Читать книгу A Woman, In Bed - Anne Finger - Страница 17

Flush

He was flushed, in all the myriad senses of that word: warm, lavish, abundant. He held forth. She and Albert basked in his talk: “In Madagascar, it was said that everyone had a spirit animal. I was quite convinced mine was the aye-aye. Have you heard of the aye-aye? No? It has enormous eyes and five fingers. A species of lemur. Difficult to actually catch sight of, it hides in the forest and plays tricks on us humans. But when I confided my belief to one of the village elders, he shook his head very solemnly from side to side and said, ‘Angonoka.’” Jacques imitated the old man’s hunched shoulders, his penetrating glare, the gravely certainty with which he spoke.

“Angon—,” Simone repeated.

“Angonoka.”

“Angonoka.”

“There. We’ll have you speaking Malagasy in no time. The Europeans call it the ploughshares tortoise,” Jacques laughed. “One of the ugliest animals you have ever seen—a strange protuberance of its shell under its head—most pronounced in the male of the species, resembling a plough. If my spirit animal couldn’t have been the aye-aye, couldn’t it have been the native bats with a face like a fox? No, alas, within me is a lumbering tortoise. Its mating is triggered by fighting with male rivals. The two of them go at it, locking their ploughs together, stumbling back and forth. Have you ever seen a boxing match?”

“No,” Simone said. “Bullfights, I have seen bullfights.”

“Sometimes one of the fighters knocks the other out quite decisively. But sometimes the match goes on and on, two men, punch drunk, leaning into each other, almost as if they were engaging in a strange dance, every now and again one or the other landing a blow. Resembling one of those longstanding marriages where the couple are joined together by hatred and custom, staggering around together. That is how the ploughshare tortoises fight—the male of the species.”

“And the female of the species?” Simone asked.

Jacques gave a shrug.

Albert yawned. “We should be getting to bed,” although none of the three made a move to rise.

Another half an hour passed, Albert yawned again. “We should be getting to bed. We must be up early, our hike to the lighthouse.”

“Sleep in tomorrow,” Simone coaxed. “You can see the lighthouse some other day.”

“No, alas,” Albert said. “There’s only tomorrow. On Thursday, we leave for Carcassonne.”

“You are leaving?”

“You see,” Albert said to Jacques, “she adores us, she’s devastated that we are going!” Simone had begun to cry.

“Didn’t Albert tell you? We are on a pilgrimage.”

“It’s just that it’s so dull here. I’m so lonely. I’ll be left alone with that dreadful colonel and those squabbling families.”

Albert offered her his handkerchief. “This corner is clean.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You must think I’m—weeping like this.” She pushed her fingers against the underside of her eye sockets and forced a rueful laugh. She shook her head, like a dog shaking off water: “A pilgrimage? What kind of a pilgrimage?”

“Perhaps we could come back.” Albert cocked a questioning eyebrow at Jacques.

“Perhaps.” Jacques sounded doubtful.

“Oh, no, no. It’s your holiday. I don’t want to—. The doctor says I should wait until Marcel is at least six months to take him to Istanbul. There are fevers there. And Luc—my husband—can’t come here, because of his duties. For a while—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be airing my thoughts—it seemed that he was going to be able to come for a visit. I was looking forward…but then some calamity arose—something to do with a shipment of railroad ties, if you can imagine. Oh, I’m so sick of myself! I sit around and brood all day. Like a hen. I cluck and fuss. Tell me about your pilgrimage. What kind of a pilgrimage would the two of you be going on?”

Albert dropped to his knees, took a few steps on them, his hands pressed together in prayer. “I didn’t tell you, I had a religious conversion, I’m going to become a Carthusian monk.”

“Oh, Albert, you couldn’t keep silent for an hour, never mind a lifetime.” Simone ruffled Albert’s wild hair.

“I like that. Perhaps I’ll become a dog instead. Your faithful companion,” and from his knees he went onto all fours, hung his tongue out, wagged his rear.

“We are going to Carcassonne to meet a poet, Joë Bousquet. A literary pilgrimage. I have been corresponding with him—he has quite a striking voice. He was wounded in the war, paralyzed, and is now unable to leave his family home.”

“Come with us.” Albert had gone from all fours to sitting on the floor, with his legs drawn up in front of him.

“You forget I am a married woman. I can hardly go traipsing off across the countryside with the two of you.”

“Tell your mother that we’ve become monks. We’ll make a great show of our piety tomorrow.”

“And then there’s my child.”

“Oh, he’s so small. I’ll just tuck him under my arm—”

“And what would my husband say?”

“I won’t tell. Jacques, will you tell?”

“Your husband should have known better than to leave you alone.”

“Jacques, Jacques, put that harsh schoolmaster self away. Have some more mirto.”

Jacques raised his hand, like a cop stopping traffic. “I have had enough. And you have had more than enough. To bed, with all of us.”

At the top of the stairs, they bid whispered goodnights. Jacques lingered in the hallway, watching as Simone entered her bedroom.

Having shut the door behind her, she wept. Was she crying because Jacques and Albert were leaving tomorrow, abandoning her? Because she was ashamed of having revealed to them the depth of her loneliness? Was she weeping because she had already fallen in love with Jacques?

She pressed her fingers against her eye sockets. She would be fine, fine without the two of them. After they had gone, she would spend time with the daughter of the family from Rouen—-what was the girl’s name? Martine? Yes, Martine. As for her rather untoward behavior in the parlor tonight—they’d all had a bit too much to drink, in the morning no one will remember her having cried, and if they do—why it will all be covered in a hazy, alcoholic wash. As for those looks that friend of Albert was giving her—the way he had stared at her with such disdain when she talked about her husband’s mustache, and his—leer, really, there was no other word for it, I prefer her as a woman.

She heard a bedspring creak. “You’re drunk!”

“Mother!” Simone had quite forgot her mother had given up her own room to Albert and Jaques, had been asleep up here waiting for the parlor to be vacated.

“Yes, your mother.” She rose in her rumpled white nightgown, wrapping a throw around her shoulders, stumbling across the room towards the door. Before she closed the door she hurled over her shoulder, “I heard you crying!”