Raw Silk (9781480463318)

by Burroway, Janet

  Then he got up and paid the bill.

  We walked back to the hotel in unspeakable unspeaking tension, not through the park but along the sidewalk. I wanted to suggest the park. In the park, I felt, it would have to break, but this seemed to me so obvious that I could not suggest it; it would have been vulgar, I believe. We crossed the lobby and took the lift and he walked me to my door. I couldn’t believe what was happening and I didn’t know what to do.

  “I’d offer you a nightcap,” I said, clodhopper with confusion, “but I haven’t got anything but ice water.”

  “No, no. No, that’s okay.”

  He delivered a few slight popping blows to the doorframe with his fist, put his hands in his pockets and nodded a distant prelude to good-bye.

  “You are very vulnerable right now …” His pitch lifted on the “now” so that the statement hung there half a question, but I didn’t know what the question was. Was he asking permission to take advantage of me? Or asking me to understand why he would not? Or making an excuse for not? Or none of these? I couldn’t be asked to believe that this particular man was making protestations of chivalry, could I? And the best thing, under the circumstances, that I could conclude, was that he was sorry for me and apologizing for the pity.

  “I’ll be all right,” I said, and it came out sounding sullen.

  “Send me a sketch, a, one of your designs, would you?” he asked, and I said I would, but furious and despairing because I did not know where he lived. And he must know that, mustn’t he? The Very Reverend Warren Montgolfier, Southern Cal. Is that an address?

  “Good-night,” I said, and turned in. He did not touch me; we couldn’t touch.

  25

  I STOOD STUNNED IN the slatted moonlight, looking at the venetian blinds. This truck is driven by a blind man. I reached around to undo the obi. I dumped it with the kimono into the suitcase I had taken to Takayama, and to which I had returned all the rest of my Japanese bric-a-brac. I took off my underwear and shoes and put on the hotel’s kimono, and lay down stunned staring at the eggshell ceiling.

  I cried, like no crying I had done in living memory, a stifled howling rageful sort of crying, sort of baying. I fantasized that I would go and pound on Montgolfier’s door. I fantasized that he would come back and pound on mine. I pounded on the mattress and found myself very comic indeed, and was not in the least relieved by it. Relief, I sup-fucking-pose, is indicated. I’ve got pretty used to masturbation over the years and don’t mind much anymore. It’s like the rest of my experience, the punishment is in the guilt. And the guilt is pretty well gone by now, except for a sorry sense that once you’re into this nobody else can do so well. You know what effect you’re having, after all, which makes for skill. I remember a trick we used to pull in the playground, you put your index finger up against somebody else’s, and feel along both fingers. It’s a strange sensation, since you feel one side of the exchange both doing and receiving, and the other is half felt and numb. We used it call it Dead Man’s Finger. After you’ve made enough of a habit of what in those days we referred to as self-abuse, then I guess that being with anybody else is Dead Man’s Fucking. I worked myself so angry that I hurt, until I came. Came, as in a journey and arrival, shit on that. I cried and pounded as before, oh, very funny lady. Smoked a cigarette and had a glass of water, washed my face. Lay down again and cried more quietly, as I got less numb, as the anger went and the loss welled up, and I let myself realize what loss it was.

  He didn’t pound on the door. He barely tapped. So I guess I didn’t hear it. And if I had I wouldn’t have believed that such big hands could have made such a timid noise. And then I thought I heard it. And then I did.

  “Just a minute!” I started up and tucked the kimono tighter across me and rebelted it. I looked in the mirror frantically but it was too dark, I couldn’t see. He wasn’t going to come calling now, was he? Not after I’d screwed myself.

  “Just a minute!” I cast about frantically for something, what I don’t know. There wasn’t anything for it but to go and unlock the door.

  “Is it you, Montgolfier?”

  “YES!” What was the point of his tapping so low if he was going to shout to wake the dead?

  “Just a minute, I’ll unlock it.” I unlocked it. He stood there in a blue-flowered hotel kimono just like mine.

  “Shit goddam, Virginia,” he shouted. “What do you want?”

