Reading Madame Bovary (31 page)

But there were other temptations and he had to be careful, to maintain a constant alertness. One night he dreamed again about the lake, a terrifying dream of falling. He stood on top of the dry stone wall and swayed; at any moment the stones beneath his feet threatened to dislodge and slide into the dark water so that he staggered, and gasped, and scrambled for a foothold, until at last he woke in a cold sweat, mouth agape.

It was a Thursday morning, and all day the dream stayed with him, the sublime, unearthly shadow of it, so that by evening he was tempted to tell Inez, to dissolve the terror of it in her embrace. There was a moment when, staring down into his whiskey, he hovered on the brink of confidences, but something pulled him back. If he spoke to her as he once did to his wife then the spell of their sexual intimacy might shatter. The risk was too great. It was not part of their compact.

Then, one Thursday, she failed to turn up. He waited for a phone message or a note (a note would have been more like Inez) but, nothing. Had she decided to break it off? Had she become bored with his lovemaking?

In the days that followed he felt years older. Every small pleasure became dulled, his coffee tasted bitter, he missed an important deadline. He waited and waited; he would not attempt to contact her. He thought it might be an aberration and he ached for the following Thursday.

Again, an empty room. The hideous quilt cover, the cheerful travel magazines, the tacky brochure on available movies with special rates for ‘adult viewing'. This time he felt hollowed out with rage. Now the blandness of the room mocked him, recast him into an impotent old fool, and he felt an urge to smash his fist through the cloudy grey glass of the television. What an ugly, futile object it was! He wanted to hurl those brown bedside lamps at the discreetly curtained window and bellow out the insult of his aloneness, of her desertion. He flung open the door of the room with a loud crack and strode out into the car park, over the footbridge and back across the campus to his office, where he drank from a bottle of whiskey he kept in a drawer. The department office was closed, the staff gone home. It was too late to access the files but he would do it first thing in the morning; he would look up Daniel's home address and get her number that way. He would ring her at home and tell her what he thought of her.

Her voice at the end of the phone was beyond disconcerting. He could hear himself breathing heavily, like a stalker. ‘Well?' he demanded.

‘The cancer has returned,' she said, flatly. Her voice was reedy and strained. ‘I can't see you. We have to stop now, John.'

‘The cancer? Where?'

‘What does it matter where?'

There was a silence. For a few deadly moments he had nothing to say.

‘Look, John, I've had this conversation too many times already this week.'

‘I'm sorry. I'm sorry for blundering around like this.' Yes, he was, blundering that is, which wasn't going to be of any consolation to her. ‘It makes no difference to me. I'd still like to see you.' There was silence at the other end of the phone. ‘I can help you,' he said feebly.

‘No,' she said, and her voice was corrosive. ‘No, to be honest with you, John, you can't help me.'

For a moment he thought to say, ‘Yes I can, of course I can help you. I can help look after you. I can drive you around, I can cook for you.' But of course this was absurd. He was beyond the pale. That had been the essence of their arrangement and it was too late now to change it.

‘Daniel will look after me,' she said firmly. ‘It will be a test of his Christian charity.' She allowed herself a bitter laugh, and that laugh was seductive. It flooded him with muscle memory, flesh to flesh, bone to bone. Letter to the Romans.

‘Please ring me,' he said feebly, ‘if you change your mind. If there is anything I can do.'

‘Yes, John,' she said, dismissing him. ‘Thank you for calling.'

Thank you for calling!
How could she say this? How could she patronise him in this way, he who had given her hours of pleasure. How dare she? Again he was enraged. He deserved
more
, he deserved better. Unable to sleep he lay rigid on his bed with taut shoulders and a stiff neck. Into the hollow cave of his mind came an image of her chest, not one but two pale-pink scars, wounds of living tissue that he would press down on, the greying hair on his chest, he would smother all this out of reckoning in an hour of lovemaking. In their room. In the cocoon. One more time, at least. And how special it would be, how loaded with portent, like a loaded gun at their heads. The excitement of it! The excitement of death. He had faced it once before and he could face it again!

He must go and remonstrate with her. He must show her, prove to her that her body still had life in it. He had no rights but he was a man possessed. He had never asked her where she lived but of course he knew, because he had looked up Daniel's file.

He sat up abruptly like a puppet in jack-knife and went downstairs, out to where his car was parked on the street. In the driver's seat he looked in his road atlas and it was easy to find her house, right in the bend of Quakers Hat Bay.

There was little traffic at that time of night and within twenty minutes he was there, parked outside an impeccably maintained Californian bungalow with leadlight windows. The large front garden was paved and there were small flowerbeds in curved shapes, bordered by trimmed boxed hedges and trees in terracotta pots. It was all so very neat; hideously so.

He rang her number. It rang and rang and no-one answered, and yet there were lights on inside. He got out of the car, picked up a pebble and threw it at the front window where the light was on. Then he threw another, and looked around quickly to see if he was being observed. He returned to the car and rang again. This time she answered.

‘Please go away,' she said curtly.

‘No.' He was breathing hard.

She hung up.

He got out of the car again and this time he almost tripped over one of her flowerbeds. The path to the front door was narrow and winding, and although there was a bright moon he was disoriented.

‘
Inez!
' he yelled, thumping with his fist on the front door. He waited. ‘No,' he whispered to himself. ‘
No
.'

For a while he stood there, fuming, waiting for her to open the door. A car shone its headlights directly at him, no doubt some busybody neighbour, and he turned and glared. What now?

