Praise (20 page)

‘I was wrong. It does matter. It's not right if there's no feeling there.'

‘I don't care if there's no feeling. You can just fuck me, can't you? It doesn't take much, for chrissake. I'm easy to please.'

‘How could you be happy with that?'

‘It'd be better than nothing. I
love
you. You can't just take it away. You can't just say it's over. I won't let you.'

‘Look. It's not over, Cynthia. I'm not going anywhere. I don't want you to go anywhere. I just need things to stop for a while.'

But it went on all night. Cynthia got frantic. Screamed at me. It was a barrage. There was no defence against it. Just a gut dread that told me not to give in. If I gave in, it'd only last another month, another two months, and then it'd be over. Really over. It'd turn into hatred.

I didn't want that.

Nothing was resolved. We slept and woke up and started again.

The days passed. Cynthia alternated between rage and depression. I went for long walks on my own. They didn't help. Long walks were a waste of time. Being on my own was a waste of time. I'd go back to the flat and it'd be like entering a boxing ring. We went round for round. Cynthia threw everything she could at me. I just put my hands over my head and took it.

In bed it was worse.

She clawed at my body, tugged at my prick. ‘It's mine, it's mine. You're not going to take it away.'

‘It's not yours, Cynthia,' I said. ‘It's mine.'

We'd exhaust each other. Sleep. And then when she went off to work I dragged out the old porn magazines and masturbated. Once or twice a day.

Vass came to my door one afternoon. Cynthia was at work. I was watching TV, slumped in the couch.

He sat down and we talked for a while. He didn't look too good. The emphysema was bad. He rambled on about the women he'd known, the ones that'd destroyed him, the one that'd saved him, his wife, his children, the time Jesus Christ came to him in a vision.

I listened. I was looking into my own future again.

His talk ran out.

‘How's that little woman of yours?' he said, finally.

‘She's okay.'

‘No she's not. I walk up and down that hall and I can hear you two at night. Something's wrong. Are you hitting her? I never thought you were the type for that.'

‘Jesus, Vass, no.' I sat up. ‘What makes you think I am?'

‘I hear, I hear. I'm not as deaf as all that. I hear her crying, and I hear her saying, Stop it, stop it.'

‘No. I'm not hitting her. I'd never do that. It's just that things aren't going too well at the moment. I think we might be breaking up. And Cynthia doesn't want us to.'

‘Hitting is no good. It never is. You're a lucky man. You've got it all with her.'

‘I know. It's just not working, that's all. But I'm not hitting her. Honestly.'

But I sounded guilty.

I felt guilty.

It got worse.

There was nowhere for Cynthia to go, nowhere for me to go. We weren't drinking, we weren't smoking anything, weren't taking anything, we weren't going out. There was only us. And Cynthia wasn't going to quit.

Three weeks after the car was stolen I was cooking dinner. Steak and rissoles again. Cynthia was sitting in the other room, watching TV. She'd been quiet for the last couple of days. Lying in bed. Staring at nothing. Scratching her face. Chain smoking. Not eating much. I couldn't rouse her.

I brought the plates out, steaming. ‘Here it is.'

Cynthia looked at it. ‘I'm not hungry.'

‘You gotta eat, Cynthia.'

‘What for?'

She got up and went and lay in bed. I sat down, ate my rissoles. I felt very, very tired. Then I got up, went into the bedroom.

She was smoking, her eyes were red, vacant.

I thought about what I was going to say. I thought I should be angry, but the energy wasn't there.

‘Okay,' I said. ‘I'll give it a try for a while longer. I can't stand this any more.'

She kept smoking.

I got up and went back to my meal. After a while she came out and ate in silence.

I looked at her. ‘I can't promise anything, I'll just try, okay?'

She nodded. ‘I'm going out for a minute.'

‘Where to?'

‘Just somewhere.'

She went. She came back about twenty minutes later with a carton of beer. Toohey's Old. Cans.

