John Hawkes - Death, Sleep & the Traveler

Peter’s white pajamas on the floor, Ursula’s short transparent Roman toga at the foot of the bed, the heat of the two nude bodies beneath the soft bedclothes drawn up to their chests, the feeling of Ursula’s eyes on mine and the sight of Peter’s neck and shoulder muscles that appeared shrunken and cast in sinuous silver, the moment was so familiar, peaceful, even alluring, that I felt in no way the intruder and took no offence at the harshness of what Ursula was saying.

I removed my robe, I dropped my pajama trousers, I scrubbed the hair on my chest and around my nipples with stubby fingers.

“All right,” she said, as I drew back the covers, as the snoring stopped, as she raised herself on one elbow, as I thought of Peter’s automobile waiting below in the night’s frost, “all right, we’ll go to your room.”

“No, Ursula,” I said in return and sliding under the bedclothes like a ship in the dark and stretching out against the heat and smoothness of her naked length, “tonight I prefer your room, not mine.”

She said nothing. The snoring recommenced. Gently I pushed away Peter’s hand from where I encountered it on Ursula’s belly that was tawny and filled with the morning sun, the evening cream.

“If you control yourself,” I said in a low voice appropriate to lavish beds and nocturnal games, “he will not wake. Believe me.”

“Allert,” she whispered, “you are not amusing.”

“But it is just as I suspected,” I whispered, “you have never been readier. Never.”

“But have you forgotten Peter?”

“Let Peter sleep.”

“But it’s impossible. It makes no sense.”

“Except to me, Ursula, to me. And I want it so.”

In the morning we sat together in the alcove and ate the goose eggs boiled by Ursula, who was still wearing only her Roman toga through which the morning sun shone as through the clear windowpanes. The morning light, the goblets of cold water, the cubes of butter sinking into the centers of each of the great white eggs with their untamed flavor and decapitated shells, and the aroma of coffee and the contrast between Ursula in her usual near-nudity and Peter and me in our plaid robes, the deep peace and clarity of the moment — all of it made me more securely aware than ever of the relationship between the coldness outside, where the geese were honking, and the warmth within.

“I see now, Allert,” he said, lifting his clear glass, lifting his spoon, “that you too are capable of deception. It is not a pleasing thought, my friend. Not at all.”

“But, Peter,” I objected pleasantly, “you must not forget that I am the husband.”

“Nor must you forget, my friend, that I am the lover.”

“But Peter,” Ursula said, interrupting us and thrusting a bare hand inside Peter’s robe, “let’s forgive Allert. I think we should.”

“Of course we’ll forgive him,” Peter said, smiling and paying no attention to Ursula’s hand, “in due time.”

Beneath the table Ursula’s bare foot was probing mine. In the sunlight Peter had the long thin face of a Spanish inquisitor.

“The trouble with you, Allert,” she said, pulling off her firebird bikini and standing thick and soft and naked on Peter’s beach, “is that you think you’re Casanova. What you do is one thing, what you think of yourself is another. And you think of yourself as Casanova. But all the amours in the world do not mean that you are attractive to women. Don’t you see?”

But the idea, like so many of Ursula’s ideas, was completely invalid. Never did I for a moment form such a self-image. Never did I think of myself pridefully. I am not interested in the long thread of golden hair hanging from the tower window.

Naked and resting on all fours on the leather divan in the darkness, wrapped in her tawny nakedness as another woman might partially cover herself in the skin of a lion, and resting on her knees and elbows with her buttocks thrust high and glazed as with melted butter, thus she swayed and waited in the darkness for either Peter or me to rise and approach and take advantage of her position on the divan. In a low voice she was crooning an unmistakably serious invitation to Peter and me.

I was the first to move.

When she leaves, when she is finally gone, when she terminates all the processes of leaving and disappears at last, in all this will there be some kind of gain for me? I anticipate no loss, no hours of stunned grief. But what of the possibility of gain? Ursula is leaving me deliberately. Ursula intends to spare herself my distasteful presence, to neutralize my acid with her departure. But Ursula also anticipates enrichment in the unknown life she plans to pursue. Will I also find enrichment when I am left alone? In emptiness will I discover freedom? Will I cry out once again for Simone? Will I write letters and make long distance telephone calls until at least a few of the women I have known in the past return to me? But more than likely I will write no letters, make no telephone calls, do nothing. More than likely I will leave the enrichment to Ursula. But whatever I do or however long I stand at the window, never again will I commit my life to marriage. On the subject of marriage I share completely Ursula’s sultry vehemence. I am happy to admit our total agreement on the subject of the burning bridal gown, the cigar in the dark.

When I again glanced down to the crowd on the pier, I saw that she was no longer waving but was swinging her handbag back and forth on its leather strap and staring up at me, where I stood at the rail, with a face that was merely fleshly and quite drained of expression. Then she was gone, as though that white ship would never again return to its home port. The baskets of flowers heaped on the deck reminded me of the banks of living flowers in a crematorium. The flames from the engine room glowed on the deck. The first blast of the whistle cut back and forth through my body like an invisible beam. We began to move.

In the darkness and through the open porthole I smelled the scent of orange blossoms, the aroma of dead dust, the smell of lemons flickering on some distant hillside, even a few faint traces of eucalyptus oil floating just beyond the reach of the waves. But when I struggled into my trousers and went out on deck to investigate, exposing myself once more to the darkness and the wet night air, I realized that we were still two or three days from our next port of call. I stood at the rail only a moment, yet long enough to be discovered by Ariane and to arouse her fear. She emerged from the shadows, she hesitated, she approached, she clung to my arm.

“So you too have those feelings,” she whispered. “I thought you did.”

For answer I drew her abruptly into my dark stateroom, thrust her roughly down onto the disheveled bed and bruised her in the agony of my desperate embrace.

It was dusk when we glided out from among the trees and across the last white slope toward Peter’s house in the country. I heard the sibilance of our skis on the snow, I smelled the resin on the cold air, I heard their laughter as Peter and Ursula made playful stabbing gestures at each other with their bamboo poles. The light of the first stars purled impossibly through the last light of the day, so that in the cold gray atmosphere there was a hint of pink. Ursula lost her balance, thrust out her rump, spread wide her skis, recovered. A single small bell tolled in some distant village where no doubt the cold sexton stood alone pulling the rope, and Peter made clacking noises with his skis on the snow.