Little Birds (10 page)

He was huge, restless, destructive, loved no one, was attached to nothing, a tramp and an adventurer. He would paint at the studios of friends, borrowing oils and canvas, then leave his work there and go off. Most of the time he lived with the gypsies on the outskirts of Paris. With them he shared their life in the gypsy carts, traveling all through France. He respected their laws, never made love to the gypsy women, played the guitar with them at night clubs when they needed money, ate their meals—very often made of stolen chicken.

When he met Hilda he had his own gypsy cart just outside one of the gates of Paris, near the ancient barricades, which were now crumbling. The cart had belonged to a Portuguese who had covered its walls with painted leather. The bed was hung at the back of the cart, suspended like a ship's bunk. The windows were arched. The ceiling was so low it was difficult for one to stand up.

At the party that evening, Rango did not invite Hilda to dance, although friends of his were providing the music for the night. The lights in the studio had been put out because enough light came from the street, and couples stood on the balcony with their arms around each other. The music was languid and dissolving.

Rango stood above Hilda and stared at her. Then he said, "Do you want to walk?" Hilda said yes. Rango walked with his hands in his pockets, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He was sober now, his head as clear as the night. He was walking towards the outskirts of the city. They came to the ragpickers' shacks, little shacks built unevenly, crazily, with sloping roofs and no windows—enough air came through the cracked boards and badly built doors. The paths were made of earth.

A little farther on stood a row of gypsy carts. It was four in the morning, and people were asleep. Hilda did not talk. She walked in the shadow of Rango with a great feeling of being taken out of herself, of having no will and no knowledge of what was happening to her, merely a pervading sense of flow.

Rango's arms were bare. Hilda was aware of only one thing, that she wanted these bare arms to grip her. He bowed to enter his cart. He lit a candle. He was too tall for the low ceiling, but she was smaller and could stand straight.

The candles made huge shadows. His bed was open, merely a blanket thrown back. His clothes were strewn around. There were two guitars. He took one up and began to play, sitting among his clothes. Hilda had the feeling that she was dreaming, that she must keep her eyes on his bare arms, on his throat showing through the open shirt, so that he would feel what she felt, the same magnetism.

At the same moment that she felt she was falling into darkness, into his golden-brown flesh, he fell towards her, covered her with kisses, very hot, quick kisses, into which his breath passed. He kissed her behind her ears, on her eyelids, her throat, her shoulders. She was blinded, deafened, made senseless. Every kiss, like a gulp of wine, added to the warmth of her body. Every kiss increased the heat of his lips. But he made no gesture to raise her dress or to undress her.

They lay there for a long time. The candle was finished. It sputtered and went out. In the darkness she felt his burning dryness, like desert sand, enveloping her.

Then in this darkness, the Hilda who had made this gesture so many times before was impelled to make it once more, out of her dream and drunkenness of kisses. Her hand fumbled for his belt with the cold silver buckle, felt below the belt at the buttons of his pants, felt his desire.

Suddenly he pushed her away as if she had wounded him. He stood up, reeling a little, and lit another candle. She could not understand what had happened. She saw that he was angry. His eyes had grown fierce. His high cheeks, which seemed always to be smiling, no longer smiled. His mouth was compressed.

"What have I done?" she asked.

He looked like some wild, timid animal that one had done violence to. He looked humiliated, offended, proud, untouchable. She repeated, "What have I done?" She knew that she had done something she ought not to have done. She wanted him to understand that she was innocent.

He smiled now, ironically, at her blindness. He said, "You made the gesture of a whore." A deep shame, a sense of great injury overwhelmed her. The woman in her that had suffered from being forced to act as she did with her other lover, the woman who had been made to betray her real nature so often that it had become a habit, this woman wept now, uncontrollably. The tears did not touch him. She got up, saying, "Even if it is the last time I come here, there is something I want you to know. A woman does not always do what she wants. I was taught by someone ... someone I have lived with for a number of years and who forced me ... forced me to act..."

