William Vollmann - The Atlas

And yet love and friendship were not always skulls with no minds. There had been that wife so gentle and sunny in Key West (no matter that she hesitated to meet him again). There had been the one in Bangkok. As for the others, could there be any whose recollection he'd ever fail to praise? Their tears and reproaches, silences, farewells, laughter and whispered words were marked on the atlas pages like nations. The ones who'd loved him still and the ones who'd sent him away, he loved them all so much that it stopped his breath. Proud of them, grateful he was, to each from the very first who'd flashed her young head, telling him no and not yet and not anymore while she ran her fingers through her long blonde hair, whose absence she now concealed with wigs, to the last one, the quiet one, the one they'd exultantly warned him was mysterious. She was the one who told him that anytime he wanted to die she would help him by strangling or stabbing as he preferred, after which she'd bury him in a hole. She was very practical and had killed before. She had dark hair which she sometimes braided; and he loved to take a braid in his hand, lean down and kiss it. Her pale oval face had a delicious odor. Her big hand would reach for his own and lift it to her lips. Then she'd kiss and lick and suck the back of his hand. He could feel her hot wet tongue on his skin. Sometimes they came together mouth to mouth and her tongue would go inside him and she'd hold him tight and stroke his hair. They held hands for hours. He had fallen in love and told her so. She said she loved him. She said: I'm sorry I'm such a shitty lover. — That was because she wouldn't fuck him anymore. Fuck was the word she used. She'd taught her little son and daughter to say fuck and dick and cunt. On her ancient car, whose transmission was senile, whose first gear was dead, whose front passenger seat consisted of the floor, on which her lesbian friends sometimes coupled— on this car of hers, which she loved, were painted a devil and a woman transacting cunnilingus. An old hippie walked by and muttered: Wow, it's flashback time! — The mysterious woman liked girls, and would sometimes bring him to strip bars, saying: That one's really horrible! or: That girl is so beautiful I want to eat her cunt! Look at her pretty cunt! Do you want to fuck her, too? — Sure, he always said. I'd do her. — And he drank his beer. The girl on stage stuck her rear out at them, bent over and studied them upside down from between her legs. He took the hand of the woman he loved, the big warm hand, and said: If you could do just one thing to her, what would it be? — I'd snuggle her and give her a long, long orgasm , she replied. — Later it was too sad to view clearly those pictures of the past as he sat in another hot dry hotel room gazing out at a long blue blade of mountain holding up fog and rain. But the first chilly night in their tiny hotel room in Billings when he'd kissed her lips for the first time and taken her big breasts in his hands right through the sweater, he'd known that she had borne him out of everywhere somewhere nowhere, all the way to the capital city of the central continent; the atlas opened. As they made love she gently ran her fingernails over him (your skin marks so easily! she said in wonder); and she fucked him again, whispering that she wanted him to put one of his pistols in her mouth, which he didn't do, and in the morning they took each other again and then she went into the shower and he could not help following her any more than if she had been a taxidermist holding him by a loop of wire through his eye sockets; he was soaping her off when she said: I don't want to fuck anymore. — OK, he said. Are you sore? — No. — He hadn't understood. All day he continued in his joyous ignorance, kissing her mouth, holding both of her hands. She always kissed back, and his penis was firm and ready like his heart. Even though she'd kept her lips closed that last time in bed, he skated along, thinking himself well-shod when all he wore were his assumptions. So together they unlocked the door of the hotel room in Bozeman and she said: Didn't you hear me? I wanted two beds. — He looked at her in amazement. It was a pity that he couldn't later see his own face at that moment, because it must have looked so comically befuddled. — You don't want to screw me anymore? he said finally. — No. — Why? — I just don't feel it. — OK, he said. I'll sleep on the floor. — But she didn't want him to sleep on the floor. She said she'd go talk to the clerk and get two rooms. He asked her not to, please. He would much rather sleep on the floor than face still another humiliation, although he well knew that he ought not to be affected by any opinion of the clerk's; he was weak and shy just then. Then she said he could sleep in the double bed, but he didn't want to. Perhaps he appeared contrary, although he wasn't. Neither is Aadorf (47.30 N, 8.54 E) the same as Aadorp (52.22 N, 6.37 E). She said she couldn't bear to have him sleep on the floor. So he lay just under the bedspread with his face turned away, limbs tensed, alertness stiffly resident in every muscle and tendon as if he