Pearl Buck - The Eternal Wonder

Yet theirs was no rational relationship. They seldom talked, and never for long; willful, amusing, even brilliant as her talk could be, he found himself not listening, and scarcely answering. Instead his whole being was concentrated upon the inevitable meeting of their bodies—inevitable but without schedule, so he never knew whether, when he took her in his arms, she would allow him to proceed or whether she would merely give him a gentle kiss and withdraw herself. She teased him, she tantalized him, she made him happier than he could imagine, she cast him into anger or despair. He did not understand her, nor did he want to understand her as a person. He wanted only to know her mood. Would she receive him this day, this night, or would she reject him? Nor could he even call it rejection. She was too tender, too courteous perhaps to reject him. Even when she withdrew, it was after a kiss, a touch, a reassurance.

“But why?” he demanded.

“I just—don’t feel like it today,” she might say, or she would say, “I love you, I always love you, but tonight I love you quietly.”

If he sulked, and he was surprised to discover that he could sulk, she laughed at him. When she laughed, he left her and went away and she never followed him. She never mentioned the difference in their ages, but she could make him feel sometimes, though always subtly, by her amusement, that she was indeed far older than he, far wiser or at least more knowing, and that it was possible that she could tire of him.

They celebrated Christmas with a dinner of roast goose and an exchange of token gifts and greeted the New Year from the white satin canopied bed toasting each other and taking what each had to offer the other until dawn was breaking over the horizon as Rann crept back to his own rooms careful not to attract attention from the already-stirring household. He thought of this year ahead of him, yet another year in his young life, and of what he knew he must do. There was still the world beyond the castle, beyond even Lady Mary, waiting for his discovery, but could any discovery be as sweet, as complete, as all-encompassing as the discovery of himself that he had made here within the ancient walls of this castle under the gentle but wise guidance of this beautiful woman? Questions that would remain unanswered, he knew, until he himself went forth to find the answers. But the answers would not change, would they? Eternal truths would remain as they were for him to find, and he was still so young. There was time, plenty of time for all that he wished to do and this, too.

The winter passed into spring with one day folding into another, their outlines dim, his waking thoughts, and often his dreams as well, filled only with contemplation of her and when they would be together again in her huge old bed while the servants slept, unknowing, in their own beds in a remote wing of the castle.

It was the day after his seventeenth birthday that brought him back to himself at long last. Even so, the return was not immediate. Two incidents compelled his return. The first was a long letter from his mother. She did not write often, nor were her letters usually long.

“Your life is so full,” she wrote, “that I feel there is nothing here which would interest you. I do sometimes wonder, darling, if you are limiting yourself too much in your present life. I know the castle must be very interesting with its wonderful library and I don’t worry about the academic side of your education, for your father always told me you would educate yourself with books, provided you had enough of them, which now it seems you have. But the world is made up of people as well as books, and while I don’t expect you to be really interested in people of your own age, still they are people. I don’t want to be unkind to Lady Mary, for she has been and is so kind to you, but I do just ask myself sometimes if she is lonely and in some way is using you to alleviate her loneliness, whereas perhaps it would be better for her, darling, if she, too, found companionship with people of her own age—not that she is using you, of course, or if she is, I am sure she does not mean it that way.”

She wrote from another world. The small American college town was no longer his home. He belonged now to a different world, not a geographical world but one of emotion and sensation, centered in himself. Was Lady Mary using him? Rather, he was using her—using her to explore himself. Until now he had not dreamed of the depths of feeling, physical and emotional, of which his body was capable. His body—he had not thought of it before as separate from himself. Now it occurred to him that it was indeed separate, each part separate, each with its own function, his legs, his feet, his means of movement and motion; his hands his tools; his inner organs part of the machinery that sustained and made possible the life of his brain; and now the center of his being, his sex! And yet each part mechanically performing its duty, conveyed more than a mechanism. They conveyed the awareness of shape, the feeling of touch upon the skin, of scent and sound that some part of him received, delighted in, or rejected—an emotional part, separate from the body sensation and even from brain, something that was pure emotion. It was emotion that was the core of his being—emotion so volatile that it could convey the keenest delight or be cast into disappointment and even despair. The focal point of this emotion was, at present, his penis in its useful aspects. But when it became what his father had called “the planter,” it became the conveyor of a delight so inexplicable that he could not describe it, although he tried to do so in words and more than once.

He was not satisfied with the words. Moreover, they did not express the truth. For a brief moment, yes, they were one, he and she, and at that instant he thought of love. But it was only for a moment. When it was over, and inevitably it was over, they were separate again, he and she. His penis, shrinking, was symbolic of his whole being. He shrank away from her. He had given what he had to give. And she, too, had given what she had to give. And what was this except a momentary spasm of delight? And then what? Nothing, except perhaps a relief, also a matter of moments, a few hours, no more—for there the desire was, back again, always—inevitable and stronger, perhaps, even than before.

“Make the most of your age, my young lover,” she had said one day almost wistfully.

“Why do you say that?” he had demanded.

“Because even desire doesn’t last,” she had replied. “It becomes habit, and then—well, it’s only habit. That’s why I like my lovers young.”

“Lovers?” he had inquired.

“And are you not my lover?” she said, laughing.

He considered this thoughtfully and she waited, watching his face with a teasing smile.

“I am not sure I know what love is,” he said at last.

She opened her eyes wide. “Then you give a very good imitation of it!”

“No,” he said slowly, still thinking, “it’s not imitation, because I don’t really love you. In a way, it’s more like loving myself—or loving the opportunity you give me of loving myself. Perhaps that’s all I give you, too.”

For she had made it a fair exchange. She had taught him how to exchange delight, an exchange he had not understood at first until she revealed to him the secrets of her own body and made them his, until he understood the fulfillments of mutuality. Ah yes, she had taught him very much. But when it was over, each time now, there was no more to learn. They returned to what they had been before, two separate beings—himself, herself. And was this all there was to love? Was separateness inevitable and eternal between human beings? Then what was the use of love if it was only endless physical repetition? Was there no more?