His teasing had no effect. She insisted. Then, on the day of Anna’s wedding, his patience ran out. He was standing next to one of the buffet tables; the waiters were arranging it with great precision—he looked at the cold meats and the indistinguishable covered dishes with sudden repulsion. He’d been eating; now he put down his plate, hastily. He’d been drinking; now the smell of alcohol made him sick. He found himself standing on the front steps, the parking lot in front of him, lines of white-jacketed Negro boys waiting to bring cars. The lot was crowded. These people were never going home, he thought. At daylight they would still be drinking and eating and rubbing around in the shadowy shrubbery.
He went down the steps to the white gravel of the parking lot. The party sure wouldn’t miss him. Now who would he miss? Who was there that he would ever want to see again, if he had the choice? His dead wife’s family and their in-laws, by the hundreds? It seemed to him that he had always been surrounded by her family. Drowning in them, jammed to death by them.
Their pressure was like a weight on the back of his neck. “Where’s my car?” The big Packard limousine, flashy badge of success, stopped in front of him. He waved his chauffeur away. “I’ll drive.” Where? Where did he want to go? He hesitated, one hand on the door. And then he knew. “Wait,” he said, and hurried inside. To call Helen Ware. She’d come to the wedding and to the reception, but she had not stayed long. She was always so very correct. He kept ringing, humming cheerfully to himself. Until she answered.
“I’m coming over,” he said. “Put a light in the window for me.”
“Now?”
“No, in about five minutes.”
A pause. “You’ve been drinking, that’s what it is.”
“Comb your hair, or whatever you have to do.”
“You just can’t come walking in at this hour of the night—do you know what time it is?”
“No,” he admitted, “but I don’t care either. Answer the door.”
“I will not,” she said. “I’ve told you so often how careful I have to be.”
“You’ve told me,” he said, “but I’m tired of sneaking around corners. I’m going to park a big black Packard limousine right in front of your house, and I’m going to kick in the door if I have to.”
“I will not allow any such thing.”
“Helen,” he said, weary of talk, “you’ll open the door.”
The streets were empty; he wondered vaguely what time it could be. There seemed to be a lightening over there, would it be near morning. Or was it just his eyes?
Though he’d often been to Helen Ware’s house in the two years he’d known her, he had trouble finding it now. The quiet uptown streets, with their heavy greasy canopies of camphor trees, all looked alike. He peered at the street signs: Hampson, Perrier, Coliseum. What was the name of her street? He turned a corner, stared. No, not this one. Go the other way. Where the hell was it, that white house with a magnolia tree directly in front, that low white house with a fringe of wood gingerbreadwork over the screened front porch. Where’d it got to? Must have disappeared. He peered down another street, and then another. Maybe I’m in the wrong part of town.
He actually drove past the house before he noticed. There. He backed up, hastily. Sure enough. That was it. Have I been passing it all this time, going round and round in front of it?
The door opened at once, she must have been sitting right behind it, waiting.
“Good morning,” he said cheerfully, “did you see me drive by a few times before?”
“I wasn’t looking out,” she said.
She was in terrible humor, that was clear. He grinned, knowing that in his lined, weathered face, his grin was still boyish. “I had some trouble finding your place.”
“How much have you had to drink?”
“Haven’t any idea. Would you care to offer something to a gentleman caller?”
“I would not.”
“You keep it in the dining-room cabinet, right?”
“You can’t come here any hour of the night and expect me …”
He poured himself a neat Scotch. “To your health.”
She was still sulking. Her underlip was definitely pouting. He decided to ignore it. “You like the wedding?”
“It went beautifully.”
“What did you think of the reception?”
“Everyone seemed to be having a marvelous time.”
“They still are,” he said to the yellow Scotch.
“You don’t mind.”
“The liquor will last longer than they will.”
“You’re very patient.”
“I’m not there.” He pulled a chair away from the table with his foot and sat down. Deliberately, because he knew it annoyed her, he put his glass on the polished mahogany surface.
She slipped a coaster under it, wordlessly.
“What about a whiskey, Helen?”
“No, thank you.”
“Take one,” Oliver said. “It’ll make an old drunk like me look better to you.”
“You must stop thinking of yourself as ancient.”
He shook his head, grinning. She refused to think of him as old. She also refused to think of herself as old. “Have a drink with the Old Man,” he said. “Everybody’s called me that for more than thirty years. And by God, they’re finally right.”
“We are both middle-aged,” she said. “Middle-aged.”
She would never change. Oliver himself rather liked the idea of getting old; if he managed it right he’d be venerable, like the pope, and people would think him very wise. …
Helen Ware said “middle-aged,” as if it were a charm that held back time. How foolish women were, how silly. Middle-aged. Not any more. And not for a long time past. You could see age in her body, could see every one of her years clearly marked on her skin. Hollows on the inside of her thighs, little caves where the flesh had fallen away. That wasn’t middle-aged, he thought with a silent laugh. That was old. Like those bulges along her jaw that she smoothed and pressed and treated with creams each day. And the way her skin felt thin and dry and brittle and scorched. … Sometimes it seemed to him that time was like fire, burning as it passed. The heat of the blood dried and withered the flesh it supported.
