Death, Sleep & the Traveler (14 page)

Naked and resting on all fours on the leather divan in the darkness, wrapped in her tawny nakedness as another woman might partially cover herself in the skin of a lion, and resting on her knees and elbows with her buttocks thrust high and glazed as with melted butter, thus she swayed and waited in the darkness for either Peter or me to rise and approach and take advantage of her position on the divan. In a low voice she was crooning an unmistakably serious invitation to Peter and me.

I was the first to move.

When she leaves, when she is finally gone, when she terminates all the processes of leaving and disappears at last, in all this will there be some kind of gain for me? I anticipate no loss, no hours of stunned grief. But what of the possibility of gain? Ursula is leaving me deliberately. Ursula intends to spare herself my distasteful presence, to neutralize my acid with her departure. But Ursula also anticipates enrichment in the unknown life she plans to pursue. Will I also find enrichment when I am left alone? In emptiness will I discover freedom? Will I cry out once again for Simone? Will I write letters and make long
distance telephone calls until at least a few of the women I have known in the past return to me? But more than likely I will write no letters, make no telephone calls, do nothing. More than likely I will leave the enrichment to Ursula. But whatever I do or however long I stand at the window, never again will I commit my life to marriage. On the subject of marriage I share completely Ursula’s sultry vehemence. I am happy to admit our total agreement on the subject of the burning bridal gown, the cigar in the dark.

When I again glanced down to the crowd on the pier, I saw that she was no longer waving but was swinging her handbag back and forth on its leather strap and staring up at me, where I stood at the rail, with a face that was merely fleshly and quite drained of expression. Then she was gone, as though that white ship would never again return to its home port. The baskets of flowers heaped on the deck reminded me of the banks of living flowers in a crematorium. The flames from the engine room glowed on the deck. The first blast of the whistle cut back and forth through my body like an invisible beam. We began to move.

In the darkness and through the open porthole I smelled the scent of orange blossoms, the aroma of dead dust, the smell of lemons flickering on some distant hillside, even a few faint traces of eucalyptus oil floating just beyond the reach of the waves. But when I struggled into
my trousers and went out on deck to investigate, exposing myself once more to the darkness and the wet night air, I realized that we were still two or three days from our next port of call. I stood at the rail only a moment, yet long enough to be discovered by Ariane and to arouse her fear. She emerged from the shadows, she hesitated, she approached, she clung to my arm.

“So you too have those feelings,” she whispered. “I thought you did.”

For answer I drew her abruptly into my dark stateroom, thrust her roughly down onto the disheveled bed and bruised her in the agony of my desperate embrace.

It was dusk when we glided out from among the trees and across the last white slope toward Peter’s house in the country. I heard the sibilance of our skis on the snow, I smelled the resin on the cold air, I heard their laughter as Peter and Ursula made playful stabbing gestures at each other with their bamboo poles. The light of the first stars purled impossibly through the last light of the day, so that in the cold gray atmosphere there was a hint of pink. Ursula lost her balance, thrust out her rump, spread wide her skis, recovered. A single small bell tolled in some distant village where no doubt the cold sexton stood alone pulling the rope, and Peter made clacking noises with his skis on the snow.

“Well, Allert,” Peter said, divesting himself of skis, mittens, ski poles and the bulky knitted sweater that portrayed two angular black deer on a field of white yarn, “it
was a good way to spend an afternoon, don’t you think?”

“I enjoyed myself,” I said, recalling the playful shouts, the flat white hours, the black trees bleeding at the edge of our path. “Going cross-country with you is always a pleasure. Even Ursula becomes animated on these occasions. Is it not so, Ursula?”

She was smiling, our faces were florid, our boots were creaking, our skis were properly upright in the rack against the white wall of the house. We stamped off the snow, we laughed, we put our arms across each other’s shoulders, Peter favored Ursula with a prolonged kiss. When they pulled apart, cold and at the same time tingling, the first few white flakes began to come down.

“So,” I said, glancing into the approaching night, “tomorrow there will be no sign of where we have been today.”

“That’s an oddly mordant remark, my friend,” Peter said. “Come, let’s enjoy some black rum and a roaring fire.”

“Peter’s nice,” Ursula said then, with nothing but internal whim to justify her indulgent non sequitur. “Isn’t he nice, Allert?”