Rango listened. She continued. "I suffered at first, I changed my whole nature ... I..." Then she stopped.

Rango sat down next to her. "I understand." He took up his guitar. He played for her. They drank. But he did not touch her. They walked slowly back to where she lived. She dropped exhausted on her bed and fell asleep weeping, not only for the loss of Rango but for the loss of that part of herself she had deformed, changed for love of a man.

The next day Rango was waiting for her at the door of her little hotel. He stood there reading and smoking. When she came out he said simply, "Come and have coffee with me." They sat at the Martinique Café, a café frequented by mulattos, prize fighters, drug addicts. He had chosen a dark corner of the cafe, and now he bent over her and began to kiss her. He did not pause. He kept her mouth on his and did not move. She dissolved in this kiss.

They walked the streets like Parisian apaches, kissing continuously, making their way to his gypsy cart, half unconscious. Now in full daylight, the place was alive with gypsy women preparing to sell lace in the market. Their men slept. Others were preparing to travel south. Rango said he had always wanted to go with them. But he had a job playing guitar at a night club where they paid him well.

"And now," he said, "I have you."

In the cart he offered her wine and they smoked. And he kissed her again. He raised himself to close the little curtain. And then he undressed her, slowly, taking off the stockings delicately, his big brown hands handling them as if they were gauze, invisible. He stopped to look at her garters. He kissed her feet. He smiled at her. His face was strangely pure, illumined with a youthful joy, and he undressed her as if she were his first woman. He was awkward with her skirt but finally unhooked it, with a curiosity about the way it fastened. More adeptly he raised her sweater above her head, and she was left with only her panties on. He fell on her, kissing her mouth over and over again. Then he took off his own clothes, and fell on her again. As they kissed, his hand gripped her panties and pulled them, and he whispered, "You are so delicate, so small, I cannot believe that you have a sex." He parted her legs only to kiss her. She felt his penis hard against her belly, but he took it and pushed it downwards.

Hilda was amazed to see him do this, push his penis down between his legs, cruelly, thrusting away his desire. It was as if he enjoyed denying himself, while at the same time arousing them both to a breaking point with kissing.

Hilda moaned with the pleasure and the pain of expectancy. He moved over her body, now kissing her mouth, now her sex, so that the shell-like flavor of the sex was brought to her mouth and they mingled together, in his mouth and breath.

But he continued to push away his penis, and when they had worn themselves out with unfulfilled excitement he lay over her and fell asleep like a child, his fists closed, his head on her breast. Now and then he caressed her, mumbling, "It is not possible that you have a sex. You are too delicate and small ... You are unreal..." He kept his hand between her legs. She rested against his body, which was twice the size of hers. She was vibrating so much that she could not sleep.

His body smelled like a precious-wood forest; his hair, like sandalwood, his skin, like cedar. It was as if he had always lived among trees and plants. Lying at his side, deprived of her fulfillment, Hilda felt that the female in her was being taught to submit to the male, to obey his wishes. She felt that he was till punishing her for the gesture she had made, for her impatience, for her first act of leadership. He would rouse her and deprive her until he had broken this willfulness in her.

Had he understood that it was involuntary, not truly in her? Whether he had or not, he was blindly determined to break her. Over and over again they met, undressed, lay side by side, kissed and caressed themselves to a frenzy, and each time he pushed his penis downwards and hid it away.

Over and over again she lay passive, showing no desire, no impatience. She was in a state of excitement, which exacerbated all her sensibilities. It was as if she had taken new drugs that made the entire body more alive to caresses, to a touch, to the very air. She felt her dress on her skin like a hand. It seemed to her that everything was touching her like a hand, teasing her breasts, her thighs continuously. She had discovered a new realm, a realm of suspense and watchfulness, of erotic wakefulness such as she had never known.

One day when she was walking with him, she lost the heel of one shoe. He had to carry her. That night he took her, in the candlelight. He was like a demon crouching over her, his hair wild, his charcoal-black eyes burning into hers, his strong penis pounding into her, into the woman whose submission he first demanded, submission to his desire, his hour.

