Even now she felt called upon to assert some of her feminine independence, to assert a loving domination over him by her sheer physical strength. She decided that she would force him to a climax first by the sheer strength of her young animal control, the strength of her sphincters; and he felt the challenge as she seized him for it summoned up all his own strength and litheness, his defences against a premature dispersal of force. “I see you are smiling,” he said between shortened breaths, while she replied “Yes,” punctured with little gasps, adding, “You will give in first.” He shook his head: “No.” Still she smiled, and he closed his eyes in agony and put his head on one side. “Please!” Constance said boastfully, “My sphinxes are strong and in good repair. I order you to come.” He fell forward under the discharge of her kisses, proud now at her victory and keen to share it. It was only some time later that she knew that he had given her the victory which he would have been quite capable of forcing upon her. But now she felt wildly exultant. They lay exhausted in all that blood and steam like stricken martyrs to human bliss. She had known it all along, she had known that it would be like this, that he would be like this; why had she closed her mind to it and stayed deliberately in Avignon, away from temptation? Paradoxically, to remain faithful to Sam! The thought filled her with astonishment – how old-fashioned the gesture seemed!
“I can see nothing,” he said, blinded by the steam, “even your face is dim, like a wet water-colour. And I have printed the tiles all over with my bare feet – your blood, Constance.” He refilled the bath once more, carefully hanging up his own wrap, and stepped into it to lie at ease, deeply thoughtful, watching the filaments of dark blood wash off his skin and hang in the warm water before dissolving. “I feel like Petronius.” But she was appalled by the mess, and had started taking measures to clean it up with damp towels, unwilling that the room service people should see it. “Come,” he said. “It’s their job, Constance. Come in here with me, it’s not too hot for you.” It was something of a jam but somehow she managed amidst much laughter to squeeze herself beside him and to shrink down sufficiently far to have the water level up to her neck. They were like eels in a jar. An enormous depression suddenly seized hold of him, and she noticed with a passionate concern which she was rather ashamed of showing and said, “O, what is it? What has happened, have I displeased you?”
He shook his head and said, “No. I have an overwhelming desire to make you pregnant – it’s crazy. I have not slept with anyone for several years and I wasn’t really prepared for you. I thought I was, I lived on hopes as you must feel all too clearly. But I am in disarray. You have scattered everything to the winds. I feel numb, dead, like a mummy. Can you bring me back? I doubt it.”
“What happened the last time?” He smiled sadly, but did not answer. Then: “In Alexandria someone who is quite continent, apparently uninterested in sex, causes alarm and disquiet. In Arabic they say, ‘He has a penis with three heads’, and nobody can use it – that is the sense.”
“Am I too young for you?”
“Even if you were, what difference? This thing!” He pressed his fingers upon his body in the vague region of his heart. She took them and placed them upon her own hot cheeks. “So you wished to anchor me to my loom and spoil a promising medical career?” Still troubled he was able to reply, “I could, yes.”
She lay there for a long time, saying nothing, stretched beside him like a young lioness, one hand lying possessively upon his article, cupping the sinister-seeming scrotum like a nest-tumbled bird gathered up. Soft as a cloud her spirit started pouring into his and she felt, like a ship answering a shift of wind, the mast rise into the sky of his unrealised desire. But he had not finished quite for he said, “But sperm can be a poison if it is not fresh, or poorly documented, or sick like the sperm of deteriorated schizophrenics and others; undue retention can cause illness, brain fever, mind-squeeze, one can witness this in hypocritical cultures based on puritanism like yours. Sperm needs to be cultivated, it is really riches, money in its physical aspect, the girl should all the time be making more and more, manipulating the scrotum, caressing it, counting her change. She must feel it psychically coming down the urethra drop by drop, she must welcome and husband it, and let the parched womb rush at it, unleashing the ova like a pack of hungry wolves. They must both act towards each other with the highest degree of conscious effort; the more they render the orgasm conscious the deeper in phase they will be, thus the purer the child and the more harmonious the race. This takes so long to express but there is no mystery about it – real women have always known it. When a culture starts going downhill the first victim is the quality of the fucking and the defective documentation of the sperm – by documentation I mean oxygen, just lack of oxygen, which is race-knowledge, genetic nous.”
Half-sleeping now in each other’s arms, their desires prospering with every breath, he whispered on, telling her about the history of sex, why it had always elicited fear and an exemplary piety. It was an engine fuelled by the mind and the coarse manifold of sperm which was needed by the thirsty soil of the womb. Alone the man could do nothing, alone the woman could not resolve the dilemma of her earthly needs. And this was the base of thought and feeling – in every order of perception. The primal vision of man and woman, the primal fig leaf, the primal asterisk – they dwelt in this domain of high-tension wires whose fearful fragility was manifest every time a kiss went astray or a desiring look missed its target. “It’s terrible; we can do nothing without each other. Each is the other’s fatality – you with your little handbag full of Easter eggs and farthings, but attached to another, and over which you have only temporary and fleeting control: instead of having it always near, on you like a real handbag, full of powder and lipstick and French letters; and then me, a sleepwalker from the beginning of history, mesmerised by your two galactic bubs, the spring of eternal youth, which gave me my first drink on earth and comforted me from the assault of light and sound, and the agony of trying out a new stomach and lungs. Mama!”
