Little Birds (11 page)

She had said to Jan: "When you are finished with your work, I want you to make a drawing for me on the ceiling, of something that is already there, if you can see what I see..."

Jan had become curious, and he did not want to work much longer anyway. He had reached the baffling and difficult stage of feet and hands, which he disliked; they perpetually eluded him, so he often wrapped them up in a cloud of formless swathing, like the feet and hands of a cripple, and left the drawing as it was, all body, a body without feet to run away on or hands to caress anyone with.

He turned to the study of the ceiling. To do this he lay back on the bed next to Laura and looked up with keen interest, seeking the forms she had distinguished and following the oudines she indicated with her forefinger.

"See, see, there ... do you see the woman lying back...?"

Jan rose halfway in the bed—the ceiling was very low in that corner, being an attic room—and with his charcoal began to draw on the plaster. First he sketched the woman's head and her shoulders, but then he found the oudine of the legs, which he completed, pointing the toes.

"The skirt, the skirt, I see the skirt," said Laura.

"I see it here," said Jan, drawing a skirt that was quite evidently thrown upwards, leaving her legs and thighs bare. Then Jan darkened the hair around the sex, carefully, as if he were painting grass blade by blade, and added detail to the converging lines of the legs. And there was the woman, reclining on the ceiling without shame, where Jan could look at her with a tiny flame of erotic response, which Laura caught in his intensely blue eyes, and which made her jealous.

To irritate him as he looked at the woman she said, "I see a little piglike animal very near her."

Wrinkling his brow, Jan looked intently to find the outline, but he did not see it. He began to draw at random, following rough ragged edges and confused lines, and what began to take form was a dog who was climbing over the woman, and, with one last ironic stroke of the charcoal, he drew in the dog's knifelike sex almost touching the woman's pubic hair.

Laura said, "I see another dog."

"I don't see it," said Jan, and he lay back fully on the bed to admire his drawing, while Laura stood up and began to draw a dog that was climbing over Jan's dog from behind, in the most classical of poses, his shaggy head of hair buried in the other's back as if he were devouring it.

Then with the charcoal Laura began to search for a man. At all cost she wanted a man in this picture. She wanted a man to look at while Jan was looking at the woman with her skirt raised. She began to draw, cautiously, for the lines could not be invented, and if they wavered too much and too faithfully and according to the contours of the plaster, she would have a tree, or a bush, or a monkey. But slowly the man's torso emerged. True, he was legless, and his head was small, but all this was amply compensated for by the largeness of his sex, which was quite obviously in an aggressive mood as he watched the dogs coupling almost on top of the reclining woman.

And then Laura was satisfied and lay back. They both looked at the drawing, laughing, and as they did so, Jan with his big hands still full of drying paint, began to explore under her skirt as if he were drawing, molding the contours with a pencil, touching each line amorously, very gradually traveling
up the legs, making sure of having caressed every region and of having gone around every curve.

Laura's legs were half pressed together like the legs of the woman on the ceiling, toes pointed like a ballet dancer's, so when Jan's hand reached her thighs and wanted to be allowed between them, he had to part them with a little force. Laura was nervously resisting, as if she did not want to be anything but the woman on the ceiling, merely exposed, the sex closed, the legs rigid. Jan labored to melt this rigidity, this firmness, and he set about doing it with utmost gentleness and persistence, making magic circles with his fingers on the flesh, as if he could make the blood turn in eddies a little faster, and then yet a little faster.

As Laura continued to look at the woman, she opened her legs. Something touched her hips just as the woman's hips were touched by the stiffened sex of the dog, and she felt as if the dogs were coupling right over her. Jan saw that she was not feeling him but the picture. He shook her with anger, and, as if to punish her he took her with such long, lasting, stubborn emphasis that until she cried to be delivered he did not stop ploughing her. By that time neither one was looking at the ceiling. They were tangled in the bedclothes, halfcovered, legs and heads entwined. Thus they fell asleep, and the paints dried on the palette.

Fay had been born in New Orleans. When she was sixteen she was courted by a man of forty whom she had always liked for his aristocracy and distinction. Fay was poor. Albert's visits were events to her family. For him their poverty was hastily disguised. He came very much like the liberator, talking about a life Fay had never known, at the other end of the city.

