The Pacific and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

this singer, I now was in love with her in the way that old men can briefly be in love with youth, which is like standing on the platform as an express train that doesn’t stop at your station goes by at full speed. It’s exciting, the wind comes up, your clothes whistle in the air, you awaken, and then it’s gone, without even having seen you.
    Let me describe her, for in my infatuation I burned into memory every detail, and for a woman I have never touched (she made sure, for his sake, not even to shake my hand), it is as if I have slept next to her for decades. First, she was, for a singer, very slight. I could easily have lifted her into my arms. Doing that with Rosanna would be as inconceivable as tossing a hippo across the English Channel. But this beautiful singer was, at the same time, full, so that, though I might easily have lifted her, I could not have held her effortlessly or for long. She was not a delicate, weightless creature, all bone; she was, although trim and strong, a woman. The strength of her singing had to be more than just spiritual. Her body, though not overbearing, was alluring. Physically, she was dense and substantial, quick, self-possessed, and sexually willing. I knew that. How I knew, I don’t know.
    I never remember what anyone is wearing, even I myself. My wife will sometimes command me to close my eyes. “What am I wearing?” she asks. I cannot say. “What are
you
wearing?” I cannot say that, either. But, strangely, I am able to remember what everyone there was wearing, not least the soprano. She stood in black sandals, and her toenails were painted. This shocked me, for I think it is barbaric and makes women look like the rhinoceroses in the Babar books. Why would such an angelic and unparalleled person stoop to such vulgarity? I immediately thought of Rosanna, who hires experts to buff and paint the nails on her feet, and suspected that this rhinocerine practice might somehow correlate with divine song, though why would it?
    She wore pants that, though tight enough to show her perfect figure, were loose enough and black enough so that as she stood with her legs together it seemed as if she were in a sheath skirt. Her sleeveless top with narrow shoulder straps was black as well. It embraced her tightly, accentuating her firm and attractive bosom. Because the shoulder straps were so narrow, her brassiere straps, also black, had escaped their bounds and were visible on both sides. She was slightly sunburned, and on her left wrist she wore a cheap Japanese watch with a silver band. The face of the watch was rectangular and its diminutive blue dial against the black of her clothes was ravishing.
    Her chestnut hair, though not colored, was pulled back and had the same quality as his. That is, it seemed wet, though it was not. And then I realized that—in Venice, in peak season—they could not afford a hotel room. They were probably living on the street. A woman who, with a season of apprenticeship to learn techniques of the stage and how to live richly, would, or, rather, could be one of the two or three highest-paid sopranos of the world, whose talent was equal to, if not finer than, that of Rosanna Cadorna, the highest-paid singer in existence, was, for all her beauty and majesty, living on the street.
    I have mentioned that she was beautiful, and she was. Her face was as sharp as a hawk’s, and as strong. And her eyes were the strangest eyes I have ever seen. Unless she looked directly at you—and as she sang she looked either at her feet or up at the high walls of the Accademia—you could not see them. It was as if she were blind or they were hooded like a hawk’s, neither of which was the case. Much as he would not engage his audience, neither would she, but whereas he was obliged to look at the music, she could not, and here the highly unusual eyes served to protect her privacy. Perhaps she was ashamed of singing and living on the street. But when she sang, the shame vanished.