Sexus (15 page)

“Come, come,” I managed to gurgle, “this won't do any good.”

Her sobs redoubled. I knew I had said the wrong thing. I couldn't help myself. No matter what she did—even if she were to kill herself—I couldn't change the situation. I had expected tears. I had also half expected to do this very thing—stroke her hair as she wept and say the wrong thing. My mind was on the goal. If she would get through with it and go to bed I could sit down and finish the letter. I could add a postscript about cauterizing the wound. I could say with honest joy and sorrow mixed—“It's over.”

That's what was going on in my mind as I stroked her hair. I was never farther from her. While I felt the quivering gasps of her body I also felt pleasure at thinking how serene she would be a week hence when I had gone. “You will be feeling like a new woman,” I thought to myself. “And now you are going through all this anguish—it's right and natural, of course, and I don't blame you for it—only get done with it!” I must have given her a shake to punctuate the thought, for at that instant she suddenly sat erect and, looking at me with wild, hopeless, tear-stained eyes, she flung her arms around me and pulled me to her in a frantic, maudlin embrace. “You won't leave me yet, will you?” she sobbed, kissing me with salty, hungry lips. “Put your arms around me, please. Hold me tight. God, I feel so lost!” She was kissing me with a passion I had never felt in her before. She was putting body and soul into it—and all the sorrow that stood between us. I slid my hands under her armpits and raised her gently to her feet. We were as close as lovers could be, swaying as only the
human animal can sway when he is given utterly to another. Her kimono slipped open and she was naked underneath. I slid my hand down the small of her back, over her plump buttocks, wedged my fingers deep into the big crack, pressing her against me, chewing her lips, biting her ear lobes, her neck, licking her eyes, the roots of her hair. She got limp and heavy, closing her eyes, closing her mind. She sagged as though she were going to drop to the floor. I caught her up and carried her through the hall, up the flight of stairs, threw her on the bed. I fell over her, as if stupefied, and let her rip my things off. I lay on my back like a dead man, the only thing alive being my prick. I felt her mouth closing over it and the sock on my left foot slowly slipping off. I ran my fingers through her long hair, slid them round under her breast, molded her breadbasket which was soft and rubbery-like. She was making some sort of wheeling motion in the dark. Her legs came down over my shoulders and her crotch was up against my lips. I slid her ass over my head, like you'd raise a pail of milk to slake a lazy thirst, and I drank and chewed and guzzled like a buzzard. She was so deep in heat that her teeth were clamped dangerously around the head of my cock. In that frantic, teary passion she had worked herself up to I had a fear that she might sink her teeth in deep, bite the end of it clean off. I had to tickle her to make her relax her jaws. It was fast, clean work after that—no tears, no love business, no promise me this and that.
Put me on the fucking block and fuck!
that's what she was asking for. I went at it with cold-blooded fury. This might be the very last fuck. Already she was a stranger to me. We were committing adultery, the passionate, incestuous kind which the Bible loves to talk about. Abraham went into Sarah or Leander and he
knew
her. (Strange italicizations in the English Bible.) But the way those horny old patriarchs tackled their young and old wives, sisters, cows and sheep, was very knowing. They must have gone in headfirst, with all the cunning and skill of aged lechers. I felt like Isaac fornicating with a rabbit in the temple. She was a white rabbit with long ears. She had Easter eggs inside her and she would drop them one by one in a basket. I took a long think inside her, studying every
crevice, every slit and tear, every soft, round bump that had swollen to the size of a shriveled oyster. She moved over and took a rest, reading it like Braille (New York Point) with her inquisitive fingers. She crouched on all fours like a she-animal, quivering and whinnying with undisguised pleasure. Not a human word out of her, not a sign that she knew any language except this block-and-tackle-subgum-one-ton-blow-the-whistle sort. The gentleman from Mississippi had completely faded out; he had slipped back into the swampy limbo which forms the permanent floor of the continents. One swan remained, an octoroon with ruby duck lips fastened to a pale-blue head. Soon we'd be in clover, the blow-off, with plums and apricots falling from the sky. The last push, the drag of choked, white-hot ashes, and then two logs lying side by side waiting for the ax. Fine finish. Royal flush. I
knew
her and she
knew
me. Spring will come again and Summer and Winter. She will sway in somebody else's arms, go into a blind fuck, whinny, blow off, do the crouch and sag—but not with me. I've done my duty, given her the last rites. I closed my eyes and played dead to the world. Yes, we would learn to live a new life, Mara and I.I must get up early and hide the letter in my coat pocket. It's strange sometimes how you wind up affairs. You always think you're going to put the last word in the ledger with a broad flourish; you never think of the automaton who closes the account while you sleep. It's all the strictest kind of double entry. It gives you the creeps, it's all so nicely calculated.

