“Let me introduce you to some people,” he said.
They joined a man and two women on paisley-covered mattresses near a window. The man, Ed, had a Fulbright to study art history. He was lanky and boyish, with unruly pale brown hair and skin as smooth as a girl’s. Next to him sat an older woman, plump and bouncy, and opposite, his wife, Rusty.
“It was every bit as bad as I thought it would be, having it in a Catholic hospital,” Rusty said in a toneless voice. She was gaunt, with deep shadows under her eyes, thick brown braids, and buck teeth. Ed poured more white wine into her empty tumbler, which she clutched so tightly that her knuckles showed white. “The nuns wouldn’t give me a thing for the pain. They just stood there, three of them, standing over me yelling, ‘Spingere, spingere.’”
Caroline looked questioningly at Ivan.
“Push,” he whispered in her ear, lingering an extra second on the final, breathy sound.
“But it was finally all right, apparently?” said the older woman, Sarah.
“I pushed. What else could I do?” She moved her stunned eyes to the face of each listener in turn, as though they could offer alternatives. “But those nuns had no feeling. If something went wrong they would let me die—I kept thinking that the whole time I was pushing. It was horrible.” She tipped her head back and downed the wine. “I hated all of them, and Ed and the baby too.”
“How old is the baby now?” Caroline asked.
“Five weeks.”
She examined Rusty more closely for signs of damage. She was skinny on top, and the rest of her body was hidden by her long skirt as she sat cross-legged on the mattress.
“We thought of bringing him along to show him off,” said Ed. “We have a basket. But at the last minute we realized it would be pretty noisy here, so we left him home.”
“You don’t mean you left him alone?” Sarah asked.
“Sure. We do it all the time.”
“You can’t do that,” she cried. “You can’t leave a five-week-old baby alone in an apartment all night!”
“Our neighbor would hear if he cried,” said Rusty, waving her thin arm through the air. “I’m there all day. I have to get out at night.”
“Don’t you realize what could happen!” Sarah rose to her feet excitedly. Strands of auburn hair slipped from the bun at the top of her head. “Crib death. Fire. Burglars. He could even choke from crying. I don’t understand you two. You must go home right away.”
Ed patted his beardless jaw. “I don’t know, Rusty, maybe…”
“Nonsense. He sleeps straight through the night. He’s a marvelous baby. And he has his pacifier.”
“He could choke on his pacifier,” said Caroline without thinking, then she put her fingers to her lips. She was the stranger; they were all friends.
“I can’t believe this. I mean, we’ve been doing this ever since he was born. Times have changed.”
“Babies haven’t changed, and you’ve been damn lucky,” said Sarah. “Listen, I’m going over there. Give me a key. I can’t sit still another minute knowing that baby’s alone. Bob? Bob?” She elbowed through the crowd to find her husband.
“I guess we ought to go with her,” said Ed.
“Jewish mothers,” Rusty grumbled. She stood up, smoothed down her skirt on her jutting hipbones and stalked off, setting her empty glass on the window sill. The window was wide open; Ivan removed the glass.
Caroline looked at him. “I’m not keen on babies myself, but really…”
Ivan turned to her absent-mindedly, desire forgotten, and laid his hand on her arm in a simple, friendly gesture. “It’s scary, isn’t it, to have a baby at all?”
“Nobody has to do it if they don’t feel up to it.” She shrugged. “Joan and Cory seem happy, don’t they?”
“I don’t know. They look the same to me.”
Later, when they were leaving, Ivan wanted to drive around to all seven hills of Rome. The views at night, he told her, were spectacular. They went from crest to crest. Beautiful as Ivan promised, the city drifted below, black and starry. But back in the taxi after the fourth hill, Caroline reached out and put her hand on his knee, and he leaned forward and gave the driver her address. They were silent the rest of the way, and as she pushed open the heavy, recalcitrant door.
“Here we are,” she announced foolishly. Ivan moved to the center of the room, where he gazed around, sullen and helpless like a juvenile offender ushered into his cell.
“Is that where you sleep?” He gestured to the old gray couch piled with books and newspapers.
“No, there’s a bedroom. Over there.”
He came to her. He suddenly seemed very much a stranger—there was something demented about taking him inside her. Her yearning fled, leaving her vacant, chilled and a bit shaky. This was all a big mistake, but it was not too late. She could apologize and ask him to leave: she had reconsidered and it would not work out. She heard herself say softly, “Are you going to tell me now what you’re so afraid of?”
“Please,” Ivan said, shaking his head as if in pain. “I don’t want to talk now.” He lowered his lids and nodded toward the bedroom, giving her a slight nudge. Chivalrous even in this poignant urgency, he wished her to precede him through the bedroom door, and so she did.
“Well,” Caroline said right after, lying next to him and breathing hard. “I thought maybe you weren’t interested. Or you couldn’t do it.”
“What’s the big deal?” asked Ivan. “Anybody can do it.”
“Not like…”
He chuckled, looking the other way. As she chuckled, she remembered, alone in her room after she won a spelling bee. A solitary, proud glee.
“You’re not a wolf,” said Caroline. “You certainly took your time. A real gentleman.”
