40

I Said Nothing

Who’s there?” I whispered.

“It’s me.” I recognized C.’s voice as he tried to whisper, though it came out as a squeak. I didn’t know what to do.

I couldn’t ask what he wanted through the closed door. Someone might hear. Should I open the door? That would be as good as an invitation. I said, “It’s too late,” and walked away from the door.

He knocked again. I went back to the door angrily and quietly but firmly said, “Go away!”

“Just give me a minute,” he begged. “I just have a few words to say to you, no more.”

“I can’t.”

He knocked again.

“What is it?” I said, opening the door an inch. “What do you want?”

“I need to ask you something.”

“Come back in the morning! How dare you? I was sleeping!” I lied. I tried to close the door in his face, but he forced it open and came into my room. He closed the door gently behind him.

We stared at each other for a while, each of us gearing up for a fight.

“My God! How beautiful you look like that!” he said, gathering his hands in an almost religious pose. “Darling, I’ve never seen you like this before.”

I realized that I was almost entirely undressed. Although he’d just called me “darling” (which seems to be some kind of rule with him when he’s alone in the dark with me), I ignored it, looking around for my robe.

He tore the robe out of my hands and threw it aside. “Why do you need that?” he asked. “Are you embarrassed of your own beauty?”

“I’m cold,” I said through clenched teeth. It was true, I really was shivering, though not so much because of the temperature as out of anger at his tearing my robe away from me.

“Cold?” he said, and he grabbed my hand, lay me in my bed, and covered me with the blanket. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked me in the eyes, laying his hands on my head. “Why did you run away from my lecture?” he demanded.

“I wanted to,” I answered.

“Was it a bad speech?”

“It was absurd.”

“You didn’t hear the end.”

“I can imagine it.”

“You can’t. They practically threw me into the air when I was finished. Everyone shook my hand. I looked for you. I was upset that you weren’t there to see it. They’re going to rent a bigger hall for my next lecture so that everyone can come. So many people were turned away today because there wasn’t enough room in the hall.”

“Good for them!”

“Do you think so?”

“I think that I think so.”

“Why are you so angry?”

“I want to sleep. Go away!” I sighed. “I don’t want another scandal like we had last time in the other room. People here don’t know who or what I am. They might think—”

“If they hear noise they will certainly think it. Let’s be quiet and let them sleep. I hate when people make scenes. People like your old landlords who threw me out, they make me crazy. I hardly know what to do with myself.”

“Why do we have to argue in the middle of the night?”

“Is it my fault that it’s the middle of the night? I feel like the sun could rise right now, just for me. What does time have to do with me?”

“But I—”

“Darling!”

“Don’t call me darling.”

“Alright. No more darlings. Although such endearments are made for silence, darkness, for what you’re wearing now. And, darling, I love you, do you hear me? I love you with all of your whims, with your childish grudges against that thing that is so essential to your life, and to mine. You’re cruel to yourself, you suppress your natural urges. Your soft, velvety body begs to be caressed, to be covered in kisses. Your romantic soul wants love, but you, darling, turn away from it. You’re afraid to look the truth in the face . . . Are you sleeping?”

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see him. When he talked this way, when I closed my eyes I saw B. in him. And as he sat there in silence, holding my hand, I could almost imagine that he was A. instead.

When I kept my eyes closed and didn’t answer his questions, C. said, “She’s actually asleep.” He started to undress.

“What do you think you are doing?” I stared at him.

His plan was a simple one. Why should he sit there if he could lie down instead? And you don’t lie down with your clothes on. He only sleeps with his clothes on when he’s studying for an exam, he explained. But he’d already passed his examinations when it came to love. He was in no hurry to fall asleep. He could take his time and remove the unnecessary clothing.

It seemed to me that he was suggesting that everything he was wearing was unnecessary.

“No! What do you think you’re doing?” I protested, though weakly, since I didn’t want anyone to hear. “Where do you think you are, at a bathhouse?”

“Shhh,” he said to me. “Enough with these questions! Now’s not the time.”

I got out of bed, grabbed my robe, and sat in a rocking chair. He could lie down alone if he wanted!

He lay down in my bed and laughed at me. What was I so afraid of? Why was I running away? He wasn’t going to lecture me! If I wanted him to, he’d be very quiet, absolutely quiet, quiet as a mouse. He knew that I preferred men not to say anything. At the beginning of our relationship he thought that I needed to be taken by storm like other girls, but he soon realized that he could only persuade with actions, not words. “Won’t you come a little closer, so I don’t have to speak so loudly?”

“No.”

“The landlady will come in, and that won’t be pretty.”

I didn’t say anything. “How can I keep quiet about this?” I thought. “He came to my room in the middle of the night—no, he broke into my room in the middle of the night like an intruder, undressed, and got into my bed. My bed! Warmed by my own body! And he’s lying there and I’m sitting here covered in a thin robe, shivering in the cold, terrified, angry, and powerless, because—why? Because I’m afraid of making noise! Can he just do whatever he wants, and I’ll say nothing?”

“You know,” he said conspiratorially, leaning on the edge of the bed with his head resting on his hands, “for a long time I’ve been picturing this moment, when I’d be with you in this position. I couldn’t imagine it any other way. At night, in my dreams, I held you in my arms and kissed you. My God, how I kissed you! And then when I awoke and you weren’t beside me, I cried for sleep to return. My God! How bitterly, how pitifully I cried! It was like my soul was flying out of me. Neighbors had to wake me up and—”

“After you woke up someone had to wake you up?”

“What? You see my dear, I made a mistake and you noticed. I was just trying to see if you were paying attention to what I was saying. And now that I know that you’re listening, I’ll say something more important. Don’t be such a child. Come to me. You’ll catch such a chill sitting over there in your chair that you’ll never warm up. And a chill is a horrible thing that can turn into a serious illness. Come.”

I didn’t come.

“I swear by all that’s holy,” he said, raising his right hand, “they can cut off my hands if I touch you at all against your will.”

I heard someone talking somewhere, and then steps, a door opening. Two dark shadows grew larger in front of my door and then smaller again until they faded away.

C. lowered his hand.