Memory and Desire

by Lisa Appignanesi

  He walked over to the window and looked out. This wasn’t like him. He was a man of regular and arduous habits, and Saturday was set aside for putting the thoughts of the week in order. It was a grey, sombre day. Normally, he liked to see a slate sky, the slate-coloured river beneath him. It served as the perfect, neutral background for his work, tempered its excitements. Today it depressed him.

  He looked back at his laden desk and the large painting which hung over it. Picabia’s melodramatic eye stared out at him. It cheered him a little. He picked up the cold coffee cup, walked barefooted over the profusion of Persian rugs which covered the large highly polished living room floor and made his way to the small kitchen.

  Just as he was brewing fresh coffee, the door bell startled him. Jacob wondered if the concierge might have some urgent post for him, or a package. He opened the door unthinkingly.

  Sylvie Kowalska stood there, a flush rising in her pale cheeks. She was wearing a blue serge coat with a matching midi hat. Her hair was loosely tied into a tail with a blue ribbon. She looked more than ever like a slightly gawky school girl.

  ‘You weren’t expecting me. I’m sorry. Your note didn’t specify a time.’

  ‘No, no, come in. I was expecting you. I just didn’t know when you might come.’ Jacob’s voice trailed off. ‘Come in,’ he said more firmly, as she hesitated visibly.

  He took her coat, her hat. Her dress matched her outward apparel exactly: a low-waisted blue with a white-trimmed sailor collar.

  ‘I was making coffee. Can I get you some?’

  She nodded, her eyes skimming the ample room. ‘It’s very pretty here. And you can see all the lines of the roofs and the river. It’s beautiful. And you have a piano.’ Her eyes shone.

  ‘Do play if you like.’ Jacob strode towards the kitchen. He needed to compose himself. He couldn’t believe this Sylvie was the same woman he had seen with painted lips and garish dress the previous evening. His eyes, his secret expectations must have been playing hallucinatory tricks on him. He chided himself, but his hand as he poured the coffee was slightly unsteady.

  When he came back into the sitting room, she was standing by the piano, stroking its mellow wood with a slender hand.

  ‘Did you like my playing the other day?’ she asked.

  ‘Very much. Very very much.’

  ‘I was playing for you.’ Her eyes suddenly took on a taunting expression. ‘The Gershwin. Mother Theresa was very very angry. It’s not meant to be suitable, you see. Would you like me to play for you now?’

  Jacob nodded. ‘But tell me first. Was it you I saw yesterday at La Coupole?’

  She took the coffee from his outstretched hand. ‘Me?’ she said, her voice high. Then she shook her head vigorously and laughed. ‘Not me, no.’ She drank the hot, strong coffee down in one gulp, sat on the piano stool and with one smooth gesture, pulled the ribbon from her hair and shook her head vigorously. The golden cloud settled on her shoulders. Demurely, she tempted a few chords, sped through a few scales and then without warning, a deep raucous contralto issued from her.

  Jacob sat down in the low armchair nearest the piano. Her profile was clearly visible to him and he watched with fascination as Sylvie the girl metamorphosed into Sylvie the woman. Not any woman, but a bold blues singer. He recognized the style, but not the song. Her voice wailed plaintively one moment and took on a seductive world weariness the next, beguiling him, exciting him.

  When she turned her eyes on him, they were a deep, luminous blue. They trailed over him. He felt a tugging at his loins. He could see the excitement in her too, the wide, open mouth, the arching throat as she threw back her head. Suddenly she played a jarring chord and leapt up. Before he could move, she had placed herself on his lap. She took his hand, led it to her full breast.

  Jacob tried to still himself.

  ‘J’aime ça,’ she said pouting a little, guiding his fingers over her firm nipple. ‘Yes, yes, I like it. Here and here,’ she led his hands.

  Jacob crushed her against him, kissed her fiercely. Her hot dry tongue flicked over his. Her hands sought his bare taut skin. Sharp little animal cries issued from her.

