Kathleen Spivack - Unspeakable Things

“Herbert,” protested Adeline in her normal preemptory voice. She sat up abruptly, removing his arms from her body. “How is this possible? I haven’t played for years.”

“Never mind,” said Herbert bravely. “It is too late to think of things like that. The concert is already advertised.”

Adeline was silent, thinking this over. “But…,” she began again.

“Shh,” commanded Herbert, holding her. She was calmer now. The steam pipes hissed in the corners, but they were only steam pipes after all.

After a silence, Adeline said softly, “Herbert?”

“Yes, my darling?” He stroked her hair into a semblance of smoothness.

“Herbert?” She plucked at his sleeve questioningly. “What shall I wear?”

“Why, your best silk dress,” said Herbert practically. “You know the one I mean.”

Herbert’s elder son, David, was absent from this story and perhaps from all stories. He was a cipher, working in a Washington basement, trying to decipher other ciphers. Because of his job as a war decoder for the U.S. government, his eyes were swollen, red, and scratchy, almost granular. But he could sleep on trains, and on the night train to New York, he let himself sink into the smoke-imbued night. He slept, and sleep renewed him. The weather changed along the way and the sky lightened gently. He would arrive before anyone in the family was awake, as he did one weekend a month.

The first signs of spring had come to New York. They came suddenly, stealing into the city and breathing their soft breath against the cheeks of sleepers, as if to remind them that they were here. Fists of magnolia blossoms opened furtively in the dark, revealing their pink centers. The frothy cherry trees, the soft green of leaves stirring, the fingertips of trees along the avenues: remember me?

David noted their outlines. Perhaps this had been happening in Washington, too, but he had been too long underground, immersed in papers, to notice. Spring had returned. He crossed New York on foot, his nose and skin picking up the fresh odor, the stirring wind. The sounds of the city had become more muted, baffled by the petals that appeared everywhere.

David entered the building, passing the sleeping elevator’s cage. At the top of the stairs, he took out his key and entered the room furtively, silently. He sighed, letting his coat fall off him in a heap. The curtains stirred in welcome.

At that moment, spring entered the room also and woke his wife, Ilse, kissing her eyelids. She stirred and moved her dampened thighs, half-aware of her body’s surge. A dream perhaps? What had she dreamed? Her husband stood beside her awakening form, standing there as if waiting for something.

Ilse sat up suddenly, pushing the blankets aside, only her nightdress sheltering her body. “Shh,” said the figure.

“David?” cried Ilse sharply, questioning in a whisper.

“Shh,” he said, and sat carefully on the couch where she slept.

“David,” she whispered. No one else in the room stirred. Herbert’s snores fell rhythmically from his corner.

“My darling girl.” David slid under the sheets beside her, pulling up the bedclothes. “I’m here.” He took off her nightdress gently as she raised her arms to him.

Suddenly, they were together, warm, naked. Ilse’s body opened in many little mouths, soft velvet lips. She was ready for him. She arched her body toward his caresses as if feeding. His hands glided over her silky skin and smoothed it. It became fluid, as water, as transparent chiffon, silvery in the spring dawn. Ilse parted her legs. For one moment, she felt as if pierced, and he slid inside. His hotness rose in her; she could feel herself swelling in bloom to meet him, an answering opening and response. “David,” she gasped. They held their breath together and lay fused, as if one. Ilse’s body trembled with involuntary spasms as she pressed deeper, further against his. He moved slowly, more deeply inside her, but at the same time, he waited, growing larger. And opening her legs, she grasped and accommodated him, an answering opening as he moved deeper, coming to rest somewhere in the region of her heart, or so she imagined. They lay together in the soft spring air. And in that moment, merged, they were complete.

“David,” Ilse whispered, wrapping her legs more tightly around him and drawing him in even deeper. Their bodies trembled, and streams of spasms ran through them, involuntary, hardly noticed, so deep was their fusing.

Spring wrapped her gauzy curtain around them both as they lay together, a curtain that obscured them from the others. Ilse’s eyes were closed in ecstasy, and for once she was not aware of the little family that had become her responsibility. There was only that large, delicious darkness penetrating her body, the swelling warmth.

“David?” Ilse half opened her eyes and saw his eyes looking deeply into hers. She closed her eyes again, feeling their bodies’ slow, liquid acceptance of each other. They rocked as they lay together, answering shiver to shiver till finally breaking in a long crescendo, almost regretful, a soft, strong, dark good-bye, as the largest wave took them both.

“Just one moment longer. I’m only here for a little while,” muttered David against Ilse’s dark hair. “I can’t stay. Just till tonight. I need you so.” A surge of despair, even then. He sighed.

“I know,” whispered Ilse, raising her breasts to him. He kissed them, as if wanting to nurse, to be comforted by their round, soft beauty.

“No one knows I’m here,” he said. “I had to see you. You and Father.” In his mind, he was already going back to Washington.

“My darling,” she answered softly, “we’ll be together soon.”

“When the War ends. For it must end someday.”

This they thought, they hoped, but didn’t say aloud. There was so much to say; yet so little really mattered. Each turned a bit; David hastily regrouped, becoming his shabby, buttoned-down self again.

“I must go now,” David whispered to his wife, feeling for his spectacles. “Tell Father I’ll be waiting for him. The usual place. I have news.” Ilse moved away, loosening her hold.

“Yes, of course,” she whispered, already half-asleep. David left hurriedly, leaving the door half-closed behind him. The whoosh of spring air caught it, slammed it shut.

Ilse slept until the morning light woke her. The room looked as usual, small, dark, and drab, but something had changed.

At first light, Herbert woke. A moment to register that dawn had a slightly lighter look than before. He dressed quickly.

“Father, David’s here,” Ilse whispered to him as she served his tea.

“David?”

“Yes, he has news.” Herbert appeared to be his deliberate self, but there was alacrity as he put on his coat. Ilse brushed the lapels for him, and he was gone.

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” played itself through his head as he hurried down the stoop and out into the streets. New York had been transformed overnight. The first leafy fronds of tree branches, delicate fingers, arched toward the sky. They thrummed to an imaginary Pastoral Symphony. “David, my darling boy!” Herbert thought, skimming the sidewalks quickly, floating without interruption across intersections. No taxis honked impatiently this morning; no crowds barred his way. Effortlessly, he entered the Automat. “Be quick, old man!” he told himself. An expectant joy. “David, my love, my life.” Herbert remembered his two little boys, one dark, one fair, as they stood on the stairs of his house, watching the musicians in the parlor. One of Adeline’s soirees — they all merged — and the two little boys were delighted to be allowed to watch from the outside. The men and women festively dressed. The music. The Tolstoi Quartet at its prime in those days. And Adeline, how her eyes had glittered as if with fever, as if with delight.