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I filled the sugar bowl, set a small pitcher of milk beside it on a tray, and went back to her. The sugar bowl was shaped like a coconut. I had found it the night before in a cupboard. I placed some slices of lemon on a plate beside it. I did everything I could to avoid what I really wanted to do.
My heart began to pound as I came close to her again. She looked at me with a grin as if she wanted to comment. Perhaps the grin was in response to the shape of the sugar bowl. Still, she didn't say a word. God, she was as shy in her way as I was, and I was too shy to ask what in heavens' name the grin was for.
Eventually, I retreated to a chair at the dining table across the room. I knew deep within my mind that this wasn't a game. It was an exploration to find whatever had been lost through centuries of false civility, a search for something that could bridge the isolation which had kept us apart since the day we met. I feared that pushing too hard could widen the gulf, and pushing too little would cause the isolation to persist and perhaps be strengthened.
I suggested to Jennie that I should open the package of pound cake we had bought. I sliced it carefully, though still watching her out of the corner of an eye. She smiled when our eyes met. Moments later she got up and came towards the kitchen. She stopped at the doorway for a minute or two, until I had finished slicing the cake. I arranged the pieces carefully. Then she grinned at me. I responded with a grin of my own that turned quickly into a stare as she lifted her nightgown over her shoulder and pulled it off.
"Let's not play games with each other," she said to me as she folded the gown and leaned back against the doorpost. Let's stop playing games.
I stood petrified, with the plate of cake in my hand, my mouth wide open, stunned. There she was, like a beautiful dream: naked, honest, inviting, beautiful. The odd thing was that I still couldn't touch her. I began to reach out, but pulled my hand back. I held onto the plate of cake and carried it into the living room. I offered her a piece. She declined. Thank God she declined! I put the cake down. With the deepest honesty that was within me I put my arm around her and hugged her, gently. "Thanks, Jennie!" was all I could say.
I let go of her after a long time had passed, so it seemed, and sat on a nearby chair and kept on looking at her. Oh, why was she so patient with me? Was it compassion? Did she feel my great need? Or was it love? She felt soft, warm, wonderful, why did I let go of her? I valued her as a fragile remnant of a fragile world that was fast slipping away. I was frightened. What a laugh! Me, a veteran of thousands of flights, being frightened? Yes, I was. I was frightened for both of us. I knew she wasn't a dream, she was tangibly real, and the chaos in the world was real, too, but the two realities had become exclusive of one another. I also knew that none of that was cause. The cause was that I loved her.
I beheld her like a delicate butterfly, fluttering through the open balcony door where she had stood. As I saw her standing before me in the same brilliance, like the loveliest of all women, bold, free, delicate, infinitely precious, more cherishable than the most delicate butterfly, I stood up and embraced her again. "I am in love with you, Jennie," I said. "I always have been." I felt wonderfully alive. We were no longer just surviving, but living. At least I had begun to life. How absurd the denial of the past now appeared that I had wallowed in, in my thoughts before for all these years before, and even earlier, whenever I met another woman, which had blocked from me this wonderful experience of a boundless unity, of being alive as a human being.
Out of the depth of this re-awakening arose the total acceptance of her, and of myself too, a total honesty, an acceptance of my own feelings, an acceptance of her as she was, a feeling of unity unfettered by any myth or fear. On this platform I was finally able to embrace her fully and without reservation. It was as if we had gained access at last to a new dimension of reality that we hadn't even been aware of before.
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