  “Come in!”

  “Goddam you.” He slammed me against the wall and slammed the door and found my mouth, but broke again to mutter, “What do you want of me?”

  “What kind of dumb-ass question is that? I want you. What do you mean? Who are you, Sir Goddam Galahad? You look ridiculous.”

  He took off the kimono. He took mine off. He laughed me backward, down onto the bed, still muttering and cussing, and me laughing back until all at once my flesh caught breath. My body caught for breath, and I understood that I was not going to be punished, I’m never punished for the standard sins. Whatever I take I get away with, that’s what I’d been telling him. I’d abused myself, in the language to which I was born and bred, but that was for starters, abuse was hors d’oeuvres, and anything else I’d known till now was meat.

  “Jesus goddam,” said the Very Reverend Warren Montgolfier against my neck, and where his breath hit, my flesh caught for breath, my sweet entire anatomy began to flow from there. Such joy has no locale. He entered me. I like the phrase. It’s also true I entered him. He said my name against my neck; I became a sacred object, and began to fly and flow.

  The truth is that I can’t do you much more of this. Finally, there are no metaphors. A mouth is not words, the sounding surface of the flesh is not words, blood doesn’t sing in words. I read somewhere—in the higgledy-piggledy random millions of words I have read, and of which a few seem luminous without seeming to have taught me how to live—I read somewhere, “I take it as my principle that words do not mean everything.”

  And this principle attracted me, it stirred me deep somewhere, though at the time it stirred me mainly because what I do is paint. And I do paint. I will paint. There is that, though my mouth and flesh and blood don’t sing again.

  Afterward, journey and arrival, he lay in a splayed sprawl of open trust, and told me how it would be that I would come to California. We would take the morning train together, change my ticket at Haneda Airport, fly together to Los Angeles, and then … see, from there.

  “There’s no omnipotent injunction that you’ve got to wait till day after tomorrow.”

  “No, and anyway, I spent half my leftover money on that kimono. If I stayed another night, it’d have to be in some dump, so that works fine. Poetically, I think.”

  “Of course, you’ll have to be discreet in California.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, they’re used to all sorts of gonzos. All the same, you won’t find many people living there in order to save their children from a British education.”

  I giggled and nestled. “I see what you mean.”

  “The thing is, you understand … I don’t want to convince you to do this, it has to be what you want yourself. I couldn’t handle it, if you finally left Oliver because of me. It was dangerous to come in here, because I didn’t want to seem to make …”

  “Promises.”

  “Commitments.”

  “Vows.”

  “I’m a drifter by nature, and after all, we’ve known each other for a total of …

  “Twenty-nine hours, I make it, Montgolfier. And I am as aware of it as you are.”

  “Can’t you call me Warren?”

  “No. It sounds like rabbits. It sounds like the name your family would’ve given you, since they couldn’t call you Hutch or Burrow. I think I might be able to call you Putai.”

  “I think I might like that. I would.”

  “Putai.”

  Somewhere in the next few or several minutes the telephone rang. I guess the night clerk wasn’t passed my message. Or maybe
he didn’t think fast enough, as I didn’t when I picked it up.

  It’s peculiar about transcontinental calls, how the line is always clearer than it is from down the block. I’d had that sense when I used to call my dad from England, and I had it now from Japan, like Oliver was in the room next door. And that’s in spite of the fact that his voice was distorted and thick and choked. I sat nude on the floor and listened to him. I couldn’t sit on the bed, because Montgolfier was sprawled all over that side of it, nude, with a hand at his crotch and honey-colored hair all down his thighs.

  “Virginia, Virginia, my God, I’ve been going mad. Where have you been? I’ve been frantic, I thought you were dead, I’d about decided you were dead. I called the embassy, and they were going to get up a search for you. You don’t know what it’s been since Tyler called ten days ago. I’ve lost twenty pounds, I haven’t been to East Anglian, I couldn’t work. I couldn’t do anything. I’ve been sitting on the floor, staring at the floor. Thank God you’re safe. Where were you, and why didn’t you let someone know?”

