The Avignon Quintet (116 page)

“Grubby and crow’s-footed, as you see.”

He said, “Not for long. How tired are you? I have told the hotel hairdresser to stand by for breakfast-time.”

“Bless you. That would be marvellous.”

“But first I must tell you my real news – before you go off to sleep. Constance, we have managed to get Aubrey on to an exchange list of badly wounded prisoners of war – fifty German against fifty English. They will come here in a week’s time. Once here he can detach himself and we must see that he gets medical treatment – whatever is needed for his condition. This is where you come in. I have his whole dossier now; you will be able to study it in detail and judge. Are you listening?”

“Of course I’m listening,” she said indignantly. “I am bowled over, that is all. What a miracle!”

She had planned to call back at her flat but it was not to be thus; the hour was against them. Heavy fog and a dirty white light did nothing to enhance the beauty of the lakeside town they were approaching with suitable caution. There was no traffic, fortunately, but they were obliged to hoot a warning on the curves of the hills – a sound which echoed dolefully on their ears. They were moving towards the outer suburbs now among green foothills still partly encumbered with fresh snow. She had an attack of yawns which made him smile. “Poor Constance!” he commiserated. “You could sleep for a month – and so you shall. But for today …” He pointed a long forefinger at the clock on the dashboard which said four o’clock. “We have fallen askew; nothing will start before six-thirty now. The best would be to come back to my suite – you know how big it is. I can give you a whole small flat to yourself, bathroom and all. Have you a change of clothes with you? Very well, then wash and have a nap. This afternoon you can go down to the hairdresser and – well, anything you feel up to. I have some mail for you, too, which is also in my room. What do you say?”

“And Aubrey? When will he get here?” The very words filled her with amazement, as if she had not fully realised the meaning they conveyed as yet. The image of Sam and Aubrey walking arm-in-arm over the bridge at Avignon came back to her like some ancient yellowed snapshot found at the bottom of a trunk. “I can’t take it in,” she said again and again, and then yawning fell into a deep slumber which only the sudden switching off of the motor eased into dazed wakefulness. They were at the hotel already and her companion was ringing the night bell. A sleepy hall porter opened to them and took their possessions; in the lift she leaned against Affad, almost asleep again, which gave him an excuse to put an arm about her shoulders and guide her towards his suite. Once there they explored the adjacent rooms which he had never bothered to investigate. They were sumptuous double rooms each with a bathroom which was still packed with toilet articles, soaps and scents and oils which were part of the hotel propaganda of the day. “I’ll take this one,” she said, relieving him of her case. “And I shall have a long bath and clean-up; then I’ll come
chez vous
if you promise to be kind to me and not too violent. I need cherishing.” It touched him to the heart – her disorder and grubbiness. “I understand you,” he said gravely while she looked at him carefully, keenly with her fine eyes. She was actually asking herself, “What
is
it about short-sighted men that I find so attractive? And these long cervine heads … ”But she went on sternly, as if to warn him against her inadequacy. “You see, I can’t love any more; like someone with prolapse or hernia, I’m forbidden to handle heavy objects – all the mysterious symbols of attachment, heavy metaphysical baggage. I am a simple junior psychiatrist, a sorcerer’s apprentice. A devil’s advocate …” she tailed away into yet another yawn.

“I am demanding nothing of you,” he said, though he knew this to be untrue. He was irritated by her attitude.

“I know,” she said. “Sorry to be prosy. It’s a poor return for your thoughtfulness. It’s fatigue and the feeling of unreality – all that hot water and soap after my usual hip bath and a boiling kettle.”

“I am going to doze a little,” he said, though he knew himself to be far too excited to sleep. Constance nodded her approval. “Maybe I will too, in my bath,” she said.

It was marvellous to hear the swish of the hot water into her bath, and to finger all the toilet delicacies on the shelves. She would have liked to use everything, all at once in one terrific and wasteful splurge, but of course it would have been to no purpose; the oils and soaps cancelled each other out. Nevertheless she sank sighing down in a nest of violet bubbles, submerged completely until all she could hear was the thick drumming of the water as it rushed into the bath. She washed her hair, so badly in need of the shears, and wrapped it in a towel before falling magistrally asleep in the warmth, her head against the back of the bath. Such sleep – of the very bones it would seem – no opiate could have procured for her, and diminishing the hot flow to a steady trickle she relaxed as if for eternity.

