Mikhail, you left the window open. Look what you have done.
—What?
—The morning air has invaded my shoulders. May God forgive you, my darling.
Her plump hand coursed over his rough cheek. In her eyes something resembled a smile, and everything in her body lay calm and relaxed.
She said: Will you rub my back a little?
She turned over, giving him her back. The vale of her waist plunged down as the hill of her soft buttocks rose up—the line of their circular cleavage indicated beneath the shriveled white sheet.
This body, all of it, is a mask in its beauty, its strangeness and sleepy stretches; it contains nothing, has no message. Its warmth is generated as if from behind a smooth metallic surface that slips from hands. Its curves are deliberate, geometrical, foreign. He does not know their language.
The roundness of her bare shoulders: two solid, supple rocks on the sides of the elongated elevation of her back, surrendered to his hands. He caresses the soft vale with deliberation. His hands possess knowledge, elicit a special infatuation of their own. He senses a large feline’s open eyes in the darkness of the old cemetery buried in the mountain. The sighs of deep, tender pleasure coming across times that do not pass away, under the scorching sun of the Valley of the Queens. His hands move to and fro with the rhythm of flagging funeral rites. He inclines his face without impetuosity, inhaling the sharp scent of the rough hair at the back of her head, aware of her smile taking place then disappearing. Under her right shoulder is a light, longish scar: trace of an old wound? Of a child’s fall? Or a cut by claws made in an old lusty battle?
He said to her, from behind her head: There is an old wound on your back.
He did not go on; he came down with his lips touching the thin line as if trying to heal or erase it; clearly it was too late, much too late.
She said to him with her mouth buried in the pillow: Mikhail, what are you doing? Are you rubbing my back or caressing it? Beware.
Her laughter was faint, tense. His extended fingers moved faster; he pressed with the surface of his two palms, knowing they would never be filled. In one motion she turned on her back and opened herself to him: breasts pouring; the other face of her body, extended, rich, demanding suddenly, on display. She emitted her faint involuntary sighs. The merging of the two bodies, the joining of lips was instant. His virility fully awake; he felt in his eyes and in the tenseness of his figure the fierceness of attack.
She said to him in a plaintive, pleading, desiring tone: Mikhail, don’t hurt me.
The world’s rock collapsed. The column broke and fell; everything withdrew.
The contractions that followed announced failure. He joined his face to her shoulder: a pressing touch of failure and frustration that asked no pardon, a touch of hurt pride that neither apologizes nor asks for anything.
Her request “Don’t hurt me” had reached him as words from a practiced professional. How many times had this exclamation been repeated with the same precision? The white light of a letter she had received only the day before flashed in front of his eyes. She had concealed the letter with an intimate, secretive gesture. How many—besides he—had hurt her? The repetitive act cancelled him, made him anonymous, a number in an unknowable mathematical progression, a nameless member of a certain class. He stopped being Mikhail and turned into an element, among others, in a recurring code whose symbols had been entangled and disentangled a thousandfold.
He broke down, knew for the first time how the old marble cracks. She was surprised by his failure. Her eyes vented cruelty, anger. He was not there.
He said to himself: This surprise is nothing new for her. She’s expert at this game. For too long she’s been living at the gates of Astarte, against the pillars of the Ramasseum that never collapse. The lives of others, the presence of others, is always within her. Who are they? Who is he? She is aware and calculating; she is open-eyed even in the sigh just before reaching climax. This awareness isolates me, exiles me; it makes me, too, one of the others.
God can separate a man from his own heart. But why this cruelty from myself, from her?
He lay down, silent, withdrawn. Then he got up and sat in front of the window. The wintry dry tree was without flowers or leaves. The room around them was hostile, the morning dismal once again. The window was still cracked open, issuing cold air.
She said to him: Anyway, I will get in touch by phone at 5:30. If I don’t call you then I’ll see you at the Club.
He had said to her: I missed you a lot. I really missed you. It seems as if I haven’t seen you for ages.
She said: It’s wonderful to hear this from you. It really uplifts my morale.
He said: I never hear anything of the sort from you.
