by Warren Adler
"To whom?" He was being sarcastic. The question needed no answer. But it was the key to her life and she persisted.
"To our blood." She had paused. "And our children."
"Children?"
"Of course. It is our duty to conceive children."
"Like this?"
"It is the way it is done." She was mocking now. But she had inadvertently given him a weapon.
If she was to continue her indifference, he determined to hold off, to whip his desire. He no longer submitted himself to his own passion, and although it steamed and churned within him, he would not go near her. If she noticed, she said nothing, certainly relieved and, perhaps, hopeful that a conception might already have taken place. It hadn't.
Miranda's life changed little since their marriage. She had her friends, her tennis, her parties. She was still the center of interest everywhere she went, and if she had little joy to give him, her smile warmed everyone else she touched. He followed her obediently for the first six months, hoping that his father's admonition of "in time" might suddenly become operative. It didn't. They drifted, speaking little, always polite. He imagined he was trying to wipe away, destroy his love for her somehow, but it was impossible. Its intensity continued to burn, fueled, it seemed, by the depth of her indifference.
He knew there would be a limit to his endurance. Despite his love for her and his pain, his intelligence had long ago rejected all of her values--perpetuation of wealth for its own sake, a clear contempt for the have-nots. She had an absolute belief in the aristocracy of power through family and heritage. The rights of privilege were everything. It was his own family's dictum as well. He began to look upon his life as an exercise in futility.
It was when the idea of killing himself popped into his mind that he realized how far afield he had gone. He was surprised, too, at the seriousness with which he entertained the idea, contemplating in detail the method he would use. He had rejected the grand gesture, a bullet in the brain, a knife in the heart, throwing himself in front of a train or truck, hanging himself. Such a dramatic gesture might have meaning if he had sought martyrdom, a permanent impression for political motives, for example. His was to be the death of failure, a simple exit of a wayward soul.
He began to dwell on the method of the overdose as an appropriate poetic gesture. Only Miranda would understand the irony and, after all, that was just, since it was only Miranda's reaction that would matter. Would it make the slightest impression on her, he wondered. He would stare at the little vial of her pills on the ledge of the medicine chest, wondering when he would find the courage to use their contents. It would be so simple. A handful of pills down the gullet, a passage into slumber and then a swift painless demise.
He might have done it, too, if the matter of his death had not become an object of concern. It was as if the idea had permeated the air, seeped into her brain, a supernatural transference.
"I have prepared our wills," she said one evening on the rare occasion of their dining together. She moved an envelope across the polished granite table.
"That's ridiculous," he said. Had she actually read his mind?
"Actually, it was your father's suggestion. His firm drew it up."
"But who will benefit?"
"If you die, I will. If I die, you will. Then when there are children.... "She shrugged and slid the envelope further across the table in his direction.
"There will be no children," he said emphatically, watching her face.
"That's absurd," she said.
"Is it?" He continued to explore her face. It betrayed nothing of what he was thinking. God, how he loved her, he thought. At least, she will need me for that. The idea of it made his loins churn.
"Never," he whispered.
"Just look it over. Then sign them. It is quite necessary."
"The hell with it!"
"Don't be a fool!" she admonished, her eyes narrowing in anger. So she is human, after all, he thought happily, knowing that the idea of his suicide was losing its allure.
The next day he quit law school and presented himself at party headquarters, where his return was compared with that of the prodigal son. He asked for an assignment outside of Santiago and was quickly assigned to Valdivia, a northern city, where he was to supervise the editing of the party newspaper and participate in expanding the party base. It would not be an easy task. The city was dominated by citizens of German origin who were extremely conservative.
"How will you explain it to your father?" Miranda asked. It was her only reaction. There was no question of her going with him.
"I'm going without you," he told her.
"Of course."
He tried to write a long letter to his father, justifying his action, but the words kept congealing on the paper. Could he explain his own sense of warped maturity, his hopeless one-sided love for a frigid wife, his flirting seriously with suicide? How could such information be conveyed to someone outside yourself? Especially to someone who, he knew, loved him.
