HE: There. You see?
SHE: What?
HE: There.
SHE: Where?
HE: There, where the bay curves inland. The two figures.
SHE: On the beach?
HE: At the very edge.
SHE: Someone on the sand, walking.
HE: Two of them... standing still.
SHE: I only see one -- only one figure.
HE: Two. Close together.
SHE: There are?
HE: Near to each other. Very near.
SHE: Looks like one big fat one to me. With a bulge, as if she were pregnant.
HE: She? How could you tell from this distance?
SHE: I can't.
HE: But you said --
SHE: A matter of speaking, nothing else.
HE: Ah. (Beat.) It's my wife.
SHE: Ah.
HE: My wife and someone else. I saw them. A month ago. It was colder then, and the air clear. I saw two figures moving toward each other, slowly...
SHE: The same two figures? The ones you see now... down there?
HE: Passing each other. Slowing down imperceptably, for a moment, hesitating...
SHE: But moving on? In different directions.
HE: Only for a moment.
SHE: And?
HE: Then they stopped. One stopped. Only one... at first.
SHE: One of the two? The other kept moving?
HE: Yes, my wife. The figure I knew to be my wife's, it kept moving.
SHE: Ah.
HE: Yes, but only for a moment... a second perhaps, or a fraction of a second, I don't know anymore. You know how it is. After such a long time.
SHE: You said it was a month ago.
HE: At least a month, maybe more. It could have been three, four months. It was cold.
SHE: Yes, you said that. (Beat.) It is spring now, almost summer.
HE: It was cold. She was wearing a sweater.
SHE: Down there by the water, walking?
HE: Where the sand is wet; waves sending scallops of foam up on the beach, washing their feet, obliterating their foot prints.
SHE: They were barefoot both of them?
HE: As if they were walking on water.
SHE: But that was some time ago, when it was cold.
HE: The sweater, it reached down to her thighs.
SHE: Just a sweater?
HE: A long, thick Cowichan sweater.
SHE: Nothing else?
HE: There was no need. Cowichan sweaters are warm.
SHE: But the wool is so coarse... on your skin...
HE: She was only going for for a short walk, along the beach.
SHE: Still --
HE: It was my sweater. When she left the cottage even her hands were hidden in the sleeves. She looked so vulnerable with nothing on her body but my sweater.
SHE: You followed her.
HE: She hadn't returned after an hour. The tide was coming in, and soon it would be dusk.
SHE: Ah.
HE: I walked to the point, and I saw them -- two small figures.
SHE: In the setting sun.
HE: Sometimes objects seem to get magnified... when the sun is... low... over the water.
SHE: Huh, I always thought they seemed smaller, because the sun looks so large near the horizon.
HE: They stood there, not moving, until I couldn't see them any longer. I wanted to go there, disrupt the silence between them. But I stayed. I stood here on the point above the beach and I was silent also. I sat down on the damp grass between the rocks and looked north, trying to penetrate the darkness... and the silence. Only when I heard her footsteps below me as she climbed the path, did I get up. She found me at the cottage, outstretched in an armchair, with a book in my lap... in the dark.
SHE: What was it? The book you were reading.
HE: The funny thing is, we were on vacation and I had left my reading glasses at home.
SHE: Huh.
HE: I'm all right for distance. I can read road signs a long ways away... But not up close. Not a book. Not without my glasses.
SHE: Did you see them again after that? Your wife... and that other person? Together?
HE: From that time on she left the cabin every day, just before dusk. Every night she returned with her hair wet and the smell of the sea on her skin. She would say she had gone for a swim, intrigued by the sea's phosphorescence. But I knew she was washing her body of the sins that it... had...
SHE is so close to HE, their bodies almost touch. They both circle each other very slowly.
SHE: Someone looking at us from a distance now, from a certain angle, may well think we are one and the same person.
HE: Pregnant?
SHE: Just an illusion -- for someone looking at us from a distance.
HE: Pregnant.
SHE: I told you --
HE: With his child.
SHE: With your child.
HE: My child?
SHE: Yes.
HE: Hm.
SHE: It was yours from the beginning.
HE: It was?
SHE: Yours and mine.
HE: Ah, yes...
SHE: Ours.
HE: Ours...
SHE: You followed me silently, in the dusk. Along the water's edge you found my invisible footprints. And you gave me a fright when you slipped your hands under my sweater --
HE: My sweater.
SHE: Your hands, sudden and cold, separating the coarse wool from my skin.
HE: My hands?
SHE: Two long shadows, across the wet sand. Two shadows as one.
HE: Swallowed up by the moonless night.
SHE: Now you remember.
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