Free Turning Back the Sun by Colin Thubron

fine.” He gave a collusive laugh. “But then, she”s never the same …”
    It was the first time Rayner had seen this look on Ivar”s face: perplexity. So he had failed to understand her.
    Then Rayner felt a sudden distaste at them both standing here, talking about their temporary women. Hedid not want to discuss Zoë any longer. But he could not resist asking, “How the hell did she land up in this town?”
    “She”s always gone her own way. Her parents are decent people in the north, you know. Teachers. But she had to be different …”
    Zoë and Felicie came out onto the terrace then, exclaiming at the moonlight and the men”s absence. They had twined jasmine in each other”s hair. Their laughter tinkled in the night. Anyone boating on the lake, Rayner thought, would have seen two glamorous young women carelessly on holiday with their men …
    Behind them the band had struck up one of the syncopated dance tunes popular that year. In front, an isolated wind was interfering with the moonlight all over the lake. Felicie was walking unsteadily up and down the terrace, crooning to herself. Zoë, standing close to Rayner, had started listening for owls, and he was conscious of her hands resting beside him on the verandah stonework, their long fingers interlaced. Ivar came and stood beside them, his jacket hung carelessly over his arm.
    Then Ivar reached out and covered Zoë”s hands with one of his. It was a broad hand, Rayner saw. A gold ring glinted on it. Ivar said, “Come and dance.”
    There was something so assured, so proprietorial about the gesture, that Zoë”s reaction was the more shocking. Her hands darted from under his and bunched whitely at her waist. For a split second an abyss of vulnerability opened up in her. Then her anger covered her. For an instant Rayner saw her eyes flash down at his crippled foot, the one which could not dance, then up again at Ivar. Her hands were behind her back. She breathed, “No!”
    Because he scarcely knew her, her character splintered with awesome complexity before his eyes. Every night she would wipe away with cold cream the elaborate evening face she had composed, and there would appear beneath it her other, softer persona. With her hair loosed behind herback like a young girl”s, her features appeared thinner, peakier. Even the luster in her eyes seemed to change. It calmed to a tentative stare. Her whole demeanor seemed to be asking: am I all right?
    This changed person awoke Rayner”s protectiveness. It was as if this capacity in him—a kind of impassioned tenderness—had been there long ago, waiting for her. At night the slender dancer”s arms with their elongated fingers twined about him in blind urgency, so that he wanted to calm her into himself. Yet whenever he started to think that this orphan was her only manifestation, its mirror image would erupt—vital, playful, defiant—and she would revert to her daytime self: the owner of the proud back and strong-shaped legs. Then she would tease and laugh at him and at herself, like somebody watching a carnival.
    He sensed that she carried with her a past as disjoined as his own. At first, because she didn”t refer to it, he thought her secretive. Then he realized that she just wanted to forget: she despised self-pity. For years after leaving the capital she had lived hand-to-mouth, performing in theater and cabaret. She had started to drink too much; and yes, there had been many men.
    She spoke without regret. She wanted him to know. After leaving dance academy, she said, she might have entered the state ballet company. But she”d fallen in love with jazz and flamenco, and joined a mime theater instead. “Everybody said I was mad, because we were openly political. Our director behaved as if the country was as free as it pretended to be, and we did shows about every state farce and corruption.” She laughed ruefully. “But we were just children, of course, trying to make the world all