  “I went to Takayama, in the mountains,” I said. “To think things through.”

  “Oh, my God, I’ve been going mad. Think what through? Virginia? My love? Are you slipping away from me?”

  Slipping away! Slipping away. I held onto the phone and looked at Warren “Putai” Montgolfier’s golden knees, and the way the hair grew down his thighs. There’s no difference of race, religion, class or politics that can’t be overcome in a love affair, as long as you like the way his hair grows down his thighs.

  “Why didn’t you ask me that two years ago, Oliver? Or five years ago?”

  “Please, please,” he pleaded. It was real pleading. The transcontinental cable can convey that much. “You don’t know what it’s been like.”

  “What makes you think I don’t?”

  “Come home. Please. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking of going on to California, and meeting Jill there.”

  “Come home. Come home, oh, love, my God, come home, I’m crazy here. I’ve been staring at things not seeing them, I knew you were gone. I can’t live without you. Without Jill. Can’t work. I hate my life, I’ve nowhere to go at East Anglian. I’ve nothing to live for but you and Jill. I can’t live if you don’t come home. I’ve been shaking and couldn’t eat, I’ve lost twenty pounds in the last ten days. Come home and we’ll start again, I’ll do anything, I’ll change …”

  And he broke down into hiccupy sobbing, which went on and on. He sobbed about twenty guineas’ worth, I guess. He’s not stingy, Oliver.

  I reached up for help to Putai, who took my hand and held it against his cock while he fluttered and grew. So I sat with my hand on his bird, and Oliver’s sobbing in my ear, a fair modern version of the medieval rack, I think, and was pulled at the joints until I started crying too, which left me arbitrarily identified with Oliver.

  “You can’t take Jill away from me. You can’t. Can you take my baby?”

  “Oliver, I don’t know.”

  “Anything you ask, whatever you ask, do you know what you want of me?”

  The cock stirred under my hand, my anger stirred. Yes. Yes, I know. I want that you will not be in my presence without that my presence is in your consciousness. I want that you not leave the room for a drink, a book, a crap, a light, without that you acknowledge—a kiss, a touch, a word, a declaration—that you are going from my presence. My presence will be known and seen to be known. I am and am. You will acknowledge me, therefore I am in your acknowledgement. You will not be in my presence but that you say I AM.

  “I’ve always given in to you, Oliver,” I said. “I’m a very giving person.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I have to think. Go away now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Come home, come home, my love.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Please come home tomorrow.”

  I hung up and crawled back in bed, and Putai made love to me again, very slowly and sweetly, and I cried the whole way through. When he lay breathing heavily against my hair, but not heavy on me, not heavy for so big a man, he said, “You can come to California, though.”

  “I can try.”

  “No, you can do it or not do it. Trying is not a verb and not an action. It’s a pseudo-verb we use to excuse ourselves for having failed.”

  “I think that’s hard.”

  “You know I’m not hard on you. I only want you to do what you want to do. I don’t want you to come because I ask you to, and I goddam sure don’t want you to go back to England because he says. He’ll live, you know. He isn’t your responsibility.”

  “Isn’t he? If you could prove that. He’s not whole to me anymore. He’s a cartoon, that telephone call was a cartoon. But it wasn’t always that way. He used to be whole to me, he even ran, like you, and joked, like you, and loved his work, and he used to listen. I used to think him the best listener in the world. Maybe not of me. But a listener. I was in on the process of his turning into a cartoon for me, don’t you see. I was there all along. I was in on it. It seems a peculiar thing to walk out on, a cartoon.”

  I continued to cry, and he continued to tell me to do what I wanted to do, until about five o’clock in the morning, yesterday morning, when he fell asleep.

