David Szalay - Spring

The next Tuesday they had supper at the old trattoria near his flat—a place that still offered a prawn-cocktail starter served in a little stainless-steel dish and flaunted the stale-looking desserts in a transparent fridge. There, they were unable to keep their hands off each other and having made a spectacle of themselves for an hour they walked back to Mecklenburgh Street. As soon as the door was shut he started to kiss her. Still standing in the hall, still urgently kissing her, he lifted her short skirt and pulled everything down as far as her mid-thighs. Still kissing him, she seemed to make a weak effort to stop him. Instead he pulled everything further down, past her wavering knees, until she lifted first one foot and then the other to let him tug the things off. They stumbled into the bedroom and ended up on the floor. It seems to him that what happened next has introduced a permanent flaw into everything that followed. He was moving in a fog of fear there on the floor as he started hurriedly to unfasten his trousers. His view of the situation was mechanistic—it seems strange to him now how straightforwardly mechanistic it was. For what had happened last time to happen once, he thought, was okay. If it happened twice it might start to seem like a problem.

‘Please don’t come inside me,’ she said.

Suddenly still, they lay there in silence for a few seconds. Then she said, ‘Did you come inside me?’

He was not even sure. He had been so preoccupied with other things… ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

She laughed and sat up straight, pulling her skirt into place. ‘What do you mean you don’t know?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe…’

‘You don’t know whether you came?’

‘No.’

She laughed again and said, ‘I can’t believe this.’

‘What?’

‘Is that just normal for you?’

‘No…’

She was shaking her head. ‘I… I never let anyone come inside me. I’ve only ever let one person do that. Someone I was totally in love with.’

For a moment he wondered who this man was. Then he stood up, stumbling in his lowered trousers. ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘You don’t know whether you came ?’ She sounded shocked, on the verge of tears.

‘I’m not sure. I think so.’

‘That’s just weird.’

‘I’m sorry…’

‘What if I get pregnant?’

‘You’re not likely to get pregnant…’

‘Why not?’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean you’re not likely to get pregnant. It’s not likely. From one… you know…’

She seemed to be looking at something on the floor, though outside the shape of light that spilled in from the hall it was too dark to see anything. ‘This isn’t what I expected,’ she said. He put out his hand and touched her. When he tried to hug her she stood stiffly in his embrace. He sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. Leaving him there, she went to the bathroom, evidently to settle the question of whether or not he had ejaculated inside her. He heard the toilet flush, fistfuls of water splash in the sink. When she unlocked the door, she picked up her things from the floor in the hall and went into the living room.

The standard lamp was on and she was standing next to his desk, inspecting her tights. She did not look at him.

‘I’m sorry…’ he said.

Still without looking at him, and in a more quivering-lipped tone than the first time, she said, ‘This isn’t what I expected.’

The wind howled in the dark shaft over the skylight.

He stood there, wondering what to do.

‘I think I’m going to go,’ she said quietly.

However, she did not put on her tights. She was still standing there next to the desk. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something. ‘Don’t go. Please don’t go,’ he said, shocked into total sincerity. ‘Please. That would be terrible.’

*

In the morning she had a shower and, when she was dressed, he said he would walk her to Russell Square station.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’

‘Are you sure?’

She nodded quickly. ‘M-hm.’

He followed her out into the frigid shade of the area, where the dead leaves were veined with ice, and watched her walk up the metal steps. On the pavement, in a flare of sunlight, she waved to him, but when they spoke on the phone the next day, she sounded strange, and vague, and as if her heart was not in what she was saying. He persuaded her to see him on Sunday—she wasn’t free, she said, until then—and then when they spoke on Sunday afternoon, she said she was tired, that she had been working since eight in the morning, and how about meeting some other time?

There was a longish silence.

He said, ‘Look, I want to see you. Today. Please.’

She sighed. ‘I’m tired, that’s all. I look shit. And I won’t be much fun to be with. I’ve got to do some ironing…’

‘Why don’t we meet at your place then?’

‘Well…’ she laughed. ‘If you don’t mind watching me iron.’

‘I don’t mind watching you iron,’ he said.

On the tube he started to wonder whether he should have forced it like that. She very obviously did not want to see him. For a few minutes he loitered in the foyer of Angel station, wondering what to do. Then he set off up Essex Road in the sleet, and when she opened the door he was soaking wet.

Her flat was on the upper floor of a modest terraced house on Packington Street. The downstairs entrance hall was a narrow moth-eaten space full of unloved objects, from where severely straitened steps went up to a landing under a light bulb and the plain front door of the flat.

‘Do you want a towel?’ was the first thing she said.

He said he did, and while she went for one he waited in the hall, and then followed her into the living room.

‘How are you?’ she asked.

‘I’m okay. Wet.’

‘Do you want some wine?’

She had already started on the wine. He took off his jacket and towelled his soaking hair. He had a sense, handing her the towel, exchanging it for wine, that things were not quite as hopeless as he had thought. It had started with the way she looked at him when she opened the door, the way she took a moment to let him fill her eyes. And she was not ironing; there was no sign of the ironing board. Still, when the wine was finished he expected to be encouraged to leave—so he was surprised when instead she said, ‘Do you want to get something to eat?’

‘Sure.’

‘There’s this Indian,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’

‘Fine.’

Leaving the house he wondered whether this was the moment to touch her, whether even to try and kiss her. Something about her posture—hands shoved in pockets, shoulders hunched—prevented him. The pavements shone wetly as they walked. They stopped in front of the Taste of India on Essex Road, under the sopping green awning, and he touched her for the first time as they went in. It was not much of a touch—letting her precede him through the plate-glass door, he placed his hand lightly on her back for a moment. She might not even have felt it through the substantial white puffa jacket she was wearing. Inside, in the tired velvet shadows and quiet, seemingly formless sitar music, they studied takeaway menus. There was a palpable Sunday-night atmosphere. Standing there, poised to take their order, the waiter yawned.