He would begin by establishing business dealings between his firm and my employer’s. Then he would inquire about certain products that were handled by the department in which the woman worked. Two days later he informed me that he had made a business appointment for the next day and thought it likely he would negotiate directly with her.
As I saw him enter the office I grew tense. Without looking at me, he walked over to the section manager. Then I heard him speaking with the girl
That afternoon he informed me that all had gone well and a further meeting had been arranged. It was after this second meeting that she accepted his invitation to dinner.
Within the week she became his mistress. He described her as devoted and ready to do anything for him: she had become his instrument, and if I was ready to possess her, he could arrange it. He added that he had already required of her that she submit one day to another man as proof of her love and loyalty to him. He had assured her that she would never know the stranger’s identity, because her eyes would be blindfolded. At first she was indignant, claiming she was being humiliated and insulted. Then, he said, she agreed.
The following evening I left my apartment and took a cab to his house. I arrived too early and had to walk slowly around the neighborhood. Finally I waited silently outside his door, listening. I heard nothing, and rang the bell; the door opened and my friend calmly gestured me in.
A circular white wool rug covered the center of the bedroom floor. A lamp cast its shaded light on the naked woman who lay there, a wide black blindfold covering half her face from the forehead to the base of her nose. My friend knelt down beside her, stroking her with his hands. He beckoned to me. I approached. A melancholy ballad was drifting up from a phonograph; the girl lay still, seemingly unaware of the third presence in the room.
I watched his fingers slide loosely over her skin. As she half rose toward him, seeking him with her hands, he whispered something to her. She dejectedly fell back on the rug, turning her face away from him, her back arched and her hands crossed as though for protection. I hesitated.
Patiently he stroked her again. The cords in her neck softened, her fingers unclenched, but she did not yield any access. My friend rose, and picking up his dressing gown, walked to the door. I heard him turn on the television in the library.
Remembering that I must not speak, I gazed at her tousled hair, her neatly curving thighs, the rounded flesh of her shoulders. I was aware that to her I was no more than a whim of the man she loved, a mere extension of his body, his touch, his love, his contempt I felt my craving grow as I stood over her, but the consciousness of my role prevailed over my desire to possess her. To overcome this I tried to recall those images of her which had so often aroused me in the office: an underarm glimpsed through the armhole of her sleeveless blouse, the motion of her hips within the confines of her skirt
I moved closer; she resisted but did not pull away. I began to touch her mouth, her hair, her breasts, her belly, stroking her flesh until she moaned and raised her arms in what could have meant either rejection or appeal. I drew myself up to take her, my eyes closed to shut out her nakedness, my face brushing the smooth blindfold.
I entered her abruptly: she did not resist With a movement at first timorous and now almost impassioned, her hands gathered me in, pressing my face to her breast Her loosened hair was spreading around her head, her body tautened, her lips parted in voiceless amazement. Our bodies shuddered; I slid down at her side.
She lay rigid, her hands folded piously on her breast like the medieval effigy of a saint She was cold and stiff and quiet; only her twisted face had not yet surrendered to the lull which held her body. Her blindfold was stained with the sweat falling from between her drawn brows.
I went to the bathroom, signaling to my host on the way. I dressed and left the apartment At home I flung myself on the bed. Instantly my image of her divided: the woman in the office, clothed, indifferent, crossing the room; and the naked blindfolded girl, giving herself at another man’s command. Both images were clear and sharp—but they refused to merge. For hours each displaced and supplanted the other.
I woke several times during the night, unable to recall the shape or movement of her body, but vividly remembering the smallest details of her clothes. It was as though I were forever undressing her, forever held back by mounds of blouses, skirts, girdles, stockings, coats, and shoes.
Shortly after the war, I remember, I used to catch butterflies. One section of the town had been completely bombed out, and people no longer lived there. Among the ruins, in smelly pits half filled with amorphous objects which had once been utensils, gangs of cats waged war against hordes of starving rats. Here and there, between piles of rotting timber and rubble, among the ashes of gutted houses, weeds and flowers struggled to free themselves from moldy heaps of clay and brick, bursting into sudden stabs of green. Like rebellious shreds of a rainbow, the butterflies swarmed high against the blackened walls. My friends and I would capture them by the dozen in our homemade nets. They were easier to catch than the stray cats, the birds, or even the fierce, hungry rats.
One day we placed some butterflies in a large glass jar and set it upside down, its wide neck overlapping the edge of an old ramshackle table. The gap was wide enough to let in air, but too narrow for the butterflies to escape. We carefully polished the glass. At first, unaware of their confinement, the butterflies tried to fly through the glass. Colliding, they fluttered about like freshly cut flowers which under a magician’s hand had suddenly parted from their stems and begun to live a life of their own. But the invisible barrier held them back as though the air had grown rigid around them.
