"Scandalous," he said, still looking at her.
Perhaps the girl had seen the change; she got up, said goodbye politely, and left.
"I think we have a bone to pick with each other," he said severely.
When she got up to pack, she turned out to be very slightly built: her beastly crown did not even come up to his shoulders. Without a word she put on her coat and went outside. Wondering how he was to break through that silence, he followed her to the car park. When she had put the key into the door of a small car, she suddenly turned to him and gestured invitingly.
He burst out laughing. "I've got one too. I'll follow you."
A little later, in his dark-green sports car with the white cloth hood, which was raring to go faster, he dawdled behind her along the road to The Hague, with a constant semi-erection because of the situation.
"A fortune-teller!" he cried as they passed Delft, and banged his wooden steering wheel. "That's all I needed!" He felt in his element and began singing a Mahler song: "Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht, fröhliche Hochzeit macht …" Tears welled up in his eyes. Melancholy, lust, music — suddenly everything overwhelmed him as he watched the red taillights.
"I'm alive!" he shouted. "I'm alive!"
She lived in a pedestrian apartment building, plonked down crudely in a street full of nineteenth-century workers' houses. Even as she walked along the back balcony she remained silent. In a small, warm apartment she lit candles and incense sticks, and handed him a bottle of wine with a label that did not inspire confidence. As he took the bottle between his knees and stuck the corkscrew into the cork, sitar music filled the room.
"Of course," he said. "Ravi Shankar."
They clinked glasses and drank, still looking at each other. He did not like the wine and put down his glass. What next? He was sitting in the small armchair; she was on the sofa. He got up, knelt down in front of her, and laid his right hand palm upward in her lap.
"Right, now let's see what you can do."
He felt the warmth of her thighs, but she moved his hand to one side like a book that she did not want to read and took hold of his left hand. The hand lay in hers like an item of lost property; her small hand was warmer than his, which aroused him still more. She had still not said a word; they did not even know each other's names. After casting a glance at his short, slightly deformed thumb, she began drawing crosses and circles again — but suddenly she faltered and looked at him in alarm. He was also alarmed. He read something in her look that he would not believe but which he did not want to hear.
He withdrew his hand and laid it on her hip, putting the other on her neck. Pushing his fingers into her thick hair, he pulled her head slightly toward him, which she willingly allowed him to do. He gave a short grunt, and then suddenly leaped forward across her, while she immediately parted her legs. At the same moment they were writhing and biting like fighting dogs, pulling each other's clothes off. Yelling, screaming, they were caught up in a whirlpool and dragged down to a depth of which no memory usually remains…
He woke with a start. He had slept for no longer than a minute. He turned his head to the side. Above the slowly fading glow of an incense stick, a thin white cone of ash bent further and further forward and broke off.
"I must be going," he said.
Again he studied the topology of the chiromancer. It was as though she were also a snake-woman; her posture was an impossible one, like in an Escher drawing. Her curls of hair had worked loose and lay over her shoulders and back like congealed lava, but it might also have been her breast. Without waking her, he wriggled out from beneath her and opened a door behind which he suspected the bedroom lay. He lifted her up. She was as light as a child; he laid her carefully on the bed and pulled the blankets over her. She had not woken. Because he felt agitated, as though he were in a hurry, he did not take a shower; he washed with cold water in the kitchen, dried himself with a clammy tea towel, dressed quickly, and scrutinized the flat.
In the Swedish whitewood bookcase there was a postcard of Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding: perhaps because of the pregnant bride's hand, which lay palm upward in that of the bridegroom. The back of the card was blank. He pulled a yellow pencil with an eraser on the end out of his inside pocket, produced a small pencil sharpener from a side pocket of his blazer, sharpened the pencil meticulously in an ashtray, and wrote: "I'll never forget this. — Max." For a moment he considered leaving his telephone number, but did not. He carefully placed the card on her small desk against a polished veined-pink stone, perhaps invested with magic powers, but perhaps simply a souvenir from a southern beach. Then he blew out the candles, left the incense burning, and gently closed the door behind him.
Sexual satisfaction had washed every part of him clean. He was reminded of a vacation in Venice, when violet-colored mountains suddenly appeared on the horizon after a storm. His tiredness had gone and with Schubert's First Symphony on the radio — probably the Berlin Philharmonic under Bohm — he drove haphazardly down the empty winter streets. He was free! He wanted nothing more now! This was as wonderful as fucking itself, or the certainty beforehand that it was going to happen. Or was it even more wonderful? Was the reason that he wanted to sleep with a woman every day, a different one every day, ultimately to achieve this aim: not to want to for a short time? What a happy old man he would be. But of course that was not how it would be; when that time came, he would want to want what he was no longer capable of. Happiness was not freedom from chains but release from chains. Chains were an indispensable part of happiness!
He had no idea where he was, but by driving straight ahead as far as possible he was bound to reach the edge of town. The Hague was not that big. Suddenly he recognized a junction. On the deserted pavement stood a large man in a long overcoat, who raised his hand.
Surely a mugger would not operate like this, he thought, at one in the morning in the freezing cold. He signaled, pulled over with a rapid movement, and stopped. He saw the man come jogging up in the mirror; he turned off the radio, leaned over, and wound down the window on the other side.
Onno, bending low, looked into Max's narrow, fanatical face. It reminded him of an ibis, the Egyptian Ibis religiosa, with its thin neck and curved beak; there was something dangerous about it, like an ax. Max, for his part, surveyed Onno's full, domineering features. The transition from the forehead to the straight nose was classical, with no curve; beneath was an equally classical small mouth, with curved lips, scarcely broader than his nostrils. It struck him as vaguely familiar.
"Where are you headed?"
"Are you going toward Amsterdam?"
"In you get."
Onno took a step back and surveyed the car disapprovingly. "But under protest!"
"Please, I beg you," said Max in amusement.
Once, with some effort, he had managed to sit — or, rather, lie — down, Max put his foot down and the car leaped forward like a racehorse.
"Nice motor," said Onno with an expression that indicated he thought his benefactor was not quite right in the head.
Max burst out laughing. "Oh, this is nothing. When I grow up, I shall buy a white open-topped Rolls-Royce, and I'll sit on the back seat in a white fur coat, with a beautiful woman at the wheel."