“I’m a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
She looked him over. “You’re certainly hairy enough. You must be the black sheep.”
“Actually, in my family I probably am. Drifter. Can’t stick to anything. Tell me, do you think I’d make a good gigolo?”
She laughed. “She’d have to be a strong old lady. What’s your family like?”
“Poor but honest,” he said. “Not now, though, all right? Now come over here. Please. That time was mostly a relief. Maybe we could…get to know each other?”
She moved closer. He took her hand and studied it, touched each finger and joint and brought the palm up to his lips. “We’ll begin at the extremities,” he said, “and work our way inward.”
“You’re lovely,” said Caroline. “But you’re not a foot fetishist, are you?”
“Oh, shush. Keep still and let yourself be worshipped.”
“‘An age at least to every part.’ Is that what you have in mind?”
“It’s not a bad idea.”
“Ivan, you’re such a romantic. I never dreamed—”
“Well, what of it?”
“It’s perfectly all right. Sensitive, aren’t you? Go on, get on with it. Then I’ll do it to you.”
She woke late. Sun streamed in through the slits of the shutters. Slanting bars striped the north wall, and in the flat parallel beams of intruding light, motes of dust drifted. She had her back to Ivan but felt he was awake. When she turned, his eyes were fixed on her, greener than she had ever seen them, and squinting.
“Where are your contact lenses?”
“On the dresser.”
“Do you make love with them in?”
“I can. It makes no difference.”
“Did you?”
“I suppose so. Yes, I got up later and took them out, after you fell asleep. What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?”
“I’m always in a rotten mood in the morning.”
“I’ll fix that. Good morning.” He circled an arm around her and pushed his leg between hers.
“Don’t. I don’t like that approach.”
Ivan moved away. “What’s the matter. Did something happen?”
“No, everything is fine. I’
m getting up. I want to go to the bathroom and then make some coffee.”
“Will you come back after?”
They had coffee and rolls together in bed, and then he put his arms around her and kissed her. The touch was overpowering, and the impulse to sink against him unwanted and beyond control. Her body was no longer her own, nor, as in tales of passion, was it his. It was some lush, willful alien that knew only craving and brutish pursuit of what it craved. She began to weep.
“What is it?” he cried. “What the hell is going on?”
She wiped her eyes on the pillowcase. “You made me ask. You wanted to see if you could get me to ask for it. How long it would take you. So now you see. Now you can go home and pat yourself on the back. It’s humiliating, that’s all.”
Ivan lay without moving, his face impassive. “I don’t understand how you can say those things,” he replied at last. “It’s ridiculous. You’re assuming things that have no basis.”
“Oh, you’re so innocent, aren’t you? I see the type you are now. You don’t act like a brute, no, you don’t act like a boss, but you manoeuvre and manipulate. It comes to the same thing. Oh, you must love to see women wanting you—you are attractive, I admit. Some kind of operator.”
Ivan gave a dry, callous laugh. “You flatter me.” He pulled his arms close to his body, gripping one wrist tight. As he closed his eyes Caroline thought she saw his lids tremble, and was horrified. She touched his shoulder, but he had moved far beyond reach.
“Ivan,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I hurt you. Maybe I was wrong. Tell me.”
“I have nothing to tell.”
“Tell me how I’m mistaken. I’ll believe you if you just say it.”
“You remind me of King Lear,” he said, opening his eyes. His voice was lighter; there was even the faintest trace of the edge of his laugh. “You want to hear how much? A lot, okay? I didn’t want to start something with you, because…”
“Well, why?”
“Because I could tell…I had a feeling that if I did, I’d have to go on doing it for the rest of my life.” He smiled ruefully. “Thumping on and on, sort of…fucking my life away on a woman.”
Caroline laughed. “But I’m not one of those insatiable types. I never thought…Do I seem like…like that?”
“You don’t understand. It’s not what you would want,” he said impatiently. “It’s what I would want.” He turned from her and shielded his face with his arm.
“Oh, God. I am sorry.” She tugged at his shoulder till finally he turned back to her. “This must be what happens when people are in love.”
“Oh, are we in love?”
“Yes,” said Caroline. “We love each other.”
“All right then, that’s settled. So let’s not talk about it any more. Now, how about it?”
“There’s just one thing,” she said later, as Ivan lay with his head resting on her stomach. “If you were afraid to start this, I mean, if you weren’t sure you wanted to risk it, then why did you?”
He moved up and bent over her face. His eyes were very green again and very amused as he brushed the flopping hair off his forehead. He was trying to keep from smiling. “You asked, Caroline, remember? You said yourself I was a gentleman. I couldn’t refuse a lady.”
“Oh, you!” she cried, and lunged for him with hands like claws. But he was so much bigger, he had her pinned down in an instant, and he laughed at her squirming efforts to free herself. She didn’t want to give in by laughing too, so her only defense was to close her eyes and simply feel him there.
She had never been given to having close friends. (Nor had he, he protested when she told him that, as if she had insinuated a secret, shameful weakness in him; she was his exception.) Growing up, she cared for math and music and chess, which endeared her to neither the arty nor the domesticated girls. Friendships with boys were not in fashion, so she got used to keeping her own counsel. She had never traveled in a pack, never learned how to make accommodations of the subtle, intimate sort. At college she roomed alone. She was agreeable and had friends, but they had to knock on her door and wait for her to open it.
