Norman Rush - Mortals

“And you don’t remember we exchanged looks when we saw this poor devil, this physically unfortunate man, or neighborhood idiot, or whatever he was? And we were sure he was Vassilios?”

What he remembered was hating the Cretan Sun, the cheapest hotel they had ever stayed in, the poster of Delphi above the bed with the line Il y a des poux dans cette chambre penciled neatly along the bottom margin, the miserable shower that gave two minutes of warm water.

“And you don’t remember we exchanged glances … And by the way, when you tell people about our adventures in Crete I would appreciate it if you’d leave out the note on the poster about lice being in our room.”

He was obviously blocking out what should have been cognized as the main event, apparently, of that night. Sex was the reason. Somehow getting aroused, which he had, at the movies, had arced over to the sexual event, events, back at the Cretan Sun, and obliterated the interim for him. It had been that night at the Cretan Sun when he had come up with the affectionate term nethers for her pudenda, which had come from Netherlands, and which he still used from time to time.

He said, “We didn’t discuss this at the time, that night?” She shook her head.

“And we didn’t discuss it the next day, either, did we? That is, we never got into a discourse about it.”

“No, we were too stunned, I thought.”

“I remember noticing an oddlooking guy. But that’s all.”

He thought, Here it is, a thing that has never been an issue: But here it is courtesy of the female mind for which there is nothing dead that can’t be made to live again. He had failed to recognize the situation at the theater as the burning emblem of man’s inhumanity to man it obviously was for her. Then it hadn’t come up the next day due to their katastrofi , when she stepped into a hole in the pavement and cracked her ankle and then the nightmare come true of trying to get medical help in Crete had begun. He remembered every detail of that. He loved her, that was why. But here it was again, the past that lives forever, in detail, with women, like the women in Joyce, “The Dead,” ruining everything. Then at the museum in Heraklion they had been unable to see the murals because the galleries were closed due to a recent katastrofi . And then there had been the katastrofi of the side trip to Anoja in the White Mountains where the insane monster winds had blown his pitiful, hobbling wife flat into the sides of buildings and walls time after time.

She pushed herself to a standing position and got slowly out of the tub, distractedly, not punitively abandoning him, apparently. She was through. She was keeping her back to him, which could be just accidental.

He got out of the tub and dried himself off very thoroughly. He followed her damp footmarks into the bedroom. Once there, he malingered, dragging out finding the right pajamas and selecting a bathrobe from his oversupply. He had four, all gifts from Iris and all too expensive and all more appropriate for some rich parasite than for him. Why she kept buying him bathrobes that lacked pockets was a mystery. He settled on a black silk robe he thought he looked pretty good in. He combed his hair. Iris was in bed. Still naked, looking at a copy of the International Herald Tribune he knew was at least a week old.

It was so clear and so dumb, what was happening. He was being cast as the incarnation of Secrecy. It was inevitable because he worked for the agency and the agency was what, Secrecy Itself. And at the same time she was casting Morel as the dry light of the mind that goes everywhere, anywhere, as Truth with the bit between its teeth, the maypole of Truth she was traipsing around like a berserk Isadora Duncan, flinging her arms around like a jerk, naked, flutes and ribbons all over. That was the scene he was trapped in.

But at least his costume was perfect. He was uncomfortably warm, a natural consequence of dressing himself in a daze, putting pajamas on without reference to what season it was. Black matched his mood. It was his fault that she kept giving him pocketless robes. The first robe she’d given him had been pocketless and he’d praised it. The absence of pockets had seemed to him like a fairly central objection, especially considering the effort she’d gone to, delegating her sister, transatlantic phone consultations. And it had been when they were starting out, when she was insecure about buying things for him. So now all he needed was a cocktail shaker and a Santos Dumont in a cigarette holder and it would be clear he had wandered in from an adjoining farce, a Noël Coward farce. In fact they were both costumed perfectly for the scene, layers and blackness for him, and for her … nudity, symbolizing fearless disclosure.

Now she was sitting on the edge of the bed, her back three-quarters to him, examining the sole of her foot. The great aesthetic absolute, he thought.

She caught him looking too raptly at her. “Why are you looking at me that way?” she asked.

“I’m not looking at you, I’m beholding you.”

“Well this is the wrong moment for it. By the way, I think you have mild priapism.”

“That’s the best kind.”

“Well don’t,” she said, smiling a little.

She was going to sum up. He could tell. She held her mouth in a certain way.

She said, “First, nothing is going to happen to us. Second, I’m going to go and be with Ellen and I’ll be back in six weeks and everything will be okay, I promise.”

“When did we say six weeks ?” he asked, not calmly enough.

“Well six weeks at the outside.”

Do not resist, he thought, saying, “Well six weeks then, although … it wracks and harrows me.” He was surprised at himself. Somehow he had decided to be slightly poetic just then. It was insane. She was looking at him with a certain heightened interest, he thought, although it might be concern and not interest. There were still moments in his life when he felt capable of poetry. When the impulse was there he was normally afraid of it, for the simple reason that he wasn’t a poet. The Irish, or some of them, felt free to burst out with it. But even in the case of the Irish talking gorgeously he knew they were working from a fixed menu of tropes and images and not engaging in individual invention. What was he doing? He wanted to send her away with an absolute knowledge of how lovely she was to him, was all. But this had been like a deacon suddenly breaking into a juggling routine. You can’t just wrench yourself into some new and cuter state, he thought. He was embarrassed. They were both going to ignore it. He thanked God.

“I don’t think we should have sex tonight,” she said.

He couldn’t agree more. Having sex would dishonor their differences.

“I couldn’t agree more,” he said. His tone dissatisfied him and he added, “I mean that. I seriously do. And if you would slip into something less comfortable it would be a help.”

She was amused. He went to the closet and got out his favorite robe of hers, a blue and white yakuta they had bought in Paris. He draped it over her shoulders and she got properly into it in a rather piecemeal if not exactly teasing manner, he thought. He was a little surprised to realize that the blue elements in the pattern were winged seeds, on the order of locust seeds, and not the Horus eyes they had been in his mental picture of the garment for years. Lately he was looking too closely at everything around her. It was fear. It felt valedictory.

How could he tell that they weren’t, even now, through yet? It was in the eyes. What else there could be was beyond him. He was probably safe in assuming that they were down to odds and ends, that she’d started with the more offensive items and was working down, the way he would have. There was no guarantee about that, though. Now he was scaring himself.