Blind Date (33 page)

The chair rocked, and they clung to each other, rising and falling. Her eyes remained open, anguished, staring at him. The next record dropped onto the turntable. They rose from the chair, and he led her slowly to the bedroom.

She lay flat on her back, her legs apart, her arms at her sides, and she watched him as he walked over to the closet, opened it, and
pulled out a full tie rack. He selected several ties, one after another, choosing only those which were soft enough.

He returned to her and she did not move. He raised her hands above her head and tied each wrist to a bedpost, taking pains not to knot the ties too tightly. She did not stiffen when he tied them, nor when he fastened each ankle to a post at the foot of the bed. She was spread-eagled. He pushed two pillows under her, lifting her body in an arch, her chest rising, her belly concave, her thighs flat, her flesh open. He picked up one more tie and an elastic band; gathering her hair into a ponytail and securing it with the band, he slipped the tie through and attached her hair to the railing of the bed. He put a small pillow under her neck.

Levanter began to trace his fingers gently along Pauline's neck, the underarm, down to her thighs, then up again, diagonally, over her belly and breasts. His torso brushing against her breasts, his flesh against her hips, he hovered above her like a bird of prey, descending only to nip at her skin, biting until it swelled, pressing his flesh against hers, then lifting himself until only the tip touched her skin. A ripple went through her, and his hands followed it. He kept teasing her until her body was taut; her whole being seemed to be a thin membrane he could pierce at will. He started to enter her, then to leave, to enter again, and leave again; he remained stilled inside her, then twisted, at times bulky and stiff, at times slender and pliant, drawing himself tightly into her, contracting and releasing. She strained, the veins in her neck and arms swelling, the ties threatening to cut through her, and she drew her body up, attempting to pull free, her eyes blank, unseeing, her mouth open but uttering no sound. He crouched between her thighs and wedged his fingers into her flesh. His hand parted it, slowly feeling the tender cords. She tensed and contracted, trying to pull back, but the bonds held her tightly in place. Like a burrowing animal, his hand crept into her, his fingers twisting, spreading the slippery tissues, probing deeper and deeper. She shivered, and he waited for her to ask him to stop but she did not. He pushed his hand farther in, and as her muscles gripped his wrist, he could not tell whether he felt her pulse or his own. Her body rose higher. Her
face tightened; she moaned, “No!” A sudden current ran through her like lightning; then, just as suddenly, the tension that gripped her dissolved. He lost the feeling of his own shape; in the ultimate moment, when his vision shrank, he heard her whisper, “Yes!” and, as its sound ebbed, her body softened, freed from its own bondage, no longer struggling against any restraints.

He took his skis from the gondola rack and walked to the start of the run. He was the only passenger in the last PicSoleil gondola on the final day of the skiing season. All the other lifts were already closed, and the attendant warned him that no skiers had come up that day. This would be the first time that he had the mountain range entirely to himself. The Aval was his favorite run, and he could ski it blindfolded. He would be in ValPina in less than half an hour.

He felt exhilarated. The unbroken whiteness of the endless slopes staggered him with their permanence and grandeur. A descent was like life: to love it was to love each moment, to rejoice in the skill and speed of every moment. Soon, skiing down these fields, he would appropriate them as if they had been set there just for him, to be fleetingly possessed, the possession vanishing an instant after it took place. Finally only the memory of having possessed the mountain would be his.

The air was unusually still, with only occasional cold streaks. To the right, over the plains, the sky was filled with slowly churning dark brown clouds. But to the left, over the miles of glacier, where storms formed, the sky was blue, the sun bright, and the faraway white peaks seemed to grow straight out of the ice. He was sure he could reach the first valley of the Aval before the fog from the plains slowed him down.

He put on his skis. The bindings clicked. As always before a long nonstop run, he did a few limbering-up exercises: he bent his
elbows and knees several times, twisted his torso back and forth, sat down on the back of his skis and got up without using his hands. He pushed off. A sudden gust of wind sent him skidding sideways; for a moment he almost lost his balance.

The wind changed direction and pushed him from behind. He was speeding toward the ridge, skis rattling on the crusty snow. His sunglasses steamed a bit and an unexpected cold blast chilled his body. The slope was getting steeper, and he was still gaining speed.

The wind changed direction again. It came in gusts, blowing against him, slowing him down. He was surprised to encounter cold wind coming from the vineyards, which were already turning green. The temperature seemed to be dropping rapidly. He was wearing only a light racing parka over his shirt, thin gloves, and no head covering. Visibility decreased; he could no longer distinguish the distant peaks and could barely make out the ridge.

When he turned to look across the valley toward ValPina, he saw a funnel of brown mists steaming up at him like the fumes of industrial wastes. In seconds, the frosty dew had enveloped him and even the tips of his skis were hidden from view. But he kept going down. He was only a short distance from the ridge.

Under his skis he could feel the frozen traces of other skiers. He knew he had reached the ridge, even though he could see only inches in front of him. Beyond the ridge opened the first valley of the Aval, protected on two sides by massive slopes, dropping steeply toward the second of the three valleys. He expected the visibility to improve in the valley and the strength of the wind to decrease.

He crossed the ridge and discovered that he had been mistaken. He was in the center of a boiling, hissing cloud. He remembered the route well and assumed that he could find his way to the bottom of the valley, below the center of the storm. He had gone a few hundred yards when a mass of savagely icy air came from below at great speed. He fought it obstinately, and only when he was not able to move forward one more inch did he stop skiing. The turbulence around him increased and he began to fear that he would
be swept down onto the rocks lining the slopes. The wind, pumped by invisible bellows, lifted him, then pushed him against the fall line, throwing him to the ground. He understood that he was caught in one of those spring storms that might end in hours or last for days. Shivering, struggling for breath, he knew that to crawl down was to risk falling into a crevasse or being trapped in the valley by an avalanche. He had no choice but to abort the descent, to spend two hours climbing back up to the PicSoleil gondola station.

