Pearl Buck - The Eternal Wonder

“I am a man,” he said aloud in the darkness of the night. “I am a man—I am a man—”

And when he slept it was the sweetest sleep he had ever known, the sweetest and most deep.

MORNING WOKE HIM AND HE lay for a long moment, recalling himself. So this was he, a new person, and she was new, a woman. She would never seem the same to him again, any more than he was the same. They had met in a new world. They had stepped across a threshold. It was a reality he had never known before.

He was shy when she came down to breakfast in a dark-green jacket suit that brought alive the vivid color of her hair and eyes. To his surprise she was quite herself, quieter perhaps, giving him a smile instead of a greeting. When the butler left the room, she yawned behind her narrow white hand with its diamond and emerald rings.

“How I slept,” she said. “Of course, I’m a natural sleepyhead, but last night I didn’t even dream. Just slept. And you?”

“I slept very well, thanks.”

He was formal because now he was shy. He did not know what to say to her. Should anything be said? And how would they proceed from here? Perhaps he should go away. What was the next step? She was twice his age, but she looked no more than twenty. He had never seen her look so young, so fresh. She was smiling at him, not in the least shy, her bright eyes teasing.

“You’re ten years older than you were yesterday,” she said. “I can’t explain it, but you are. And I am ten years younger. Of course, I can explain it, but I won’t. I’ll leave you to realize it for yourself. You don’t know me—or yourself. You’ve spent your life learning about everything except yourself.”

“I’m—more than one person,” he said stiffly, not looking at her.

“Of course,” she agreed with gaiety. “You’re an unknown number of persons. But I wanted to confirm what I guessed—that you are also very much of a man. Now I know.”

Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “You were wonderful, Rann—so instinctively wonderful. I knew as soon as I met you that you were a genius. I’ve known geniuses—a few. What I didn’t know was whether you were—something more—something that would make you complete. Well, you are. And that something completes even your genius.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t expect you to understand. That will come slowly. But someday, at some moment, you will know yourself wholly. This is a time of learning.”

They were looking into each other’s eyes, his drawn to hers by her steady, honest gaze.

“Will you trust me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

HE TRUSTED HER AND HE learned how readily he obeyed. He was amazed and sometimes shocked that he was ready, and at all times, to obey her slightest touch. Standing behind his chair, she leaned over him, her cheek against his and he turned instantly, instinctively, passionately to seek her mouth. One touch, one movement, led to the next until they were in each other’s arms. They tried to be wary of the servants and this led to their night hours together. When the house was quiet, the servants sleeping in their distant quarters, they would steal to each other’s rooms, she to his at first but soon he to hers. She preferred him to come to her, and when he discovered her preference, he always went to her. He lay awake, impatient with longing, until the clock in the hall struck one. Then he rose and put on his robe and, barefoot on the thick carpets, he went down across the hall to her rooms. Sometimes she was sitting before the fire, wrapped carelessly in a silk robe, her body naked beneath it, and soon, how soon, he learned to slip it away, at first shy, his hands trembling, but after a few nights boldly and quickly, revealing all her white loveliness. He never tired of looking at her, not until he could no longer wait, and then lying on the wide bed, looking at her again, his head supported on one hand, the other free to touch, to feel, to examine.

“Did you ever really see a woman before?” she asked one night smiling at him.

“Yes, once,” he said. “When I was a little boy on my first day at school. We were coming home together and she wanted to see me… my—my penis, I mean. My father had told me about myself—a penis is a planter, he said. And then she offered to show me herself, and did. And I saw something like a flower holding a pink tip. We were as ignorant—and innocent—as the babes we were. But some woman saw us and, evil-minded, she told Ruthie’s mother and Ruthie’s desk was moved far from mine in school. I didn’t know why.”

“Were your parents angry?”

“Mine? Oh, no—they understood a boy’s curiosity—”

“Which grows into a man’s—doesn’t it?”

“Yes—but I didn’t know it. I’m so grateful to you. It might have been so—horrible. Instead it’s—beautiful—with you. Because you are so beautiful yourself.”

“What will happen to us, Rann?”

“What do you mean?”

“This can’t go on forever, you know.”

He had not thought of this. Go on forever?

“Do you want it to?” he asked.

“I might—if you were even ten years older. But you’re not.”

“I don’t think I’ve been thinking. For the first time in my life—I’ve been feeling, only feeling. No, I don’t suppose it can go on forever. You aren’t asking me to leave you? Because I can’t—”

It was true. He could not imagine himself leaving this lovely body of a woman. He had come to needing her as a man needs to drink. His flesh clamored for her. He responded viscerally and physically. He was impatient for the night. If they walked in the loneliness of the deep forest surrounding the castle, he could not wait for the night. He was inappeasable. Satiated at one moment, in an hour he was hungry again. He did not know himself now. He was yet another person. Where was that studious, book-loving boy? He rarely went into the library now. The more he knew her, the more he wanted her—not her mind, not her laughter, not even her companionship, but her body.

“Are all men like me?” he demanded at three o’clock in the morning.

“No one is like you,” she replied. She looked white in the lamplight, exhausted yet strangely, sweetly beautiful.

“But I mean it,” he said impatiently. “I’m like a man who can’t get enough to drink—again and again and again—I exhaust you.”

“And, loving you, I love it,” she said.

“Then are all women like you?”

“I don’t know. Women never know each other—not where men are concerned.”

“Shall I always be like this?” he demanded.

“No,” she said half-sadly. “Perhaps only with me. Every experience is the same—it can never be repeated.”

He pondered this, lying on his back, and gazing unseeing into the shadows flickering on the ceiling. There was a wisdom in her words that he could not immediately grasp. After a moment he turned and kissed her abruptly.

And then he got up, wrapped himself in his robe, and went back to his own room, conscious of her quiet gaze following him until the door closed between them.

WINTER HAD COME SLOWLY OVER the landscape. He was accustomed to the abrupt weather of his own country, and the mild approach of cold and chill rather than cold, he scarcely noticed. The autumn had been mild, the flowers bloomed late, the trees changed their colors gently, and the first snowstorms were mere flurries, edging the outlines of the landscape, house roofs in the village, the slow rise of the hills, the lines of tree trunks and branches rather than the violence of wind and snowstorms.

He was conscious of change not so much in his outer world as in himself. He read very little nowadays. Books, instead of being sources of discovery, made him impatient; instead of enjoying the long quiet hours alone in the vast old library, he found himself wondering where she was. Impossible of course to concentrate if she was in the library with him, it was even more impossible to concentrate if she was not there. Or, if she told him that she would be away for an hour or several hours, for she kept her independence, then time was interminable and he was too restless to read. Instead he walked about the grounds or the moors, glancing often at his watch, timing his return to hers.