When Laura was about sixteen, she remembered, she was told endless stories of life in Brazil by an uncle who had lived there many years before. He laughed at the inhibitions of Europeans. He said that in Brazil people made love like monkeys, frequently and easily; women were accessible and willing; everybody acknowledged his sensual appetite. He told laughingly of the advice he had given to a friend who was going to Brazil. He had said, "You must take two hats."

"Why?" asked the friend. "I do not want to be loaded with baggage."

"Nevertheless," said Laura's uncle, "you must take two hats with you. The wind may carry one of them off."

"But I can pick it up, can't I?" asked the friend.

"In Brazil," said Laura's uncle, "you cannot lean over or..."

He also claimed that in Brazil there existed an animal called the chanchiquito. It looked like a very small pig with an overdeveloped snout. The chanchiquito had a passion for running up the skirts of women and inserting his snout between their legs.

One day, according to her uncle, a very pompous and aristocratic lady arranged a meeting with her lawyer about a will. He was a white-haired, distinguished old man she had known for many years. She was a widow, a very reserved, imposing woman, sumptuously dressed in full satin skirts, with lace collar and cuffs neatly starched and a veil over her face. She sat stiffly like some personage out of an old painting, resting one hand on her parasol, the other on the arm of a chair. They had a quiet and methodical talk together about details of the will.

The old lawyer had once been in love with the lady, but after ten years of courtship had not been able to win her. Now there was always a certain tone of flirtation in their voices, but an imposing, dignified flirtation, more like ancient gallantry.

The meeting took place in the lady's country house. It was warm and all the doors were open. One could see the hills. The Indian servants were carrying on some celebration. They had surrounded the house with torches. Perhaps frightened by this and unable to escape the circle of fire, a certain small animal scurried along and into the house. Two minutes later the grand old lady was screaming and contorting herself in her chair, with an attack of hysterics. The servants were called. The witch doctor was called. The witch doctor and the lady locked themselves in her room together. When the witch doctor came out, he was carrying the chanchiquito in his arms, and the chanchiquito looked worn, as though his expedition had almost cost him his life.

This story had frightened Laura—the idea of an animal burrowing his head between her legs. She was afraid even to insert her finger. But at the same time the story revealed to her that between a woman's legs there was room for an animal's long snout.

Then one day during vacation, when she was playing on the lawn with other friends, and had thrown herself back to laugh at some story or other, a big police dog was immediately upon her, sniffing and smelling at her clothes, and he stuck his nose between her legs. Laura screamed and pushed him off. The sensation had frightened and excited her at the same time.

 

A
ND NOW
Laura was lying on a wide, low bed, with her skirts wrinkled, her hair loose, and rouge spread unevenly around her lips. By her side lay a man twice her weight and size who was dressed like a workman, with corduroy trousers and a leather jacket, which he had opened, showing his bare neck, not confined by a shirt collar.

She shifted slightly to study him. She could see the high cheekbone shaped in such a way that he seemed to be always laughing, and his eyes turned upwards at the corners with perpetual humor. His hair looked uncombed, and his gestures were easy as he smoked.

Jan was an artist who laughed at hunger, at work, at slavery, at everything. He preferred to be a tramp rather than lose his freedom to sleep as late as he liked, to eat what he could find at the time he wanted it, to paint only when the passion for work took him.

The room was full of his paintings. His palette was covered with paint that was still wet. He had asked Laura to pose for him, and began the work with great eagerness, not seeing her as a person, but observing the shape of her head, the way it seemed to rest on a neck too small for its weight, which gave her an air of almost frightening fragility. She had thrown herself on the bed. As she posed she looked up at the ceiling.

The house was a very old one, with chipped paint and uneven plastering. As she had looked, the roughness of the plaster and its many cracks began to assume shapes. She smiled. There in the jumbled lines and cracks and churned surface she could see all kinds of forms.