Then she could see on his face what he wanted to tell his father: call his father, tell him what could not be told, but which his entire new body wanted to tell him: I have taken a woman! I have a woman of my own. I am your equal, Father! I am a man!
When his father answered Paul could only say the ordinary words a son can say to his father, but he uttered these ordinary words with exultant arrogance, as if his father could see him with his hand on Djuna’s body: “Father, I am here.”
“Where are you?” answered the father severely. “We’re expecting you home. You can continue to see your friends but you must come home to please your mother. Your mother has dinner all ready for you!”
Paul laughed, laughed as he had never laughed as a boy, with his hand over the mouth of the telephone.
On such a day they are expecting him for dinner!
They were blind to the miracle. Over the telephone his father should hear and see that he had a woman of his own: she was lying there smiling.
How dare the father command now! Doesn’t he hear the new voice of the new man in his son?
He hung up.
His hair was falling over his eager eyes. Djuna pulled at it. He stopped her. “You can’t do that any more, oh no.” And he sank his teeth into the softest part of her neck.
“You’re sharpening your teeth to become a great lover,” she said.
When desire overtook him he always had a moment of wildly beating heart, almost of distress, before the invading tide. Before closing his eyes to kiss her, before abandoning himself, he always carefully closed the shutters, windows and doors.
This was the secret act, and he feared the eyes of the world upon him. The world was full of eyes upon his acts, eyes watching with disapproval.
That was the secret fear left from his childhood: dreams, wishes, acts, pleasures which aroused condemnation in the parents’ eyes. He could not remember one glance of approval, of love, of admiration, of consent. From far back he remembered being driven into secrecy because whatever he revealed seemed to arouse disapproval or punishment.
He had read the Arabian Nights in secret, he had smoked in secret, he had dreamed in secret.
His parents had questioned him only to accuse him later.
And so he closed the shutters, curtains, windows, and then went to her and both of them closed their eyes upon their caresses.
There was a knitted blanket over the couch which he particularly liked. He would sit under it as if it were a tent. Through the interstices of the knitting he could see her and the room as through an oriental trellis. With one hand out of the blanket he would seek her little finger with his little finger and hold it.
As in an opium dream, this touching and interlacing of two little fingers became an immense gesture, the very fragile bridge of their relationship. By this little finger so gently and so lightly pulling hers he took her whole self as no one else had.
He drew her under the blanket thus, in a dreamlike way, by a small gesture containing the greatest power, a greater power than violence.
Once there they both felt secure from all the world, and from all threats, from the father and the detective, and all the taboos erected to separate lovers all over the world.
Lawrence rushed over to warn them that Paul’s father had been seen driving through the neighborhood.
Paul and Djuna were having dinner together and were going to the ballet.
Paul had painted a feather bird for Djuna’s hair and she was pinning it on when Lawrence came with the warning.
Paul became a little pale, then smiled and said: “Wafer, in case my father comes, could you make yourself less pretty?”
Djuna went and washed her face of all make-up, and then she unpinned the airy feather bird from her hair, and they sat down together to wait for the father.
Djuna said: “I’m going to tell you the story of Caspar Hauser, which is said to have happened many years ago in Austria. Caspar Hauser was about seventeen years old when he appeared in the city, a wanderer, lost and bewildered. He had been imprisoned in a dark room since childd. His real origin was unknown, and the cause for the imprisonment. It was believed to be a court intrigue, that he might have been put away to substitute another ruler, or that he might have been an illegitimate son of the Queen. His jailer died and the boy found himself free. In solitude he had grown into manhood with the spirit of a child. He had only one dream in his possession, which he looked upon as a memory. He had once lived in a castle. He had been led to a room to see his mother. His mother stood behind a door. But he had never reached her. Was it a dream or a memory? He wanted to find this castle again, and his mother. The people of the city adopted him as a curiosity. His honesty, his immediate, childlike instinct about people, both infuriated and interested them. They tampered with him. They wanted to impose their beliefs on him, teach him, possess him. But the boy could sense their falsities, their treacheries, their self-interest. He belonged to his dream. He gave his whole faith only to the man who promised to take him back to his home and to his mother. And this man betrayed him, delivered him to his enemies. Just before his death he had met a woman, who had not dared to love him because he was so young, who had stifled her feeling. If she had dared he might have escaped his fate.”
“Why didn’t she dare?” asked Paul.
“She saw only the obstacle,” said Djuna. “Most people see only the obstacle, and are stopped by it.”
(No harm can befall you now, Paul, no harm can befall you. You have been set free. You made a good beginning. You were loved by the first object of your desire. Your first desire was answered. I made such a bad beginning! I began with a closed door. This harmed me, but you at least began with fulfillment. You were not hurt. You were not denied. I am the only one in danger. For that is all I am allowed to give you, a good beginning, and then I must surrender you.)
They sat and waited for the father.
Lawrence left them. The suspense made him uneasy.
Paul was teaching Djuna how to eat rice with chopsticks.
Then he carefully cleaned them and was holding them now as they talked as if they were puppets representing a Balinese shadow theater of the thoughts neither one dared to formulate. They sat and waited for the father.
Paul was holding the chopsticks like impudent puppets, gesticulating, then he playfully unfastened the first button of her blouse with them, deftly, and they laughed together.
“It’s time for the ballet,” said Djuna. “Your father is evidently not coming, or he would be here already.”
She saw the illumination of desire light his face.
“Wait, Djuna.” He unfastened the second button, and the third.
Then he laid his head on her breast and said: “Let’s not go anywhere tonight. Let’s stay here.”
Paul despised small and shallow waves. He was drawn to a vastness whic corresponded to his boundless dreams. He must possess the world in some big way, rule a large kingdom, expand in some absolute leadership.
He felt himself king as a child feels king, over kingdoms uncharted by ordinary men. He would not have the ordinary, the known. Only the vast, the unknown could satisfy him.
Djuna was a woman with echoes plunging into an endless past he could never explore completely. When he tasted her he tasted a suffering which had borne a fragrance, a fragrance which made deeper grooves. It was enough that he sensed the dark forests of experience, the unnamed rivers, the enigmatic mountains, the rich mines under the ground, the overflowing caves of secret knowledges. A vast ground for an intrepid adventurer.
Above all she was his “ocean,” as he wrote her. “When a man takes a woman to himself he possesses the sea.”