Intimations (2 page)

You don't have to snap at me, he said. I went to the lock and turned it, but it went around and around. He had found the only room in the house with a nonfunctional lock. I heard footsteps slowly coming up the stairs. They stopped in front of the other bedroom and then the bathroom. Then they stopped in front of my door.

You'd better let me in, he said.

The door's locked, I said. You'd never get through. I was bluffing. I needed more details to make the lie convincing, but I was all out of words. There was a long silence and I hoped that he would not try the knob.

Well, it doesn't matter, he said thoughtfully. Because I found a knife, a really sharp one. And it can reach you through
the door even if it's locked. As long as you're standing here talking to me.

I hesitated. Was he bluffing?

Is it a long knife? I asked through the door.

Yes, he said.

I don't believe you, I said through the door.

Why's that? he said.

I thought hard. Because I would have heard it when you came up the stairs, I said, hoping that he would let it go. I don't think that's true, he said.

Fine, then tap it against the doorknob, I said. Let me hear it.

Clink, clink, he said.

No, I said, I'm not buying it. Okay, he said, but I'm not going to believe that your door is locked either. If it were locked, you wouldn't be talking to me here. You'd be over at the window behind you, trying to find a way out. I felt a pit in my chest. He was right. I should have been there trying to get out. Instead I had wasted that time trying to talk about the situation. I looked behind me. The man with the short hair was sitting on my bed, reading one of my books.

Then the one I had chosen burst into the room. He was holding an armful of things he had found in the linen closet, which, I assumed, he was planning on using as weapons. First he took an armful of mixed towels and washcloths and attempted to drive them into my back. Then he grabbed a collapsible laundry hamper and threw it in the direction of my head. He picked up some containers of fabric softener and lobbed them at me, and then tried repeatedly to jam a feather duster through my chest. He picked up a long cushion that had come from the couch.

At this rate it would take forever.

He paused, breathing heavily. Okay, look, he said. I give up. I love you and I don't remember why I'm trying to kill you. Can we just start over? I thought about it. What would we do? I asked. We could watch a movie, he suggested.

I didn't know what to say. I knew I had a big choice to make. I could let it all go and try to love him, try to trust him, try to make something lasting and good. He obviously had strong feelings for me or about me. And he wasn't being so bad right now. We could build something sturdy, beautiful. Or I could try to make a dash for the door by crawling under the dining room table.

There was a good chance that he would kill me later, either way.

I dove under the table and scrambled toward the door.

He was still behind me, cursing over the fallen chairs that lay before him and the ten-foot lead I had. But when I reached for the knob, it wouldn't turn. The lock was on the outside. Who ever heard of the lock for a door being on the outside? It would be up to another, possibly a total and complete stranger, to decide whether you'd ever be allowed to leave.

I knew it was time to run again. He was looking around the room for a better weapon, and he would probably find it. I was so tired. I just wanted to curl up with someone, anyone, even him, and sleep until work on Monday. I wanted to feel someone's, anyone's, hands on me, even if it was in that way I hate, the fingers all over my face and jaw.

1

The lobsters were dead in a pile and no longer a danger to us. They were dead in a pile and their shells were not brown not red not blue, but the color of eyes, both yours and mine. We ate them to destroy them but a murmuring came, nevertheless, from their empty carapaces, uncracked. The lobsters with their soft, hissing voices and their words like air escaping a punctured tire. We ate them to destroy them all but suddenly we felt sad and empty and overly full. I turned to you and for the first time told you I was in love. The lobsters were dead in a pile and with a froth on their shells they waited and watched us undress each other. They no longer made the hostile lobster sounds, they no longer threatened us in tiny words with the destruction of our species but waited there dead with eyes that looked little different from the eyes of the living. There on the shore the sun glowed and our love was indestructible, though the sea washed up a strange red froth. The lobsters were in piles and they no longer moved, but some of them did and were alive still and in their movements within the pile they made the heap writhe like water boiling in a pot. We had eaten the lobsters to forestall our own destruction, but it became clear that
nothing would. I resettled myself on the sand and leaned back against you, and I closed my eyes, stroking your leg and your large right claw, and I was at rest at last.

