Maya never used to look through the peephole, but now I heard the clicking sound of the little tin disc being turned aside, and I lowered my head to avoid her glance. She opened the door but didn’t invite me in as usual. She stood in the doorway holding together her unbuttoned yellow housecoat, and looked at me, annoyed and sleepy.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, “I didn’t mean to wake you up. I thought you were out.”
She suppressed a yawn. “Then why were you ringing?”
I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I stared down at her bare feet.
“Oh, well, come on in. I guess I sleep too much anyway.”
Maya turned and I followed her inside, down the narrow hallway, which was empty except for Japanese prints on the walls. Her velvet housecoat was wrinkled, and from the back she looked sloppy and unattractive. But I didn’t let my senses deceive me. I find her unattractive because I’m afraid, I thought. At the end of the hallway there were two doors: one on the left leading to the living room, one on the right leading to the bedroom. She closed the bedroom door, shutting out the sight of an unmade bed, and turned into the living room. She sat down uncomfortably in one of the small armchairs and I remained standing, keenly aware of being a nuisance. Yet my awkward situation in fact helped me to speak up: much as I was afraid to ask her to make love with me, I found it even less possible to coax a sleepy woman into a social chat. I drew a deep breath and looked into her half-closed eyes.
“I made a resolution I would throw myself into the Danube if I didn’t ask you to make love with me today.”
I wondered about adding my preconceived opening line, but it seemed now superfluous. I was so relieved that I’d dared to speak up, that for the moment I couldn’t have cared less whether she said yes or no.
“That’s settled then. You’ve asked me and now you won’t have to kill yourself.”
“You told me once that I shouldn’t mind if I looked like a fool — you said it wasn’t important.”
“It’s not fair to quote me against myself.”
It was so unlike her to be coy that I heard my voice snapping back at her. “You want me to leave? You want to go back to sleep?”
“You’re too cocky … but that’s good,” she said, with the warm glint, my beacon, lighting up in her eyes. She stood up to present me with a kiss for my cockiness. I had never been kissed like that before, and I could hardly stay on my feet. I reached under her now-open housecoat to hold onto her warm body. I was ashore at last. Still kissing, she tiptoed backward with me over to the room with the unmade double-bed — then suddenly pulled away.
“I’ll have to put in my diaphragm. And I must have a shower. A hot shower makes you more sensitive.”
Giving me a light, brief parting kiss on the nose, she disappeared into the bathroom. I didn’t know what a diaphragm was, but the fact that she needed to make herself “more sensitive” for the occasion hurt my pride. I can’t possibly mean anything much to her, I thought, suddenly depressed. Then, listening to her shower, I began to walk up and down the bedroom, marvelling at how simple it had all been. I was rather proud of myself.
I undressed and moved under the blanket, and she came back and slipped in beside me. While she pressed my head against her firm yet pillowy breasts, kissing my closed eyes, I reached down to touch the warm well of her body. It’s said that just before death a person sees his whole life in an instant. On the winding roads of the Austrian Alps between the Russian and German armies, I had found this to be true: once when I felt certain that the screaming shrapnel was about to land in my skull, I had seen in a moment, as if on a sky-wide screen, all the events of my eleven and a half years. Lying beside Maya, pressing close to her, I experienced a similar hallucination — not before death now, but before life. I saw the little neighbourhood girl with whom I played doctor-and-patient at the age of five. I had completely forgotten her, but now I was with her again, comparing her hardly visible thin line with my small branch. A rather meaningless difference it was, but her mother slapped us hard when she found us. I saw again my mother’s fluffy friends, and felt the Countess’ body stiffen as I accosted her at the shower-door. I saw the mysterious shadow which appeared through the white silk of Fräulein Mozart’s panties, and felt the cool and passive body of fifteen-year-old Julika, whom I could not enter. The memories of my long roundabout voyage paralysed me and I was helpless for long, scary minutes. As if she sensed what was going through me, Maya kept running her warm fingers over the back of my neck and spine until I had an erection again.
She guided me into her body and, once inside, I felt so content that I didn’t dare to move for fear of spoiling everything. After a while, she kissed me on the ear and whispered: “I think I might wiggle a little bit.”
When she moved, I discharged instantly. Maya gave me a passionate hug as if my performance had been the greatest thing she had ever experienced. Emboldened by her pleased reaction, I asked her how it was that the difference in our ages didn’t disturb her.
“I’m a selfish slut,” she confessed, “all I care about is my own satisfaction.”
Then we made love, from sunny afternoon late into the darkness. I haven’t learned much since those timeless hours: Maya was teaching me everything there was to know. Yet “teaching” is the wrong word: she was simply pleasing herself and me, and I was unaware of losing my ignorance while discovering the ways of her strange territories. She delighted in every motion — or in just touching my bones and flesh. Maya wasn’t one of those women who depend on orgasm as their sole reward for a tiresome business: making love with her was a union, and not the inward masturbation of two strangers in the same bed.