She said: You know I don’t say such things. I assume you know them.
Her voice was tight, dry, on the verge of breakdown.
He said: There is never ever anything assumed in such matters.
She said: I hope you’ll wear the white pullover, so you can remember me.
He said: I don’t need it to remember you.
He said to himself: Wasn’t it nice that she had told him such a thing before—that she’d missed him—despite her claim to the contrary?
He went back to his idée fixe, recurring to the point of boredom: This romance is sullen, stern, overwrought. Even now I cannot believe it. It’s as if it were a badly-written romantic novel, with ready-made clichés. Does all this talk mean anything? It’s a struggle with words, isn’t it? Tiring to the utmost. There is neither victory nor defeat. Will unity and fusion be realized? Is it the struggle of Jacob with the angel on the staircase that does not reach heaven? Is it a stumbling, awkward Hamlet without tragedy, and no stage? Have I ever considered my life, taking into account the defeats and victories? Not at all. How many defeats have fallen on my soul and body? How many victories? How many miscarried intentions, burnt out dreams, black suns?
He said: Why these blue sunglasses? The sun is not so strong right now.
She said: Don’t they suit me? Look. Too big on my face? What about the color? Darker than it should be?
He said: That’s not the point. They suit you very well. Everything you put on partakes of your beauty.
She said: God bless you, my love. You always compliment me.
He said: No, it is true. But why the sunglasses in the late afternoon?
She said: To erect a wall between me and the world.
He said: Oh, please come off it. What wall? No wall can ever stand between you and the world. You, yourself, are a cosmic force.
He said to himself: This cliché is very suitable.
He said: Forgive me. I am happy today, an irrational happiness: a strange receptivity for no reason. Alertness and openness toward everything, all day, after your telephone call this morning. Once I knew I would be meeting you, the rhythm of the day became more dynamic, more refreshing, livelier and larger than life itself.
Her large, round, bronze earrings were swaying under her ears in a gypsy mode. Her arms, their downy hair barely visible in the sun, ended with broad silver bracelets holding the wrists in tight confinement, inciting an erotic mood.
She looked at him with scrutinizing eyes, a look that freighted contentment and something else, as if she wished he would be easier, simpler, happier, and more direct than he was. Of course, she knew she was dealing with him, himself, as he was, and that such wishes were sterile and pointless. It was as if she were saying: Doesn’t he go too far in the seriousness of this love, doesn’t he go too far in his anguish, his pride, his rejection, his devotion, without ever actually moving in one of two possible directions?
Long spells of torment and misery had gotten hold of him. Now there was this lively and joyful tremor shaking his body after a period of depletion.
He said to her, to her person that he kept within himself, but while physically looking at her, yet as if he were not seeing her: Not bad, not bad at all. I was expecting all this, or
half expecting it. It has become a completely familiar pattern. No, no, let me finish what I need to say. The fact is, I don’t admit such things. I must say that I have made a fool of myself, the perfect image of the fool in these matters. Just the same, I am not sorry. But I hope that now you are content, whatever the reason is behind your contentment. No, don’t give me good justifications and arguments, exact and logical reasons. They too are possible, even facile. I want the real reason—if there is such a thing—if you are really ready to put it forward. We have reached now an implicit agreement to avoid the issue of the real problem and the essence of the real question. Real? Is there ever anything real? Well, I have in mind something, and you do too. But I know that my version of the real is different from, even contradictory to yours. One cancels the other. But what would I know? Do I know the implicit agreement, which is not to answer the genuinely important questions, not to ask them even, and that that is the crux of the matter? Here we are now. Do I love you? I ask myself this question a thousand times and I answer in the negative a thousand times—no, no, no. Yet I love you. Even now, my love is a rock that cannot be displaced.
In the twilight that always carries with it an ambiguity not to be resolved, the bite of yearning for your arms gets hold of me suddenly. Lonesomeness is increased, becomes unbearable when one is in love. I am tormented by a desire to meet people, to drown my loneliness in words, in chatter, in sarcasm, in a glass of whisky with water and ice. With sex too. Easy solution? No. There are no solutions. Sex is passing, an act of emptying tension—mechanical and organic, mere penetration of flesh. I am in a car creeping through crowded and noisy streets, helpless and defenseless, when the silent light of a car comes from the opposite direction with incomprehensible and hidden power. A stab in the pallor of sunset.