2

Holiday in Cape Cod. Lucy spreads the beach blanket on the hot sand, and I jump on to avoid burning the soles of my feet. Susan is slathering sunscreen on the exposed segments of her body, as the gulls circle over us all. We play paddle-ball and catch and the little red rubber sphere traces out a path among us three. I walk down to the seam of shore and sea and practice digging small holes with my feet, holes that fill immediately with water. Does water lurk everywhere, just below the surface, or only here?

I see you farther upshore, fully clothed, watching me carve hopeless marks in the sand. I see a giant lobster, the size of a beach blanket, stranded at the shoreline. It looks a tender pink. You see me seeing the lobster, but you do nothing. The lobster strokes desperately but it only digs itself farther in, its legs slap at the wet dark sand. A common misconception is that a lobster screams when boiled; actually the whistling sound is steam escaping the shell. I go over to the giant lobster, not wishing to touch it. But I take up a stick of driftwood and I will wedge it from the sand, roll it toward the water.

I go over and briefly it stops struggling and in this still moment I think it may be grateful, waiting to be helped. I am nudging the shard under and under its belly to lift and
overhead the gulls go wild. Now the blood is gushing, blue blood, frothing all over the gulls that swoop in to eat from its belly, eat of its belly, it was too tender to move and it is emptying quick. My stick still sticks in it, the stick now blue the gulls blue my hands are blue, blue is everywhere I look except you. You are pale and clean, watching me from afar. You look queasy.

That sound: was it a whistle, a hiss, or a scream? From the ocean come thousands upon thousands of lobsters and they are not whistling or hissing or screaming but are whispering one word over and over again, over and over and over.

3

“I'll have the Lobster in Cream Sauce,” Susan says, tilting her head this way and that at the menu. “But please make certain the seafood is of local origin: we have all traveled too far to dine on imported creatures.”

Plunge two lobsters each weighing two pounds into the boiling water, quickly so they die at once; break off the large claws and set them in the center of a saucepan. Douse in white wine and water, add bay leaves, parsley, and onion and boil for twenty minutes, then pull apart the tails, strain the creamy innards, and fry the remainder in butter. Moisten with lobster stock and add shallots, cream, and brandy. Cut the bodies in slices and lay the shells at the sides, the heads facing up toward you, directly toward you, and pointed away from the sea.

Lucy licks her lips, studies the menu. “I'd like the Lobster
à la Bordelaise.
With extra wedges of lemon and some Tabasco, please.”

In white wine, with a broth based on lobster flesh, simmered with diced carrots, onions, and potatoes. The lobster must be fresh, unfrozen, caught from cold water that hardens the shell. A lobster is sweetest and full of the richest flesh right before a molt, when the shell is at its most protective. Before it has shed its sense of safety.

And for me? A cup of the corn chowder, with a small salad. Dressing on the side.

Susan looks at me with a combination of amusement and scorn. “Oh, Anne-Marie. Only you would attempt vegetarianism on the Cape, in the summer. Why not live a little, eat the best? After all, you are what you eat.”

But I am not.

4

What a beautiful day as thousands and thousands of lobsters skitter up from the water, whispering their single word over and over again as the sky blues brightly overhead. What a beautiful color staining the swollen breasts of the gulls as they argue over the last contents of the great lobster, nearly fainting from their own fullness. Susan and Lucy look over at me from a distance and they put down their red rubber
ball, uncertain. We were to take a sunset stroll to the leeward side of the cove, hand in hand, as when we were children, but now a sound comes from the sea and I sense our plans must be reconsidered.

The sound rises like the whistling of a teakettle but breaks into a shriek, a single beautiful tone that pierces the sea breeze like a knife, cracks it like a mallet, and when it has gone on long enough I can begin to hear the word whispered beneath. By the time the lobsters have begun to kill us, I recognize it distinctly.

The lobsters take down a healthy athletic type, they take him behind the knees and he crumples like a doll. The lobsters with their clumsy claws are terrible in droves, the sun glistens off their backs and they are a wave, a tide, a drowning of speckled brown and red crawling over the faces of people. I look down at my hands covered in blue and tell myself this is not happening, but of course it is. They fight their way into the mouths and down the airways of vacationers of all ages, indiscriminate.