  ‘Pas si vite, Sylvie. Not so fast,’ Jacob whispered hoarsely through the cloud of her hair. He felt like an inexperienced youth. His robe offered little protection. Gently he lifted her off him, stood up. She clung to him. Suddenly strong, she pulled him towards the sofa. Her eyes were wide open as she rubbed against him. She guided his hand beneath her thick skirt to the bare skin above her stockings. It was silken smooth, warm. She moved slightly so that his hand covered the arch of her mount. The heat burned as she rocked against him. ‘Yes, yes, there,’ her voice was muffled. He groaned, kissed her savagely. The restraining thought that she was a mere girl fled. He lifted her astride his leg, following her desires. A shudder of pleasure passed through her, again and again. Her head arched backwards, her hair flowing. And then, before he could stop her, her hand reached inside his briefs. ‘Yes, that,’ Her eyes were blazing as they met his. She stroked, once twice, firmly, and then she brought her mouth down over him, licking, sucking, hungrily, rhythmically. Her hair, electric, spilled over his loins. Jacob trembled. There was little he could do to stop himself now. From the base of his spine, he could feel the juices gathering in him, oozing, pulsing out violently.

  Her face was filled with a wild triumph as she looked up at him. He drew her towards him and cradled her in his arms, kissing her gently. But she drew away from him.

  ‘This is what I like best of all,’ she said, like a cat licking her whiskers. Then in a flash, she was up, her dress straightened, again the demure girl. ‘I have to go now or Tante Julie will wonder where I’ve got to. Can I come again next week? I usually meet my friend, Caroline, about this time and I’ve told her about you.’

  Jacob stood to his full height, looking down on her. He nodded, not trusting his voice.

  ‘Goodbye, then.’ She pecked him on the cheek. If you want to see me before then, I might be able to come by the Dôme on a Thursday.

  Again, Jacob nodded. He wanted to grab her, shake her, make her speak to him. But before he could do anything, she was gone. He looked out the window and watched her walking down the street, her step light, innocence in the swing of her shoulders.

  As the days passed, Jacob realised that the unspeakable feeling that haunted him was that he had a sense of having been raped. That may not have been an accurate description of events, but it was nonetheless his sensation. Despite his initial invitation to Sylvie, he felt himself to have been utterly passive in their sexual encounter. Indeed, he felt humiliated. Yet still he was transfixed. Transfixed by the disparate images of her which floated unceasingly through his mind. Sylvie the good little girl; Sylvie flagrantly mischievous. And then the woman, wanton - as wanton as a prostitute in a brothel. And yet, unlike her, taking evident pleasure. Such pleasure. He had never encountered anything like it. He sensed that it would be wise to stop seeing her. But he could think of nothing but their next meeting.

  Gradually over the next months, their relationship unfolded. The first few times she came to see him in his flat were like a replay of the original encounter. Except that he was more in control of himself, less surprised by the forthrightness of her desires. Gradually, she let him undress her. He was reverent over the beauty of her flawless body, the heavy breasts, the slender shanks, the golden skin. But she would never allow him inside her. He understood this, understood the fear, he thought. She was nineteen, ten years younger than him. Soon she would trust him. But what he had never experienced with any woman before, was her sheer excitability. He had only to touch her there, and she shuddered wildly. And she wanted him, wanted him in her mouth, as much as she could take, as much as he could give. It exhilarated him and depressed him, in turn.

  He learned more about her. She told him of her studies, which were coming to an end with her baccalaureate this year, far too late as far as she was concerned. Told him, too, of her parents, their death
, though she passed all this over blithely, as if it were long in the past and of little concern. What she preferred to talk about were what she called her adventures. These were intricate and varied and Jacob was never too sure whether he altogether believed her. At times he felt sure she was spinning fantasies. This troubled him only a little. His training after all had taught him that fantasies were as telling as facts. Often these stories had to do with her childhood.

  She told him how she and her brother hated being in the big house - which was what she called their country estate. ‘Everyone there was always dying of boredom or telling lies. They were horrible mean little lies and they had mean, horrible faces. Stiff and empty and pompous. Like cardboard cut-outs depicting high seriousness.’ She pulled a grotesque face, then giggled.

