The Bodice Ripper

by Byron Rempel

  But that was history. What was needed here was love, caravans of it. With cold blood Anna cut three well-researched paragraphs. Like that she could see the Moor and Sister, free to shuffle up their own dust devils. But could Angeles imagine love with a

  mere mortal?

  Ten thousand feet high in the air, the falcon carved lazy circles in the hot air. Beneath him, a stubbled land spread in all directions, and distant hovels of men and women appeared irregularly. To the bird, the Moor and horse were but a flutter of circumstance. It descended with patience and devotion. Then at a half-mile’s distance from his master’s arm, the bird’s telescopic vision caught the flash of something in the Spanish sun. In a second the bird stooped to the chase and shot downward at one hundred and fifty miles an hour, the Moor growing ever larger, a rumple of cloth and limbs behind him, until the falcon finally saw that the gleam came from a piece of plain metal lying in the sand, twisted into the shape of a ring.

  Oh, that nun! So transgressive. Whenever Anna wrote her, her own heart opened and she breathed easier. She looked at the winter weather outside and now thought it playful. Who cared if accuracy suffered? In any Medieval reality, the nun would be a dead woman by now. This was freedom.

  I’d flung the ring I wore as the bride of Christ behind us as we rode. My heart was as twisted as the metal. I told myself that I’d left the ring behind so that others could track us. But what others? The nuns wouldn’t leave the abbey to chase down an armed Moor across the semi-arid basin of the Duero. No one could save me now, and it was my own fault, the fault of my virgin heart.

  A tambourine shook, the falcon cried. The bird veered, slowed, and grasped the Moor’s stump. The Moor slipped a hood on when the falcon reached for a strip of meat. They had reached the hilltop, and the horse stopped abruptly as the Moor sat up. In the valley below, vultures circled and crested, dining on an army of lost Christians.

  I clung to the Moor as he turned the horse around. Now I knew what jangled each time the horse took a step, the tambourine, the call for his raptor, shimmered with every shift of the horse’s hip. I imagined he would take me to Cordoba, once we crossed these arid and empty plains. And once there, we would not be able to hold back any longer and our forbidden love would akdhg[ianbv’o

  Anna later swore she felt it in her unpainted toenails before she heard the echoes through her house, the way people said they felt lightning come up through the ground while devices crackled snicker and pop. She shivered until her fingers jiggled on top of the keyboard, leaving a trail of confusion. She gaped at the ceiling, prepared for its collapse. Then it hit. An icy roar tore at the roof. Anna squeezed her eyes shut, then peeked through them to what she was sure would be an impossible winter thunderstorm.

  Her ceiling was intact. Everything was whole. She’d just convinced herself it was a psychotic incident when the monster bellowed again. Outside her window, a constant veil of white. Anna grabbed the sides of the computer screen she had cleaned so well, spun it away from the window. Her face reflected in it—no makeup. Someone on her roof. And she in a comfortable but unflattering housecoat.

  The sound stopped.

  “Go away,” Anna whispered. A man in the house was preferable. Even Attila.

  And then she knew. Attila hadn’t butchered anyone at her front door. He spared the Zap Reno guy. And now on a weekend morning, that buzzard crawled around on his roof. On her roof. A long scrape sent another veil past her window.

  Anna pried it open. But kept her head.

  “Good morning.” She stepped back from the window.

  Another scrape. A yell. A crunch.

  A slight column of snow fell.

  “Are you finished?” Anna winced at each sound.

  “I’ll be down soon. Need a ladder.”

  “Because I’m at work here.” That sounded authoritative. She would use that tone in the future. With her students.

  “It’s nothing,” Zap said. “I cleared my roof so I thought I’d do yours. You may be short a few slate tiles. I warned you about that. I could help you out there.”

  “It’s too dangerous to shovel up there.” That didn’t sound authoritative. She sounded like Dotty.

  “You kids get down right now,” she whispered.

  “From this perspective, you know, in the winter. All roofs look alike. Our houses. Though mine isn’t slate. Asphalt. Someone was in a hurry I guess. On the subject, I wonder if you could track down that ladder. Some students kicked mine over.”