Now, lying in her bed, he held one of his arms straight up into the air and looked at it. Sometimes it seemed to him that he wasn’t really connected to himself. The memories of the person he’d been didn’t seem possible. This arm now. He had a hard time believing that it belonged to him as a boy. The arm that had been with him forty years ago in the alleys of Singapore and the streets of Manila was sunburned and thick with light hair. This arm now—the one he held over his head—had white skin and dark hair. Like a photograph negative. … Feelings went that way too. Things important to the boy, the man never thought about.
He turned his arm about, staring at the corded veins along the inner side, trying to see the blood running inside them. When a man was cut, the blood pumped out in squirts, just like a pump emptying a boat. He’d seen that when he was little, back in the Ohio Valley; a saw slashed his thigh, his blood pumped red into the snow, steaming. Oliver remembered thinking that it was like hogs’ blood at slaughtering time.
Now, here was his arm, again, stuck up in the air. He whistled through his teeth at it. Old man’s arm, old man’s body.
“What are you doing?” Helen Ware asked.
“Thinking.”
“About what.”
“When I was young.”
“For heaven’s sake.” She thought all memories were bad. She snuggled closer to him, her fingers tapping at his ribs, the insistent demanding call on his body. For two years he’d had answers for her. This time there was no response.
“I’m sorry, Helen,” he said.
Funny, he thought, it doesn’t bother me; it ought to, but it doesn’t.
“You’ve had too much to drink.”
She was annoyed, he thought calmly. Very annoyed.
And what happe
ned to his desire? Into what strange corner had his lust drained?
It had troubled him for so long, this lust, as it raged and burned sporadically. Times when clouds looked like breasts and mountains like buttocks. Times when the entire air quivered with the smell of musk. When any woman was beautiful, because she was necessary. When he could not sit down, could not keep still. He jammed two-bit whores, without noticing their scars and filth. He ordered expensive women, and had not noticed the details of their superb bodies. Even when he changed whores for decent women, nothing was different. It was still the same blind urge.
He was driven to their flesh, impelled, as if it weren’t his doing at all. As if he weren’t really present. As if there were just a naked joyless male drive and a nameless woman to satisfy it. When it was over, he’d come back to join his body again—in the emptiness of satisfaction there was room for him.
With this woman now, Helen Ware, he felt comfortable. Her house was familiar to him, he recognized even the smallest objects. Just as he knew the rooms around him, he knew the body next to him. He knew the feel of the thin skin, the little perpendicular wrinkles of the neck, the dry thighs. … There’d been a whore once, so long ago; she’d been oily all over, inside and out, slippery skin, slippery hair. Juicy was her word for it, but it reminded him of ice-skating. …
It was pleasant to lie in Helen Ware’s bed in the semi-darkness, and study the shape and form of his arm, and feel his daughter’s wedding liquor sing in his brain. And know for a fact: the end of lust. He had expected to be afraid and horrified. He wasn’t either. He was only, vaguely, surprised. That was all. The first death. So quiet. A tide you didn’t see go out until it was gone.
She shook him and asked: “Are you sick?”
“Just old age.” The first death; yes, that was right. When was the next?
“I don’t know what’s the matter with you tonight.”
He lowered his arm and looked at her. “It’s rough on you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She had a lot to say, but he didn’t listen. He was still considering himself, with surprise. So this was the way it went, gentle. He’d never even considered the possibility of that. Nature fixed it for you: desire and ability went together. Neat and proper. He felt lighter now. A burden, a requirement, was gone.
She was crying. He turned to her but she pushed him away, angrily.
“I know I don’t have the body of a young girl.”
He frowned. What was she talking about? What had she taken it all for?
“I know perfectly well that no woman fifty-five can be beautiful. Not like a young girl.”
“What?” he said. “What?”
She didn’t listen. “You don’t have to do it like this. …”
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “What am I doing?”
“How can you be so insulting, so cruel. …”
Well. Like that. She thought it was her fault. Which of course was the way a woman would think. Too bad. If she’d only understood, they could have lain in bed and had a drink together. And she might even have felt some of the gentle softness he was feeling. The great release. My dear, what you’ve missed. But maybe it never comes to women. My dear, what a pity and a shame.
He thought he knew what to say, and he said it to the ceiling. “Would you like to get married?”
In the silence that followed he waited patiently.
“Are you serious?” she asked.
And then there was a great weariness that ran around the hollow spaces inside his body, filling them like smoke. “No,” he said. “No.”
He drove home in the red light of the early-June sun. This isn’t so bad, he thought; this isn’t so bad at all. At least he felt free.
Robert
ROBERT STOOD IN THE corner of his new bedroom, the inside of his skull shaking and shivering. Like jello. Or an earthquake. One or the other. He couldn’t decide which.
The whole room was full of pink roses. He squeezed the nearest bud between his fingers until it burst.
