Sexus (57 page)

Rebecca came at once to my room. The house was empty. Mona had telephoned, she said, to say that there was another rehearsal on. She didn't know when she would be home.

“That's fine,” I said. “Did you make dinner?”

“God, Henry, you're adorable.” She put her arms around me affectionately and gave me a comradely hug. “I wish Arthur were like that. It would be easier to forgive him sometimes.”

“Isn't there a soul around?” I asked. It was most unusual for the house to be so deserted.

“No, everybody's gone,” said Rebecca, examining the roast in the oven. “Now you can tell me about the great love you were talking about over the phone.” She laughed again, in a low, earthy laugh which sent a thrill through me.

“You know I wasn't serious,” I said. “Sometimes I say anything at all. . . though in a way I mean it too. You understand, don't you?”

“Perfectly!
That's why I like you. You're utterly faithless and truthful. It's an irresistible combination.”

“You know you're safe with me, that's it, eh?” I said, sidling up to her and putting an arm around her.

She wriggled away laughingly. “I don't think any such thing—and you know it!” she burst out.

“I'm only making up to you out of politeness,” I said, with a huge grin. “We're going to have a cozy little meal now. . . . God, it smells good . . . what is it? Chicken?”

“Pork!” she said.
“Chicken
. . . what do you think? That I made this especially for you? Go on, talk to me. Keep your mind off the food a little longer. Say something nice, if you can. But don't come near me, or I'll stick a fork in you. . . . Tell me what happened last night.
Tell me the truth, I dare you
. . .”

“That isn't hard to do, my wonderful Rebecca. Especially since we're alone. It's a long story—are you sure you'd like to hear it?”

She was laughing again.

“Jesus, you've got a dirty laugh,” I said. “Well anyway,
where was I? Oh yes,
the truth
. . . Listen, the truth is that I slept with my wife . . .”

“I thought as much,” said Rebecca.

“But wait, that isn't all. There was another woman besides . . .”

“You mean after you slept with your wife—or before?”

“At the same time,” I said, grinning amiably.

“No, no! Don't tell me that!” She dropped the carving knife and stood with arms akimbo looking at me searchingly. “I don't know . . . with you anything's possible. Wait a minute. Wait till I set the table. I want to hear the whole thing, from beginning to end.”

“You haven't got a little schnapps, have you?” I said.

“I've got some red wine . . . that'll have to do you.”

“Good, good! Of course it'll do. Where is it?”

As I was uncorking the bottle she came over to me and grasped me by the arm. “Look, tell me the truth,” she said. “I won't give you away.”

“But I'm telling you the truth!”

“All right, hold it, then. Wait till we sit down. . . . Do you like cauliflower? I haven't any other vegetable.”

“I like any kind of food. I like everything. I like you, I like Mona, I like my wife, I like horses, cows, chickens, pinochle, tapioca, Bach, benzine, prickly heat. . .”

“You like!
. . . That's you all over. It's wonderful to hear it. You make me hungry too. You like everything, yes . . . but you don't love.”

“I do too. I love food, wine, women. Of course I do. What makes you think I don't? If you like, you love. Love is only the superlative degree. I love like God loves—without distinction of time, place, race, color, sex and so forth. I love you too—that way. It's not enough, I suppose?”

“It's too much, you mean. You're out of focus. Listen, calm down a moment. Carve the meat, will you? I'll fix the gravy.”

“Gravy . . . ooh, ooh. I
love
gravy.”

“Like you love your wife and me and Mona, is that it?”

“More
even. Right now it's all gravy. I could lick it up by the ladleful. Rich, thick, heavy, black gravy . . . it's wonderful.
By the way, I was just talking to an Egyptologist—he wanted a job as a messenger.”

“Here's the gravy. Don't get off the track. You were going to tell me about your wife.”

“Sure, sure I will. I'll tell you that too. I'll tell you everything. First of all, I want to tell you how beautiful you look—with the gravy in your hand.”