So the sleepy commerce between them entered upon the domains of an attachment where the physical and the mental made common cause; but she realised that he had opened up something inside her mind by this conversation, had primed her, and that if they were not careful she would become impregnated. It was as if he had hypnotised her into this delicious satyriasis; she was dying to feel, to prosper and harvest his orgasm, but he hung back, as if reluctant – in fact to sharpen her desire for him. They lay in an agony of impatience with thoughts of loving obedience pouring out between them like some vast waterfall. “Now!” she said. “Wait!” he replied, engrossed mentally in trying to accord their breathing, their very pulse-beat. Already he could sense the rich void of repletion they would enjoy afterwards, lying like drunks in each other’s arms, driven to sleep like sheep, into a pen. He turned her lightly towards him and loosed the sails, feeling them draw breath, feeling their craft heel and strain and then gather weight with a shared ecstasy guiding it. She realised that she had never known what love was, what it could be. She was terrified to feel so much at his mercy, and at her own. To surrender, to yield, to abdicate and receive – it made her feel dangerously vulnerable. She said sadly, “Ah, but you are joking and I am serious; you are going to be disappointed in me. I am only a scientist at heart. I believe in causality.”
He raised himself on an elbow and looked closely at her, as if seeing her for the first time, as if she were some strange insect which had alighted before him on the counterpane. “Alchemically speaking, nothing can be achieved without the woman, without you; your thighs are the tuning-fork of the male intuition. You strike the spark, we light the fire in the hearth and stick you with child.”
“O yes, Herr Professor,” she said meekly.
They both laughed. “O no, you don’t,” she said in her new relaxed and confident mood. “This is a male plot to make our relationship neurotic. I’m not playing. Let us begin with ourselves, only ourselves. I’m only an old Freudian,
and can’t see further than my nose.”
“You live in the spare parts of other people’s dreams, neologisms among the nightmares which project themselves into your own daymares of violence and panic. Which somnifère do you take? Constance, we are full of ideas which remain obstinately homeless. I want to share, to share.” There was a tap at the door and a breakfast tray appeared as it opened. With an unpremeditated gesture they both drew the sheets over their heads and lay motionless, as if in deep slumber, until the tray was placed by the bed and the maid withdrew. Then they burst out laughing, throwing off all the covers and engaging with a sudden new-found fierceness in a love bout which was deliberately pain-giving. The violence was delicious, she felt with horror and pleasure his vampire’s suçon on her throat under her ear. It would leave a tell-tale blue mark which would need careful powdering out. Damn! But this time it was he who called the tune and she was surprised by the controlled strength of that tall, somewhat awkward body with its bony girl-like motions. At the same time it made her exultant, the inner recognition that he was completely fashioned as a male, and capable of making her groan softly with pain, to hurt her without leaving bruises or blemishes, with the sole exception of her throat – but this was a piece of pure vulgar sexual boasting and she would tell him as much. She found herself trembling under his assault, trembling at her good luck in being after all able to plunge deep into an attachment without reserve – she who had felt herself dried-up and empty of all emotion. Suddenly the thought of Livia smote her, she saw her dead face, and between pain at the memory and pleasure in the present began to cry, which made him desist. He was apologetic now; he had been thoughtless when she was so tired. Then he added an amazing thing: “And shocked too by Livia’s death.”
She sat up in bed, wrapping her kimono round her and said, “How on earth . .?” but he shook his head gently to reassure her and explained, “From Smirgel, of course. He has been in our pay for a long time.” It should not have surprised her, but it did. “Whose pay exactly?” she asked, and he replied, “I didn’t mean the Red Cross, silly, I meant the Egyptian army, so called. It’s an independent net. The British feel happier with their own old-fashioned methods and men like Quatrefages – whose field of vision is very limited. We work independently, though of course we share our labours with them when there is anything really important. But they never believe us – they don’t believe in Smirgel, for example.”
“Neither would I,” she said. “He is a real Nazi believer, he confessed as much to me and gave me the whole gospel. I would never trust him. Really not, not an inch.”
“He is a double operator, perhaps,” agreed her lover equably. “But we have had a long history together. I must tell you how we’ve saved his head more than once from Hitler’s impatience and Ribbentrop’s. Head for a head, so to speak.”
