He tossed my bra aside as if he hated it. And then his cool hands finally slid across my skin. To my disappointment, I wasn’t the least excited. I just lay there, thinking clinically and rationally: What’s he going to do now? What’s his next move?
His hands moving quickly, expertly, he pulled off my panties. Then he sat up, took off his own clothes, and dropped them to the floor. For a moment, he stood beside the bed, looking down at me. And although I was surely as curious about his body as he was about mine, I immediately shut my eyes. How attractive could I possibly be? I wished I could see myself through his eyes. If only I could sink away through the bed, through the floor, through the depths of the city, straight down through the earth to the other side of the world to land on a quiet beach where everyone would just leave me in peace.
He slowly lowered himself onto me. And now I’m supposed to have these deep, intense emotions, I thought, aimed at this man who’s about to give me a brand-new experience that can never be undone. But the conscious, contemplative experience I’d dreamed of simply wasn’t there. It was as if I was being dissected by a razor-sharp blade. From the center of my body, a flaming gulf of pain spread through me in every direction, to the tips of my fingers, to my toes, to the roots of my hair. I screamed, but — as in a nightmare — made no sound. Again and again he thrust into me, as if he wanted to tear me apart, as if I would never be whole, never be myself again. With each rush of pain, I felt warmer, oceans of my life’s essence drained out of me and washed away in the dry bed.
His head rested on my shoulder; his hair smelled earthy, male, and consoled me in some incomprehensible way. I burrowed my face into him until he raised his head with a brief cry of surprise. From far off, I heard the wail of an ambulance. Suddenly, it seemed clear to me that I had been wounded and would have to be taken to the hospital, where an understanding surgeon would lovingly heal me, would restore my virginity and purity.
Ruud lay on top of me as if he was incapable of movement. He seemed to be getting heavier. I could barely breathe. Finally, he rolled over and lay with his back against me. He gazed up at the ceiling, then turned his face toward me to gauge my condition.
“How’d you like it?” he asked.
“It hurt,” I said.
“It’s supposed to hurt,” he told me with an abrupt laugh, almost proud of the pain he had brought me.
He lit a cigarette. I stole a glance at the glowing red point of light. It irritated me that he was able to switch from one form of enjoyment to another so effortlessly. Soon afterwards, I was quickly and efficiently driven home. The drizzle had turned into a driving rain. There’s no one I can tell about this, I thought, and I cried with my face pressed against his back. My tears mixed with the raindrops and fell onto the asphalt, marking the route from the furniture store to my parents’ house like a trail of breadcrumbs.
At the factory, every day was the same.
As quickly as a fire spreads, that’s how slowly the time passed. This was where we spent the largest part of our week — everything else, the outside world, was just window dressing. It was as if we labored in an enormous blacksmith shop deep in the heart of the earth, feverishly stoking the fires that kept the planet revolving, ignorant of what was happening up on the surface.
One afternoon, the boss bustled into our department with a man who looked American with his healthy appearance, his bebop hair, and an easy laugh that promised that anything was possible, no mountain too high, no problem that the human brain couldn’t solve, no battle that couldn’t be fought and won.
“We need a charming hostess,” said the boss, raising his voice to be heard above the hiss and rattle of the machinery, “who can demonstrate our product line to potential customers.”
They examined us closely. Our eyes remained shyly lowered, and the sealing of the little bags of candy proceeded without interruption.
What did they see, our jolly boss and his crewcut colleague, as they searched for their Chosen One?
They saw themselves reflected in Lien’s thick spectacles, they saw the permanented gray hairdos of the two other women, they saw me the way I’d been feeling since I’d spotted a girl with a tower of black hair sitting behind Ruud on his dirt bike with her arms clasped around him.
“No beauty queens here,” cried Lien snippily. “You want a beauty queen, try over there.” And she waved them over to Trix.
“They’re all the same,” Lien growled. “They want a Madonna for their kids and a Marilyn Monroe in bed. Look at this!” She pulled her hands from the line and, as the unsealed bags immediately began to pile up against each other, smoothed down her sweater. “You wouldn’t think I’ve had two children, would you?”
The handknitted yellow-and-black-striped sweater accented her little-girl breasts, then bunched up again the moment she stopped smoothing it.
“Paul’s the same as the rest of them,” she said. “That’s why I keep my eye on him.”
“You mean you don’t trust him?” I asked.
“What do you think?” She was indignant. “You think I like going to all those soccer games and boxing matches?”
The sun tries its hardest to break through the low-hanging mist. We are moving through the prettiest part of our route: the heath, dotted with fantastic pines and beeches that glimmer silvery white through the fog.
I would gladly step out into that mysterious world. In my poor, city-girl imagination, I envision the gradual clearing of the mist and reemergence of the sun. In my mind’s eye, I can see the forest animals awaken and stretch themselves lazily.
I can’t remember the last time I was in the woods. All I can recall is the city park, which has too little that’s natural and too much that’s man-made: gravel paths, mown grass, neatly planted flower beds, geometric streams littered with orange peels and decaying half-eaten sandwiches, patrolled by well-trained ducks and crawling with pensioners, actually nothing more than a graveyard except no headstones, the corpses out in the open, sitting on the green park benches, twittering, scattering crumbs to the birds.
Maybe none of us has gotten enough sleep over the weekend. Like overfed house cats on velvet cushions, we gaze drowsily out the window. Cora sucks on a bonbon for a long time, apparently not realizing what she’s doing.
When the compartment door is suddenly thrown open, we are shocked out of our lethargy. A young, gleamingly polished conductor — new to us but equipped with all the tools of his trade — steps into our car.
“All tickets, please,” he says, his voice stiff and formal.
He examines us impatiently from behind wire-rimmed eyeglasses, as if it surprises him that we’re not sitting on the edge of our seats with our tickets at the ready. As slowly as possible, searching distractedly in handbags and coat pockets, we locate and present our monthly passes. With the precision of a schoolmaster, he studies the small print on each pass.