* * *
At breakfast, the people gathered around the table seemed even less substantial, even more ephemeral than the day before. The woman who had spent the night with me twirled a teaspoon in a soft-boiled egg, without raising her eyes to me; her body, under a batiste robe, must have kept some traces of our nighttime games; it may have been she who had held out the light for me at the previous night’s dinner, but I couldn’t be sure. The children were silent and swallowed buttered toast and glasses of fruit juice; for my part, I leafed through the morning paper, full of still more unsettling news on which I found it hard to concentrate, so much did the feeling of my own presence distract me: I felt so solid that my joints ached. The doctor was announced: I joined him in the hallway and in a few words filled him in on the night’s events. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he affirmed, “it happens at that age, with strong fevers. The main thing is to bring the temperature down, as you’ve rightly done.” In the bedroom, he examined the child, who submitted with a tired air, without protesting; the doctor tried to ask him some questions, but he didn’t remember anything. The fever had diminished. “He should eat a little,” the doctor decreed, putting his instruments back in his bag. “Broth, stewed fruit, a little white rice if he can.” Outside, it was still raining, and I took the large brown umbrella to escort him to his car, stepping aside to let him pass through the gate in front of me while protecting him from the rain. Alone in the street, with my back to the gate, I hesitated: what if I returned to the apartment? I looked at the street in that direction and my throat tightened when I glimpsed the two men in black, each armed with an umbrella. They held them very high up, which allowed me to see with a growing fear their shining, lifeless eyes, and their lips open in wide predatory smiles. With calm, even, resolute steps, they advanced toward me.
An Old Story
I
My head broke the surface and my mouth opened to gulp air just as, amidst loud splashing, my hands found the edge, took hold and, transferring the force of my momentum to my shoulders, hoisted my dripping body out of the water. I stood for a minute balanced on the edge, disoriented by the muted echoes of the shouts and water noises, dazzled by the fragmented sight of parts of my body in the long mirrors surrounding the pool. Around my feet, a puddle was slowly growing; a child shot by in front of me, almost making me topple backwards. I caught hold of myself, took off my cap and goggles, and, throwing a last look over my shoulder at the gleaming line of my lats, went out through the swinging doors. Dried off, clothed in a grey, silky tracksuit, pleasant to the skin, I found myself back in the hallway. I unhesitatingly passed an intersection, then another, it was rather dark here and you could barely make out the walls in the indistinct lighting; I began to run, in short strides, as if I were jogging. The dull-colored walls streamed by; occasionally, I seemed to glimpse an opening, or at least a darker part, I couldn’t really be sure, sometimes also the cloth of my jacket brushed against the wall, so that I swerved to the middle of the corridor, which must have been curving, but very slightly, almost imperceptibly, just enough to throw my running off-balance; already I was sweating, even though it was neither warm nor cold, I was breathing regularly, inhaling an insipid gulp of air every three steps and then exhaling it almost in a whistle, elbows held close to my body so as not to bump into the walls, which sometimes seemed to grow farther away and sometimes to get closer, as if the corridor were snaking back and forth. In front I could make out nothing, I moved forward almost at random, above my head I could see no ceiling, perhaps I was already running out in the open, perhaps not. A sharp shock on my elbow made me stumble, I rubbed it reflexively and turned around: an object on the wall stood out from the greyness, gleaming. I put my hand on it; it was a door handle, I leaned on it and the door opened, dragging me with it. I found myself in a familiar garden, quiet and peacefuclass="underline" the sun was shining, spots of light were scattered over the mingled leaves of the ivy and the bougainvillea, neatly trimmed on their trellis; further away, the twisted trunks of old wisteria emerged from the ground to cover with their greenery the tall façade of the house, raised in front of me like a tower. It was hot and I wiped the sweat beading on my face with my sleeve. Then I went in. In the back of the hallway, through a half-opened door, a series of curious sounds reached me, low-sounding plosives interspersed with whistles: the child must have been playing war, knocking his tin soldiers over one after the other in a deluge of shots and explosions. I left him there without disturbing him and headed for the spiral staircase leading upstairs, pausing on the landing to contemplate the ironic gaze, lost in the void, of the large reproduction of the Lady with an Ermine hanging there. The woman was in the kitchen; at the sound of my steps she put down her knife, turned around with a smile, and came over to kiss me tenderly as she pressed against me. She was wearing a pearl-grey house dress, thin and light; I caressed her hip through the cloth, then plunged my face into her Venetian blond hair, done up in an artfully disheveled bun, to breathe in her smell of heather, moss, and almond. She laughed quietly and disengaged herself from my embrace.“I’m making dinner. It’s going to take a while.” She brushed my face with the tip of her fingers. “The little one’s playing.”—“Yes, I know. I heard him when I came in.”—“Could you put him in the bath?”—“Of course. You had a good day?”—“Yes. I got the photos, they’re upstairs on the dresser. Oh, another thing: we have a problem with the electrical circuit. The neighbor called.”—“What did she say?”—“Apparently there are voltage spikes, it’s causing power outages at their house.” My face darkened. “She’s out of her mind. I had our circuit overhauled twice. By a professional electrician.”—“Yes, I know.” I turned my back to her and went back downstairs. The sounds of battle had ceased. Before opening the door, I went into the adjoining bathroom to run the bath, checking the temperature to make sure it wasn’t too hot. Then I went into the child’s room. He was only wearing a t-shirt; his buttocks bare, he was squatting and photographing with a little digital camera the tin cavalrymen armed with lances and rifles, carefully lined up on the rug spread over the grey tiles. I watched him for a minute, as if through a glass wall. Then I came forward and tapped his buttocks: “Come on, it’s bath time.” He dropped the camera and threw himself in my arms, squealing. I lifted him up and carried him to the bathroom, where I took off his t-shirt and put him in the water. Immediately, he began slapping the surface with his hands, splashing the walls and laughing. I laughed with him but at the same time drew back, leaning on the door to watch him as he plunged completely underwater.
