Deep in the grotto candles flickered before an altar supporting a golden bowl behind protective glass. I knelt at the altar. The moan of the organ beneath me stopped. The Latin chant of the priest floated up. I felt your eyes on me, peeling the clothes off my back. I turned. You were not there. I could not see you but I heard your heartbeat. I looked to the Virgin for guidance. Her sad crease of a smile beckoned. Within the golden bowl was a crystal vial, filled with her milk, eternally fresh from a breast never suckled by an infant God. The cruelest hoax.
Was your telephone call to me a hoax, a summons into which I had misread desire? I was dressed in mourning but I had all the expectations of a bride. Foolish woman. Foolish virgin that never was. I was determined you would not have me with your silence. I hurried down the spiral staircase. The mass was over. I joined the parishioners headed toward the door, searching their pious faces. Their eyes avoided mine, guarding their own sorrows. At the door I dipped my fingers into the basin of holy water before departing God’s house. Another hand quickly covered mine, plunging my hand underwater, pinning it to the bottom of the basin. I struggled to turn around but a powerful body blocked me from behind. I felt the breath of words imprinting the back of my neck: “Go home.”
I rushed along the wet streets toward my apartment. I heard no footsteps behind me. I did not turn to see if you were following. When I crossed the bridge over the river a faint shadow, my own, flickered on the water’s surface. I slowed down and drew myself erect, walking coolly the rest of the way to my apartment. I climbed the steps and opened the door. No one was there. I pulled the black dress over my head and threw it into the corner. I lay down on the bed, listening for your footsteps.
I know you are standing at the bottom of my staircase. Rain splashes from your slicker onto the steps as you climb them. Your footsteps are at the top of the stairs, the doorknob turns in your hand as you enter. You take off your slicker and it crumples into a dark pool around you. You are a stranger, which is why I am able to give myself so completely. If I knew you only halfway there would not be this moment, for there would have been reasons and excuses to turn back. After all, you were a man falling from a marriage and I was ascending to womanhood. There was nothing symbolic here, only you sliding a pearl-handled straight razor from your pocket and flicking out its shiny blade.
You stripped your shirt off, turning your back to me as you bent over the wash basin. You lathered your face with soap and water and began shaving. In the reflection of the mirror above the basin your eyes glided over me lying on the bed. Your glance penetrated me. All things were mathematical shapes to you, nothing more than abstract furniture, furniture taken and stacked up on one side of your mind. Then the other side of your mind smashed the furniture, redistributing its pieces, denying memory and mathematical equations, inventing a new disorder free of gravity. You didn’t see me at all. You were making a painting of me in the circumstance. The strokes of your razor cleared away the lather, exposing a newborn face. The blade against your bearded stubble sounded like a paintbrush against canvas. I did not move, took no breath, not a bone in my rib cage shifted. I wanted you to hear my words. I wanted you to hear them shouted into violent silence: A broken heart is like a cut flower, the longer you keep it in memory’s water, the longer it will suffer. But no words escaped my lips. There was only the cut through silence, the downward stroke of a razor on flesh.
You finished shaving and wiped the razor blade clean against your pants. You set the razor on the sink, its blade shining against white porcelain. You came to me. You unhooked the leather suspenders strapped over your bare shoulders and your pants fell to the floor. I saw how urgent you were. Swiftly, with the suspenders, you tied me by the wrists and ankles to the bedposts. Your hand reached between my thighs, ripping away the thin material covering me there, exposing me to your fingers, which knotted into the curls of my hair as you shouted: “I am going to shave it!”
