Love is of a birth as rare …
It was begotten by despair
Upon Impossibility.
The Definition of Love
Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
HE STOPPED THE CAR at the garden square opposite his apartment and turned the key. For a while they didn’t say anything: just sat there listening to the cooling engine.
He turned to face her. ‘If you’ve changed your mind, I’ll understand.’
She hesitated. This, after all, was not the way it was supposed to be. Where was the joy, the breathlessness? The heart-racing excitement? Melancholy and passion were mean bedfellows.
‘At least come up for a drink. Please. I just want to be close.’
Still she hesitated, she was feeling apprehensive now. But then she looked into his eyes. Last night she had squandered the moment. She shouldn’t do so again.
Inside his living room, he took her coat, his fingers brushing against her neck. ‘Sherry, right?’
‘Thank you, yes.’
The light winked off the rims of the glasses: drew sparks from the diamond facets of the cut-glass decanter. The sherry dripped into the glass with an oily whisper.
She said, suddenly desperate, ‘Justin, maybe I should go after all.’
‘I want you to stay with me.’ His voice was almost a sigh.
Her hand hung limply by her side. He picked it up and brought it to his cheek, his eyes never leaving her face. Then he turned his head sideways and his hot breath was on her wrist. He moved his lips against the palm of her hand, pressed his mouth on the swell of the fleshy mound at the base of her thumb.
‘Stay with me.’
Softly his finger pressed against her lower lip, forcing her to slacken her mouth. He brought his face close to hers. His eyelashes were dark and long.
He kissed her. His tongue was exploring her mouth gently: a self-assured intruder prying, probing, insisting she give way.
She felt her lips soften.
His breathing became sharp and shallow. Then her hand was in his and he was pulling her towards a closed door. As he placed his hand on the doorknob, she felt herself holding back.
‘Don’t be afraid.’ He pushed her gently into the room ahead of him.
She had a confused impression of a low, wide bed; a room decorated in shades of flannel grey. But her eyes were held by the reflection in the long, full-length mirror facing her. A reflection of a woman with tangled hair and a bruised mouth. A woman with irresolute eyes.
She tucked her hands behind her back. The woman in the reflection ducked her head and her hands moved behind her back in a timorous gesture. Now she was moving backward, as though trying to escape.
He was standing a few paces behind her, his face unreadable. He made no move to touch her. The message was clear: if she wanted to leave, he was not going to stop her.
She gave a last look at the woman with the uncertain eyes and turned her back on that diffident figure. She walked up to him and pressed her body against his. Reaching up to take his face in her hands, she pulled it strongly and deliberately towards her.
• • •
THROUGH HER MIND raced wisps of a dream, a memory of another life. She was back on the farm and it was dark. Black night and bright stars. She was swimming in the murky water of the dam by the steel windmill. She was naked and the cold water lapped at her thighs and breasts and caused her nerve endings to crackle and leap. She dipped her head underneath the water and forced her body down, down until her feet touched the bottom and she recoiled at the slippery feel of slime. Her hands and arms started rowing upward again, she was blinded by water and her chest hurt, but as her head broke the surface she laughed exultantly with panic and exhilaration.
He was drawing his finger down her body, down the inside of her arm, her armpit. It hovered at her breast, the curve of her hip. He lowered his head and flicked his tongue all the way down the length of her, starting at the hollow at her throat, lingering at the back of her knees, the soft arch of her foot.
She started trembling and the shiver that gripped her made her tighten her hands, made her pull her shoulders forward as though she felt a chill. His mouth pressed against her stomach, lingered in the damp fold of her thigh. And the chill turned to heat and every vein inside her was touched by fire; every sinew in her body burned.
The crushing pressure of his weight. His lips hot against her mouth. His hips rocking against hers: waves, water, drowning. Her skin dewed by his sweat. She placed her hands on the small of his back and pressed him against her. She wanted him close, she wanted to feel the sharp, knobbly angles of his hip bones, the muscles moving like thin snakes underneath his skin.
She opened her eyes. His face loomed above her; he was watching her. Then his eyelids closed painfully as though he was shielding himself from her gaze. His head drooped. He placed the palm of his hand over her eyes and it became dark.
• • •
THE SCENT woke her up. A heavy, intensely sweet scent. The powerful perfume of crushed roses.
For a moment she lay completely still, but even as her brain recognized the fragrance, it was already dissipating, evading her.