After we had nearly filled the jar with butterflies, we placed lighted matches under the rim. The blue smoke rose slowly about the pulsating blooms inside. At first it seemed that each new match added not death but life to the mass of living petals, for the insects flew faster and faster, colliding with each other, knocking the colored dust off their wings. Each time the smoke dimmed the glass, the butterflies repeated their frantic whirl. We made bets on which of them could battle the smoke the longest, on how many more matches each could survive. The bouquet under the glass grew paler and paler, and when the last of the petals had dropped onto the pile of corpses, we raised the jar to reveal a palette of lifeless wisps. The breeze blew away the smoke—it seemed as if some of the corpses trembled, ready to take wing again.
There was an old abandoned factory on the outskirts of town. It had been condemned for years; not an unbroken windowpane remained. There was no equipment left on any of the floors; even the electric wires had been ripped out. I slept on the premises without being molested by anyone. The factory was guarded at night by an old watchman who did not know I was living there; his habit of patrolling the yard from nightfall to early morning kept him from entering the buildings. In spite of the scant attention he gave to anything around him, I found his presence disturbing.
The watchman had no place to rest except in a deep doorway, where he often set his chair and rocked. I felt that the factory never even entered his mind. It was quite possible that he was there simply because he had no better place to go.
One night, unable to sleep, I watched the old man move about the yard, stopping every once in a while to light his pipe. I wondered if it ever occurred to him that he might not be alone.
There were a lot of empty beer bottles discarded around the floors, and on the staircase. I quietly lined up several next to the window, carefully observing the courtyard and the watchman.
The first bottle smashed a few steps to the left of him; he jumped and, shouting, fled into the doorway. Frightened cats were springing from the empty oil drums. Then all was quiet.
What could he do next? He could remain in the doorway, hidden from my sight, ready to defend himself against further assaults, and wait there until morning. Or he could leave the factory right away. Instead, he emerged and began cautiously veering from side to side as if trying to confuse my aim
. Then he bent rapidly to examine the broken glass on the ground. He peered into the shadows around him, possibly still frightened, still conscious of the possibility of a renewed attack, but he could not determine where the bottle had come from. Then he seemed to regain his composure and, relighting his pipe, resumed his rounds.
Again I aimed carefully, letting the second bottle fall right at his feet. Shattering, it muffled his cry. He ran into the doorway, but this time returned just as fast, jerking his head spasmodically.
He obviously would not hide. He must have known that standing in the center of the yard he made a perfect target. When another bottle broke a few feet away from him, he leaped back, but I managed to plant the next one just behind his heels. He scuttled into the shadow of the doorway. There, well hidden, he waited for my next move. Only his pipe glowed in the dark.
What could he have wondered about his enemy? He must have sensed that his life was threatened and that his tormentor was watching from one of the high dark windows overlooking the yard. He knew that he could be killed by one of the bottles.
It was dark in the doorway until his match flared up again. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he began inching along the wall toward the center of the littered area.
I aimed and threw three bottles at once. One of them must have hit his back, for the old man swore loudly, retreating into an alleyway just out of my range. I heard him pacing up and down, angrily thumping the ground with his stick. Unexpectedly he returned into the range of fire. I waited, as he pushed pieces of glass away with his stick and nonchalantly kicked at them while whistling an old cavalry tune.
I fired two bottles at once. The old man did not retreat; he sprang aside with the light steps of a fencer. The next bottles weren’t even close; he swung his stick in a mocking salute. I tried again but overshot the mark. By this time the watchman completely ignored the attacks. Only the flickering sparks of his pipe indicated his position. Arranging the remaining bottles as though they were artillery shells, I calculated the distance very carefully.
The next day the newspapers reported that an old man had been hit with a beer bottle thrown by an unknown assailant and had died on the spot He had become a night watchman when the factory was still in operation and had refused to retire after its closing. Previously he had served a long term in prison for deserting from the army during the war.
The taxi moved quickly through the streets of the capital, past the Party buildings, the university with its historical statues, the museums and modem skyscrapers, then across the bridge over the river. I was on my way to the airport. I realized what I now saw I was seeing for the last time.
Scattered somewhere around those buildings, suspended between those monuments like wisps, were twenty-four years of my life. The knowledge brought me no emotion: it could have been twenty-four days or twenty-four centuries. My memory, broken and uneven, was like an old cobblestone road.
The airport Passport control. The plush seat on the plane. The takeoff. I continued to reflect that my own quarter of this century had been spent waiting for this departure, that the time into which I was now entering was inconceivable. Now, airborne, I grew uneasy that I had done nothing in the last years to make my imminent arrival in another continent more real. Only the departure had reality. I felt cheated and robbed: so many years had led to nothing more than a seat on a plane.
Had it been possible for me to fix the plane permanently in the sky, to defy the winds and clouds and all the forces pushing it upward and pulling it earthward, I would have willingly done so. I would have stayed in my seat with my eyes closed, all strength and passion gone, my mind as quiescent as a coat rack under a forgotten hat, and I would have remained there, timeless, unmeasured, unjudged, bothering no one, suspended forever between my past and my future.
