Читать книгу A Woman, In Bed - Anne Finger - Страница 32

Slam

She had no memory of that first evening with Joë ending, of making her way with Jacques to their room, only knew that the next morning she was down in the depths of the ocean, trapped by the water’s enormous weight as a series of sharp raps was being delivered to their bedroom door. She rose up up up up up but still did not get to the surface. Her brain was waterlogged. She wanted to take it in both her hands and wring it out.

And now sunlight was pouring through the windows, the woman who had been knock-knock-knocking on the door had entered the room, flung open the drapes, and Jacques was moaning, “Oh, for the love of God. Let us sleep.”

“The young master said I was to get you up. It’s long since gone noon.”

“Jesus,” he moaned. “Some coffee, at least bring us some coffee.”

“There’s no need to be rude.” The woman slammed the door as she departed, returning a quarter of an hour later with a tray with a pot of coffee, bread, and cheese, still muttering, “…decent Christians…the young master said…run off my feet,” keeping up her chant as she went out again, again allowing the door to slam behind her.

In the meantime, Jacques had redrawn the drapes, although a shaft of afternoon light, pouring through a gap, illuminated motes of dust filling the air.

Simone had fallen asleep in her clothes. She was shocked by how musty they smelt, how the waistband, digging into her flesh, had left a red and itchy mark, her stockings rumpled. Overnight, she had become a slattern. She’d have a wash—although she dreaded ringing for the sullen girl, asking her for hot water and a clothes brush.

Jacques downed the coffee as a Russian downs a shot of vodka. Simone stirred warmed milk and sugar into hers, sipped from the porcelain cup. He was naked. His clothes lay in a heap on the floor.

“I can’t believe I slept in my clothes. And this is my only outfit.”

“Ah, dear Simone, I fear I have debauched you.”

He did not speak with the playfulness of the night before. His concern was shadowed by guilt.

She saw that his remorse was causing him pain. Although she did not want to make him suffer, she knew it would be futile to lie to him.

When her parents had left the peasantry behind, they had bid farewell to filth. In the hamlets and thorps surrounding Juan-les-Pins, Simone had passels of aunts and cousins and second-cousins-once-removed who tromped out to their barns and pastures through muck and mire with steps that resembled a military march. In the cold of winter, they herded their animals inside so they might share in the heat from the pigs and sheep who smelt of shit, cheese, and menstrual blood. They had permanent black lines not just under their fingernails but encircling their cuticles—and, as for their toenails, they had come to resemble the hooves of their animals. With hot water and soaps, lavender oil and nail brushes and pomades, Simone’s parents had fought back against the ancestral filth threatening to ooze out from their pores, to invade the safe house they had erected for themselves with its bleached linen curtains and well-scrubbed floor—a tide of slop that would sweep them back into the world from which they had so recently escaped.

“I feel—unclean,” she admitted. “Physically and—I suppose I would sound foolish if I said ‘spiritually.’”

“Ah, Simone, you are so—unjaded. It’s what I love about you.”

The word “love” had been spoken. The word “love” floated up towards the ceiling. She would have liked to grab hold of it, but knew it would be like grasping a soap bubble: touch would make it dissolve.

“No, you don’t sound foolish.” He moved to embrace her, and she hung back, afraid he would be disgusted by her smell.

“Jewish women have a ritual bath that they undertake after their monthly cycle—”

“The mikvah,” he said.

It didn’t surprise her that he knew about it, even knew the Hebrew name: what didn’t he know?

“I wish there were such a place I could go, immerse myself in purifying water.”

“The mikvah,” Jacques said, as he leaned back on the bed, then pulled her towards him, “must be filled with rainwater. And before a woman enters it, she must be completely clean—”

“Are you Jewish as well as Egyptian?”

“No.” He paused, then rushed into the breach of his silence. “My wife is Jewish. Not observant, but—she likes to tell me about the—strange customs from which she escaped. There, there, you mustn’t pout every time I say the words ‘my wife.’”

“I’m not pouting, I—”

“You look as if you’re about to burst into tears.”

“I’m sorry! I can govern what I say but not the expressions that cross my face!”

“Let’s not row. I have a wife, you have a husband. It may be awkward when—these things, these connections, people, come up in conversation, but—it would undoubtedly be even more difficult for us to communicate if we avoided all mention of them. My wife”—he said the phrase deliberately—“my wife is a very modern woman. A doctor. She likes to tell me about the superstitious rituals of her grandmothers and aunts in the Russian Pale: the sabbath goy who was employed to light the oven and switch on the lights, since they were prohibited from doing so—the Passover ritual of cleansing the house of leavened bread—the rules about menstruation and coupling. She expects me to share her disdain for them, to dismiss them as primitive…I must have some more coffee.” She watched as he walked naked across the room, pouring himself another cup of coffee and downing it in a single gulp.

“Has she ever come here?”

“What is that to you?”

“I-I was merely curious.”

He allowed nearly a minute to pass before he spoke:

“No. If Sala were to come here, she would start scheming for Joë’s improvement. She’d want to get him to some medical clinic in Paris where wounded veterans are trained in a useful occupation: accountancy, perhaps. She’d lecture him on the dangers of morphine and confiscate his medication. Donate it to some clinic that served the worthy poor of Paris. She’d roll up her sleeves and get to work on him.” He took Simone’s hand and gave it an affectionate squeeze, which he felt served as sufficient apology for his earlier sharpness.

A rap on the French doors that opened onto the garden: Simone cried out.

Jacques peeked out from behind the drapes, covering the lower half of his naked body. Joë was seated in his wheeled device, with a gold-headed cane which he rattled against the wavy glass.

Joë was saying something, but they could not make it out, and he motioned for Jacques to open the doors.

“My coy maiden,” he said to Jacques.

“No maidens here.” Jacques still covering himself with the curtain.

“Ah, but coy. Fling open the drapes, and look into the garden. You will see that we are in Eden. What need have we for shame?”

But surely in Eden everything had been new: each flower in perfect bloom, the pomegranate trees and the apple, the persimmon and the fig, all bountiful and fresh, while in this garden, as old as the walls that enclosed it, the trees were ancient and gnarled.

“We’ll be dressed and join you soon.”

“Bah! I want to see my two creations pure, unsullied by clothing—”

“We’re hardly your creations.”

“Don’t engage in theological disputes! Just do as I command. Oh, please. At least let me see the lovely Simone, bare and pure. Simone, if I were a painter, a sculptor, you would pose for me, wouldn’t you? Really, it’s no different, my art is my words, but I still need the form of a beautiful woman before me.”

She looked to Jacques: he jutted out his lower lip, shrugged his shoulders, and she removed her clothes, glad to be free of their stink and heaviness, dropping them onto the floor, then stood at the window, naked. She surprised herself by not crooking one arm over her breast, another over her genitals.

Joë stared at her, and then shifted his gaze to Jacques.

“Oh, you must show yourself, too,” Joë demanded. Jacques stepped forth from behind the curtain, and the two of them stood there, hands clasped, side by side.

“Ah, she’s a beautiful girl, your Simone.” He sliced his finger through the air. “Draw the curtain, get dressed, and come and join me.”

For the remainder of this visit, things among the three of them were rather prim. If Joë had need of morphine, he indulged in it alone, and in quantities sufficient only to take the edge off his pain. His flirtations with Simone were of the sort that flatter a young woman without suggesting that anything untoward might occur.