Near the head of Golfo de California, on the Sonoran coast south of Cabo Tepoca, El Gran Desierto tapers tenuously to an end and a more nondescript country of dry barrancas and occasional water begins. It was along this desolate stretch of coastline that the Mexican philanthropist and businessman Ochetó de Mismas built his retreat of twelve thousand acres, with a comfortable house in the mission style, to which he flew ten or twelve times a year for a few days of relaxation and to swim in the gulf.
Among his many interests de Mismas was drawn to the physical sciences, and he sometimes attended international meetings to hear papers presented. At a meeting in Mexico City in 1988, of scientists and engineers working with difficult mathematical descriptions of turbulence in fluids, de Mismas was struck by the presentation of a young Canadian, a deaf man named Glenn Wycliff who had begun his career as a private student of Ralph Bagnold, the great English theoretician of the dynamics of windblown sand. In his paper, “The Double Curved Surface of Barchan Dunes at al-Kharijah,” Wycliff described dunes near a line of oases in southern Egypt in language that, for a scientific presentation, was almost recklessly sensual. He made his colleagues as wary as he had made his famous mentor; but de Mismas found Wycliff’s allusions provocative and stimulating. He invited him out to dinner. Over dessert, de Mismas made Wycliff an offer that took the young scientist by surprise. At his coastal home in Sonora, said de Mismas, there was an isolated colony of dunes. He was no expert, he insisted, but these dunes seemed an odd cross between coastal dunes and the draa, seif, and barchan dunes of interior deserts. Would Wycliff be interested in studying them, their shape and behavior? De Mismas would offer his home as a residence, plus a stipend and telephone and fax services. He would have a man come down every ten days or so from Puerto de Lobos, to the north, with fresh food. Wycliff was overwhelmed, and accepted. The two men embraced.
Even with a hearing aid in each ear, Wycliff could barely hear. He suffered from a deterioration of his auditory nerves, an irreversible condition but one that so far had compromised his work very little. His single regret was that it was not the esoteric evidence that sand dunes offered of the wind’s sweep and caress that had originally drawn him to their study, but the sound dunes made, a somewhat prolonged, vibrant booming that issued from them, as if from church bells buried beneath. The phenomenon was little studied, its cause unknown. Recordings Wycliff once heard had astonished and then haunted him; but the gradual loss of his hearing had pointed him in another direction, into the study of the types of curves winds create in dune fields and on the surface of dune seas. The de Mismas dunes would provide him an opportunity to study a system that was geographically isolated and, as de Mismas described it, unaffected either by the growth of vegetation or by the meanders of domestic stock.
Wycliff told de Mismas he had to finish a year of teaching, a temporary position at the University of Leeds, but that he would be able to move out to de Mismas’s estancia in Sonora in a few months. De Mismas said he would be glad to support him for several years, that Wycliff should bring a companion if he wished, and that he, de Mismas, would be visiting, but not frequently. Perhaps during such times, de Mismas suggested, Wycliff might want to go off for a few days to explore. Wycliff agreed enthusiastically with all of this, but on the flight back to Leeds he became troubled by what in de Mismas’s presence had seemed so suitable. He could not think of a companion—a woman—to go with him; and he did not entirely relish the idea of so many months alone. As his hearing failed, so, too, had his circle of friends diminished. His hearing might finally wane completely while he was living at de Mismas’s; he wondered if under those circumstances he might develop the flat, toneless voice of the profoundly deaf, yet not know it. He might, then, lose what little sociability he had left.
These thoughts did not stay with him long, however. He was buoyed by feelings of anticipation for the work, had strong feelings of gratitude toward de Mismas, a sense of personal fortune, and a nearly physical desire for the sublime beauty of the dunes, emotions that all ran together with him.
Wycliff arrived at the de Mismas house in August, a single passenger, with Hector Gutierrez, de Mismas’s pilot. It took him some weeks to accustom himself to the heat, but by October he had in place a regular schedule of work and a grasp of his research problems. The dunes were more attractive, both mathematically and aesthetically, than de Mismas had been able to make clear. They stood inland from the sea about a mile and were nearly two square miles in extent, rising to a height of sixty or seventy feet. They were surrounded on three sides by a vast playa and on the west by a scabrous plain with little vegetation. Within this space, like dancers on a stage, the dunes shifted continuously, year after year, an enormously complex movement that left some dunes isolated for months at the periphery or in the interior of the dune field before they were reincorporated. All this Wycliff deduced by hiking around and through the dunes and from the first few months of data from his recording anemometers.