Although his political instincts seemed crystal clear at times, he wondered about the sincerity of his commitment. It occurred to him that perhaps he was merely acting to destroy a system of life that had made him unhappy. Sometimes he could feel passionately what he espoused. But distrust of emotion was conditioning him. Emotion was the enemy, he decided. Surely, there was some way to overcome it, perhaps to use it, but never to allow it to dominate or control.
Above all, he envied Miranda, her coldness, even though it tortured him. Every nuance of indifference was a dagger in his heart. Yet he admired her uninvolvement. His intelligence could be in revolt, but nothing--logic, objective reasoning, ridicule--could erase what he felt for her. He had seen her on the tennis courts, a perfectly innocent pastime, and it had become an obsession, a monster. He had betrayed his political instincts. He had betrayed his father. He had betrayed himself.
In the end, he could explain nothing to his father. As for Miranda, she would endure the temporary embarrassment, providing, she insisted, that appearances were kept up. It was becoming trendy now to have a radical husband. The party of Allende was, as a matter of fact, taking on an air of respectability in some circles. Conditions in Chile were in decline even for the wealthy. Ominous signs were on the horizon. She might live with that. Divorce, of course, was out of the question. There was the religious issue but, more important, there was the financial problem. She was not going to deprive her unborn children of the fruits of the Ferrara-Palmero merger.
He was quite proud of the fact that he had prepared his mind for his departure. That was why he had been so baffled by what occurred. He was fully packed. His bags were actually piled in the foyer ready for the morning journey. It was near midnight. He had poured himself a cognac and stood by the windows watching the flickering lights of Santiago which lay like a luminescent carpet at his feet. It was his habit now to take a cognac before he got into bed. It made him drowsy. Sometimes he would take two or three or more, depending on his mood and the state of his agitation. Miranda, he knew, would induce her sleep with sleeping pills. It was a fact of their lives together. She anesthetized herself to endure him. He anesthetized himself to hold himself back. There was, he knew, spite in both their motives.
"May I join you?" He was startled by her voice. Turning, she appeared in a soft yellow dressing gown that he had never seen before. Over it, her brushed hair seemed to glow as it fell in sharp contrast. Beneath the dressing gown, he could see her full, lush body.
He poured out a drink and, handing her a snifter, watched her tapered, ringed fingers delicately caress the glass. If only it were me, he thought. She stood beside him, watching the lights outside, sipping the cognac. He felt her magnetism, heard the softness of her steady breathing. His heart began to beat wildly.
"I know it's my fault," she said. The words came in a velvet whisper. Distrust it, his mind told him. He said nothing in response.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"You can't bake bread without flour," he said s
tupidly, censoring the original crudity.
"We are simply different," she said. He felt her glance move over him, a rare feeling. He had never even felt that she had noticed he was alive. I will resist her as always, he pledged to himself. Her onslaught was too obvious, surely a ploy.
"Everyone has a cross to bear," he said, sensing the power of his self-pity.
"I have given you nothing," she said.
"That is true." He had tried to disguise his bitterness.
"You have every right to be.... "She seemed to have lost the word.
"Humiliated. Hurt. Unhappy. Foolish. Choose it."
"I know," she sighed.
He moved away from her, poured himself another cognac, and sat down on the chair. She continued to look out the window, her back toward him. He could not draw his eyes away from the delicious curve of her body, the straight back reaching downward into the curve of her tight buttocks. His hardened penis quivered in expectation. It is unbearable, he told himself.
When she turned to face him, he knew how fragile was the extent of his resolve.
"I can't remake myself," she said, lowering her head. A single lamp lit the room. She moved and it was behind her, the light passing through the flimsy dressing gown.
"It is cruel," he said. But she seemed to be perplexed by his meaning, hesitant in her answer.
