I replied truthfully that I was not engaged. It is true that I had nearly been engaged to a brother of a friend of mine on an occasion two months previously. I do not wish to say more about that at present. So then G said, You are in need of protection from yourself. You have a very passionate and loving nature and if you are not careful men will take advantage of it. I kept telling myself as he spoke that this was nonsense, but all the time I recognised in myself these new feelings that I could not fathom. I knew that his words had a certain truth, even though he spoke them with a kind of superior, teacher’s air. Then he said that to fulfil myself I needed to experience the ecstasy of physical desire. I burst out laughing.
It was when he laughed as well that I knew he was probably right. He then used a word for my most private part that I’d heard only once before, from Agnes, my school friend. When she’s said that’s what men called it I hadn’t believed her. Like so many things you don’t want to remember, I’d remembered that word. He used it. I blushed crimson and he knew of course that I knew what it meant. At that point he gave me another kiss, a light one on my burning cheek, and went out of the room with quite a jaunty stride, as if he’d just won something on the horses.
So you see you are receiving this from a weak woman who is not sure of her own heart and feelings, let alone of her own soul. You can reproach me for weakness in telling you these things. You asked me to write whatever I felt was dearest to me, so I am telling you my most private fears and feelings. You will say I am a silly bourgeoise – isn’t that the word you used in Brittany? I know that if I had more real cares, like the poor barefoot children three streets away with their pinched, whey faces and their mothers wearing smelly old tatters, then perhaps I needn’t write to you about such trivial matters as my own feelings. But I write what I know of. I have no wish to hide that fact, and I think I know myself better than I know the world. You must teach me about the world…
What was the relevance of all this? The addressee was unknown, the relationship between the authoress and the addressee was unclear and the style of the document was awkward, even if the translation could not fail to suggest that it was reasonably colloquial. An experienced translator can fairly quickly perceive the way in which a text may have arisen in some capillary action from deep acquaintance with the language as well as from within the author’s creativity. Somehow, this did not seem to be true here. The document was puzzling. It conveyed the incongruous impression of something written both naively and candidly by a lady who, if not actually English, used what felt like English turns of phrase. Yet, if it were intended to be presentable in a court of law, particularly in England, the frank nakedness of the passion could lay it open to all manner of legal constraints and challenges.
So why was it in Russian? And why should Ben have hinted that it was relevant to him, Joseph Richter? Of course, it was addressed to Dear Mr Richter, but who was this Mr Richter? Was he a relative? Maybe. There was little doubt the letter’s honesty of feeling made it seem authentic and therefore relevant. The addressee or recipient of such a confession would want it to be secret, Joe supposed, because identities, and no doubt place names as well (except for the mention of Brittany), were to be concealed on his insistence (the Russian clearly indicated that the addressee was masculine). This made the relevance to Joe himself even more conjectural and did nothing to explain what connection there might be between this Russian text and the phial of DNA labelled with his name.
Despite this, what lingered in Joe’s thoughts was the old photograph he had found in the ‘bank box’. It could have been taken on a holiday in Brittany, couldn’t it? The possibility stimulated him into wanting to continue the word-for-word translation as soon as possible. Fatigue, though, suddenly brought it to a halt. He knew he had to keep all his queries to himself. Ben could not be contacted. That had been the abiding rule of their friendship from the start. As for Leo, contact by phone had been prohibited. There seemed little chance, in any case, he would know anything about what might have happened in Brittany or the intimate relations between the lady in this Russian document and the G about whom she was writing.
He saved all the text he had translated and copied it to a USB stick before leaning back and staring out of the dark window. Dimly discernible against similar windows in the back of the adjoining house in Courtier Street was the faint iceberg shape of the tree Billy had mentioned and he had himself glimpsed earlier. Its presence was comforting. He did not know why, but he felt it was protective. It warned him, he thought, to pause in the effort of translating and have a rest. Practically at once he yawned, lay down on the bed and fell asleep.
10
The table lamp still shed a small island of light on the laptop. He knew he should have turned it off. His wristwatch showed just after one o’clock in the morning and London, to his amazement, was momentarily a silent universe at the back of Courtier Street.
Things changed. He was awake and aware of the faint, residual smell of emulsion paint along with distant sounds – an aircraft overhead, the wail of a siren, a shout, a dog barking – and then again silence, so that even his own breathing was like a succession of barely audible cries for help heard through thick mist. Then the explosive loudness of the bed as he sat up. He listened. Again silence and through the silence the tiny scratchings of sound that were early-morning London. He suddenly shivered. This time it was as much from loneliness as from night-time chill.
The little bedroom in its uniform emulsion paint had an antiseptic, naked, cell-like whiteness. Without any adornment of pictures or even a mirror it seemed to cry out for a human presence. Climbing out of the bed, he asserted his own presence at once by opening his laptop. It made all the requisite bird-like noises of early-morning awakening before showing him another letter. This time it was a coherent, virtually seamless narrative of intimate confession that offered an account of an important episode in the writer’s life. Soon, as if it were a faintly echoing reminder of bedsprings creaking regularly under lovemaking, the bedroom became filled with the tapping of keys as he translated word-for-word.
