“Skiing in the dark”

“Skiing in the dark” is Richard Cantwell’s metaphor for a night shared with Renata, joining darkness, remembered intimacy, and the question of whether one person can feel accompanied by another who is asleep. Its decisive significance lies in the metaphor’s change of ownership: what begins as Richard’s description of a disorienting night becomes Renata’s image for loving him throughout it, then a way to insist on their present closeness despite his correction of her account.

Meaning and First Use

Richard first describes the experience through a comparison that immediately unsettles itself: “It was like ski–ing in the dark. Not really ski–ing but really dark.” The opening offers a recognizable activity, then withdraws its literal force. The repeated qualification leaves darkness as the phrase’s firmest element; skiing becomes a way to approach an experience that the speaker does not straightforwardly identify as skiing. The image consequently carries both movement and uncertainty: something like a familiar run is being evoked, but the conditions make it difficult to see clearly.

That self-correction matters. Richard does not give a detailed account of what happened during the night; he offers a compact image, then distinguishes its darkness from its apparent activity. The phrase preserves that gap rather than resolving it. It can describe the night’s quality without making every part of the experience explicit, and the later exchange develops its meaning through dialogue rather than through an explanatory narration.

Renata’s Recasting of the Image

When Renata asks Richard whether he still loves her in the cold morning light of Venice, he answers that he does and accepts her description of the morning as cold and hard. She then returns to the night in his own terms: “I loved you all night when I was ski–ing in the dark.” The phrase now names not merely an atmosphere but the duration of her love. Its movement from Richard’s simile to Renata’s declaration makes the image relational: she uses his language to tell him what the night meant to her.

Richard asks, “How do you do that?” Renata answers by explaining the metaphor from within its skiing terms: “It is the same runs except that it is dark and the snow is dark instead of light. You ski the same; controlled and good.” Her explanation holds sameness and altered conditions together. The runs remain the same, and the skier’s manner remains controlled and good, while darkness changes what can be seen. The image thus presents continuity without pretending that the night is simply ordinary: familiar movement persists, but the world through which it moves is harder to make out.

Sleep, Presence, and Disagreement

Richard tests the image against its duration, asking whether she skied all night and observing that this would mean many runs. Renata’s answer separates the metaphor from literal, continuous activity: “No. Afterwards I slept soundly and well and I woke happy. You were with me and you were asleep like a baby.” Her account moves from the imagined runs to sleep and waking. The phrase belongs to a larger description of the night, but it does not mean that she remained awake and literally skied throughout it.

Richard contradicts the part of her account that places him beside her: “I wasn't with you and I was not asleep.” Renata does not settle the disagreement by changing her claim about the past. Instead, she answers, “You're with me now,” and holds him close and tight. The shift to the present gives the exchange its emotional resolution without making the earlier accounts identical: he denies that he was with her or asleep, while she asserts the closeness she can establish now. In this conversation, the image’s uncertainty is not removed; it is answered by a present gesture and declaration.

Later Echo and Significance

At a later meal, after requesting a ration of the alleged Canadian bacon, Richard turns to Renata and asks how she is, calling her “my dearest.” She says she is “Quite hungry, I suppose,” then thanks him “for being good for so long a time.” Richard replies that it was easy. The exchange does not repeat the skiing image, but its reference to his being good for a long time echoes the earlier conversation’s attention to duration and conduct. Set beside the night’s account, the ordinary question of hunger and the request for breakfast place the couple’s intimacy within a continuing, everyday exchange.

The phrase therefore works less as a fixed symbol than as a compact, revisable description. Its first use emphasizes darkness and qualification; Renata’s use gives it the duration of love; her explanation makes controlled movement possible in altered conditions; and her final insistence moves from disputed recollection to present closeness. The metaphor does not explain the night away. It gives the characters a shared language for describing it while leaving their differing statements about sleep and presence audible.