And then, she saw it. The T-shaped form made by the light, on the floor. Coming from the same closet she had stumbled upon, last week. The faint yellow of the stroke from the left side of the door, going rightwards across the top of the door. She hefted the frying pan. She was holding it firmly; and by God, whoever it was, he got to come clean! The bastard going-have to kill me, or I kill he! The iron frying pan was weightless in her hand.
She crept silent, step after silent step, the frying pan raised and ready, her eyes staring, and seeing blood, her body and the pan and her steps in a tense synchronized oneness; staring at the weak light forcing itself out of the half-open door; and clearer now, brighter now in her control of the threat and how she is going to master it, she sees that the shape of the light from the closet is not a T, but an inverted L. And she moves as a yacht would move silent over swift water, and when she comes face to face with the door, she didn’t know she could get there so fast and with such stealth; and she raises the iron frying pan ready, and at the same time, with her left hand, she flung the door inwards, and screams, “Bastard!”
She finds herself standing over her.
He is sitting on a box marked CONFIDENTIAL, his head in his hands, bent down in a stooped posture of complete dejection. He was facing her. But he was not looking at her. His eyes were not looking at her. His eyes were not open. But he was awake and alert. And then he opened his eyes, and remained sitting and staring at her, as if he was sleeping, dead to the world. And she stood there, full with her former pity for him, and with a new tormenting and strange desire, like a feeling of love for someone who has never known love, with the frying pan in her hand, but now at her side, her own eyes staring back in bewilderment and wonder. But most of all, with pity and with a great strange love.
She tried to control the shaking in her body with the emotions running through it: pity and love and a tinge of indecentness that she had robbed him of his privacy, even though she could not understand that he had sought to be private in the basement of his own mansion; she felt she had unsanctified the holiness of his retreat. Whatever was his problem, whatever was his misery; whatever had caused his heavy drinking and his apparent surrender even with a life of such success and wealth; whatever his misery that she had left him; and whatever her good reasons, it was his home, his mansion, his castle and his dignity that she had ruptured through her fears and fantasy and the reading of recent horrors beaten and slashed and driven into the flesh and psyche of women.
“My God, Mr. Moore, I could have killed you!”
“May,” he said. “May.” She could see that he wanted to say more.
“What’re you doing here, Mr. Moore?”
“Oh, May.”
She was holding him now, in an embrace. He had risen to reach her. And she could feel the weight of her body against his; and he could feel the weight of his head against her breasts; and the softness there, and the pulsating blood, such as he had tasted once when he was on holiday in the Bahamas and had danced in his wildness to the beat of calypso; and could feel, as he felt then, the flesh in her back as his arms tied the Bahamian woman too close to him, even for a dance; and she was frantic and affectionate; squeezing him, holding him to her, frightened and faithful: for he was her employer and she was a woman, overcome by her grief and her pity; and pure and un-sinning: she could feel her body for the first time in three years answering to the touch of a man’s hands; and knowing that notwithstanding that dirty dream she had the night before, the thought that rushed to her head like blood itself, she knew she wanted him. She could feel his desire touch her there: plain, hard and honest; and she could feel her body give in . . . for the three cardboard boxes marked CONFIDENTIAL, PICTURES & PHOTOS, and TERM PAPERS were large enough for their two bodies; and were soft enough and adequate enough and supple enough; and so, she put him to lie on his back, flat against the ridges and edges of the three boxes, and he had more than space and comfort so he closed his eyes, for he could not look at nor witness what was happening to him, after she had eased the tight-fitting custom-made corduroy trousers below his waist, and had pulled them down along his legs to white that she was surprised; “You should be in the sun” passed through her mind; seeing that his legs were skinny, and she left one trouser leg on, since it was too much trouble in her rush of emotion getting both over his shoes; and she raised the light-blue cotton dress, her smock as she called it, her work dress; and she pulled this up, and sat on him. It was then that he saw the rich brown flesh, her belly with its slight bulge, and her breasts with their black circles round the nipples, and the thickness and silk of her hair betwixt her thighs. Such lusciousness he had not seen before. But deep down had always yearned for. It was when his eyes rested on her greatness that the sight was too much for him, and in shame, in surrender, he closed his eyes. He also closed his eyes because he was praying. Always before, in the years of his marriage to her, it was fear and doubt and trepidation and he always ended up feeling inadequate, for she wanted to do it by the book, and she wanted him to talk, and say precisely how he liked it, and if he liked it this way or that, and he had to spell out for her the positions into which she had taken him. This is why now, not being able at this point, to know if there was going to be any difference, he closed his eyes. The realism was too much for him. It was like closing his eyes, momentarily, when the car approaching him had its high beams on, to avoid temporary blindness. But he preferred it with his eyes closed, anyway. And how was he to know that this would be the experience, the moment, he had been waiting all his life to have; and at the same time, the time and the experience he had been running for his life, to avoid.
And when it happened, when he reached his manhood inside her, she closed her eyes and said something like a prayer. And he screamed, “Oh Jesus Christ!”
