The Beach Read Online Free PDF Page A

to be friends."
    "That fellow will be asking for your room next, you'll see," Doro said.
    Encouraged by Clelia's attention, I went on. I explained that Berti's brass was merely timidity become aggressive in self-defense. I said that the year before, before disappearing and probably squandering the money he was supposed to spend in lessons, that boy showed signs of being in awe of me and gave an embarrassed nod when he saw me. What happens to everyone had happened to him,- the truth was masquerading as its opposite. Like those sensitive spirits who pretend to be tough. I envied him, I said, because, being still a boy, he could still delude himself about his real nature.
    "I think," said Clelia, "that I ought to be a closed, diffident, perverse character myself."
    Doro smiled to himself. "Doro doesn't believe it," I said, "but he's the same; when he plays gruff is when he wants to cry."
    The maid, who was changing the plates, stopped to listen, blushed, and hurried off. I went on. "He's been like that since he was a boy. I remember him. He was one of those people who are offended if you ask them how they feel."
    "If all this were true, how easy it would be to understand people," Clelia said.
    These conversations stopped after dinner when the others arrived. Guido came as usual—if he left his car, it was only to play cards; some older women, some girls, an occasional husband—in other words, the Genoese circle. It was no surprise to me that more than three people make a crowd, that nothing more could be said that was worth the effort. I almost preferred the nights we took the car and drove along the coast looking for fresh air. Sometimes, on some belvedere, when the others were dancing, I could get in a few words with Doro or Clelia. Or exchange some serious nonsense with one of the older women. Then all I needed to feel alive again was a glass of wine or a breeze off the sea.
    On the beach in the daytime it was another story. People talk with an odd caution when they are half naked; words no longer sound the same. When they stop talking, the very silence seems to contain ambiguities. Clelia, stretched on a rock, had an ecstatic way of enjoying the sun. Offering herself to the sky, she seemed to sink into the rock, answering with faint murmurs, a sigh, a twitch of her knee or elbow, whatever might be said to her by the nearest person. I soon realized that Clelia really didn't hear anything when she was stretched out like that. Doro understood and never spoke to her at all. He sat on his towel, hugging his knees, gloomy and restless. He never sprawled like Clelia. If he ever tried, before long he was twisting around, turning on his stomach or sitting up again.
    But we were never alone. The whole beach swarmed and babbled. So Clelia preferred the rocks to the common sand, the hard and slippery stone. Now and then she would get up, shake out her hair, dazed and laughing, would ask us what we had been talking about, would look around to see who was there. Someone might be leaving the water, someone else trying it with his toes. Guido in his wrapper of white toweling was always turning up with new acquaintances and dropping them at the foot of the beach umbrella. And then he would climb to the rock, tease Clelia, and never go in swimming.
    The best time was the afternoon or sunset when the warmth or color of the sea persuaded the most reluctant to take a dip or walk along the beach. Then we were almost alone, or there was just Guido talking cheerfully. Doro, who found a dark distraction in his painting, sometimes planted his easel on the rock and drew boats, umbrellas, streaks of color, happy enough to watch us from above and overhear our gossip. Once in a while, one of the group would appear in a boat, carefully beach it, and call out to us. In the silences that followed, we would listen to the slapping of the waves among the stones.
    Friend Guido was always saying that this wave rustle was Clelia's vice, her secret, her