He said to himself: Childish torments are painful for grown-ups.
I am alone in the taxi, when a whiff of your perfume reaches me from nowhere, from the burning Nile sky in the evening, from above the crowns of desolate trees on the island soil of the other shore, between high-rise buildings, wires, trees, columns, the ancient obelisk and minaret, emerging from a land I thought I had left and forgotten. The pale moon drips blood in the sky. The falling of blood on earth has a subtle effect. The dry sand and the green grass are soaked with blood. The stabbed sky-flesh still drips blood. I love you, though I curse you and resent you a thousand times. A thousand times my heart inclined in devotion. Yes, this is your old song.
He bent over her in his room. There was this whiff of body scent. He had made coffee. He bolted it while looking at her, smiling because he was with her. She left her coffee to cool. She sat on the armchair, open-legged, steady in her low-heeled expensive shoes. The shoes looked old, dusty, soft, carelessly put on, as if they were an extension of her feet’s strong flesh. Her eyes were heavy, her body exuding its lustful melody.
How beautiful she is today—after a month’s absence? Impossible? Not really. This long night of wounded pride, of buried desolation, of the usual love-sickness, seemed incurable. But now he is cured, his heart awakened and flourishing. How gentle her gaze on him, yet what a stranger she seems to him.
A soft and supple sense between two old friends in middle age is like the touch of figs whose skins have thinned, almost breaking and falling at the last stage of ripeness, yet delicious in the last moments of their tenacity. He said to himself: As if I had not known her before yesterday, yet as if I had known her all my life. His sharp desire quivers, flashes, glowing steadily on a calm fire. He feels indulgent as he approaches her, as they join together. He closes his eyes to the faint traces left on her face by the fingers of time—the imprints of birds on a sandy shore. The slight heaviness of her hands, their exciting tenderness. The intimate affection between two embracing bodies, without complications, with erotic yearning coming out of him now—without frantic flaring—flowing in a steady current of tenderness. Her clothes lay dispersed on the armchair, on the clothes rack, on the edge of the bed and the small table. The sides of her black bra adorned by lace are dangling, the clasp made of silvery thin metal; between the cups a tiny rose of red fabric, somewhat wilted, shriveled. Her long, beige, transparent panty-hose is on the armchair: one of its legs swings free without reaching the floor. Her spread-out skirt on the wooden bedstead seems ample, strange, empty, though its tightly-woven fabric feels warm as if it retained a dark intimate spot of her sweat. He feels secure, trusting in this feminine presence that surrounds him now, as if it were a signal along a somber road whose ending is unknown. Once more, he recognizes the sharp, rich womanish smell, that of every woman. The whiffs of powder and sweat, the taste of honeyed saliva, the scent of worn, diffused perfume, the warmth of the barely flowing juices. He is surrounded by the fragrance of light, pungent whiffs, by the aromas of love in this female body as he buries his face in its folds, in its pleats and tucks. The body that gets endlessly recreated, always renewed, surprising each time, yet still the same body. Suddenly he feels strange, the object of an invasion. In the moment of intimate merging, she steals away. There is only this tight, tender entity, nameless and impersonal even though possessing specific features—familiar yet without identity—which his hands know and plunge into without difficulty or effort. A familiar body yet unknowable fills his arms now. Her hard surfaces soften with the fresh moisture of assurance. The last silent kiss, as she looks contentedly and quietly at him, reveals her small white separated teeth. A tangle of rough hair sticks to her narrow forehead, as if waiting. The two of them fall into a quasi-slumber, almost oblivious of each other. He ridicules himself a little, contentedly though, since he senses his power and confidence in the usual masculine triumph. Her obedient, subservient body with its bright skin, the color of sand, undulates one last time, its waters flung on the shore in an effort for final consummation.
This gift that is never the same: each time it is something unique and extraordinary. So what worry of his is eating him up?
