I pushed against the door with all my strength but I could feel Rowan’s greater strength pushing on the other side, my slippers were sliding on the tiling and the door kept coming open…Icy with fear I pleaded with him—’Please, please, Rowan!’—no, I tried to plead with him but I’d lost my voice, fear had frozen my vocal chords and my throat emitted nothing but a series of rusty croaks. I kept striving to calm my heart, clear my throat and articulate the words clearly, ‘Please, I’m sorry! I apologise! I’ll do whatever you say! Please!’ but all that came out was an absurd whisper and Rowan, in silent, furious determination, kept crashing into the door with monstrous thumps of his shoulder. Finally the weakness and impotence of my vocal chords spread throughout my body and I gave up, gave in, the door burst open, inwards, knocking me flat, Rowan grabbed me by the hair and dragged me across the tiles, my head banged up against the toilet bowl, and he said, ‘Now I’ll teach you, you asked for it.’ I kept pleading with him, saying, ‘No, no, please, Rowan!’ over and over again — that is to say, my lips shaped the words, the air passed through my throat, but not a word came out of my mouth and my body didn’t put up even the semblance of a struggle. All this was in semi-darkness, it was late evening and there was almost no light coming from outside, just a single streak of orange along the top of the blue-black rectangle of sky framed by the bathroom window as seen from the floor, interrupted by the jagged black silhouettes of three pine trees, the sentries of our back yard.
When his spasms had abated, Rowan glued his sweating body to my back and I felt a fraternal tear run down my neck. Then, getting to his feet and adjusting his clothes, he said in a voice so low as to be all but inaudible, ‘Remember when you were little you always wanted me to teach you what I’d learned at school?’ His voice broke then and I had to strain to hear what followed—’Well, now you know… what I’ve been learning…in that goddamn fucking school I got sent to…because of you.’
Rena takes a Noctran and a half before slipping into Gaia’s large soft bed. Impeccably washed and ironed, the white linen sheets are redolent of lavender.
SUNDAY
‘The principle of photography…secrets no one knows.’
Selvaggio
Doing a reportage with Aziz in a foreign city — we’re in a bus but we forget to ring the bell and the bus goes hurtling past our stop — by the time we lurch to the front to ask the driver to let us off, the bus is already beyond the city limits. Getting off at last, we find ourselves in an unbelievably beautiful landscape — bright sunlight, clouds scudding across the sky, trees waving in the wind—’Look!’ I exclaim. ‘It’s pure Stieglitz!’ Glancing around, I see some enormous animals in the field right next to us. ‘Look, Aziz! What are they? Oh, my God…they’re gorillas!’ There are several of them, circling one another and emitting angry cries, clearly about to start fighting…I see lions as well, and other wild animals roaming free — there’s no barrier of any kind between them and us. ‘I’m scared, Aziz,’ I say. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ A bit farther down the road, a wildcat has escaped and a woman farmer is running after it…‘Oh my God, Aziz,’ I keep repeating. ‘Oh my God!’
Maybe your own wildness trying to escape? Subra suggests.
Strange how I kept saying Oh my God in the dream — an expression that never crosses my lips in real life. Fermata means stop — a bus stop, for instance, except that the bus doesn’t stop, it goes hurtling past the city limits and plunges us into savagery, the woman farmer in my dream is desperately trying to catch the wild animals and lock them up on her farm, just as I was trying to do by firmly closing the door behind me, yes, firm farm fermata, you want to lock things out but sometimes you just can’t, and if the truth be told I wasn’t wearing a blindfold that day, Dr Walters had contented himself with binding me hand and foot, and though my bonds prevented me from moving freely I did catch a glimpse of my father as he burst into Room 416 wearing a bathrobe which, being wide open, gave me some idea of what had been going on in Room 418…Yes, you, dear Commander! Poor tottering, detumescent, living statue, reaching to tear the whip out of Don Juan’s hands in a trance of fury and indignation—What is the meaning of this, sir? With my daughter? How dare you? — and punish him for the same infamies you were committing with another man’s daughter in the next room, thus revealing the depth of the complicity between you, revolving around your irresponsible cocks. Commanders in bathrobes, dads as pals, shrinks as lovers — none of this fatally confusing mess should ever have existed.
She drifts back to sleep.
Domenica campagnola
She is wakened by silence — the silence of a Sunday morning in the country. Its purity is almost disturbing, after the hustle-bustle of Florence’s Via Guelfa with its honking horns and revving motors…
She opens her eyes and stretches luxuriously, revelling in the charm of her room and the perspective of the relatively low-stress day ahead of them. San Gimignano in the morning, Volterra in the afternoon, after which they’ll come back to Impruneta and spend a second night here at Gaia’s.
The bathroom is flooded with sunlight. An enchanting order reigns in this house; everything bears the precise and colourful imprint of their hostess — towels in different shades of green, small bouquets of dried flowers, copies of Etruscan statuettes, scented soaps in the shower stall…Even the hills seem to have been carefully arranged by Gaia and her architect lover so as to offer a pleasant view from the bathroom window.
As she splashes her body with warm water, Rena realises she’s in an excellent mood.
All is well, Subra says. You’ve passed the halfway point of the trip and so far no one has murdered anyone; there’ll definitely be an afterwards.
A moment later, she turns off the hair-dryer and stands looking at her naked body in the wardrobe mirror, first from the front then from the back. Still passable. Peaceable. Impassive. Straight, discreet lines. No one would ever guess what it’s been through.
For all that, I didn’t become allergic to sodomy.
I should hope not! exclaims Subra, who is also in an excellent mood this morning. If you had to give up everything you learned in discomfort, what would you have left, right? There’d be no reading, no eating, no playing the violin…
The first time I suggested to Alioune that he take me that way, he responded with indignation, disgust and a firm religious condemnation. Gradually the idea grew on him, though, and within a few months he’d mastered the technique of relaxing me without resorting to gadgets or vaseline, preparing me only with his fingers, tongue and words. Once he got the hang of it, he could impale me almost surreptitiously, so to speak, as I was negotiating a photo fee with Schroeder over the telephone…or hanging up the laundry in the bathroom…or even (once, unforgettably) out of doors — in July 1998, on the Dakar cliff road overhanging the ocean, while the entire population of the city was engrossed in a World Cup soccer final on TV. He even became a little more tolerant of gays.