“Watch me now,” she warned me before she came, “you’ll enjoy it.”
During one of our brief rests, I asked her when she had decided to give in to me. Was it at the moment when I was ready to give up and asked her whether she wanted to go back to sleep?
“No. I made up my mind when I told you that you were growing too fast and made you stand beside me by the mailbox.”
I was dumbfounded. This made all my conflicts and stratagems seem futile and ridiculous; and it also meant that we had wasted precious, long weeks. Why hadn’t she given me some sign of encouragement?
“I wanted you to ask me. It’s better for you to seduce a woman, especially when it’s the first time. Béla’s never got over the fact that he started out by paying a whore. You won’t have problems like that. You can be proud of yourself.”
“How can you tell that I’m proud?”
“You certainly should be,” she said.
Thus complimenting both of us, Maya embraced me with her arms and thighs — then turned around without letting me go, so that now she was above me. “You should have a nap,” she said, “and let me do all the work.”
We first stopped because Maya got hungry, and while she was preparing something for us to eat, she suggested that I should get dressed and go down and tell my mother I wasn’t lost. She said I could come back, because her husband had a mistress (just as I had suspected) and was spending the night at her place. I told her I found it inconceivable that he could leave her alone for another woman. “Oh I don’t know — she’s a very pretty girl,” Maya said matter-of-factly, without any sign of resentment.
At any rate, thanks to that pretty girl, we could spend the night together, and I went down to speak to my mother. I didn’t even go into our apartment. At the door I told her that I was in the building, that she shouldn’t wait up for me, and that she shouldn’t worry.
“You poets!” She shook her head and smiled sadly, offering the only excuse she could think of for my sinful behaviour. Bounding back up the stairs, I made a vow that the next day I would buy her some nice present.
After I got back, we had dinner and returned to bed — just to feel each other and talk. Of course I told Maya that I loved her, which I did and still do, and asked her whether she loved me.
“I do,” she said seriously. “But you�
�ll learn that love rarely lasts and that it’s possible to love more than one person at the same time.”
“You mean you have another boy friend?” I asked her, scared.
“Well, my husband,” she answered, widening her eyes slightly. “But you shouldn’t worry about it. This idea that you can only love one person is the reason why most people live in confusion.”
She told me she wished they had children, and was thinking of getting a job as a teacher.
“When?”
“Not right now. After you leave me.”
We made love again, and then once again, before it was time for me to get up and go to school.
We could never go out together: Béla would object to that, she said, which made me suspect that he knew about us. He was very polite whenever we met and was obligingly absent most of the time. But even within those four walls we had everything we needed — food, music, books and the large bed. As vividly as our lovemaking, I recall our rubbing against each other and sniffing each other as dogs do — and especially our habit of cutting our toe-nails together, with our arms and legs so tangled up that it was a wonder we didn’t cut ourselves oftener than we did.
All this must have affected my appearance, or at least my manner: I began to notice women noticing me. Perhaps it was because I had lost my air of desperation. And while I still enjoyed looking at strange women, I didn’t get cramps in my stomach any more.
At school, my teachers were struck by my new-found self-assurance, and decided that I had “qualities of leadership.”
Seven
On Being Promiscuous and Lonely
Sweet is revenge — especially to women.
— Lord Byron
Being Maya’s lover, I was bound to suspect miraculous possibilities in all women. Her very perfection gave me the notion that other women must be equally wonderful inside their excitingly different shapes and colours. I suppose one of the reasons why older women are often wary of young men — and why husbands should be wary of virgin brides — is that even the most exceptional qualities are lost on those who have no basis for comparison. As Maya’s cousin Klári used to say: “You can’t count on young people.”
Klári came to visit Maya about once a week, and the fact that I was always there apparently upset her. She wore long-sleeved, high-necked dresses to keep her slim, sexy figure to herself, and her black hair was always neat, as if she had just come from the hairdresser. She was some years younger than Maya, but her dark eyebrows cast a grave shadow over her round, babyish face.
“I hope you’ll forgive me for saying so,” I once overheard Klári telling Maya while I was supposed to be asleep in the bedroom, “but you’re absolutely out of your mind to waste your time with that boy. You should be getting yourself a divorce and looking for a new husband. If you sleep once in a while with a boy like András, fine, I’d understand that — there’s such a thing as curiosity. But to carry on an affair with him — that’s madness. You haven’t got much time to lose, you know.”
When I came back to the living room, interrupting their conversation, Klári gave me an impatient smile. I thought she looked pretty in a mean sort of way. After she left, I had one of my rare fights with Maya about her.
“Oh, be quiet,” she told me at last. “Klári means well.”
“She hates my guts.”
“Don’t be so silly. Klári is my cousin, after all, and she’s just trying to protect me. She’s warning me that I shouldn’t count on you. But I knew that anyway — so you shouldn’t worry about what she says.”
Then she kissed me on the nose, which was always an end to our arguments.