“If you don't stop this,” she said, “I'll put a knife in you. What's come over you, anyway? Does your wife have such an effect upon you every time you see her? You must have had a wonderful time.” She sat down, not opposite me, but to one side.

“Yes, I did have a wonderful time,” I said. “And then just now there was the Egyptologist. . .”

“Oh, drat the Egyptologist! I want to hear about your wife . . .
and that other woman.
God, if you're making this up I'll kill you!”

I busied myself for a while with the pork and the cauliflower. Took a few swigs of wine to wash it down. A succulent repast. I was feeling mellow as could be. I needed replenishment.

“It's like this,” I began, after I had packed away a few forkfuls.

She began to titter.

“What's the matter? What did I say now?”

“It isn't what you say, it's the way you say it. You seem so serene and detached, so innocent-like. God, yes, that's it—
innocent
. If it had been murder instead of adultery, or fornication, I think you'd begin the same way. You enjoy yourself, don't you?”

“Of course . . . why not? Why shouldn't I? Is that so terribly strange?”

“No-o-h,” she drawled. “I suppose it isn't. . . or it shouldn't be, anyway. But you make everything sound a little crazy sometimes. You're always a little wide of the mark . . . too big a swoop. You ought to have been born in Russia!”

“Yeah, Russia! That's it. I love Russia!”

“And you love the pork and the cauliflower—and the
gravy
and me.
Tell me, what
don't
you love? Think first! I'd really like to know.”

I gobbled down a juicy bit of fatty pork dipped in gravy and looked at her. “Well, for one thing, I don't like work.” I paused a minute to think what else I didn't like. “Oh yes,” I said, meaning it utterly seriously,
“and I don't like flies.”

She burst out laughing. “Work and flies—so that's it. I must remember that. God, is that all that you don't like?”

“For the moment that's all I can think of.”

“And what about crime, injustice, tyranny and those things?”

“Well, what about them?” I said. “What can you do about such things? You might just as well ask me—what about the weather?”

“Do you mean that?”

“Of course I do.”

“You're impossible! Or maybe you can't think when you eat.”

“That's a fact,” I said. “I don't think very well when I eat. Do you? I don't want to, as a matter of fact. Anyway, I was never much of a thinker. Thinking doesn't get you anywhere anyhow. It's a delusion. Thinking makes you morbid. . . . By the way, have you any dessert . . . any of that Liederkranz? That's a wonderful cheese, don't you think?

“I suppose it does sound funny,” I continued, “to hear someone say, ‘I love it, it's wonderful, it's good, it's great,' meaning everything. Of course I don't feel that way every day—but I'd like to. And I do when I'm normal, when I'm myself. Everybody does, if given a chance. It's the natural state of the heart. The trouble is, we're terrorized most of the time. I say ‘we're terrorized,' but I mean we terrorize ourselves. Last night, for instance. You can't imagine how extraordinary it was. Nothing external created it—unless it was the lightning. Suddenly everything was different—and yet it was the same house, the same atmosphere, the same wife, the same bed. It was as though the pressure had suddenly been removed—I mean that psychic pressure, that incomprehensible wet blanket which smothers us from the time we're born. . . . You said something about tyranny, injustice, and so on.
Of course I know what you mean. I used to occupy myself with those problems when I was younger—when I was fifteen or sixteen. I understood everything then, very clearly . . . that is, as far as the mind permits one to understand things. I was more pure, more disinterested, so to speak. I didn't have to defend or uphold anything, least of all a system which I never did believe in, not even as a child. I worked out an ideal universe, all on my own. It was very simple: no money, no property, no laws, no police, no government, no soldiers, no executioners, no prisons, no schools. I eliminated every disturbing and restraining element. Perfect freedom. It was a vacuum—and in it I exploded. What I really wanted, you see, was that everyone should behave as I behaved, or thought I would behave. I wanted a world made in my own image, a world that would breathe my spirit. I made myself God, since there was nothing to hinder me. . . .”

I paused for breath. I noticed that she was listening with the utmost seriousness.

“Should I go on? You've probably heard this sort of thing a thousand times.”

