The Penguin's Song

by Hassan Daoud

  My entire body lay on top of her. From the midpoint of our bodies where they were pressed against each other as closely as could be, when I came into her it was as if I woke her up. The skin around her eyes looked wet and her eyeballs rolled as she stared at me, moving her midsection up and down as if to insist on a rhythm I must follow too, as I moved up and down. That pair of spying eyes staring at us, from overhead this time, from some tiny hole in the ceiling that was the best vantage point, would be thinking that we must have reached the end, or that at least we were in the final stage of what we were doing. The woman under me trembled harder as she tried to hurry her climax. Here she was with her arms around my middle, pulling fiercely, pulling my whole body down.

  XXI

  IT AMOUNTED TO NOTHING MORE than a rushed attempt that went badly askew. I had to climb down and go back to exploring with my hand. She had stopped moving beneath me when she sensed me slowing down, lagging in the rhythm we had reached together. As I fell off her to lie next to her again, I realized she hadn’t been at her climax after all, for she was able to come out of her frenzied state very quickly. She relaxed the hands that had been pressed tensely flat against my middle and slid them down to the mattress. Seeing me sit up, she began to look steadily at me, not bothered by the sight of my sex—damp, dangling loosely, once again limp. We had to go back to the beginning, understanding now that perhaps we had been too hasty that first time. Lying next to her, now I felt embarrassed by the pair of spying eyes. I no longer knew from what vantage point they were looking, where they were concealed. Because of those eyes I tugged the sheet up to cover the lower half of my body, but not the exposed body next to me, which was at once lifeless and expectant.

  When I begin the next attempt—and I cannot wait long—it will be for the sake of the pair of spying eyes more than anything else. Perhaps, as we lie inert, those eyes are judging the time passing now as the final moment before we climb out of bed. But we must start all over again. We must begin at the very beginning and not from the point we reached. Not only that: it will have to seem as though we’re seeing these two bodies for the first time, unclothed, exposed, naked. I reach my hand to her shoulder and touch her lightly, as if apologizing for something and also, with this one caress, firmly separating what we just did from what we will return to doing very soon.

  But it turns out that returning to it—for a second round—is not slow and gradual. Between touching her shoulder and then slipping my hand lower on her body there were no fateful touches. This time it was like a test we would have to pass well and with no delays, as if it were a timed exam and speed was essential to our success. She was dry inside, as if her body had sucked in the moistness she’d had, or had sent it back, where it had been before, deeper inside. I knew, though, that my touch could make her go wet again in there. This time the woman had opened her eyes and she rested her head on her fist, in the pose of the thinker. Apparently my caresses, going deeper, were not coming close to that intimate pleasure of hers that closed her eyes and took her far away. She leaned her head on her fist as if she were thinking about something completely unrelated to what was going on down there at the very center of her body.

  I knew I had to work quickly and return her to that state she’d been in, and so I figured I must redouble my speed because I was doing this alone. And then, her open eyes, dreamy and given over to whatever thoughts held them, pushed me to exert still more effort in an attempt to banish their obliviousness. I shoved my hand deeper inside, toward the wetness, which, just when it seemed I was almost there, eluded me, for she withdrew my hand and turned her body away. But I knew this was not the end. It was simply her complaint against our swift progress that was dragging her, against her will, out of her remoteness. I would be able to begin again after a pause, a space of detachment that she needed. I would begin by extending my hand, just like this, as if to placate her with a half-neutral, half-affectionate little touch.

  The pair of spying eyes had widened, there somewhere overhead, in the ceiling. In her own way, the woman who had just bent her body away from me seemed to be in a state of preparation for this new round. She launched it hastily, as if the desire she was summoning back had returned suddenly, unexpectedly. Without any preliminary move she took my sex in both hands. She began pulling me toward her wetness, which seemed to have returned and must have welled up from its source somewhere deep inside. It was she who assumed control of this acceleration after that moment of rest she had wanted. As she began to quiver, one tremor following another rapidly, I knew I should abandon myself to her pace. My hands went to the dark aureoles on her chest, pressing hard on what lay below them, reckless enough to cause pain that would send the woman’s voice all the way to the ears plastered to the other side of the door. No, I must not abandon myself completely to her tempo, just as I must be careful not to appear as if I am slowing down if she should go on ahead of me. I will remove myself just as I am reaching the pinnacle of my own onrush above her, just at that point, as if to deliberately delay our completion, after which we’ll get up from the bed. I will make her follow my tempo as I move up and then down on her, and meanwhile I am recharging myself with the desire that keeps me pushing above her.

  This time, too, the high wave that had borne me upward soon troughed. Immediately I lowered myself off the woman. Trying to make me stay, pulling my body back toward her, she was apparently still a little way from reaching the pleasure she sought. When I lay back next to her she turned away from me to be alone as she went the small distance left on her own. But I restrained her, lifting her hand from where it lay and barricading that part of her body. I knew, though, that I must not leave her in this state for long. Without delay I must climb on top of her again to begin again where I had left off. If her wetness recedes or dries up this time it will no longer rise from those depths where it lies in wait.

