Seduction of the Minotaur Read Online Free PDF Page B

ordeal. He still belonged to the Nordic midnight
sun; the tropical sun could not tan him, only freckle him. Sometimes he had the
look of a blond angel who had just come from a Black Mass. He smiled innocently
although one felt sure that in his dreams he had undressed the angels and the
choir boys and made love to them. He had the small smile of Pan. His eyes
conveyed only the wide expanse of desert that lay between human beings, and his
mouth expressed the tremors he felt when other human beings approached him. The
eyes said: do not come too near. But his body glowed with warmth. It was his
mouth, compressed and controlled, which revealed his timidity.
    At everything new he marveled, but with
persistent reference to the days of his childhood which had given him a
permanent joy. Every day was Christmas day; the turtle eggs served at lunch
were a gift from the Mexicans, the opened coconut spiked with rum was a new
brand of candy.
    His only anxiety centered around the problem of
returning home. He did not have time enough to hitchhike back; it had taken him
a full month to get here. He had no money, so he had decided to work his way
back on a cargo ship.
    Everyone offered to contribute, to perpetuate
his Christmas day. But a week after his arrival he was already inquiring about
cargo ships which would take him back home in time to finish college, and back
to Shelley, the girl he was engaged to.
    But about Shelley there was no hurry, he
explained. It was because of Shelley that he had decided to spend the summer
hitchhiking. He was engaged and he was afraid. Afraid of the girl. He needed
time, time to adventure, time to become a man. Yes, to become a man. (He always
showed Shelley’s photograph, and there was nothing in the tilted-up nose, the
smile, and her soft hair to frighten anyone.)
    Lillian asked him: “Couldn’t Shelley have
helped you to become a man?”
    He had shrugged his shoulders. “A girl can’t
help a boy to become a man. I have to feel I am one before I marry. And
I don’t know anything about myself…or about women…or about love… I thought this
trip would help me. But I find I am afraid of all girls. It was not only
Shelley.”
    “What is the difference between a girl and a
woman?”
    “Girls laugh. They laugh at you. That’s the one
thing I can’t bear, to be laughed at.”
    “They’re not laughing at you, Christmas.
They’re laughing because they wish to hide their own fears, to appear free and
light, or they laugh so you won’t think they take you too seriously. They may
be laughing from pleasure, to encourage you. Think how frightened you would be
if they did not laugh, if they looked at you gravely and made you feel that
their destiny was in your hands, a matter of life and death. That would
frighten you even more, wouldn’t it?”
    “Yes, much more.”
    “Do you want me to tell you the truth/font>
    “Yes, you have a way of saying things which
makes me feel you are not laughing at me.”
    “If…you experimented with becoming a man before
you married your girl, you might also find that it was because you were
a boy that she loved you…that she loves you for what you are, not for what you
will be later. She might love you less if you changed…”
    “What makes you think this?”
    “Because if you truly wanted to change, you
would not be so impatient to leave. Your mind is fixed on the departure times
of cargo ships!”
    When he arrived at the pool Lillian could
almost see him carrying his two separate and contradictory wishes, one in each
hand. But at least while he was intent on juggling them without losing his
balance, he no longer felt the pain of not living, of a paralysis before
living.
    His smile at Lillian was charged with
gratitude. Lillian was thinking that the primitives were wiser in having
definitely established rituals: at a certain moment, determined by the
calendar, a boy becomes a man.
    Meanwhile Fred was using all his energy in
rituals of his own: he had to master