Voice of our Shadow

by Jonathan Carroll

"You did that to me once, so we're even now."

  "Did what?" She let go and started to get up.

  "Broke my heart." I kissed her on the top of the head and smelled that fine clean India smell again.

  The next morning we had breakfast at a brass and marble Konditorei on Porzellangasse, near their apartment. Then, because the day was bright and clear, we decided to drive up along the Danube and stop when we saw a nice place. Both of us felt full of life and were definitely in the mood for a long walk. We found a spot near Tulln, a dirt path that ran parallel to the river and wound in and out of the forest. She held my hand the whole way, and we walked and ran and waved at the crew of a Rumanian barge that was slowly working its way upstream. When someone on board saw us and tooted the horn, we looked at each other wonderingly, as if we had accomplished something magical. It was the kind of day that, in retrospect, is almost cheapened by its cliches, but that, when you're experiencing it, has an innocence and clarity that can't ever be matched in your more rational times.

  We drove back to town under a plum and orange sunset and had an early dinner at a Greek restaurant near the university. The food was terrible, but the company was something special.

  The two weeks Paul was gone went by like that. I didn't do a lick of work because we were constantly together. We cooked, went for walks in remote districts of town where no one ever went, much less sightseers. The fact that we were probably the only people who had ever gone there to sight-see pleased us no end. We went to a couple of movies in German, and on the spur of the moment to hear Alfred Brendel playing Brahms at the Konzerthaus.

  One night we decided to see what Vienna offered in the way of night life. We must have gone to twenty places and had thirty cups of coffee, ten glasses of wine, and a Coke here and there. At two in the morning we were in the Cafй Hawelka looking at all the phonies when India turned to me and said, "Joey, you're the most fun man I've been with since Paul. Why can't I marry both of you?"

  Paul was due in on Saturday night; the two of us planned to go down to the train station to meet him. I didn't want to tell her, but for the first time since I had known him, I wasn't looking forward to seeing Paul all that much. Call it greed or possessiveness or whatever, I had grown used to squiring India around town on my arm, and it was going to be damned hard and sad to have to give it up.

  "Hi ya, kids!"

  We watched him zoom down the platform toward us, arms full of bags and packages, a great beaming smile on his face. He hugged India and then me. He had a thousand stories to tell about "the Commies" and insisted we go to a cafй so he could have a real cup of coffee for the first time in two weeks. He let me carry one of his suitcases, which seemed to be light as air. I didn't know if it was empty or because adrenaline was pumping through my body a mile a minute. I didn't know how I felt anymore. India walked between us, holding us each by the arm. She looked completely happy.

  "That crumb."

  "India, take it easy."

  "No! That dirty crumb. How do you like that? He actually asked."

  "What exactly did he say?"

  "He asked me if we'd slept together."

  Big Ben tolled in the middle of my stomach. Half because of indignation, half because with one question Paul had put his finger right on the button. Had I wanted to sleep with India? Yes. Did I still want to sleep with India, my one best friend who was married to my other best friend? Yes.

  "And you said?"

  "What do you think I said? No! He's never done that before." She was fuming. A few more degrees and smoke would have come out of her ears.

  "India?"

  "What?"

  "Never mind."

  "What? Say it. I hate that. Tell me now."

  "It's nothing."

  "Joe, if you don't tell me, I'll kill you!"

  "I wanted to."

  "Wanted to what?"

  "Go to bed with you."

  "Uh oh."

  "I told you, you should forget it."

  "I'm not uh-ohing because of that." She clapped her hands together and held them tight against her stomach. "The night we went to the cafйs together I wanted you so much I thought I was going to die."

  "Uh oh."

  "You said it, brother. Now what?"

  We talked and talked and talked and talked, until we were exhausted. She suggested we go out and do some shopping. I followed her around the market, my knees shaking the whole time. Once in a while, weighing a grapefruit or choosing eggs, she threw me a look that sent me reeling. This was bad. The whole thing was bad. Black. Wrong. What could you do?

  She picked up a triangle of Brie cheese. "Are you thinking?"

