Tildy parried when with dripping claws she unexpectedly shoved the torn-up piece of orange under his mustache. But her wild, almost primal gesture of maternal feeding was overpowering; against his will, he opened his lips to accept the first piece and then offered only weak resistance to the next one, and the next after that. She seemed to find more pleasure in taking care of Professor Lyubanarov, whose stream of words had suddenly been halted and who with a glassy gaze swallowed whatever was shoved into his mouth. All the while her bearing was suspiciously serious. Tildy had no sense for how hideously ridiculous the whole scene was. The fact that he, too, had become her victim only sharpened his tense vigilance. He realized that he had lost the first round, but was unable to explain how; the contest did not follow any of the rules he had expected. While inclined to think himself duped, led on, and made a fool of — a suspicion that gnawed at him, because it was unchivalrous and would have turned his “cause” into a farce, he was immediately ashamed of his mistrust. Because after the girl had fed the last piece to Lyubanarov, she let her hands — dirty and sticky as they were — sink into her lap, and stared at the mountain of discarded peels, thin and lost before the picture of senseless waste like a sorrowful child, and this was no pose. A deep sympathy for her poverty, her youth, her bad breeding, and the loneliness of her existence overcame him, as strongly as a sense of guilt. She stared helplessly at her hands, and he handed her his handkerchief. It was made of fine batiste, large and unadorned, and she touched it with the same sensual rapture she had displayed while touching the fruit. Then she held it to her mouth, closing her eyes, and inhaled its pure scent.
“I love you,” she said, as if in jubilation. She stood up, letting her light coat slide off her shoulders. She was wearing a sleeveless dress of a very plain cut, which despite its cheapness seemed on her as elegant as a chiton on a young Greek woman. She came mincing over to him on her high heels, and sat down in his lap, with such a natural lack of inhibition that he did not resist. He let her drape her bare arms around him and snuggle her face against his, allowed her to kiss him, cover his forehead and cheeks with a shower of tender fleeting kisses like the warm droplets of a fine spring rain. Her display of affection showed a brilliant gift for avoiding routine opening gestures; she was able to elicit desire that went beyond the merely immediate and touched on the sublime; she knew how to draw things out into an ongoing play that was at once innocent and sinful. She touched the tip of his nose with her own and opened her eyes very close to his, and he gazed into her large, fixed eyes, ringed by the dark makeup, and saw the mask of death and yielded to the temptation of that ultimate sinking-away, that final act of relief, of becoming a child in the lap of nonexistence. And she tossed her head back and took a deep breath and laughed a mute, enraptured laugh, then nuzzled her temples against his mouth, and rocked her head as if falling into a happy, restorative slumber. Overwhelmed by this tenderness, Tildy found himself touching her with a sensual delight he had never known, as his hand caressed the beautiful curve of her head, clasped her neck with a warm, firm grip, and guided her blissful child’s head close to him. A dark feeling of happiness engulfed him, clouded by an inexpressible sadness that was now finally free of all constraint.
Professor Lyubanarov again took hold of his arm. “No,” he said, with glazed eyes, as if making a great mystic proclamation, “the curs no longer step aside for you, they rub their mangy fur against you, they lick your boots — soon they will bite you, brother-in-law. And yet you have also gained something: now the butterflies are alighting on you …”
And then Tildy sensed the hornet-flicker of a uniform hovering over the head of the girl. He looked up. Standing in front of him was a sergeant from his former squadron, who had been in the service for years: vulgar, mustachioed, brutal, his eyes empty and mean. “You will permit me a dance with the lady,” he said in a voice dripping with scorn. And before Tildy could reply she had jumped up and was reclining in the arm of the mercenary, playing the same brilliant game of erotic delay, as she danced with him in the sliding, choppy rhythm of the tango — except her movements were more undisguised, blatantly routine, with a hypocritical coldness that did not lessen her pleasure, but on the contrary appeared to arouse it.
Tildy felt the raw, deadly sharp stab of disappointment and averted his gaze, eager not to meet the eyes of the brute in whose arms she was cradled. His courage commanded otherwise, to meet each and every scornful glance with his unruffled “English” countenance. He found himself once again deceived, because the sergeant no longer cared about Tildy but was simply staring at the girl, crudely lusting into her eyes. Nor did she pay Tildy any notice.
The tango seemed to go on forever. Its flat musical motif kept curling out of the monotony of rhythmic thrusts and shoves, twining into a primitive arabesque and tapering off with no real resolution into a banal loop of endless repeats. Professor Lyubanarov let his head droop from his pulled-in neck like a befuddled steer. “Bear it, brother-in-law,” he croaked. “Here all pride has an end. I know all too well, believe me.” He shook Tildy’s arm vigorously—“Believe me,” he shouted, “I know the arrogance that poisons the ear with phrases like ‘even though I’ve treated you as my equal you’re still far from being my equal.’” He sobbed once again, the tears running down his spongy cheeks. “Words! Their poison eats away the heart like the eagle gnawing on Prometheus’s liver. But they don’t help you in the least. Not at all. If you are honestly uxorious, and devoted to one woman, then bow your head and submit your neck to the yoke. Never will you find a woman who spares the man who loves her; for though she be herself aflame, she delights to torment and plunder him … Nothing will help you, and least of all words, words, words! Subter caecum vulnes habes sed lato balteus auro praetegit ut mavis da verba et decipe nervos si potes … Mere words, once again! Admovit iam bruma foco te Basse Sabino iamne lyra et tetrico vivunt tibi pectine chordae mire opifex numeris veterum primordia vocum atque marem strepitum fidis intendisse Latinae … Yes, soon the winter frost will coax us to the Sabine fireside — the Sabine fireside we do not possess … the winter frost … The world, I tell you — are you listening to me? You don’t wish to hear what I’m saying, brother — you don’t want to hear me in your hurt pride, sir, but nonetheless I am offering you a great and deep truth: the world, dear sir, is dark, wet, and windy — just like an old man’s ass — yes that is a great — deep — wisdom.”
Tildy was sitting, unmoved, when the girl came back. He did not look up when she picked up an orange and peeled and ate it; he saw only the barbaric motions of her clawlike hands, now less hasty, and he surmised that her face was as calm as he wished his own were. Then he rediscovered the same groping humility in her hands, and against his will he followed the one that was lifting the torn pieces of orange to her mouth, and he saw how she kept her eyes closed and chewed with an expression of inner gratitude, how she swallowed as if exhausted, gulping down that first, longed-for draught. He shuddered at the terrifying notion that she must have known or would yet know true hunger. At once, all thought of himself, all mistrust, all caution, all hesitation to become involved, was erased. He knew he had been called to protect her and save her from her dirty existence. He was flooded with self-confidence: for the first time in his life he felt how powerful he could be. He again sensed a deceptive amplification of his capacity to feel, and transferred his gratitude onto her, and as she faced him once again full-on, he sensed that her gaze was now more probing, and he believed that he saw in her eyes a tentative hope responding to the certainty that he was pouring into her.