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.His gestures were free and nimble, the gestures of an adolescent, restless and light.The eyes alone contained all the fever.He had driven his bicycle like a racing car.He had come down upon me as if he did not see trees, cars, people, and almost overlooked the stop signal.The red light changed to green.He gave a wild spurt to his pedaling, and then stopped suddenly to ask me the way to the beach.The tone in which he asked directions was as if the beach were a shelter to which he was speeding away from grave dangers.I disliked Easthampton.The cloud of monotony and uniformity which hung over the new, neat mansions, the impeccable lawns, the dustless garden furniture.The men and women at the beach, all in one dimension, without any magnetism to bring them together.Zombies of civilization, in elegant dress with dead eyes.Static.The sign in front of the church: "This is the site of the most costly church on Long Island."At midnight the place was deserted.Everyone was at home with bottles from which they hoped to extract a gaiety bottled elsewhere.It was the kind of drinking one does at wakes.Only the bars were open, where limp figures clutched at oblivion.I ran out of sleeping pills.I walked looking for a drugstore.They were all closed.At one o'clock I was still walking, hoping to tire myself and be able to sleep, but I could not overcome my memories of Saínt-Tropez: the fiestas, the lively scene at the port, the open cafés, the lights, the dancing, the flags, the banners of yachts.A car stopped beside me.A tall, white-haired Irish police officer addressed me courteously:"May I give you a lift?""I couldn't sleep.I was looking for a drugstore, where I might find sleeping pills."I climbed into the car.I said: "I'm homesick for other beaches I have known.""I was homesick when I first came from Ireland.""Did you ever see Saint-Tropez?""Yes, I did.I was once a bodyguard for a rich man.I'll take you to my home first.The wife and kids are asleep, but I can get you some aspirin."He left me in the car.He entered his house.He came out carrying a glass of water and two aspirins.I took the water and the aspirins obediently.He focused his flashlight upon a bush in his garden and said: "Look at this!"I saw flowers of velvet, with black hearts and gold eyes."Roses of Sharon," he said reverently, and in the purest of Irish accents."They only grow in Ireland and in Long Island.""I'll sleep now," I said."Yes, you will.One can only sleep when one has found something to be grateful for.You can never sleep when you're angry."He gave me roses of Sharon to admire.Driving me home, he spoke of another homesick character."He is a young fellow in the Royal Air Force.Aviator all through the war, seventeen when he volunteered.He's grounded now, and he can't take it.He's restless, and keeps speeding, and breaking traffic laws.I stopped giving him tickets.He's used to airplanes.Being grounded is tough.I know how he feels."The next day we met at the beach.The grounded aviator was there.We were introduced.We took a walk along the beach.John began to talk: "I've had five years of war as a rear-gunner.Been to India a couple of years, to North Africa, slept in the desert, crashed several times, made about a hundred missions, saw all kinds of things.Men dying, men yelling when they're trapped in burning planes.Their arms charred, their hands like the claws of animals.The first time I was sent to the field after a crash.the smell of burning flesh.It's sweet and sickening, and it sticks to you for days.You can't wash it off.You can't get rid of it.It haunts you.We had good laughs, though, laughs all the time.We laughed plenty.We would commandeer prostitutes and push them into the beds of the guys who didn't like women.We had drunks that lasted several days.I liked that life.India.I'd like to go back.This life here, what people talk about, what they think, bores me.I liked sleeping in the desert.I saw a black woman giving birth.She worked in the fields carrying dirt for a new airfield.She stopped carrying dirt to give birth under the wing of a plane, just like that, and then bound the kid in some rags and went back to work.Funny to see the big plane, so modern, and this half-naked woman giving birth and then continuing to carry dirt in pails for an airfield.You know, only two of us came back alive of the bunch I started with.My buddies always warned me: 'Don't get grounded; once you're grounded, you're done for.' Well, they grounded me, too.Too many rear-gunners in the service.I didn't want to come home.What's civilian life? Good for old maids.It's a rut.It's drab.Look at this: the young girls giggle, giggle at nothing.The boys are after me.Nothing ever happens.They don't laugh hard and they don't yell.They don't get hurt, and they don't die, and they don't laugh either."There was a light in his eyes I could not read, something he had seen but would not talk about.We walked tirelessly along the beach, until there were no more homes, no more cared-for gardens, no more people, until the beach became wild."Some die silent," he continued, as if obsessed."You know by the look in their eyes that they are going to die.Some die yelling, and you have to turn your face away and not look into their eyes.When I was being trained, you know, the first thing they told me: 'Never look into a dying man's eyes.'""But you did," I said, suddenly understanding the expression of his eyes.1 could see him clearly at seventeen, not yet a man, with the delicate skin of a girl, the finely carved features, the small straight nose, the mouth of a woman, a shy laugh, something very tender about the face and body, looking into the eyes of the dying."The man who trained me said: 'Never look into the eyes of the dying or you'll go mad.' Do you think I'm mad? Is that what you mean?""You're not mad
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