  No answer from Anna’s window. She froze. Something flew towards Sanjay’s window across the street. The snowball missed. Another hit his second-storey dormer. Nobody answered.

  “What little person survives up in that attic above Sanjay,” Zap said.

  Anna had wondered the same thing. “Rochester’s mad wife.”

  “Which Rochester?”

  “A piteous creature of Brontë.”

  “Weren’t there three of them?”

  “Wives?”

  “Broncos.”

  “Those. Bucked all over the place. All mad, too.”

  “None of those in your attic, right?”

  Sanjay stood below the window now. “You lost your ladder, Mr. Zap. I saw the kids kick it. They do not understand respect.”

  After much rattling, a ladder finally waved near Anna’s window. She grabbed for a throw, but didn’t cover the window. She wrapped it around the shoulders of her housecoat, which made her neither invisible nor fashionable. The blood-coloured blanket featured velvet toreadors, a travel gift from Baby Boy Quince. Anna tossed her head to one side, looked away from the rescue ladder like a forgotten paramour.

  “She’s a writer,” Zap explained to Sanjay as he bumped down the rungs. “Romances.”

  Anna pulled the blanket over her head and waited for the morning to end.

  Then she wrote in her head:

  And once there, unable to hold back any longer, our forbidden love would surge up, sweep around me and beneath him and my eyes would fill with relief. Everything would begin. No more wait. No more.

  The toreadors went on the window. The shouts and backslapping below faded away. She typed the correction, and switched to the urgent, present tense.

  It takes days to unwrap my habit. Each piece of clothing drops from my slight hand and lands behind the Moor’s horse on the dune floor with a puff of sand. It is a trail for my

  pursuers. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he doesn’t notice; the few men I had contact with noticed little outside their tiny worlds. He still hasn’t touched me. He is too busy keeping an eye out for Christians.

  This is not the first time this Moor has transgressed.

  We ride towards the first light. That is his goal always. The form that light takes. He tries to explain it to me, but I hear nothing, I drift in and out of sleep behind him. Lost in the folds of his robes. In that world of half dreams, I remember only vaguely the abbey. The demands of the mother superior. The husband I left, the jealous Christ.

  It is too light now. The sun pierces the orange groves. He rides deep into them, unfolds me from my perch. My hair falls loose now, and as it brushes against him it transfers shocks through his body. Defenseless like this, unable any more to protest or fight, I reveal the secrets of my beauty. My dark hair coils and rushes like a spring river. The slope of my nose like the Atlas Mountains. The rise of my breasts like small ripe fruits. Among his people the Moor would invent dances for me, sing my praises through the night on the divan of love.

  My face rises to his and I cover his mouth with mine. His lips burn like the sand, but I am the lone well in the oasis. The Moor’s horse snorts a protest over something, but I cannot stop. The morning sun finds a path through the orange trees and bathes my face and the curls of the Moor. In the heat we tear at our clothes. His scarves. A dagger. My hands clutch at his wide sash. And just when it loosens he catches my hand,
and holds it still. We both stop. The cry of a hawk. And I cannot believe it but the Moor pushes me away.

  “I cannot further go.”

  “What?” Anna said. “You’re not further going? Can’t commit? Or is it the wounds, it’s the wounds isn’t it. More noble. Like Hemingway. I got news for you, buddy. You’re furthering. I might not have a grant, but I will get my man.”

  The Moor clasped me with his one arm.

  “I cannot love you. I cannot bear to see you ever go.”

  The last woman he couldn’t let go of chopped off his arm.

  “Shut up,” I said. Then I pulled him to me and my lips crushed his, and he dropped his sash and dagger to the sand. Now he wrapped his arms arm around me, now his lips gaped and his tongue drove inside me, driving me on like an animal. Like an animal too my body acted before my mind, and caught on fire. The whole desert was on fire. The smell of burnt almonds and sugar and rosewater.

