After pouring him a drink in the kitchen, and then another one, straight whisky this time instead of Dubonnet, the large pink man who resembled a Dutch farmer in an advertisement for classy cigars insisted on not giving Yoel a chance to apologize or to explain. Never mind. I don't care what brings you here like this in the middle of the night. After all, everybody has enemies and everybody has worries. We've never asked you what you do—and by the way, you haven't asked me either. But maybe one day you and I will have a nice job together. I've got a suggestion. Not now in the middle of the night, of course. We'll talk about it when you're ready for it. You'll find that I can do anything you can, dear friend. Now, what can I offer you? Some supper? A hot shower? Very well then, now it's bedtime even for big boys.
In a kind of sleepy submissiveness that fell upon him suddenly, from fatigue or mental distraction, he allowed Ralph to take him to the bedroom. There, by the vague green underwater light, he saw Annemarie sleeping on her back like a baby, with her arms spread out by h£r sides and her hair spread out on the pillow. Next to her face lay a little rag doll with long eyelashes. Fascinated and exhausted Yoel stood by the bookcase watching the woman, who seemed less sexual than touchingly innocent. And as he watched he felt too tired to resist when Ralph began to undress him in a firm yet gentle, fatherly way, undoing his belt and loosening his shirt, then hurriedly unbuttoning it, releasing Yoel's chest from his undershirt, bending over and untying his shoelaces and removing the socks from the feet that Yoel obediently held out, unzipping his trousers, easing them down, pulling off the underpants too, and then, with his arm around Yoel's shoulder, like a swimming instructor leading a hesitant pupil to the water, taking him to the bed and raising the blanket and, when Yoel was lying, also on his back, next to Annemarie, who did not wake up, tenderly covering the two of them, whispering good night, and withdrawing.
Yoel raised himself on his elbow and gazed at the face of the pretty baby in the faint watery light. Gently, lovingly he kissed her, almost without his lips touching her skin, on the corners of her closed eyes. She put her arms around him, in her sleep, and focused her fingers on the back of his neck until his hair bristled slightly. As he closed his eyes, he picked up for a moment the sound of a warning from somewhere inside himself, Careful, man, check the escape routes, and at once he replied with the words, The sea doesn't run away. With that he began to devote himself to her pleasure as though pampering an abandoned child, almost ignored his own flesh, and in this way he had his pleasure. Unril his eyes filled suddenly. Perhaps because, as he was sinking into sleep, he felt or guessed that her brother was adjusting the blanket over them.