They are lying on their backs on the damp and crumpled sheets, their arms by their sides, their faces and bodies bathed in white light like figures on a cathedral tombstone, stiff and motionless for all eternity. The only area of shadow is her crotch, where she has placed her hand.
She speaks calmly, sleepily, replying to his questions, prompting others, and all the while she’s touching herself gently, with little in-and-out movements of her finger, careful not to leave any gaps in the conversation in case the small wet noise gives her away.
“My editor has a second home in the Black Country,” she says, “and when you say ‘Naaah!’ it makes me think of there … Everyone talks like that in that godforsaken place.”
“How do you know?”
“He invited me once.”
“Only once?”
“Once or twice …”
“And what does your husband say?”
“I tell him it’s for work. There’s nothing he can say.”
Her finger is turning faster in her moist and secret place. “Do you know that area?” she murmurs, her eyes closed.
“It’s where I was born. My father moved there for the mines. My uncle died when a gallery caved in—”
“How awful,” she cuts in quickly, “how awww …” The phrase ends in a long hissing sigh while her body arches.
“I’m sorry,” she says, opening her eyes. Her voice sounds as if she is waking from a long sleep. “You were talking about mines and deaths, and I …”
“I noticed,” he says, calmly. “Why didn’t you cry out, the way you did before?”
“Before, you were hurting me.”
He smiles and looks up at the ceiling. She can see the yellow spot in his eye, like a speck of gold in a small green lake. She thinks of his wife, the way she imagines her to be. A well-built woman, gentle like him, with flabby skin and incurably greasy hair. His wife probably loves the spot in his eye too.
“I’d like you to kill me one day.”
“We’ll see,” he says. He stares at the naked bulb on the ceiling. They always make love with the light on, and she always closes her eyes.
“Do you love your wife?”
He looks at her anxiously.
“I hope at least you respect her?” She juts out her chin earnestly.
“I love her.”
“Respect is more important. You can hate someone and still respect them.”
“I love her,” he repeats.
She suddenly remembers that she still has that article to write about the mountain bikers who roar through the forest, trampling the paths and scattering the roe deer. For tomorrow, without fail, her editor said.
“Does your wife work?”
“Naaah,” he says briefly, as much as to say: Let her be. She stirs against him, then, leaning with one hand on his torso, she abruptly stands up.
“I’ll make coffee. You know where the shower is.”
He feels obliged to wash. She always seems to think you emerge from lovemaking the way you come up after a day down a coal mine. Black.
The water is already running. She turned on the faucet on her way to the kitchen. He studies the bottles of liquid soap. The husband’s. The children’s. The one her editor gave her as a Christmas present. Sometimes she receives champagne or gilded wooden decorations for the tree, but this year it was bath foam, in a pretty blue box with red and gold edges. She explained all about it the first time, adding that he could use the editor’s bath foam if he liked. As it was the kind of luxury you’d never think to buy for yourself, why not take advantage of it?
He doesn’t take advantage of it. He has no wish to go home smelling of strange scents. Besides, he doesn’t like her to mention that man. Or any man. He doesn’t want there to be anyone between them—editor, husband, brother, cousin. He wants there to be just the two of them, every Thursday between one and three in the afternoon, in the empty, rather cold house. Him with his head like a bull’s and his eye with its yellow spot. Her with her tight black dress and high-heeled shoes, her clear stockings and fine soft underwear, dark red or mauve or fawn. Him with his hairy chest and his thick wrists that hold her down when she struggles. Her with her very pale skin and narrow hips, her cunt sprinkled with talc, and her cries that are like dry sobs.
He could kill her.
“Coffee?”
She pours him the coffee—black—then runs to take her turn in the shower. When she comes back, she is dripping beneath the cloth she has pulled off the bed and twisted around her.
“Tell me something,” she says, sitting down.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Something about yourself. I don’t like to make love without knowing …” She stops. “Knowing” wasn’t the right word. “Without talking. It scares me.”
