Passion Play

by Jerzy Kosiński

  “Would you like to celebrate our meeting with a bang or a swim, baby?” he asked, his head bobbing at her feet.

  “I’m too cold for either one,” Vanessa came back. Her voice was low but not hesitant.

  “You don’t look cold to me, beautiful,” he announced exuberantly.

  “But you do to me,” Vanessa replied promptly, her smile steady. She was growing bolder. “Cold or not, though, you’re still the longest I’ve ever seen!”

  The other men in the pool, hearing the byplay, started to swim closer, their laughter rippling with the waves they made.

  “The longest? No kidding?” The man was pleased, then puzzled.

  “I said the longest.” Vanessa was bantering with him now, flicking water in his face with her feet. “If you don’t believe me, ask my father.” She pointed to Fabian.

  “Your father?” The man jerked back with astonishment, shaking the water out of his eyes. “You brought your dad here?”

  “What makes you think my dad didn’t bring me here?” Vanessa asked. The men and women in the pool turned to see how Fabian would take this.

  “If my pet says it’s the longest,” Fabian drawled from his bench, “it must be the longest. She’s done enough petting in school to know what’s long.”

  The two women, not wanting to be left out, had drifted over from the shallow end.

  “Haven’t seen anything yet, honey,” one woman sighed loudly, between giggles. “Now, you leave the young lady alone,” she said to her man, her mock scolding coated with affection; then she turned to look up at Vanessa.

  “Honey, by now all my man can do is remember what’s long, not how to make it last long,” she went on, setting off a fresh tide of laughter. Her man began to swim closer, his face pretending outrage. She moved out of his reach with a vigorous splash.

  The game had run its course; the black men and women began to climb out of the pool. Picking up their towels, they waved to Fabian and Vanessa and piled out the door.

  The room was silent again; the surface of the pool subsiding, the water translucent then opaque with the dappled play of light. Vanessa got up and went over to the bench where Fabian reclined, one hand propping his head. She perched on its edge; she seemed to be waiting for him to speak. She shivered briefly, not looking at him.

  “Well, you’ve had your pool,” he said. He reached beside him for another towel and tenderly cloaked her shoulders with it. She slid against him, pressing. He asked, in playful imitation of the black man, “Is there anything else I can do for you, beautiful?”

  “Yes, there is—Father,” she said quietly.

  “Then tell me, what is it, my child?” He remained playful.

  “I’m still a virgin, Fabian,” she whispered. She slipped from his grasp, rising. He stood up to bring her closer; the towel slid from her neck and shoulders, and she trembled, his arm about her waist. She turned finally to look at him, her face lifted to brush his mouth, her lips cold and dry. “I don’t want to be anymore.”

  He wondered if she were telling him this so that he would go with her to one of the rooms they had passed, thick with couples in the act of lovemaking. He imagined her in the clasp of another man, a nameless body.

  Fabian released Vanessa and stepped back. Instinctively, she reached out and touched his cheek.

  “I don’t want it, Fabian,” she said.

  “What do you want?” he asked, his voice neutral.

  “You,” she whispered, her eyes serene, her arms folding across her breasts. She retreated to the bench and lay down on it.

  For a moment, he hovered above her, then eased himself to the ground before her, guarded, afraid to touch her. He wondered if for her, as for him, memory had begun to act as a courier, bearing images of their inviolate exchanges in his VanHome.

  “I’m often attracted to young women,” Fabian said warily. “I’m drawn to those who’ll give me a second look, and also to those who won’t. There are girls I want to stir me up, and others I want to stir up. But always, before, when I wanted a woman, the faster she passed through my life, the more exciting I found her. But you—you were never one of them. I’ve always been afraid of losing you. I’m afraid now.”

  He stopped, reluctant to name what he felt. Now, when she was willing to resume what he had initiated so long ago, to receive the finality of his mark, to embrace the long arc of his design for her, he saw himself caught in that design.

  “The first time I saw you,” he went on, “beyond anything else I felt that whatever might happen between us, I could never have you, that the day might come when you would outgrow your memory of me, and I would become, for you, a pathetic figure from your riding days.”