Affad, too, was weary, for he had had no sleep while waiting at the frontier post – simply a fugitive doze in the back of the car. Now he changed into a thick winter dressing-gown and turned in, reading for a few moments by the light of his bedside lamp. For how long he did not know, but he woke with a jolt to find his bedside clock showing six, and the yellow dawn light over the lake gradually increasing in strength. There was no sign of Constance and he thought it probable that she had also taken to her bed in one of the two spare rooms of the suite. He would not have disturbed her for worlds. Then he heard the annoying and persistent sound of the overflow running in her bathroom. He listened to it for a long moment, trying to decide what it might signify. Had she left the tap on and gone to bed? Had she gone to sleep in the bath, oblivious to the running water? Perhaps he should investigate and turn it off? He allowed curiosity and anxiety to master his disinclination and gently opened the bathroom door to see what was the matter. But unexpectedly she had crawled out of the bath and on to the wide table – the masseur’s settee so to speak – after wrapping herself in the heavy white burnous of towelling provided by the hotel. White in a white decor, she slept quietly, her head still rolled up into a seashell shape. Her lips were parted on the faintest suggestion of a half-smile and she heard nothing of his stealthy approach. In all that whiteness and steam he tiptoed to close the tap, and was turning away to leave when he noticed the blood flowing down from the couch, from the half-opened gown, the half-opened legs – a red pool into which he had inadvertently trodden with his bare foot and printed the tiles. What awakened her was the sudden cessation of the noise from the bath, and dimly through half-opened eyes, and with a half-awakened mind, she saw that he was there and held out a hand to him in a gesture of sympathy which was a pure fatality, for he approached her now and pressed her, all warm and snuggly, in his arms. “O God!” she groaned. “I’m bleeding. It’s too soon.” But the gradual strengthening of his embrace was accompanied not only by kisses, warm and shocking in their precision, but the excited whisper: “Bleed! Thank you, Constance. Bleed!” He was overwhelmed with gratitude for he realised that it was for him, this dark menstrual flow; and turning her slightly to depress her legs and pull her downwards towards him he entered her softly, circumspectly, disregarding her faint mewing protests, which soon subsided as she quietly opened herself to him, profoundly and completely, made herself the slave of his lust in a way that had never before happened to her. Where, she wondered, had she acquired the experience to react so absolutely? It was not enough to tell herself that it was simply that she realised herself to be deeply in love with him. He stood there bending over her for a long moment, doing no more than kiss her, embrace her. He was inside her but he did not move. He waited in deliberate cunning for her to stir the first; he waited for the suspense to become intolerable. “You will get covered in blood!” she said at last to disguise the movement which took possession of her loins with a mock-attempt to rise and disengage. But now he had begun the fateful rhythm which joined their breaths to the universal pattern of breath. She tried to protest to herself, telling herself that this must not be; but he only drove his slender horn ever deeper into her.

Even now she felt called upon to assert some of her feminine independence, to assert a loving domination over him by her sheer physical strength. She decided that she would force him to a climax first by the sheer strength of her young animal control, the strength of her sphincters; and he felt the challenge as she seized him for it summoned up all his own strength and litheness, his defences against a premature dispersal of force. “I see you are smiling,” he said between shortened breaths, while she replied “Yes,” punctured with little gasps, adding, “You will give in first.” He shook his head: “No.” Still she smiled, and he closed his eyes in agony and put his head on one side. “Please!” Constance said boastfully, “My sphinxes are strong and in good repair. I
order
you to come.” He fell forward under the discharge of her kisses, proud now at her victory and keen to share it. It was only some time later that she knew that he had given her the victory which he would have been quite capable of forcing upon her. But now she felt wildly exultant. They lay exhausted in all that blood and steam like stricken martyrs to human bliss. She had known it all along, she had known that it would be like this, that he would be like this; why had she closed her mind to it and stayed deliberately in Avignon, away from temptation? Paradoxically, to remain faithful to Sam! The thought filled her with astonishment – how old-fashioned the gesture seemed!

