Under the veiled voice she felt the hidden warmth, under the hesitancies a hidden strength, under the fears a vaster dream more difficult to seize and to fulfill.
Alone, after an afternoon with him, she lay on her bed and while the bird he had carved gyrated lightly in the center of the room, tears came to her eyes so slowly she did not feel them at first until they slid down her cheeks.
Tears from this unbearable melting of her heart and body—a complete melting before the face of Paul, and the muted way his body spoke, the gentle way he was hungering, reaching, groping, like a prisoner escaping slowly and gradually, door by door, room by room, hallway by hallway, towards the light. The prison that had been built around him had been of darkness: darkness about himself, about his needs, about his true nature.
The solitary cell created by the parents.
He knew nothing, nothing about his true self. And such blindness was as good as binding him with chains. His parents and his teachers had merely imposed upon him a false self that seemed right to them.
This boy they did not know.
But this melting, it must not be. She turned her face away, to the right now, as if to turn away from the vision of his face, and murmured: “I must not love him, I must not love him.”
The bell rang. Before she could sit up Paul had come in.
“Oh, Paul, this is dangerous for you!”
“I had to come.”
As he stopped in his walking towards her his body sought to convey a message. What was his body saying? What were his eyes saying?
He was too near, she felt his eyes possessing her and she rushed away to make tea, to place a tray and food between them, like some very fragile wall made of sand, in games of childhood, which the sea could so easily wash away!
She talked, but he was not listening, nor was she listening to her own words, for his smile penetrated her, and she wanted to run away from him.
“I would like to know…” he said, and the words remained suspended.
He sat too near. She felt the unbearable melting, the loss of herself, and she struggled to close some door against him. “I must not love him, I must not love him!”
She moved slightly away, but his hair was so near her hand that her fingers were drawn magnetically to touch it lightly, playfully.
“What do you want to know?”
Had he noticed her own trembling? He did not answer her.
He leaned over swiftly and took her whole mouth in his, the whole man in him coming out in a direct thrust, firm, willful, hungry. With one kiss he appropriated her, asserted his possessiveness.
When he had taken her mouth and kissed her until they were both breathless they lay side by side and she felt his body strong and warm against hers, his passion inflexible.
He laid his hand over her with hesitations. Everything was new to him, a woman’s neck, a shoulder, a woman’s hooks and buttons.
Between the journeys of discovery he had flickering instants of uncertainties until the sparks of pleasure guided his hand.
Where he passed his hand no one else had ever passed his hand. New cells awakened under his delicate fingers never wakened before to say: this is yours.
A breast touched for the first time is a breast never touched before.
He looked at her with his long blue eyes which had never wept and her eyes were washed luminous and clear, her eyes forgot they had wept.
He touched her eyelashes with his eyelashes of which not one had fallen out and those of hers which had been washed away by tears were replaced.
His hair which had never been crushed between feverish pillows, knotted by nightmares, mingled with hers and untangled it.
Where sadness had carved rich caverns he sank his youthful thrusts grasping endless sources of warmth.
Only before the last mystery of the body did he pause. He had thrust and entered and now he paused.
Did one lie still and at peace in the secret place of woman? In utter silence they lay.
Fever mounting in him, the sap rising, the bodies taut with a need of violence.
She made one undulatory movement, and this unlocked in him a whirlpool of desire, a dervish dance of all the silver knives of pleasure.
When they awakened from their trance, they smiled at each other, but he did not move. They lay merged, slimness to slimness, legs like twin legs, hip to hip.
The cotton of silence lay all around them, covering their bodies in quilted softness.
The big wave of fire which rolled them washed them ashore tenderly into small circles of foam.
On the table there was a huge vase filled with tulips. She moved towards them, seeking something to touch, to pour her joy into, out of the exaltation she felt.
Every part of her body that had been opened by his hands yearned to open the whole world in harmony with her mood.
She looked at the tulips so hermetically closed, like secret poems, like the secrets of the flesh. Her hands took each tulip, the ordinary tulip of everyday living and she slowly opened them, petal by petal, opened them tenderly.
They were changed from plain to exotic flowers, from closed secrets to open flowering.
Then she heard Paul say: “Don’t do that!”
There was a great anxiety in his voice. He repeated: “Don’t do that!”
She felt a great stab of anxiety. Why was he so disturbed? She looked at the flowers. She looked at Paul’s face lying on the pillow, clouded with anxiety, and she was struck with fear. Too soon. She had opened him to love too soon. He was not ready.
Even with tenderness, even with delicate fingers, even with the greatest love, it had been too soon! She had forced time, as she had forced the flowers to change from the ordinary to the extraordinary. He was not ready!
Now she understood her own hesitations, her impulse to run away from him. Even though he had made the first gesture, she, knowing, should have saved him from anxiety.
(Paul was looking at the opened tulips and seeing in them something else, not himself but Djuna, the opening body of Djuna. Don’t let her open the flowers as he had opened her. In the enormous wave of silence, the hypnosis of hands, skin, delight, he had heard a small moan, yet in her face he had seen joy. Could the thrust into her have hurt her? It was like stabbing someone, this desire.)
“I’m going to dress, now,” she said lightly. She could not close the tulips again, but she could dress. She could close herself again and allow him to close again.
Watching her he felt a violent surge of strength again, stronger than his fears. “Don’t dress yet.”
Again he saw on her face a smile he had never seen there in her gayest moments, and then he accepted the mystery and abandoned himself to his own joy.
His heart beat wildly at her side, wildly in panic and joy together at the moment before taking her. This wildly beating heart at her side, beating against hers, and then the cadenced, undulating, blinding merging together, and no break between their bodies afterwards.
After the storm he lay absoluly still over her body, dreaming, quiet, as if this were the place of haven. He lay given, lost, entranced. She bore his weight with joy, though after a while it numbed and hurt her. She made a slight movement, and then he asked her: “Am I crushing you?”
“You’re flattening me into a thin wafer,” she said, smiling, and he smiled back, then laughed.
“The better to eat you, my dear.”
He kissed her again as if he would eat her with delight. Then he got up and made a somersault on the carpet, with light exultant gestures.
She lay back watching the copper bird gyrating in the center of the room.
His gaiety suddenly overflowed, and taking a joyous leap in the air, he came back to her and said:
“I will call up my father!”
She could not understand. He leaned over her body and keeping his hand over her breast he dialed his father’s telephone number.