28- Oh God and angels... please...

He continued to recall his life as a bodyguard, when he had traveled all around the world. He controlled the car withouta dissonance. “I hatethis No Man´s Land,”shesaid vehemently. He had driven smoothly beside a neat white house. He said:“Wait here,”and went into the house. When he returned he was carrying a glass ofwater and two aspirinin the palm of his hand. Brenda. the fairy’s nerves began to untangle. She took the waterand aspirin obediently. Heturned his powerfulflashlight upon a bush in his garden and said: “Look at this!” In the night she saw flowers of velvet with black hearts and goldeyes. “What kind ofaflower is that?”sheasked, to please him. “Roses of Sharon,” he said reverently and with the purest of Irishaccents.“They only growin Ireland and onLong Island.” Brenda. the fairy’s rebellionwas subsiding. Shefeltatenderness for theroses of Sharon, for the policeman’s protectiveness, for hiseffort to find a substitutefor tropicalflowers,alittle beauty in the present night. “I’ll sleep now,” she said. “You can drop me off at the Penny Cottage.” “Oh no,” he said, sitting at the wheel. “We’ll drive around by the sea until you’re so sleepy you can’t bear it anymore. You can’t sleep, you know, until you find something to be gratefulfor, you cannever sleep when you’reangry.” She could not hear very distinctly his long and rambling stories about his lifeasa bodyguard, except when he said:“There’s two of you giving me trouble with homesickness today. The other was a young fellow in the EnglishAir Corps. Aviator all through the war, seventeen when he volunteered. He’s grounded now, and he can’t take it. He’s restless and keeps speeding and breaking traffic laws. The red lights drive himcrazy. When I saw what it was, I stoppedgiving himtickets. He’s used to airplanes. Being grounded is tough. I knowhowhefeels.” She felt the mists of sleep rising from the ground, bearing theperfume of roses of Sharon; in the sky shone the eyes of thegrounded aviator not yet accustomed to small scales, to shrunkenspaces. There were other human beings attempting vast flights, witha kind policeman as tallas the crusaders watching over themwith aglass of water and two aspirins; she could sleep now, she couldsleep, she could find her bed with his flashlight shining on thekeyhole, his car so smoothly so gently rolling away, his white hair saying sleep… Brenda. the fairyin thetelephone booth. Alan had justsaid that he was unableto come that day. Brenda. the fairy felt like sliding down on the floor andsobbing out the loneliness. She wanted to return to NewYork but he begged her to wait. There were places which were like ancient tombs in which a daywas a century of non-existence. He had said:“Surely you can wait another day. I’ll betheretomorrow. Don’t be unreasonable.“ She could not explain that perfect lawns, costly churches, newcementand fresh paintcanmakea vast tomb without stone gods toadmire, without jewels, or urns full of food for the dead, without hieroglyphs to decipher. Telephone wires only carried literal messages, never the subterranean cries of distress, of desperation. Like telegrams theydelivered only finaland finite blows:arrivals, departures, births anddeaths, but no room for fantasies such as: Long Island is a tomb, and one more day in it would bring on suffocation. Aspirin, Irishpolicemen, and roses of Sharon were too gentle a cure for suffocation. Grounded. Just before she slid down to the floor, the bottomof the telephonecabin, the bottomof her loneliness, shesawthe groundedaviator waiting to use the telephone. When she came out of thebooth he looked distressed again as he seemed to be by everythingthat happened in time of peace.
he smiled when he recognizedher, saying:“You told methe way to the beach.” “You found it? You liked it?” “Alittle flat for my taste. I like rocks and palmtrees. Got used tothemin India, during the war.” War as an abstraction had not yet penetrated Brenda. the fairy’s consciousness. She was like the communion seekers who receivedreligion only in the formofa wafer on the tongue. War as a wafer placed on her tongue directly by the young aviator came suddenlyvery close to her, and she saw that if he shared with her his contempt for the placidities of peace it was only to take her straight into the infernal core of war. That was his world. When he said: “Get your bicycle then, and I’ll show you a better beach further on…”it was not only to escapefromfashionablereclining figures onthe beach, from golf players and human barnacles glued to dampbar flanks, it was to bicycleinto his inferno.As soon as they startedto walk along the beach, he began to talk: “I’ve had five years ofwarasarear gunner. Been to Indiaacouple of years, been to NorthAfrica, slept in the desert, crashed several times, made about one hundred missions, saw all kinds of things…Men dying, men yelling when they’re trapped in burning planes. Their arms charred, their hands like claws ofanimals. The first timeI was sent to the field after a crash…the smell of burning flesh. It’s sweetand sickening,and itsticks to you for days. You can’t wash it off. You can’t get rid of it. It haunts you. We had good laughs, though, laughs all the time. We laughed plenty. We would steal prostitutes and push theminto the beds of the men who didn’t likewomen. We had drunks that lasted several days. I liked that life. India. I’d like to go back. This life here, what people talk about, what they do, think, bores me. I liked sleeping in the desert. I sawablack woman giving birth… She worked on the fields carrying dirt for a new airfield. She stopped carrying dirt to give birth under thewing ofthe plane, just likethat, and then bound the kid in somerags and went back to work. Funny to seethe big plane, so modern,andthis half naked black woman giving birth and then continuing tocarry dirt in pails for an airfield. You know, only two of us came back alive of the bunch I started with. We played pranks, though. My buddies always warned me: ‘Don’t get grounded; once you’regrounded you’re donefor.’Well, they grounded metoo. Too many rear gunners in the service. I didn’t want to come home. What’s civilian life? Good for old maids. It’s a rut. It’s drab. Look at this: the young girls giggle, giggle at nothing. The boys are after me. Nothing ever happens.