  He seared my bare skin beneath my robes with his touch, and my fingernails dug into his back as he teased the soft folds at my centre. I was a Phoenix consumed in that flame, and at the same time the touch of the FalconMoor made me born again. My fingers coursed through his raven hair, and I pulled his head back to look deep into his eyes. Then we were lost again in each other’s mouths, and my hand involuntarily grasped for the thickness between his legs, to feel exactly how he wanted me. He cried out.

  At the same time, the hawk’s cry again shattered the sky. It circled over us, caused the hooded falcon to screech in return. “Christians!” the Moor whispered.

  In the seconds that followed a hail of arrows scatters through the orange grove. The Moor engulfed me, his hand over my mouth. His skin smells of leather and pine. One of his legs is between mine, pressing me down. I don’t resist. I can’t. I take fitful breaths through my nose. The ground is warm sand and burst oranges. He looses the pressure on my mouth, and I breathe in a large gulp of hot air. His hand moves. Away from my mouth. Down my neck. Until his fingers curve around my breast and suddenly I am atop the snorting horse, and we gallop deep into sand and sky. The arrows falter, then stop. I glanced behind us. The Moor had stumbled upon my cloister, and I had cared for his wounds, and from that humble accident grew the most extraordinary spiritual confluence of history. I, in love with light; his rhetoric of polished ambiguities. We whispered what no person had yet dared. We searched for words to tell our feelings, and when none came we realized that ours was the first romance. I turned forward to where we rode, and missed the vision of a shimmering genie, a mirage on the dunes, a desert coyote laughing at our messy fates.

  12. Are We History?

  Christophe stands at the back of the class, Introduction to Love: At First Sight, and frowns at Professor Anna Hill’s extrapolations. He thinks her ideas about romance origins simplistic, her theories antagonistic to the logical French view, and her cardigan without form. Her carefully constructed castle of romance could be demolished with a few deft catapults. He wouldn’t stay this long in the class if it hadn’t been for Dmitri.

  The Great Mediator, Dmitri, the Chair. He is responsible again. He did the same thing trying to bring the History Department together in a snow orgy of camaraderie and socialistic democracy, and look where it got them the first time. The woman wandered off and froze her toes. Still walks funny in front of the class. Makes a fool of herself. Dmitri tries again to reconcile his faculty by pushing Christophe to join the class, to encourage scholastic collaboration, but the fool has no idea what the phrase means. At least he hasn’t asked him to interact more with students.

  This frozen woman, Dmitri told him, the same one who’d snuck into the Paris conference, could use a guiding hand from a more experienced colleague. Up till recently she was on the right tracks towards a professorship, but then a few articles were sent back from journals, and research grants turned down, and now delicate thing has apparently gone off compass again.

  Christophe said he would take care of it personally. He specialized in lost women. He didn’t say that he left Paris because of such a case, or that the situation had got out of his control, and the lost woman had threatened to point out inconsistencies in his résumé. There was no use detailing every madwoman’s trajectory. And Dmitri was so visibly grateful for someone to take the lead. Being a Chair was not all medals and ribbons.

  Madame Professor looks grateful too, a senior professor watching over her. This kind of thing is so much simpler than teaching. He could do Dmitri’s job much better and with less effort, could use the power to improve this department overnight. Probably a better idea to skip that step completely and become the Dean of Arts. He will see about a Chancellorship later. The thing about going into leadership is that not only does the faculty believe you are a mystery, but that is also your greatest strength. And so Christophe remains at the back of the class, an enigmatic frown on his lips, nods when Anna mentions troubadours, shakes his head at Persian poets.

  In her cramped office they watch snow snaking from roofs.

  “The problem with this Journal of Medieval Fluffery editorial board,” she says to Christophe, a rejection letter held up to the cold window, “is that they are unacquainted with the definition of the word creativity.” She’d finally finished her Embodied Erotics paper, and almost immediately the journal threw it back in her face. “And those that are equate it with the Black Death.”

  “I heard you singing in your tower.”

  “In the shower?”

  “The tower.”

