Authors: Albert Cohen
He was now out of his bath, which he had deliberately prolonged to abridge the time of waiting until he saw her' once more. Naked and oh so smoothly shaved, smooth-cheeked for her, he danced, danced for the joy of seeing her soon, danced like a Spaniard, with tiny, neat steps, one hand on hip, clicking the fingers of the other, suddenly stamping his heels or shading his eyes with one hand, desperately seeking a glimpse of the woman he loved, then danced like a Russian, squatting and kicking his legs out in front of him, straightening up and clapping his hands, unleashing ludicrous warlike whoops, leaped, whirled, dropped into the splits, got up again, gave a cheer because he would be seeing her soon, smiled at himself, loved himself, loved her, loved the woman he loved. Oh, if he had ever felt alive it was now and for ever!
In the taxi which carried him to her, he sang deliriously, and the sound of the engine covered his singing, and he urged the driver to go faster, to carry him like the wind, and he promised him prodigious sums, even said he would kiss him when they arrived, then he sang again of going to her, sang with such satanic glee that once he had flung his finest ring out of the window into the passing cornfields, and he sang and he sang and he sang endlessly that he was going to her, oh song of impatience and fearful joy, oh preposterous canticle of youth, and he sang and he sang and he sang, endlessly sang the triumph of being loved, and he looked at the man who was loved reflected in the windows of the taxi, was proud of his teeth, proud he was handsome, handsome for her, victoriously going towards her who waited, and lo! he saw her from afar, waiting at her door beneath the roses, oh glory, oh wondrous sight: 'Lo! behold the woman who is loved, unique and full of grace, glory to the Lord, the Lord in me,' he whispered.
CHAPTER 41
Their first evenings together, rapture of conversations interrupted by a myriad kisses, chaste interludes, the fascination and delight of telling the other about themselves, of learning everything there was to know about the other, of pleasing the other. She talked eagerly to him about her childhood, about the games she'd played with Éliane, about the little song she'd made up which they'd sung on the way to school, told him about her uncle and her aunt and Varvara, told him about Magali her owl and Fluffy her cat, two delightful little souls prematurely torn from her tender affections, showed him old photos and homework she'd done as a girl, even gave him her private diary to read, only too happy that he should know all about her, hold sovereign rights over her, or else she told him gravely about her father, and he put on an attentive, respectful expression to see her breathe more deeply, for she gloried in his respect, which justified their love and made it right.
The miracle, as they talked, of seeing herself with him in the mirror, of knowing that this was for ever, that he was with her and was hers. The miracle of sharing everything with him, of making an oblation of her most secret self, her adolescent passions, her day-dreams, the sometime hermit, now dead, the well-dressed gent she'd gunned down and left in the snow, her trick of soothing her nerves by banging herself against the wall, oh the miracle of feeling that he was her soul-brother who understood her completely, understood her better than she understood herself. Yes, the miracle too of being brother and sister, and of laughing together.
She told him what kinds of music she liked, and occasionally got up and played examples on the piano for him, and she gazed at him when she had finished, relieved if he liked them too, and she would kiss his hands. If he did not like them, she suddenly found them less beautiful, realizing that he was right. Oh this need to feel at one with him, to like only what he liked, to know what books he liked so that she could read them and like them too.
Endless talking, friendly suspensions of carnimalities which comforted her and were to her mind living proof that they were joined in spirit and not simply in body, the never tarnished joy of talking about themselves, of being clever and intelligent and handsome and noble and perfect. Two actors absorbed in outcharming each other, striving and strutting, he thought once more, but what did it matter, it was bliss, for evei^thing about her delighted him, even her good-little-girl-rm-watching-the-birdie-for-the-photographer-man smile whenever he said something nice about how beautiful she was, even her Genevan accent and vocabulary delighted him. He loved her.
One morning she invited him for dinner that evening at eight. It was the first meal they had eaten together. So proud to have got everything ready all by herself, and especially proud of her sorrel soup, which she carried gravely to the table. 'Darling, I made it myself from start to finish, the sorrel is from the garden, I picked it this morning.' Highly pleased with the thought that she was feeding her man, thrilled by her mental picture of the wife and servant genteelly ladling out the soup. The pleasure of watching him eat. She felt like a home-maker; she approved. She approved of him too. Good table manners, she thought as she watched him. Her pleasure too in the role of sensible wife. When he asked for a third piece of chocolate cake, 'No, darling, three pieces are too much,' she said sententiously. That same evening he cut his finger slightly, very slightly. Oh how happy she was to tend his hurt, to put iodine on it and swaddle it in a bandage which she sealed with a kiss, like a tender mother.