  My watch said noon. The room was stuffy and Montgolfier was gone. Entirely gone; not a note, not a hair left behind to put in a locket, not so much as a recognizable indentation on the pillow. It seemed very hard of him. It seemed very hard, for him, to go so entirely. I dragged myself into the black dress and the scarf for a belt, and dragged downstairs. The café was open for lunch, so I ordered the most breakfasty lunch I could see, an egg salad sandwich, which I picked at with a fork to pretend that it was breakfast. I didn’t eat it, though. I had a hangover, of all things. I drank a lot of coffee and figured I’d better check the trains. I went to the desk to do so, paid my bill, and asked if there were any messages. I didn’t suppose he’d leave one at the desk where I wouldn’t get it till I went out, but it did no harm to check.

  “Yes, madam, there is one.”

  The clerk handed me one of the pink while-you-were-outs. “Please call back” was wittily checked, and the message read: “I won’t tell you what to do. But I will insist that it’s an option. You could come with me. You could come with me. You could come with me. Putai.”

  I carried it up to my room and set it on the bureau top. I read it over about thirty times, which meant I got the message ninety. I got it finally. I could, couldn’t I? I could. I could if I hadn’t missed the train. I started making phone calls with the efficiency of panic. I found out there was a flight from Haneda to L.A. at two o’clock, but he wouldn’t be on that one because the ten o’clock train he took got in to Tokyo at 2:02. There was also a 5:43, Japal flight 287. He’d’ve taken the ten o’clock train for that, but the afternoon bullet express got to Tokyo at 5:15. You could get a demi-express from here at 1:27, which would pick up the express at Nagoya, but there was no point in that, because you could wait for the express itself at 2:14. I decided to catch the 1:27 all the same, if I could. It would be better to be in motion even if there was no point. Motion was the point. I would have to go now to catch it, and even so I might be too late, but I would “try.” I had no time to pack, but I zipped the little suitcase that already had my kimono and the Takayama store of junk, and took that; and when, at Kyoto station, I found I’d missed the demi-express, well, then, that was the point. That I’d left everything behind me that I’d brought. All I’d carry along with me was my treasure trove of Japan.

  I paced back and forth on the platform from 1:30 to 2:14, striding and energetic as long as I was pacing east, but dogged and tired pacing back again, away from Tokyo. I did the same thing on the train, as if two hundred miles an hour wasn’t fast enough, and then at Nagoya sat in the front car, that much nearer my destination. I flipped the footrest over and over; I didn’t try to read. Then I rea
lized that the front car wasn’t the cleverest place to sit; if I got off there I’d have to walk back to the middle of the station. So I lugged my souvenirs back again to the center of the train. I passed a couple of phone booths and remembered calling Tyler Peer when I was headed the other way. I thought it would be kind to call him now. But I wasn’t feeling kind. I’ve never been able to muster kindness up for Tyler Peer. I bought a sake and some beer. I sat looking out the window, moving faster than the train, still damp with last night’s love, or anticipation of the next. When we hit the outskirts of Tokyo I stood up and waited by the door, though there was twenty minutes or so to stand there, the outskirts of Tokyo beginning at the heart of Yokohama, bag in hand. It made me the first one out anyway. I dashed for the monorail.

  But I missed the first turning, so I was closer to the taxi rank than the train, and I wasn’t sure, anyway, which was faster, and there was no queue, and there was a cab. So I tossed in my bag and took it.

  “Haneda, Haneda, Haneda” was all the Japanese I had that day. But when my driver wandered along at the pace of his own mood, I dug out my phrasebook, and stuttered out that I had a plane to catch at 5:43. He looked at his watch, and shook his head, and shrugged, but he speeded up.

  We hit the suburbs, and the racecourse with its miles of stables and trainers’ flats, a setup like old peasant quarters, horses below and men above, but in cheap corrugated tin, with front yards full of hay. When we got to the racecourse entrance we had to stop for a traffic light, and as if out of nowhere a cop showed up, and held us against our green light while a herd of thoroughbreds crossed the road. They pawed and snorted, prancing, handsome, led by besatined jockeys. I hid my face in my hands. I checked my watch. Five-thirty-two. The monorail passed over us, roaring for the airport, and one or two of the horses shied. We were held for three green lights and three red, and then we took a green. My driver shook his head to himself. I hated his yellow guts.