MYRIAM WAS PRETENDING to sleep. She tried to produce the sound of a woman sleeping so I’d fall asleep and she could think there was still time to say no, and not take the plane, not return to Somalia—she must have considered that. When she closes her eyes, the scenes are tragic, war, certainly, and the triumph of armed stupidity, but most of all it’s the twisted mouths, the decayed teeth exposed in laughter, the insults. It’s not the rape itself that hurts, it’s the contempt and powerlessness. That’s why, when we make love, she always says gently and turns her face away. But when she opens her eyes, the shadows on the ceiling are reassuring. A moonbeam lights the room, the trains go by on time, and we can hear the anxious cry of ducks that have lost a duckling in the water lilies in the pool in front of the hotel. A drunk is howling, but those noises comfort her
“Claude, are you sleeping?”
“No. I was waiting for you to fall asleep.”
“Make love to me, gently.”
I moved inside her and made myself as light as possible. People don’t know anything about lightness and gentleness in bed. For Myriam, the border is so thin between pleasure and horror that a single thrust that is too abrupt brings her back to the place where death began. She knows I’m not raping her. She asked for this penis that labours inside her. She loves my penis that is gentler than all the rest. She believes she loves the man attached to it. At least she trusts him because when she says gently, he slows his rhythm and is sorry for being too eager. That’s enough for Myriam to love now: the power to say gently to a man and feel his breathing slow down and his body move to hers instead of looking down on her from his triumphant height, his body an extension of the weapon that tears through flesh. Her flesh is so smooth, like velvet, perfumed and musky, her flesh is like silk, astonishing in its smoothness, and then there is that other flesh inside her, perforated again and again, worked over as if she were a territory to be mined, carved out in secret, bloody caverns. Gently, she says.