There were no pockets in his parka, and he had to keep rubbing his hands together to maintain the warmth. His face went numb and his neck became rigid with cold. He could not move his lips; his nostrils were filling with icy flakes. He touched his ears but could not feel his hands on them. To bring the blood back, he bent down and, with hands that now felt nothing, picked up a mound of snow and began massaging his face and ears. He twisted in pain and stopped the scrubbing. Closing his eyes, he forced himself to remember the dead German soldiers he had seen as a child during the war, their chins, noses, and ears missing, their teeth flashing through the holes in the frostbitten cheeks. The image was more agonizing than the pain he was causing himself, and he kept rubbing until sensation returned.

He started to walk uphill to find the ridge and the large rock that stood next to it, thinking that behind it he might be able to shelter himself from the wind. But he had lost his sense of direction and suddenly feared that he had walked too far up. He was probably above the ridge, he thought, traversing a giant slope that was taking him farther and farther away from the ridge and from the only path to the gondola station.

I must keep climbing, he repeated to himself. I must keep climbing. He dragged himself up in the fog, aware of losing all sense of time and distance, trying to detect by the sound his skis made on the icy sheet whether he was still following the tracks of other skiers.

Each time he thought he had lost the track, he took off his gloves and, with his skis spread, bent down and trailed his fingers over the
crusty surface, seeking the traces. Soon his hands were too cold and he could not tell what he was touching. But he kept plodding uphill, step after step, convinced that if the clouds lifted even for a second he would find out where he was.

I must keep climbing, he thought. But this time there was a gap between the “I” and the “must.” Behind the white tapestry of snowy space, “I” was still a word that made sense; “must” was a vague command from somewhere else and was as useless as the sunglasses that pressed against his forehead. “I” was still here, on this steep slope blanketed with fog; “must” was drifting away with the wind.

He was tired; he had to sit down, to rest. Perhaps he should even take off the skis and lie down, if only for a moment. He had not allowed himself to panic about the pain he felt under his left arm. His heart had lost its rhythm just once or twice, and at this altitude, with the temperature so low, the winds surging upward at him, a slight tremor was to be expected in a man of his age. Alone in the storm, cold and tired, he deserved a rest.

He always did everything as well as he could, he thought, and if he fell short of his own mark, he worked to improve himself. He once saw a black man, all alone in a Broadway arcade, dressed in rags, playing a ball-and-ramp game and registering the highest score with each roll. Levanter started to play the game at another ramp, but after several attempts still could not score even the lowest number. He went over to the black man and asked if he could pay him for a lesson: he wanted to learn to play the game well, he said.

The black man laughed. “This game?” he asked. “What would you want to learn this game for? Nobody plays this game anymore!”

“You do,” said Levanter, “and you get the best score every time.”

“I sure do, man, I sure do!” The black man kept laughing as he rolled one ball after another, each ball finding its target easily. “But this game is all I know. So I play it because it makes me feel real good to know how well I play it. But you, man, what would you want to play it for?” He kept glancing at Levanter, his face full of
joy, while his hand picked up each wooden ball as it rushed at him from under the ramp, his arm bent, then extended, and he released the heavy ball for another perfect score. He continued to laugh, pleased with himself and pleased that Levanter kept watching him play his game.

Levanter could not catch his breath. The icy wind filled his lungs. He grew confused; drowsily he covered his face with his arms. He had been scoring quite well in the games he played, he reflected, although, like the black man, he knew there were few others who would ever want to learn to play his game. The game was good to him, made him want to play it, yet even a solitary player needs his rest. He leaned on his poles, but the wind threatened to knock him over. He sank down and turned his face away from the wind. Slowly he reached toward the bindings; they were frozen but he managed to open them. He put the skis beside him; his knees and ankles suddenly invited to regain their movement.

He was lucky, he thought, to find this shell of a slope to rest in. The storm might be rolling past him right now, and he might as well sleep through it. Soon the sun would be on him, warming his body as it melted the white walls of this frozen vault.

His rest was not a surrender to the storm, he thought; his striving continued even when he rested. He no longer felt circulation in his legs or hands. To guard the little heat his body had conserved, he unzipped his parka and pulled it over his head. His chest felt tight, gripped by a vest of ice. His heart started to rebel, one beat following another over a block of silence. The ice vest tightened, locking his chest, but as he drifted off to sleep, he thought how snug a bed of snow could be.

Slowly, he began to realize that the cold he felt was of no more concern to him than the heat had been that day in Palm Beach when his friends wondered if it was too hot to stay outdoors. He did not mind the heat. He was observing a young boy on the beach. The boy had wanted to hear a story Levanter had started to tell him. But the boy's mother, an anxious American divorcée, and her suitor, a boring Briton, disapproved of what Levanter was telling
the child. They did not want the boy to listen to such stories, they said; he was to enjoy the sea and not to talk to strangers again.

The boy obeyed. He got up and slowly walked toward the ocean. He stood in the knee-deep water. When a wave rolled toward him, he assumed a fencing position and cut at it with an invisible sword. The wave washed by, lapping against the shore. When the next wave came in, he hit it twice before it flattened, foaming at his feet. Like a fencer frozen in a pass, he let the next wave swell on the sand toward him, and then the next. The waves deposited their foam on the steamy sand, one after another, one after another, and the boy, his back to Levanter, watched them mindlessly.