Dear Mr Richter,
This is what happened to me that weekend and I will describe it quite candidly. Please do not take offence at the honesty of my account. I am writing to you from the same seaside place because I wanted to make sure I had remembered the room and the pier, etc. correctly. The difference is that now my heart is so open it is like the tenderest wound that hurts literally from the contact of air.
G insisted I should wait for him on Friday. We met at Victoria Station and in the carriage we were pressed so close together by the crush of people I felt the heat of his body through his suit. The warm air blew through the carriage window. It untidied my hair. All my earlier, carefully arranged life seemed to be blown about as the train raced through the bright evening countryside. My feelings were such a mixture. I thought, here am I, with smuts from the engine blowing on my face and clothes, and my hair being blown right out from under my hat, but the rushing countryside looked so beautiful and fresh, just as I really felt inside. When he whispered in my ear that I was looking as fresh and lovely as a flower – and with all the smuts on me! – I thought he was teasing. And what a silly comparison that is, isn’t it? But no, he whispered it again, and suddenly it seemed the nicest, sweetest thing any man had ever said to me. I was sure he meant it. I sensed the love in his words, a love that filled the tight little compartment of the carriage and spread out over all the countryside in a brilliant golden glow of feeling.
He explained that he had booked into a hotel right on the seafront. We took a cab from the station. It was getting dark and the new electric lights hanging between the lamp-posts all along the seafront were so pretty and bright they were like tiny necklaces hanging there for the sea to admire. The pier was lit up, too. He had said we would have to pretend we were a married couple, because the hotel had a good reputation and everything had to be respectable. I knew very well what he meant, but this time, I have to say, it
was not like it was in Brittany.
The room was on the third floor overlooking the sea. There were two windows and two separate beds and a basin. It was a pretty, freshly decorated room and I thought it had a happy atmosphere. I am very conscious of atmospheres in places.
To be alone with G in a hotel bedroom, pretending to be his wife when you scarcely knew him, needed tact, of course, and much more real friendliness than I had imagined would be needed. He did his best. He put me at my ease by complimenting me on my clothes and telling me that I had good taste. I am so vain, I know, that the slightest flattery will set me ringing with pleasure like a glass bell. There was no jauntiness about his manner now. He was so seriously affectionate to me I felt certain of his love and he had only to reach up his hands to my face and hold my cheeks and gently press his lips to mine for me to feel again all the sweet readiness to submit that I had felt at the first kiss and tried so hard not to feel. But now there was no fear of my father coming into the room. We were completely private for the first time. He was shy, too, I realized. The very privacy itself, the opportunity, made us behave towards each other as if we had not read the instructions to this game of happiness we were about to enjoy. I thought he would fumble, believing he should behave in the man’s role with some overmastering and rather insensitive way towards me, so I urged him first to unclip his tie, pinned as it had been with the pearl pin just by his throat.
He did this laughing, opening his collar so that it sprang away to reveal a little soreness on his throat where the starched edge had fretted. I was so overwhelmed with concern for this sore mark that I had to kiss him and as I stretched towards him he started to undo the buttons at the back of my dress that Amy always does up for me whenever I am going out. So we played this game of forfeits, he forfeiting his collar and cuffs for the undoing of the buttons on the back of my dress, then he undoing his shirt for the unfastening of my own collar and the three buttons at the front, and the unbuckling of my belt for his braces, until we were laughing so much someone above us (probably one of the hotel servants, as I later learned) banged for us to be quiet.
So very quietly, feeling guilty like naughty children doing what we knew our parents wouldn’t like, we slowly slipped off more of each other’s clothes until he was bare to the waist and I had only my petticoat on. It was the first time in my life I had seen a man’s nakedness close-to, except of course in pictures. His skin was pale, but it was very clean and glowing in the dusk-filled room, and though he had a fine, well-muscled chest it was smooth and hairless, not like the men you and I had seen in Brittany. The sight of his strong bare shoulders and his bright smiling eyes made me think of him as no more than a boy. I was not in awe of him or frightened of him at all and let him lift my petticoat over my raised arms and untie the covering over my bosom. So I stood in front of him quite bare, but not afraid. I even felt a pride in offering my body to his eyes, because I had nothing to be ashamed of and his eyes were so filled with love.
A little shock came when he also took off his trousers and stood before me. He was slim, white-skinned, well-formed, but my eyes could not escape seeing the stiffly risen, tall flower of his masculinity, with its broad, peach-shaped head and fine curve rising from abundant black curls. A satyr, I thought, a wild, priapic stallion, and I gave a gasp of surprise, but this somehow gave him greater authority and power. All shyness gone, he came towards me, held me strongly and I felt the soft, hot pressure of his masculinity on my… Oh, I am crossing the word out, the word I had learned from my friend Agnes at school! – but I will say he kissed me fiercely, his body pressing against mine. Then, without removing the counterpane, he drew me down on to one of the beds, using his physical strength to overwhelm my attempts to fend him from me. I did not fight, my love for him was too great. In my own turn, knowing nothing else mattered, I sought to please his excited, wild state and was ready to accept any hurt from him. But he did not thrust hard and gently let himself enter me as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
At first I thought of it as a violation. Ever since I was a girl of ten and learned some of the physical facts of love I had wondered why what is called ‘love’ should be so humiliating. Why do grown-up people seek humiliation like that? I had wondered. Because I was sure that for all men the compulsion to sexuality was as much of a violation of selfhood as it was for all women who had to submit to men’s sexual part. It was, I thought, women’s role in life. So I had often thought it would be better to be a nun than submit to such a violation of my body.
