Her first thought was: What the hell has got into me? Why did I say that? Then she thought: I don't care, it's true. And finally: But why do I love him? - She did not know why, but she knew when. There had been two occasions when she had been able to look inside him and see the real Dickstein: once when he spoke about the London Fascists in the Thirties, and once when he mentioned the boy whose father had been killed in the Six-Day War. Both times he had dropped his mask. She had expected to see a small, frightened man, cowering in a corner. In fact, he had appeared to be strong, confident and determined. At those moments she could sense his strength as if it were a powerful scent. It made her feel a little dizzy. The man was weird, intriguing and powerful. She wanted to get close to him, to understand his mind, to know his secret thoughts. She wanted to touch his bony body, and feel his strong hands grasping her, and look into his sad brown eyes when he cried out in passion. She wanted his love. It had never been like this for her before.
Nat Dickstein knew it was all wrong. Suza had formed an attachment to him when she was five years old and he was a kind grown-up who knew how to talk to children and cats. Now he was exploiting that childhood affection. He had loved Eila, who had died. There was something unhealthy about his relationship with her look-alike daughter. He was not just a Jew, but an Israeli; not just an Israeli, but a Mossad agent. He of all people could not love a girt who was half Arab. Whenever a beautiful girl falls in love with a spy, the spy is obliged to ask himself which enemy intelligence service she might be working for. Over the years, each time a woman had become fond of Dickstein, he had found reasons like these for being cool to her, and sooner or later she had understood and gone away disappointed; and the fact that Suza bad outmaneuvered his subconscious by being too quick for his defenses was just another reason to be suspicious. It was all wrong. But Dickstein did not care.
,They took a taxi to the flat where she planned to stay the night. She invited him in-her friends, the owners of the flat, were away on holiday-and they went to bed together, and that was when their problems began. At first Suza thought he was going to be too eagerly paisionate when, standing in the little hallway, he gripped her arms and kissed her roughly, and when he groaned, "Oh, God," as she took his hands and placed them on her breasts. There flashed through her mind the cynical thought: I've seen this act before, he is so overcome by my beauty that he practically rapes me, and five minutes after getting into bed he is fast asleep and snoring. Then she pulled away from his kiss and looked into his soft, big, brown eyes, and she thought: Whatever happens, it won't be an act She led him into the little single bedroom at the back of the flat, overlooking the courtyard. She stayed here so often that it was regarded as her room; indeed some of her clothes were in the wardrobe and the drawers. She sat on the edge of the single bed and took off her shoes. Dickstein stood in the doorway, watching. She looked up at him and smiled. "Undress," she said. He turned out the light. She was intrigued: it ran through her like the first tingle of a cannabis high. What was he really like? He was a Cockney, but an Israeli; he was a middle-aged schoolboy; a thin rnsin as strong as a horse; a little, gauche and nervous superficially, but confident and oddly powerful underneath. What did a man like that do in bed? She got in beneath the sheet, curiously touched that he wanted to make love in the dark. He got in beside her and kissed her, gently this time. She. ran her hands over his hard, bony body, and opened her mouth to his kisses. After a moInentarY hesitation, he responded; and she guessed he had not kissed like that befom or at least not for a long time. He touched her tenderly now, with his fingertips, exploring, and he said "Ohl" with a sense of wonder in his voice when he found her nipple taut. His caresses had none of the facile expertise so familiar to her from previous affairs: be, was like - - - well, he was -like a virgin. The thought made her smile in the darkness. "Your breasts am beautiful," he said. "So are yours," she said, touching them. The magic began to work, and she became immersed in sensation: the roughness of his skin, the hair on his legs, the faint masculine smell Of him. Then, suddenly, she sensed a change in him. There was no apparent reason for it, and for a Moment she wondered if she might be imagining it, for he continued to caress her; but she knew that now it was mechanical. he was thinking of something else, she had lost him. She was about to speak of it when he withdrew his hands and said "It's not working. I can't do it." She felt