The Surface of the Sun
The first time I understood the brutal side of Ivo, the first time I was able to reconcile the scientist with the poet with the lover with the violence, was when we were walking in a gale on the beach. A native to the area, I knew we should return home at once. But Ivo was animated by the wind's ferocity and turning to me with electric eyes proposed we walk further. I was astonished and told him a storm was coming, but he laughed and called my beach "tame". This was the first time I realized that he had seen more savage beaches, that for him half of the joy of what he did lay in the fact that he faced perilous conditions.
Later I would witness his tenacity when white-water rafting, hear him shout in triumph when sailing in a storm, watch him walk out to the furthest rock as the tide came in - threatening, though never touching, him. He was, at heart, a wild thing and like all wild things was only happy in his element.
I remember the sad expression on his face when he announced that my beach had no fossils on it, "Not a single one." It damned coastal Suffolk in his eyes; we, as a species, had failed.
Not so the Jurassic Coast where we vacationed that Easter. It had the decency to preserve the footsteps of history - that chaotic primeval beginning with which my lover was obsessed. Days he would spend combing the area for something he had not yet seen. Hours he would pour over a single rock, finding in it more answers than there were questions to ask.
I marveled at his savagery, juxtaposed so incongruously against his professorial mode.
"How do you manage?" I asked as we ordered tea in a quiet cafe.
"Manage what?" He was genuinely confused.
"To be such a walking contradiction?"
"I am not contradictory," he replied evenly. "I am what happens when a volcano on earth meets a tornado from the sun."