THE PLANE LANDED and rolled to its final stop in front of the terminal building. I put on my fur overcoat Though it was winter, a warm springlike rain continued to fall.
It was a splendid coat, made of Siberian wolf fur, soft and silvery, with an enormous collar and great flapping sleeves. I had bought it in a small town in the middle of the steppes. I remembered the man who sold it to me had tried to convince me that only in such a coat could one dare to cross the North Pole, that only in the Western countries could one afford such a coat
The walk between the aircraft and the buildings was out of doors; with every step my coat became heavier, more and more rain-sodden.
I walked through the long corridor to the customs control, leaving behind me a trail of water. The other passengers stared at me curiously. No one else was wearing a fur coat, and it occurred to me that the salesman of the steppes had considerably exaggerated the riches of the West. I collected my suitcase, which was loaded with dictionaries, and was about to cross the main waiting room when the handle suddenly tore loose and the suitcase hit the floor, bursting apart like a gigantic clamshell, spewing out its contents. People jerked their heads, children laughed.
The youth hostel was filled. The manager, after I had bribed him with several rolls of film, allowed me to sleep in a windowless workshop adjoining the boiler room. In the evening, when automatic devices had started the boiler, hot water began to surge through the pipes and walls, filling the air with radiant heat. My fur, still heavy from the day’s rain, steamed as though pressed with an iron. First the collar dried, then the shoulders, the back, and finally the cuffs and front With the last bit of dampness gone, the coat shrank and grew stiff, its pelt roughened by the bunches of hair knotted and stuck to each other. Almost simultaneously there seemed to be no air left in the room. My mouth and nose were parched; I tossed from side to side on my pallet
Each morning I hoped that snow and frost would come to save my coat from dying, to breathe new life into its sagging shoulders, to stretch its sleeves and spread fresh luster over the once gleaming back.
I had no other coat to wear when I went out looking for work. It rained for the next few days: the fur was slowly turning into a matted lump.
I spent the day offering my services in the neighborhood, but since I hardly spoke the language, I received no offers. My last roll of film had gone for a meal. I walked about the streets, more and more aware of my fascination for the shop windows full of food. I was famished.
There was an abundance of food in all the shops and supermarkets, but none was crowded enough to absorb a hungry thief in a fur coat In addition to the salespeople, there were panoramic mirrors hung strategically under the ceilings, in which I saw myself grotesquely enlarged or flattened like a griddle against a background of exotic fruits. I was strongly inclined to steal an apple or a roll but was never brave enough to do so. I gave up and left the stores, stared at by amused shoppers.
More people crowded the shops in the evening. I was growing both hungrier and bolder. I wandered about a large supermarket, sniffing its odors, trying not to brush against the other customers with my wet coat, constantly on the lookout for some nutritional food small enough to conceal. It occurred to me that the small jars in front of me could be hidden in the palm of my hand and then dropped quickly into the upper front pocket of my coat I fingered one of the cold objects for a moment, lifted my hand to my chin, then allowed it to escape through my bent fingers directly into my pocket. I left the shop in cool composure. In the days that followed I visited many stores. Aware of its value as a restorative, I stole only black caviar.
I was recruited to chip the paint and rust from a ship scheduled for refitting. The recruiter said that the work had to be done during the night since it was illegal for non-union men to work on the ship. He explained that there were never complaints from the union as long as the less demanding, better-paid painting jobs went to its work crews. The painting could not be started until the old layers had been removed, and paint scraping was far beneath the dignity of union men when better jobs were to be had.
At night we were taken in large gangs to the ship. The recruits were always newly arrived immigrants, always poor, ofte
n destitute. Many of them had entered the country illegally or had other reasons for avoiding the authorities. The pay was one third of the going rate, but I was relieved to have some money coming in regularly.
Though the ship was moored at the quay, she-rolled as choppy winter currents pulled at her. We were given neither boots nor coveralls—just handed broadfaced chisels and hammers. We had to chip the paint so as not to let flakes fall on our fellow workers. As I worked, the scraps flew off into my face and clothing.
Poised in our slings, we dangled high above the water, swaying as icy winds blew in from the sea. The ship’s portholes were dark; every time I peered into one of them I longed to be inside the cabin that lay behind. I longed to be the only passenger on that deserted ship, protected all about by steel walls, able to sleep and then awaken to some faraway sea, my identity gone, my destination uncharted.
I worked wearing my fur coat, which soon became flecked with gummy particles of paint, growing suffer and heavier by the hour. In the early morning I returned to my overheated room. The heat mingling with the smell of paint left me weak and nauseated. I picked at the paint flakes before sleeping, hoping to get them off the coat before they hardened. But I was always too exhausted, and there was never enough time.
Later in the day, when I wanted to go out, I met with further opposition from my coat. Its sleeves resisted the entrance of my arms, its pockets seemed sealed against my hands. As I closed the coat across my chest, the front creaked in protest.
Steps Page 8