  She gave no sign of registering his intensity. Her eyes remained serene; her arms still enclosed her body.

  “I thought of you when I was alone and when I was with others,” he continued, “and the thought always brought with it the same regret—that, as your father, I would have been at least the one who shaped your past, but as a lover, nothing I could ever do, no force of my will breaking in on your life, could ever change it.” In his vehemence, he had drawn closer to her, his shoulder brushing her thigh. “I’ve loved you all along, Vanessa.”

  Vanessa did not respond; he laid his head in her lap. She reached up to his face and touched his mouth with her hands. A door slammed, a distant sound. Vanessa removed her hands, bringing one of his to the scar on her lip.

  “Then love me now,” she said simply.

  They rose. Fabian led Vanessa, who was carrying her clothes, toward the sauna. Opening the door before her, he switched on the light. A smell of shavings and dry bark spilled over them; the benches, bleached and plain, offered spare comfort.

  Vanessa went toward the benches, her towel abandoned, and deliberately put her clothes on the top bench. Then she sat on the one beneath waiting for him.

  He began to undress, placing each item of his clothing beside the small mound Vanessa had made on the top bench. To find the freedom that had been his with her before, he willed himself to remember images of afternoons in his VanHome, of Vanessa undressing before him, carefully placing her clothes within reach in case they might be interrupted and she would have to dress quickly. He realized that then, in the conspiracy of his VanHome, it had been he who took her, a mere girl, for his lover, putting at stake the only security he knew, containing his need for her, restraining the impulse to break the seal that bound her to herself. Now it was she who was taking him for her lover, bidding him to come, inviting him to break that seal.

  Naked, his body was not yet responsive. He sat down next to her, his shoulder lingering at her back, the scent of her hair mingling with the pungent smell of wood, his mouth on her neck, his lips grazing the soft mound behind her ear, soft as it had been when he had first kissed it. His hands slid over her breasts, and the stir that rose in her quickened him, but his knees did not urge her to part her legs. A disquiet that he might soon cause her pain grew in him. He wondered whether she was also apprehensive.

  He slipped a hand between her thighs, skimming her flesh, brushing its folds; his fingers, deeper still, found her moist. Slowly, unresisted, his hand invaded; a force within her, he drew her to his side, her eyes on him, her arms swaddling him. Memory and thought drowned in a touch he could no longer flee, as if the knowledge of who he was lay within her, and only by claiming her could he discover it.

  He bent her gently to the wooden plank, her head back, her legs spread, one angled to rest a foot on the floor, one snaring his hip as he lowered himself, his hand braced to ease his weight on her, the other hand guiding the crest of his flesh along her crease, still reluctant to sink into flesh that had abandoned resistance, the tautness in his groin rising. She arched both legs girdling his hips, and impaled herself on him, and he yielded, his flesh sinking into her, wedging her flesh until it found its obstacle, a limit of tension which seemed at one with his own urgency. He sensed the straining of her neck; her eyes, hooded, defied his
scrutiny. He bore down, her nails knifing his skin, until he pierced her, breaking through to the spasm of her brief, harsh cry, the signal that he was free now to enter her deeper, to gather himself in her, swift in his motion, to reach her where she had never been reached before. Her face was distorted in a grimace, at once that of a young girl on the brink of tears and that of a woman in labor. Her hand commanding his hips, she began to thrust at Fabian, her body springing back as the tip of his flesh met her womb.

  Above the sound of their breathing, Fabian heard the rasping of her teeth, a wailing from her closed mouth, its lower lip tightly bound against the other, as if to cover the scar. His hands were under her buttocks, lifting her, his flesh breaching her still further, each stroke a summons to her womb. Pushing her shoulders sideways, she curved her belly to him, her hands above her head, fingers clawing the wood as if to scrawl on it, her body sundered, waiting for him to keel into her, offering herself to a deeper quest.

