Oliver Benjamin
Beautiful, he was so beautiful to her. She held him and slid her
sweaty arms around his neck. He kissed her eyes.
“I heard you were unwell,” he said softly.
A sudden burst of warmth spread through her. “I was,” she said.
“Take me into the tent.”
He carried her inside. It was both late and early. She pressed her
white gown against his linen. His beard brushed her cheek.
He recited softly, “Real life is elsewhere.”
His arms supported her with an impossible tenderness; a cloud
holding moisture. She pressed her lips to his ear and whispered, “My
small feet tremble delicately on the floor.”
“There is gold here I cannot partake of,” he said.
“This is the time with which we fall in love,” she whispered.
“We must be absolutely modern.”
“Two children walk in the paradise of our garden.”
He cried, “Why puberty so late and disgrace…”
She sighed, “The lily drinks your blues, your hair, your face…”
“…”
“…”
Not having loved women—although passionate!—his soul and
his heart and all his strength were trained in strange, sad errors.
E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
High glacial spears, white kings, quivering of flowers;
I, vermillions, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips
The blood came and would not stop.
“Will I die?” she said weakly, her white gown stained crimson.
He ran to wake up her father.
Everything after that happened very quickly, events which he did not
understand and would not for some time. Camera crews crowded
around the Bunting house. He pushed past them but no one would
answer the door. The phone, too, was inoperable. One day a man
came over and hammered a strange wooden sign into the soil of Yak’s
front yard. “For Sale by Owner.”
“I’m not selling it,” Yak said.
“Then you’re not the fucking owner,” the man said, smiling
cheerfully, and got into his car.
A few days later a different man in a dark suit came to see him
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