  ‘Once Tadzio and I decided we would pee on the floor in unison, just to see what they would do. You should have seen their expressions. My father was apoplectic. We were sent to our rooms and had to live on bread and water for a day.’ Sylvie laughed hilariously.

  ‘What we liked best was running wild on the grounds. The woods were so beautiful. And the summer before I was sent away, we took to spying on the gamekeeper.’ Sylvie’s eyes sparkled as she warmed to her subject. She was sitting on his bed, wearing only her shirt and knickers, while he lay back, an arm under his head, listening.

  ‘It was always after he was out shooting. We’d follow him, very very quietly, back to his house and peek through the window. ‘He’d drop the rabbits on the big wooden table and then shout for his wife. She’d come running, a big heavy woman, and he’d smack her, once, twice, across the face, really hard. Then he’d push her down on the floor by the shoulders so she’d be kneeling in front of him. He made her unbutton his trousers and his cock would come rushing out.’

  At this point Sylvie stopped, a little breathless, and looked at the region of his groin. Jacob kept himself very still, unwilling to feed her fantasies, though stirred into tumescence by her excitement, despite himself.

  ‘Then, he’d lift her up onto the table, right on top of the dead rabbits, lift her skirts and ram into her.’ Sylvie giggled. It was obvious to Jacob that she identified with the gamekeeper.

  ‘He caught us once. He looked up in the middle of it all and saw our heads at the window. He bounded out and shook me, just me,’ she added proudly. He said if he caught us at it again, had better watch out.’

  ‘And did you?’ Jacob asked

  She answered by stroking him, so that he forgot his question, until the next time when the incident might be repeated with a slightly different twist.

  ‘And your brother?’ Jacob once asked. ‘How did he feel about all this.

  ‘Oh Tadzio, Tadzio was much braver than me,’ Sylvie answered proudly. Then her eyes clouded over and she changed the subject.

  One day Sylvie told him how her father had had an affair with their governess, who was promptly sent back to France. Sylvie was miserable. She was attached to the woman, yet distressed at what she had learned about her and her father. She rarely mentioned her mother.

  From time to time, she would also elaborate on her current life in the convent. There was one nun who particularly hated her, who watched her with an eagle eye. She loathed the woman, her spying, her utter ecstasy in prayer and she had filled a notebook with the execrable punishments she would like to inflict on her. One day, she looked at Jacob wildly and with utter conviction, said if she didn’t get out of that convent soon, she would wreak her vengeance on the woman.

  The more Jacob saw her, the more intrigued he grew.

  She started to bring him presents. One week, it was a painting she had done, which Jacob instantly framed and placed in his bedroom. She brought him another. She was talented, this Sylvie and he liked the madcap animals with which she peopled her whimsical pictures. Then she started to bring him other kinds of gifts, a lighter, cologne, a watch. These worried him. He suspected she might have stolen them. When he asked her, she merely laughed in her mischievous way and when she next came to see him, she presented him with an apple.

  Jacob had never been so excited by a woman, so enthralled and at the same time so frustrated. Sylvie’s sheer lack of inhibition, the wickedness of her language, fascinated him. Where had she learned such things? Sexually, she aroused him to the point of frenzy; yet that final hold was barred. He waited, unable to do anything else, unwilling to force her.

  By February when they had been meeting regularly in his flat almost every Saturday afternoon for over four months, Jacob felt he had somehow to break out of what was quickly becoming a folie à deux. The preceding week, she had failed to appear, as she had on a few previous occasions, and he had been thrown into an agony exacerbated by his enforced passivity. He had no way of contacting her: he could only wait until the following week or trail her to the convent like a demeaned slave. Jacob resolved to act.

  The following week when she arrived, offering no excuses for her previous breech, he sat her down and insisted that they talk. Despite the pain it caused him, he refused her kisses, her fervent hands. He said he wanted to meet her godparents. It would make things easier for her, put things on a slightly more normal footing. They could go out together. She could meet his friends. Sylvie sprang up from her chair, sat down on the piano stool and angrily bashed out some wild jazz improvisation. Then cooly, with demurely veiled eyes, she turned to him: ‘No, I don’t want you to meet them,’ she said flatly.

