Читать книгу ALCHEMIES OF THE HEART - David Dorian - Страница 22

Nerve Endings

When I came home around eight o’clock, the dining room table was well-appointed. Crystal goblets reflected the flames from elongated blue candles in silver holders. My wife uncorked the bottle of chilled Chenin Blanc.

“I’ve prepared canard à l’orange with a Grand Marnier sauce for your birthday. I didn’t invite your friends as you requested.”

“Thank you.”

I hate birthdays, particularly my own. I am susceptible to amnesia around that time of the year. I’m always reminded of that day by family and friends.

I washed my hands stinking of acrid hospital antiseptic soap and sat close to my wife.

“Your mother called. She’d like you to visit her. She has a present for your birthday.”

“I’ll call her.”

Maren disappeared in the kitchen. The house was quiet. I cherished the momentary stillness. A compulsive woodpecker perched on one of the tall trees around the house was banging its head against a resilient bark. Its hammering disturbed the delicate serenity of that bucolic evening. I had escaped the mechanical jackhammers manned by Honduran workers slaving for Con Edison in the city, tearing the asphalt on Lexington Avenue outside my office. I had sought refuge in an arboreal suburb. Now in this rustic milieu, this bipolar bird with its beak was pulverizing the exterior membrane of a tree in search for insects hiding inside the trunk. There are government environmental agencies that monitor noise levels. This incident became magnified, forgetting that my birthday neurosis goes into high gear around the day of my entry into this world. I gulped my wine hoping the alcohol would sedate my disgruntled.

“I’ve been thinking of turning our attic into a yoga studio,” my wife dropped.

I was in no mood to discuss house renovation: workers traipsing on my floors with their industrial boots dragging planks of wood and sheetrock.

“You think it’s a good idea?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I groaned.

“I’d like to start teaching again. Maybe you’ll take some classes.”

“Why don’t you rent studio space in some gym.”

“I can do that, but I’d prefer having my own studio, and the attic is perfect.”

“What about privacy? Students will be coming in and out. I don’t want to turn my home into a school. It’s a residence, not a dojo.”

“The classes will be in the evening, and you’re never here in the evening.”

“And on weekends? Housewives flock to yoga classes on weekends.”

“I won’t do weekends.”

“What’s for dessert?”

“Black forest cake.”

She walked to the kitchen and returned with a tray with a coffeepot and the cake.

“What kind of renovation?” I asked.

“I scheduled appointments with flooring contractors. I’ve not signed any contract. I wanted to talk to you first. I think some white pine flooring will gave the attic a pristine look.”

“Pristine? You want to build a shrine?”

“No, just a place that’s welcoming, a place for relaxation. We have to remove some boxes and store them in the garage,” she said. “I found photos.”

Maren handed me a cardboard box full of snapshots illustrating many stages of Captain Jim Martin’s life: a smiling infant, an impish child, a clownish adolescent, a virile young man. An album contained grainy sepia snapshots of my stepfather in uniform with his army buddies. Many photographs highlighted an exuberant liberator of many Italian towns, surrounded by local Italian girls. In a photograph shot in an aristocratic living room belonging to some Junker, my father was sitting on a Baroque chair, throne-like, brandishing captured enemy flags, banners, and weapons he had looted from the retreating Germans.

“Your father had lots of fun in Europe,” Maren commented.

“That’s why men go to war,” I said.

“There’s no war for you, my love,” she launched.

I didn’t rise to the provocation.

Every dawn I enter the operating room, I engage the enemy. It’s a carnage with many casualties. The clash lasts for hours. Sometimes, I am soundly beaten; other times, I prevail. Hostilities never end. There is a truce. We call it health. In those periods of nonaggression, life begins again, but not for long. The virus or the bacteria or some weak cellular tissue ruptures, or some accident rips organs, and the patients are rushed to the operating room, and I am summoned to plan the next assault.

I set the photo album aside and continued prospecting my black forest cake.

That night, my wife made love to me. Her body, I had thought, held no mysteries. I had caressed, tasted its fragrant sweetness a thousand times. Her geography, which I thought I knew intimately, now seemed alien. Her surfaces were alluringly unfamiliar. Her skin, which I had caressed countless times, was unidentifiable. Did my wife sense the proximity of another woman, a potential rival? Did that subliminal awareness cause glands to secrete more estrogen to oversexualize Maren, now threatened by Mantuo Luo? Estrogen, the female hormone is a Greek word—oistros, meaning literally “verve” and “inspiration” and the suffix “gen,” which is “producer of.” Estrogen is the maker of sexual desire, according to the ancient Greeks. Did this same intuited feeling of insecurity caused by the possible intrusion of another female into her mate’s life stimulate my wife’s hypothalamus to produce more oxytocin, that intimacy hormone? Or was my sensorial system being heightened by Mantuo Luo? Did my Chinese masseuse vivify my skin, refining my tactile connection, invigorating my nerve endings?