Free Oh What a Paradise It Seems by John Cheever Page A

philosopher on the wheel and fed the saints to the lions. They were eating fried food when they hung the witches, quartered the pretender and crucified the thieves. Public executions were our first celebrations and this was holiday food. It was also the food for lovers, gamblers, travelers and nomads. By celebrating and extolling friedfood, all the great highways of the world kept alive our early memories of itinerant hunters and fishermen when we possessed no history and very little vision. It was the food for spiritual vagrants.
    Eduardo was sleeping noisily when Sears returned to bed. Sears had been told that such lovers were always thieves, liars, felons, and sometimes murderers, but he thought he had never known anyone so honest. He felt then a surge of lewdness and with this some revelation that these caverns of his nature would never enjoy coherence. What he felt for Eduardo seemed more like nostalgia than the adventurousness of traditional love but it felt no less powerful. He saw then that if he was truly seeking purity he would never find it in himself.
    In the morning they woke quite happily. Eduardo washed his hair with a shampoo that, Sears noticed, was advertised to make his head a glory of lustrous radiance. It reminded Sears of the happy and robust vanity of that time of life and—with no ruefulness at all—of the vast difference in their ages. How long it had been since Sears had ducked his head into a basin of water and combed his hair with the hope of appearing attractive.
    After breakfast they rented an outboard. Fishing water was for Sears a creation with which he enjoyed a powerful rapport. He was enjoying this while tying a leader when the man who had rented them the boat came over and said: “I can’t let you men go out without telling you that there hasn’t been a fish here for about ten years. The last time the water was tested—that was three years ago, I think—it was a little more acid than commercial vinegar.”
    “Are there any other ponds around here?” Sears asked.
    “Yeah, there’re about a hundred ponds around here,” the stranger said, “maybe two hundred, but they’re all just as acid as this. Of course there’s nothing to stop you from trying. The fish may be coming back.”
    They went out anyhow on the disqualified water and cast for an hour or so. Eduardo, Sears noticed, got his line out with commendable grace and expertise. When they brought the boat in Sears asked his friend what he was going to do with the rest of his ten days’ vacation. “I’ll take my wife to Key West,” he said. “The union has package tours that you don’t have to book in advance. I took her down the year before last and she loved it.” They drove back down the strip again and it rained again. The younger man’s company helped Sears to understand better the barbarity and nomadism of 774. They parted at Sears’s apartment. “I’ll see you when Renée gets back from Des Moines,” said Sears. “Get a great tan.”

9
    A FTER the fracas in the supermarket Henry saw that Betsy needed a change. He got the day off and they decided to go to Chelmsford Beach. It wouldn’t be as crowded as it always was on the weekends and they didn’t much enjoy it with a big crowd. Betsy made a picnic, with lemonade for herself and beer for Henry, and they took off at about ten in the morning with little Randy and Baby Binxie in the carrier. It was a nice summer’s day. They made the trip in less than two hours and they both enjoyed reaching the beach on a weekday when half the parking lots were closed and privacy on the beach was just something you walked into, which contrasted with their memories of the weekends when privacy was something you had to look for like a needle in a haystack. They found a nice place and put a parasol up over Binxie with his bottle. She and Henry had a nice swim and then she went up and lay on the sand and Henry gave Randy a swimming lesson. Henry kept shouting: “That’s the