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By Root 13863 0

conveyed by the body’s odours after orgasm, breath, tongue-taste — through these one “knows” in quite primeval fashion. Here was a perfectly ordinary man with no exceptional gifts but in his elements, so to speak, how good for me; he gave off the odours of good natural objects: like newly baked bread, roasting coffee, cordite, sandalwood. In this field of rapport I missed him like a skipped meal — I know it sounds vulgar! Paracelsus says that thoughts are acts. Of them all, I suppose, the sex act is the most important, the one in which our spirits most divulge themselves. Yet one feels it a sort of clumsy paraphrase of the poetic, the noetic, thought which shapes itself into a kiss or an embrace. Sexual love is knowledge, both in etymology and in cold fact; “he knew her” as the Bible says! Sex is the joint or coupling which unites the male and female ends of

knowledge merely — a cloud of unknowing! When a culture goes bad in its sex all knowledge is impeded. We women know that. That was when I wrote to you asking if I should come to visit you in your island. How grateful I am that you did not answer me!

It would have been a wrong move at the time. Your silence saved me! Ah! my dear, forgive me if I bore you with my wanderings for I see that you are looking somewhat sleepy! But with you it is such a pleasure to talk away the time between love-making! It is a novelty for me. Apart from you there is only dear Balthazar —

whose rehabilitation, by the way, is going on apace. But he has told you? He has been inundated with invitations since the Mount-olive banquet, and it seems will have little difficulty in rebuilding the clinic practice again.’

I: ‘But he is far from reconciled to his teeth.’

She: ‘I know. And he is still rather shaken and hysterical — as who would not be. But everything goes forward steadily, and I think he will not lapse.’

I: ‘But what of this sister of Pursewarden’s?’

She: ‘Liza! I think you will admire her, though I can’t tell if you will like her. She is rather impressive, indeed perhaps just a little bit frightening. The blindness does not seem like an in-capacity, rather it gives an expression of double awareness. She listens to one as if one were music, an extra intentness which makes one immediately aware of the banality of most of one’s utterances. She’s unlike him, yet very beautiful though deathly pale, and her movements are swift and absolutely certain, un-like most blind people. I have never seen her miss a doorhandle or trip on a mat, or pause to get her bearings in a strange place. All the little errors of judgement the blind make, like talking to a chair which had just been vacated by its owner … they are absent. One wonders sometimes if she really is blind. She came out here to collect his effects and to gather material about him for a biography.’

I: ‘Balthazar hinted at some sort of mystery.’

She: ‘There is little doubt that David Mountolive is hopelessly in love with her; and from what he told Balthazar it be gan in London. It is certainly an unusual liaison for someone so correct, and it obviously gives them both a great deal of pain. I often imagine them, the snow falling in London, suddenly finding

themselves face to face with the Comic Demon! Poor David!

And yet why should I utter such a patronizing phrase? Lucky David! Yes, I can tell you a little, based on a scrap of his con-versation. Suddenly, in a moribund taxi speeding away to the suburbs she turned her face to him and told him that she had been told to expect him many years ago; that the moment she heard his voice she knew that he was the dark princely stranger of the prophecy. He would never leave her. And she only asked leave to verify it, pressing her cold fingers to his face to feel it all ove r, before sinking back on the cold cushions with a sigh! Yes, it was he. It must have been strange to feel the fingers of the blind girl pressing one’s features with a sculptor’s touch. David said that a shudder ran through him, all the blood left his face, and his teeth began to chatter! He groaned aloud and clenched