  He felt a warm trickle on his thigh, and he knew it to be her blood. Yet he did not lift his eyes from her face. Fusion with a body that had become his, a port of incessant entry and departure, left him uncertain whether with each step he was binding her closer to himself or setting her adrift, to shores and reaches of her own.

  Moving within her, he recalled the Vanessa he had first known: a slender girl on a horse next to him, his eyes trapped by her thighs, the shape of her breasts, the flex of a knee, the space that, with every movement of the horse, opened between her and the saddle. He looked at her now, his vision clouded by the thought of her, of time yet to come, the inert burden of life without her, a space brackish with the tedium of himself as a mere consequence of that life and no longer the sire of it. In the blood that dabbled his thighs, he knew he had drawn forth proof that something uniquely hers marked him indelibly, pronounced him as the first lover to touch her womb.

  Vanessa seemed remote, her face contorted, the rasp of her teeth more audible, her hands clenched. As if by instinct, whether to be free of her or of himself, he could not tell, he lifted his body in a vague threat of partition and his hand moved down, fingers prodding, searching for her flesh, capturing it. She moaned at his touch, and, withdrawing his hand, he pushed back into her. Her womb contracted, her hips and belly falling back. Erupting, her body pounded against the wood, her face shielded by her arms, her mouth agape, torn apart by the moan, the scar of her lip protruding, reluctant to remain hidden any longer, the stiffened nipples of her breasts strong with desire on the palms of his hands, her legs, bloody, unlocking from around his hips.

  He framed her head with his arms, his thighs cleaving hers, his chest over her, the shuddering calves of her legs now over his shoulders, her feet above his head. He watched the tide of blood his every thrust spilled. In a sudden urge to share it with her, he withdrew his flesh, a column of blood, and stroked her face with it, each stroke leaving a track of red; he repeated this, bearing into her and pulling out again, returning to her prodigal with blood, brazing her forehead, marking her cheeks, brimming her mouth, obliterating her scar. Then, his face to hers, he licked the blood from her forehead, her cheeks and neck, his tongue gathering it to her mouth. Caressing her lips, cajoling, he kissed her, kisses she returned, tasting the gift of blood he brought to her from her own depth. As she plunged beneath him, her eyes staring, her mouth trapping a scream, he moved into her again, a reeling of ebb and flow pulling her apart, buckling her in quivers of desire.

  The landscape of her, riven, swells and fissures overwhelmed him. His thirst unappeasable, he bent his mouth to her mound, his tongue where his flesh had been, a pilot in the wake of her blood, tasting her flow, receiving it, tasting her again, his tongue fluttering, the last pulse of his energy spending itself to absorb her every drop, greedy for all that had once been hers.

  Gathering her in or letting her out, idle or tense, sliding into her or taking root, he held her to him until she was beyond strength, energy, feeling, her mind open no more to the sensations her body insisted on bringing to flood.

  From that peak, she toppled. To open her again, to make her conscious of her freedom to withdraw, to stay inviolate, he knelt over her, poised in the space that divided them, his hands thrust back, his body erect, the cone of his flesh close to her face, ready to brush her cheeks or lips, her chin, her neck. She gathered him in, avid to make fast her hold on him, to strip him of the freedom that was his, to force him to surrender to his own flesh and, by that act, reveal that when he was with her, like her, he was powerless against sensation. With his hands still thrust back, he started slowly pushing into her, moving, swaying, then plunging, filling her, swelling. Her head tilted back, she fought for air, but in her freedom chose to retain him, drowning as she sought to swallow, her eyes open, her feet drumming against the bench. Her arms, suppliant in defense, then arrested by will, stopped in midair, reluctant to initiate an assault or to surrender to him. As her eyes closed and her arms dropped back, he receded, leaving her mouth open to the flush of air, but with her first deep breath, she once again reached toward him in silence, empty now of all but their shared need. The drumming of her feet subsided, a dwindling echo in the small wood hutch.

  Fabian looked down at her face. She had waited for him to return; now she would wait for him no more. She was beyond waiting, beyond the deed she had once imagined. She was finally free of him, free of herself.