How come, then, after so short a spell, she gave Ivan a key? She didn’t understand it. She didn’t understand herself any more. At the age of twenty-three it outraged her to suspect that lust could have so great a dominion. That was a comical concept and a comical word, not one you used in the ordinary course of life. “Desire” was what you called it, if you had to call it something. Lust: when she whispered it aloud to herself in the dark of night it had an ancient, quaint and scary hiss. More amusing than frightening, but she was frightened nonetheless. Never had she been so much under the influence of another person. The phrase itself suggested something shoddy and disreputable, as when her mother used to remark archly from time to time that the butcher seemed “under the influence.” “He’d better watch his knife,” she would add. Caroline, who took things literally, still remembered holding her breath and watching the steel of the cleaver flash as it tore into the raw red meat.
In college she had known men, and in the two years after, while she went to graduate school evenings and worked days for a firm of consulting economists. She understood little of their work, only the figures, which at the beginning she manipulated quickly with a richly joyous abandon, till she grew bored, and realized that statistics and computations would never keep her interest over a lifetime. She went through the men quickly too, and began to suspect that she manipulated them as well, though with an abandon less rich and less joyous. Always she felt driven more by curiosity than by passion or affection. Who were they, the students and economists, the lawyer and the actor? What were they beneath the clothes, the face, the patter? Strictly speaking, she supposed, a few of them plumbed her depths, physical depths she regarded without mysticism. But it was she who did the exotic spelunking. In fantasy she bored a hole in their foreheads and crept through the crannies of the brain to its visceral reaches, till a narrow shaft of light showed through. She came out the other end and dropped them. They were all too easy, a short trip, no lodes of treasure. A couple said she was callous; so what? Let them soften her if they could.
She had never lived with any of them, either. Sometimes she woke to the feel of their muscular legs twined with hers in the bed, not always a pleasant surprise, but she had never been so entwined that any could say to her as Ivan now did, “Where do you want to eat tonight?” or, “Let’s rent a car for the weekend,” or, “Do you want to go to a movie with Cory and Joan?” Cory and Joan, she thought wryly. Cory and Joan were only married, like thousands of other ordinary people, while she and Ivan were yoked together like animals in harness—flexible as elastic, true, but as hard to break. And it would surely leave telltale marks on the skin.
She was not the only one who had misgivings. The stout portiera of Ivan’s building eyed Caroline with rancor and disapproval. Signora Daveglio dressed in black and always wore a striped apron tied around her waist. She had a wide clear brow and a tight mouth; horn-rimmed spectacles and gray-streaked hair gathered in a knot gave her an ascetic air. During the day she was most often found indoors on her knees, not in piety but scrubbing the steps of the building with a pail and brush. Her tenants grew accustomed to stepping around her and her pail, as well as to her penetrating stare directed at their backs as they proceeded up or down, away from her crouching form. In the evening she sat outside on a folding chair, her large feet in men’s slippers planted squarely on the pavement, and read from beginning to end l’Unità, the Communist newspaper, holding it fully opened in front of her face like a book. On cool evenings she wore over her black dress a long green knit cardigan with a white stripe around the neck and down the center of the front; across the back stretched the word “Starlets” in white satin script, and above the left breast, in much smaller letters, “Diana.” She said it had been sent to her by relatives in New Jersey.
Walking past the pail, Caroline could feel the stare boring into her back like twin r
ays of condemning fire. There was an oddly personal note in Signora Daveglio’s disapproval, as though Caroline’s evident willingness tainted all the members of their sex with disgrace. Her attitude toward Ivan was stern also, but more tolerant, as one excuses little children for bed-wetting, but not bigger ones, who should know better and whose offenses become a public nuisance. Caroline complained to Ivan, so one day he paused, before stepping over the pail, to greet Signora Daveglio, astonishingly, with the smile of an accomplished charmer, and presented Caroline as his fidanzata. The woman smiled back with relief. She wiped her fingers on her striped apron and shook their hands, regarding them as warmly as her stony features would allow.
“So I’m your fiancée now, eh?” Caroline said as soon as they entered the apartment.
“Well, you wanted her to stop looking at you that way. Anyhow, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t it a possibility?”
“I don’t believe what I’m hearing. Are you suggesting marriage? The unregenerate independent spirit?”
“Oh, forget it. Are you hungry?” said Ivan, retreating to the refrigerator. But later on he brought up the subject again.
“I don’t know what to say,” she answered him. “I didn’t have marriage in mind at all. I came here for a good time.”
“But aren’t you having a good time?”
She sighed, lying in his arms. “Yes. That’s not what I meant. Marriage doesn’t strike me as a good time.”
“You don’t want to live in sin,” he said. “You lose on income taxes. You have trouble with leases. You’ll get your Ph.D. and try to get teaching jobs in colleges, and they’ll spread nasty rumors about your private life. And what about the children? You don’t want little bastards, do you?”
Rough Strife Page 5