And you are running toward me while the lobsters are killing us all, your hair ruffled in the breeze and the sun glistening off your smooth shoulders, and you are mouthing something, shouting it, something I cannot hear over the screams of lobsters and of people. You reach me and then you whisper in my ear that we must kill them all. I nod slowly as you grab one of the largest in your hands and tear it in half. You hold one of the halves out to me, it drips blue
on the warm, soft sand. I take it in my hands tentatively, like it could hurt me, and I bite down.

5

So full. Full of lobster meat and the sadness of the lobster meat. Full of the feeling of having cracked hundreds upon hundreds of precious shells. Full of the sound and the sight of destruction, the lobsters dead in a pile, some of them with lipstick marks on their empty husks. Their voices piled up on one another. I felt a whispering coming from deep within my belly, the voices not yet at rest, and they said in a tone sympathetic and unsympathetic at the same time, Next Next Next. “Well,” I said, “what do we do next?” “Lobster dinner?” he asked, chuckling a little as if I ought to be chuckling with him as well. And as he leaned in to kiss me, my eye saw his open mouth grow larger and larger until it seemed it could swallow me whole.

1

The body of Victor Tallon bends both of its knees on the downbeat, sinking and suddenly halting, like a toy abandoned by a child. Legs crooked, he remains there too long, squatting shallowly in the midst of what had once been a passable plié. The stiff arms hold their shape, suspended as if from threads extending invisibly into the heavens. After several seconds, the finely positioned arms begin to quiver.

From where I stand, I watch this tremor grow bolder, as I watch also the eyes beginning to brim with a considerable quantity of tears. He moistens rapidly. His emptied mouth gapes toward the audience like a dark hole deep, deep in the woods. Meanwhile, the music has already moved on, marching toward the fourth bar, though a strain of hesitancy creeps into the notes as it occurs to each of the players that they might soon be ordered to slow down, or to cease entirely.

I give him a stern appraisal, from the slack mouth to the slackening hips. He should now be executing the
élevé,
but it is all terribly wrong. He tilts left somewhat and looks as though he might topple. Though he has been perfectly still for the last few minutes, poised mid-sequence for fear of
making an error, now his legs begin to wriggle in place. It occurs to me that he might fall upon all fours and make a dash for the palace doors, straight for the elegant foyer and its elegant escape, fleeing like a dog from a promise of certain punishment. Such a turn would not take me by surprise: Victor Tallon is a savage, and holds a coward's attitude toward the art of dance. But when I lower my hand gently to the rod at my hip, he pitches forward and releases a gasp, a spasm of fearful sound. The neck protruding from his collar and coat is pink with fear, twisted round like a wrung goose. Then he resumes his choreography, proceeding as instructed through the rise, the jeté, another plié, another
élevé,
another light and airy kick. For one such as he, accustomed to the harsh admonitions of the wilderness, only a similar harshness will stir him to civilized action.

I look to the braggart philosopher Portesquieu to measure his response, but he does not meet my eye. Victor continues to sway a bit too much for my liking, giving the elegant
chacotte
an unseemly teetering quality. However, it must be said that his posture is impeccable.

2

Young Victor Tallon wandered into our village three years and thirty-seven days ago, wearing upon his head a flap of filthy linen made more vile by the matted teats of hair hung beneath it. The physician who examined him estimated his age at sixteen years, though with his stunted height and well-developed teeth he could have been a man closer to my own. When we realized that he was more than a beggar—far more, by way of being far less—we descended upon him
as children upon a sack of sweets. Not only was he unable to give us an account of himself, his name, origin, occupation, the name of his father, the occupation of his father, the whereabouts of his mother, etcetera, he was unable to account for anything at all. To our questions and threats, he made a soft chuffing sound, followed by a sort of attempt to bite the air, snapping at it and gnashing his teeth as though he had seized upon some delicacy. Men and women of all ages and ranks, we convened upon the town square to see this empty vessel, to gather around him, to lift up his lips to examine his gums, to explore his sensitivity to prodding and loud sounds.

That night in the tavern, the philosopher Portesquieu addressed me before all present. Dancing-master, he said from a mouth stained with meat, why do you not try your hand at reforming the wild young man? You claim that you are a favorite of the court, surely some official would commend him to your custody, to teach him the essentials of modern thought and comportment. Perhaps knowing the proper execution of the gavotte would help the boy make sense of the world.