However, Maya couldn’t ignore Klári’s disapproval either. To justify her fondness for me, she was telling Klári what a prodigious lover I was. She made up stories that would have quelled the misgivings of a frigid nun. Another time when I eavesdropped on their conversation, I heard Maya saying that I could make love for two hours without interruption.
These wild tales must have affected Klári, for she began to look at me with that glint in her eyes, the meaning of which I could now recognize. And she began to make remarks about her own womanhood, without any relation to the subject under discussion. At one of our dinners she announced casually (but blushing at the same time) that her husband made love with her in his sleep, and in the morning refused to believe that it had happened. Whether this was true or not, I can’t say. But I was fascinated by her sudden change of colour and by the way her face grew soft and disordered, as if she were making love — while in fact she sat upright at the dinner-table, cutting her meat with utmost elegance. I could see by her face that her panties were wet.
In trying to make friends with Klári, I enjoyed perhaps most the fact that I could now approach a woman without feeling scared. Sometimes, as a friendly, absent-minded gesture, I would put my arm around her waist. There was nothing to it. She felt different from Maya, and just as exciting. Invariably, she would push me away with a nervous laugh. One day, while her cousin was in the bathroom, she said to me: “You know, I think I begin to understand Maya,” but then quickly changed the subject.
There were no further lapses from decorum until one Saturday afternoon when our hostess left us alone while she went out shopping. Klári stayed because she was supposed to have dinner with us, but I couldn’t help wondering why she felt “too tired” to accompany Maya and chose to wait with me in the apartment — for what we expected would be an hour or more.
“Well, you’re left in my charge,” she said with a rather self-conscious laugh, “what should I do with you now?”
It wasn’t only the laugh that made her body vibrate: I saw her face grow soft and disordered once again. There’s an irresistible attraction for me in a woman’s nude expression when she is fully dressed. And Klári was asking what she should do with me.
“Seduce me.”
She grew serious. “I’m surprised at you, András.”
“Well, you asked me what you should do with me.”
“I was only making friendly conversation.”
“What could be friendlier than asking you to seduce me?”
“You obviously have no feelings and no morals, yourself. I love my husband and I love my cousin. I’d never betray them even if I liked you. As a matter of fact, I don’t understand how she can carry on with you the way she does. It’s stupid and I don’t mind telling you I told her so too. She should find herself some nice man whom she could marry and leave that rotten husband of hers.”
“Maybe she will.”
“Well, she isn’t showing any sign of it! She’s already given you a whole year of her life, and what thanks does she get! It’s revolting.”
I could see that she meant every word she said, nor did I disagree with her. Yet as we went on talking in this vein for a few more minutes, we were both changing colour with increasing frequency. Klári finally got up from the armchair and went to the bookcase, where she became absorbed in the titles. As she stood there I couldn’t help feeling that she was waiting for me to approach her — even if she didn’t want me to. Nothing but old age could have made me resist this situation. I went to her and kissed her shoulder, but she drew away.
“You’re horrible. Besides, we couldn’t do anything even if I wanted to. I have my period.”
It was a sincere lie. Most likely she would have been relieved if I had accepted it, but as I did not (or rather, didn’t care one way or the other) she offered no more resistance. When we made love, we didn’t have to move. Her body was shaking with explosions from beginning to end. Perhaps because we didn’t really want to meet again (she thought I was immoral, I thought she was stupid), these few minutes had the violent sensation of a once-and-only encounter.
Maya came back early from shopping and found us in bed. When she opened the door on us, her arms full of groceries, she said with a smile: “Oh, I guess I’d better join you — you seem to be having fun.”
“Please do,” I mumbled senselessly.
> But she stepped back and closed the door. Klári got up, dressed hurriedly, and left.
After some time I ventured forth from the bedroom and found my dear lover listening to a record, reading and smoking one of her occasional cigarettes. As she was sitting in the small armchair, I bent down to her, but she cut me off before I could say anything.
“Don’t look so tragic. It’s my fault — I came back sooner than you expected.”
“I love you.”
“Now you look confused. You still don’t believe that you can love many people at the same time, do you?”
To prove she wasn’t angry with me, she kissed my nose and then got up to unpack the groceries. She had brought home all kinds of cold meats and fresh vegetables and fruit: paprika sausage, roast beef, green onions, cucumbers, fat red tomatoes, peaches and grapes, and we ate everything, praising the food from time to time. We both seemed to have an extraordinary appetite.
From that day, our relationship changed almost imperceptibly. Maya never blamed me or seemed to care for me less — in fact, our lovemaking became more intense — but she began to have less time for me. There were more and more concerts, plays and parties which she thought she shouldn’t miss. Of all people, she often went out with Klári. They had made up, though Klári was never seen in the house again while I was there.
One evening about two months later, when Maya expected me, I found a strange man in the living room having coffee with her. I was introduced as a young poet who lived in the house and borrowed books, and he was introduced to me as an old friend. Reverting to my original role, I asked for two books and left.
In Praise of Older Women Page 6