Your words struck me as unspeakably funny. As if I wanted to be your little girl! I could not control my laughter, it burst from me. I didn’t care about your Spanish pride, I didn’t care about the heat of your urgency. I just wanted you to understand that I knew every move you were going to make before you made it. Now we could get on with the real game. You looked at me quizzically. The furniture so carefully rearranged in your mind scattered again. You were caught in my laughter. The belittled peasant inside you could rise up and strike me—or the proud Iberian gentleman could drag his deflated ego out the door. Instead, your chest burst with laughter, a gift from the angels showering upon me, music in my ears. Your hands slid over my skin, my nipples quickened. How beautiful you were when you laughed. My thighs opened, my sea glistened in the sun of your smiling gaze. I stared into the sun, a bird passed, my heart in its beak. Your laughing lips covered mine, your kiss exploding in my mouth. I felt the skin of your shaved face on my cheek. “My darling,” I said. “The only way to keep me tied to you is to set me free.”
You pushed up suddenly from the bed and went to the sink, grabbing the straight razor. The blade flashed in your hand as you came back and towered over me. You slashed at the leather straps binding me to the bedposts. Your laughter roared in the room. I was released. I fell to my knees and pressed my face close to you with a moan. Your skin had the faint musty scent of the holy water in the cathedral basin, a heady swampy mix stirred by many fingers. What felt like splashes of rain from above were your tears falling into my hair.
We both knew that love is where one fears to go most, where no articulation of self exists nor architecture looms to define the fleshy halls wandered, all gives way beneath a finger’s imprint, collapsing from the heart’s faintest murmur, reappearing at the merest breath. It is the purest real estate, the perspiration across Cupid’s lip, the butter melting on an angel’s tongue, the soul’s atmosphere.
My famous man, Francisco Zermano, between laughter and tears there is only life. The muse gave you her gift but you did not obey her rules.
YOUR LOUISE
Villa Trône-sur-Mer
Côte d’Azur
Louise, I am under a deadline to leave here so I am busy packing everything. Who knows if this place will still be standing after all this is over. I have sent my man Roderigo to Ville Rouge to find you. He is there every day at the café in front of the Roman fountain. He has instructions not to leave until he has contacted you.
The situation in Paris grows worse by the day. Our home there will be destroyed if I don’t return. You remain the center of my thoughts. I won’t rest until I know you are secure. How much money do you have? How long can you last? I left so much of my art with you. What good is the art to me without you? It was made for you. Sell it all, take the money while there is still some small market left. Tell me you have done that so I know you are safe, so that I know you aren’t being compromised.
Can it be that only one month has passed since last I saw your face, kissed your lips, held your body? The longest month of my life. I did not know there were so many hours in a day, hundreds, so many minutes in an hour, thousands, each second stretching to eternity. I know you did not want to leave me, you made that clear in Nice, but you must trust me. In the remoteness of Provence you are probably not aware of what is happening each day, how completely the world is coming undone. Are you still in Provence? How can I know anything for certain?
All I can do is feast on memory. My mind goes back to the summer, we are traveling away from the humidity of the seacoast, the vineyards open before us, orchards shimmer in the heat. The road is bumpy with stones laid down centuries before by the Romans in their chariot-driven conquest. We drive deep into a landscape lush with suspicion, where the inhabitants monitor the passage of each trespasser into their paradise. Our passion was open; we did not hide it. If I could have seen what was coming I would have stopped it. If I had seen him in time I would have strangled him with my bare hands. I saw only you, sun-radiant. I was blinded. I couldn’t see him until it was too late, but I recognize
d him. You always receive the best in a man, but man is a deceiver with his face of generosity, his mask of caring, he craves only what is beneath your dress, between your thighs while you are young and supple, after he has what he wants his sword shrivels to a worm, he crawls from the craven hole he has bored into the perfect apple, only the magpies are left screeching in the sky overhead, waiting their turn to descend and peck at the ruined fruit.
Right now I hate men. I hate myself. I hate this confusion raging around me. The magpies of war are descending. I am alone without you, each day a funeral.
FRANCISCO
Village of Reigne
Oh Francisco how you break me. How I want to take you to my breast, stroke your face. What you think you should have done as a man still haunts you. Couldn’t you see love’s consequence? I remember that day we drove from the coast. On both sides of the road fields of sunflowers turned their faces to us as we passed. I had no cares, only desires. Behind the steering wheel you watched for dangerous curves ahead as we laughed. It felt like a day without end, that long summer afternoon, the eternity one would choose if one could only choose. I wanted to share with you the memories of my youth, far from the fashionable clutter of the Côte d’Azur.
