Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow [91]
Their desire for each other’s company was unflagging. This was noted with amusement by the adults. They were inseparable until bedtime but uncomplaining when it was announced. They ran off to their separate rooms with not a glance backward. Their sleep was absolute. They sought each other in the morning. He did not think of her as beautiful. She did not think of him as comely. They were extremely sensitive to each other, silhouetted in a diffuse excitement, like electricity or a nimbus of light, but their touching was casual and matter-of-fact. What bound them to each other was a fulfilled recognition which they lived and thought within so that their apprehension of each other could not be so distinct and separated as to include admiration for the other’s fairness. Yet they were beautiful, he in his stately blond thoughtfulness, she a smaller, darker, more lithe being, with flash in her dark eyes and an almost military bearing. When they ran their hair lay back from their broad foreheads. Her feet were small, her brown hands were small. She left imprints in the sand of a street runner, a climber of dark stairs; her track was a flight from the terrors of alleys and the terrible crash of ashcans. She had relieved herself in wooden outhouses behind the tenements. The tails of rodents had curled about her ankles. She knew how to sew with a machine and had observed dogs mating, whores taking on customers in hallways, drunks peeing through the wooden spokes of pushcart wheels. He had never gone without a meal. He had never been cold at night. He ran with his mind. He ran toward something. He was unencumbered by fear and did not know there were beings in the world less curious about it than he. He saw through things and noted the colors people produced and was never surprised by a coincidence. A blue and green planet rolled through his eyes.
One day, as they played, the sun grew dim and a wind began to blow in from the sea. They felt the coldness on their backs. They stood up and saw flights of heavy black clouds coming over the ocean. They started back to the hotel. The rain began. Raindrops pelted craters in the sand. Rain left streaks on their salted shoulders. It poured into their hair. They took shelter under the boardwalk a half-mile from the hotel. They crouched in the cold sand and listened to the rain spatter the boardwalk and watched it collect in droplets between the planks. Debris was under the boardwalk. Broken glass and staring putrefied fish heads, torn parts of crabs, rusted nails, broken boards, driftwood, starfish as hard as stone, oiled spots of sand, bits of rags with dried blood. They stared out at the sea from their cave. A storm had risen and the sky glowed with a green light. Lightning broke the sky as if it were a cracking shell. The storm punished the ocean, flattened it, cowed it. There were no waves now but aimless swells that did not break or roll into the beach. The weird light increased in intensity; the sky was yellow. The thunder broke as if the surf were in the sky and the wind now blew the rain along the beach, whipped it into the sand, rolled it down the boardwalk. Coming through the wind and water and golden light were two figures walking with their heads down, their arms shielding their eyes. And they would turn and with their backs to the wind look up and down the beach and cup their hands to their mouths. But they could not be heard. The children watched them without moving. They were Mother and Tateh. On they came. They stumbled through the wet sand. They turned and the wind blew their clothes against their backs. They turned and the wind blew their clothes against their chests and legs. They cut away from the water toward the boardwalk. Tateh’s black hair, flattened over his forehead, shone in the bright water. Mother’s hair had come undone and lay in wet strands about her face and shoulders. They called. They called. They ran and walked and looked for the children. They were distraught. The children