A Sport and a Pastime (12 page)

“We go to the shops?”

Dean doesn’t reply. He merely stares at her.

“Come,” she insists.

It’s chilly at this hour, the end of the day. Her cheeks are reddened, like an urchin’s. The tiny slits in her earlobes seem a mark of low caste. They walk towards the center of town. She has linked her arm in his. He seems not to notice. He has turned into lead.

“
Tu es fâché avec moi?
” she asks.

He shrugs. They walk along cheerlessly. Her face has the helplessness of someone who is no longer believed in.

“Phillip,
tu es fâché?
” she repeats.

“No.”

There are only women in the shop, mothers and daughters, wives. The owner moves among the flutter of merchandise. She is waiting on two or three customers at once. She reaches for boxes on various shelves and lays them open on the counter. Dean is uncomfortable. He stands against the wall like a shadow. He has a pose of disinterest, but although they glance at him upon entering, nobody seems to pay him any attention.

“Phillip,” she calls.

He looks up for an instant, uncertain. She had gone to the back.

“Phillip,” she calls again, “
viens
.”

She beckons from one of the booths.

He starts back. One of the shoppers looks up at him. He feels awkward, as if the process of movement had suddenly asserted all its complexity and everything had to be commanded. He walks as if made of wood. The curtain is pulled aside. There in the company of a large mirror she stands, naked to the waist.

“You must help me,” she says calmly.

She slips her arms into a brassiere and presents her back to him to have it fastened. He does it without a word, with the detachment of a servant, but as he watches her in the mirror regarding herself, turning slightly, then hunching her shoulders together to take it off again, he begins to have an erection.

“You must help me choose,” she says. A pause. “Phillip.”

“Yes.”

“You must help me.”

He is watching her. Her nakedness compels him. No matter what he does, he cannot commit it to memory. It seems to be given to him in a series of revelations that are like flashes. She makes her breasts comfortable in another garment which he fastens.

“Do you like it?” she asks.

“I like the other more,” he says. His first words. She gives not the slightest hint of triumph.

“This?”

“Yes.”

She strips to try it on again.

“Yes,” she agrees. “This one is the best.”

She raises her arms to allow him to feel it. After a few minutes she removes the brassiere and watches in the mirror as his touch makes her nipples hard. Someone begins walking towards the rear of the shop, and Dean starts to move away, but she tightens her arms against her sides to imprison him. They hear the curtain of the other booth being pulled aside for a young girl and her mother. In the mirror Dean discovers a smile.

They go off to dinner near the
gare
. The sky is unnaturally bright. In the last of day a great storm assembles. The air is alive. Across a heaven of terrifying, of Toledo blue, huge clouds are moving, dark as the sea. People begin to vanish. The open spaces of town, the promenades, the squares, become thrilling in their emptiness. A cat hesitates, then hurries across the street.

They eat with the rain coming straight down, smoking across the pavements. Dean is excited. His whole mood has changed. Great bands of water move through the darkened air and beat on the cloth of his car.

“Isn’t that beautiful?” he cries.

He is hunched over the table, looking out.

“
Tiens
,” she says, “are you happy now, seal? There is water.”

He nods, ashamed of how he has been, which seems childish. The storm is the first of spring. It turns one’s thoughts ahead. Her freckles–she does not know the word–will come back, she says. Not everywhere, just here, she circles her eyes and nose.

“Ah,” he says. “You’ll be like a raccoon.”

“A what?”

“A raccoon. A raccoon,” he says. “Don’t you know what that is? It’s an animal.”

“Oh, yes?” she says blankly.

Suddenly he bursts into laughter. He cannot contain it. He tries to tell her:
c’est très joli
, but he can’t say it, and she begins laughing, too. He starts to draw one for her on a scrap of paper. First the feet, but they are absurd. He collapses in laughter.

“It’s a rat,” she says.

“No, it’s not.”

However, he cannot keep it from becoming that. Its ears. Even its tail. The nose grows very pointed.

“It’s a rat,” she says.

They need only glance at each other to start laughing again.