De Mismas visited twice in the fall with Gutierrez, both times insisting Wycliff not disturb his research by going away. De Mismas listened attentively to Wycliff’s description of his work and walked across the dunes with him on each occasion. Wycliff, comparing the first meeting with a less-than-enthusiastic second meeting, and contrasting in his mind the different ways de Mismas had paid attention, worried that he had become long-winded and boring on the subject of wind-shaped dunes, that de Mismas might be having some second thoughts about his generosity. Just before Christmas, de Mismas faxed to ask Wycliff if he might take a short trip, as they had once agreed, so that de Mismas might have the house alone at Christmas time. Wycliff made every effort to be gracious in assenting, but he felt turned out.
De Mismas maintained this arrangement into the spring, telling Wycliff each time he wanted to come up from Mexico City that he would like the house to himself. Wycliff was hurt. His hearing was so diminished now he could hardly detect sound. His isolation, his truncation, felt extreme. He longed, too, for a woman’s company, sometimes to the point of anguish. This desire was exacerbated by wandering the sensuous forms of the dunes, his body, like the dunes, tongued by breezes from the sea or by hot winds from the interior. But he did not hold on to these depressions. The research he was doing, measuring the changing radius of curvature of a single dune, correlating this to a pattern of seasonal winds and observing changes in the heights of individual dunes (as though the dune field were breathing through a year, inhaling and exhaling)—all this complexity held his imagination and soothed him.
One day in June a fax arrived saying Ochetó de Mismas was coming up with two friends, that he would welcome Wycliff’s company, and that Wycliff should plan to stay at the house, to take his meals with them and perhaps enjoy a swim together.
Wycliff did not sense the plane’s approach. He was intently photographing a ridge, a place where two dunes that had once merged were again separating, when he saw the Cessna’s shadow cross in the frame. He looked up to see the blue and white plane wagging its wings and starting its downwind turn. He collected his notebook and equipment and walked back to his Honda three-wheeler.
Wycliff pulled up at the airstrip with a luggage trailer just as Hector was shutting the engines down. Hector signaled from the pilot’s seat, hola. Wycliff could see de Mismas exiting onto the wing on the far side to assist his passengers, and he brought the trailer around. He had expected, for some reason, two of de Mismas’s business associates—there was nothing in the house to suggest de Mismas ever came with his family—but these were two young women. They were dressed expensively and fashionably, as was de Mismas, as though all of them had just come from a party. De Mismas was, as usual, impeccably groomed. He remembered de Mismas’s cultured voice, the deep, lilting run of his language, how perfectly it matched the gracious movements he saw now as de Mismas helped the women in high heels down the plane’s two-step ladder. They all wore impenetrable dark glasses. One of the women wore a white silk dress. In the brilliant light Wycliff could see the shadow of her slip, and, when wind pressed around the airplane, the outline of her nipples and the interior curve of her thighs. In spite of the heat and the confinement of the plane, both women seemed fresh—poised and energetic. Wycliff initially took them for models. He expected them to move with languid boredom. But then he realized their breasts were too large and they seemed, to him, too ebullient to be models. As quickly, he realized they were an expression of de Mismas’s appetite, that they were here for him.
De Mismas introduced him to Estrella, with a mane of blue-black hair, and to Mora, in the white dress, and asked if he would help Hector. The women smiled at him, shook hands in a friendly way, and began walking toward the house with de Mismas, arm in arm.
Hector had already started loading the trailer with soft leather baggage and insulated food containers. Wycliff could speech-read Spanish, but Hector, in an effort to help, would make it more difficult by exaggerating the movement of his lips and the other muscles of his face. Wycliff learned they had brought roast duck, veal, and salmon. Hector would heat it all in the microwave and prepare the vegetables and salads fresh. Hector swept his hand over the containers and made an exaggerated, conspiratorial face, as though to eat like this was to get away with something.
“Las chicas?” inquired Wycliff.
Hector, crossing his legs and pulling his fists repeatedly toward his belly, made an extreme gesture of pain and joy. Then he shook his right hand violently, as though he had burned it.