The ax is falling. Last ruminations. Honeymoon Express and all aboard: Memphis, Chattanooga, Nashville, Chickamauga. Past snowy fields of cotton . . . alligators yawning in the mud . . . the last apricot is rotting on the lawn . . . the moon is full, the ditch is deep, the earth is black, black, black.

The next morning it was like after a storm—breakfast as usual, a touch for carfare, a dash for the subway, a promise to take her to the movies after dinner. For her it was probably just a bad dream which she would do her best to forget during the course of the day. For me it was a step towards deliverance. No mention of the subject was ever made again. But it was there all the time and it made things easier between us. What she thought I don't know, but what I thought was very clear and definite. Every time I assented to one of her requests or demands I said to myself: “Fine, is that all you want of me? I'll do anything you like except give you the illusion that I am going to live the rest of my life with you.”

She was inclined now to be more lenient with herself when it came to satisfying her bestial nature. I often wondered what she told herself in making excuses to herself for these extranuptial, pre- or postmorganatic bouts. Certainly she put her heart and soul into them. She was a better fucker now than in the early days when she used to put a pillow under her ass and try to kiss the ceiling. She was fucking with desperation, I guess. Fuck for fuck's sake and the devil take the hindmost.

A week had passed and I hadn't seen Mara. Maude had asked me to take her to a theater in New York, a theater just opposite the dance hall. I sat throughout the performance thinking of Mara so close and yet so far away. I thought of her so insistently and unremittingly that as we were leaving the theater I gave voice to an impulse which I was powerless to squelch. “How would you like to go up there,” I said, pointing to the dance hall, “and meet her?” It was a cruel thing to say and I felt sorry for her the moment it left my mouth. She looked at me, Maude, as if I had struck her with my fist. I apologized at once and, taking her by the arm, I led her quickly away in the opposite direction, saying as I did so—“It was just an idea. I didn't mean to hurt you. I thought you might be curious, that's all.” She made no answer. I made
no further efforts to smooth the thing over. In the subway she slipped her arm in mine and let it rest there, as if to say—“I understand, you were just tactless and thoughtless, as usual.” On the way home we stopped off at her favorite ice-cream parlor and there, over a plate of French ice cream which she doted on, she unlimbered sufficiently to eke out a thin conversation about domestic trifles, a sign that she had dismissed the incident from her mind. The French ice cream, which she regarded as a luxury, combined with the opening of a fresh wound, had the effect of making her amorous. Instead of undressing upstairs in the bedroom, as she did ordinarily, she went to the bathroom, which adjoined the kitchen, and, leaving the door open, she took off her things one by one, leisurely, studiedly, almost like a stripteaser, calling me in finally as she was combing out her hair to show me a blue mark on her thigh. She was standing there naked except for her shoes and stockings, her hair flowing luxuriantly down her back.

I examined the mark carefully, as I knew she wanted me to, touching her lightly here and there to see if there were any other tender spots which she might have overlooked; at the same time I kept up a running fire of solicitous queries in a calm, matter-of-fact voice which enabled her to prime herself for a cold-blooded fuck without admitting to herself that that was what she was doing. If I were to say to her, as I did, in the calm, dull, professional voice of the M.D.—“I think you'd better lie on the table in the kitchen where I can examine you better”—she would have done so without the least coaxing, spreading her legs wide apart and letting me insert a finger without a qualm, because now by this time she remembered that since a fall which she had had some time ago there was a little bump inside her, at least so she thought; it worried her, this bump; perhaps if I would put my finger in ever so gently she could track it down, and so on and so forth. Nor did it appear to disturb her in the least when I suggested that she lie there a moment, on the table, while I removed my clothes because it was getting too warm for me in the kitchen, next to the red-hot stove,
and so on and so forth.
And so I removed my things, all but my socks and shoes, and with an
erection fit to break a plate I stepped blandly forth and resumed operations. Or rather, I in turn had now become aware of things past, such as bumps, bruises, spots, warts, birthmarks, et cetera, and would she kindly give
me
the once-over while we were at it, and then we would go to bed because it was getting late and I didn't want to tire her out.