That night we got back to fucking. It was a decent, drunken attempt. If I was giving in to her, I thought, I might as well put my heart into it. For as long as I could.

‘I love you, I
love
you,' she said, when it was over.

‘It's a terrible sort of love,' I said. ‘It's gonna kill us both.'

‘I don't care.'

‘It was only my first run, Cynthia. I'll try again.'

‘I'll be ready.'

Next day, after Cynthia had gone to work, the phone rang.

‘Gordon Buchanan?' a voice enquired.

‘That's me.'

‘Detective Terry Kindle here, Valley C.I.B. You reported the theft of a yellow Holden sedan, registration 467 NOS?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, we've found it.'

‘You're kidding!'

‘We do find them occasionally, y'know. It turned up in a street in Albion. It's been sitting there for weeks.'

‘How is it?'

‘Fine. A few dents ...'

‘It already had quite a few.'

‘Oh? Well, we've fingerprinted it, so you can come and pick it up if you like.' He gave me the details, I gave him my thanks, we said goodbye.

I put down the phone.

For a while, things weren't too bad.

If I was trapped with Cynthia, there was no need for it to be all pain. Just as long as I didn't struggle. She was good company. We got on well. It was only when I was very drunk, or sometimes when we fucked, that I understood how depressed I was.

I needed to be alone for a time.

It wasn't going to happen.

Cynthia's next period arrived. Her periods had been irregular ever since the abortion, but this time it was bad. Painful. The pre-menstrual cramps went on for days. And when the bleeding came it was black, clotted and dead. It was wrong. She was worried. I was worried. I kept my mouth away from it.

By that time I knew Cynthia's cunt almost as well as I knew my own prick. In fact, I knew it better. I'd never seen my penis from all the angles. That honour was Cynthia's. She had even discovered a mole on the underside of my balls. I'd never known it was there. It was
her
mole. Maybe it was all hers. Balls, prick, the lot of it.

In which case, her cunt was mine. The whole thing, right down to its dark and dangerous depths. I had four months of exploration behind me. I'd stretched and pulled and poked. I knew my way around. I knew how deep it was, how wide it could go, how far I could suck the lips back into my mouth before it really started to hurt.

Cynthia's cunt was my responsibility. I could tell when something was wrong with it. And something was definitely wrong with it.

It was my tongue that picked it up. It was two or three nights after the bleeding had stopped. We were fucking in the dark. I was down between her legs. My mouth was latched on. And my tongue encountered lumps. Dozens of them. The inside of her vagina felt like the sole of a sandshoe.

I waited until after we'd finished. Then I told her about it.

‘Lumps?'

‘Lumps.'

She sat up and switched on the light, then turned her back to me and examined herself. ‘Oh. Oh yuck.'

‘What?'

‘Look at this.'

She turned around and I got down between her legs. She spread the lips. I looked in. The skin was spotted with what looked like pimples. Small, white-headed pimples.

‘Jesus,' I said.

‘How far back do they go?'

‘Far as I can see.'

She took her fingers away and lay back. ‘What's
wrong
with me?'

I didn't know.

I drove her up to Family Planning the next day. We went to Family Planning for everything like this. They were free. Cynthia wasn't looking forward to it.

‘I
hate
vaginal examinations.'

The doctor won't enjoy it either.'

‘How would you know?'

‘I know. It's all the doctors in the family. Between them they've gone through hundreds of vaginas. When they were interns it got so bad that they'd run screaming from any woman with vaginal problems. There's a lot that can go wrong with vaginas. They bleed, they stink, they exude pus, they collapse, they grow tumours, they fall
out
.'

‘Thanks. Thanks a lot. It's what I need to know. It's okay for men. Men have it all hanging out, ready to look at.'

Which was true. There was only one risk with having exterior sexual organs — they could be chopped off, or crushed, or mangled. The family doctors had a lot of horror stories there, too.

We reached Family Planning and I dropped Cynthia off at the door. I parked and waited. She came walking back along the footpath about half an hour later. She looked upset. She was holding some leaflets. When medical clinics or Social Security gave you leaflets, it was a bad sign.

