CHAPTER IX
She looked at the clock on the dressing table and saw that it was two o' clock. The sun poured in through the open windows, and she wanted nothing to do with the sun.
Her skin stuck to the sheets where the blood had congealed during the night. Her slightest motion opened the wounds. She touched her jaws and mouth, and found her face tender and swollen. She reached to the bedside table for the hand mirror. She stared long at her reflection. Her eyes were dark- rimmed, but peaceful. Her mouth was split and bruised. It would be difficult to speak, but there was nothing she wanted to say. Thank God she was sick. It was a welcome reprieve; now she could offer herself the devotions due an invalid. The sickness of her mind had at last conquered her body. The fever that would register on the thermometer would entitle her to rest. The next best thing to love was rest. The next best thing to rest was death. The rapist was not important. The welts rising on her back – that was her true concern. At last, her body was a fitting prison. The pain of her flesh equaled the pain in her heart, balancing and finally negating the untouchable torment.
She remembered the heap of naked flesh that she had dragged to the second floor landing. It was two o' clock; he must be gone by now. Had one of the tenants found him sprawled clumsily in his own sweat? He seemed a timid man, except for the drunken beating he' d administered. Probably when sober he would recall the evening with shame. She didn' t think he' d repeat the visit. Possibly one night, drunk and hot, he would. But she didn' t particularly hate him. He had proved a valuable executioner. The leather belt was still in the bed beside her. C.D. Charles the Divine. The room was comforting and familiar, and she lay back in a curious repose.
She was too sore to bathe; she could barely sponge her face. She put fresh sheets on the bed and then put on a pair of starched cotton pajamas. The house was in a disorder that upset her, upset the feeling of tenuous calm. But solutions, this free afternoon, were everywhere. She called the maid service and then got into bed with a book.
She got up from the bed and found a woolen shawl that she wrapped around her shoulders. It was too warm, but she wanted the comforts of illness. She did not wait for the rapist, but seemed to wait for her mother to walk into her bedroom with a tray of orange juice and tea and thinly sliced toast. She recalled the love her mother had showered on her when she was sick. It was worth the aches to hear the hushed voices outside her door… to be coaxed into tasting the delicious dull food.
Gloria heard the key turning in the lock and she knew that the maid had arrived. The woman poked her head into the bedroom and announced herself.
" Anything special you want done, Miss Gloria?"
" No," said Gloria. " Please just clean up the mess."
The maid stepped into the room. She looked closely at Gloria. " Why, you' re sick," she said sympathetically.
" Yes, very," Gloria sighed contentedly.
" Shall I call the doctor for you?"
" I' ll be all right," Gloria assured her. " I just need a few days' rest."
The woman remained staring at her. Finally, she said in a choked voice, " Who did it to you?"
" I did it to myself," Gloria explained.
The woman had an aged cynicism. " It' s pretty hard to blacken your own jaw."
" It was very difficult. But if you try very hard, you can manage anything."
The maid started to walk out of the room. Her shoulders shrugged disapproval.
" Oh, please," Gloria called her back, " can I have a tray with orange juice and lemon tea and a few slices of toast?"
" I' ll get it for you first thing," the maid promised, and seemed to like Gloria better for the request. She knew how to act towards children afflicted with the flu. Gloria had a seven- year- old' s expression etched peaceably on her face.
Gloria leaned back on the crisp pillows and opened a Joseph Conrad novel. It began, " He was an inch, perhaps two under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders…" It was relaxing to sink into someone else' s imagination. Hers was limited. The only light in her world came from two white eyes. She turned the page and did not notice the maid entering with the tray. The tea steamed through the nozzle of the teapot. The lemon was sliced thin and yellow in the cup. She saw that the maid had placed a small dish of strawberry preserves and a few round chocolate cookies on the tray. The childlike kindness filled her eyes with tears. The woman was pathetically concerned.
" Here, here," she soothed, " you' ll soon feel better."
" I feel wonderful." She was surprised by her emotion- cracked voice.
" You' re a very brave girl," the woman reassured.
Gloria could not bear the automatic affection.
" Would you turn the radio on?" she asked.
She decided to listen to a thick, impassioned Edith Piaf. The French accent was as tragic as the defeated lyrics of the song.
Maybe I' ll go to Paris, Gloria speculated. After I kill him, I' ll go to Paris.
She heard the vacuum cleaner buzzing under the chairs and tables in the living room. She loved the apartment being cleaned.
This is what the people around me have been doing. They' ve been resting, sitting in soft chairs and repeating familiar sensations. I want to rest, too, when he' s dead. Then I' ll rest.
Joseph Conrad carried her into the pride of heroes, and she dozed in the warm room. When she awoke, dusk was falling heavy and quiet in the streets. Her terrible aloneness that had been her peace, assaulted her. The maid had left the flat clean and empty as a stage set.
Gloria wandered into her studio. The ashtrays were sparkling on the tables. The few drops of paint that had stained the floor were scraped away. The immaculate room mocked her, " No one lives here anymore."
She walked hastily to her paints and squeezed some crimson pigment on her pallet. She mixed the paint with her spatula and spilled the paint, in drops, on the waxed floor. She pushed her bare toes into the paint and smeared it frantically along the floor and onto the white wall. Then she got down on her knees and stupidly rubbed the paint over her pajamas, then pulled them off and rubbed the pigment into her unhealed flesh. She was crying, lamenting her brief succor of rest. She rubbed the paint into her cunt; her pubic hairs became flaming and heavy. She reached to press her red palms against her cheeks. The fellows are crazy for the lady in red…
The doorbell rang. It continued persistently.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
" One minute, please," she called.
The jangling sound brought her down to earth. She poured turpentine on a white cloth and rapidly wiped the paint off her body, hands and face. She gathered up her pajamas and dropped them into the bathroom hamper. Then she took her paisley robe and belted it around her waist. Her face in the mirror was swollen, less swollen than it had been in the afternoon, and strangely serene. She hoped, now that her head was calmer, that her visitor was not the rapist. It seemed the greatest deceit that someone else had beaten her. The rapist would not object to signs of another man' s love on her, because he did not love her. But she was his to destroy.
She opened the door and Laura was there opening her bag, fumbling for one of her eternal cigarettes. It was a relief to her that Laura was breaking the nervous solitude of her evening.
" Come in," she said. " I' m glad to see you."
Laura studied her face with alarm. " Christ!" she said. She looked behind Gloria' s shoulder and saw the unmade bed through the opened door. " Get back into bed," she urged. Gloria was feeling dizzy from the few minutes on her feet, and she hurried under the protecting blankets.