“A little old,” I murmured, thinking of a white chateau, a dark field, a night of ice, “but an excellent friend.”

“But Peter’s in his prime, Allert. That’s what I mean.”

“Well, then, it sounds to me as if Peter deserves another one of your wet kisses.”

“Exactly,” Peter said then, squeezing Ursula’s waist, “but in front of the fire. In front of the fire.”

The animal skins were heaped before the hearth as usual and the fire was high. The jaws of the polar bear into which Ursula had flung a stein of beer one steaming night,
the hide of the tiger that was worn and smooth like a map composed of dust and sand, the long dark silken hair of a water buffalo long dead and headless, there they lay, adorned as usual with small soft brightly colored pillows and the light of the fire. In the large room totally dark except for the fire, the skins and pillows were an island of sensuality in a cold sea, and as usual it was Ursula, rather than Peter or I, who became the waiting castaway on that floating island. She sank into the fur of the water buffalo, she yawned, on her stomach she propped her pelvis on the head of the bear, like a child she smiled into the light of the fire, she sat up in order to accept the thick glass from Peter.

“Schnapps for Allert, rum for you and me,” she said. “But you forgot your wet kiss,” she said, and drew Peter’s mouth down to her own. And I, stretched out on the edge of the polar bear skin, took a few rapid sips from my glass and noted the rough texture of Peter’s amber-colored corduroy pants and the roll of warm flesh between the waistband of Ursula’s ski pants and the lower edge of her black turtleneck sweater. My stocking feet were crossed at the ankles, I wriggled my toes, I saw for a moment the little familiar plug of gold in Ursula’s left incisor when Peter pulled his mouth away in a simulated playful need for breath.

“More schnapps, my friend? Please help yourself.”

All around us the house was empty, filled with shadows and cold beds, drawn blinds, and from the dusty high-fidelity equipment in one of the darkened corners of the cold room in which we lay came the sound of half a dozen
baroque recorders singing with the austerity of artificial birds. I heard the music, I tasted the cold night, I smelled the steam of our outdoor clothing and hairy socks. In the fireplace, which was extremely wide and constructed of stones hauled laboriously from a nearby field, the logs were as large as the bodies of young children and were burning as in the aftermath of some prehistoric fire. Ursula was smoking one of her infrequent cigarettes, the schnapps was strong. I heard Peter’s footsteps in the hallway, above our heads, behind me, and then Peter returned to us and dumped the soft Nordic blanket between Ursula and me and placed the several plastic containers of body lotion on the hearth to warm.

“More schnapps, my friend? Please help yourself.”

Gently Ursula freed herself from Peter’s hand and stood up between us and pulled off her ski pants. Our clothes were steaming. The snow was banking up on the darkened windows, the sprawling fire was casting its hot patina on the skin of Ursula’s bare legs between her woolen socks and the tightness of her scanty beige-colored translucent underpants.

“Well,” Ursula said, tossing her half-smoked cigarette to the waiting flames, “now you see what you have done with your rum and fire.”

She turned and pushed up the sleeves of her knitted sweater. In the shadows the fat crotch of her elasticized underpants looked as if it had just been roughly cupped in the wet grip of an anxious hand. And smiling, pushing up her sleeves, patting her broad stomach beneath the sweater, down Ursula sank to her elbows and knees, lowering her
face to the touch of the buffalo hair and raising her wide tight buttocks to the glow of the fire. She was contracting and loosening the small of her back, thrusting high her shining rump, stretching her fingers, smiling and rubbing her face to and fro on the buffalo hair.

“I don’t know about you, my friend,” Peter said in a low voice with his eyes on Ursula and his head tilted toward the sound of the recorders, “but I find this scene extremely attractive.”

“And I too, Peter. But Ursula should be surrounded by golden tumbling cubs, should she not?”

“You are always jocular, my friend. Always so jocular when it comes to the life of the sexual being.”

“It is true. You have your psychiatric patients, I have Ursula and my sense of humor.”

“But Allert has never been possessive,” Ursula said, filling our pause with the sound of her throaty words and the sight of her backside rotating closer and closer to the heat of the fire, “that at least can be said for him.”

“Tell me,” I said then, changing the subject and feeling Ursula’s strong fingers picking tufts of hair from my right-hand sock, “what is your professional opinion on the inability to believe in the reality of the human self?”