  "Too much. My head's going to blow a fuse."

  "Mine too. You like Brie?"

  "Huh?"

  Paul called that night around seven and asked if I wanted to go to a horror film with them. It was exactly what I didn't want to do, and I begged off. When I hung up, I wondered if my refusal would make him suspicious. He knew India and I got together once in a while during the day. We would rendezvous when she was through painting or after one of her German classes at the university. What would happen now? He was so kind and generous; I'd never thought of Pad as a jealous or suspicious man. Was this a glimpse of that side of him?

  "Joe?"

  "India? What time is it, for Christ's sake?" I tried to make out the numbers on the clock next to the bed, but my eyes were too fogged over from sleep.

  "It's after three. Were you asleep?"

  "Uh, yes. Where are you?"

  "Out walking around. Paul and I had a fight."

  "Uh oh. Why are you walking around?" I sat up in bed. The blanket slipped down my chest, and I felt the cold of the room.

  "Because I don't want to be home. You wanna have a cup of coffee or something?"

  "Well . . . uh . . . okay. Um, or would you like to come over here? Is that okay?"

  "Sure. I'm right at the corner of your street. You know that phone booth?"

  I smiled and shook my head. "Should I turn the light on and off three times to signal when the coast is clear?"

  I heard the zazzy sound of a Brooklyn raspberry come through the phone before she hung up on me.

  "Where'd you get that robe? You look like Margaret Rutherford."

  "India, it's three o'clock in the morning. Shouldn't you call Paul?"

  "Why? He's not around. He took off."

  I was heading toward the kitchen, but that stopped me fast enough. "Took off where?"

  "How should I know? He went one way, and I went the other."

  "You mean he hasn't actually gone anywhere –"

  "Joe, shut up. What are we going to do?"

  "About this? About you and me? I don't know."

  "You really want to go to bed with me?"

  "Yes."

  She sighed loudly and dramatically. I wanted to look at her, but I couldn't. All my courage had fled with her question.

  "Well, Joey, me too, so I guess we got big problems, huh?"

  "I guess."

  The phone rang. I looked at her and pointed to it. She shook her head. "I ain't answering that, the creep. If it's him, tell him I'm not here. No, no! Tell him I'm in bed with you and can't be disturbed. Ha! That's it! Give it to him!"

  "Hello?"

  "Joe? Is India there?" His voice said he knew she was but was asking just to be polite.

  I wasn't taking any chances with my answer. "Yes, Paul. She just got here. One second."

  This time I held the receiver out to her, and after a dirty look, she snatched it out of my hand. "What, stinko? Huh? Yes, you're damned right! What? Yes. All right . . . What? . . . I said all right, Paul. Okay." She hung up. "Ratface."

  "Well?"

  "Well, he said he was sorry and wants to apologize. I don't know if I should let him." She said it while she buttoned up her coat. She stopped when her hands got to the last one, and then she looked me long and hard in the eyes. "Joe, I'm going home and listen to my husband apologize. He said he even wan
ts to apologize to you. Christ! This thing's going to happen and we both know it and I'm going home to listen to him apologize to me for being suspicious. Is it bad, Joe? Are we really this bad?"

  We looked at each other, and it was a long time before I realized my teeth were actually chattering.

  "You're scared, huh, Joe?"

  "Yes."

  "Me too. Me too. Good night."

  Two weeks later I turned her wet face to me and kissed her. It was exactly, exactly the way I'd envisioned India Tate kissing: gently, simply, but with a delicious intensity.

  She took my hand and led me into the bedroom. The big goose-down comforter was folded neatly across the foot of my double bed. It was coral pink; the bottom sheet was white and without wrinkles. The glass lamps on the side tables gave off a muted, intimate glow. She walked to the other side of the bed and began unbuttoning her shirt. In a minute I saw she was wearing no bra, which must have embarrassed her, because she turned away and finished with her back to me.

  "Joe, can I turn out the light?"

  In bed I discovered that her breasts were larger than I'd thought; her skin was tight and firm everywhere. In the dark it was a dancer's body, very warm against the fresh, icy sheets.

