Ray Bradbury
http://blogs.myspace.com/mysteryal
In a Season of Calm Weather
1957
George and Alice Smith detrained at Biarritz one summer noon and in an hour
had run through their hotel on to the beach into the ocean and back out to bake
upon the sand.
To see George Smith sprawled burning there, you'd think him only a tourist
flown fresh as iced lettuce to Europe and soon to be transhipped home. But here
was a man who loved art more than life itself.
"There..." George Smith sighed. Another ounce of perspiration trickled down
his chest. Boil out the Ohio tap-water, he thought, then drink down the best
Bordeaux. Silt your blood with rich French sediment so you'll see with native
eyes!
Why? Why eat, breathe, drink everything French? So that, given time, he
might really begin to understand the genius of one man.
His mouth moved, forming a name.
"George?" His wife loomed over him. "I know what you've been thinking. I
can read your lips."
He lay perfectly still, waiting.
"And?"
"Picasso," she said.
He winced. Some day she would learn to pronounce that name.
"Please," she said. "Relax. I know you heard the rumour this morning, but
you should see your eyes - your tic is back. All right, Picasso's here, down the
coast a few miles away, visiting friends in some small fishing town. But you
must forget it or our vacation's ruined."
"I wish I'd never heard the rumour," he said honestly.
"If only," she said, "you liked other painters."
Others? Yes, there were others. He could breakfast most congenially on
Caravaggio still-lifes of autumn pears and midnight plums. For lunch: those
fire-squirting, thick-wormed Van Gogh sunflowers, those blooms a blind man might
read with one rush of scorched fingers down fiery canvas. But the great feast?
The paintings he saved his palate for? There, filling the horizon, like Neptune
risen, crowned with limewood, alabaster, coral, paintbrushes clenched like
tridents in horn-nailed fists, and with fishtail vast enough to fluke summer
showers out over all Gibraltar - who else but the creator of Girl Before a
Mirror and Guernica?
"Alice," he said, patiently, "how can I explain? Coming down on the train I
thought. Good Lord, it's all Picasso country!"
But was it really, he wondered. The sky, the land, the people, the
flushed-pink bricks here, scrolled electric-blue ironwork balconies there, a
mandolin ripe as a fruit in some man's thousand fingerprinting hands, billboard
tatters blowing like confetti in night winds - how much was Picasso, how much
George Smith staring round the world with wild Picasso eyes? He despaired of
answering. That old man had distilled turpentine and linseed oil so thoroughly
through George Smith that they shaped his being, all Blue Period at twilight,
all Rose Period at dawn.
"I keep thinking," he said aloud, "if we saved our money..."
"We'll never have five thousand dollars."
"I know," he said quietly. "But it's nice thinking we might bring it off
some day. Wouldn't it be great to just step up to him, say 'Pablo, here's five
thousand! Give us the sea, the sand, that sky, or any old thing you want, we'll
be happy...."
After a moment, his wife touched his arm.
"I think you'd better go in the water now," she said.
"Yes," he said. "I'd better do just that."
White fire showered up when he cut the water.
During the afternoon George Smith came out and went into the ocean with the
vast spilling motions of now warm, now cool people who at last, with the sun's
decline, their bodies all lobster colours and colours of broiled squab and
guinea hen, trudged for their wedding-cake hotels.
The beach lay deserted for endless mile on mile save for two people. One
was George Smith, towel over shoulder, out for a last devotional. Far along the
shore another shorter, square-cut man walked alone in the tranquil weather. He
was deeper tanned, his close-shaven head dyed almost mahogany by the sun, and
his eyes were clear and bright as water in his face. So the shoreline stage was
set, and in a few minutes the two men would meet. And once again Fate fixed the
scales for shocks and surprises, arrivals and departures. And all the while
these two solitary strollers did not for a moment think on coincidence, that
unswum stream which lingers at man's elbow with every crowd in every town. Nor
did they ponder the fact that if man dares dip into that stream he grabs a
wonder in each hand. Like most they shrugged at such folly, and stayed well up
the bank lest Fate should shove them in.
The stranger stood alone. Glancing about, he saw his aloneness, saw the
waters of the lovely bay, saw the sun sliding down the late colours of the day,
and then half-turning spied a small wooden object on the sand. It was no more
than the slender stick from a lime ice-cream delicacy long since melted away.
Smiling he picked the stick up. With another glance around to re-insure his
solitude, the man stooped again and holding the stick gently with light sweeps
of his hand began to do the one thing in all the world he knew best how to do.
He began to draw incredible figures along the sand. He sketched one figure
and then moved over and still looking down, completely focused on his work now,
drew a second and a third figure, and after that a fourth and a fifth and a
sixth.
