He wanted to kiss her, between her thighs, but she drew away. She seemed to feel his pain; she had grown abstracted; he opened his eyes upon the pale street light that covered her body and thought for a strange moment that he did not even know this woman.
After a while she sat up. She said, “I don’t feel well. I’d better take a bath or something.”
Jules sat up and stroked the back of her neck. He could only say, “I’m sorry…”
She let her head rest briefly on his shoulder, then turned away. When she got up Jules felt for the first time a sharp stinging on his back, from her nails.
He followed her into the bathroom. She turned on the faucets to fill the tub with hot water, steaming the air. There was a murky, satisfying violence in the sound of this rushing water. Jules stroked her slight, slender body, and she stood without responding, staring at the water. He knelt to inspect a yellowish bruise on her thigh. “Did I do that? I’m sorry,” he said. He was genuinely sorry. She turned vaguely to him as if his words were hardly audible to her. Jules felt his heart sink but he said cheerfully, putting his arms around her, “I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again.”
She said nothing. A nerve twitched in Jules’s eye. He was in love and he knew that Nadine loved him. But, standing here, a little blinded by the steamy air, he felt distance opening between them and could do nothing about it. She leaned over the bathtub, away from him. He put his hands around her waist. Obviously her body belonged to him; she had given herself up to him, and yet it did not make much difference. He could not guess what she was thinking about. Love, this gravitation toward unity, this terrible fusion—why did it mean so much?
He was baffled and frightened, thinking of it. Why did it mean so much?
Nadine stepped into the tub, holding onto his arm. She sat awkwardly, as if afraid of falling. Jules looked down at her as if looking at a child, one of his sisters as a child again. “You’ll feel better now. I must have made your skin pretty raw.”
She leaned back. Her body was white beneath the water. Jules was reminded suddenly of a statue of the Virgin Mary he had stared at as a child, imagining he had seen it move. He had wanted so badly to see it move—he had needed a sign of friendship, of recognition. Now he knelt by the side of the tub and pressed his forehead against the rim. He said nothing. Nadine said nothing. They remained like this for some time. He could not think why his feelings for this woman were so violent. Why did he want nothing else except to love her, again and again, when she herself had drawn back from him, accusing him of failure? He did not truly believe in failure, any kind of failure. And so this did not make sense. How could he have failed her when she was himself, the two of them were one, in love? But her body did ache from him. Her skin was sore. His back ached from her raking fingernails. He could feel in her a rising tension, not the tension of love, turning her away from him although she was not looking away.
He looked up at her. She lay perfectly still in the water, her body growing pink from it. Jules tested the water with his finger and said, “Jesus, that’s hot.” She did not look at him. She seemed drugged, in a trance. He believed that she felt what he felt—locked in a desire for fusion, unity, but turned back rudely, baffled. He had not quite been able to believe in her terror but he was prepared to believe in it now. There was a terror in this white bathroom, the gleaming porcelain sink and tub seen at four in the morning, by artificial light. One’s veins might be opened here, drained away by dawn. Should he kill Nadine and then himself, to fix their love properly? But he could not kill her without hurting her; he did not want to hurt her.
“You don’t believe that I love you?” he said.
There was a tyranny in the tension she held between them, making them both victims. They were not free. Nadine lay like a victim in the hot bathwater, a woman in her middle twenties, slender, intense, baffled. Her hair was wild. Tendrils hung down onto her forehead and cheeks. Her eyes were livid, also a little wild, but with a dilated, drugged, stormy look. A rash had broken out along her chin, reddening as if the warm air were shaping it. Jules could imagine the rashes on her delicate skin that his hands had made. Exhausted himself, he felt her exhaustion. The damp air clouded his mind. He could not make out what she wanted or what he himself wanted.
She drew her hands up before her, covering her breasts. She looked down at herself slowly. “You’re thinking of me—that I’m a pig, aren’t you?”
“Nadine, what?”
“You’re thinking that I’m a pig? For all of this? A pig, a slut?”
“Don’t talk like that. You know better.”
She was silent. He wanted to lean over suddenly to kiss her, but there was something still and deathly about her. She had control of the tension between them; it lay in her body. Jules’s head ached with the enchantment he had labored under for so many years, and he saw helplessly that, for Nadine, it had moved on, it could not be reclaimed. The metamorphosis continued. Her face, which had seemed luminous to him the other week, at her home, was now very still, turned inward. She seemed absorbed by wonder.
“What’s happening?” said Jules. “I love you. I don’t want anything to change.”
