John Hawkes - Death, Sleep & the Traveler

“I see. The purser. Apparently I have not been aware of him.”

We were closer together and I was quite familiar with the implications of the belted pants, the lure of the naked midriff. It was a commonplace attire. So far she promised nothing that was not in fact commonplace, except that her nearest shoulder blade was bare and poignant and that the miniature features of her face were grouped together in distinctive harmony. Even if she was an adult instead of a child and was a person who had actually lived beyond her majority, as I assumed she had, still she could never have come even close to half my age, a notion that engaged my attention occasionally from this moment on.

“You don’t know the purser? Really? He’s the one with the handlebar mustache. He’s a favorite of mine.”

“And who is the young officer who has assigned himself the seat next to mine at our table?”

“Oh, that’s the wireless operator. He’s another favorite of mine.”

“You have many favorites.”

She was smiling, I was closer than arm’s length to her naked shoulder, I told myself that she could not possibly wish me to kiss her lips or even to touch her small bare shoulder so soon despite the inviting way she balanced the black ball, and despite her smile, her steady eyes, her upturned face. And yet I could in fact imagine this young person readily unbuckling her tight pants here in the space for games and athletics between smokestacks fore and aft and two white lifeboats on either side. And yet the poles of sex and friendship, I told myself, did not always imply the bright spark leaping between the two, at least not immediately.

“If you don’t know the purser,” she said, glancing down at the black leather ball, “then you don’t know that my name is Ariane.”

I reached for the ball, I felt the heat from the nearest smokestack mingling with the chill of the invisible wind and the bright light of the sun. Far below us a steward was moving along the hidden deck playing the three impersonal notes of his luncheon gong. The young woman’s breathing was reflected in her bare navel as well as in the natural rhythm of the breasts supported only by the triangulation of the blue halter. Between her shoulder blades the halter was tied, I saw, in a crisp knot.

“So,” I said, giving the ball a small toss, “so you are Ariane. It’s a lovely name.”

My tie was struggling in its clip, my hair was blowing, the dead white net was high above my head, I thought of the young woman’s name and saw the brothers, the sisters, the anonymous girl in the luncheonette, the shabby baptism of the first-born and female child receiving the elevated name she would so often discover in cheap magazines in the offices of social welfare.

“Whatever you’re thinking right now,” she said, slipping her hand inside my jacket and her arm part way around my waist, “is unworthy of you. You shouldn’t think such things, Mr. Vanderveenan.”

“But your name is indeed lovely. You must remember that I mean what I say — always.”

Her arm was around my waist, the slightness of her entire body was brushing against all the bulk of mine, I could feel her small ringless hand playing with the folds of my damp shirt in the area of the small of my back. Had anyone discovered us standing there together between the smokestacks, he would not have been able to detect her arm and hand concealed inside the formal drapery of my unbuttoned jacket. But I could feel the slight pressure on my waist, the faint tugging and stroking motions of the fingers of her left hand, by leaning down was able even to catch a smell of her breath which was fleeting and natural in the context of the ocean wind. Her gesture was a surprise of course, and for an instant caused me to experience another one of those rare pangs of anxiety and anticipation in the face of the first hint of sudden attraction. I thought she was being friendly, I thought that her physical gesture expressed warmth and playfulness without intention. And yet we were indeed leaning together on the uppermost deck and one of her fingers had become somehow lodged between my belted trousers and my damp shirt. Already her entire manner should have told me plainly enough about her firmness of mind and her directness.

“Well,” she said, raising her face toward mine and smiling, “you can’t play net ball in your jacket.”

“Just so,” I said and drew my body away from hers, gave her the ball, removed my jacket, turned and walked into playing position on the other side of the net. The steadiness of the ship, the syllables murmuring in the wires overhead, the honed whiteness of the wooden deck, the symmetrical web of the high net, the sound of a ventilating machine, the wind at my back and the sun directly overhead so that time and direction were obliterated, these circumstances could not have been more concrete, more neutral, more devoid of meaning, more appropriate to the surprise and simplicity of the occasion at hand, when an unknown young woman was offering me something beyond innocence, companionship, flirtation. She was watching me as closely as I was watching her, and in both hands had raised the ball to chest level.

“You’re traveling alone,” she called, while I waited, raised my own hands in anticipation of her girlish throw.

“And you,” I called back, squinting and waiting for the game to commence, “you too are traveling alone.”

“But I’m different. I’m not married.”

“Well,” I called, laughing and wondering what had become of the desperate gulls, “I am married and I am nonetheless alone on this cruise. There’s no more to say.”

She raised the ball above her head. I took a step backward, I cupped my hands in the shape of the suspended ball. The ship was carrying us not toward any place but away.

“Often I go on these cruises,” she called. “Often.”

“Excellent,” I called back. “Are you going to throw?”

She waited, this small anonymous female figure in an athletic pose. And then staring at me through the remarkable vibrations of the taut white net, slowly she lowered her arms until the ball, still gripped in her two hands, came to rest in the upper triangulation of her thighs, which were slightly spread. Her halter and tight pants appeared untouched by the wind, while on my back and shoulders and heavy legs my shirt and trousers were flattening like sails.

“I don’t think so,” she called without moving. “I think not.”

I understood. Suddenly I began to understand the absolute presence of the girl who was waiting on the other side of the net and whose name was periodically carried on the passenger lists of ships such as ours. So I nodded and ducked under the net; she dropped the ball which, moving in accordance with the wind and slope of the deck, drifted under one of the lifeboats and disappeared over the starboard side of the ship.

We embraced. The skin of her naked back and shoulders was as smooth and glossy as the skin that has replaced burned skin on a human body. Her kissing was wet and confident, prolonged and wordless, and included even my nose, which she sucked into her small entirely serious mouth.

“You must never pity me,’ she said when we were ready once more to descend the ladder. “That’s what I ask.”

How could I possibly have done harm to such a person?

“Allert,” Ursula was saying, “my reason for leaving you is not sexual. Not at all sexual. It’s just that you don’t know yourself, that you have no idea of what you are, that in my opinion you are an open cesspool. Your jowls, your eyes like lenses for the treatment of myopia, your little cigars, your ungainly person, your perverse sense of humor, all this is nothing to me. But you have long since emotionally annihilated yourself, Allert, and I can no longer tolerate your silences, your silence in the throes of passion, the accounts of your dreams, the stink from the cesspool that is yourself.”