CHAPTER 42
One evening when their love was young, he asked her what she was thinking. She turned abruptly, making her skirt flare dramatically, a manoeuvre she felt sure would please him. 'I'm thinking how enchanted I am to have met you,' she said. 'Enchanted,' she repeated, delighted by the sudden taste of the word on her tongue. She laughed, walked up and down, knowing that he was staring admiringly, feeling her dress hug her in all the right places. 'And now what are you thinking?' he asked. 'I'm thinking how sorry for myself I am, because the rest of my life will be spent trying to please you, wearing heels that are too high and skirts that are too tight, twirling my dress like I did just now, like Mademoiselle de La Mole in the book, it's quite appalling and I make myself sick, I'm turning into a regular female, it's dreadful.' She knelt and kissed his hand. Deplorable, this urge to be forever falling on her knees. 'Say you'll keep me, keep me by you always,' she said.
How beautiful she was kneeling, looking up at him, with both arms round his hips in the attitude of one who prays, his poignantly slim hips, the hips of her man. 'Let me look at you,' she said, and she drew back to see all of him, checked every feature and smiled, oh perfect teeth of youth. She must weigh sixty kilos, of which forty are water, he thought. I am in love with forty kilos of water, he thought. 'What are you thinking about?' she asked. 'I'm thinking about Kitty,' he said. She asked him to tell her again, because she loved listening to him talk about his sweet little cat, now, alas, no more. So he told her the first thing that came into his head, said that sometimes Kitty was fat and moody, sometimes slender and as friendly as an angel; sometimes she went on purring for as long as it took to eat her dinner, with her little head in her dish; sometimes as good as gold, eyes raised, patient, perfect; and other times as old as time and dreaming of days long ago. 'More,' she said. So he told her that Kitty demanded constant stroking because she was never free of the atavistic fear of danger, and stroking relieved her anxiety. If she was being stroked, she couldn't be in danger. 'I want to have my anxiety relieved too,' she said, and she snuggled up closer. Held by him, she tilted her head and half-opened her lips like a flower in bloom, and they drank each other's sweetness, painstakingly, deeply, lost to the world, and this was the grave and suddenly passionate language of youth, a long, lubricated struggle as lips and tongues conjoined. 'Lower,' she ventured in a barely audible whisper.
'Lower,' she sometimes ventured in a whisper when the mouth-kissing was done, shamed by her boldness, and she sometimes undid the top of her dress herself, and then he would lean forward and reach down to her bare breast, and she would close her eyes at once so that she would feel her shame less intensely, detach herself, know nothing, nothing but the magic of the night which opened to receive her, heedful of the honey that dripped in the night, yielding and deliquescent, dumbly eavesdropping on exquisitely expiring ecstasies, on occasion breaking the silence with a moan of endorsement, on others giving him encouragement and thanks by slowly, uncertainly stroking his hair, sometimes whispering 'The other one now.' 'I love you,' she would add hurriedly, to reclaim her dignity and inject a modicum of soul, and then would moan once more, eyes closed, thoughts scattered, carnimal, her breath rasping and slavering in her throat, in the enchantment of his hovering over her other breast. Oh make him go on and on like this, don't let him move on too soon to the rest, she ventured to think.
When he pulled away to look at her so beautiful in her nakedness, she did not stir, her lips still open and head thrown back, smiling and dazed, happy in the knowledge that she was defenceless and entirely at his mercy, awaiting the resumption, and then velvet night came down again and it was filled with the exquisite torture of her crouching lover. But suddenly she gripped him by the shoulders, pulled him down on her and told him: now.
First nights of their loving, long, stumbling, fumbling nights, desire perpetually reviving, limbs intertwined, secrets whispered, brief and ponderous collisions, turbulent storms unleashed, Ariane submitting, altar and victim, at times nipping her lover's neck with plaintively sharp teeth. Oh her eyes showing white like a saint in ecstasy, and she would ask if he were happy in her, if he were content in her, and ask him to keep her by him, keep her by him always. First nights of their loving, mortal flesh colliding, sacred rhythm, primal rhythm, backs arching, backs lunging, deeply thrusting, rapid, dispassionate thrusting, male implacability, she passionately endorsing, suddenly flexing, reaching towards the male.