“You’re thinking of how I am, how disgusting I am,” she said slowly. “Like some little slut of yours. Some Negro woman. You’ve seen what I’m like and now you’ll never forget it.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I always wanted you,” she said in a slow, emphatic voice, as if confessing. “I couldn’t think of anything else. I wanted you, only you. I wanted you to make love to me but not for it to end. I was in misery, wanting you. I walked around the house out there and was in misery while everything was so beautiful, all the things I owned and couldn’t use. There was nothing I could do about loving you, nothing. My body ached. Everything in me ached. I wanted to die, I was sick with it. Did you think women could feel this way? It was heavy, dragging me down. I couldn’t think of anything else. I couldn’t sleep. Everything weighed me down, my body, the air pressing on my body, everything. I thought only of what it would be like when you entered my body, and time stopped for me, my heart stopped, just thinking of it. So now you know what I’m like.”
She was to him a small, solid object, a statue made of some white substance, drawn in upon itself furiously and selfishly, complete. Her words were completions of something, a kind of ending. Jules said, desperately, “But so what? What the hell? What does that mean?”
“I’m a pig,” she said slowly.
“Jesus Christ, what does that mean? A pig! I’ve never met a pig, never; that expression means nothing to me. In all my life I’ve never met a pig in human form, let alone you, never!”
She seemed almost to be listening. But she did not look up.
“You’re exhausted, you don’t know what you’re saying,” Jules said shakily. “I’ve upset you by coming here and staying so long.”
“Yes, I’m upset.”
“It’s natural for you to feel like this. I stayed with you too long, I should have been gentler with you.”
“Yes.”
“And your husband, you’re probably thinking about him. Do you want me to leave for a while, a few hours? Then I’ll come back again and we can talk this all over.”
“You want to leave me?” she said. For the first time in several minutes she turned to look at him. Her eyes were opaque, baffled. He felt a sickness in his body, seeing her so strange. She said, “Do I disgust you, Jules? What are you thinking? Are you comparing me with other women?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you think, I made her commit adultery?—do you think that?”
He pressed his forehead against the rim of the tub again; he began tapping his head against it as if he wanted to smash his skull.
As it was above, so it went below—Jules thought giddily of his jokes and his flightiness, floating upward to an innocent sky, and of his passion and heavy, black,
feverish blood, dragging him down. He was a criminal. His secret was that he was a born criminal. Her body was someone else’s property he had ransacked, but he could not carry it off; he had the power to ruin it but could not escape with it. He had made of Nadine a soiled conspirator in his lust. He knelt on the bathroom tile, trying to think, tapping his head against the porcelain rim. Finally he said in exasperation, “So you’ve committed adultery! So what!”
“I don’t want to think about it.”
“Don’t think about it then.”
“I can’t stand to be awake.”
“You only want to make yourself sick. You’re driving yourself to a breakdown. Why are you doing this?”
They had been together too long. Their intimacy had lasted too long. Nadine lay very still but there was no relaxation in her, no peace. He could feel her tension. It was like madness, gone beyond words or explanations. He had set it into being but could not touch it now, could not change it, as if he were no longer the man she had once desired.
“I committed adultery. I went to bed with you. I called you here, to come here, and all along I knew exactly what would happen,” she said slowly. “I didn’t think of anyone except you. I’m not thinking of my husband. What is there about you, why are you so strange? You might be married, I don’t know. You might have some kind of disease after all. I don’t even care about it. I don’t care where you live or where you work. I don’t give a damn about you but only going to bed with you. Now you see what I’m like. I should die.”
He felt sickened, hearing this. He said nothing.
“You’ve degraded me but I wanted it to happen. Everything is dirty in me, inside me. My mind is filthy. I should die, I shouldn’t live…”
Sickened, Jules got up and left. In the other room he stood perplexed and stunned, not remembering—not remembering where he was, what had happened. He looked out the window. There was always a promise in windows, the possibility of surprise. It was dawn, very early. A few cars had been parked on the street overnight, at the corner his own car was still parked. Escape. As long as he had his own car he was an American and could not die. But the room tugged at him—he had to turn to it, acknowledge it. The sheets on their bed were a mess of wrinkles, stained from his semen, terrible to look at. He felt stunned, hypnotized, by the sight of that bed. What had happened between them could not be undone, and yet she was trying to reject him, trying to end it. How could her body reject him after so much love? He felt the heavy, trancelike lethargy of her body, its lust powerful beyond anything he could feel, a lust beyond his own. He was weak, stunned, by this failure.
He stumbled around looking for his clothes. He was a little blind, his eyes were filling with tears. He had the sudden fear that she would kill herself.
He knocked on the bathroom door. “Nadine? Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you come out now?”
“I will.”
He got dressed. He brought her bathrobe to the door, he opened the door shyly and leaned in. “Here,” he said, handing it to her, but somehow it fell on the floor. She thanked him. He withdrew.