When they were married, Fay was installed like a princess in his house, which was hidden in an immense park. Handsome colored women waited on her. Albert treated her with extreme delicacy.

The first night he did not take her. He maintained that this was proof of love, not to force oneself upon one's wife, but to woo her slowly and lingeringly, until she was prepared and in the mood to be possessed.

He came to her room and merely caressed her. They lay enveloped in the white mosquito netting as within a bridal veil, lay back in the hot night fondling and kissing. Fay felt languid and drugged. He was giving birth to a new woman with every kiss, exposing a new sensibility. Afterwards, when he left her, she lay tossing and unable to sleep. It was as if he had started tiny fires under her skin, tiny currents which kept her awake.

She was exquisitely tormented in this manner for several nights. Being inexperienced, she did not try to bring about a complete embrace. She yielded to this profusion of kisses in her hair, on her neck, shoulders, arms, back, legs ... Albert took delight in kissing her until she moaned, as if he were now sure of having awakened a particular part of her flesh, and then his mouth moved on.

He discovered the trembling sensibility under the arm, at the nascence of the breasts, the vibrations that ran between the nipples and the sex, and between the sex mouth and the lips, all the mysterious links that roused and stirred places other than the one being kissed, currents running from the roots of the hair to the roots of the spine. Each place he kissed he worshiped with adoring words, observing the dimples at the end of her back, the firmness of her buttocks, the extreme arch of her back, which threw her buttocks outwards—"like a colored woman's," he said.

He encircled her ankles with his fingers, lingered over her feet, which were perfect like her hands, stroked over and over again the smooth statuesque lines of her neck, lost himself in her long heavy hair.

Her eyes were long and narrow like those of a Japanese woman, her mouth full, always half-open. Her breasts heaved as he kissed her and marked her shoulder's sloping line with his teeth. And then as she moaned, he left her, closing the white netting around her carefully, encasing her like a treasure, leaving her with the moisture welling up between her legs.

One night, as usual, she could not sleep. She sat up in her clouded bed, naked. As she rose to look for her kimono and slippers a tiny drop of honey fell from her sex, rolled down her leg, stained the white rug. Fay was baffled at Albert's control, his reserve. How could he subdue his desire and sleep after these kisses and caresses? He had not even completely undressed. She had not seen his body.

She decided to leave her room and walk until she could become calm again. Her entire body was throbbing. She walked slowly down the wide staircase and out into the garden. The perfume of the flowers almost stunned her. The branches fell languidly over her and the mossy paths made her footsteps absolutely silent. She had the feeling that she was dreaming. She walked aimlessly for a long while. And then a sound startled her. It was a moan, a rhythmic moan like a woman's complaining. The light from the moon fell there between the branches and exposed a colored woman lying naked on the moss and Albert over her. Her moans were moans of pleasure. Albert was crouching like a wild animal and pounding against her. He, too, was uttering confused cries; and Fay saw them convulsed under her very eyes by the violent joys.

Neither one saw Fay. She did not cry out. The pain at first paralyzed her. Then she ran back to the house, filled with all the humility of her youth, of her inexperience; she was tortured with doubts of herself. Was it her fault? What had she lacked, what had she failed to do to please Albert? Why had he had to leave her and go to the colored woman? The savage scene haunted her. She blamed herself for falling under the enchantment of his caresses and perhaps not acting as he wanted her to. She felt condemned by her own femininity.

Albert could have taught her. He had said he was wooing her ... waiting. He had only to whisper a few words. She was ready to obey. She knew he was older and she innocent. She had expected to be taught.

That night Fay became a woman, making a secret of her pain, intent on saving her happiness with Albert, on showing wisdom and subtlety. When he lay at her side she whispered to him, "I wish you would take your clothes off."

