What she actually knew was less clear than that she didn’t want to know too much. Andrea had apparently told her aunt that she’d sensed something — something in the hall, something in her room — and had thought at first it might be an intruder before she’d realized that her mind was playing tricks on her. So much at least I gathered through the sharp bursts of cigarette smoke that erupted from Maureen like hisses of steam. At one point she turned to me and said in a fierce whisper: “We’ve got to be careful. She knows, she knows. Oh, she doesn’t know she knows, but she knows. Hssst!” Here she held up a hand, turned her head sharply, listened. She shrugged. “I thought—” She listened again. “Do you think she’s listening?” She waved at the smoke with swift short strokes of her hand, as if someone might be hiding in there.
Later, on my way to the attic, I lingered in the upstairs hall. Maureen had a habit of going to the refrigerator for a drink of bottled water and a bite of whatever lay at hand before she climbed the stairs to get ready for bed. In the unlit hall I stood before Andrea’s door. A line of light showed under it. I could hear the turning of a page, the creak of bedsprings. My desire to enter the room was so powerful that I could feel it penetrating the door and coming out on the other side. But already I could hear Maureen’s footstep on the carpeted stairs. Back in the attic I listened to her enter her room, across from Andrea’s.
Please understand: it had been scarcely five weeks since I’d fled from my house through the dark dawn. I knew some things, but not many, about the conditions of my new existence. Even so, I recognized that my behavior had taken a turn toward the — well, toward the bizarre. I had always been a quiet man; a man of regular habits; a conventional man, if I may put it that way without the sneer that usually accompanies such a description. My relations with Maureen, peculiar though they might seem to an outsider, made entire sense to me. What didn’t make sense was my behavior toward Andrea. I was no bender and sniffer, no lurker in ladies’ closets. What had come over me?
Let me speak for a moment about the nature of our desire. We do not understand it, we others. Our relation to the world in which we find ourselves is murky at best. We possess the faculty of sight, though we see best in the dark. We hear, but the sound of our own voices is always disturbing to us. We are entirely without the sense of taste. Some of us are without the sense of smell, though I am not one of them. Many of us claim that we are without the sense of touch, though it’s well known that we can adapt our shapes to the shapes of the world — we can sit on couches, stand on floors, climb steps. I would argue that we have a memory of touch, a shadow-touch that permits us to conform to your world. What then of desire? Our desire resembles yours in certain respects, with this difference: it expects nothing, it believes in nothing. Above all, it does not believe in itself. Why should it? We know who we are, we others. We are not-you. We have nothing to do with you. Which is to say, we have only to do with you — for without you, we are even less than ourselves, we are less than absences. Is this clear? Nothing is clear. A murky business, as I’ve said.
As for Andrea, I knew only that I craved to be near her — to be as near her as possible. I did not crave to see her naked body. Such desires have nothing to do with us. But the desire to be near, to be as near as possible, to be nearer than is possible, to mingle, to merge, to lose ourselves in the substance of a living creature — that is what we desire, when we desire.
After Maureen was safely in her room, I found myself in the upstairs hall before Andrea’s door. I say “found myself” because I became aware of standing there without any memory of having descended the attic stairs. A moment later I was inside the room. It was entirely dark — she had closed and lowered the blinds and drawn the curtains — and it was only now, in that room, that I realized how very well I was able to see in the dark. She lay on her back with her head turned to one side and one arm lying across her stomach. The sleeve of her pajama top had been pulled back to the middle of her large forearm. I sat down on the end of the bed, next to the place where her feet pushed up under the covers. I felt gratified to be near her. I felt more than gratified, I felt soothed, as if my existence were a bleeding sore for which she — but this is a horrible metaphor. I leave it here as evidence of my agitation.
Andrea was a restless sleeper — I had known this before. What I hadn’t known was how much, in sleep, she remained in motion. She moved each of her shoulders; her hands shifted position; her head turned until she was facing straight up. Then her whole body began to roll over. I had the impression that her body was a train traveling through the night, while she lay fast asleep on a berth somewhere inside. Now she lay on her outstretched arm. Now she turned again, onto her stomach. She took a deep breath, and was still — then rolled onto her back. She said, very distinctly, the syllable “nong.” She sighed. She opened her eyes.
I hadn’t expected her to open her eyes. She saw me — I saw her see me. She sat up violently, holding the collar of her pajama top against her throat. The gesture reminded me of her aunt. She held up her forearm, as if to prevent a blow to the face. I heard myself speak — that distant, despairing sound — and with a cry she leaped from the bed and rushed to the door, where she fumbled at the knob before escaping into the hall.
I continued to sit there, paralyzed with shame, while outside I heard Andrea tear open the door of her aunt’s room and cry out “Oh god — oh god—” and as I rushed from that cry and hurled myself up the attic stairs, I could hear the women talking together, very fast.
In my high lair I paced and brooded. What else was there to do? I had seen the look of terror on Andrea’s face and I could imagine with dreadful ease the dark thoughts of Maureen. I kept out of sight all day Sunday and came out only when it was safe. Maureen was waiting for me in the darkened living room. As soon as I appeared she whispered, “You scared the life out of her! She’s practically — how could you?” She paced in a haze of smoke, waving her cigarette. “I told her it was all a dream. I think she — but she knows. She knows. I made her doubt her own eyes. I can’t believe that you — in her room, of all places. What were you doing in her room?” I stood there stiffly while she shouted in whispers. Smoke swirled around her like river mist. Light from the kitchen caught her barrettes, her eyes. She looked like a creature in a chamber in hell. Jealousy flared in her like fire. “I thought we had an agreement — an understanding—” She flung herself heavily onto the couch. Her head lay against the couch-back. A hand fell to her lap.
I breathed out an apology and made an awkward exit. I had no excuses, nothing to say. Outside, in the night, I threw myself from one refuge to another, in search of calm, but there was no calm. I had terrified one woman and mortified another — it was time for me to banish myself to the ends of the earth. But where does the earth end? The earth never ends. Besides, where could I go, really? It was also true that I wanted desperately to return and set things right — I who was wrong in my very existence.
Back in the attic I paced and paused, paced and paused, like someone with a memory disorder who is searching for something that keeps vanishing from his mind.
Have I spoken of the dawn? We do not like the dawn. We object to its youthful radiance. We dislike its suggestion of new beginnings, of the uplifted spirit. We are creatures of the downward-plunging spirit, where hope perishes in black laughter. Some claim that at dawn we cease to exist, that we dissolve in light. Blissful thought! But that is pure superstition — or careless observation. No, we’re there, always there, though in a weakened and faded way, like flowers that bloom only after sunset.