  I don't know if sex is a reflection of a person's true spirit or personality, although I've heard it said often enough. India was very good – very fluid and active. She knew how to prolong both of our orgasms without making it feel as if she was manipulating or trying to remember some page out of The Joy of Sex. She said she wanted to feel me as deep inside her as possible, and when I was there, she rewarded me with words and shivers that made me want to plunge even deeper and rattle every object on her shelves.

  We moved quickly through the first and then the less shrill, less desperate second. That, however, was nothing new: for me the first time with any woman has inevitably been more to prove it's actually happening than to enjoy. Once you've passed that barrier, you become human and fallible and tender again.

  A street lamp threw its harsh, cheap light across the bed. India came back into the room holding two small glasses of the wine I had bought that afternoon. She was still naked, and when she sat down next to me on the edge of the bed, the light moved up her side and stopped just below her breasts.

  "It's very cold. I took a big sip in the kitchen and it gave me one of those ice-cream headaches." She handed me one, and after I sat up, we touched glasses in a quiet, unspoken toast.

  "Aren't you cold?"

  "No, I'm fine."

  "That's right – neither of you – oops." I was so embarrassed I closed my eyes. The last thing I wanted was to bring Paul into the room.

  "Joey, it's okay. He's not here." She drank her wine and looked out the window. "I'm still glad we did it, and that's supposed to be the big test, isn't it? I mean, after you've zipped through the passion and are back where you started? I wanted you, it happened, and now we're here and still happy, right? I don't want to think about anything else. I have to tell you something even though it doesn't mean a thing. I've never done this with anyone since Paul, okay? It doesn't matter, but I wanted you to know."

  She reached out and ran her still-warm palm down my chest. She caught the top of the blanket with her fingers and pulled it down: past my stomach, past my penis, which was blooming again like an African violet. She straddled me and, licking her fingertips, reached down and spread the wetness over the head. Then she took hold of it, strongly – like a gun – and slid it into her. Halfway there she stopped, and I was afraid it had hurt her, but I saw she was only trying to hold the moment until she was ready to own it again.

  One day in bed we had a conversation about my "type" of woman.

  "I bet you I'm not your kind, am I?"

  "What do you mean?" I pulled the pillow under my head.

  "I mean, I'm not your type of girl. Woman."

  "India, you must be or else we wouldn't be here, would we?" I patted the bed between us.

  "Oh, yeah, sure, I'm good-looking and all, but I'm not your kind of girl. No, no, you don't have to say anything. Sssh, wait a minute – let me try and guess."

  "India –"

  "No, shut up. I want to try this. Knowing you . . . you probably like big blondes or redheads with tiny fannies and big boobs."

  "Wrong! Don't be so smirky, smart aleck. I do like blondes, but I've never been a big-breast man. If you really want to know the truth, I like beautiful legs. You have beautiful legs, you know."

  "Yeah, they're okay. Are you sure about that breast thing? I would've sworn you were a tight-sweater lad."

  "Nope, I like long sleek legs. Most of all, I'm crazy for a woman who's at ease with her looks, if you know what I mean. She doesn't wear much makeup because it doesn't mean anything to her. If she's attractive she knows it, and that's enough. She doesn't feel the need to show off what she's got."

  "And she bakes her own bread, believes in natural childbirth, and eats three bowls of granola a day."

  "India, you asked. You're making me sound stupid."

  "Sorry." She slid over in bed and put one of those long legs over mine. "Besides looks, what else do you like about me?"

  She was serious, so I answered seriously. "You're unpredictable. You're good-looking too, but behind those looks are all these different women, and I like that very much. Everyone has different qualities if they're at all interesting, but in your case it's as if there's no one India Tate. I think it's amazing. When I'm with you, I feel as if I'm with ten women."

  She tickled me. "Sometimes you get so serious, Joey. You look as if I just asked you a question in biochemistry. Come over here and give me a big smooch."

  I did, and we lay quietly in each other's arms.