"I suppose," she said. She seemed to be holding herself in a pose, ever the narcissist. Despite his resolve, he could not contain the onrush of pleasure, the sharp tingling down his spine. Logic receded. His energy seemed concentrated in his manhood. He was taut, ready to burst. He undid his robe. His hard, quivering penis stuck out of the fly of his pajamas. He looked at it, stupidly, his face flushing.
"You see."
He wanted to cry. His body shook as he stifled a sob. I hate myself, he shouted inside. He knew she could not bear it, watching as her eyes looked away. Yet she came toward him. You mustn't, he told himself, his will gone now, reaching out for her, touching her, lifting her dressing gown, feeling her flesh, kissing the soft thatch of hair at the edge of her flat belly. His tongue lapped at her, like a dog. His head pounded.
"Feel something, dammit!" he shouted, moving her body over his, plunging his hardness inside of her, feeling immediately the surging wonder of his body's pleasure, a suffusion from his head downward, from his toes upward, as if his entire body had reached into her womanness, devouring, begging for her mercy as he gorged himself on her.
Even after, his hardness would not dissipate and he carried her into the bedroom and moved inside of her again, holding her tightly, engulfing her with his legs and arms, his lips pressed against hers until they hurt, his nostrils breathing in the scent of her, his eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks. His mind seemed vacated, his intelligence gone. Only his oneness with her mattered. Later, when some rational sense returned, he realized that she held him clutched between her legs, her arms locked over his back. Was it happening, he wondered, daring not to delude himself. It was the only sign of response, the holding.
He would remember this moment as the high point of his life and the high tide of his self-delusion. He did not leave the next morning. They made love throughout the day. She brought him food on a tray and they talked little since he was afraid that what was happening would disappear in words. It was too fragile to disturb, and each time he moved over her and she held him, it was balm to a weathered soul, an elixir to still his self-pity. He was ready to forgive her anything, to reverse his own betrayal of what had seemed a perverse bargain up till then.
"I love you," he told her again and again. She said nothing. He refused to be clinical. Had he moved her? He dared not ask. When he was not loving her, he was watching her, a feast for his eyes, her face, her hair, the upward curve of her full breasts, the gentle sweep of her hips, the tight flesh of her stomach. He kissed her navel, the beginning of her, moving downward and upward, hungry for every part of her. It was dangerous to know such happiness.
Is it happening to her? It was the one question for which he might have given his life for an affirmation.
Toward evening of the next day, he saw her pass into sleep, the fading light inhibiting his view of her. He got up to light a lamp that sat on a table across the room. Pulling the chain, he saw the puddle of yellow light illumine a book, somehow oddly placed. Later he would wonder why his eye had caught it, some preordained, demon-inspired movement. It was actually the Bible, and it made little sense being where it was. Miranda was, he knew, a devoted Catholic, but she had never brought the Bible into their bedroom. Or he simply had not noticed. Picking it up, a paper slipped from its pages, a kind of chart. It fluttered to the floor and he stooped to pick it up, putting it into the puddle of light to read it.
On it was a graph, neatly drawn, with little number notations on intersecting lines. Some of the numbers were consecutive, others changing, providing a rising, steady curve upward as the lines intersected the rising points. His heart lurched. She was recording her temperature levels, the present date coinciding with the beginning of the rise in the curve. He felt the blood rush to his head as he moved quickly to the bedside, shaking her awake. Her eyes opened in fear. When she saw the paper in his hand, her fear vanished, giving way to the old recognized contempt.
"You bitch!" he said, waving the paper in front of her. Then he crumpled it and threw it across the room. He felt victimized, unclean, betrayed. "I was a fool!"
She shrugged, remaining silent, turning her eyes away. She had sat up. Now she reclined, watching him.
"You felt nothing." It was not a question. His anger had quieted and his sense of futility seized him again.
"I am what I am," she said, gently now. "It is not in me." Then she smiled, an odd, owlish grin, as if the entire episode had been an amusement, an entertainment.
"Hopefully, some good will come of it," she said. "The temperature was at its highest."
"But it meant nothing!" he sputtered, reaching for words that would not come.