In the room she tries on her new things. She slips off her clothes and puts on the pants and bra she’s just bought. Then she poses for him, laughs, and falls onto the bed. They lie together in the calm darkness. He places her hand on his prick. Her cool fingers hesitate a moment and then begin to comprehend it. She is more obedient than before. He is more devoted. The bath of anger has left them happier. It’s like a pruning. Afterwards they seem less encumbered–they move towards the very light.

A long time passes. Her head rests on his chest. She begins to kiss his stomach. The gravity of her movement betrays her. Suddenly he is certain of what she is about to do. He draws her up and presses kisses on her mouth. He can already feel it fitting over him. She moves down again. Her body is curled between his legs. Tenderly she explores him. Finally she begins. Dean touches her cheeks. He traces his finger around her mouth, outlining it. She stops as if for breath, then starts again, accepting more of it. He thrusts a little. He feels himself come. Great, clenching bursts. She doesn’t move. She draws back slightly. Finally she relinquishes him altogether. A solemn moment somehow occurs. She spreads part of the sperm on his belly with her index finger while she watches the last, reflexive spasms. Then she goes to the sink. Dean hears the water running. Was it bad, he asks. She spits out some water and says something in French. He doesn’t understand.

“What?”

She is silent.

“What is it like?” he asks.

She returns to the bed. She doesn’t know. Strange, is all she will say. Strong. It’s her first time.

[19]

O
NE AFTERNOON VISITING THE
source of the Marne, or perhaps it’s at Azay-le-Rideau, nothing is certain, they stroll in the mild sunlight and talk of the ways to love, the sweet variety.

“What are they?” she wants to know.

Dean begins casually, arranging as he does a bouquet of alternatives to conceal the one he really desires. He has said it a hundred times to himself, rehearsing, but still his heart skips. She listens impassively. They walk slowly, looking at the ground. They seem, from afar, like schoolmates discussing, perhaps, an exam.

“It must hurt,” she says.

“No,” he says. Then, very naturally, “if it does, we stop.

“We can try it,” he adds.

There is no reply, but she seems to agree. Yes. Sometime. He feels a moment of dizziness, as if he has run from a theft. He begins to explain it further, to fashion a derivation, to make it rare, common, whatever seems right. She understands only a little of what he is saying. Dean is talking deliriously. Finally he recognizes it and forces himself to stop. They have come to the car. He opens the door for her and then walks around to the driver’s side. He gets in himself, becomes busy with the keys. Why, she asks, has he waited so long to tell her about this. He cannot think of what to answer.

“I don’t know,” he says. “All in good time.”

“
Comment?
”

She’s very matter of fact. He shakes his head–nothing. She looks at him, and he feels nervous. She has thrown him into despair.

Then, in that great car that exists for me in dreams, like the Flying Dutchman, like Roland’s horn, that ghosts along the empty roads of France, its headlights faded, its elegance a little shabby; in that blue Delage with doors that open backwards, knees touching, deep in the seats they drive towards home. The villages are fading, the rivers turning dark. She undoes his clothing and brings forth his prick, erect, pale as a heron in the dusk, both of them looking ahead at the road like any couple. Her fingers form a ring which she gently slips onto it and then causes, cool, to descend. Her slim fingers. She turns to see what she is doing. Dean sits like a chauffeur. He is barely breathing.

“I like your
profil
,” she says. “How do you say that?”

“Profile.” His voice seems lost.

“I like your profile. No, I
love
your profile. Like is nothing.”

She is in a good mood. She is very playful. As they enter her building she becomes the secretary. They are going to dictate some letters. Oh, yes? She lives alone, she admits, turning on the stairs. Is that so, the boss says.
Oui
. In the room they undress independently, like Russians sharing a train compartment. Then they turn face to face.

“Ah,” she murmurs.

“What?”

“It’s a big
machine à écrire
.”