It was still early, not yet nine, and he would give her time to think about it, to relent. He would go for a walk and work off some steam and come back in half an hour. On his map it showed a bush reserve at the end of the street and he locked the car and set out down the road to where the bitumen terminated in a clearing. As he drew closer he could see a barbecue stand, some picnic tables and a cluster of moonlit gums that overlooked the water. Without hesitation he strode through the clearing and plunged into the bush, heedless, down a narrow track and into the path of a spider's web that clung to his hair and shoulder. Through the trees he could see the ripple and gleam of water, could hear the swell from a passing ferry as it lapped against the rocks. When he emerged onto the shore he tripped and fell, and steadying himself against a large boulder he grazed his palm and swore. Then, panting and dizzy, he sat on the boulder and pictured himself in her bedroom. It would be upstairs, next to Daniel's, and with thin walls so that sound would travel, and he looked around this room and he saw that it was full of … full of
things
, personal things, little blobs of sentimental meaning, women's things, distractions every one of them; photographs of people he didn't know, knickknacks, cosmetic creams and perfumes, a basket of sweaty linen. And who would he be in this strange room? Where would he fit in? A rutting ersatz spouse who got up in the morning in his shorts and flip-flops and squeezed orange juice? What sadness would inhere in all this, and how awkward he would be, how out of place.

He got up, and his joints had stiffened and there was an ache in his hand where he had grazed it against the rock. He could see the opening of the path only a few metres away, and began his climb, back up to the level of the bitumen. As he approached the grassy verge a pair of headlights swept the road and he looked up to see an old blue Mitsubishi Magna pull into her drive. The form that emerged from it was unmistakably Daniel's.

That night was a long one. By four in the morning he was beyond exhaustion; he felt as if he might never sleep again. I have been abandoned a second time, he told himself. And so soon. For a long time he thought only of their motel room, and relived the act itself, over and over with infinite variation; it had become sacred to him, undefiled. And now she was dying and he didn't even have a picture of her, not even an image on his mobile phone (he had once, like a gauche adolescent, tried to photograph them together naked on the motel bed and she had pushed his hand away). He had nothing to remind him of her, no memento. The nearest thing, perversely, would be the small school Bible that belonged to Alice. It would probably still be in her old room. With this thought he dragged himself off the rumpled bed, feeling as if his body was weighted with lead. He slouched into the small bedroom next door and surveyed Alice's bookshelf. There it was, on the very top shelf, layered in dust.

Back in his own room he sat by the window, the one that looked out to the steeple of St. Stephen's, and settled into the cane chair in which his wife had spent her last day. He opened the Bible and turned the pages until he found the beginning of Romans:
To all
God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints …
And for a moment he could hear Inez's voice, the rise and fall of its sharp, sardonic inflections. But no, it wouldn't do, the text was too abrasive:
For the
wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness …
Paul was passionate but he was a scold: full of rage, of grievance and indignation. Still, he was reluctant to put the book down as if, in abandoning it, he was abandoning his last connection with her, so he skimmed ahead, looking for the first verses of Corinthians. Wasn't there something in there, somewhere, about love? But the tone, alas, was the same.
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the
scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the
wisdom of the world?

Enough. He was too much of an old Roman to endure this stuff and he laid the book on the windowsill and returned to bed. It was almost
5
a.m. He had survived the night. Now he could sleep. And sleep he did, though not for long, and he dreamed again of the lake. The village, the oak trees, the carpet of acorns on the ground, the dry stone wall, everything as before, only this time he wasn't afraid. He hoisted himself onto the top of the wall, dislodging a hail of rock that almost cost him his balance, and he took a deep breath and steadied. Then, with slow deliberation, he extended his arms and dived out over the glassy surface of the water—

He woke. The room was stuffy and he lay there in a sweat, his heart pounding. I am still here, he thought.
I am still here.
He looked at the clock.
5
.
40
a.m. The light had begun to filter in at the edges of the window and the blind hung like a stiff shroud. Well, he would get up, he would get up and wash this night off his skin.

Inside the shower bay he stood woodenly, feet planted apart, and he allowed the merciful wet to envelop him. When at last the water turned to lukewarm he emerged with a towel to stand at the window and look out over the terraced rooftops, shadowy in the dawn light. The street was deserted; frangipani flowers lay along the gutter and a beady-eyed currawong perched on the iron ledge of his balcony. I will just stand here, he thought. The water dripped from his body but he could not summon the energy to move. Then the phone rang and a car pulled up outside his gate. As he reached for the phone he glanced down into the street and in that moment his heart contracted. The car was Inez's. The passenger door opened and Daniel unfolded himself onto the pavement. He had an envelope in his hand and in a quick, deft movement he slid it into the letterbox and climbed back into his seat.

The car pulled out into the empty road.

He still has the contents of that envelope, propped against the desk lamp in his study. It is a postcard, a painting of Monet's waterlilies.

It reads:

Dear John,

Thank you. Thank you for everything.

Love,

Inez

PUBLICATION DETAILS

All stories are previously unpublished apart from the following:

An earlier version of ‘Reading
Madame Bovary
' appeared in
The Best
Australian Stories 2002
, ed. Peter Craven, Black Inc., Melbourne,
2002
.

Two earlier versions of ‘Perfect', entitled ‘Diary of Her Body', appeared in
Scripsi
, Vol.
6
, No.
2
, Oxford University Press, Melbourne,
1990
; and in
Bodyjamming
, ed. Jenna Mead, Vintage, Sydney,
1997
.