In his room Levin laughed one minute and groaned the next. Breathing heavily, he paced back and forth for hours. Or he stared out of an open window, lost in profuse memory. Sometimes he silently celebrated his performance in the open—his first married woman, sex uncomplicated in a bed of leaves, short hours, good pay. He was invigorated by the experience, one he would not have predicted for himself. A few minutes later he was soberly conscious of this figure within—an old friend with a broken nose warning him against risking his new identity. The new life was very new. Yet he wondered what he could be with her. Could he, with Pauline, be more than he was? Levin thought in terms of experience with her, not necessarily commitment. Hadn’t she herself denied he was obligated to her? This could only mean she wanted no serious tie to him. Yet he was glad he had told her about the past; it was a relief to share that with someone.
By night the forest had taken on a dreamlike quality. Was there such a forest? Were the trees still standing? Were they real? Was it Pauline he had met there? He asked himself, Who is she? Extraordinary thing to have been in a woman and not know her. Could he trust her? What did she want from him; why, for instance, Levin? Because her saintly papa had worn whiskers—beard as totem? Was there perhaps some design in her choice of him (Had she purposely followed him into the woods? Impossible!) or was their lovemaking the more or less accidental end of a discontented woman’s desire? If not, if she had in one way or another sought him out, what could he offer her, a man at thirty still running after last year’s train, far behind in the world? Nothing. To be involved with a married woman—danger by definition, whose behavior he had no way of predicting was no joke. Who could guess what grade she would want changed; or what she might whisper to her lawfully-wedded spouse in a moment of tenderness, or hurl at him in hatred. If she threw Levin up to Gilley, farewell Levin. He feared his fate in her hand. Yet if she were concealment itself he knew his relationship to Gilley was changed for all time. This bothered him. Since he disliked him he wanted it to be for a just cause, to wit, Gilley, not because Levin had stolen from him—the primal cheating, result, oppressor hating oppressed. The thought that haunted him most was that the slightest revelation of the act under the tree would mean the worst disaster he could think of: end of future.
During the week, though she was often in his mind, Levin felt he didn’t miss her, and probably vice versa. She could never be interested in a man with his kind of past. As he mulled this, he could not be sure he was right—she had seemed more than sympathetic to him, had practically wept. Probably it was closer to truth to think she had wanted the distraction of an affair, had had it, and quits. Or maybe she’s now ashamed of it. She’s the one with a husband; thank God I have no wife. So fare thee well. Yet too bad, for what’s good deserves repeating. He had been thinking it was impossible to live on
memory of sexual pleasure, no matter how satisfying. The better the pleasure the more useless the memory.
This was his mood one rainy night, the week after the forest, as he sat in his room. The fire of unseasoned applewood had sizzled out after nine, and Levin, tired of reading, had rebuilt it. He went back to his book but found it hard to concentrate; had to nail down each sentence before he could move to the next. The alternative was to shut the book and think of her. Let me be honest with myself, he thought; if I have her again I must keep romance apart from convenience. Love goes with freedom in my book. He had less than a minute to test his reflection, for there was a sound on the back stairs, and through the blurred glass he saw Pauline about to tap with a key. He rose hastily, his impression that she had been observing him, questioning what—his existence? worth? good sense? Levin momentarily thought of disappearing, but went instead to open the door where she stood. Could a man do less on a rainy night?
Pauline entered quickly. “Did you want me to come?” Her eyes hid from his.
If he said no it wasn’t yes, but Levin said yes. Still, it was yes without pain, unless pain could be present without one’s knowing, an unlikely procedure.
They kissed and at once parted as if there was much to say, or at least get straight, before they could kiss again. Her face and hands were cold, she had shivered as he held her. Levin hung up her wet raincoat. Pauline stood before the fire in the green dress he remembered from the night he had banged his head. She wore pendant earrings.
“Just let me get my breath back.”
But breath she had. What was missing he wasn’t sure. She seemed troubled, said little. Levin guessed what it probably was—the difference between last time and this. Their meeting in the woods was accidental. Tonight she must have lied to Gilley when she left the house. There was, in any case, that house to leave and this to come to.
For a half hour they watched the fire. She offered no explanation for her mood and he made it a point not to ask. He had disappointing visions of a short sexless evening. At length Pauline sighed and gave him her hand.
She looked around. “Is there anyone else on this floor?”
“Nobody. Mrs. Beaty sleeps downstairs.”
Pauline plucked off her earrings and dropped them into her purse. She stepped out of her shoes and began to undress. He did the same though nobody had asked him. The contract was in the prior act, there in the forest.
In her lace-bosomed slip reflecting the fire she looked at him with a half-sad smile.
“Do you like me in this?”
“It’s a poetic garment.”
“You’ve never seen me naked.”
The fact surprised him.
She drew the slip over her head and was naked. Her hips were slim. She was long waisted, the legs and trunk gracefully proportioned, her arms and shoulders lovely. Naked, she looked unmarried.
But her chest was barren, the flowerlike nipples only slightly fleshy. He had almost looked away.
“Shall I keep my slip on? Would you like that better?”
“No.” He had to watch himself with her.
She pressed down the mattress to see if the bed creaked.
“Are you afraid?” he asked her.
“Dreadfully. I’d die if anyone heard us.”
He took her in his arms. “Don’t be afraid. The landlady’s deaf when she’s asleep. She’s asleep now.”