“Do go on,” she said softly, placing a hand on my arm. “I'm beginning to see another you. I like you better in this vein.”

“Didn't you forget the cheese? By the way, the wine isn't bad at all. A little sharp, maybe, but not bad.”

“Listen, Henry, eat, drink, smoke, do anything you want, as much as you want. I'll give you everything we have in the house. But don't stop talking now . . .
please.”

She was just about to sit down. I sprang up suddenly, my eyes full of tears, and I put my arms around her. “Now I can tell you honestly and sincerely,” I said, “that I do love you.” I made no attempt to kiss her—I just embraced her. I released her of my own accord, sat down, picked up the glass of wine and finished it off.

“You're an actor,” she said. “In the real sense of the word, of course. I don't wonder that people are frightened of you sometimes.”

“I know, I get frightened of myself sometimes. Especially if the other person responds. I don't know where the proper
limits are. There are no limits, I suppose. Nothing would be bad or ugly or evil—if we really let ourselves go. But it's hard to make people understand that. Anyway, that's the difference between the world of imagination and the world of common sense, which isn't common sense at all but sheer buggery and insanity. If you stop still and look at things . . . I say
look,
not think, not criticize . . . the world looks absolutely crazy to you. And it is crazy, by God! It's just as crazy when things are normal and peaceful as in times of war or revolution. The evils are insane evils, and the panaceas are insane panaceas. Because we're all driven like dogs. We're running away.
From what?
We don't know. From a million nameless things. It's a rout, a panic. There's no ultimate place to retreat to—unless, as I say, you stand stock-still. If you can do that, and not lose your balance, not be swept away in the rush, you may be able to get a grip on yourself . . . be able to act, if you know what I mean. You know what I'm driving at . . . From the time you wake up until the moment you go to bed it's all a lie, all a sham and a swindle. Everybody knows it, and everybody collaborates in the perpetuation of the hoax. That's why we look so goddamned disgusting to one another. That's why it's so easy to trump up a war, or a pogrom, or a vice crusade, or any damned thing you like. It's always easier to give in, to bash somebody's puss in, because what we all pray for is to get done in, but done in proper and no comeback. If we could still believe in a god, we'd make him a god of vengeance. We'd surrender to him with a full heart the task of cleaning things up. It's too late for us to pretend to clean up the mess. We're in it up to the eyes. We don't want a new world . . . we want an end to the mess we've made. At sixteen you can believe in a new world . . . you can believe anything, in fact . . . but at twenty you're doomed, and you know it. At twenty you're well in harness, and the most you can hope for is to get off with arms and legs intact. It isn't a question of fading hope. . . . Hope is a baneful sign; it means impotence. Courage is no use either: everybody can muster courage—for the wrong thing. I don't know what to say—unless I use a word like vision. And by that I don't mean a projected picture of the
future, of some imagined ideal made real. I mean something more flexible, more constant—a permanent supersight, as it were . . . something like a third eye. We had it once. There was a sort of clairvoyance which was natural and common to all men. Then came the mind, and that eye which permitted us to see whole and round and beyond was absorbed by the brain, and we became conscious of the world, and of one another, in a new way. Our pretty little egos came into bloom: we became self-conscious, and with that came conceit, arrogance, blindness, a blindness such as was never known before, not even by the blind.”

“Where do you get these ideas?” said Rebecca suddenly. “Or are you making it up on the spur of the moment? Wait a minute . . . I want you to tell me something. Do you ever put your thoughts down on paper? What do you write about anyway? You've never showed me a thing. I haven't the least idea what you're doing.”

“Oh
that,”
I said, “it's just as well you haven't read anything. I haven't said anything yet. I can't seem to get started. I don't know what the hell to put down first, there's so much to say.”

“But do you write the way you talk? That's what I want to know.”

“I don't think so,” I said, blushing. “I don't know anything about writing yet. I'm too self-conscious, I guess.”

“You shouldn't be,” said Rebecca. “You're not self-conscious when you talk, and you don't act self-consciously either.”