* * *
At the meal, the child, seated between us, chattered on about his battles. I listened to him absent-mindedly, savoring the cool wine and the langoustines sautéed in garlic. The woman, her thin face framed by blond locks that had escaped from her bun, smiled and drank as well. The child finally fell silent to attack a langoustine, trying to break one of its claws between his little baby teeth; I wiped myself with my napkin and, with the tip of my fingers, stroked his hair, blond like his mother’s. His meal over, he quickly cleared his dishes and ran down the stairs, rubbing his greasy fingers on his pajamas as his mother gently scolded him. I finished clearing up as she went downstairs to put him to bed and carefully washed my hands before returning to finish my wine. A disk case was lying on the stereo, a recent recording of Don Giovanni; I put the third disk on and sat down in front of the bay window, lighting a thin cigar and contemplating the saffron light of evening dotting the green masses of the garden. The Commendatore was about to turn up for dinner and I thought about the meaning of this threatening, moralizing figure. He demanded, above all, to impose his law on the rebel son; but hadn’t the latter run him through in the beginning of the first act? Obviously, that hadn’t done any good, since now he was returning, even more monumental and deadly, the ruin of all pleasures. But the end was approaching and the son was resisting every inch of the way, like a stubborn kid, crafty and obstinate, refusing all adherence to that dead, outdated, stifling law, even if his life depended on it. Outside night was falling and I got up to turn on, one by one, the living room lamps. Then I poured myself another glass. Already the disk was coming to an end, in a comic final ensemble which sounded like the last echo of the unrelenting rascal’s mocking laughter. Later on, the woman came back up, and I followed her upstairs. Her hips swayed gently in the half-light of the stairway. As she showered I quickly went through the photographs on the chest of drawers: they all showed me in the company of the child, at different times and in different situations, at the circus, at the beach, on a boat. None of them caught my eye and I left them there before getting undressed, absent-mindedly examining my lean muscles in the tall upright mirror that stood next to the door. Seen from the back, my body seemed almost feminine to me, I examined the ass, white and round like the woman’s. When she emerged from the bathroom, naked and still wet, her long hair rolled up in a towel, I pulled her by the shoulders and pushed her onto the bedspread, a thick golden cloth embroidered with long green grass. She fell on her stomach with a little cry and I reached out to turn off the light. Now only the pale gleam of the moon lit the room, it flowed through the windows behind which stood out the mad twists of the wisteria, illuminating the green leaves of the embroidery and the white body sprawled out on it, the long, thin back, the hips, the twin globes of the buttocks. I lay down on top of this body and it shivered. The towel had fallen away and the hair covered her face. With the tips of my feet, I spread her legs, I slipped a hand beneath her belly to raise her hips, and pressed my erect member against her sex. But it was dry, I withdrew a little, poured saliva on my fingers and smeared the opening, gently massaging it. Then I could enter easily. Her breathing accelerated, her behind, beneath me, began moving, her long body, held in both my hands, went taut and a cry escaped her, immediately broken off. I felt myself melting with sweetness, a long needle of delight pierced my back, very thin, stretching the skin on the back of my neck and electrifying it. I turned my head: in the mirror, pale under the moonlight, I could again see my ass and the top of my sinewy thighs, hers too, pinned beneath, and in between them dark, reddish, indistinct shapes. Fascinated by this incongruous spectacle, I slowed down, the woman, her body lost in the long embroidered grass leaves of the bedspread, was panting, her hand sought my hip, I could see it in the mirror, the lacquered nails embedded in my muscles, while next to the mirror the door opened and in the section of moonlight I saw the pointy little face of the child, his eyes wide open and his lips stubborn, obstinate. I froze. The face also remained motionless; next to it, I could still see in the mirror the double mass of buttocks and the dark jumble of organs between them. I could feel the pleasure mounting, the woman was moaning, I withdrew abruptly and rolled onto my side, my wet, scarlet member still throbbing, I was coming in long spurts almost without realizing it, the kid’s face had disappeared into the darkness of the stairway, we could hear his little bare feet hurriedly slapping the stone steps, the woman was looking at me with a lost, confused air, I was still coming. Dripping with sweat, my breathing irregular, I rolled completely onto my back and distractedly wiped my stomach with the sheet as the woman, already standing, put on a bathrobe to go follow the child.