Saints+Sinners

by Saints

  If I were Rodin, he said, I would not sleep or eat until I had sculpted you. (At home, bourbon in hand, he would often practice saying soft tickling things to women.)

  Oh, push, she said lightly. Help me get this off.

  She unclipped her stockings while he began unlacing the corset, and after a minute they had wrestled it off.

  What a contraption! she laughed, tossing it aside. She kept the stockings on, clearly conscious of their arousing effect. Next came the camisole, which had a single dainty tie at the front; she undid it while keeping her amused gaze on the bulge in his trousers. He kissed her breasts: each was a pearled overfullness, like a water droplet on the underside of a leaf, and blessed with a larger-than-usual nipple.

  He heard her murmur something about a transformation, but he didn’t catch it—he was too busy kissing everything he could.

  * * *

  People think that the world is dead in winter, but actually it’s dead in late fall. With the snow comes a quickening; valleys and hills begin to take on light; and flesh turns sleepwalker at all hours.

  In the days that followed, Connor found himself constantly sliding into reveries about Arundel Grey. He was bewildered by their intensity and frequency. He could be riding the Sparks Street tram, or printing forms at the American Legation, or composing another dreary diplomatic invitation, and Arundel would be there, sweet water from the brackish wells of the day. Sometimes she came just to talk, but mainly she came to have sex. As she told Connor, these interludes were an escape for her, too.

  Sleeping, he was bravo and barnstormer. They did the usual dream activities like flying, with some wild harlequin twists. Once he found himself in a tandem ski jump with her, standing on the back of her skis while they soared through the air, both of them naked except for witch-elk ski boots and grey woolen socks. Fifty feet below them, the spectators clapped and cheered. Arundel’s curved warmth cleaved the streaming cold around him. I know I’m dreaming, he thought, but…wait, let me see. In mid-air she bent at the waist, as ski jumpers do, and his penis slid inside her briefly. Maybe it wasn’t a dream after all! He heard her laughing very naturalistically as his penis popped out. When they landed, she edged one ski ahead of the other, his foot moving with hers, and they both managed to keep their feet. Definitely dreaming, he thought. But the realization liberated him, and before they came to a complete stop, he managed to enter her again. The crowd cheered wildly.

  He was certainly moving beyond the theory of skiing.

  But he wanted to see her again, and that would mean getting out on skis. The best place for an innocent encounter would be Dome Hill, where she went for her weekly lessons. Oh, hello, Mrs. Grey. So nice to see you again. Yes, I’m on skis—I guess you inspired me! On Saturday morning he wrestled his eleven-pound hickory ridge-top skis (“Made in Canada by Scandinavians”) into the streetcar and rode with the other skiers to the Dome Hill stop. Disembarking with his equipment under his arms, he marveled. The valley was brimful with light, the sky a startle of blue like a flock of hyacinth macaws. It took him five minutes to do up his bindings. Clutching his bamboo poles, he moved off in the laborious stamp-shuffle of the beginner. He studied the easy swing of passing skiers and strove to mimic it, but his skis wouldn’t go smoothly over the snow. Small children passed him nonchalantly. The heel strap of one binding kept creeping up to the edge of his boot. At one point he took off his skis and studied the bindings balefully: metal toe flanges to keep the foot in place (bent), straps for the toe and heel (ineffectual) and a boot plate (coming loose). Shouldering the skis, he began walking but kept sinking through the crust. Eventually he had to put the medieval things back on. He got to Dome Hill at 10:30, almost missing the lessons for married ladies.

  From the shadow of Dome Hill Lodge he scanned the hill. Lilly and Arundel stood together at the top; the other women must have already left. Lilly was streamlined as usual in men’s ski slacks and flight jacket; Arundel was wearing a dirndl skirt and cowl-neck sweater. He shuffled closer. Arundel snow-ploughed cautiously down the hill, Lilly following easily, and then they both wrapped their skis with something (waxed sealskin, he found out later) and tramped up again. At one point Arundel toppled over, laughing: Lilly helped her up and they stood side by side, Lilly’s arm around her student’s waist, while she gestured in explication to their skis.

