But Kloster didn’t seem to hear and went on, absorbed in his account.
“I asked what the matter was, of course, and she gave me an explanation I only half believed, about posture, and tension in the arms and neck when typing. Apparently, anti-inflammatories didn’t relieve the pain so she’d been advised to take up yoga and get massages. I asked where exactly it hurt. She leaned forward slightly, sweeping her hair out of the way with her hand. It was a trusting, spontaneous movement. I could see her long bare neck, proffered to me, and the precise outline of the vertebrae. She pointed to a spot somewhere in the middle. I placed my hands on her shoulders and slid my thumbs up and down her neck. She sat rigid, motionless…expectant. I think she was as agitated as I was. But she didn’t say a word and gradually I felt her give herself up to the movement of my hands. A wave of heat rose into them from her shoulders. I could feel her neck and everything in her yielding, melting beneath the pressure of my fingers. But then I think she suddenly sensed the danger, uneasy at having lost herself for a moment. She sat up, pushed her hair back, and thanked me, as if I’d really helped the pain, saying she felt much better. Her face was flushed but we both pretended it had been something unimportant, not worth mentioning. I asked her to make coffee and she got up without looking at me. When she came back, I went on dictating as if nothing had happened. I’d say that was the second move in the sequence.
“I thought it would all end there, that she wouldn’t want to take it any further. But still, every day, I waited for the next move. I was starting to find it hard to concentrate on my novel, always watching for any tiny signal she might give. I had arranged a trip to a writers’ retreat in Italy, for a whole month, and now I regretted it. Since I’d started dictating my work to Luciana, I couldn’t imagine sitting in front of the computer, working alone again. But of course I couldn’t take her with me. I think I was afraid that the growing unspoken closeness between us would be interrupted. She didn’t mention her neck again, but the day before I left, she cracked it, as if the pain had never gone away. I slid my hand under her hair and pressed. I asked if it was still painful and she nodded, without looking up. I started massaging the area with one hand and she leaned her head forward slightly as my fingers moved upwards. I placed my other hand on the side of her neck, to support her head. She was wearing a loose blouse, with the top button undone, and when I slid my hands round her neck I shifted the fabric and another button came undone. She didn’t do it up. We were both rigid, as if hypnotised, the only movement my hands on her neck. At one point I slid them down to her shoulders and realised she wasn’t wearing a bra. I leaned forward slightly and glimpsed the small points of her breasts, like those of a little girl, barely covered by the blouse. For some reason this sudden unexpected nudity made me stop. This time it was I who drew back, feeling I was one step from the abyss. I moved away, while she gathered her hair in her hands, twisting it nervously. Still not looking at me, she asked if I’d like her to make coffee. I suppose this was the decisive moment in the sequence. But I let it pass.
“When she returned from the kitchen she’d done up her blouse, and it was as if nothing had happened between us. We agreed that I’d ring her when I got back from my trip and I paid her for the whole month I’d be away, hoping she wouldn’t take another job. We said goodbye as if it was any other day. I bought her a present in Italy, though I never got to give it to her. The month passed and I called her as soon as I got back. I thought it would all be as before and we’d continue where we’d left off, with that subterranean, almost imperceptible, current between us, moving us in only one direction. But something-everything-had changed. When I asked what she’d done while I was away she mentioned you. From her tone of voice, the way her eyes shone, I thought I understood everything.”
“Everything?” I interrupted, unable to stop myself. “But it was nothing. She only let me kiss her once.”
Now, Kloster looked at me closely. He sipped his coffee, peering at me again over his cup, as if unsure whether he could trust me.
“It didn’t seem like that from what she said. Or rather, from what she implied. Of course I couldn’t ask her directly, but from something she said the message was clear, and somewhat humiliating. She gave me to understand that you’d moved quickly during that month. Anyway, I couldn’t dictate a single line. I was furious, and obsessed with the thought that I’d lost her. She seemed like a stranger, sitting there in her chair, someone I really knew nothing about. I couldn’t focus on my work at all. I realised bitterly that using typists and stenographers had worked for Henry James because he was indifferent to the charms of women. The great Disrupter is not Evil-nor the infinite as our Poet believed-but sex. Like my wife, I had underestimated Luciana. And now I was abject, in thrall to her, like a sex-obsessed teenager. I despised myself. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me again at my age. Several days passed like this: I grew increasingly tense; I couldn’t dictate at all. It was as if the silent barrier she’d erected had also blocked the flow of my novel. I couldn’t move forward with her but I was afraid now that I couldn’t move forward without her either. What I’d once considered the perfect system had become a nightmare. My most ambitious novel, the work I’d spent years nurturing in silence, to which all my previous novels had been precursors, was now halted, interrupted, as I waited for a vibration, a note, from her motionless, closed-off body.
“At last one morning I managed to pull myself together and recover my momentum, my self-respect. I began dictating one of the most cruel scenes of the novel-the first methodical slaughter by the Cainite assassins-and I found myself being carried along by my words. They seemed to be dictated by another voice inside me, a free, savage, powerful voice. I, who had so often mocked myths of inspiration, the romantic posing of writers who boasted that their characters dictated orders to them. I, who had always written just one sentence at a time, wavering, regretting my choice of words, making minute corrections, was now swept along by a wave of vociferous primitive violence that left no time or room for doubt, that spoke for me in a fierce but welcome outpouring. I dictated at unprecedented speed, the sentences rushing, tumbling out one after another, but Luciana kept up and never interrupted. She seemed to be possessed by the same facility, as if she were a virtuoso pianist only now allowed to show off her skill. It lasted maybe a couple of hours, though it seemed time no longer existed and I was in a trance beyond human measure. I glanced over Luciana’s shoulder and saw that we’d advanced by ten pages-more than I usually wrote in a week. I was overcome by good humour and saw her differently for the first time in days. Maybe I’d exaggerated and jumped to conclusions. Maybe she just wanted to wound me, and mentioning you was an adolescent tactic to make me jealous. I made a couple of jokes and she laughed in the same relaxed way as before. In my enthusiasm, my sudden euphoria, I misread the signs. I asked her to make coffee. She straightened in the chair, arched her back, and then rubbed her neck and made that cracking sound I’d waited for for so long. I was standing very close to her and thought it was her way of sending me a sign, of checking that her secret signal still worked. A second chance. I placed my hands on her shoulders and drew her towards me so as to kiss her. I’d made a fatal mistake. She struggled and pushed me away. I let go of her immediately but she screamed, as if she really thought I was going to attack her. We stood for a moment in silence. She was shaking and looked distraught. I couldn’t understand what had happened. I hadn’t even touched her lips.