They rose and as they breakfasted he told her more in his quiet, smiling voice. “You see poor Smirgel in another light, but in fact the wretched fellow is quite astute, quite clever; he must be to have kept the ear of Ribbentrop. But he did not bargain for Hitler’s impatience to get to the bottom of the Templar heresy and all the mystery surrounding it. Not only that but the rumoured treasure which they buried somewhere and which crackpots like Galen try to unearth. Hitler views them as a heretical sect convicted of religious malpractice, and he wants to found an order of black chivalry – if I may coin a phrase – to take their place. Mad, of course, absolutely mad! But when he has nothing better to think about he gives Ribbentrop a shove, or his replacement, and the shove is duly communicated to Smirgel. Recently there was some talk of replacing Smirgel, but we managed to save his head by providing something on account, so to speak. Did you ever see the dried Crusader head which Hassad carries about in a scarlet hat-box container? You did? Well, we allowed Smirgel to discover this, based upon the confession of Quatrefages. Everyone was delighted. At last something tangible! Moreover we cooked a pedigree for it. It is supposed to be the prophesying head of Pompey which the Crusaders believed was imprisoned in the cannon ball which tops Pompey’s Pillar in Alexandria. Once in a while the thing is alleged to utter a prophecy, but in one’s sleep; one has to have it beside the bed. Do you know where it is now? Beside Hitler’s bed. He half-believes, is amused and intrigued, shows it to everyone. Who can say what a shrunken head knows?”
Who indeed? Alas, there was no way of planting ready made speeches in its mouth to influence the ideas of the monster; but for the time being Smirgel was being left relatively alone with his routine duties and was concentrating on the build-up and the dumping which was going on in the new command, herald of who knew what?
“Where can we meet at the earliest sheer possibility? What are you going to do today?”
She was going to look in on her flat and tidy it if need be, visit the office, and then perhaps try and locate Sutcliffe, to make belated contact and let him know that she was back. Had he heard about Aubrey coming?
“Indeed he has. He groaned and said, ‘It’s a hard life for those of us who live vicariously.’”
She said, “Rob Sutcliffe will have to pull his weight now and stop bothering so much about her”– she expressed this opinion in rather an offhand way. “His devotion is so exaggerated that it will soon seem suspect to us, Schwarz and me.”
“You must tell him.”
“I will.”
But despite these pious sentiments once more they fell asleep in each other’s arms, and if from time to time her mind cleared and she awoke it was to a dazed abstraction which heralded something like a new life – a new attitude to her life. She felt so strange! Everything had irremediably changed.
Yes, with all this she had suddenly, dramatically assumed herself, her full femininity – something which had remained always a sort of figment, a symbol which gave off no current. To be a woman in this sense it was not necessary to be a mother, or a wife, or a nun or a whore – all these documentary forms of living were quite secondary to the central state. The doctor in her had made a discovery of the first order! To achieve some understanding of the role of the female – why, it chimed with her art, it was implicit in the craft of her job. The female was the principle of renewal and repair in the cosmic sense, it was she who made things happen, made things happen, made things grow. She was the principle of all fertility even though she might be disguised in the trappings of Mrs. Jones. (He had been brutal with her once – his joy had over-brimmed into a possessive lust, and the pain he inflicted was harsh and hard to bear; but she welcomed it, as a martyr welcomes the burning pyre.) He had split her down the centre as if with an axe. “Turn again,” he had cried, and she submitted and turned, quite prepared to die in his arms – but the poetic figure of speech was now the relevant one, for she “died” in the Elizabethan sense, and her own wanton cry of delight rang out on the silence, expressing many things, notably the thought: “So I can love, after all!” though up to that moment she had never once considered herself incapable of loving. It was as if she had simply not known what the animal was. His face looked so tense, so withdrawn: she recognised his male weakness, his alarming precariousness of feeling, his absolute need for the support without which no advance was possible, no creation within his own scope. This realisation made her suddenly conscious of her own strength, as if she could now use a whole set of muscles which up to now had lingered on in disuse. She glimpsed the tantric left-hand path of which he was always talking, and which so much irritated her scientific mind. He had given her much more than his love, he had given her the full maturity of her gift, her medical skill. “O thank you, thank you!” But he made a vague hopeless gesture and groaned, saying, “I don’t know why the devil I am telling you all this gibberish – it will make you love me finally, and you’ll find all other men insipid for about ten years after I leave you, as I have to. Damn!” But the trick was done; she possessed the secret of her own soul now, and her generous kisses and smiling eyes told him that there was nothing to regret for either of them henceforward. The
imp was out of the bottle.
A bell rang somewhere and she sat up. Good God! It was late afternoon! She had slept all day, and Affad lay beside her once more. How had he come in without waking her?
He woke from his deep trance-like sleep and rubbed his eyes, saying, “That means a new drum of paper for the machine. Smirgel has become increasingly talkative, he runs on and on. It makes you think of the agony of silence spies have to endure, for keeping a secret is a real effort, like wanting to pee during a march past. He can talk to nobody. Except me. He has become like a chatterbox wife. I keep trying to shut him up but to no avail.”
The Avignon Quintet Page 83