Her Lover (103 page)

'Listen, darling, let's not go on with this.'

'Why?'

'You know very well why.'

'Tell me why.'

'Because it's such an unlikely idea.'

'Unlikely is it? Go tell that to the birds, or your cats if you prefer. Unlikely? And what, pray, do you know about what's unlikely and what isn't? How do you know that I'm not tempted by the prospect of saying goodbye to virility?'

'Darling, don't let's talk about this any more.'

'I take it, then, that you refuse to commit yourself. Give praise to those two humble spheroids so dear to the hearts of Ophelias everywhere, and let us guard them as jealously as a treasure without price! (He looked  at her  closely,  and his eyes shone  with  the joy  of knowing.) I know exactly what you are thinking at this moment! You're hesitating between "Jewish mind goes to pieces" and "Jewish mind hell-bent on destruction", isn't that so? You women keep your brains wrapped in a cosy cocoon of romantic platitudes, that's how you always deal with awkward truths! Lucifer was the angel who came bearing light, so you turned him into the devil! But let us now come to torso-man. Would you still love me if I were torso-man?'

A sudden pang, an ache, a pain: the other evening in Nice, the sight of ship's colours being struck at sunset on a French destroyer. The flag was hauled down reverently and he had watched, envying the sailors standing stiffly to attention, envying the officer who gave the salute while the colours were slowly lowered in the gathering dusk. Farewell, sweet France, for he was now no son of hers. A few days after arriving in Saint-Raphaël he had received the letter on flimsy paper from the police department begging to inform him that by a decree published in the
Journal Officiel
Monsieur Solal was stripped of his French nationality; that motive for loss of entitlement was not, according to the terms of the law, required to be given, but that the person concerned was allowed a period of two months in which to lodge an appeal; that, the aforementioned decree being immediately applicable regardless of the entering of any such appeal, the above-mentioned person was invited to present himself at the above-named police station for the purpose of returning all French identity papers and, in particular, of surrendering his passport. Solal knew the letter by heart. He had duly presented himself at the police station. He had sat for hours on a squalid bench, waiting upon the good pleasure of a paunchy inspector. He remembered the leer of pleasure on the face of the seedy policeman, and his dirty fingernails, as he had examined the diplomatic passport. And now the only papers he had were a temporary residence permit and the identity and travel document issued to all stateless persons. He was nothing now: he was only a lover. And what was he doing at this moment? He was trying to save their love from its anaemia, he was inflicting pain on a hapless woman. Meek she was and submissive, and once more respectful of his silence. She believed in him, had forsaken all for him, caring nothing for what other people said and thought, and she lived only for him, she was his, defenceless she was, and absurdly clothed in grace and weakness when she went naked, so beautiful and destined to die and lie stiff and white in her coffin. Oh, the ghastly laughter downstairs, the applause to which she was listening. . 'I'm waiting for an answer. Torso-man!'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Then I shall spell it out. Here I am, all of a sudden, not handsome any more, I'm hideous to look at, I'm torso-man as the result of some unavoidable operation. What are your feelings towards me? Are they feelings of love? I'm waiting for your answer.'

'But I haven't got an answer. It's such a ridiculous idea.'

He felt the impact as though he had been punched. Gone was the respect she had shown him during their first days together. He was now ridiculous. He decided to make the affront an excuse to walk out on her. After a while she would come knocking, begging to be forgiven, and there would be making-up and their love would be regilded for another hour or two.

'Good-night,' he said, getting to his feet. But she held him back.

'Listen Sol, I'll be frank. I'm feeling pretty rotten, didn't get much sleep last night. So let's put a stop to all this, because I don't think I've got the strength to give you much of an answer, I'm whacked. Listen, don't let's spoil this evening. (Even supposing we don't spoil this one, there are three thousand six hundred and fifty other evenings which we mustn't spoil either, he thought.) Listen Sol, it's not because you're handsome that I love you, though I'm glad you are. It would be sad if you ever got ugly, but, good-looking or hideous, you'll always be my dearest love.'

'But why should I be your dearest love without legs or toes? Why should I be so dear to you?'

'Because I have given you my heart, because you are who you are, because you are capable of asking all these crazy questions, because you are my fretting child, my ailing boy.'

