I must decide what to do about Quinn, Maud told herself, and so she fasted for the rest of the day, then set about making a dumb cake, as Magdalena’s Zincali Gypsy had taught her. She waited until Obadiah’s household was asleep and then in the kitchen she created her cake from eggs, salt, flour, and water in which she had lightly bathed her privities. She sat in silence with her back to the stove until it was time to take out the cake. She then revealed her breasts to the cake, covered herself, drew her initials with a knife on the top of the cake, and set it on the hearthstone in front of Obadiah’s drawing-room fireplace. She opened the front door of the house and left it ajar, sliced out a small piece of the cake for herself, and walked backward with it up the stairs to her room.
She put the piece of cake on her bedside stand, took off her dress, and unbuttoned her underclothing. She then ate the cake while standing, awaiting the spectral double of the man she would marry to enter the drawing room, carve his own initials on the cake downstairs, and perhaps then come up the stairs to pursue her with phantom hands. The loosening of her shift would allow her to free herself from such a grasp. He might get her underclothing, but not her. She would fall upon the bed at such an attempt, thus banishing him from the house.
The charm drugged her into sleep, and upon waking, and after inspecting the cake on the hearth at morning, she dressed herself and awaited the arrival of Quinn and his carriage.
Quinn walked through the village streets with Maud, envying the behavior of other strolling couples, all of whom seemed to be either in complacent love or in varied stages of flirtation. None seemed to exude the intensity of what he himself felt, and yet he could not touch Maud, not even her hand with his fingertips. Nor could he take hold of her arm to guide her; and so they walked as strangers along the grass-trimmed sidewalks, out of the area of stores, shops, hotels, and onto a street of stately homes and private gardens. At a wooded area past the last of the homes, Quinn stopped to regard the residue of a careless pic-nic: bits of bread, a strew of paper, a chicken bone, the core of an apple, a cork, a cigar butt, a woman’s handkerchief with a hole burned in it. An irrational sadness overtook Quinn.
“Look at that mess,” he said, shaking his head.
“The remnants of beauty,” said Maud, nodding.
Quinn and Maud were entering a new condition. Despairing of more intimate conversation, Quinn told her of a story he was writing about John the Brawn and that Calvin Potts was interested in printing in his newspaper.
“You will be very good at what you do,” Maud said. “I myself am riding horses again for the first time since we lived in Spain. Obadiah has wonderful horses.”
“I’ve never been on the back of a horse,” Quinn said.
“It’s a majestic experience,” said Maud.
Quinn nodded, uncertain of the meaning of “majestic,” and how riding a horse could be conducive of that.
“We ought to walk through the woods,” Quinn said, and in a gesture that defied the static present tense of his life he grabbed Maud’s hand and stepped over the pic-nic leavings and onto a path that led he knew not where.
“You want me to walk in the woods?” said Maud.
“Are you so delicate?”
“I’m not at all delicate.”
“Then we’ll go into the woods,” said Quinn. “I don’t like what’s been going on with you today.”
“Nothing has been going on with me.”
“Nothing indeed, and more nothing. What I expect from you is something. I expect you to love me as I love you. I expect you to want to kiss me and hold me as I want to kiss and hold you.” Quinn thought he might have stolen this line from a poem.
“Yes,” said Maud. “I understand that. But what happened is that I spent the night baking a dumb cake to find out how to behave with you.”
“Why would you bake a dumb cake? Why wouldn’t you bake a smart cake if you wanted to know something?”
“All cakes are dumb.”
“I think I always knew that.”
“The true dumb cake helps you discover who will be your husband.”
“Ah, I see,” said Quinn. “More spirits.”
“If you like.”
“What do you do with a dumb cake after it’s baked?”
“You put your initials on it, you eat some of it, and you wait for your future husband’s double to come and also put his initials on it.”
“And that’s it?”
“No,” said Maud, and she paused. “You also show your breasts to it.”
“You show your breasts to a cake?” said Quinn.
“That’s part of the ritual.”
“It would make more sense if you showed your breasts to me, if I’m going to be your husband.”
“My breasts are too small to show to anyone. Especially you.”
“A m I so much less than a cake?”
“It’s not less or more, you ninny. It’s what must be. I didn’t invent this ritual.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” said Quinn, and he grabbed her hand and pulled her along. Suddenly he stopped and threw his arms around her and kissed her with lip and tongue, but could say nothing. He finished his kissing and pulled her toward the street.
“Your face is very rough,” Maud said to him, stumbling along behind him. “You should shave.”
“I don’t shave,” Quinn said. “People who are lower than cakes don’t have to shave.”
“You’re not lower than a cake, Daniel,” said Maud. “You don’t understand my situation, and you don’t understand me.”
“It’s true I don’t.”
“If you shave I’ll tell you everything.”
“Then we’ll go to the barber right now.”
“No, we’ll go back to Obadiah’s. I’ll get you John’s razor.”
“I don’t know how to use a razor. I’d cut off my nose.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. If a primitive like John McGee can use a razor, so can you.”
“John also knows how to use his fists and knock out the champion of the world, and I don’t know how to do that.”
“Then it’s time you learned,” Maud said, stepping up into their hired carriage.
Quinn stood before the mirror of the shaving stand in an upstairs bathroom and looked at himself. His shirt was hidden under the towel Maud had tucked into his collar. She had fetched all of John’s shaving gear: soft-bristle brush, mug of soap, bone-handled straight razor, also a jar of alum to cauterize cuts — medical wisdom she had come by while watching John shave. Maud opened the razor and put it in Quinn’s hand.
“You know how it’s done, don’t you?” she asked.
“Of course I know how it’s done. I saw my father shave a thousand times.”
“Well, don’t cut yourself in any vital spots. Go careful till you get the knack of it.”
“I don’t need to be told.”
“Then I shall tell you no more for now. Ta ta.”
And she left.
Quinn touched the razor to his right cheek, a fly’s weight on the skin, and moved it gently downward. Some of the dry, soapless stubble gave way before the razor’s formidably sharp edge, but with the pain of snagged hair. The truth was that Quinn had never seen his father shave. The man wore a beard. Quinn now looked at John’s brush and soap as hostile objects, for if you cover your face with soap how will you see what you’re supposed to cut? He continued his dry shave. It hurt. Still, he had not gouged himself. He pressed on. It hurt.
Eck.
A cut.
Reluctantly he wet his face and soaped one side of it and around the mouth, making small dabs with the brush, using the circular motion he remembered from watching a barber work. He moved his lower jaw to the left and puckered his lips as he lathered his right cheek, moved jaw to the right and made opposite pucker when lathering left. With his first finger he wiped his lips clean of soap, picked up the razor and began anew the elimination of his downy whiskers. Blood was coloring the soap on his cheek, but he tried not to watch. He shaved on.