Strangely enough she wasn't tired at all, she confessed, getting down from the table and solicitously squeezing my cock and then my balls and then the root of my cock, all with such firm, discreet and delicate manipulations that I almost gave her a squirt in the eye. After that she was curious to see how much taller I was than she, so first we stood back to back and then front to front; even then, when it was jumping between her legs like a firecracker, she pretended to be thinking of feet and inches, saying that she ought to take her shoes off because her heels were high,
and so on and so forth.
And so I made her sit down on the kitchen chair and slowly I pulled off her shoes and stockings, and she, as I politely rendered her this service, thoughtfully stroked my cock, which was difficult to do being in the position she was, but I graciously abetted her strategy by moving in closer and hoisting her legs up in the air at a right angle; then, without any more ado I lifted her up by the hindquarters, shoved it in to the hilt and carried her into the next room where I tumbled her onto the couch, sank it in again and went at it with sound and fury, she doing the same and begging me in the most candid, nonprofessional, noncasual language to hold it, to make it last, to keep it in forever, and then as an afterthought to wait a minute while she slipped out and turned over, raising herself on her knees, her head sunk low, her ass wriggling frantically, her thick gurgling voice saying in the English language openly and admittedly to herself for her own ears to hear and to recognize: “Get it in all the way . . . please, please do . . .
I'm horny.”

Yes, on occasion she could trot out a word like that, a vulgar word that would have made her curl up with horror and indignation if she were in her right senses, but now after the little pleasantries, after the vaginal exploration by finger, after the weight lifting and the measuring contests, after the
comparison of bruises, marks, bumps and what not, after the delicately casual manipulation of prick and scrotum, after the delicious French ice cream and the thoughtless
faux pas
outside the theater, to say nothing of all that had transpired in her imagination since the cruel avowal a few nights ago, a word like “horny” was just the right and proper word to indicate the temperature of the Bessemer steel furnace which she had made of her inflamed cunt. It was the signal to give her the works and spare nothing. It meant something like this: “No matter what I was this afternoon or yesterday, no matter what I think I am or how I detest you, no matter what you do with that thing tomorrow or the day after, now I want it and I want everything that goes with it: I wish it were bigger and fatter and longer and juicier: I wish you would break it off and leave it in there: I don't care how many women you've fucked, I want you to fuck
me,
fuck my cunt, fuck my ass off, fuck and fuck and fuck.
I'm horny,
do you hear? I'm so horny I could bite it off. Shove it in all the way, harder, harder, break your big prick off and leave it in there.
I'm horny,
I tell you. . . .”

Usually after these bouts I awoke depressed. Looking at her with her clothes on and that grim, tight, caustic, everyday expression about her mouth, studying her at the breakfast table, indifferently, not having anything else to look at, I wondered sometimes why I didn't take her for a walk some evening and just push her off the end of a pier. I began to look forward like a drowning man to that solution which Stanley had promised and of which as yet there was not the least sign. To cap it all I had written a letter to Mara saying that we had to find a way out soon or I would commit suicide. It must have been a maudlin letter because when she telephoned me she said it was imperative to see me immediately. This shortly after lunch on one of those hectic days when everything seemed to go wrong. The office was jammed with applicants and even if I had had five tongues and five pairs of arms and twenty-five telephones instead of three at my elbow, I could never have hired as many applicants as were needed to fill the sudden and inexplicable vacuum which had come about overnight. I tried to put Mara off until the evening
but she would not be put off. I agreed to meet her for a few minutes at an address which she gave me, the apartment of a friend of hers, she said, where we would be undisturbed. It was in the Village.