From somewhere far away came the scream of a siren. Light from the street lamp outside filtered into the room and caused shadows to curdle in the corners of the ceiling.
She turned her head. Justin was sleeping soundly, his breath slow and even. He was lying on his stomach, his pillow gathered against him in a flaccid embrace.
She edged out of bed and walked noiselessly through the door and down the passage until she reached the living room. The embers of the fire were still alive: a sullen, dark, orange glow. Her eyes fell on the oil painting above the mantelpiece, on that figure dressed in purple velvet and lace; on the arrogant, proud face with the narrow nose and dark eyes.
It was stifling in here. She needed fresh air. Opening the window, she breathed in deeply.
She suddenly noticed the cardboard box with Alette’s things, which was still on the walnut table in the window, just as it had been on that night almost three weeks ago when she had visited him here for the first time.
Three weeks. A lifetime ago.
She pulled the box towards her. Everything was still in there just as she remembered. Her hand touched the front of the table, the sharp edge of the metal knob of the drawer. Instinctively, without thinking, she pulled at the knob and the drawer slid open in her hand.
The letters Justin had taken from her were still inside. The letters from Alette he hadn’t wanted her to read. She remembered how he had snatched them from her hand.
She looked up. The eyes above the fireplace were watching her. They seemed amused.
She picked up the letters. They were still fastened together with a rubber band. Quietly, without any haste, she walked to the couch and opened her handbag. She slid the letters into the inside pocket. Afterwards she would look back on this moment and realize she had felt no shame in doing so.
‘Hey.’
She turned around quickly.
He was standing inside the door, his dark hair tousled.
‘I miss you, come back to bed.’ He held out his hand.
She followed him back down the passage and into the room. He had switched on the bedside lamp. It cast a warm glow over the sheets. Warm. Inviting. Why, then, was she feeling chilled? In the air was the merest suggestion of a sweet-smelling scent.
She got into the bed next to him and he pulled up the bedclothes so they covered her bare shoulders.
‘You shouldn’t leave me like that,’ he said. ‘I woke up and your side of the bed was cold.’
She noticed for the first time the framed print on the wall. It was an odd choice for a bedroom. It was an old-fashioned doomsday scene: mouldy skeletons rising from the putrid earth; angels with vacant faces and flowing hair blowing on trumpets; muscular demons with strong teeth and eyeballs of a pure, pure white. One of the angels, unlike her sisters, was staring out of the frame with yellow eyes, a smile on her lips. She had red hair swirling around her hips.
Justin switched off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. He yawned and put his arm around her, drawing her close. It lay heavy across her breasts. She tried to relax in his hold, but even as her thoughts grew cloudy, something was hammering away at her brain. Just before she slid into sleep Isa wondered how it was that the artist had included Alette in his picture.
• • •
WHEN SHE WOKE UP again, she was momentarily confused as to where she was. She turned her head sharply.
The bed next to her was empty. On top of the crumpled pillow was a note.
Isa,
Can’t bring myself to wake you. Have to leave early for a meeting. Will call you this evening.
Thank you. Thank you for last night.
She crumpled the note between her fingers. The paper bit into her skin.
She took a shower in a bathroom gleaming with chrome and polished granite. Standing quietly underneath the stream of warm water, she tried to think back on the night before. But she couldn’t get her mind to focus. The entire experience seemed insubstantial. All she seemed to remember was an interplay of texture and light and shadow. Skin, satin, dark hollows, moon drops on the pillows.
Stepping out of the stall, she walked with wet feet towards the towel rack. One of the towels felt damp, and as she dried herself in front of the mirror, she noticed a tiny fleck of wet shaving cream inside the washbasin.
The place felt eerily empty without him. She entered the living room and the sunlight falling through the sash windows seemed stale and sharp. There was dust on the windowsill.
She felt ill at ease alone in his apartment, but as she shrugged into her coat, she realized she also did not wish to return to Alette’s house. If only she didn’t have to go back to those quiet rooms, those smiling photographs.
Inside the taxi she found that she was tensing her arms and legs as if by doing so she could postpone the moment of arrival. And when Alette’s house finally came into view, it was as though—for just a second—a cog had slipped in her brain and she did not recognize the place. It was suddenly not a house of bricks and mortar anymore, but the line drawing of a child. Walls aslant, windows uneven, door out of proportion to the rest of the house.
She paid the driver and stepped out of the cab. Then she turned around and pushed open the garden gate. Taking a deep breath, she started walking towards the front door.