  But when we returned again to the point we had reached earlier, in our first try, we seemed unable to recapture the yearning that would press us together in a series of rapid shudders that pushed us on. Whatever it was that had urged us on then, now seemed to have fallen asleep in both of our bodies at once. Our movements seemed futile, and I began to imagine my body as if seeing it with the eyes that watched us furtively: how I would bend my body toward hers in order to lift myself and cover it, or how I would turn on my side to pull her to me. I envisioned my body, and imagined it, in its weak and passionless tossing. And beneath me or next to me, she would have her eyes open as if waiting for that wave of longing that had dwindled to come over her again, as suddenly this time as before. The spying eyes wherever they were in the ceiling were narrowed now as they accompanied us; perhaps now they were about to pull back from the peephole concealing them. No doubt they knew that the scene they had watched so furtively was at an end; and, as they withdrew before we did, that they were wiser than we were to the state we were in now. Or they knew now that being alone together in this room—me and the woman whose body I did not know, whose body I had memorized not at all—was not likely to bring us anywhere. It was a test, and the spying eyes knew, as they left the spot where they had secreted themselves, to descend rapidly to the rooms giving onto the room with the closed door, that they must show utter indifference as they focused on whatever ordinary object their gaze might encounter. The spying eyes would certainly reach the sitting room before we did, or the hallways, the spaces of departure and return. When she got up from the bed the woman’s body sagged as if the only muscle keeping it together in a taut mass had gone limp, letting its parts dissipate. The woman returned to the body she inhabited when she was at home or on her outings with my mother, even if right now it lacked the clothes that normally covered it. Beginning to dress, she turned her face and body away from me, looking as though she intended to veil a nakedness whose exposure had been nothing but a mistake. So I knew, as I went over to my heap of clothes, that I must leave the room before she would. That way I could vacate the house quickly, emptying it wholly of me. We began
putting on our clothes, backs to each other, and as I brought my belt up to my middle I thought how she would have to do her zipper up herself. I must leave the room first. Behind me she went over to the mirror on her table sitting next to the old bottles of perfume and began removing from her face, as far as I could tell, any trace that might still linger from our encounter. I must do that too; or, once outside, I must check on how I am looking and holding myself. I must not show anything that my mother—waiting in the sitting room or in a hallway leading to it—would notice. Or perhaps she would be waiting in our apartment, so that I’d be by myself when she saw me. Anyway, she could behave in exactly the same way even if she encountered me here—in the sitting room and not far from the door I would open, appearing as if I had done nothing and had not been where in fact I had been. She would turn toward me then, and as I walked over to where she stood she would straighten her back, and when I came up to her, she would give me her look, fierce and inquiring but nevertheless certain that when she turned I would follow her wordlessly to our home.

  XXII

  THAT INSINUATING LOOK, SIMULTANEOUSLY conspiratorial and slightly threatening: will it reappear, I wonder, on my mother’s face? From my room, where I am either sitting at the table or lying on the bed beneath the little mirror, I can tell that she has left, closing the door hard behind her. I was not there waiting in her path in order to know whether she would give me her surreptitious signal. Since I had figured she would come by my room, when she didn’t I felt myself sinking heavily into a morose anguish, even though I didn’t know whether I wanted to go down there again if it were suggested to me.

  I am in my room when she goes by on her way to the front door. If I were out there it would not be that arch, cajoling gaze that I would get, but rather a different look that lands on me as if to keep me frozen in place. A look I can see and judge: swift, sidelong, sweeping me from top to bottom; a gaze empty of questioning since there is nothing she needs to know. No, I will not be there in her path as she walks heavily toward the door. I remain in my room sitting at the table or lying on the bed. As for standing at the window, I hesitate, holding back as I wait for the heavy knot of disappointment and failure to dissolve and go away. And anyway, in here at this table of mine or on my bed, I am still exhausted from the weight of where I have been. I haven’t rid myself yet of the body and skin that, naked, I was pressed against, lapping at its regions. It still feels attached to me in places; I cannot remove the edges that stick to me; I cannot release them. I will not be able to exchange this state of being for another by going over to watch whatever might happen below me, just beneath my window. Being alone with the woman in her room, I exhausted and emptied myself not only on her body but also on the body of her daughter, which, to give my body the energy it needed, I began to imagine in front of me or beneath me, glistening, slender and delicate and new, the foamy hair never shaved. I imagine it beneath me, a body inhabiting the woman’s body or springing from it. What the two shared between them helped me along. The woman’s hands were ripe with the body of her daughter from all the touching she did, all the massaging of those limbs. No doubt those hands would still pat that body into place, would wash it, stopping just where it curved, stopping at what it concealed. I was in need of this strong image, every bit of it, as I struggled to replace the body beneath me with a different body. Or to pull that body from hers, not only because she had touched and rubbed it, but also because her body had given birth to it, gave it up, emerging from that place clean of the traces of childbirth, as whole and raw and new as it was now.

