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Show /<?*> from Texas to this darkened room, to this bed, to this man whom once in her darkest swoon of love she had kissed by moving her lips into that black scooped-out hole in his arm, feeling her love for him deepening and darkening as she did so, feeling their union in the darkest deepest part of her body. "Jess..." "Ah, but he tried to rape me," she said wonderingly. "But just as a man. Not-" "Yes, that's all I thought he was-until I turned around." "And he was black. But, darling, that's everybody's dilemma." Yes, only a man, and her encounter only the brutal, primitive, age-old act of ravishment re-enacted once more, only once more man betrayed as he is always betrayed by himself and others to fail the possibilities of love, only once more after centuries of failure and betrayal. And now the long ages had come to her youth. Feeling them, feeling age-old herself, she sorrowed gravely for that man's frail flesh, for die dark vulnerability of it and for its common humanity. But no less she sorrowed for herself and for Milt, sorrowed for everyone, for each fitful spark of life alone against the prevailing night. "Jess..." "Yes," she said, and turned in the dark into his arms. If darkness was her world and darkness was herself, then darkness must be her strength, must spring her only joy. "Yes," she said sadly, sinking to him, enfolded. "Yes." W e * * * * * * I77 |