"It doesn't have to."
"I thought, perhaps.... "he began. His words trailed off. He did not want to reveal his humiliation any further.
"You didn't seem to mind," she said. She had, after all, witnessed his one-sided ecstasy.
"You are like ice," he said, a salve to himself, since he had not stirred her, and could not.
He dressed silently, quickly, thinking only of how fast he must get out of this room, away from her. He did not wash. Perhaps it was deliberate, he thought, an unconscious desire to carry away the smell of her.
"If we have a child, you will have to love a piece of me," he said, a tiny note of triumph seeping into his tone. He did not look back. Nor did she respond.
XII
There had been one other time in her life when Anne had been afraid to admit her happiness to herself, afraid that the admission would make it disappear. She was seventeen and it was summer. Her parents had that big old place in Camden, Maine, overlooking the postcard harbor. They had come there each summer since she could remember and her days had been filled with sailing her tiny sloop around the harbor, haunting the wonderful public library on the edge of town, and trying to understand the changes that were happening in her body and mind.
It was no mystery to her that, of all the summers she had spent in Camden, the one that had burned itself into her memory was the brief four weeks she had spent with Biff Maloney.
It was a preposterous name. He was a preposterous person, the son of a local yacht mechanic. Muscled, tan, tall, he had blond curly hair and deep dimples which framed a big white toothy smile. There was, of course, a deep class distinction between the locals and the summer people. It was not uncommon. The locals scratched out a living from the summer folks, resented them, but relied on their coming to replenish the coffers for the lean winters. It was the rhythm of life in Camden. Everyone accepted it. And when the line was breached, there were always those who rallied round before the breach had scandalized the community.
&nbs
p; She had never noticed him before, although she had passed the boatyard hundreds of times, tacking around the harbor. An errant gust of wind had bounced her tiny sailboat against the hull of a cabin cruiser at the end of the boatyard dock, where Biff was hanging from a harness over the stern painstakingly painting the letters of the boat's name. She was called Paradise Found, which struck Anne as silly and pretentious. To make it worse, Biff had transposed the last two letters in the word "Paradise" so that it read "Paradies." He had looked down at her from his vantage in the harness, shaking his head with feigned contempt as she struggled to find the wind again. He stuck a finger in his mouth, held it up to find the breeze, then pointed in the wind's direction. She knew, of course, where it was, but she was stuck in the lee of the Paradise Found's bulk.
"The tiller to starboard," he called, smiling now, since she had lost all control and was bobbing helplessly.
"I didn't ask you," she cried, annoyed at what she perceived as his arrogance. She squinted up at him. His vacuous grin was broad and his dimples deepened. She noticed the dimples immediately. Simpleton, she thought. Embedded in the class distinction was the unspoken belief in the genetic decay of the locals. They were simply born dumb, her father had once told her, and she had believed him.
"Get a motor," he hooted. Looking up in exasperation, she discovered the spelling error and felt the onrushing joy of impending revenge.
"Get a brain," she cried, watching his confused expression. He looked up at the sky. "'Brain', you idiot, not 'rain,'" she murmured inaudibly. He shrugged and cocked an ear. He thinks I'm the dumb one, she thought.
She pointed to the letters on the hull and finally he saw what she was referring to, although it made little difference in his understanding.
Finally she had to spell it out for him and he pulled on the rope so that the harness could ascend to the deck. He was lost from sight for a moment. Then she saw his head over the rim of the rail.
"Darn right," he called, showing her a note pad on which the words were spelled right. Dropping a rope ladder, he descended. She watched him climb downward, holding the rope ladder to keep the boat from drifting. His tanned legs were lightly haired and he wore tight shorts which packed in his well developed buttocks. Above his waist he was bare, tan, muscles rippling under golden skin. In the harness he had been hardly formidable, merely dumb. Now as he got closer he was awesome, big and beautiful. It was her first jolt of awakening sexuality, the beginning of womanhood, and she could reckon the moment exactly.
