12th
“Rosalind was calling me; the real Rosalind, the one who dwelt inside, and showed herself too seldom. The other, the practical, capable one, was her own convincing creation, not herself. I had seen her begin to build it when she was a sensitive, fearful, yet determined child. She became aware by instinct, perhaps sooner than the rest of us, that she was in a hostile world, and deliberately equipped herself to face it. The armour had grown slowly, plate by plate. I had seen her find her weapons and become skilled with them, watched her construct a character so thoroughly and wear it so constantly that for spells she almost deceived herself.
I loved the girl one could see. I loved her tall slim shape, the poise of her neck, her small pointed breasts, her long slim legs: and the way she moved, and the sureness of her hands, and her lips when she smiled. I loved the bronze-gold hair that felt like heavy silk in one’s hand, her satin-skinned shoulders, her velvet cheeks: and the warmth of her body, and the scent of her breath.
All these were easy to love — too easy: anyone must love them.
They needed her defences: the crust of independence and indifference: the air of practical, decisive reliability; the unroused interest, the aloof manner. The qualities were not intended to endear, and at times they could hurt; but one who had seen the how and why of them could admire them, if only as a triumph of art over nature.
But now it was the under-Rosalind calling gently, forlornly, all armour thrown aside, the heart naked.
And again there are no words.
Words exist that can, used by a poet, achieve a dim monochrome of the body’s love, but beyond that they fail clumsily.
My love flowed out to her, hers back to me. Mine stroked and soothed. Hers caressed. The distance — and the difference — between us dwindled and vanished. Neither one of us existed any more; for a time there was a single being that was both. There was escape from the solitary cell; a brief symbiosis, sharing all the world….
No one else knew the hidden Rosalind. Even Michael and the rest caught only glimpses of her. They did not know at what cost the overt Rosalind had been wrought. None of them knew my dear, tender Rosalind longing for escape, gentleness and love; grown afraid now of what she had built for her own protection; yet more afraid still, of facing life without it.
Duration is nothing. Perhaps it was only for an instant we were together again. The importance of a point is in its existence; it has no dimensions.”
—— John Wyndham, The Chrysalids
