In the early evening, just as it was getting dark, we were sitting quietly in the whitewashed room. Maddy lay back on the pillows; I perched at the foot of the bed. With the light outside fading. Night was falling over Al Tizourus.
We had gone for a swim after returning to the hotel from the town. The combination of the warm shallow water and the mild exertion had a soporific effect. I felt alert but curiously detached, not really thinking about anything but acutely aware of the subtly changing light in the room as it seeped through the turquoise shutters. Perching on the foot of the bed, elbows on knees, arms dangling, I found myself surveying the contours of Maddy's face.
And as I stared, unblinking, the face stopped being a face, ceased to be a recognisable set of eyes, nose, mouth, and became instead a surface, an object modelled by the changing light. As I looked at this new object, the shapes and colours began to melt together, the shadows around the eyes grew and darkened, swallowing the eyes, the surface of the nose dissolved, the colour of the mouth burst out like a droplet of ink hitting water.
At no point did I stop to question what was happening. Perhaps because of this I was able to let the colours and shapes flow, dissolving, blending together. I let my eyes follow the shifting patterns, not in the least alarmed. I had no desire to question. However, I did sense that Maddy was aware that something was happening. Strangely she seemed more angry than afraid, I would see her like this again.
"Stop that!"
The bite in her voice did not cut into my concentration as by now I was entirely absorbed. Her features swirled into a blue puddle, formless, yet curiously I was still aware of her presence and I was still detached, still an observer. Her face was a livid bruise, swirling and pulsating, the colours dripping, now, over her body. At some point I realised that not only was there light seeping into the room through the shutters, but that I too had become a source of light. Light was spilling out of the crown of my head. Flooding out, I let it out, it was good. I could control it. I could could cut it off and then let it out again. I started to let it out in surges.
My awareness that this was taking place coincided with the realisation that Maddy's demeanour had changed. She was no longer angry. She was transfixed. Though her mouth had dissolved, I also knew that it was open, agog.
I could feel the light pouring out of me in waves. I could even sense their gradual approach and watch as each one crashed into the room. Feeling the rumbling approach of a big one I said to Maddy, quite matter-of-factly, "Here comes another one," and with that a huge flood of luminous colour spilled out from my head and filled the room, flooding the white walls with greens and dazzling yellows.
'Here comes another one'. If I had not voiced those words perhaps I could have persuaded myself that 'it', whatever 'it' was, hadn't taken place, that it was merely the changing light in the room, tiredness, an empty stomach, the heat. We had eaten almost nothing since breakfast, we had walked quite a distance, I suppose. We had gone in the water. Was I tired? Maybe I was a bit tired but that, on its own, didn’t seem to explain the phenomenon.
Maddy fumbled beside the bed for her asthma inhaler. I got up, pulled on a pair of shorts and went outside, leaving her in the now dark room. I found a boulder to sit on at the edge of the beach, and sat there, looking vacantly at the sea, unable to accommodate the experience. I had nowhere to put it, nowhere to stow it away, to parcel it up and make it safe. I had the sensation of having unwittingly tapped into an enormous source of energy. I felt as if a huge electrical current had been passed through me, making me glow like a filament. I was not scared, just profoundly baffled. I sat on the boulder listening to the waves. I made no struggle either to accept or deny what had happened. I was overpowered by the sheer vitality of it. It was the force that hit me more than the intellectual implications.
Maddy came out, sat down, put her arm around me and asked if I was all right. I nodded. She gave me a cigarette. While we were sitting there we became gradually aware of another sound, vaguely familiar, rising above the sweep of the waves on the shingle beach. It was a sort of threshing sound of water being churned. Then I noticed, out on the water, how far out it was impossible to judge, two white lights, widely spaced. At first I thought it might have been two fishing boats working in tandem.
While we were speculating the lights came closer, then, without warning, the threshing sound stopped and a thousand light bulbs came on revealing the outline of a paddle steamer. Rows of bulbs were hung from the masts illuminating the decks. The sound of voices, laughter and music, (it sounded like an old 1940's jazz tune), floated over the water. The paddle steamer sat out on the water like a big chandelier, its only purpose to give pleasure. Two miracles in one night. There was something about the surprise of the ship’s lights coming on and the music that released the tension. We walked down to the water’s edge, laughing.
The sound of music over the water, the shouts and laughter - the mysterious appearance of this boat seemed somehow to confirm that there was indeed nothing threatening about what had happened that evening. I didn’t need an explanation.