She was suddenly passionate, bit his lip. In bed she met him with open mouth. He thought what he must do for her but there was hardly time. “Take me.” She came quickly, at the end half singing out as she had in the woods, a sound that sang in him. At its onset he had taken it for sobbing-regret for what she was doing—but it was a halting cry of
pleasure. She took him with her before he thought it time to go. He laughed at the ease of it.
Afterwards she asked, her face lit in the glow of a cigarette, “Does ‘My young love’s rip’ning breasts’ mean so much? Does my flat bosom bother you?”
“If it did it doesn’t.”
“At least I have symmetry,” she said. “My roommate in college had a bigger right breast than left.”
He was for symmetry.
“And I’ve never worn falsies, would you want me to?”
“You’re not the type.”
“What type am I?”
“The type that doesn’t wear them.”
“Please always be honest with me,” Pauline said.
He said he had to or got mangled.
She asked if he always taught himself lessons from experience.
“Almost always.”
“My poor Levin.”
“I don’t like to make the mistakes I’ve made.”
She said, after putting out her cigarette, “What will you teach yourself from us?”
“Something good, I think.”
“Something lovely, perhaps enduring?”
He said he thought so.
“Do you think you could fall in love with a woman without breasts?”
“I’ve never tried.”
She said, suddenly, “I shouldn’t really be here.”
Pauline was at once out of bed. “Gerald’s in Marathon tonight. The children are alone because I couldn’t get a sitter. I feel like a heel.”
But she swept off the bedsheet and tightened it under him. Emptying the ashtray into the fireplace, Pauline aired the room, dressed, and left. Levin was at once asleep.
She visited him not often but often enough. One of her “meetings” was a good enough excuse for a night out. And Gilley assisted by teaching a winter-term weekly extension course for teachers, in Marathon. Usually Pauline walked the dozen blocks to Levin’s. When she had the car she parked it about two blocks from the house. Gilley was home from Marathon by eleven. She had left Levin’s room at ten-thirty, short but sweet. He could read afterwards without a stray thought, a great convenience. He envisioned a new Utopia, everyone over eighteen sexually satisfied, aggression reduced, peace in the world. Once she came for an hour after Gilley had fallen asleep, worrying Levin. She was no longer dreadfully afraid; the change in her had escaped him. She said she sometimes slept on a couch in Erik’s room and Gilley was a heavy sleeper. In the unlikely event he awoke he would not miss her. But Levin asked her not to take chances. She promised, then went frankly on record in extenuation of the chances she took. “Gerald can sometimes be indifferent to me for weeks. He began to be after we found out the true reason why we couldn’t have children, although I will admit there are times when it’s my fault, when I just don’t have the energy.”
What a waste, he thought.
The next time they were in bed, after Levin had dozed and waked, she brought up Gerald. “Why don’t you like him?”
“I never said I didn’t.”
“Tell me what happened in the department.”
“I told you we didn’t agree about some things.”
“Be patient with him,” she said. “He has good will towards you.”
“Let’s not talk about him,” Levin said.
“He’s really been very sweet to me. Sometimes I’m a moody bitch, but he’s usually patient and I’d like to be grateful.”
He said nothing.
“We weren’t doing so badly at first,” Pauline said, “then we began to have some nasty spells. He disappointed me in certain ways, some not his fault. I know I disappointed him. We had
a very bad time just before we got Erik but it’s really been better since the kids came. They’ve made me as nearly happy as I’ve been in recent years. Gerald does a lot for us. Lately I’ve been thinking I’d like to be in love with him again. It was very nice when we first were. Do you think anybody can bring past love alive or is it gone forever once it goes?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sometimes I’ve thought that if I were having an affair he might sense I’m being attractive to someone, and it might awaken more of his desire for me. If that happened maybe I would respond. Do you think that could happen?”
“I doubt it,” he said.
“So do I,” said Pauline.
He interpreted this to mean she wanted pleasure, solace, a momentary change, but no serious involvement with him. Her marriage, deficient as it seemed to him, apparently meant something to her. The situation suited him. If it made their relationship seem less consequential than it might be, on reflection so much the better. If his affair with Pauline inspired Gilley to respond to her, and she to love him for responding, so much the freer Levin’s conscience. It wasn’t easy to be helpful while enjoying the fruits of another man’s wife.
He anticipated her visits, the tap of her key on the glass. They embraced ardently, her hand going for his fly. Levin guessed this was new for her, probably a new way she saw herself. It was new for him. Off came her earrings, then her clothes, without embarrassment. Breasts or none, her woman’s wealth satisfied him. When he touched her nipples the effect was electric. She could be a little wild in bed. “Your fingers are fires.” He enjoyed her long body, the cool flesh, sex smell, fragrant hair. He enjoyed the possession and adventure, her intensity with detachment. In bed he rarely thought of her as Gilley’s wife. If he did he countered conscience with the thought he could break it off by spending the summer in San Francisco. In the fall he could find some excuse not to
see her. He could say he had fallen in love and was thinking of getting married.
The forest had shrunk to a double bed. In bed they lived, in bed explored their bodies and history. She often asked him about his life, what he was like at ten, seventeen, twenty.
“A romantic,” Levin said.
“That’s still in you.”
He shrugged. “Almost gone.”
“Don’t you like it?”
“I’ve lived too much on air.”
“I like that in you.”
Then she said, “Is love air?”
“Too often it was.”
When he asked about her she asked: Did he find her attractive? Did he like her hair long? Did he like her legs? “I have such big feet.” “I’m not pretty, am I?” She said once she didn’t think she was interesting. “I’ve had so few experiences. My life was so prosaically different from yours. It’s almost as though I wouldn’t go the extra step to make something happen, and not much did.”