Jim Crace - Genesis

Lix could not help but smile while he imagined how the beautiful Madame Picasso would get on if they turned up one blustery afternoon, say, at the Cougar’s Promenade on the cliffs above the long California beach where he and Mouetta had rented a house for their honeymoon. She wouldn’t be able to expose her outfit and her makeup to the rain-laced wind. Her hairdo would not tolerate the weather. Her skin would not enjoy the light. Her dress would flap and wrap around her knees. Her heels would sink into the rippled sand and topple her. She would not even be able to seek the solace of a cigarette. The wind would snatch her flame away and steal the smoke. No chance either that she would agree to cut off up the beach into one of the secluded bays where they might lie down on the sand and carelessly make love.

The plumper one in black, the woman with the dragonfly brooch, might well be game in such a circumstance. But she would not belong on his imagined beach, so far from bars and restaurants. She was a woman who was determined to enjoy herself — just watch her laugh and smoke — but all her pleasures would be city ones. She’d not be agile on a beach. Too heavy, obviously, and possibly — the smoking and her weight — too short of breath to much enjoy a hike. Even Mouetta when she’d had the chance to walk with her new husband on that beach in nothing worse than misty rain had preferred to stay inside their hired car to watch the sea in comfort.

But place the Prickly Pear on the Cougar’s Promenade, suggest to her they get out of the car to brave the wind and spray, and there could be no doubt that she would soon be running down the steps, across the pebble line and tidal sand, to reach the sea. Lix could place her with her beach boots in her hand, her trousers rolled up to her knees, the waves around her calves, her short hair ruffling. She’d be convincing there. No doubt of it.

Wade in yourself, he thought. Stand next to her and feel the shingle shifting underfoot. No matter that the sea is unpredictable. Suggest to her, to that large open face, deprived too long of flattery and kisses, that they should find a quieter spot up in the rocks. Lix was certain she would readily agree.

Two images: the pair of them embracing in the middle of the sand, her hand pushed down beyond the waistband of his trousers, his hand pushed up into the warmer regions of her cardigan, reaching around to find the soft underarm anticipations of her breasts; and then the two of them, invisible amongst the rocks, fettered at the ankles by their fallen clothes, their mouths engaged, their hands employed between each other’s legs. And for the sound track? In the film? Gulls, of course. A crashing sea. In the distance, cries for help. Madame Picasso stranded by her footwear and the tides, her blue dress lost against the perfect sky, and no one wading out to rescue her.

“WHAT’S SO AMUSING?” Mouetta tapped him sharply on the hand with her coffee spoon. “I said I’m going to the restroom, Lix. You’re grinning like a little boy. Were you dreaming or dozing?”

“Pretty much both. I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“I only need a nap, that’s all.”

“Well, that makes two of us.”

She left the table and made her way across the room toward the toilets, even smiling at the woman in blue as she passed. His wife looked disheveled from behind, as well she might. She’d slept in what she wore, her once smart skirt and favorite blouse. Made love in them. Inside a car, deep in the park. She hadn’t had a chance to wash or even brush her teeth that morning. So far she’d only used a comb, a touch of cologne, and a couple of tissues. No wonder she was the least crisp woman in the room.

Mouetta’s absence was an opportunity, but not to contemplate his undermining shame at trading in the firebrand student for six minutes’ pleasure in the car. He had to bury that at once. Rather it allowed him to concentrate unambiguously on all the women in the room. Lix could not help himself. Besides, Mouetta wanted his reply on her return. Again he studied the three attractive possibilities over the rim of his lifted cup. He tried them out. He was auditioning. He placed them in Mouetta’s seat across the table in the Palm & Orchid, imagined how they’d look and what he’d say to them if they’d been married for two years, what might occur when they drove home, how they’d react to his determined ambush on the stairs. Again the oldest woman won the day.

He had his answer then. The Prickly Pear. She was the one he chose, out of all the women in the room. She was the likeliest. She was the one that he’d prefer if he could take just one to bed. He wondered what his wife would make of that when she came back from freshening herself. Would she believe him when he pointed to the older woman, oddly dressed, boy-haired, and overdrawn as a cartoon, and said, She is the one that I desire the most?

Lix felt his cock fattening at the very prospect of it, the conversation he and Mouetta would enjoy about the woman’s face and body and clothes, how that might lead, must certainly lead, to more lovemaking when they got back home.

For surely this was Mouetta’s project, to find some sexual stimulation in the answer Lix would give, whatever it might be, while still fully retaining Lix. His passions might well drift beyond recall. His body never would. Mouetta was the only one allowed. Her question, “If you could go to bed with anybody here, which one?” was her foreplay, a scheme to get her husband talking about having sex with someone else, encouraging his imaginary couplings, his unreal consummations, so that she herself could play the role of that new woman, give herself to Lix as someone new, an actress in a fresher part. That’s why she’d set him loose and left him to indulge these unrequitable but animating fantasies amongst the female colleagues at the table in the city’s chicest coffee shop. She wanted him to test his dreams with her.

Isn’t that what men and women did? Men and women who had shared a marriage berth for two years and a day? They’d want some shore leave, wouldn’t they, to visit — in their hearts, at least — the beds of other lovers, other spouses? We need to flirt and covet strangers for the health and spirit of our marriages. They would be wearying otherwise. There’d be no love. Oh, to begin the day, each day, with fresh desires and still stay true.

Lix could quite easily, with Mouetta safely out of sight for a few minutes, catch any of the women’s eyes, make profiles of his famous face for them, engage one in a conversation, flirt, arrange to meet her in a bar one evening, seduce her with some tickets to his show. That’s exactly what his colleagues would do, given half a chance. An actor’s touring life is cut out for adultery, affairs, the weekend fling. What harm in that? And what — if he were truly someone who would cheat on his wife, other than inside his never faithful, ever scheming head — if he were to go up to the likeliest? If he were to step across and what? Invite her to abandon her workmates and come with him onto the long-imagined beach? What harm in that?

The harm in that for him was the misfortune — was it truly a misfortune? — that every kiss produced a child. Remember? Fertile Lix had never slept with anyone without — eventually — a pregnancy. There always was an aftermath for him.

So then: How dare he take Madame Picasso from the hotel restaurant into the kissing elevator and up into his room, the bed, the mirrors and the steam? There’d be a child, impatient at the door. A boy, he thought. A mother’s boy. Well dressed for one so small — and too obedient. The little violin case in his hand told all of it, as he stood in the corridor amid the uncollected trays, patiently waiting for his parents as they created him inside the hired room. He’d do his practice every time, be quite the little fiddler though not quite good enough to win the prizes that his mother wanted so much — and which his celebrated father would be jealous of.