were one of those animatrons at Las Vegas (It was taken directly out of the movie and recreated, said the tour guide; it was spectacular to watch them put it up; in one day they'd have an entire part done!); and his soul correspondingly stiffened into vile green spurious crystal spires of anxiety like tourmaline because there was nothing that his clenched body could do or grasp or fight. He heard her sleeping peacefully. She lolled naked on the sheet, and the sight of that body which he had known and thought to know again and could now not touch inflamed him with rage and grief. After three or four of those caged hours he double-dosed himself with sleeping pills. She continued very gentle and open and cheerful. At night when he was sleepy she'd squeeze his hand and whisper: You're so pretty! and although each morning he awoke aching with loneliness and sorrow, her gentle darling ways always won him over anew because throughout the day she was beside him holding his hand. He felt so happy with her! He loved her so very much! One autumn's midnight they were driving from Idaho to Montana in a storm whose white rays of snow sped towards them in an explosion like silent fireworks; lines rushed outward from a central perspective point which eluded them and drew them on as they ascended the pass, snow deeper and deeper on the road and they had no chains. — This is crazy! she laughed. It's so, so beautiful! Thank you for bringing me with you. — And for hours of dark snowy rivers she squeezed his hand and he would have kissed her but it was not about that. He'd cooked elk and venison for her that night and she had said that it was delicious and he had asked her if they would be lovers again and she'd said: I'm not sure. — She said: Sometimes I look at you and I really want you. Other times I don't. — Her eyes shone when she looked at him, and she smiled and said that she loved him. He threw his amis around her. She said that she couldn't decide anything, that she was sorry, that maybe he should just hit her over the head and take her. He listened and actually considered it, but for him that game was too fearful to play. What if he started and couldn't stop? Rape and murder and suicide shone hypothetically before him, grimly equidistant beacons of love indicated on the atlas page by scarlet pentagrams. He told her he didn't think he could do that. She said she didn't think he could, either. Slowly and thoroughly she licked his hand. The snow-trails were like shooting stars. They reached the summit and began to come down into Montana where a snowplow whined feebly up the mountain, with snow thick ahead of it and new snow behind. He felt so close to her. In pioneer days it must have been that way and more, a man and a woman travelling on together, helping one another, needing each other, not knowing whether they'd make it. These days there seemed no penalty for not being sure. The atlas opened; easy pages lay ahead. When they came into Missoula an hour later he told her to pick the motel and then said as always: One room or two? and she smiled tenderly and said: Two, and he smiled back and rushed out of the car before she could see him crying. It was absurd. — It'd be a lot cheaper for you if you just got one room with two beds, said the night manager. — I think I'll take two rooms, he said. — He brought her her key as she sat there in the car with the motor on and he said goodnight and ran to his own door several rooms down, but as he set down his pack to pull the key out of his pocket he saw her standing there beside him in the cold darkness smiling and his heart flowered until she said again: Goodnight, and she took his head in her hands and kissed him. — Goodnight, he said. — Then he went inside, flung himself down on his bed, and wept. Did it count that he only wept for five minutes? Anyway, why snivel at all? She did love him. Others loved him. If he wanted sex or just a woman to hold in his arms all night there would be an escort service. There'd been a night when he'd asked her: One room or two? and she'd cried: I don't know! so of course he got them one and she undressed and said she felt sleepy and said she just really didn't want to very much now and said: You can jack off or whatever the fuck you want! and added gently: I'm sorry… so he'd waited until she made her darling sleeping sounds, hearing which he rolled stealthily toward her until his knee grazed her buttock and that touch alone was able to keep him happy all night. In the morning she rolled into his arms and began sighing and deeply kissing him and they'd made love. That was the last time they slept in the same room. But on the last night of their journey, they went to see a movie about a boy who ran away from home, and the boy was so happily leaving everything behind on that early summer morning of green forests that he who watched was uplifted (throughout that film, which she'd chosen, she held his hand); so he no longer ached or wondered or sorrowed but just kissed her goodnight in the parking lot of their latest motel as she shivered in her leather jacket and he said to her: Darling, I love you so much. — And he strode quickly and happily to his room without looking back.