She had said to him: Yes, I love you. Haven’t we spent six days together? Isn’t this an expression of affection?
He said to himself: As if she hates the word love, no sooner does she mention it than she withdraws it. Isn’t she simply being truthful though?
She said to him: I sacrifice myself for those I love.
She had said to him: You … You have not yet reached this stage.
She was scrutinizing him, without provocation, without hurry.
On the inside wall next to the window, there was an amulet, a folded square of animal skin, hanging with a triangular string from a small nail—a charm made to counter adversity and bring about love. Next to it sat the mummified fetus of a small crocodile of solid yellow with open, black eyes.
On my shoulders I carry dreams and a bundle of frail but heavy reeds. I shall sing to you, Rama, the songs of my ancestors, as I walk to Memphis the capital, carrying my burdens, carrying my dried up dreams. This Nile is my wine and Memphis is a bowl of soft ripe figs. I fear my grip will be too much for them. In the reeds of the river, I shall find Ptah of knowledge and truth. My trajectory along the edge between the reed and the wine is endless. Ancient waters flow between you and me. Their waves are solid, fixed beneath my feet. I feel your body as an amulet and charm. Your breath scorches at times, like the desert; at others, it moistens with the scent of earth and of watered greens. From a distant death you revive me, and my body flourishes. You open your lips and I am intoxicated. You say: Don’t you want to pass your hands over my legs? I say: Thirsty I am, my love. Then you say: Here is my breast, drink, my beloved. Your eyes, Rama, are two fallen birds and it is not in my hands’ power to save them from snares.
Considerably later than midnight, having left behind them the tremendous Imbaba Bridge—which seemed intricate to him, as if vaulting huge circular arcs, layer after layer, through a frozen movement of time—they reached her house. The car stopped in an open yard near the sandy road—everything indistinct at night. She opened a small wooden gate in a low fence
constructed with sun-dried bricks and white-washed with lime that glowed pale in the dark. Among the fields and narrow roads, in the heart of the cultivated areas, there were small, awkward, broken-sided buildings amid the trees. Her four dogs barked with welcoming excitement, then made plaintive cries that were not only welcoming but also freighted an organic and physical yearning. They wallowed on the soil and jumped all over her, throwing themselves at her legs when she bent down. They nibbled gently on her hands, licking them, whimpering affectionately in what goes beyond welcome and longing, becoming a kind of adjoining and joining. Their soft paws were feeling, touching, and hanging on her hands, legs, and face, while she was babbling affectionately with them, as if addressing them in their language, using soft sounds that had the same whimpering and plaintive tones as their own. They formed a mass of five bodies, all one with multiple limbs, expanding and contracting in the intoxication of reciprocal infatuation.
She said to him as she raised her head from this sensuous drama that nevertheless had no obscenity: They have been waiting for me. I am the only one who gives them food, no matter how late I might be. I am the only one who trains them, takes care of them.
She called out: Mabrouka! Ya Mabrouka!
A woman’s voice came: Yes, Madame, right away. The voice was saying to someone inside, Madame Rama has arrived. From behind the vague darkness, weak electric light, pale and yellowish, was snapped on. She said: Bring the dogs’ food.
From beyond the open yard that looked lighter among the dark squares, the fields in the night seemed silent, hot, depressed. In them stood the bodies of crooked old machinery, small tractors, agricultural implements with tremendous, vast, blunt teeth. Their outlines merged en masse in the darkness now soaked with faint morning light. The old trees with their enormous twisted trunks and their packed, profuse, thick branches seemed like good-hearted, strong-muscled guards breathing deeply in their nocturnal wake. The trees possessed animal powers. The dogs howled and whirled at each other, at her, at the food. In front of them were boiled heaps of bones and scraps of offal and bone joints in chipped, dark glowing pots. The dogs took their mouths away from her hands, as if with difficulty, then went back to her, pushed by hunger for food no less organic than their hunger for her. The cracking of bones in the dogs’ teeth was mixed with the supple sounds of munching, of tender smacking, of voiced swallowings.
Rama and the Dragon Page 13