Waiting for her to come out, he paced the room and out into the larger room, depressed by all this emptiness. His brain could not manage in such dim empty rooms. Even the shining floor depressed him. He was too much alone without Nadine. He thought of loving her, he thought of her anguished, dilated eyes, he thought of her saying, Now you see what I’m like. But he did not see, he did not understand. What was she like? What had he seen? He could recall nothing except his own love, his burying of himself deep in her body and his need to stay there, dying in that mindless, suspenseful wonder…but, thinking of her, he began to want her again and the desire was a harmful one.
He heard her in the bedroom but did not go in. He was afraid of offending her, disturbing her privacy. After a few minutes she appeared behind him, dressed.
“Jules?”
“Yes?”
“Are you leaving now?”
“Wouldn’t that be the best thing for me to do? I’ll come back later, when you feel better. After you sleep. Or don’t you want me to leave?”
“Yes, I think you should leave.”
She smiled at him, a meaningless smile.
“Can I see you later today then? This afternoon?”
“I don’t know.”
She came to him and touched his arm gently. Surprised, pleased, Jules leaned to kiss her. His body yearned for her but he did not dare to touch her; he felt that this would destroy her. She kissed him in return, touching his lips coolly with hers. He felt his soul going blind at her touch.
“Nadine, I love you so much. I love you,” he said.
“I love you, Jules,” she said slowly.
But it was as if she had spoken against her will. They stood for a moment staring at each other. Then she said suddenly, “I’ll walk you down to your car. I haven’t been out of this apartment for…for over a day.”
“All right. Good.”
“I’d like to walk out in public with you, on the sidewalk. I think I’d like that,” she said.
He felt that she was hurrying him out of the apartment now, guiding him along. But when he took hold of her shoulders to kiss her she turned her face up to his at once, without resistance. He kissed her for some time, gently. He felt how blind his kisses made her and yet how little effect they had upon her stubborn, hypnotized soul. He kissed her eyelids, to close them. He did not want to hurt her. The sullen morbidity of her words had passed from him, he did not choose to remember them, he put his faith in the magic of love to carry them on—why not, if she stood so obediently to be kissed, allowing him to kiss her eyelids, kiss her blind? Why not? His kisses must have felt to her like gentle moths, butterflies…If this metamorphosis had come upon them, binding them together in love, why not another? Why must there be any end to change? She had loved him violently once and he had the conviction that she would love him again, that her love would be stronger than her revulsion.
“Please remember that I love you. That I think of you constantly,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And I want to marry you. I have to marry you.”
“I want to marry you, yes,” she said.
He drew back from her, uncertain. She tried to smile. Then they went to the door together, Jules with his arm around her shoulders, trying for a certain jaunty intimacy, a casualness. They were lovers. She walked alongside him, pressing easily against him, in a dress of some dark, coarse material, a stylish dress with a sailor collar. Her legs were bare. On her feet were black shoes with knobby heels. He smelled soap, he smelled dampness in her hair. A sense of love rose in him, sickening him with its urgency. At the door he let her pass before him, weakened, feeling absurd.
“I’ll come back this afternoon then,” he said quickly. “Should I call you first?”
“I don’t have a telephone.”
“Yes, that’s right, I forgot. You don’t have a telephone here.”
They went to the elevator. Jules pressed the button; it glowed red. Down. A down button, to take them down to the street. It would be delightful to walk with this beautiful woman on the sidewalk, in public, right out on the sidewalk. Why did that seem so dangerous? He kissed her neck. He kissed her hair. Why was he leaving her exactly? He could not quite remember. They decided something in their words. He had said something, she had replied. If he had not said those particular words, she would not have replied as she had, determining their fate. But he was less apprehensive of her now. He moved his face gently against hers, weakened, loving. He did love her.
Out on the street he saw that the city was waking up. A gentleman in a handsome suit crossed the sidewalk before them, on his way to a car. On another street a car pulled away from a curb. The early morning air was cool, invigorating. Jules glanced sideways at Nadine and saw that she was staring at him. She was shivering; s
he walked with her arms held rigidly against her body. “You should have a coat on or a sweater,” Jules said. “What’s wrong?” She was staring at him so oddly. He leaned toward her to take her arm but she drew away, still staring at him.
“Nadine, what the hell? Why are you acting like this?”
They were walking slowly past apartment buildings, one after another. Spaces of green lawn, expensive shrubs, wrought-iron fences. A man and a woman, dressed for traveling, the man carrying a suitcase, the two of them crossing the street to a large black car. Good. Their intimacy looked good. Everywhere there were expensive cars, which must have meant something, something good, peaceful. But still Nadine stared at him without recognition.
“Nadine?”
She continued walking alongside him, but on the far side of the sidewalk. Then, out of her pocket, she took an object—Jules looked and saw at first a small black purse. Then he looked and saw a gun. She held this out toward him as if waving him away.
“What are you doing? My God!” Jules said, more in alarm for her than for himself, fearful of her being seen. “What are you doing? Nadine? Put that back, hide it!”