And like a ritual, like a cleaning up after, like the practised taking up of things and putting them back in their correct places, she put back on her brassiere and her light-blue smock, and left the room. He was too weak to move. He was too invigorated to want to move from the three boxes marked CONFIDENTIAL, PICTURES & PHOTOS and TERM PAPERS. But more than anything, it was the peace in which he lay. And was contented to remain lying. And wanting in that contentment, to take his own life. To die.
She was standing in front of the double sinks in the kitchen. Her hands were moving automatically. Her face was serene. She could feel a new kind of life in her body. As if her blood was being taken out and changed and poured back in. She was staring into the backyard . . . and the trees were white and the jewels of snow brightened by the bright powerless sun, took her wandering, walking, looking into the windows of shops along Bloor Street; and looking into the peaceful waves of the sea near Gravesend Beach where she lived in Barbados. Her hands moved over the crystal glass she was washing. And she realized she had been merely holding it, when the light took up the intricate working on the glass, and the sparkles jumped and had a life of their own, like stars in the darkest night of blue. Then, the full force of her act struck her. Her mind was no longer focused on the glass. What had she done? What had been done to her? But what had she done?
When she realized what she had done, she panicked. Tears poured down her cheeks, and she could feel the water and she did not feel her tears were warm, as people said. Her tears were cold. She felt cold all over. Terror gripped her, and she wondered what to do. What had she done? From her Bible it was clear what her act was. And her religion would chastise her; and she knew she would have to atone for it. She knew she would not wish away her act of adultery. And more than that, her sacred vow to herself, and to Gertrude that no man would ever violate her body, not even if she had, as before, given her body in love, or in a passionate act of lust. When she knew what she had done, she became irrepressibly depressed. The act and her entire body became one inexplicable lump, a large ball, some kind of encumbrance that was ugly and bad, blocking the way to her other thoughts about anything else she knew about herself, as if the act encompassed her e
ntire being. She was now nothing more than adultery itself.
The tears continued to bathe her face. But she realized the feeling her body, and the newness there, and the love she had given. No one could erase that. No one could say it was not love, that it was not her gift, that it was his assault.
When she knew this, when this thought like the spirit she felt many Sunday nights in her church gripped her, when she knew this, and was this, she broke down.
She picked up her winter coat from the chair on which she had placed it, hours before, and threw it over her shoulders. And she rushed through the front door, not really knowing where she was going; ignoring her woollen hat, her scarf and her gloves; and she ran across the circular driveway, crushing the snow and leaving pointed marks where her speed had destroyed the firmness of her footprints; running in the thick snow without her winter boots; ignoring the treachery of the ice beneath the snow. She bounded into the bookstore, rushed up to Gertrude who held five books in her hand, a pencil in her mouth, with three customers standing beside her.
“Come! Come!” she said, and went behind the counter by the cash register, and grabbed Gertrude by the hand, and said, “Come!”
On the way through the door, she told Gertrude, “This is business. Woman talk.”
“What about my job?” Gertrude said. They were in the middle of Yonge Street, with two lines of traffic in either direction bearing down upon them. May ignored the cars.
“In here!” she said.
“The Pilot Tavern?” Gertrude was aghast.
One week ago, May had scolded women drinking liquor so early in the day, calling them sinners. “To drink?”
“Something happened.”
“Wait!” Gertrude screamed. “The traffic!” It was almost too late. Brakes screeched as the two lines of traffic in two directions came to a shouting, abusive and gesturing halt.
“They have to wait.”
“Danger,” Gertrude said.
They entered the bar. And walked past the line of stools on their right hand, and which stretched the length of the bar counter. On their left were small round, black-topped tables, shining and placed into the spaces left between the custom-built leather seats. She guided Gertrude to the rear of the room. It was darker here. She chose a seat near a door over which was marked EXIT in red.
“Gerts, what have I done?”
“You sure’s hell cost me my job!”
“This is business, man. Woman talking to woman.”
“I’m concerned about my job.”
“I tried to call you.”
“You just come me my job, May.”
“To tell you.”
“How could you?”
“All morning, beginning last night, I had this feeling, like a burden, you know? All the lights was left on. And the radio was on my favourite station.”
“How’m I going to explain this to Mister—”
“It was as if I couldn’t help myself, all morning I couldn’t help myself. All morning I feeling this presence. And I went down in the basement. And there he was. There he was, Gertrude.”
“God, May, how’m I going to explain this? What have you done to me, May?”
“And there he was, in a little room in the basement, sitting down on a box. Do you know what was marked on this damn box he was sitting on?”
“How can you do this to me, of all people?”
“CONFIDENTIAL! CONFIDENTIAL! was marked on that damn box, Gertrude. I could have killed him dead, when he surprised me so. Dead, dead, dead, I tell you, this afternoon, Gerts. What you want to drink?”
“Something soft. Perhaps a soda.”
“A soda? A soda, Gertrude? Do you think I bring you in here to order a soda, in a crisis like this? Gerts, I have done something, and in this hour o’ darkness, you want to drink a soda? How the hell can you listen to my burdens if I drinking something hard, and you drinking a blasted soda pop?”