Wycliff wanted to ask if Hector knew why de Mismas had asked him to stay, but he decided the question would reveal an intention he did not have. Hector had pulled a broomstick from the luggage compartment and stepped to the edge of the airstrip, where he began tossing small stones in the air and slamming them off into the desert with terrific swings. Wycliff was aware of the sharply rising whir of the stick, like a quail exploding from brush, and of the click and whine of the stone as it cut the desert air. But he heard neither.
De Mismas settled the women in a single bedroom that looked out onto the gulf and which communicated with his own bedroom. De Mismas had decorated the house with pieces of Aztec and Mayan pottery and with works by contemporary Mexican sculptors and painters. Wycliff had put the rooms in perfect order that morning, and the women, to whom de Mismas was giving a tour, were complimenting de Mismas on his taste and on the design of his home when Hector and Wycliff walked in with the luggage.
“My young friend,” began de Mismas in Spanish, gesturing toward Wycliff, “is an eminent scientist, a man with an international standing, but he keeps a beautiful house.” They all laughed except Wycliff, who merely smiled and nodded. Mora held his eyes for a fraction longer than he expected, and he looked away, acutely conscious of her physical presence and of a physical longing that arose in him, which felt wild and dangerous under the circumstances.
“Why don’t we change,” said de Mismas in English, “then you can tell us, Glenn, what you have been doing. I’m sure the ladies would appreciate it.”
Wycliff helped Hector prepare a lunch of fresh fruit and cold salmon. When he met Hector’s eye, Hector read his mind and made a long, painful face, cupping his crotch with one hand. Wycliff realized in that moment that his own physical desire had overwhelmed another longing, a hope as desperate, as intense, for another sort of union.
They ate lunch in a mirador, a gazebo separate from the house, where the wind off the water cooled them. Wycliff explained his research at de Mismas’s gentle urging, though he felt it was too esoteric a subject, too great a presumption on his part. The women listened attentively and, to his surprise, asked questions that seemed more than polite. He was restrained in his responses, for fear of losing their attention. Again, Mora gave him to believe, with a direct look and turn of her smile, that she understood and appreciated what he was saying. And that she liked him.
“Let’s swim, shall we?” announced de Mismas, rising from the table. He nodded to Hector to clear the dishes, motioned the women to their room with a dismissive movement of his hand, and then said, “Will you take a swim, Glenn?”
“Yes, sure,” said Wycliff.
“Do you like them?”
“The women?”
“Yes, Glenn. Is there someone else here?”
“Well they seem very … spirited. Very nice women. Bright, good-looking.”
De Mismas gazed out over the gulf with the air of a magnate. “Do you want to take one?”
“Want?”
“Yes! Why else are they here? If you wish, they will listen politely all night while you discuss complicated theoretical approaches to the study of turbulence—and, I can tell you, they will love your descriptions of dunes when you get into that ecstatic state of yours—but they are here, really, for us to fuck. Do you want to sleep with Mora?”
Wycliff could not respond, though his mouth moved in the shape of words.
“These are clean women,” offered de Mismas. “There is no problem with that. Is there a difficulty I do not see? Is it men?”
“No,” Wycliff blurted.
“Can you understand them, then? Their English is not very good.”
“No, I can read them … Mora more easily.”
“Go, change. Later, if you decide you want Mora, just take her to bed. I give you that. I am not offended. I respect you. I respect what you are doing, and realize you are lonely out here.”
He had not been in the water for more than a week. He enjoyed thinking of himself as a mote in the great gulf, suspended just there where its waves washed up on the Mexican shore, their energy dissipating into heat and increasing the Earth’s spin to a degree too slight to measure. Mora swam toward him. On the beach he had been embarrassed by the urge to look at her, at her taut, voluptuous body, the delicate bones of her face, at the utterly unblemished skin. Her green eyes.
“What is it for you?” she asked, treading water next to him.
“What?”
“You understand my lips?” she said.
“Yes, sí.”
“You want a friend?”
“Yes. I have been here many months by myself!”
“That is too bad. I can fix that, you know?”
“Is that true?”
“Yes. The choice, all my life, I make that.”
She swam off, with a look that transfixed him. He continued treading water with smooth, coordinated movements of his limbs, like a salmon at the edge of a rapid.
Hector prepared veal for dinner and a large green salad. Afterward, de Mismas showed slides of two trips he had made recently, one to Athens and the second to a part of the Namib Desert Wycliff himself had always wanted to visit, huge dune fields around Sossusvlei, west of Sesriem and the Naukluft Mountains.