  In the late autumn, Fabian found himself on the road again, moving from stable to stable and giving lectures, always in search of work. On his way to Massachusetts, he detoured to New York, his destination the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden, a venerable annual event drawing horses and riders from all over the world.

  Even though the show had been in progress for almost a week, Fabian was curious to see the remaining events. And there was another reason; during their recent encounter, Vanessa had told him that Captain Ahab, her stallion, a present from her father, had qualified at the Garden for the Stanhope Cup international open, puissance class, a jumping event in which the score rested on the horse’s performance, power and endurance in clearing a number of large obstacles. The prize—a silver cup and a substantial purse—had been established by Vanessa’s grandfather, Commodore Ernest Tenet Stanhope, and was the grandest the show could confer on a horse.

  When Fabian had talked to Vanessa last, she had been almost certain that she and her parents would not be in New York for the show, and she had been pleased to learn that Fabian would be there to see her horse perform.

  The Stanhope Cup was one of the major events of the show’s closing days, and as Fabian walked into the Garden, he caught the stir of anticipation, its excitement overcoming his distrust of competition.

  Men in black tie or tails and top hat, their ladies nests of jewels and heavy, trailing furs, crowded onto escalators and moved along the round stairwells and huge corridors that spiraled the auditorium. The flame of scarlet hunt coats blazed wherever Fabian looked.

  The vaulting auditorium was filled and seething with activity. Attendants put the last touches to the ring and the course; judges checked the distance between obstacles; television crews set up their cameras and lights; photographers leaned over the barrier around the show ring, trying out the most favorable angles to catch jumps.

  Dizzied by all that splendor and feverish preparation, Fabian left the auditorium and walked behind the main arena, to the paddock, an area set aside for practice riding, for stabling the horses and housing the equipment, tack and supplies. There, at the Stanhope tent and stalls, he hoped to catch a glimpse of Captain Ahab, familiar to him from several local competitions in Totemfield. Because the area was not open to the general public and required a pass for admittance, Fabian had taken along the jacket of his book Prone to Fall and presented it to the guard as his credentials. Impressed with Fabian’s photograph on the back cover, and his equestrian accomplishments listed on its flap, the guard let him in without a pass.

  In the paddock, a more orderly life reigned.
Fabian passed the rank of tents and stalls housing major national and foreign equestrian teams, their horses bearing insignia of the most renowned stables. He saw breeders and owners with their families, fleets of trainers and coaches, riders practicing and dressing for one event while their fellow competitors recovered from another, grooms currying and saddling and unbridling the mounts.

  At the far end of the passage, he found the Stanhope Stables tent and stalls. The baroque family coat of arms stood out boldly against the deep blue stain of the stalls, the red fabric of the tent, the yellow wool of the horse blankets and hoods.

  Fabian came upon the head groom, a man who remembered him from a time when Fabian had taught his young son at the Double Bridle Stables in Totemfield. The man, crippled in his youth by a fall from a horse, hobbled among the horses and tack with the aid of two canes.

  The head groom told Fabian that Captain Ahab was already in the practice ring adjacent to the entry to the main arena, being warmed up there by Stuart Hayward, a young man from a prominent Southern family who had frequently ridden the stallion for the Stanhopes, working his way up through novice, junior and open events until he had qualified for major competitions. Riding Captain Ahab to victory in the puissance class at the Garden would be the culmination of all his efforts.

  Inside the warm-up ring—unusually small in proportion to the number and height of the obstacles erected around it—Fabian saw that, in preparation for the main event that was to start in half an hour, several riders had already begun to pace their mounts at an even rhythm over the practice jumps. Next to the ring, he noticed the spectacular silhouette of Captain Ahab, an American Thoroughbred of impeccable lineage and breeding. At his side, the rider was in the process of adjusting the horse’s tack.

  Fabian walked briskly over to Hayward. The young man was slightly taller than Fabian, with strong thrusting legs, blond hair falling with unruly charm over his forehead. Fabian could see him on a college football team or behind a tennis net.