All passion spent, she would gently stroke his naked shoulder, grateful, eyes shadow-ringed, and speak to him of what she called their union, tell him whisperingly the bliss he had given her, and whisper even lower as she asked if he had been made happy by her. Then it was his turn to comment, quite aware of the absurdity of their dithyrambic exegeses, but he did not care, for he had never known another woman as desirable as she. He loved those tender interludes, her caress, their affectionate talk, the way they embraced, like brother and sister. Human contact restored, he thought, and he nestled against her while she bewitched his hair.
In these interludes their mood was bright, they were amused by trifles, and both laughed loud when she told the tale of Angeline, a farm-girl from Savoy, who pretended to be sorry for her cow so that the clever creature would respond with a gloomy moo. Ariane took both parts. First she was Angeline saying: 'Poor Buttercup, who's been smacking Buttercup, then?' (To give the story its proper flavour, you really had to say 'Pore' and 'Boottercoop'.) Then she was the cow, answering with a martyred moo. The best part of the story was when the cow answered. Sometimes they mooed together, to emphasize just how smart that old moo-cow was. As you see,, they weren't hard to please. They were bright, they were friends, laughing at little things, laughing if he told her about a kitten pretending to be afraid of a chair, or if he admitted that he was terrified by big, buzzing bluebottles which glinted like green metal, or if he said how cross he was when he heard people come out with the cliche about butterflies being pretty, they were horrible, soft, squashable, flying caterpillars, each one packed with nasty lymph, with wings in the worst possible taste which looked as though they'd been painted on by elderly unmarried ladies from another epoch. Oh how happy they were together, like brother and sister giving each other innocent pecks on the cheek. One evening, as they lay next to each other, when she asked him to make up a poem starting 'I know a land across the sea', he did so immediately. 'I know a land across the sea Where blooms the gillyflower; The people there smile charmingly Every minute of each hour. The tiger there is mild as grass, The lion gentle as a lamb, And to all the hoary tramps that pass Ariane gives buttered bread and jam.' She kissed his hand, and he was ashamed to be so worshipped.
If he lit a cigarette at the conclusion of a joust, she felt sad, as though lighting a cigarette was an act of disrespect for her, or even an act of sacrilege. But she let it pass without mention. They can be tactful at times.
Sometimes he fell asleep beside her, exuding trust. Her heart warmed then, for she loved to see him as he slept, loved to watch over him while he slept the sleep of a stranger on whom she gazed with curious pity, a stranger who was now her whole life. I have a stranger in my heart, she thought, and silently she spoke words to him, the wildest of words, the most holy of words, words which he would never hear. My son, my lord, my Messiah, she ventured inside herself to say, and when he woke she was seized by the joy that women know in the madness of their loving, oh superiority of womankind! She hugged him close, kissed him hard, entranced by the thought that he was alive, and he kissed her too, deliriously, suddenly terrified by the bones of her skeleton which he could feel beneath her pretty cheeks, and once more he kissed her beautiful young breasts which death would stiffen, and desire would flood back, desire which she welcomed, venerated. 'Take your woman,' she said.
'My master,' she would say, reverently beneath him, and she wept tears of happiness as she bade him enter. 'My master,' she said once more, words of gloriously appalling taste, and he was shamed by such exaltation, but oh how absolutely wonderful it was to be alive! 'Your woman, I am your woman,' she said, and she would take his hand. 'Your woman,' she repeated, and to know that this was so she told him to use her as he pleased. 'Use your woman as you please,' she loved to tell him. Perspiring beneath him, sobbing beneath him, she said that she was his woman and his servant, lower than grass and smoother than water, told him over and over again that she loved him. 'I love you yesterday, today and always, and it will always be today,' she said. But if I'd had two teeth missing that night at the Ritz, two pathetic ossicles, would she now be there, at her orisons, beneath me? Two ossicles weighing three grams apiece, which made six grams. Her love tips the scales at six grams, he thought, leaning over her, stroking, adoring.