George Smith, printing the shoreline with his feet, gazed here, gazed
there, and then saw the man ahead. George Smith, drawing nearer, saw that the
man, deeply tanned, was bending down. Neerer yet, and it was obvious what the
man was up to. George Smith chuckled. Of course, of course... along on the beach
this man - how old? Sixty-five? Seventy? - was scribbling and doodling away. How
the sand flew! How the wild portraits flung themselves out there on the shore!
How…
George Smith took one more step and stopped, very still.
The stranger was drawing and drawing and did not seem to sense that anyone
stood immediately behind him and the world of his drawings in the sand. By now
he was so deeply enchanted with his solitudinous creation that depth-bombs set
off in the bay might not have stopped his flying hand nor turned him round.
George Smith looked down at the sand. And, after a long while, looking, he
began to tremble.
For there on the flat shore were pictures of Grecian lions and
Mediterranean goats and maidens with flesh of sand like powdered gold and satyrs
piping on hand-carved horns and children dancing, strewing flowers along and
along the beach with lambs gambolling after and musicians skipping to their
harps and lyres, and unicorns racing youths towards distant meadows, woodlands,
ruined temples and volcanoes. Along the shore in a never-broken line, the hand,
the wooden stylus of this man bent down in fever and raining perspiration,
scribbled, ribboned, looped around over and up, across, in, out, stitched,
whispered, stayed, then hurried on as if this travelling bacchanal must flourish
to its end before the sun was put out by the sea. Twenty, thirty yards or more
the nymphs and dryads and summer founts sprang up in unravelled hieroglyphs. And
the sand, in the dying light, was the colour of molten copper on which was now
slashed a message that any man in any time might read and savour down the years.
Everything whirled and poised in its own wind and gravity. Now wine was being
crushed from under the grape-blooded feet of dancing vintners' daughters, now
steaming seas gave birth to coin-sheathed monsters while flowered kites strewed
scent on blowing clouds... now... now... now....
The artist stopped.
George Smith drew back and stood away.
The artist glanced up, surprised to find someone so near. Then he simply
stood there, looking from George Smith to his own creations flung like idle
footprints down the way. He smiled at last and shrugged as if to say. Look what
I've done; see what a child? You will forgive me, won't you? One day or another
we are all fools... you, too, perhaps? So allow an old fool this, eh? Good!
Good!
But George Smith could only look at the little man with the sun-dark skin
and the clear sharp eyes, and say the man's name once, in a whisper, to himself.
They stood thus for perhaps another five seconds, George Smith staring at
the sand-frieze, and the artist watching George Smith with amused curiosity.
George Smith opened his mouth, closed it, put out his hand, took it back. He
stepped towards the picture, stepped away. Then he moved along the line of
figures, like a man viewing a precious series of marbles cast up from some
ancient ruin on the shore. His eyes did not blink, his hand wanted to touch but
did not dare to touch. He wanted to run but did not run.
He looked suddenly at the hotel. Run, yes! Run! What? Grab a shovel, dig,
excavate, save a chunk of this all too crumbling sand? Find a repair-man, race
him back here with plaster-of-paris to cast a mould of some small fragile part
of these? No, no. Silly, silly. Or...? His eyes flicked to his hotel window. The
camera! Run, get it, get back, and hurry along the shore, clicking, changing
film, clicking until...
George Smith whirled to face the sun. It burned faintly on his face, his
eyes were two small fires from it. The sun was half underwater and, as he
watched, it sank the rest of the way in a matter of seconds.
The artist had drawn nearer and now was gazing into George Smith's face
with great friendliness as if he were guessing every thought. Now he was nodding
his head in a little bow. Now the ice-cream stick had fallen casually from his
fingers. Now he was saying good night, good night. Now he was gone, walking back
down the beach towards the south.
George Smith stood looking after him. After a full minute, he did the only
thing he could possibly do. He started at the beginning of the fantastic frieze
of satyrs and fauns and wine-dipped maidens and prancing unicorns and piping
youths and he walked slowly along the shore. He walked a long way, looking down
at e free-running bacchanal. And when he came to the end of the animals and men
he turned round and started back in the other direction, just staring down as if
he had lost something and did not quite know where to find it. He kept on doing
this until there was no more light in the sky, or on the sand, to see by.
He sat down at the supper table.
"You're late," said his wife. "I just had to come down alone. I'm
ravenous."
"That's all right," he said.
"Anything interesting happen on your walk?" she asked.
"No," he said.
"You look funny; George, you didn't swim out too far, did you, and almost
drown? I can tell by your face. You did swim out too far, didn't you?"
"Yes," he said.
"Well," she said, watching him closely. "Don't ever do that again. Now -
what'll you have?"
He picked up the menu and started to read it and stopped suddenly.
"What's wrong?" asked his wife.
He turned his head and shut his eyes for a moment.
"Listen."
She listened.
"I don't hear anything," she said.
"Don't you?"
"No. What is it?"
"Just the tide," he said, after a while, sitting there, his eyes still
shut. "Just the tide, coming in."