him
listening, and that was good enough.

She walked on and heard skitters of invisible creatures, the wind through
the thinning pines. There was a sense of clarity that accompanied the
quiet, and this was something Vivian already knew to look for in a man.
When one held back from her, she couldn't help but pay attention.
The path finally opened up into a clearing, and because the sun had just
set, the land-his land-was the darkest of greens, a shade brought on by
October in New Hampshire when the day holds on to the richness of color
even when light is gone.

There in the distance, just as he'd promised, was a pond.

She couldn't quite see the water. He was blocking her view with his body,
but she could smell the wet sand and fallen leaves, the swampy, reedy
darkness. And although it was unquestionably autumn, Vivian could feel the
brazen heat of summer, the lovely shock of a dive. She could also hear the
slice of blades on ice, the scrape and shriek of skating. On sensing this
body of water, she briefly forgot why she was here. Then a distinct shift
took place inside of her as he placed his hand-as if he'd done so
countless times-under her long tangled hair. He still hadn't said a word.
Here was a feeling both thrilling and disappointing, as if someone had
just informed her that the world was about to end. Her neck was cold and
his hand was warm. It was the first time they had touched.


Vivian was saving money to sail away to Spain. She was substitute teaching
and writing poetry while staying with her brother Aaron. That night Aaron
sent her to Cal's Bar, where he knew the bartender. Aaron knew a lot of
bartenders for someone
who didn't drink. He knew everybody in Portsmouth. Only months later,
having decided not to go to Canada, he would
die a reluctant private in a Vietnam helicopter accident; the funeral in
their Massachusetts hometown would be so crowded that his pregnant sister
wouldn't recognize half of the people there. Her first son would be his
namesake. She would name him Aaron and pray, like any mother, that he
would not die young.

But she knew none of this that evening, when she sat alone at Cal's Bar,
drinking a bottle of beer. She had been aware of Jeb Wheeler's presence
since he'd walked through the door in worn jeans, a workshirt, and a red
down vest. She guessed he was at least thirty-five. He was very tall and
thin with a long crooked nose, full lips, and arresting green eyes. It was
his eyes that
she noticed first. There was something wrong with them. She tried not to
stare as he sat down beside her and ordered a rare hamburger. She tried
not to stare but soon became acutely aware that he was the one who was
staring. And he wasn't shy about it either.

"Hello," he said.

"Oh, hi." She smiled and looked into his eyes that were strange. As one
moved normally in the socket, the other stayed quite still. While his
pupils were the same light green color
and were framed by the same long dark lashes, the left eye appeared to be
made of glass. It was foreign and would stay foreign. She'd never quite
get used to it.

"I've never been here," she said, just to say something.

But he wasn't like that. He kept on looking at her and smiling. Finally he
said, "Well, I'm glad you're here now."

She told him what there was to tell about herself, how she'd graduated
from college and was leaving for Spain in the springtime. She tried to
keep it brief and ended up drinking her beer too quickly. He didn't ask
many questions and the ones he did ask were blunt: Why Spain? What will
you do for money once you're there? Have you noticed my eye yet?

He had lived in New York City and worked as a chemist. In
a slightly suspect explanation of how he'd ended up here-
looking like a lumberjack or possibly a carpenter-Vivian learned that he
had sold something, a patent of sorts, and that he had quit his job.

"What do you do now?" she asked, leaning into him, not completely aware
she was doing so. She could smell woodsmoke on his clothes, the faint
toxic smell of varnish.

"Well," he said, smiling, as if he somehow wasn't quite sure what to say,
"I bought land. I bought some fine land, and I've been building myself a
house."

"Where is it?" Vivian asked. She pictured herself on top of him on a spare
iron bed, being cold and even lonely and asking him to build a fire. She
didn't bother trying to stop fantasizing. She knew herself better than
that.

"It's about forty-five minutes from here," he said, and raised his
eyebrows. "Kind of out there." He gave her a look as if to say, I dare you.
When he was through with his burger, they left together. He opened the
passenger door of his truck for her.

He said, "You don't need to worry; I'm not very dangerous."
Until that moment, the thought hadn't crossed her mind.


And now they were in a forest clearing between his half-built house and
the pond. Pine needles covered the loamy ground, and sycamores framed the
sky. They weren't looking at each other. As he moved his hand very gently
along the back of
her pale neck, she found she was straining to see the pond-
over his shoulder, beyond the trees-as if to see the black-green water
would be to inhabit the sense of certainty that she knew water created.
But from where she stood, the water was not much more than a ghost in the
trees watching and assessing this union.

