“I'll keep in touch, says Lige, ain't going to let you go. We have done something we don’t understand neither and partly do.” They have seen something they don’t understand and partly do, in the same breath. (…) We part like dancers, we briefly go down to our patrons, we briefly bow, and then we have turned and are gone. We have reached the very borderland of our act, the strange frontier. Then the lungs of the audience giving out, and a rasping rush of sound. Every last man, young and old, wants John Cole to touch my face, hold my narrow shoulders, put his mouth against my lips. Down down we go under them waters of desire. It is unlikely any of them could of holded their breath like this underwater. The held-in breath of the audience is not let out again.

He reaches out a hand, so openly and plainly that I believe I am going to expire. But I'm suspecting that every one of them would like to touch me and now John Cole is their ambassador of kisses. They know I'm a man because they have read it on the bill. (.) John Cole all spit and polish approaches from the far side of the stage and we hear the men draw in their breath like a sea tide drawing back on the shingle of a beach. Soft-breasted woman (.) I might be one of the footlights, with a burning wick for a heart. I guess it is true they are seeing a lovely woman. (.) I guess they don't know what they are seeing. Slowly slowly I walk down towards the men. It is like I am underwater in a pool of brightness. I am like something left over after a storm. “I step on the stage and find the lights blazing against me and yet in the same distance pulling me forward. The moonlight not able to flatter him because he was already beautiful.” Two soldiers walking under the bright nails of the stars. We move on and he’s just shaking like a cold child. Then war over it’s back to the bright dress. The berdache puts on men’s garb when he goes to war, this I know. But he’s like the plough-horse that got the whins.

John Cole gazes on them but he don’t like to let his eyes linger too long in case he gives offence.

Then with the ease of men who have rid themselves of worry we strolled among the Indian tents and heard the sleeping babies breathing and spied out the wondrous kind called by the Indians winkte or by white men berdache, braves dressed in the finery of squaws. John Cole and me sought out a hollow away from prying eyes. In the beautiful blue night there was plenty of visiting and the braves was proud and ready to offer a lonesome soldier a squaw for the duration of his passion. “Empurpled rapturous hills I guess and the long day brushstroke by brushstroke enfeebling into darkness and then the fires blooming on the pitch plains.

Days without end by sebastian barry