Free Frances and Bernard by Carlene Bauer Page A

I would not have decided to celebrate my last week of summer by swimming naked at night, but have you ever seen the moon waxing crescent, hanging low and white in the sky, and heard the breeze blow through the bushes and trees? You feel as ripening and shining as the night you are in, and it’s excruciating to stand there enduring nature—God’s instantiation, God’s invitation—as a spectator when you can plunge yourself in the middle of it. That felt sinful, to not plunge myself in the middle of it. It made me think of Augustine:
     
God, then, the most wise Creator and most just Ordainer of all natures, who placed the human race upon earth as its greatest ornament, imparted to men some good things adapted to this life, to wit, temporal peace, such as we can enjoy in this life from health and safety and human fellowship, and all things needful for the preservation and recovery of this peace, such as the objects which are accommodated to our outward senses, light, night, the air, and waters suitable for us, and everything the body requires to sustain, shelter, heal, or beautify it: and all under this most equitable condition, that every man who made a good use of these advantages suited to the peace of this mortal condition, should receive ampler and better blessings, namely, the peace of immortality, accompanied by glory and honor in an endless life made fit for the enjoyment of God and of one another in God—
     
    Light, night, the air, and waters suitable for us.
That was what was in front of me, and I felt that I should make good use of them.
    I quoted this passage to Michael as explanation, but he said I was perverting the text. That I was out of my mind to think that the passage legitimized my pagan gesture. I quoted Paul to him—you know, if you want to eat meat, eat meat; if you don’t, don’t, etc.—and then he said that my concept of sin was too precious and he quoted Paul back to me by reminding me that I was living according to the flesh, that I was too alive to sin and too dead to Christ. (Yes, the girl added luster to the evening, and I’ll confess to you that maybe I liked that there was something Edenic about the two of us in the water, and it occurred to me that I was indeed too alive to sin in that moment, but I was not interested in making anything more of our nakedness than a picture in my mind.) Michael and I went on for an hour, quoting scripture back and forth to each other, voices getting louder, which brought Eliza to the shed. She entered the room like Yul Brynner inspecting the slaves’ quarters or some such in
The Ten Commandments
(now I’m infected with your disdain, goddamn you) and put her hand on my arm, and while her touch was just a touch, just four fingers on my forearm, it put silence into me, because she was also looking at me with cold iron-gray-blue eyes, and then she said: “I think you are too great a disturbance to this house,” and asked me to leave. Ted thinks she got her moral authority purely from the fact that she’d thought I’d harassed a girl, not because I’d sinned. I laughed, but I think he’s wrong. Mostly.
    Do you know we have now been writing to each other for just over a year?
    Love,
    Bernard
     
    November 17, 1958
    Bernard—
    Thanks for the proofs. I have availed myself of all ten permissible corrections. I hope that rewriting a paragraph counts as a correction. Because four out of the ten are that. The rest was correcting what your proofreaders should have corrected. But I know you’re corralling glamour-seeking Harvard grads to do that stuff, so I can’t expect them to actually give a rat’s ass about doing their work. I think I smelled gin on these pages. Were these proofread at a cocktail party?
    Bernard. You do realize that you have been kicked out of two Catholic communities for what looks like an inability to control yourself around women? I trust you left this out of your account because this goes without saying? I guess I should bring up