Vivian reached out to touch him, letting him know right away where she
stood. Under the down vest, his denim shirt was hot. She rested her hand
there as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

"Beautiful," she finally said. The trees moved so slightly. The sky was
full of stars.

"You are," he told her, and, taking her pale face in his two rough hands,
he kissed her.

A kiss can be as minuscule as a moth or the tiny flame it craves, a torn
fingernail or an eyelash; and yet a kiss can be huge. It can be as
expansive and dangerous as this one was. It can be the origin of a family.
They kissed softly and tenderly at first, and then things
got rougher. As the clear sky became clearer and darker, they grabbed hold
of each other's clothing. They kissed hard, almost bitterly, as if they
resented their mutual attraction.

They were both impatient people. They'd wage battles against impatience
all their lives, but not tonight. Tonight they did exactly what they
wanted.

They didn't even make it to the house. Without any debate, she lay down on
the cold damp grass. She wasn't taking birth control pills and he didn't
use a rubber, and-as if it were a dream and she was using dream logic-she
found she knew exactly what she was doing without any fear of
consequences.

Vivian watched for the pond over his shoulder but couldn't see a thing;
the promise of a pond sat under the moon and stared at her boldly,
watching her gasp for breath. She thought of Spain with a kind of
nostalgia: it seemed smaller than before and awfully far away. She said
goodbye to Cordoba and Sevilla, adios to flamenco and paella.
He breathed in her ear and she kissed his long, stubbled neck.
"I can't believe we just did that," he told her. But she knew that he was
lying.


"Let me show you the house," Jeb said, after gently taking her hand in his
and heading for the path. When he kissed her again, she felt a surge of
greed and strained to see the water. "What?" he asked.

He was close to her, leaning down to see her face. She could smell the
varnish and the brackish smell of his sweat. It was purely carnal and she
backed away from him-head tilted, coy-as if she had a secret.

"What?" he repeated.

She retreated some more-a come-and-catch-me set of eyes, an attempt at a
wicked smile. The water was so close just beyond the stand of trees and
weeds, and-with a toss of her hair, having barely a notion of what she was
doing-she ran.

As she expected, he did not run after her. Vivian was now free to get as
near to the water as possible, to trample over the fallen wet reeds and
feel her boots sink into the sand. The wind blew and the pond came to her,
slowly lapped at her boot toes in a lazy, ancient rhythm. The moon shone
down in a harsh slant, casting the pond as particularly separate from the
soil and the trees and from her. She felt younger out here in this untamed
space, and-as if she were being watched, as if the pond itself were
judging her-she stood up straighter as she surveyed the landscape. She
took a deep clean breath.

Jagged rocks began a few yards to her left. Smooth slabs framed the water,
flat as if they'd been carefully beaten down. Dried-out grass stood tall,
interspersed with endless weeds.

She wouldn't have changed a thing.

The pond wore its surroundings like careless attire, as if to protect its
luminous beauty. Its surface shimmered, innocent of the forest's tall
shadows or the mountains' cranky terrain. The water divulged nothing, and
she couldn't help but bend down and touch it with her fingertips. It felt
brutally cold, and she put her fingers in her mouth at once, sucking back
some comfort from herself. Vivian gazed at the water and there it was-her
reflected self, round as an infant but twice the size. Then, quick as
lightning, the distorted shape was gone as a dark cloud shrouded the moon.
Here was where she would make her life. Over years to come she would swim
and sunbathe, take walks with Jeb and the children, take time alone with
her thoughts. She would eat potluck meals here, engaging in terrific
conversations with neighbors who would move away. And later in life, after
drinking too much, she would come straight to the slabs of rock by the
water's edge and she would sit-her mouth parted, too tired for
wonder-staring at the water for hours.

This was where her future would unfold. Later she'd say she knew it right
then and without a single doubt. She would tell her sons and daughter that
she just knew it, the same way she knew that Spain was only a single
country on so many maps of the world.


From the Hardcover edition.

Reseñas en medios

"Joanna Hershon has a gift for choreographing a group of characters in space and in time. She is persuasive with moments of sexual passion, and she knows how to make them last for the reader long after the lovemaking is over. In her novel, the past pulses in the present, and we experience these lives with real sorrow, and real hope."
–Frederick Busch, bestselling author of Girls and The Night Inspector:

"Reading Joanna Hershon’s Swimming is like diving in over your head– intoxicating and terrifying at once. Not since Jane Hamilton’s Map of the World have I read such an affecting tale of memory and loss. I couldn’t put it down."
–Sheri Holman, bestselling author of The Dress Lodger



From the Hardcover edition.