He sat down, the wind quite taken out of his sails. The thrust had gone home. Damn! If it was love you wanted, then what was this but love? He scratched his temple, pulled a face by moving his closed mouth from side to side, felt to see if his nose was still where it should be, and stroked it. Then, reaching out to the gramophone, he began absent-mindedly winding the handle. Suddenly aware that it was meeting no resistance, he remembered the broken spring and looked round warily. No, she hadn't noticed anything. He cleared his throat to give himself confidence, and stood up. But it simply couldn't be: she was lying and didn't know it. If she believed she would still love him if he were hideous, a mutilated trunk of a man, it was merely because at this moment in time he was handsome, disgustingly handsome.

God, what did he think he was playing at? Everywhere in the world there were liberation movements, hopes, struggles to create greater happiness among men. And what was he doing? He was fully occupied creating a miserable climate of passion, had a full-time job relieving the boredom of a wretched woman by tormenting her! She was obviously bored with him. But that first evening at the Ritz she hadn't been at all bored. Oh no, she had been dizzy with bliss that first evening at the Ritz. And who had made her dizzy? A man named Solal whom she did not know. And now he was a man she did know, a man who had sneezed maritally this afternoon, after their coupling, and in the silence of the post-coital intermission she had, to his mortification, heard him sneeze. Oh yes, she had deceived him in advance with the Solal she had known that first night, the Solal of the Ritz who had not sneezed, Solal the Romantic.

'Solal cuckolded by Solal,' he murmured, and he twisted his curly mane left and right into cuckold horns, and he waved to the cuckold in the mirror, while she, head bowed, sat and shivered. To be sure, she had deceived him with that other Solal-self, for had she not dared to love him that very first evening? She had deceived the man she knew now with a stranger she had met at the Ritz! And she had immediately kissed the hand of the very first man who had shown his face - a Solal substitute, a stand-in, not the real Solal! And why? For all the reasons he despised, for the same animal reasons which had operated in the times of the primeval forest! And that first evening, at Cologny, she had not shrunk from giving her lips to the lips of a stranger! Brazen and wanton! Oh women! Brazen, wanton lovers of men! It was unbelievable, but they who were so delicate loved men, beyond a shadow of a doubt they loved men, they loved the braggarts, they loved the louts, they loved revoltingly hairy boors! Incredibly, they accepted male sensuality, yearned for it, gorged on it! It was past all belief, yet it was true! And no one was shocked!

He turned to face her, only to be utterly disconcerted by the purity of her expression, the innocence of her demurely lowered eyes. Pure! She who had given herself to a stranger at the Ritz, a Jew from God knew where, was also purity! Yet she had needed no bidding to give her lips, her tongue, to a man she did not know! Qh, women would drive him insane, for who could understand them? They would make him mad: Madonnas one moment, lewd Bacchantes the next! And yet they spoke such noble words when they were dressed! But suddenly riding on the wild wings of night they spoke words which would strike you dead on the spot, my poor little Solomon!

'Listen, darling,' she said. 'Don't let's stay here. Let's do something. Let's go downstairs.'

He was stabbed to the heart by a dagger of despair. Her tender words were a judgement. 'Don't let's stay here. Let's do something!' So being together meant not doing anything. 'Let's do something!' But what? Why not just carry on from where you left off?

'Let's go back to torso-man. Again I put the question, which is not the least ridiculous. (He spoke slowly, savouring each word.) Let's suppose advanced gas gangrene left the doctors with no option but to amputate my arms and both my legs to the groin, that is to say to leave me a human torso, and to which add that I also stink and am covered with pustules from the effects of the gangrene,' he smiled sweetly, and his cup of joy overflowed. 'It could happen. Such disorders do exist. Well then, if I were just an abridged torso, an immobilized, fetid, reeking heap, would you still love me in the grand poetic manner, along the lines of Cherubino and the Brandenburg Concertos? And would you still shower me with sublime, amour-piercing kisses? Answer me!'

'Stop this, stop it!' she begged. 'I can't take-any more of this, I'm so tired. You can say whatever you like, but you won't get another word out of me.'