Amid his laughter, I reflected upon the many spiritual benefits that a mastery of the dance could offer. A firm knowledge of the social dances—invented for pleasure yet placed in the service of the public good—could benefit the poor savage in both mind and body. For if the elegant gestures of the dance spring from a deeply cultivated sense of intelligence and propriety, it is clear that knowledge of these gestures would cultivate the appropriate intelligence in its practitioner.

It is to this end that I took young Victor on as my own student, and to this end that he performs the steps as I have taught him, in the order I have taught him, before this audience: the audience that will affirm his civilization. It is for this reason that he rotates with his left arm extended and his right gently curved—performing the court dances like a gracious and sensible man. Although he does not yet understand what any of those words mean.

3

Victor executes a magnificent bow in the center of the hall. He bends before a bramble of eyes, convened to witness the degree to which bodily form may supplant a long history of mental formlessness. He is a portrait of health and good grooming: his eyes and gums no longer ooze. Atop his head, he wears a wig of coppery curls that suits him as though it were his own from birth, and upon which the sides have been pinned back in the style of the moment, and to prevent him from chewing at it. The fitted coat and collar make the most of his shape, so much so that the least choosy of the court ladies titter to each other as he passes by. As he takes his first step into the second prepared dance, a minuet choreographed to the playing of flute, tambourine, and harpsichord, I am pleased to note that every possible sign of good breeding has been stamped onto his surface, wrought in his flesh. Not a thing is out of place as he glides forward into the first movement, but for the composition of the face.

Set back within a recess of the coppery wig, two eyes twitch back and forth rapidly, like finches traversing a small cage. They give the appearance of little creatures trying to
see past the glorious billows of auburn waves, to see a way out. Below, Victor's small red mouth pops open and closed, open and closed, a vestige of his former penchant for gnawing at the air. Beyond the red rims, teeth that are blinding white: purer, whiter than any I have seen in the mouths of those raised on more cultivated foods.

I frown to myself. In his treatise on the history of dance, Cahusec writes: “The different affections of the soul are the origin of gestures, and the dance, which is made up of them, is consequently the art of executing them with grace and proportion relative to the affections they express.” Yet I know that this particular gesture originates in young Victor Tallon's desire to have his chewing-toy returned to him, a base desire reflective of his regression toward savagery. Earlier that day he slyly tried to hand over a piece of chipped wood when I came to recoup it from him before the performance. When I persisted, he made attempts to demonstrate his affection for the toy, miming his pleasure at gnawing upon it, showing that it could be concealed completely within his mouth.

Rooting around among the feverish little points, the wet and roiling tongue, I explained to him that, invisible though it might be, the simple knowledge of its presence would rot the occasion from within, destroying my satisfaction entirely.

4

Young Victor arrived at my door a dwarfish creature, freshly shorn and clothed in a length of linen. He resembled a boy, but only in shape. He lacked a boy's liveliness and capacity
for joy, he would not be enticed by bright scraps of cloth or the antics of dogs at play. To most of the world he was calloused: he did not turn toward the sound of a human voice, nor did he seem to note particularly the difference between a well-enunciated sentence and a hacking cough. He loved to eat and to lie about unbothered and to gnaw upon the objects whose names and functions I attempted over and over to teach him. To all else he was indifferent. I placed his head and hands in the proper position for attending to my instruction, only to look back and find them slumping back into his customary untidy heap. There were times when I watched him rolling around belly-up in the pastures, chewing upon a convenient branch, and despaired that I would ever teach him even the meanest of jigs.

While with most beginning students I would first impart an understanding of the names and qualities of the most common courtly dances, young Victor required a most intricate and time-consuming education. I was faced with the problem of persuading him to pay any notice at all to higher forms of activity, for he was inclined to an eventless life spent supine in various corners of his chamber. Once, I performed an exquisite series of
balancés
for his benefit, to which he responded by gnawing on my headpiece while I was occupied. In rejoinder, I removed from his daily routine those few things that he favored—food, flowers, and chewable items. I set in their place a system of tutorials directed toward teaching him the most elevated of concepts and behaviors, which I believed he would interest himself in were he not continually able to please himself by putting objects into his mouth. It is in this manner that societies
have caused their own advancement: by starving themselves of ready satisfactions, they stir their appetite for finer sustenance.