I was wrong. We both know how wrong I was. Those were the thoughts of a frightened girl. Now I know it is not humiliating. It is joyful. The pressure of his body on mine, just like when we were on the train, was joyful. Then I felt his own arousal within me and the quick motion lit me like a shaft of sunlight and I quivered with him and a dance began between our bodies, so fierce I thought I could hardly draw breath. I drew him into me, lifted myself to him, as if I would rain down upon his most sensitive part such a storm of kisses that I would encase him with loving enticements. Then it all seemed so happy, so natural, so delicate and so shared, this loving of our bodies for each other. I had never thought I would be made so free and happy by physical contact as I was then. Quickly his arousal drew to a climax. He withdrew at the last moment. I didn’t mind. Perhaps, if I am completely truthful, I was a little disappointed that he did not permit himself the uninterrupted ecstasy of that final moment. At least I realized he had known other women and knew that such withdrawal ensured there would be no serious consequences.
We lay in each other’s arms for a while listening to the sound of the music from the pier and the carriages going by in the darkness along the seafront. I could not stop myself from kissing him. I was wild with love for him and so happy I could barely think I was alive. In the evening quiet, feeling the soft rise and fall of the waves beating out regular drum-rolls below us, mingling with the band music and the other noises, I held my lover and he held me and we did not need to speak at all. We contributed a little, I think, to the great mystery of happiness that exists unseen in the world and which people know from time to time by chance. Once they have known it they can never forget it. A bit of heaven, I suppose.
Later we went out to a restaurant where there was a French maitre just like the one at the auberge in Brittany. He was almost exactly the same, with black hair parted in the middle and a very fast walk. He kept on fluttering his fingers in a strange way. We had a whole bottle of wine – G was being very extravagant – but he told me he had plenty of money and could afford the very best for his ladylove.
I asked him quite boldly how many other lovers there had been in his life, supposing he would evade the question at all costs, but he surprised me by admitting quite openly there had been five others and of these only two had been affairs, as he called them, one a married woman whose husband was abroad, the other a divorced lady. He said how lucky he had been to learn so much about love from these partners, because he said loving had to be learned like everything else in the world. I felt like laughing at all this solemn talk. He spoke so much like a doctor talking to me as a patient. I decided I would puncture his self-confidence and boasting. So I did something quite unforgivable – I said I also had a previous lover of my own! And do you know who that was? It was YOU!
There had been no obvious addressee until this point. The YOU was presumably Mr Richter who might be related to him, Joe supposed, his grandfather, for instance, or great-grandfather, perhaps the man in the old photograph of the couple standing in bright sunlight against a blurred background of sea, with the studio name printed on it. Were they in Brittany? It seemed a clue. But the relevance of it all, he now realized, would only become clear once the addressee was known and could give this account of an affair some purpose. He stood up, paced up and down for a short while, sat down again in front of his laptop and continued the translation.
He became very interested when he heard this and started asking me about you. I sa
id you were not English, you were German, and when he heard that he frowned and looked annoyed. I wasn’t going to tell him anything more. You mustn’t be offended. I know you will probably take this very seriously and tell me what a dishonest woman I am, but G will believe almost anything I say, just as I will believe every word of his. Loving is believing, after all!
So now, you see, we are lovers! I suddenly have two men in my life when only three weeks ago I had none!
G, of course, became jealous. He started asking what I was writing all the time. I said I had a household to manage. But he was never going to see my letters. If he had seen any of them, he would have been mad with jealousy, because he is quite the most jealous person I have ever known. He is still refusing, you see, to believe I’d had a lover, so to calm him I decided to tell him it was all a fib. I said it was all nonsense. I said, which is the honest truth, that it was simply my love for him, my readiness to enjoy our pleasure, that gave me such knowledge of lovemaking.
Perhaps I have already written too much in the letter I am now writing. I content myself with thinking it does not matter, because you will destroy everything I have written as you promised. So I have written all this for two reasons, one is because you have a perfect right to know about my relationship with G, and the other is out of a selfish desire to express myself. You know, as I told you, how much I need to talk. It is real torture for me to keep silent for long. That is why I miss dear Mother so much. We were always talking, she and I. I could discuss with her all the private things of my life and she would always understand. Now she is no longer with us I have found it very lonely.
My father could never imagine how Mother and I could find so much to say to each other. But of course he is now in sole charge. The reason the legacy’s not been made available to me is that my father still doesn’t consider I am sensible enough to have the responsibility for so much money. And that is also the reason why G has talked about going to the police or going to law. His jealousy could make it very difficult for me to give you the sums that I wanted to set aside for your purposes.
Mr Frankenstein Page 13