David Gillham - City of Women

He gave her an uneven smile that was more interior than exterior, and climbed back onto the mattress. Taking a drag from his cigarette, he blew smoke toward the ceiling.

“I think a circumcised cock is an honest organ. It looks so naked. So unsheathed,” she told him, drowsing her hand over it. “It has nothing to hide. All men should have such an honest cock.” And then she said, “Funny, that word still feels so strange in my mouth.”

“The word or the organ?”

“Ha!” She laughed and slapped her hand against his arm. “If you’re worried, I’ll confess that I’ve come to love the taste of both.”

And now he laughed, too, but she could tell that there was something secret behind his eyes. This was nothing new. She’d seen it many times, and had always been able to ignore it, but wondered now if there would come a moment when that would change. She leaned over and kissed him thickly on the mouth, and he kissed her back, holding his cigarette up in the air. Was it politeness? No ashes or embers dropped on your lover’s delicate flesh? Or perfunctory. Kissing her to the depth required before he could return to his smoking? These were the types of questions with which she battered herself, but only when they were together. Or when they were apart. Just another sample of the minutiae of their connection that would roll around like a marble for days in her brain. Moments before, his mouth had tasted of her. Had tasted of the last place his mouth had been, between her thighs. But this kiss tasted only of tobacco.

AT NIGHT, she came home to 11G. Shelling beans or peeling potatoes for supper, while her mother-in-law fussed over her roast or her chops. The radio masked the silence between them. And when Kaspar came home from the bank, he would kiss them both on the forehead, then go change into a sweater. She was never required to return his kiss, which was a relief, because she feared that she would be incapable of kissing without passion after her hour with Egon. At the table, she was also relieved that she was not required to contribute to the talk. Mother Schröder would yammer on. Kaspar would grunt with polite interest at appropriate moments. So it surprised her one evening when her husband turned his eyes on her and asked, “How was your day?”

She felt caught, as if the thoughts inside her head had just been turned inside out for all to see. As if Egon had suddenly taken a chair at the table.

“ My day?”

A mildly wry smile. “Yes. Yours ,” he assured her.

“It was fine,” she answered, and then waved away the question. “Uneventful.” For an instant, she was convinced that he knew about everything. That she had been fooling no one. But then he only nodded. “Good,” he said, and went on with supper. At bedtime, he gave her the same chaste kiss as always before settling his head onto the pillow. She turned and faced the wall, staring at her memory of Egon’s face.

There was no part of herself from which she forbade Egon. She was unlocked. Undefended. An open gate. In the aftermath she was shellacked in sweat, though the windowpanes were sticky with frost. She shoved the wet strings of hair from her eyes, and stared up into his face, which hung above her like the sun. She felt herself smile in simple reflex. “I want you to tell me something.”

“Tell you?” His face was arranged into an easy, sated expression, but some fragment of caution had entered his voice. “Tell you what?”

“Tell me something no one else knows.”

“There is nothing to tell,” he answered. “I have no secrets.”

“You have nothing but secrets,” she pointed out. “So tell me something.”

“My name is Weiss.”

This was not exactly what she had in mind. “What?”

“My name is Weiss,” he repeated, and rolled onto his back to pick up his cigarette pack, the paper crinkling as he rummaged about inside. “It’s the name that I was born to.”

“I see. So, your name is Weiss,” she said.

“Don’t sound disappointed, Sigrid. That’s an explosive bit of intelligence. Not many know it.”

A breath. “It’s a very sharp name,” she observed, trying to make the best of it. “It sounds like the swish of a saber blade. Weiss ,” she said, demonstrating with a whoosh.

“A Jew’s name,” he pointed out blandly, and lit up.

“No. It is your name.”

“Precisely my point, Frau Schröder.”

She didn’t like it when he addressed her in this way. Didn’t like the scorn it veiled. Perhaps it was her punishment for squeezing a secret from him. So was it her retribution when she suddenly said, “Tell me about your wife.”

He breathed in the question slowly with his cigarette smoke, and then released his response with a frown. “You won’t enjoy this game, Sigrid. I promise you that. You will not.”

“It’s not a game. Only a question.”

No words, only smoke.

“You have nothing to say?” she inquired, drawing the blankets around her. “Or is it that you have no interest in me, beyond what I offer below the waist?”

“Above the waist as well,” he answered in a grimy voice. “You’ve got quite a set.”

It might have aroused her to have heard this a moment before. But now that she was angry, it sounded only crude. She frowned blackly to herself. “Yes. I must have made an irresistible target. Another unfulfilled hausfrau. One among many, no doubt. Stupid in my desires.”

“If you’re intent on torturing yourself like this”—he shrugged—“I can’t stop you.”

“Tell me her name.”

Shaking his head. “Sigrid.”

“It’s a question, Egon. Only a very small one for a mistress. What do you call your wife?”

“I call her by her name.”

“Which is?”

A small breath of concession. “Which is Anna.”

Anna. Sigrid takes the name inside herself, and consigns it to an interior vault. The name of her lover’s wife. “Where is she?” she asked. Nothing. “You have forgotten, perhaps? Now, let’s see… where did I put my wife? Should you search your coat pockets?”

Egon exhaled darkly, then answered. “She’s in Vienna. Her parents are there.”

“How long have you been married to her?”

“Six years.”

“Six years.” It might as well have been a lifetime. It might as well have been a century in comparison to their six frantic months. Six months, one week, and what? How many days? How many hours? How many minutes left? “And does she know?”

“Know?”

“Does she suspect that you so easily slip off your wedding band?”

“I don’t wear a wedding band. I don’t care for symbols of ownership.”

“How convenient for you. And you have children?”

“ Sigrid, ” he says, glowering.

“Should I assume that the answer is yes?”

“I wouldn’t think you’d be in such a rush to assume anything at this point.”

“But you do, though. Have children , that is.”

“I have daughters,” he admitted. “Two.”

“Ah. You see that wasn’t so difficult. A straight answer.”

“How old?”

He was up, out of the bed. His bare feet padding across the crooked hardwood floor. “How old?” she repeated.

“Five and three.”

“And they have names, like most children?”

Uncorking a bottle of schnapps on the battered sideboard, he poured out a glass. Only one glass. “These questions of yours, Sigrid. They have nothing to do with us.”

“No?” said Sigrid, her voice strident.

He faced her, leaning naked against the sideboard’s edge with the drink in his hand. “What we have,” he told her, “is private. Just between you and me. If you must have the words, fine. You know that I love you.”