He seemed startled, but he consented. Then she saw his youthful, slim body at her side, with his very white hair gleaming, a curious mingling of youth and age. He began to kiss her. As he did so her hand timidly moved towards his body. At first she was frightened. She touched his chest. Then his hips. He continued to kiss her. Her hand reached for his penis, slowly. He made a movement away from it. It was soft. He moved away and began to kiss her between the legs. He was whispering over and over again the same phrase, "You have the body of an angel. It is impossible that such a body should have a sex. You have the body of an angel."

The anger swept over Fay like a fever, an anger at his moving his penis away from her hand. She sat up, her hair wild about her shoulders, and said, "I am not an angel, Albert. I am a woman. I want you to love me as a woman."

Then came the saddest night Fay had ever known, because Albert tried to possess her and he couldn't. He led her hands to caress him. His penis would harden, he would begin to place it between her legs, and then it would wilt in her hands.

He was tense, silent. She could see the torment on his face. He tried many times. He would say, "Just wait a little while, just wait." He said this so humbly, so gently. Fay lay there, it seemed to her, for the whole of the night, wet, desirous, expectant, and all night he made half finished assaults on her, failing, retreating, kissing her as if in atonement. Then Fay sobbed.

This scene was repeated for two or three nights, and then Albert no longer came to her room.

And almost every day Fay saw shadows in the garden, shadows embracing. She was afraid to move from her room. The house was completely carpeted and noiseless, and as she walked up the stairs once she caught sight of Albert climbing behind one of the colored girls and running his hand under her voluminous skirt.

Fay became obsessed with the sounds of the moaning. It seemed to her that she heard it continuously. Once she went to the colored girls' rooms, which were in a separate little house, and listened. She could hear the moans she had heard in the park. She broke into tears. A door opened. It was not Albert who came out but one of the colored gardners. He found Fay sobbing there.

Eventually Albert took her, under the most unusual circumstances. They were going to give a party for Spanish friends. Although she seldom shopped, Fay went to the city to get a particular saffron for the rice, a very extraordinary brand that had just arrived on a ship from Spain. She enjoyed buying the saffron, freshly unloaded. She had always liked smells, the smells of the wharves, and warehouses. When the little packages of saffron were handed to her, she tucked them in her bag, which she carried against her breast, under her arm. The smell was powerful, it seeped into her clothes, her hands her very body.

When she arrived home Albert was waiting for her. He came towards the car and lifted her out of it, playfully, laughing. As he did so, she brushed with her full weight against him and he exclaimed, "You smell of saffron!"

She saw a curious brilliance in his eyes, as he pressed his face against her breasts smelling her. Then he kissed her. He followed her into her bedroom, where she threw her bag on the bed. The bag opened. The smell of saffron filled the room. Albert made her lie on the bed, fully dressed, and without kisses or caresses, took her.

Afterwards he said happily, "You smell like a colored woman." And the spell was broken.

The illumined skyscrapers shine like Christmas trees. I have been invited to stay with rich friends at the Plaza. The luxury lulls me, but I lie in a soft bed sick with ennui, like a flower in a hothouse. My feet rest on soft carpets. New York gives me a fever—the great Babylonian city.

I see Lillian. I no longer love her. There are those who dance and those who twist themselves into knots. I like those who flow and dance. I will see Mary again. Perhaps this time I will not be timid. I remember when she came to Saint-Tropez one day and we met casually at a cafe. She invited me to come to her room in the evening.

My lover, Marcel, had to go home that night; he lived quite far away. I was free. I left him at eleven o'clock and went to see Mary. I was wearing my flounced Spanish cretonne dress and a flower in my hair, and I was all bronzed by the sun and feeling beautiful.

When I arrived, Mary was lying on her bed coldcreaming her face, her legs and her shoulders because she had been lying on the beach. She was rubbing cream into her neck, her throat—she was covered with cream.

This disappointed me. I sat at the foot of her bed and we talked. I lost my desire to kiss her. She was running away from her husband. She had married him only to be protected. She had never really loved men but women. At the beginning of her marriage, she had told him all sorts of stories about herself that she should not have told him—how she had been a dancer on Broadway and slept with men when she was short of money; how she even went to a whorehouse and earned money there; how she met a man who fell in love with her and kept her for a few years. Her husband never recovered from these stories. They awakened his jealousy and doubts, and their life together had become intolerable.