The waiter was standing over them. He could not understand her speech. Her speech and the accent in which it was embedded were too strange for his Sicilian ear. He remained standing and waited.
“Bring her a brandy. And bring me one, too, please.”
“Coming up,” the waiter said, and left.
“You can’t help me to understand this burden whilst you stay sober, and me walking in the valley of death. Girl, drink something strong.”
“I left my purse in the store.”
“I have money.” And she placed her purse on the table.
“And my job, May. How could you?”
“The CONFIDENTIAL box, Gerts. And I with the iron frying pan in my hand. And I see him there. Like a baby. Like a child. And I don’t know if it was the dream about the woman-lion that I had and had told you about, or the dream about the dog. As I stepped through that door this morning, my spirit wasn’t itself. It was the blanket.”
“What the hell does a blanket, pardon my French, have to do with my job? You compromised me in front of my customers.”
“An Indian blanket, Gerts.”
“Indian from the East?”
“Indian from here! The Indian blanket that I wrapped him in, yesterday. I told you about that. When I could hardly control the thought o’ murder, remember? Well, I may not be able to explain it like you, but there was something in that blanket. I don’t know anything about the cultures o’ people, but Gerts, something was existing in that blanket. And for me, a Christian-minded person . . .”
“And drinking this?”
The waiter had placed the drinks before them.
“The cultures o’ people and native people don’t mean a damn thing to me, but I feel something was in that blanket. Some-damn-thing.” In one sip, she drank half of her brandy. “Now, I am in the basement. He in the closet. Like a little boy. Put in a corner. And when I saw his eyes, and what was happening to him, concerning the wife, yuh know? Gerts, I don’t know what I have done. It is terrible, Gerts.” She was crying now.
Gertrude, still pale and wan from the sudden intrusion, sipped her brandy, and then feeling its power, drank it off in one gulp. She liked brandy.
“All the way up here to you, running like a damn madwoman, Gerts, and the tears pouring down my two cheeks in sadness and in confession over what took place in that little basement room.”
“You killed him, at last? You killed the bastard, eventually? That’s the trick you want me to believe, eh May, after you have gone and got me fired? ’Cause, I sure’s hell can’t go back there!” She drained her glass, already empty. “Is that what you want to make me believe you did? That you killed him?”
“I had him.”
“You what?”
“Had him, Gerts. I had him. Mr. Moore.”
“Waiter!” Gertrude said, and motioned for another brandy. “A double, please.” And she remained silent for a while, while she tried to understand what she had just heard. “Had him? Like, had sex with him?”
“Fooped him, Gerts.”
“You mean. You mean, don’t tell me, but do you mean, sex?”
“Fucked him, Gerts!”
“You? And Mr. Moore! Sex! ”
“Waiter?” Make that a double, please.” She had, in her confusion, forgotten that she had ordered it already.
For a time, perhaps longer than either of them realized, or could count, it remained still, dead, and with a silence that spoke amazement.
And when it was broken, eventually, it was broken by Gertrude’s laughter. She leaned back in the straight-back chair, and laughed, until something like tears came to her eyes. She took a lace handkerchief from the sleeve of her brown fitted dress, and passed it over her eyes, and dabbed her cheeks with it.
“And how do you feel about this?”
“Is that all you can ask me?”
“Who initiated it?”
“What you mean, who initiated it?”
“He assaulted you, didn’t he?”
“I, a woman, and at my age, mixed up in fornication with the man I works
for, and all you can ask me, after drinking-off two brandies, is how I feel? And who initiated the fornicating?”
“Listen to me. Take it easy. I know you are distressed by this. But who initiated it? You have to tell me. He came at you, didn’t he?”
“How do I feel? How do I feel, Gerts? I feel like shit. I feel dirty. I feel like a sinner. I feel like a whore, and a robber, too. A woman who robbed a man. I feel also like a savior. I feel, in a funny way, good. Damn good. But scared.”
“I know. I know. In these cases, the woman takes on a terrible guilt, and sees herself being the victim.”
“And it is this that’s worrying me, and I run to you, my only living friend in this city, in this country, to seek solace and a word of wisdom from you, and all you can tell me, after two drinks, is how I feel?”
“Sexual assault! That’s what it is, May. I know you’re in no condition to see this clearly. I understand that. It is an assault to your body. The unfair, criminal advances of a man with power, and wealth, over a poor woman like you. You have your rights. You have to do something about it. We have to do something about this. And if you don’t, I sure’s hell intend to!”
“Gerts, you realize what I done? You realize how my life has changed, plain and simple, by this one act? And I never planned it. I never even imagined myself in such a thing. And with the man I works for? In a room? In a basement? And me, a woman who you know detests basements? And going to church twice a Sunday, and two more times during the week? I planning to go to George Brown. Planning to buy a house. Planning to get my hands on some Canada Savings Bonds. And now look! Gerts, you’re looking at a woman who believes in God.”
“You have to tell me you don’t love him.”
“I can’t answer that.”
“That you feel hatred for him.”
“Nor that.”
“You don’t know you do.”
“I can’t answer that, Gerts.”
“Of course, you won’t know. It’s a matter of master and slave.
“What?”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
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