panic, and fought it down. She was frightened, not for herself-You've known enough stiff pricks in your time, girl, not to mention a few UmP ones,-but for him, for his reaction, in case he should be defeated or ashamed and- She put both arms around him and held him tightly, saying, "Whatever you do, please don't go away." I won't. She wanted to put the, light on, to see his face, but it seemed like the wrong thing to do right now. She pressed her cheek against his chest. "Have you got a wife somewhere?" "No." She put Gut her tongue and tasted his skin. "I just think you might feel guilty about something. Like, me being half an Arab?" "I don't think so." "Or, me being Efla Ashford's daughter? You loved her, didn't you?" "How did you know?" "From the way you talked about her." Oh. Well, I don't think I feel guilty about that, but I could be wrong, doctor." "Mmm." He was coming out of his shell. She kissed his chest. "Will you tell me sbraething?" "I expect so." "When did you last have sex?" "Nineteen forty-four.,' "You're kidding!" she said, genuinely astonished. "I"hat's the first witless thing you've said." "I ... you're right, I'm sorry." She hesitated. "But why?" He sighed. "I can't ... I'm not able to talk about it." "But you must." She reached out to the bedside lamp and tamed on the light. Dickstein closed his eyes against the glare. Suza propped herself up on one elbow. "Listen," she said, "there are no rules. We're grown-ups, we're naked in bed, and this is nineteen sixty-eight: nothing is wrong, it's whatever turns you on." "There isn't anything." His eyes were still closed. "And there are no secrets. If you're frightened or disgusted or inflamed, you can say so, and you must I've never said 'I love you' before tonight, Nat Speak to me, please. There was a long silence. He lay stiff, impassive, eyes closed. At last he began to talk. "I didn't know where I was-still don't I was taken there in a cattle truck, and in those days I coul(Wt tell one country from another by the landscape. It was a special camp, a me& ical research center. The prisoners were selected from other camps. We were all young, healthy and Jewish. "Conditions were better than in the first camp I was at. We had food, blankets, cigarettes; there was no thieving, no fightIng. At fint I thought I had struck lucky. There were lots of tests--blood, urine, blow into this tube, catch this ball, read the letters on the card. It was like being in a hospital. Then the experiments began. 'To this day I don't know whether there was any real scientific curiosity behind itA mean, if somebody did those things with animals, I could see that it might be, you know, quite interesting, quite revealing. On the other hand, the dootors must have been insane. I don't know." ' He stopped, and swallowed. It was becoming more difficult for him to speak calmly. Suza whispered, "You must tell me what happened-everything." He was pale, and his voice was very low. Still he kept his eyes shut. "They took me to this laboratory. The guards who escorted me kept winking and nudging and telling me I was glikkIlch-lucky. It was a big room with a low ceiling and very bright lights. There were six or seven of them there, with a movie. camera. In the middle of the room was a low bed with a mattress on it, no sheets. There was a woman on the mattress. They told me to fuck her. She was naked, and shivering-she was a prisoner too. She whispered to me, 'You save my life and I'll save yours.' And then we did it. But that was only the beginning." Suza ran her hand over his loins and found his penis taut. Now she understood. She stroked him, gently at first, and waited for him to go on-4or she knew that now he would tell all of the story. "After that they did variations on the experiment. Every day for months, there was something. Drugs, sometimes. An old woman. A man, once. Intercourse in different posttions-standing up, sitting, everything. Oral sex, anal sex, masturbation, group sex. If you didn't perform, you were flogged or shot. Thafs why the story never came out after the war, do you see? Because all the survivors were guilty." Suza stroked him harder. She was certain, without knowing why, that this was the right thing to do. 'Tell me. All of it." He was breathing faster. His eyes opened and he stared up at the blank white ceiling, seeing another place and another time. "At the end . . . the most shameful of all ... she was a nun. At first I thought they were lying to me, they had just dressed her up, but then she started praying, in French. She had no legs ... they had amputated her, just to observe the effect on me... it was horrible, and I... and I.. ." I Then he jerked, and Suza bent and closed her mouth over his penis, and he said, "Oh, no, no, nol" in rhythm with his spasms, and then it was all over and he wept.