  He watched them for half an hour, growing colder and colder. Arundel seemed transformed. He felt shy now about approaching the two skiers; they seemed cocooned in their own sky and snow. At length he turned around and began slogging home. Who was Arundel? Why did her name have this talismanic power? Was she the first wife of Adam? A miracle-working Irish queen? The secret consort of Jesus?

  That night, she asked him if he read poetry. Naked, she had turned herself around and was lying on top of him. She’d seen it on a French postcard, apparently.

  Tell me if you like this, she continued—

  Lovely the swift

  Sparrows that brought you over black earth

  A whirring of wings through mid-air

  Down the sky.*

  It’s glittering Aphrodite, she said, riding in her chariot drawn by sparrows. Beautiful, isn’t it?

  Grasping his penis firmly, she pressed her tongue against the moist slit, parting it slightly.

  All right, she said, your turn.

  Waking alone in the morning, he knew what he had to do. He would find out the source of her name. He would unearth the lost story of Arundel.

  * * *

  He had barely embarked on this quest, dipping into Bullfinch’s Mythology and The Nuttal Cyclopedia of Universal Information, when he was completely thrown off the rails by an encounter with Arundel’s husband.

  Basil Grey was a small man with caret wrinkles above his eyes and a sad, moral face—a non-skier, apparently. Ordinarily he would be just another of Ottawa’s pleasant, innocuous inhabitants with whom Connor had nothing in common. But given his fantasies about Mr. Grey’s wife, Connor was very curious about the husband. When they ran into each other one day at the drugstore, Connor was both uneasy and intrigued. Basil Grey didn’t seem to notice.

  “You’re the tree seller,” he said, trying to summon interest.

  “That’s me,” said Connor nervously. He cast a surreptitious eye over Mr. Grey and saw nothing more than a child wintered by time. Three kids, apparently. A modest job as a bank clerk. Hair growing out of his ears. Surely this man could never love a woman like Arundel.

  “I understand you’re giving out certificates for the trees,” said Basil. “I think my wife was too shy to ask for one.”

  Connor opened his mouth and closed it again. Obviously Arundel had said nothing to her husband about the certificate. He began to sense he was inside a story that went deeper than he thought.

  “I’ll…make sure you get one,” he said and, casting around for misdirection, added quickly, “Mrs. Grey tells me she is enjoying her ski lessons.”

  “It seems that way.” Connor detected something in the man’s voice—disapproval with a note of wistfulness. No, this man could never love Arundel. But he probably did love Mrs. Basil Grey.

  “Are you a skier, Mr. O’Flynn?” said Basil.

  “No, no.” Connor forced a chuckle. “I mean…I did it once but I think that’s going to be the last.”

  This confession seemed to break down some of Basil’s reserve.

  “My wife wants to try the craziest things now,” he said in a low voice.

  Connor felt a barely perceptible dislocation, as if a magnetic field had reversed itself deep inside him.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said.

  “She just started lessons this year, and now she wants to do ski jumping.”

  “Ski jumping?”

  “Absolutely daft.” Basil Grey shook his head. “I don’t know where she gets these ideas.”

  * * *

  At the next ski club tea, Connor watched her restively from a corner. Was it his imagination, or did she look mor
e animated, more alive, than before? He waited until Basil had left his wife’s side, and then, gathering his courage, sidled close.

  “Hello, Mrs. Grey,” he said.

  She turned on him her eyes of faded blue. “Hello, Mr. O’Flynn,” she said placidly. “How are your trees selling?”

  “Like hotcakes. Hot as…hotcakes.” He didn’t notice any particular nuance in her look, anything to indicate a sharing of dreams. “How are the ski lessons going?” he asked blandly.

  She looked pleased. “I think I’ve lost some weight.”

  “I’m glad.” He pushed ahead clumsily; he didn’t know when her husband would return. “I’ve actually done a bit of skiing myself. At Dome Hill and…at home.”