“Robert,” Anna called from the dressing room. “Why don’t you open the champagne?”
There it was, single bottle in a silver stand. Two crystal goblets next to it.
He expected Anna to be shy. Or afraid. But it was he who was nervous. She held his hand, and opened the iron gate and led him along the path to their house while her long satin skirts made little crisp noises against the bricks. He managed to unlock the door, but it was she who slipped the night latch across behind them.
The champagne opened with a loud plop. He poured it gently and carefully into the two glasses. It was pink. Or was it just the room reflecting? He found himself staring at the pink silk curtains. Was there really a window behind all that? …
The room seemed foggy; hazy. It was the soft lighting, the wall sconces with their tiny flickering fingers of light, the pink-shaded lamps.
He was married now. His life was organized and planned. A steady series of successes. Work bringing its rewards. Esteem and love. Increasing happiness. Bask in the approval of your wife’s brown eyes. … Me, the man of property, the successful businessman, growing distinguished gray hairs, the soft cushions of money all around. … And what the hell was bothering him?
The house hadn’t looked familiar. … He’d been here a hundred times. He knew the studs, and the laths, and the plaster; he knew the brick foundations and the underfloor. He knew the clapboards; he had looked into the buckets of paint. And now that he had moved here, nothing in the house seemed familiar.
“Is the champagne ready?” Anna wore a long white robe that billowed around her, fluttering and lifting and sending out waves of perfume.
“I never noticed that your hair was straight,” he said.
“I’ve always had straight hair,” she said.
“I don’t know why I never noticed.”
He picked up a glass, his hand shook. The frothy liquid ran along the finished surface of the table. Hastily, he reached for his handkerchief.
Anna put a hand on his arm, “Robert, everything in the house was made to be used, don’t worry about it.”
She was right. It was all his to be used. He handed her the glass. “Happy wedding, Mrs. Caillet.”
He’d expected a blush or a giggle. He got only a quiet smile. “I’m very happy, Robert.”
He said: “I like that, it looks lovely on you.” He reached out to touch the floating panels and his fingers were appalled by the dry scratchy feel. Like feeling dead leaves, he thought.
“I would like some more champagne, please.”
He filled her glass, without spilling this time. “I’m getting the hang of it.”
Learn all sorts of things. Learn to get used to this: me a married man. Wife all in fluffy white. That scratches like starch. Why would she wear that? Me with a house of my own. Floors so polished the rugs skid on them. It’s a long way from the oyster boats. With Ti Chou yelling: “Quick quick, you work to fill your empty mouth! You sit at my table to eat, you got to work.” …
Anna held out her glass again. “I must be nervous.”
He kissed her lightly. Her lips were very smooth and tasted vaguely sweet. Clouds of perfume hung around her face.
“I’ll wait for you,” she said.
Wait for me. Yes. I’m her husband. Take what’s mine. Can’t leave things untouched, cause for divorce. To say nothing of her thinking I’m a queer.
“I’ll be right back.”
He found pajamas and robe behind the door. Everything arranged. He stepped into the shower, letting the water pour over his face and hair. What the hell was wrong? Usually he couldn’t get to a woman fast enough. Like Betty. Sometimes they didn’t have time to get to the creaky couch in her dusty basement, and he actually felt the floor through her body. Even before the door opened, he was straining at his pants, wanting to jam into her. And that basement. He had never really seen it. Just smelled it: musky and close with the faint sweet odor of rats hanging in the air. Just thinki
ng about it now and the movement in his loins began. Damn fool, you can only make it in a dirty basement. …
The bedroom was darker, just a single lamp burning. Pink light in a pool on the floor. The white wings of her robe hung motionless on a chair. Clouds settling on the mountains.
He climbed into bed, slowly. Methodically, he held her, letting his hands smooth and pet, while his panic grew. What the hell is wrong? … She had smooth skin, cool even in June. Marble would be the word for it. Betty had sharp prickly hair growing under her armpits; her skin was rough, pitted with occasional pimples and old craters of chicken-pox scars. She was always warm, too, even on winter nights. Sweat popped out of her pores in little beads that formed quick streams. She smelled of sweat, faintly sour.
Anna sighed contentedly. He was doing all right. If he could just keep it up.
Her nipple lengthened and hardened in his mouth. His hand reached her crotch. She was ready. He wasn’t. My God, he thought, why did I have anything to drink?
“Do you like to kiss,” she asked very softly.
“You just wait,” he said, “and you’ll see.”
He’d never had a woman like that. For him it had to be a virgin.
He thought: Every woman moved alike with her spasm. Every one. The same shift, the same lift upward. Same pleasure, virgin and whore. Anna and Betty.
He had never really seen Betty; she was always a shape in the dark, speaking in whispers. But he remembered her, God, he remembered her and he could feel her now. The snake-like movements. The desire, not so much for him as for any man. But while he was there, he was all men. For that one moment the force and power of the future drove through his loins. He would break and destroy, he would remake in his own way.
The Condor Passes Page 18