Free Intimate Distance by Katerina Cosgrove Page A

the roar and bellow and rush of it raise our spirits. As we emerge from the gorge the sun is suddenly blotted out by cloud and the landscape changes, fizzles, disappears. We’ve come out into a grey watery world: no people, no movement. There are white pebbles far away but as we draw closer I see this unrelieved whiteness is composed of stones of subtle colours. At the water’s edge we strip off, walking into the sea without disturbing it. The waves are gentle, almost too small to be noticed. Further out, away from the shore, we float in still water like oil, keeping apart from each other. The mysterious day is vibrating, mystic in its stillness, its withheld significance. The sun struggling, constricted. I still feel stifled by Zoi and his brother’s relationship, their tight undercurrents of loyalty and dislike. But now, watching him here, so serene, so intensely present to me, there’s a possibility of hope, of something unbreakable between us. I plunge my head under. The sea is cold beneath, reminding me of my own vulnerability. My baby. I can feel the warmth of the sun on my body fizzling, and darkness spilling into me.
    We get out, and suddenly I’m afraid someone is watching, hidden in the caves, and quickly slip into my clothes. The sun is poised, glowing for an instant on the edge of the sea. We are being watched. More goats huddle together in the shade and stare at us with their unreadable eyes. Dimitri’s name comes back to me, repeating, repeating, pushing against my skull. The eyes of the goats glitter like bits of mica. Now the sea has turned ominous, sun sinking low, high tide. Zoi’s face is like a bed whose sheets have been smoothed clean of any significance; the brief moment of understanding forgotten. The wind has picked up and howls high in the village, exhaled in a rush by the mountains. I walk the few steps to a rock pool, bend down to the seawater, taking a little on the tips of my fingers to wash my face. Rock pools all around, shimmering yellow streams of water, inconstant, like the sequins on a woman’s dress. I feel him crouch behind me, his thighs wrapped around my waist, head heavy on my shoulder. He takes my breasts in both hands through the thin cotton of my blouse.
    â€˜Let’s go to the cave.’
    His whisper is urgent. Once there the goats shy away, rushing out in a wave of flanks and hooves and the sharp rasping of their fear. I stand looking after them, mesmerised by their escape, the way they move as one. He stands behind me and begins edging up my blouse, feeling for my nipples, breathing heavily in the cool sinister light. He leads me further into the dark. I feel his hand, alert and sweating. The only point of contact I have, straining into the blackness, is the pressure of those fingers on my palm. His touch alive and glowing.
    He sits down with his back against the wall, legs splayed. A shaft of light falls through a fissure above his head, illuminating the rock face behind him. I’m half-aware of a picture, or a series of pictures, scrawled on the wall. Are they fish, skeletal, the flesh eaten from the bones? Can I see the faint outline of a head, horned, with an open mouth? Chalky redness fades into stone, in the dim light from the opening. Outside, again there’s only the sound of those birds I can’t name.
    I can only discern a blunted emotion in myself: a long, wailing, protracted unease. I try to concentrate on Zoi: his smooth body, his gravel voice. The goats are still and watchful around us. He doesn’t take off his clothes. This I find faintly disturbing, somewhere in the periphery of my thoughts. He takes his penis out from the side of his shorts, the erection rising slowly, weighty, like a portent. I lower myself onto him, still wearing my sandals, not even stopping to take off my underpants. He pulls them aside with his hand, hurting me. And suddenly he’s thrusting beyond his own will or control, and it’s