  Anna reaches to her desk and closes her laptop with a clean snap. “I don’t sing.”

  “It sounded romantic.” He touched her hair, moved it back from her mouth. She licked her lips as if they tickled.

  “I’ll tell you the truth,” she said quickly. “I talk to myself. When I’m writing. My romance novel.”

  Christophe looked at her and chose not to react. He pretended he heard revelations like that every day. But he would never forget.

  “Hobbies are important. But let me help you with your career. The tenure.”

  She looks out the window. “Wait. One thing at a time. You’re loitering under my turret?”

  “I was not under your turret. I was first on the balcony.” He steps towards her. As he expects, she doesn’t move away.

  “It’s not the first journal to reject me. I’ve got a history.” This is a lie.

  “You are a woman of mysterious levels.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “But your premise is misguided. Romance was born with the love between vassal and lord, not with Arab transformers.”

  Outside the late afternoon sun descends, and students wander off the campus with their collars turned up against the wind. She turns on her desk lamp. In the window’s reflection Professor Hill’s harsher edges are softened.

  “It would only take some tweak.”

  He’s close enough to breathe on her ear. “Some tweets?”

  “For your tenure.”

  This is what careers came down to in this university. Tweaks and tweets. Refusals and rejections. Last week, Christophe had to laugh when Schoplik from Economics was denied tenure because his work outside the university was too popular. Not enough time on university research.

  “If you need to go to Spain, vamos a España.” He touches her shoulder. Lost women love to be spontaneous. When they’re ready. “I know a ski refuge in los Picos de Europa.”

  Anna grimaces. He moves his hand to her twists of hair, and she pulls away.

  “If I’m going to Spain I don’t want to see snow.”

  His fingers brush her neck, underneath her hair.

  “Tomorrow. We will go now. We will ski. Alone, away from the noisy Alps. Can you see it?”

  But he knows, of course she can see it. She’s seen it for months. Naked on furs in front of the fire. But she pulls away again. Does she still blame him
for her getting lost in her own land?

  “Professor Hill,” says Christophe. His lips by her ear.

  That’s all he needs to say. Anna presses against the window, her arms crossed in front of her. Christophe lets his hand drop from her shoulder. They stand in full view of the commons and the students battling snow. Anna jerks back from the window, into Christophe. Surely she can feel him through his well-cut trousers. All of him. He tugs on the cord of her desk lamp.

  “Anna.”

  He insists.

  [

  This is not how she imagined it. The lighting is wrong. Her office smells of unfinished work, rushed lunches, afternoon headaches. Voices echo in the hallway. The door is unlocked. But isn’t it too appropriate, professors uncovering love in a centre of learning? Anna’s shoulders tense. She could see Audrey waving a Complaint Template, Form A-09, talking about assessors, Disciplinary Action, impaired educational performance. And who was the harasser—the one with the grey cardigan. Anyway, nothing has happened. Only hot breath, some incidental brushing against the breast. A name, softly chanted in a deep accent. All her clothing still on. Children, groping in a schoolyard. Anna sees herself twenty-five years ago or more. She stands in a damp alley between buildings, lifts her skirt and knows she should feel shame, but doesn’t, she feels wide open, plunged into the world of adults and the endless possibility that Grown Up offers…and the boy runs away.

  Christophe is no boy. No fumble and grasp. A European man spared the rod god of Puritans, a century or two of rebellion behind him. Experienced, experimented, and a few exes besides. His hand barely outlines the curve of her breast as he mumbles des mots d’amour, des mots de tous les jours. A finger falls to her lips and she takes it in her mouth. Accidentally, she hopes. Everything is an accident with her eyes closed. His fingers drop to her neck, the brush of an archaeologist uncovering statuary. He pulls her to him and his fingers tighten till the room spins. Her frozen toes are numb. From the sky above comes the cry of a hawk. She is the rhythm of a rosary in his fingers. For the increase of faith; for the increase of hope; for the increase of love. Oh Lord, open my lips…the cry of the hawk again. Anna gasps for breath.