Unfortunately, my benevolent deprivations created in Victor only the most rudimentary physical effects. With movements and sounds, he complained of his hunger and boredom, of the disuse of his mouth, while I lectured on, discoursing on the subjects of agriculture, ancestry, the difference between present-day architectural ratios and those employed by the ancients. The only tutorial that attracted his attention was my explanation of crying, a sort of footnote to a more extensive lecture on the relationship of emotions to gesture. Victor watched with open mouth as I mimed sadness, even greater sadness, and then indicated with my fingers the streaming of tears down my face. When I made the noise itself, the gutted syllables of a man weeping, he leapt up, clapping with his hands and chuffing madly. As I tried to calm him, he roved about the property uttering sobs and palpating his eyes that they might tear more readily. I pursued his weeping form through the parlor, the library, the pantry, shouting commands at his swift and fleeing back.

When I captured him at last, he wore the expression of an animal smug with unearned fulfillment. His eyes were blister-red, racked with weeping, yet he wept still, wept freely. There was an air of contentment in his weeping that I felt to be incorrect, formally imbalanced, perhaps. Yet when I reached for his throat to amend certain flaws in enunciation, he ceased weeping at once and turned himself away from me. I heard him swallow deeply, as though tucking the remaining sobs into some secret, unseen cavity.

From that moment on, young Victor refused to weep before me, though I often overheard him weeping in private, when lying about in the barn or in some moment of leisure.

5

Victor, I say. Victor, give me your attention. Look at me. I will not ask again.

His great dull head stirs slightly, but remains fixated on a point far to my right. Victor, I say. Victor. Look at me. If you do not look at me, I will have to make use of the rod. I place my hand on the rod for good measure.

He turns his head slowly, achingly toward me. The heavy skull swivels on its stand. It is his chewing-toy that distracts him so, resting naked and exposed upon the side table where I have placed it. He finds it cruel, cruel that he is not permitted to make use of it during this tutorial when I allow it for most of the lectures and dances. I explain again: Victor, we are practicing conversation. We are improving your speech and your pronunciation. You will not improve so long as you insist on keeping that useless bauble in your mouth, where it obscures your breath and proves an obstacle to your tongue, which I remind you has never been as limber as it should.

He seems to have lost interest again. The chewing-toy gleams atop the table, lozenge-shaped and glinting like
gold. The rod, I say, remember the rod. With this reminder, he regains a healthy alertness.

Now, Victor, I begin. If another guest should approach you at court and speak to you, uttering the phrase “How do you do?” what should you say?

Victor swivels his tongue around within his mouth, twisting his lips. He has never liked the taste of words, and I sense that he has not developed much of an idea what they are for. He sighs, and his eyes remain upon the toy.

VerywellthankyouandIampleasedtomeetyouhowdoyoudo? he says, all in a rush, his mouth flapping up and down upon the sentence as though it were a piece of meat.

I, myself, am also well, I say. Do you enjoy dancing? I ask.

He stares at me, unsure what to do. I have never given him this prompt before.

Are you enjoying the ball? I ask. This one he has done many times before.

Ohverymuchsowhatareliefitistobeamongpropercompany, he says wearily.

Good, Victor, fairly good, I say. But you would do well to attend to the pauses between your words, for they are as the
counts in a measure of music, directing the body toward the greater expression of its own musicality. Measure your breaths, boy, and release them with much care and restraint. Let the words be a dance in themselves, a dance of meaning upon the surface of a tongue.

He stares at me, chewing his finger. He has understood nothing.

6

Swollen-faced Portesquieu leans back in his chair and turns his open maw toward the sky, releasing a moist gibbering of laughter. His mirth strains against the strictures of his clothing, the flesh of his neck bulging sweetly over the stiffened collar. Beads of grease from the lamb leg float upon the dark surface of his ale.

An infant does not learn to discourse on the advantages of walking before it learns to take a step, I declare, assuming a dismissive tone. Rather, the steps teach the walker the value of their use. You would have the infant crawl into old age, if it could not explain why it wished to elevate itself.

And you propose to produce a butterfly by feeding a wolf on rose blossoms and sugar water, Portesquieu replies.

Victor is no wolf, I say. And he shows a tender affection for butterflies and other creatures, one that would shame most well-bred children.