  I was still worn out by where my body had been. I must stay in my room, or in the house, but without my mother here. In the house, so that its hallways and tiles will cool me, or on the balcony where my father sits. As I approach, his head turns only the tiny distance he needs to focus his ear in the direction of the sound he senses coming toward him. He does not lift his head to be able to see me until I’m directly in front of him, and so it seems at that instant as if my appearance has taken him unawares, and it startles him. Even so, he gets up from his chair to greet me, leaning on his cane, which was another one of the items we had preserved among our old things. He asks if I want to sit down, because if so, he’ll wait so we can sit down together, him on his chair and me on the chair facing it. I will do this for the sake of soothing myself. I need to spend my time in ways I’m used to in order to distance myself from where I have been. On the balcony as I sit down I feel more affection than usual for my father; I see him in tableaux from various moments in his past. Sit down . . . Sit down . . . he would say to me as we stood in his shop, so he could parcel out his attention between his work and me. Or I see him returning with the books whose titles I had written out for him on a slip of paper; as he proffers them, hoisting their weight, he has the look of finding it strange to carry anything except sacks holding goods from his store. Here! here are the books, he says to me and stands nearby while I look at them, one after another, asking me as I make my way through them whether he has gotten anything wrong.

  I need to reestablish my sense of comfort and familiarity among the things I know, to fend off the state I was in and to drive it further away from me. Lying on my bed or pacing through the gloomy hallway where there is so little light, I decide that musing about the two women who sit below will tire me out and annoy me and weigh me down. Neither do I feel any desire to get up and go over to my pages to compare each line, after which I will turn them over, making new piles. I need to rest now, to remain flat on the bed or simply sitting at my table doing nothing. Or to return to my father out there on the balcony where he will get up slowly from his chair when my shape surprises him, to ask me whether I want to sit down; and I know that if I do sit down we will not talk about anything. He won’t ask me any questions because he thinks I prefer that we remain silent and still. If he asks me where they have gotten to now, down there, I will appear grumpy, muttering in my irritation at being forced to return to speech that says nothing. They are working, I answer him in a way that lets him know he must not ask me what they’re working at, just as he knows that if I answer a question about the work I do, I will not add anything to what he already knows. Nothing has changed, I will say to him, or I’ll simply say that they have given me some new work to do. And so we remain silent when I sit down. Sitting on the balcony as he does has made him silent. That is what it has done, as if the words we used to exchange can be elicited only by coincidental, fleeting encounters in the hallway or kitchen, or at doors that stop us momentarily. It’s his sitting on the balcony, his staying out there, that has silenced him. Do you want some water? he used to ask me whenever he saw me going into the kitchen. Do you want me to make you something? As if the words themselves arose from our chance meetings. Or as if he intended to pick up the water bottle to bring it for me, as I walked beside him, all the way to the door of my room where I would take it from him. He would be talking all the while, or he would seem, coming over to do these things for me, to be doing something hardly separate at all from his talking.

  Sitting on the balcony has silenced him, as if by staying there through all the hours of his day he has separated himself. He has withdrawn from what goes on inside the house. He no longer even knows whether my mother is somewhere in the house or whether she has gone to visit her. From where he sits, there, his wrist draped on the balcony railing, he appears to have gotten as far away as he possibly can. He has gone to that final point after which lies nothing but the emptiness that separates us from the old city.

  Still, he gets to his feet for me when he sees me directly in front of him, as if by standing up—and remaining standing—he is welcoming me there, to the place that has become his. He doesn’t sit down again until I have decided to sit down, so that we sit down together. He has no words to say to me because he no longer moves around in the house doing anything that would generate the easy, passing conversation people have without meaning much of anything. Words like It’s hot when he puts his hand
on the pan and finds it hot. Or, noticing that someone else has gotten up and headed for the kitchen, Sit down, sit down, I’ll bring it, I will. These are the sort of words he no longer says. And so we remain silent, sitting together on the facing chairs, and I resume thinking about whatever it was I was thinking of before I sat down. Or I go back to sweeping away whatever it is I want to erase from my head, giving myself over, as he does, to the breezes coming from below.

  XXIII

  THE LONG ROUTE I WALK lugging the pages I have tallied—a route I will retrace carrying another set of pages—is the only one I know in the confusion of streets that cut through the new city. Every time I take it I am affirming once again that it is my sole direction, and so I forget what I knew from my earlier wanderings. These are the only roads that exist, the only ones that are solid and real and that deposit me at that building where my feet know the way up. I have no reason to angle off onto any side streets, nor even to peer at what might be there in the blocks that lie beyond these little intersections. There is only the route between home and the building I know, the set of streets I regard as the straightest and fastest way to get me to where I must go. This is what my route becomes every time I walk it and affirm it as the only true route. But as I ponder my father’s words, telling me I need to search for work in other offices, I realize how wrong I’ve been. My fixation on this route means that I have neglected all the other possibilities. If I am to act on his words, I will have to diversify. I will have to begin again, elbowing myself in among these jumbled streets, getting lost. But this is something I cannot do or don’t want to do, since now, every time I leave our building, I already know how to proceed and what I will encounter with every step.