“I can see nothing,” he said, blinded by the steam, “even your face is dim, like a wet water-colour. And I have printed the tiles all over with my bare feet – your blood, Constance.” He refilled the bath once more, carefully hanging up his own wrap, and stepped into it to lie at ease, deeply thoughtful, watching the filaments of dark blood wash off his skin and hang in the warm water before dissolving. “I feel like Petronius.” But she was appalled by the mess, and had started taking measures to clean it up with damp towels, unwilling that the room service people should see it. “Come,” he said. “It’s their job, Constance. Come in here with me, it’s not too hot for you.” It was something of a jam but somehow she managed amidst much laughter to squeeze herself beside him and to shrink down sufficiently far to have the water level up to her neck. They were like eels in a jar. An enormous depression suddenly seized hold of him, and she noticed with a passionate concern which she was rather ashamed of showing and said, “O, what is it? What has happened, have I displeased you?”

He shook his head and said, “No. I have an overwhelming desire to make you pregnant – it’s crazy. I have not slept with anyone for several years and I wasn’t really prepared for you. I thought I was, I lived on hopes as you must feel all too clearly. But I am in disarray. You have scattered everything to the winds. I feel numb, dead, like a mummy. Can you bring me back? I doubt it.”

“What happened the last time?” He smiled sadly, but did not answer. Then: “In Alexandria someone who is quite continent, apparently uninterested in sex, causes alarm and disquiet. In Arabic they say, ‘He has a penis with three heads’, and nobody can use it – that is the sense.”

“Am I too young for you?”

“Even if you were, what difference? This thing!” He pressed his fingers upon his body in the vague region of his heart. She took them and placed them upon her own hot cheeks. “So you wished to anchor me to my loom and spoil a promising medical career?” Still troubled he was able to reply, “I could, yes.”

She lay there for a long time, saying nothing, stretched beside him like a young lioness, one hand lying possessively upon his article, cupping the sinister-seeming scrotum like a nest-tumbled bird gathered up. Soft as a cloud her spirit started pouring into his and she felt, like a ship answering a shift of wind, the mast rise into the sky of his unrealised desire. But he had not finished quite for he said, “But sperm can be a poison if it is not fresh, or poorly documented, or sick like the sperm of deteriorated schizophrenics and others; undue retention can cause illness, brain fever, mind-squeeze, one can witness this in hypocritical cultures based on puritanism like yours. Sperm needs to be cultivated, it is really riches, money in its physical aspect, the girl should all the time be making more and more, manipulating the scrotum, caressing it, counting her change. She must feel it psychically coming down the urethra drop by drop, she must welcome and husband it, and let the parched womb rush at it, unleashing the ova like a pack of hungry wolves. They must both act towards each other with the highest degree of conscious effort; the more they render the orgasm conscious the deeper in phase they will be, thus the purer the child and the more harmonious the race. This takes so long to express but there is no mystery about it – real women have always known it. When a culture starts going downhill the first victim is the quality of the fucking and the defective documentation of the sperm – by documentation I mean oxygen, just lack of oxygen, which is race-knowledge, genetic nous.”

Half-sleeping now in each other’s arms, their desires prospering with every breath, he whispered on, telling her about the history of sex, why it had always elicited fear and an exemplary piety. It was an engine fuelled by the mind and the coarse manifold of sperm which was needed by the thirsty soil of the womb. Alone the man could do nothing, alone the woman could not resolve the dilemma of her earthly needs. And this was the base of thought and feeling – in every order of perception. The primal vision of man and woman, the primal fig leaf, the primal asterisk – they dwelt in this domain of high-tension wires whose fearful fragility was manifest every time a kiss went astray or a desiring look missed its target. “It’s terrible; we can do nothing without each other. Each is the other’s fatality – you with your little handbag full of Easter eggs and farthings, but attached to another, and over which you have only temporary and fleeting control: instead of having it always near, on you like a real handbag, full of powder and lipstick and French letters; and then me, a sleepwalker from the beginning of history, mesmerised by your two galactic bubs, the spring of eternal youth, which gave me my first drink on earth and comforted me from the assault of light and sound, and the agony of trying out a new stomach and lungs. Mama!”