The painter watched till the black head was a mere dancing speck in the water.
“That was amusing,” he thought. “He wouldn’t have called me ‘thou’ if I had had my clothes on. And he is a better man than I....”
Back on the beach the painter abandoned himself anew to sheer sensation. He did not think. He scarcely remembered. He simply felt in every nerve the glow of the sun, the caress of the air, the pulse of the sea lapping softly at his feet. As he lay there, happy and languid in the warm sand, the sound of splashing in the shallows came like an intrusion. But opening his eyes he saw the young man of Malamocco come up from the water, seemly and sunburned and glistening in the light. It might have been a young sea-god rising from the waves. The painter smiled as he watched the dripping apparition, so in keeping with his humour. The youth caught the smile and answered it. He came and threw himself down in the sand beside the painter. They looked at one another, the smile still in their eyes.
The painter was glad he had hidden his clothes. He felt how absurd were those distinctions in the world from which he came, of nationality, of belief, of rank. They could be laid aside with one’s coat. This was another world, with other standards. He and the young man beside him—by what different roads had they travelled to this beach! But what influence in their lives had wrought upon them like that secret pre-natal influence which on separate continents, among different races, had cast them in an identical mould? Here lay the two of them together by the sea, children both of earth, without distinction or preference between them—unless that most ancient preference of earth for the fit.
“How white you are!” exclaimed the stranger. “I am all black from the sun.” He lifted his arm to show how the darkness of the lower tan shaded into tone but a trifle paler. “When we fish in the lagoon we often go like this. But even on the sea the sun burns through our clothes. I have always been black. I never saw anybody so white as you are—except perhaps women, and sick people, and the signori at the Lido.”
Shame filled the painter—shame, and a passionate envy. He looked admiringly at the young fisherman stretched out beside him, followed all the lines of the strong bronzed figure, without a curve of excess in its supple youth, and without one of deficiency. Then he glanced at his own lank white limbs. He felt the cut of being classed with women and sick people and signori! This was the only shame of nakedness—to have a body not worth looking at. Instinctively he took up handfuls of the fine sand and poured it over himself. The mockery of the life he had fled from that morning surged back over him. How he hated the imprisonment of houses, the lure of ambition, the thirst for pleasure, that had made him what he was! How he envied this fisherman his life of sun and sea, and his untroubled youth, and his unspoiled body!
“You take too little at a time,” laughed the fisherman. He sat up to scoop out great handfuls of sand, which he threw over the painter’s body until it was quite buried. Then he heaped a mound over himself, and looked inquiringly at the painter. “I know by your skin that you are not of my mestiere. But people in Venice do many things. What is your trade?”
The painter felt more comfortable under the sand, and the unsuspecting “ti” of the dialect touched him again.
“My mestiere is to paint,” he said. “I make pictures.”
“Ah, that is a nice trade! My cousin is on one of the Chioggia steamers, and he makes pictures of the bragozzi when he has taken the tickets. You should see how beautiful they are. Do you paint bragozzi?”