  “At home?” she said.

  “Yes—I do parlour skiing. I think I’ve got the jump turn down.”

  He watched her face for any flicker of knowingness, but she just stirred her tea and looked across the room. “That’s nice,” she said absently. “Well, I’d better see what’s become of my husband.”

  “Mrs. Grey,” he said urgently, lowering his voice, “can we meet sometime?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Can we meet? Somewhere private?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  No, he couldn’t say it; he couldn’t even hint at the recent adventures of his soul. From her look he might have been an insurance salesman or a peddler of Prohibition rum. Could all those rich fantasies just be his alone? In desperation he blurted out: “Because…I’ve discovered the story behind your name.”

  Connor was completely unprepared for her reaction. The blood drained from her face.

  “What’s wrong?” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  She had come closer; the fright in her eyes had given way to anger. “What have you discovered?” she hissed. “Tell me!”

  “Just…the origin of your name,” he faltered. “Remember I said it sounded like a name from a story? Well, I know the whole story now.”

  She blanched again. “What is it? Tell me!”

  “Well…I can’t. Not here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…” He was flailing badly but not quite under the waves. “There are too many people here. You have to hear it in private.”

  She continued to gaze at him with eyes of flint. “Very well,” she said. “I will meet you.”

  “Thank you,” he gasped.

  He couldn’t understand what had just happened; he couldn’t understand anything about this strange affair. She glanced around quickly to see if anybody was in earshot.

  “Tomorrow, Ogilvy’s is having a sale,” she said. “I’ll be in the tearoom at the back. Two o’clock.”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  She turned away, but almost immediately turned back.

  “Please,” she said in a low voice, “don’t tell my husband.”

  Connor blinked. “What?”

  “It’ll mean the end of my marriage. The end of me.”

  “I’ll tell nobody,” said Connor vehemently.

  She gave him a last tormented look and fled across the room.

  * * *

  Connor was mystified. Clearly she believed he had discovered some intimate secret about her. Well, he would set her mind at rest. He’d explain that he had discovered nothing about her, no story about her name; he’d been babbling like a half-wit. Babbling in the hope that he could see her alone. He’d be dirt in her eyes, but at least he’d be acting honourably.

  And yet, he did have a story about Arundel—their story, the tale of their secret selves meeting in his fantasies. Dare he tell her about that? God, no, that would make things worse. Maybe he could come up with some harmless little story about her name.

  And then he thought of Lilly Standish. He was sure the married ladies confided their secrets to her; she might know what Arundel wanted to hide. But he’d have to tread carefully. He could never let Lilly know that he was interested in Mrs. Basil Grey, she of the hair nets and thick calves.

  Connor could not tell whether Lilly actually liked him, or was just amused by him—by his quaint Southern lilt, his hothouse melancholy, his straw hats. But when he called on her that evening, she cheerfully ushered him into her parlour and told him he looked pensive.

  “But then,” she said, pouring him a brandy, “you always look pensive.”

  Lilly had the dark waterbird beauty of a Man Ray model—high cheekbones, a cupid’s-bow mouth, night-fluent eyes. She had, in fact, once appeared in one of Man Ray’s cinépoèmes (this was in Paris, where she had fled after the death of her husband) and had apparently done a dance routine with Kiki of Montparnasse. Man Ray’s photos could be found scattered throughout her house—all of women, their faces and torsos patterned with light and shadow. Tonight she was wearing a burgundy lace dress with a slanted hemline and a fashionable corsage at her hip. She was forty years old and as supple as a dryad. On the ski trails she was a master of the geländesprung, in which a skier would plant both poles, bend low, and leap into the air over an obstacle. She could have had any man she wanted but seemed only interested in skiing and photography.

  “Speak your troubles, dear man,” she said.

  Suddenly assailed by misgivings, Connor decided to say nothing about Arundel Grey but to sketch out a hypothetical situation.

  “There’s this person I know,” he said, “and she’s got a very unusual name. I think I fell in love with her name before I even met her. That happens with us Southerners sometimes.”