  "Can I tell you something crazy, India? Part of me always looks forward to seeing Paul. Is that nuts?"

  She kissed my forehead. "Not at all. He's your friend. Why shouldn't you like seeing him? I think it's nice."

  "Yes, but it's like that old story about why murderers put out their victims' eyes after they've killed them."

  She pushed me away, and her voice was testy. "What are you talking about?"

  "You see, there's this old superstition that the last thing a dead person sees is the guy who's done him in, if he was killed from in front, see? So some people used to think that since that was so, the image would register on the dead man's eyeballs like a photograph. Look at the guy's eyes and you'll see who did it." I stopped and tried to smile at her; only it turned out to be a forlorn, useless smile. "I keep thinking that one day Paul is going to look in my eyes and see you there."

  "You're saying I murdered you?" Her face showed nothing: it was only pale and delicate. Her voice was as distant as the moon. I wanted to touch her, but I didn't.

  "No, India, that's not what I'm saying at all."

  In those first days of our affair, I kept watching her as intently when we made love as a prospector looking at a geiger counter, but there was nothing in her expression I hadn't already seen. I think I was hoping that, in the midst of that full but simple passion that took place every time we pulled down the sheets, there would be a hint or a clue as to what was happening between her and Paul. And I didn't even know what I was hoping for. Did I want everything to be the way it had always been? Or did I secretly, selfishly, wish she was disenchanted with her husband and would end up wanting me?

  How long would it be before he found out? When it came to trysts, rendezvous, and love messages written in invisible ink, I wasn't very subtle or capable. It had happened once or twice in the past. My way of dealing with it then had been to let the woman decide when and where and how; I would go along with it no matter how urgently I felt I needed to be with her. As far as that was concerned, I knew my limits and knew if I ever tried to run the affair I'd botch everything in two seconds flat.

  Paul was good old Paul and treated me no differently. India was the same too; only once in a while she would wink or give my foot a tiny tap under the table. I was the only one wh
o was different; I was "on" every time we were together. But they both affected not to notice.

  In the meantime, India continued to come over, and we had our slivers of time when the world was only as big as my bed. When she was there I tried to put everything out of my mind and seize the part of the day she could give me. It was not a difficult time either, but I was often surprised by how exhausted I was at night. I would often fall into bed with a hunger for sleep I'd never known before. One day, when I asked India if the same thing had been happening to her, she was already asleep on my arm; it was only ten o'clock in the morning.

  Around the beginning of November, guilt began to whistle a familiar tune. Hard as I tried, I couldn't stop it. I knew a great part stemmed from my ambivalent feelings toward India. Did I love her? No, I didn't. When we made love she often said things like "Love-yes! Love-oh!" and even then I felt uncomfortable, because I knew I didn't love her. As far as I was concerned that was all right, because I cared for her, wanted her, and needed her in many different, ever-increasing ways. I had long ago given up on the possibility of finding someone I could love totally and endlessly. Sometimes I tried to convince myself that what I felt for India was the only kind of love Joseph Lennox could ever feel, but I knew I was lying. But what more did I want? What ingredient was missing? I had no idea, except that where there should have been magic and blue sparks, there was "only" great sleight-of-hand or a brilliant trick I loved but knew was done with little hidden mirrors.

  5

  Holding a bouquet of flowers in front of me like a delicate shield, I waited for someone to open the door.

  India appeared and smiled at the cluster of red and pink roses. "Well, Joey, that's mighty neighborly of you." She took them and gave me a buss on the cheek. I started through the door and suddenly felt a bitter little pinch in the middle of my back. India loved to pinch. "You look great tonight, sporty. If Paul wasn't here, I'd throw you down on the floor and ravish you."

  That was enough to shoot me forward into their living room. I wasn't in the mood to live dangerously. Paul was nowhere to be seen, so I assumed he was in the kitchen preparing his part of the dinner. They liked to do it that way – Paul was soup and salad chef, India main course and dessert. The room was warm and hummed with an apricot light. I sat on the couch and put my nervous hands on my nervous knees.