I could not have been happier, sitting at your side in the Bearcat, in which you took so much pride because you got it away from the cagey art collector, Elouard. I can still picture that afternoon at Trône, Elouard and his wife tiptoeing through your studio, speaking in whispers, their nostrils twitching at the scent of paint and linseed oil. All of Elouard’s money could not buy him the talent to paint one inch of one of twenty paintings stacked along the studio walls. He was like the wealthy everywhere who, since they cannot buy talent for themselves, attempt to buy the artist—or at least the moment of his creation, his work of art. Elouard stammered that he wanted to purchase a painting, but he was sorry he had forgotten his checkbook. Standing there without money put him in an uncomfortable position in front of his wife and me, and most of all you, whom he thought he could buy no matter how famous you were. You studied him, aware of his torment. You were so cheerful when you tossed him the bait, “How about if we trade for a painting?”
Elouard was delighted, certain he had turned the game in his favor. Now he had you in the land where he was king, in the realm of barter and steal, strike and win. He winked at his wife, who was covered in gold: earrings, bracelets, a watch; gold chains weighing down her neck.
I did not wear jewelry until I met you. You insisted on my wearing gold because you said it made my red hair burn brighter, it drew the apricot glow from my skin. I knew you were going to strip Elouard’s wife of her gold. I knew from the gleam in your eye you were going to strip her and later, after they had gone, you were going to remove my dress and decorate me with her gold, lay my body across the bed and tie my legs open with gold chains wrapped around my ankles.
You started easy with Elouard. “I don’t like to sell directly from my studio. It can get me in trouble with my gallery dealers in New York and London, and in even deeper trouble with the tax man in Paris. I spoke too soon.”
“Too soon?” Elouard wanted the ball back in his court. This was supposed to be his game. “Not soon enough! Had I known you would allow me the honor of purchasing a new Zermano, I would have arrived prepared for the occasion. As it is,” he looked at his wife conspiratorially, “I am at a disadvantage.”
You looked at his wife too. All that bright gold was too much on her. You had an expensive idea of how we were going to spend the rest of the afternoon.
Elouard caught you eyeing his wife’s gold. “That’s it,” he proposed craftily. “We’ll trade the Stutz Bearcat we drove here in. We’ll trade the auto for that big blue painting in the corner!”
“The Bearcat for the big painting?”
“I’m not trying to pull a fast one. I understand what your art commands at auction. The Bearcat might not be enough.”
“It isn’t.”
“A big blue Zermano is one of a kind, priceless. There is always another Bearcat to be had. Why don’t I—”
“What?”
“Throw in all my wife’s jewelry to even the deal?”
“Done.”
So you had your car. But where to go on our first trip in the Bearcat? I said I wanted to take you to the lost country of my childhood, to dance in Ville Rouge in front of the Roman fountain at the Bastille Day celebration. I wanted to make you part of my memory.
I kiss you softly,
LOUISE
Villa Trône-sur-Mer
Côte d’Azur
I rip the sky, I bray at the moon, a man is a stupid creature without the love of his woman, a worm crawling across cowardly ground. I know this sounds bombastic but I can only express myself in the clumsiest of ways. I am not a writer, I am a painter stripped of his weapons. I can only touch you, or hope to touch you, with these words. How I wish I were a writer, to have my words sing in your ear, embrace you with crafted care. Now I must arm myself with metaphors, but no matter how I try to state my emotions for you they seem trite. I have written page after page, insignificant missiles that miss their mark. I have balled up many letters in my fist and tossed them into the fire. Finally I am forced to put something to paper that can be sent to you. I dress up my thoughts in bright clothes hoping to portray my battered heart, which drifts night after night in dreams of you. I am making love to a ghost. But our love is not ghostly, it has flesh and meaning, it breathes. In the day I feel your hands slipping around me as I paint, your fingers locking over my eyes, your lips on the back of my neck. I set down my paintbrush and turn, your red hair falling over me as we tumble to the floor. You are a cloud opening to a world where no man has journeyed, you bring me in. I am dreaming. I want reality.
