She knew him, in the distance, perfectly. He was a rather fat, very broad
fellow of about thirty-five, and he chewed large mouthfuls of bread. His wife
was stiff and dark-faced, handsome, sombre. They had no children. So much
Juliet had learned.
The peasant worked a great deal alone, on the opposite podere. His clothes
were always clean and cared-for, white trousers and a coloured shirt, and an
old straw hat. Both he and his wife had that air of quiet superiority which
belongs to individuals, not to a class.
His attraction was in his vitality, the peculiar quick energy which gave a
charm to his movements, stout and broad as he was. In the early days before
she took to the sun, Juliet had met him suddenly, among the rocks, when she
had scrambled over to the next podere. He had been aware of her before she saw
him, so that when she did look up, he took off his hat, gazing at her with
shyness and pride, from his big blue eyes. His face was broad and sunburnt, he
had a cropped brown moustache, meeting under his low, wide brow.
'Oh !' she said. 'Can I walk here ?'
'Surely !' he replied with that peculiar hot haste which characterised his
movement. 'My pardone would wish you to walk wherever you like on his land.'
And he pressed back his head in the quick, vivid, shy generosity of his
nature. She had gone on quickly. But instantly she had recognised the violent
generosity of his blood, and the equally violentfarouche shyness.
Since then she had seen him in the distance every day, and she came to realise
that he was one who lived a good deal to himself, like a quick animal, and
that his wife loved him intensely, with a jealousy that was almost hate;
because, probably, he wanted to give himself still, still further, beyond
where she could take him.
One day, when a group of peasants sat under a tree, she had seen him dancing
quick and gay with a child - his wife watching darkly.
Gradually Juliet and he had become intimate, across the distance. There were
aware of one another. She new, in the morning, the moment he arrived with his
***. And the moment she went out on the balcony he turned to look. But they
never saluted. Yet she missed him when he did not come to work on the podere.
Once, in the hot morning when she had been walking naked, deep in the gully
between the two estates, she had come upon him, as he was bending down, with
his powerful shoulders, picking up wood to pile on his motionless, waiting
donkey. He was her as he lifted his flushed face, and she was backing away. A
flame went over his eyes, and flame flew over her body, melting her bones. But
she backed away behind the bushes, silently, and retreated whence she had
come. And she wondered a little resentfully over the silence in which he would
work, hidden in bushy places. He had that wild animal faculty.
Since then there had been a definite pain of consciousness in the body of each
of them, though neither would admit it, and they gave no sign of recognition
but the man's wife was instinctively aware.
And Juliet had thought: Why shouldn't I meet this man for an hour, and bear
his child ? Why should I have to identify my life with a man's life ? Why not
meet him for an hour, as long as the desire lasts, and no more ? There is
already the spark between us.
But she had never made any sign. And now she saw him looking up, from where he
sat by the white cloth, opposite his black-clad wife, looking up at Maurice.
The wife turned and looked, too, saturnine.
And Juliet felt a grudge come over her. She would have to bear Maurice's child
again. She had seen it in her husband's eyes. And she knew it from his answer,
when she spoke to him.
'Will you walk about in the sun, too, without your clothes ?' she asked him.
'Why - er - yes ! Yes, I should like to, while I'm here - I suppose it's quite
private ?'
There was a gleam in his eyes, a desperate kind of courage of his desire, and
a glance at the alert lifting of her breasts in her wrapper. In this way, he
was a man, too, he faced the world and was not entirely quenched in his male
courage. He would dare to walk in the sun, even ridiculously.
But he smelled of the world, and all its fetters and its mongrel cowering. He
was branded with the brand that is not a hall-mark.
Ripe now, and brown-rosy all over with the sun, and with a heart like a fallen
rose, she had wanted to go down to the hot, shy peasant and bear his child.
Her sentiments had fallen like petals. She had seen the flushed blood in the
burnt face, and the flame in the blue eyes, and the answer in her had been a
gush of fire. He would had been a procreative sun-bath to her, and she wanted
it.
Nevertheless, her next child would be Maurice's. The fatal chain of continuity
would cause it.
Originally Posted by jlb4tlb
"It's so mysterious, the land of tears." 
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; obsessed. I am glad you found Volume 3 of the short stories. I had to order mine 'used copy' from Amazon. The books you mentioned I have read before (years ago); I know you will find them highly interesting and enjoy them very much. These are very thought-provoking stories indeed. I think that Dark Muse is interested in 'The Man Who Loved Islands' and Virgil said we could do that one next.