  Lilly selected a cigarette from her case and sat with one arm supporting the elbow of her cigarette hand. It took a moment for Connor to realize she was waiting for a light. He struck a match and she leaned forward, cupping his hand. He saw a flesh-tinted shadow between her breasts and thought: what a shape-shifting marvel. On the ski slope she had the lineaments of an adolescent boy, but here, in that dress, she could have made an elderly Anglican minister go off like a roman candle.

  “The thing is, this person seems very…protective of her name,” he continued, waving out the match. “As if it had some secret attached to it.”

  Up till that moment Lilly hadn’t been paying close attention, but now she paused while inhaling and fixed him with her noctilucent eyes.

  “And somebody else said to this person that he knew the story behind her name,” he continued. “But he didn’t know it at all; he just said that. He was being an idiot. And now this person is furious at the other idiot person. It’s almost as if she thinks he’s going to blackmail her with her own name.”

  Lilly averted her face slightly to exhale, never taking her eyes off Connor.

  “There’s more to it than that,” he said uneasily, “but that’s basically where it stands now.”

  Lilly languidly drew on her cigarette. Her eyelids fell and her lips parted; a curling wafer of smoke appeared between her tongue and upper palate. She straightened to exhale—chin tilted, mouth in a languorous “o”—as if she had just felt the touch of a lover’s tongue between her shoulder blades. She was the picture of careless indolence, but Connor got the strange feeling she was thinking hard, grappling with an unexpected problem.

  “Tell me more about this person with the unusual name,” she said easily.

  Connor turned towards the coal fire. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, Lilly, it’s…complicated. Anyway, the question is—what do I do?”

  Lilly placed her cigarette in an ashtray and leaned back, crossing her legs.

  “You know, Connor,” she said, “Among some tribes of the world, it’s the custom to have two names—a public name and a secret name. And you don’t tell your secret name to anybody because it’s actually your soul. You guard that name because it’s you, and you don’t want anyone to hear it who could harm you. Evil magicians, for example.”

  “That’s exactly it!” said Connor excitedly. “I fell in love with her secret soul, I fell in love with—”

/>   He almost said it: Arundel. He had even formed the “Ar”—had Lilly caught it? He kept talking to cover himself: “And the thing is, I’ve arranged to see her tomorrow, and I don’t know what to say to her. I’m going to look bad whatever I say.”

  “I agree with you,” said Lilly. “Tell me—have you been intimate with this woman?”

  “Intimate?”

  “Yes, Connor, intimate.”

  Arundel leaned over in Connor’s mind and her breasts took on form, filling a more slender space, trembling slightly like a soap bubble on a wand when a child breathes it into fullness.

  “Not in so many words,” he said dispiritedly.

  “What?”

  “No.”

  Lilly nodded. “And you haven’t discovered anything secret about her. Anything that could be used for…blackmail purposes.”

  “No! And I would never—”

  “Yes, yes, I’m sure you wouldn’t.” Connor thought he detected relief in her voice. She stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. “I must go.”

  “Wait a second,” said Connor. “You’re not just going to walk out on me?”

  “I have a very pressing engagement.”

  “But…I thought you were going to help me, Lilly. What about all those tree certificates I did for you?”

  “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything.”

  “I’m protecting the woman, Lilly. I’m protecting her good name.”

  He followed her out into the vestibule and stood watching while the maid helped her on with her coat.

  “Well, thanks a lot, Lilly,” said Connor bitterly, when the maid had left. “I hope I’ve amused you for five minutes.”

  She turned. “Oh, Connor, stop.”

  He blinked. “Stop what?”

  “Stop being so pensive. I’m not going to help you if you’re going to look pensive.” She threw her scarf over her neck with her usual theatricality. “Very well, I’ll give you some advice. When you meet this woman, tell her the truth. Tell her that you don’t know any secret about her. Tell her you had no intention to blackmail her. Tell her that you just wanted to see her again. And then maybe you’ll find out who she really is.”