She is so wet by the time he has the pillows under her gleaming stomach that he goes right into her in one long, delicious move. They begin slowly. When he is close to coming he pulls his prick out and lets it cool. Then he starts again, guiding it with one hand, feeding it in like line. She begins to roll her hips, to cry out. It’s like ministering to a lunatic. Finally he takes it out again. As he waits, tranquil, deliberate, his eye keeps falling on lubricants–her face cream, bottles in the
armoire
. They distract him. Their presence seems frightening, like evidence. They begin once more and this time do not stop until she cries out and he feels himself come in long, trembling runs, the head of his prick touching bone, it seems. They lie exhausted, side by side, as if just having beached a great boat.

“It was the best ever,” she says finally. “The best.”

He is staring upwards in the dark.

“Phillip?”

“Yes,” he says.

“What a
machine
, eh?” she says. “Was it always so good?”

“I don’t think so.”

She touches him. He is still quite large.

“I think it’s bigger,” she says.

“A little, perhaps.”

“We must type more letters,” she says.

The night is not cold. It is quiet, piercingly clear. Across the dark roofs, crowded close, the spires of town rise, illuminated, steeped in terrestrial light.

[20]

T
HESE SLOW DAYS WITH
their misty beginnings, the fields all cool and quiet, the great viaduct still. Everything is white, everything empty, everything except the earth itself which seems to have awakened. There is an odor in the air that means France still lives. As the morning continues, the mist disappears. Slowly now, the shape of things is revealed. Roofs emerge. The tops of trees. Finally the sun. I am making an extraordinary record of this town. I am discovering it, bringing it to light. There are photographs of the house alone, nothing but that, the surfaces of furniture, the broad doors, reflections in mirrors, that are the most compelling I have ever made. It almost seems the work of a sick man, work of great patience and simplicity. It has a radiance, a tubercular calm. The children playing by the fountains will become old men, but nothing of this will have changed. There are periods when I am certain of that. My work begins to seem huge. I will be able to enclose myself in it, to have people introduce me.

Near the edge of town there are sheep, a large flock, and two black dogs, lean and endlessly circling, that move it along. They seem to be carving the flock. They curve in behind and mould it. I never hear them bark, but the bleats carry faintly across the still air. Near the front, one old ram limps along. The sun is warm now. The sheep move in a current, like a stream–the edges cling, the center continually flows. The pattern is always changing. Segments seem to break away and vanish farther on. Eddies appear. The sheep hesitate and clog. Some lambs have already been born, and they hurry along behind their mothers. Then, quite mysteriously, the entire flock stops. Slowly it begins to spread. The animals graze outwards. The dogs linger. It’s at this moment I see the shepherd in a dark, tattered coat. He walks along quietly, an old man who has watched over them since daylight when the mist hid them all. Probably he has slept in his clothes. The lambs look very young. They have long legs. They hurry to keep up with the fat, indifferent ewes.

It’s still too early in the year for Claude to go down to the river and swim before work. She always goes on her bicycle. She has no car. Perhaps when she is married again…because I have heard she is about to become engaged to a student from Bourges. He’s younger than she is. Some say twenty-two. I visualize him sitting between the voluptuous mother and that wise, level-eyed child. Perhaps he doesn’t recognize the dangers. Or maybe they have their own appeal for him. In any case, it’s generally agreed Madame Picquet is very fortunate to have this suitor. A little shrug after that. It’s quite plain how it was done.

I see things now in a different light. In a way, I’m quite relieved to hear about it. There’s a good reason why I’ve never been able to fulfill my longings–she’s been in love with someone else the whole time. He came to visit practically every weekend. So really, I would have been unsuccessful anyway. It’s comforting to realize that. And a student, well, one doesn’t mind envying a student. It’s much better than a jeweler, say, or the owner of a bar. Eventually I discover his name: Gerard.

These calm mornings. Anne-Marie crossing the Place du Carrouge. It’s very small. There’s a grocery, a little café, a fish store. She walks to work, her heels echoing on the pavement like shot, still a bit of warmth from the bed clinging to her, her flesh warm still and unwary, her mouth sullen. Dean is still asleep. His clothes are strewn about. The shutters are closed. He never dreams. He’s like a dead musician, like a spent runner. He hasn’t the strength to dream, or rather, his dreams take place while he is awake and they are marvelous for at least one quality: he has the power to prolong them.