Eleanor Catton - The Rehearsal

“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” the sax teacher says.

“And none of us ever have anything to talk about at the table,” Isolde says. “Not even Dad. He just ends up spieling about his work and everyone switches off and tries to eat as fast as possible.”

“How did you meet him?” the sax teacher says.

“By accident,” Isolde says. “Just around.”

“He should come to the recital next month,” the saxophone teacher says, still peering at Isolde with a new hard look on her face. “Come and watch you play.”

“Yeah,” Isolde says, bending the word like a sucked harmonica note so she manages to sound indifferent and aloof.

“Is he in your year at school?” the sax teacher says.

“Oh no,” Isolde says smugly, “he’s left school. He’s an actor. At the Drama Institute,” and she waves an airy hand out the curtained window to the buildings on the far side of the courtyard.

The lights change suddenly and the saxophone teacher can see it, playing out like someone else’s home video in front of her, furry and striped with grainy black.

“He’s an actor,” Isolde’s father is saying.

“That’s what I said,” Isolde says.

“He’s at the Drama Institute.”

“That’s what I said.”

“How old is he?”

“Only first-year, Dad,” Isolde says, trying to look charming.

“I certainly hope he doesn’t expect you to have sex with him.”

“Dad.”

“Because you’re only fifteen,” Isolde’s father says, speaking loudly and clearly as if Isolde is partly deaf. “If you were to sleep with him, that would be a crime.”

“Dad!”

“I’m going to ask you now,” Isolde’s father says, his eyes wide, “I’m going to ask you now, and I want you to give me a straight answer. Have you slept with him?”

“Dad, stop it, it’s gross.” Isolde is inspired by a rare shaft of genius, and says, “It’s like you want to even everything out, play it fair, do by me as you’ve done by Victoria. Crime for crime. Stop it.”

“Why are you sidestepping my question?”

“Why are you talking to me like that? Can’t I talk to Mum?”

“You’ve slept with him.”

“Great. You’ve decided. Now you’ll never believe me whatever I say anyway.”

“You’re only fifteen.”

“Can I talk to Mum?”

“Isolde,” says Isolde’s father sadly, “I never had sisters. Throw me a bone.”

The lights return to normal, restoring a yellowish afternoon light to the studio, and the saxophone teacher blinks as if awakening.

“The Institute,” she says. “That’s supposed to be very hard to get into, isn’t it? He must be rather good.”

Was he supposed to undress her first, or wait to be undressed? He didn’t like the idea of undressing her first—it seemed greedy, and the thought of remaining clothed while stripping her naked unnerved him—he imagined someone walking in, and what they would think. Would it happen piece by piece, like a polite duel—her shirt then his, her bra then his singlet, all the way down? Or were they supposed to undress themselves separately, and then come together after they had both been transformed? Stanley’s heart was thumping as he led her to the bed and they sat down on its edge, kicking off their shoes in tandem and shuffling sideways to embrace each other and lie down.

He had imagined this moment many times previously, but Stanley realized now that he had imagined the scene mostly in closeup, arching and rearing and heavy breathing and skin. What was supposed to happen now? He tried to negotiate swinging himself on top of the girl without kneeing her in the groin. He was wooden, like someone obeying a director’s instruction or responding to a cue. He floundered, shifting his weight to one side and back again, and he had a sudden, unflattering vision of himself from above, kneeling with one arm thrashing behind his back to find the slipping duvet and pull it back over his shoulders against the draught. He felt a surge of anger at his own ineptitude, and almost viciously he slipped a hand inside her shirt, just to prove he was up to the task. He felt her ribs rise up sharply at his touch.

Stanley was wishing that he was much older than he was. He wished that he was a man, and not a boy, a man who was easy with himself and could strip a girl and laugh and know that what he was doing was right. He wished that he was a man who could place his finger on this girl’s lips and say, Now I am going to make you come. He wished that he was a man who could use the word “cunt,” who could speak it aloud and easily, in a way that would make a girl admire and worship him. He wished that he was a man at home with his body, a man who could say, You are beautiful, and know that the words would have meaning because he spoke as a man and not a boy.

Stanley slithered his hand down her belly, down past the little scooped slit of the girl’s navel, hatted by a fold of skin that shrank to a tight little nib as she raised her arms up above her head. She reached to pull his head down to hers and craned up to kiss his mouth. His hand was scrabbling at the button of her fly. He was ashamed at himself for moving so quickly but impelled all the same by a helpless wish for self-annihilation, a desire for the scene to somehow go on without him so he could withdraw. The denim was stretched tight and flat over the bones of her pelvis, and he had to bend the buttonhole cruelly sideways to wrench the button through. It gave. He drew down the zipper and with his fingers felt the thin cotton of her briefs, buoyed up by the tufted whorl of her pubic hair. He felt surprise. Had he imagined her hairless, like a doll?

The girl was breathing faster. He slipped his hand inside her briefs and cupped the wiry mound of her pubis with the heel of his hand, arching his wrist to loosen the waistband of her jeans. Carefully he moved to part the seam of her, hot against the cool of his fingers. He wanted to speak. He wanted to whisper something that would break the awful fumbling quick-breathed silence that was filling the room, the mousy rustle of his hand.

Stanley found himself watching the scene from the position of a camera, and he began caring too deeply about what he might look like from above, or from the side—he tried to be sleeker, to thrash less, to push the hair gently off the girl’s face and let his fingers trail around her jawbone and touch the soft furry pouch of her earlobe, like he had seen done in the cinema so many times. It didn’t seem to be working.

“My arm’s dead, sorry,” the girl whispered apologetically, and wiggled it free.

“ Shit ,” Stanley said.

“What’s wrong?” the girl said in surprise, drawing the duvet up around her and tucking it carefully under her arms as she withdrew.

“I don’t—”

“You don’t know what to do?”

“ No ,” Stanley said, a little too savagely. “No, I know what to do.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the girl said, pushing his hair off his face with the rough heel of her hand. The action was coarse and tender at the same time, and Stanley was humbled, feeling her easily achieve the truth of the action when he had found it so difficult. “Just give me a cuddle. Come here.”

He crept across the bed and she opened up the duvet to let him in. They lay there for a while, Stanley’s heart thumping, the girl’s hands moving up and down the curve of his shoulder blade and into the thin hair at the nape of his neck.

“I didn’t think it would be like this,” Stanley said, without thinking.

The girl raised herself up on an elbow and said, “What?”

Stanley realized he had sounded rude, and said hastily, “I mean me. I didn’t think I would be like this.”