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It was stiflingly hot. Alcée got up and joined her at the window, looking over her shoulder. The rain was coming down in sheets obscuring the view of far-off cabins and enveloping the wood in a gray mist. The playing of the lightning was incessant.
The storm forces the lovers together and isolates them from the world around them. Its ferocity acts like a shield that keeps them in and everyone else out, and the time it takes for the storm to move through the town provides the occasion for the lovers to set aside other obligations and commitments. Even references to the heat and lightning play into the flushed feelings of the lovers. Their passion feels as inevitable and unstoppable as the storm.
They did not heed the crashing torrents, and the roar of the elements made her laugh as she lay in his arms.
Calixta had been afraid as the storm moved in, worried about levees breaking and the house being struck by lightning. Her emotions and thoughts were in a heightened state of arousal, and as quick as lightning, the fear in her eyes subsides, and Alcée sees in them a “drowsy gleam” of desire. By the time they take to the bed, rather than fearing the storm, Calixta becomes like the storm—elemental, insistent, and natural. Her inhibitions fall away, and she and Alcée are like “white flame” meeting and merging.
The rain was over, and the sun was turning the gleaming green world into a palace of gems.
As Alcée and Calixta part, the storm has renewed and refreshed the world, just as their spirits have been renewed and refreshed. More than that, as the storm recedes, it leaves behind a paradise—perhaps not an Eden, but the paradise of the ancient cultures, the walled garden of delights built for the use of the king and queen. When Alcée and Calixta reach the height of their passion, they find themselves “at the very borderland of life’s mystery.” The storm-washed landscape suggests that the mystery is the creative and regenerative potential of their union.