I opened the door. ‘What'd they say?'

‘They think I've got genital warts.'

I started the car.

Cynthia lit up. ‘I'm sick of this body. Pregnant. Diseased. Why the fuck do I bother?'

‘What happens now?'

‘They'll burn the warts out.'

‘Burn them?'

‘With acid.'

‘Christ.'

‘It's painless. I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about cancer. Warts can cause cervical cancer. They took some tests. I have to go back in a week.'

‘Is it likely?'

‘They took one look at my sexual history and freaked.'

‘Well ...'

‘When I told them about that last period they
really
freaked.'

‘Yes, but ...'

‘And when I told them I smoked, and took the pill, and spent half my life on cortisone, they fucking screamed at me.'

‘Cynthia ...'

‘I'm gonna die.'

‘But what about me?'

‘You'll have to get tested too, I suppose.'

‘What can happen to a man with genital warts?'

‘Cancer of the penis.'

‘Oh my
God:

‘It's a slim chance, I'll admit.'

We drove in silence.

She said, ‘I don't think you should get yourself tested.'

‘Why not? Cancer of the penis, Cynthia ...'

‘They'll just tell you to start fucking with condoms. If I'm going to die I'm not gonna have my last few fucks with condoms. Wait till I'm gone. Wait till I'm dead.'

‘What if you don't die?'

‘Then wait till I
leave
. I refuse to fuck rubber!'

We got home and read the information. The virus was more or less harmless for men, as long as they kept an eye on it. Cancer of the penis was extremely rare. Women were the ones who had to worry. If Cynthia had been infected for long enough — several years — her chances of cervical cancer were pretty high.

Not that she was alone. The Wart Virus had once been a Notifiable Disease. The authorities had hoped to eradicate it. The idea had only been abandoned after it was discovered that up to thirty per cent of the population were already infected.

We waited for the week to pass. From time to time Cynthia got scared. She could feel the cancer breeding inside.

‘It's no surprise, Cynthia,' I said. ‘Look at your life. Even if you don't have cervical cancer, you'll end up with cancer of
something
. You smoke too much, you drink too much, you take the pill, you eat badly, you don't exercise, you've fucked around all your life, you've taken too many of all the wrong drugs and far too many of the right ones ... what chance have you got? Cancer of the breast, the lung, the cervix, the bowel — you're destined for them all. Not to mention heart disease, emphysema, liver collapse, renal failure and most certainly some sort of psychosis. Do you feel any better?'

‘At least I'm not an asthmatic who
smokes
. You'll die long before I do.'

‘Maybe. But I'll go in the middle of the night and I'll go quickly. It doesn't take long to suffocate. You're gonna suffer.'

The big day rolled round.

I said, ‘I'll drive you down.'

‘I'd rather go alone.'

‘Okay. Fine.'

She left. I prowled around the flat. I felt guilty. Fuck, maybe she did have cancer. They'd rip out her cervix. They'd tear out her ovaries. She'd never be able to have kids. And we'd just got rid of one. She might even be
dying
...

She came in. I was watching TV. I looked up. I could see the news was bad. She had a cigarette in her mouth. She walked straight past me into the bedroom. I followed her in.

‘What'd they say?

It occurred to me that a high percentage of my conversations with Cynthia had been like this. Discussions about tests about her body. What'd they say? How'd it go? How bad is it this time?

She pulled on her cigarette, stared at the ceiling.

‘It's cancer.'

I sat on the bed.

‘Cancer?'

‘Cancer. I have to have an operation. They want to burn it out.'

‘They
can
burn it out?'

‘Yes. They said it was in a very, very early stage. They said they were sure they can stop it.'

‘Well, that's pretty good.'

‘Sure.'

She was pulling on the cigarette, staring at the walls.

I said, ‘How serious is the operation?'

‘I'll be in for two or three days. They knock me out, go in with the lasers, then keep me for a while for observation.'