  He threw the book he was holding down on the floor with a thump and strode over to the window. He was rigid with anger. She came up behind him and embraced him from behind. Her fingers toyed with his shirt. ‘But you can meet Caroline. We can all go out together. I’d like to know your friends. Next Saturday. I’ll see you then.’ Before he could stop her, she was out of the door.

  Next week, when, more nervous than he would care to admit, he arrived at the Dôme, she was already sitting there, a dark girl with a high forehead and sharp nose at her side. They were both sipping hot chocolate and chatting away with such girlish vivacity that Jacob suddenly felt that his secret encounters with Sylvie had been wholly the fruit of his imagination. He sat down beside them and before any introductions were made, Sylvie giggled and said, ‘You see, I told you he was exceptional. A real Apollo.’

  The other girl flushed slightly and put out a hand to greet him. They talked, casually, pleasantly enough, though Jacob was too vigilant to relax. He watched Sylvie. The golden features, the wide blue guileless eyes. Had he built a mountain of mystery around a simple schoolgirl with a slightly risqué tongue. Then the sensation of that tongue as it flickered over his body presented itself to him. He stirred uneasily. He wondered how much Sylvie told her friend.

  ‘Who is that?’ Sylvie murmured, pointing to a remarkable looking woman with glowing dark eyes and high cheekbones beneath a dazzling Schiaperelli hat.

  Jacob smiled, ‘That’s Gala Dali. If you haven’t seen before, you may have come across her eyes. Dali immortalized them in a series of photographs in a wonderful little book, . And there’s the man himself. Would you like to meet them?’

  Sylvie was irradiated. He could almost feel a feverish heat emanating from her. ‘That’s how I would like to be,’ she murmured. She clutched Jacob’s knee under the table, while he performed introductions. Others came to join them, artists, poets. Sylvie’s excitement mounted and with it a wildness came into her beauty and the flow of her speech. Her outlandish commentary on the poet Hugo, her suggestive asides, had the assembled company hypnotized. Sylvie lapped up their attention, becoming more audacious with each sign of appreciation. Caroline looked on with a wistful expression. Jacob had the increasing sensation of watching a virtuoso performance. He was at once appreciative and dismayed that the performance wasn’t only for him.

  When Sylvie announced that she wanted nothing more in the world than to be a night club singer, like Bessie Smith, one of the gathered number instantly suggested that he take her off to a club which had just opened its
doors. Without looking at Jacob, Sylvie readily complied. She and Caroline would want to go home first and change. But there wouldn’t be any problem. Her godparents were away for the weekend and old Nanou, the maid, slept heavily.

  Jacob was taken aback. He had known nothing of all these household arrangements. Indeed, he realised, on one level he knew nothing at all of Sylvie’s life. Perhaps there had been other weekends, other expeditions to dives and dance halls. He remembered the night he had been certain he had seen Sylvie at La Coupole with a young man. Jealousy seized him with unaccustomed ferocity.

  By the time they met at The Harlem Bar, his imaginings had turned it into a low constant ache. Sylvie’s demeanour, once he had lifted the girlish serge coat from her shoulders, did nothing to assuage it. She was wearing a short black velvet frock which without clinging to her body accentuated every curve. Her bare shoulders shone like porcelain against its darkness. Her legs in the silk stockings he had never seen her wear, gleamed dangerously long. ‘Tu aimes?’ she asked him, throwing back her mane of hair with a challenge. ‘I borrowed it from Tante Julie,’ she laughed, her eyes glittering.

  It was the only remark she was to address directly to him for the next few hours. While Jacob was left to take care of Caroline, whom he noted subliminally still looked, despite the addition of make-up, like a young woman of good family, Sylvie eagerly went off into the dark interior of the club with his friends. Caroline’s attention followed her as carefully as did his own.

  The room was throbbing with people, the sound of ragtime, the pulse of voices. Paris had been transformed into nighttime New York. Sylvie was in her element. No sooner had they sat down at a table which bordered stage and dance floor, ordered a drink, than Sylvie was up, her hand in his friend Michel St Loup’s. She danced with a wild abandon, her hair swinging, her body a pliant instrument in the band’s beat. Jacob watched.