“You’re gorgeous.”
“You’ve already told me that. You always say it.”
“I like to see my cock plunging into you. It’s a real thrill.”
“A thrill! That’s all you ever say!”
She gets up suddenly, as if to get something from the dresser. Instead, she comes up behind him and throws her arms around his neck and places her cheek against his.
“I’m sorry,” she says, sitting down again and taking a gulp of coffee. “When you come down to it, I’m a submissive woman.”
He laughs dubiously, avoiding her eyes.
“Submissive,” she repeats. “I won’t force you to talk.”
“You’re …”
“Gorgeous. I know. Gorgeous and submissive.”
He laughs again, as if embarrassed, and plays with his spoon.
“Funny,” he says finally.
“No, not funny. Cruel.”
“Stop …”
“I have to be cruel to men. Otherwise I’d get bored. And if they’re cruel to me in return, I love them submissively— magically.”
“Magically?”
Her elbows on the table, she gesticulates with both hands, moving her fingers in front of her eyes like a hypnotist.
“Yes, magically! Why do you think I close my eyes when you make love to me? When I close my eyes, you become an octopus, a snake, a bull, a dog, a ram. You’re an animal, and animals are cruel. They can kill just like that, almost without realizing. Stop laughing!”
He is laughing with his usual laugh, reserved yet whole-hearted. He’s a man who doesn’t say much, but whenever anything like a laugh crosses his face, you know exactly what he’s thinking. Then a shadow passes across his eyes and he frowns, and she notices again the spot in his left eye.
“We’re on dangerous ground here,” he says.
She throws her head back and lets her hands fall on the table, almost flinging them, like objects you need to get rid of as quickly as possible. She looks at them, as if seeing them for the first time.
“Dangerous?” she says, in a strangely harsh voice. “Why? Because you might fall in love?”
He turns pale suddenly and hesitates, drawing a line with his nail on the waxed tablecloth.
“If that happens,” he says, “what’ll we do?”
She looks up and stares into his eyes, searching intently for the yellow spot. “You’ll kill me.”
“I’ll try …” And he adds, almost in a whisper, “Now I have to go … I have a meeting.”
She has found the yellow spot and won’t let go of it. As she speaks, she stares at the spot, drawing it to her like a magnet.
“You know what I love? When you hold me still and bite my shoulder. Lions do that to subdue lionesses.”
At last he returns her stare, boring into her enlarged pupils with his own.
“Take that sheet off.”
“No way. I’m cold.”
“Take it off.”
“Get lost!”
“Take it off, damn it!”
She turns away, laughing flippantly. “That’s better. But you’re still not cruel enough. When you’re really cruel, I’ll take it off.”
He reaches out and tries to pull the sheet away. “Take the damned thing off!”
“Your meeting! Your meeting!” she cries, throwing back her chest.
He is still sitting. He begins to move his big body from side to side, an uncertain look in his eyes. She stands up, pulling the damp sheet tight around her chest, and goes once more to the dresser, then to him, and again puts her arms around his neck.
“I’m sorry,” she repeats. “I don’t know what came over me.
He gets heavily to his feet and picks up his car keys from the table and turns to her.
“Next Thursday?”
“Next Thursday.”
She opens the door and lets him go out alone.
“It’s more discreet,” she says, staying inside as always, keeping her eyes on the windows of the house opposite.
He leaves without turning around. By way of goodbye, he shakes his keys. They glitter in the sun.
She closes the door. The sheet still wrapped tightly around her, she shuffles to the kitchen like a mummy. She sits down and sniffs her arm, which smells of the editor’s bath foam. She has to write that article about the bikers who are destroying the forest by passing over the same piece of ground every week. And first, she has to visualize it. The narrow path, the trampled vegetation, the deep ruts. Men in helmets, silent men with hard faces, lashed with black mud. They say: “It’s a real thrill.” Yes, that’s all they can say.