Bear

by Marian Engel

  Chapter 18

  ”Bear,” she cried.“I love you. Pull my head off.“The bear did not,but her menstrual fever made him more assiduous. She was half afraid of him, but drunk and weak for danger. She took his thick fur that skidded in her hands, trying to get a grip on his loose hide, but when she went deeper into it she encountered further depth, her short nails slipped. She cradled his big, furry, assymetrical balls in her hands, she played with them, slipping them gently inside their cases as he licked. His prick did not come out of its long cartilaginous sheath. Never mind, she thought, I’m not asking for anything. I’m not obliged to anybody. I don’t care if I can’t turn you on, I just love you.The weather was at its gayest, blue and blossoming. She swam, and when the channel was empty,swam in great gusts and spurtings with the bear. She gathered bitter lettuces in the garden. She worked in the office with the canvas shades let down against the blinding sun that poured in the lantern. She went through the contents of the trunks again and again, finally slitting a blue calico cotton lining and finding Colonel Cary’s letter of commission in the 49th Foot, his military citations from Portugal, a draft of a letter petitioning for ownership of the island, and a cartoon of Rowlandson’s showing a man in black boots disappearing up a damsel’s dress. This she thumbtacked under the Colonel’s portrait. It humanized him. Because what she disliked in men was not their eroticism, but their assumption that women had none. Which left women with nothing to be but house maids. She unfolded and copied his precious papers. She cleaned the house and made it shine. Not for the Director, but because she and her lover needed peace and decency. Bear, take me to the bottom ofthe ocean with you, bear, swim with me, bear, put your arms around me, enclose me, swim, down, down, down with me. Bear, make me comfortable in the world at last. Give me your skin. Bear,I want nothing but this from you. Oh, thank you, bear .I will keep you safe from strangers and peering eyes forever. Bear, give up your humility. You are not a humble beast. You think your own thoughts. Tell them to me. Bear, I cannot command you to love me, but I think you love me.What I want is for you tocontinue to be, and to be something to me .No more. bear. Sometimes, late at night, she got faraway stations on her transistor radio. Garbled anguages from over the pole, slow accents from NewOrleans. One night when she was working by the upper window in a soft,soapy summer wind, Greek music began to flood the room. The bear snoozed by the dead fireplace. It was well after midnight. The wind riffled her papers as the bouzoukis sobbed.“Bear,” she said suddenly, “come dance with me.” She stood up and began to shift her feet in the Greek pattern, holding up her arms like a Cretan figurine.

  Slowly, the bear lifted himself up. She had the impression that it hurt or confused him to stand long on his hind legs, that his muscles did not obey him easily in that position, but he stood unsteadily across from her and, as she moved her feet and arms in time to the pulsing music, began slowly to bob and shuffle. She watched him. He was wonderful.A strange, fat, mesomorphic mannikin, absurdly heavy in calf and shoulder, making his first attempt to dance up right. A baby! A wonderful half-balancing, half smiling uncertain, top-heavy…Plink, went he music.Zonk. “Ephies.”… You went away. No, I won’t go away, she thought to him. I won’t ever go away.I shall make myself strange garments out of fur in order to stay with you in the winter. I won’t ever, ever, leave you. He danced across from her. He moved a little, shifting his weight from haunch to haunch, delicately swaying his enormous feet, sawing his arms slowly in the air. he moved towards him.“Eph—ie—esss.“The Greek clubs in Toronto had played that one until even an Anglo-Saxon learned a few of the words. It was a wail of loss, of loneliness. No one could fail to respond. Whatever radio station it was saved her from distraction by switching to a more primitive record. The music was higher, more dissonant, the beat was uncertain. The bear swayed, looking to her for direc tion.She moved towards him and took his paws in her hands, and then, her fingers interlaced with his sets of knitting needles, began to sway against him to the music. She had never embraced him upright. It was hot and strange. She swayed against him. She put her head on his shoulder.He stood still, very still. He did not know what to do. She remembered herself as a halfchild in a school gym, being held to a man’sbody for the first time, flushed, confused, and guilty. He did not reciprocate her embrace. He stood very still as she moved her body as close as possible to his.Then he yawned. She felt his great jaw moving down against her face. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the gleam of his teeth, and that two ofthem were missing. She moved away from him. The music had turned into a strange rubbing pizzicato, rhythmic and systaltic.The bear went down on all fours. Men began to make strange grunting noises against the violins.The bear lay down, his ears pricked to half-animal sounds. She let him rest a moment, then lay beside him. He excited her. She took off her clothes. He began his assiduous licking. He licked her armpits and the line between her breasts that smelled ofsweat. “Byron’s bear danced,” she whispered, “but he paid no attention. If he had known you, would the Beau have finished his days among nuns, playing with his turdies?” Sometimes the bear half-ripped her skin with his efficient tongue, sometimes he became distracted. She had to cajole and persuade him. She put honey on herself and whispered to him, but once the honey was gone he wandered off, farting and too soon satisfied.