There are certain things that happen in life and a man travels back to them. I keep coming back to that afternoon in the cherry orchard. Am I writing of this to explain what happened? Do we really need an explanation? We were not yet husband and wife then, but we were getting close. We were snakes shedding skin, writhing from one passion to another. Our eyes were on each other in the Bearcat as we drove through your lost country, not noticing the dangerous curves. Your skirt slid up on the leather seat, the whites of your thighs flashed. Your hand went between my legs, as if you were steering the car there. We almost didn’t notice when the tire blew. A bang in the heat. The front of the Bearcat dropped with a thud. Steel dug into asphalt, trailing sparks across the road. I tried to regain control, to hold back the car as it went up on its side. I held on to you as the car rolled. You were always afraid one of us would die without the other, you couldn’t bear that. You preferred that we die together, even in a crash on the roadway, with the flowers of our flesh pressed between closing steel.
Where are you? I paint your face with my fingers.
FRANCISCO
Villa Trône-sur-Mer
Côte d’Azur
Dearest woman, there is still no news of you from Roderigo in Ville Rouge. I have kept him there for weeks on the constant lookout for you, but I cannot leave him there forever. He wants to return to Spain because of what is happening with Franco. Go to him and tell him you are safe. Send me a kiss wrapped in the Italian scarf I bought you on our last visit to Nice. When I gave you the scarf you said you would cherish it forever, its amber silk was imprinted with your favorite fruits of summer. You wrapped it around bare shoulders, it clung to the outline of your breasts as you turned before me. In your French way you had taken something simple and created a luxurious garment. In your French way you elevated the commonplace; you swirled around in a blur, then stopped, out of breath, your arms outstretched, offering fragile wrists. I unwrapped the scarf, revealing your body. In my Spanish way I made something practical, tying the silk scarf into a knot around your wrists. You shuddered, bound. We both remembered that hot summer day in the cherry orchard.
I should have known someone was following us on our way to the cherry orchard. But I was aware only
of you until the Bearcat slammed to the pavement, throwing us nearly through the windshield before dragging to a sparking stop. The engine shuddered, we held each other in disbelief. The sound of our breathing slowly came back to us, threading us into the present, two people lucky to be alive. Your laughter filled the car, your fingers still gripping my arm. I turned and realized you were laughing with relief, tears glistening on your cheeks. You were still laughing as we climbed from the Bearcat.
The right front of the car was collapsed, its tire blown to shreds. We were stranded. If there was no spare tire in the trunk it was going to be a long walk to find help. You stood on the black asphalt in your white summer dress, your body profiled against the sunlight. You watched as I cautiously jacked the front end of the Bearcat up from the pavement. The massive hulk of the automobile groaned, its weight suspended on a slender steel perch. I carefully slipped off the gnarled tire and skinned my hands blood-red as I maneuvered a new tire onto the hub. Sweat ran from my forehead, blurring my vision. I felt your bare legs next to me, the hem of your dress coming up as you wiped my eyes with the soft material. I could see well enough to muscle the tire into place. You knelt next to me, your hands on the jack handle, preparing to crank. If you cranked too fast the automobile would jump its perch and crush us both. I watched you through stinging eyes, your lower lip trembled. You didn’t care if the Bearcat buried us under its weight as long as we were together. You leaned in to me as you turned the iron handle with certainty. The car creaked and rocked, sinking with a sigh against the pavement as your tongue slipped into my mouth. Your own sigh sank deep into me. My grease-blackened hands caressed you through the thin dress. I pushed the dress high over your hips. My eyes stung from salty perspiration, blurring your shape. You disappeared.
The Day of the Bees Page 4