“Glenn, you would have appreciated this country,” said de Mismas urbanely. “But didn’t you, you told me, earlier in your career, travel to Tanzania to see some dunes of volcanic ash? And weren’t you also in northern Algeria, studying gypsum dunes?”
“You have a very good memory, Señor de Mismas.” De Mismas had been like this all evening, giving him an opportunity to participate more fully in the conversation, even to embroider his accomplishments. He wanted to trust de Mismas, but he sensed the edge of something. He remained deferential and did not exaggerate his stories.
They finished the evening in the mirador, sipping aquavit, the four of them, Hector having gone to bed. The women wore shawls. De Mismas speculated about Mexico’s economic future and spoke about Mexican politics in a way that was very engaging, with philosophical acceptance and humor.
“Shall we go in, Estrella?” he said finally.
Wycliff’s sexual desire surged as they departed, but it was tempered now by other emotions. He appreciated the suggestion of depth in Mora’s company. He felt much more at ease than he had earlier in the day. When Estrella and de Mismas left, Mora leaned over and blew out the two large candles on the table, which had been guttering in the wind.
“I can’t understand you if I can’t see your face,” said Wycliff.
Mora waved her hand in front of him. Who wishes to talk? Our warmth, our attentiveness to each other, this will not be enough?
They were on a wrought-iron bench. When he reached an arm around her she moved closer to rest against him. They gazed at the starlit gulf. After a time, Mora pressed him gently.
Rising suddenly to his feet he felt dizzy and, with his first steps, a flood of anxiety. What had started hours before as driven, sexual desire was now a desire, nearly painful, for companionship. He knew that this arrangement, sleeping with her, de Mismas’s involvement with each of them, would not help. He followed close behind on the path to the house, breathing her. His desire, when he tested it like a man nervously twanging a bowstring, was intense. He had been here before; the sex would not be enough. He craved what was unbounded, impossible. He wanted to move with her beneath the surface of their bodies.
They stepped through the sliding doors into the living room to see Estrella and de Mismas stretched out together on the couch watching the large-screen television.
“Treasure of the Sierra Madre, en Español,” said de Mismas. “Have you read him, Glenn: Traven?”
He shook his head. He could hardly see de Mismas’s words in the soft blue light.
“We are to bed now,” said Mora. She tugged lightly on his arm. They all said good night. He followed her to his room at the opposite end of the house. She looked around, then turned the light on in his bathroom.
“Can you shower while I come back?” she asked. She looked at him with unexpected sweetness.
He showered. She returned wearing her high heels and a powder blue peignoir. He sat naked at the edge of the bed looking at the large, dark aureoles of her breasts. She cradled his head against her stomach. He slid back, turning the sheets, reaching for her hand. She stepped out of her shoes, crossed over him nimbly, and stretched out with her hands overlapped on his hip. The intensity of her desire, the hunger he sensed in her touch, frightened him. He wondered if making love would make the loneliness disappear or only deepen it. The moment, he felt, was precarious for him.
“When the moon is full,” he said, “and I wake up before dawn, I go out to the dunes. Sometimes there is dew on the sand. It twinkles—do you know that word?—twinkles in the moonlight, like stars. The dunes look like a cluster of stars then, a galaxy, stretching away to the Sierra de San Antonio. It’s like standing outside the universe, looking back.
“Do you ever think about things like that?” he asked her.
She moved her head gently, no, against his chest.
“I think about them. More, even, maybe than about this,” he said, lining her breast with his hand. He shifted, to pull her against him, to give her the hollow of his shoulder. He wanted to trust her company, to act on the genuineness of their passion, but he could not move.
He became aware after a while of her fingers, tapping softly on his chest. He lifted his head to look. She put a finger to her ear and then, her eyes wide, pointed to the ceiling. He did not understand. She tapped her temple, as though urging him to listen, and then made an abrupt, undulating motion with her hand, which he knew, unmistakably, was wind.
He went to the window. A storm had broken on the coast and was sweeping inland. With his hands pressed to the wall he could feel what he was not able to hear.
Mora, naked, had pulled on one of his T-shirts.
When their eyes met she made a smooth gesture with her hand, indicating they should go out. He began searching for his pants, wondering what he had for her to wear.
She was still looking straight at him. “You, either, are not owned,” she said, lifting her chin to him and smiling.
The big winds would wobble them, he thought, until they reached the dunes. Then warm, still air would envelop them, and the deep current of the wind would roar over whatever hollow in the dunes they chose.