They couldn’t have been more different. There was something compact and square about Otto. He had broad shoulders and broad hands, jaws and thighs, but his bottom was slight, and his eyes were a guileless blue which contradicted all the power he held within him. When he walked he put all his weight into each step he took. His movements were sure and precise and he always looked people straight in the eye without blinking. He had a dragon tattooed on one arm, he had been a sailor. Perhaps that was what had made him so meticulous about himself and his surroundings. He was always clean-shaven and his clothes newly laundered. He did all the housework, energetically with wide arm movements, as if it was the deck of a merchant ship he was scouring and swabbing.
When he embraced her it sometimes made her think of a drawing she had seen on a poster when she was small. She had forgotten what it advertised but could still remember the drawing of a naked man with legs apart holding a boa constrictor by its head and tail. The snake was much longer than the man, it wound itself around his muscular outline and hissed in his face with its cleft tongue, but it was held fast in his grip. She felt a bit like that snake. She liked teasing him and showing resistance and she quite enjoyed it when he got rough. When she finally gave in, reluctantly so he had to keep a tight hold on her, it seemed as if she was also enticing him to reveal who he really was. They had been together for almost two years now. She had never lived with anyone for so long, and she had not had other men since she moved in with him. Sometimes she wondered how long it would go on. She found it hard to imagine it just continuing, but still played with the idea.
It was not so much an idea, it was almost only an image, at a restaurant, for instance, when she saw a middle-aged man helping his wife on with her coat, lifting her hair over the collar and holding the door open for her with a smile. She calculated how long they might have been together, and for a second it was herself and Otto that her eyes followed through the window of the restaurant. Two slightly round, slightly wrinkled adults walking side by side looking at tempting kitchen equipment in the shop windows, chatting casually about everyday matters. Two who knew each other’s habits, weak points and embarrassing little secrets. Maybe they were happy and serene, maybe it was a comfortable hell of mute resignation and an inexplicable bitterness. Maybe a bit of each.
She didn’t talk to Otto about such things. That would have been out of order. She thought she knew him better as time went on, and they had more or less been through all they had to tell each other about previous lovers, and what else their lives had held. There were still closed doors and dark corners in him, she could feel that, but she would not have known what to ask about if she had dared. As far as she knew he had not been with anyone else since they met, but then she was there the whole time. It was easier to reach out for her than rush around town chasing strangers. Otto was not at all the lady-killer she had believed and everyone claimed he was. He was well aware of what he did to women, but didn’t allow himself to be affected by it. On the contrary, he seemed shy and hadn’t known anything like as many as she had believed. He had not pursued her, either, she came of her own choice.
Now when she was with her women friends she sensed she had crossed an invisible threshold. Their behaviour was unchanged, almost demonstratively the same, but she could see it in their eyes. If she casually mentioned Otto she had to take pains to make him sound like a perfectly ordinary guy. As if in reality he was a monster and not the unattainable object of their green-eyed jealousy. Everything was different, she had become visible at one blow. When she and Otto showed themselves in town people were gushingly friendly to her even when she had never met them before. The ones with stature even asked about her plans and responded with evasive half-promises. She mentioned it once to Otto but he didn’t understand her. If people were nice it must be because they liked her. She thought he must be rather ingenuous to be able to appear so confident.
She was fascinated by his composure. He was the same whether they were alone or with others. She often had the feeling that it didn’t make a lot of difference if she was there or not. Just as his body closed compactly around its perfect proportions, so his interior being was apparently self-sufficient. You could plant him on a desert island or in a foreign city whose language he did not speak, and the result would be the same. He seemed like someone who could get by anywhere, in any circumstances. He could spend hours without speaking, not because he was in a bad mood. It didn’t prevent him from suddenly stroking her bum as he passed by, or bringing her a cup of coffee she hadn’t asked for.
She had moved into his flat gradually, in a series of carriers and bags. They hadn’t said much about it. Her cosmetics packed the bathroom shelves, her clothes crowded against his in the wardrobe and her paperback editions of English and American plays mounted up in piles on the floors among his thrillers and videos. It seemed neither to bother him nor make him reflect on what it was all about, where it might take them. Was it taking them anywhere, in fact? They went to London one spring and Morocco one winter, when he had a break between two films. It looked as if they belonged together.
When they were going out she occasionally asked him what he thought she should wear, but he didn’t mind whether she pulled a sweater over her head or put on a short low-necked dress. He was never jealous, and although she gave him no reason to be, that did surprise her. There were plenty of men if she had been interested. There had never been a lack of those, for her. Several times she allowed herself to be talked into a corner by some stud who had the hots for her just to see if it provoked a reaction. But Otto went on calmly chatting to his friends without looking in her direction, and she had to disentangle herself from her experimental flirtation.
It wasn’t that he was indifferent to her. For the most part he was considerate, at times downright affectionate, but just as often he left her in peace, and she could feel he expected the same from her. Now and then she asked if he would rather be alone, but he merely looked at her in amazement and smiled, as if she had said something odd. When he wanted to be alone, he went out. There was a pub round the corner where he played billiards, a rough gloomy place with tobacco-yellow crochet curtains, where none of her friends would dare set their feet.
He could make her feel invisible when he concentrated on washing up, watching television, polishing shoes or lifting weights. As if she wasn’t there. At times she felt she was nothing more than a pair of hungry eyes that clung to his detached mien and perfect body. His attacks of introspective self-sufficiency had a titillating effect on her, like the maddening, pleasurable expectation when she lay in bed giving herself up to his circling, teasing caresses. His silence could fill the flat with an atmosphere that was as agonising as it was agitating, and it completely took possession of her until her body and gaze were a swollen, quivering receptivity.