'Clerk of the court!' he barked, pointing with his forefinger. 'You will take note that the accused again refuses to answer the question. What would really happen, my dear, if I were an abbreviated, foul-smelling torso, is that you would manage to think up perfectly valid reasons for finding that my soul is no longer what it was, that it has gone off, and you would stop loving me for good. Which is hardly fair. Am I to blame for gangrene? There I am, stretched out on a table, a poor, stinking lump, with no arms, no legs, not even stumps, but with my masculinity unimpaired, laid out for your despair and disgust, picture it, poor me, not much left of me to speak of, flat out on my table, head aching, a single punch would knock me off on to the floor and I'd never be able to pick myself up again unaided! But God in heaven, there's no need to go to the trouble of being lopped and butchered! A couple of missing front teeth would do the trick as well and make quite sure that your soul suddenly ceased to find delight in mine."

He rubbed his hands and smiled as he thought of a pretty prank to play on her. A first-class jape! He'd go out first thing in the morning, get his head shaved by a barber, and then all his teeth pulled out by a dentist! Oh the look on her face when he showed up looking like some comic-opera convict with a wide, empty grin! It would be worth doing as a homage to truth!

'Darling,' she said. 'Don't go on. Why do you want to spoil everything? (He gave a despairing laugh. So she too was an anti-Semite!) Please, darling,' she begged. (How easily she said 'darling', when her darling could just as well have been somebody else!) 'Darling, drop it. Wouldn't you rather tell me about when you were a little boy, or about your uncle you love so much? What does he look like? Describe him to me.'

'He's very ugly,' he said brusquely. 'Nothing doing there.'

Why did women hanker so after good looks? The other day she had told him he had beautiful eyes. Ought he now to be jealous of his own eyes? You have beautiful eyes: that meant that later on, when his eyes had become dull and rheumy, it would be all up with him! He got to his feet.

'Women are serpents with angel faces, for one fine day they suddenly, swooningly decide that they have fallen out of love! Then imitate the action of the spider! Bring on the spider we know so well! "Dear human torso," they say to the poor heap on the table, "what's the point of lying, I just don't love you any more! My mouth must remain as pure as my inner being, nor must it with pointless name-calling defile the noble memory of our past happiness!" (She bit her Up to ward off a heavy-hearted attack of giggles at the thought of the poetess haranguing her truncated lover.) Behold the spider at work! Still, who knows,' he went on mellifluously, 'perhaps you would go on loving me after all, torso notwithstanding, though that would be infinitely worse. For then you would turn into the Heroine Who Sacrifices All to her human torso, who takes care not to breathe in too much when she's near him, because he stinks to high heaven, who washes him, has to carry him about, and with a saintly smile sits him on the lavatory. But in reality your damned human torso would be a devil of a nuisance! And beneath your oh-so-heroic conscious mind your much more sensible unconscious would be busy wishing that the useless lump would die and have done with it! And that, my dear, is the top and bottom of it!'

Sure of himself, tall in his long, red dressing-gown, he crossed his arms challengingly, awaiting her reply which he would then proceed to demolish. But her head remained bowed and she said nothing. At length he unfolded his arms and began to speak in a kindly, smooth, lecturing voice.

'There is another problem which we failed to thrash out last night. With your permission, I shall raise it now.'

'No, stop, please stop! Look at me. I love you, you know I do. So why are you tormenting me? Why do you go on torturing yourself? My love, kiss me!'

He felt a sudden desire, oh yes such a desire, to kiss her cheeks and hold her close! But, when the kissing stopped, there would still be music playing downstairs and the two of them would still be up here, alone with their dominoes. Billing and cooing wasn't exactly an all-consuming pastime; kissing and cuddling was no match for the clapping at the end of a tango and the applause of a happy crowd of dancers clamouring for an encore. There was no choice but to go on.

'And that other problem is: you and sex.'

He nodded knowingly and stared. It had been obvious during these last weeks at Agay that she had taken only a theoretical interest in sex, had forced herself to show a certain enthusiasm for it without being aware that she wasn't really all that keen any more. But back in Geneva, when he'd been new - a novelty - she had been very
interested in sex indeed.
Ergo,
quite likely to be interested in sex with some other novelty newcomer! In Geneva, oh the kissing she had given him, her tongue turning and twisting like a flailing aeroplane propeller!