The Penguin's Song (12 page)

WHEN WE WENT IN TOGETHER
,
though each alone, to her room whose door had remained closed, I did not yet know the woman's body. What I mean is that I had not looked at it sufficiently yet; all I had retained was the hue of her skin stretched over the flesh of her legs, and certain contours and curves that I could see when she had her back to me. We stood together in the room that the woman had darkened by closing the wooden shutters and lowering the curtains over them. Still, I could see her in the meager light that remained, just as she could see me, waiting as she was for us to begin that thing for which I imagine that she, like me, had made no preparation. On the dressing table with its expanse of mirror, which stood next to her, I could see little bottles of perfume lined up and looking as if they hadn't been moved for a very long time. The bed was neatly made up, and its broad surface somehow gave the appearance that it had looked exactly like this through all the years she had lived.

She looked confused standing there, placing her hand awkwardly on the table next to her, not knowing what else to do with it. I remained standing just inside the closed door; and from there, I sensed that she was more confused than I was. Perhaps she was expecting me to make the first move. I could barely keep an abashed smile from curving my lips as it occurred to me that we were helpless without my mother. But that thought was quickly followed by the realization that in days past she had not been hinting to me alone: she must have been goading the woman, as she had me. She really ought to be with us, I thought, here in the room. She ought to stay close, with us, until we're in a state where we no longer need her.

But the woman took on the burden of making the first step, moving away from the mirror and going over to the bed, where she sat perched on the edge. Looking over at me from there, her gaze seemed feeble and tired and afraid of what we might do in the closed room. I didn't need to speculate much to know that my mother—who had gone up to our apartment on the pretext that she had work to do there—had come back. To be here, primarily, but also to safeguard the place from the possibility that the girl might return unexpectedly. When the woman gave me that long look from where she sat on the edge of her bed, it was as if she was imploring that we finish that thing we were to do, not begin it. I had to take the next step: to approach the bed, coming close enough that one of us would inevitably touch the other, a hand dropping and brushing against the other body. I was the one to do it. I took hold of her black hair, which was cut just shorter than shoulder length, and drew her head toward my face as I kept my gaze on her.

She staggered and nearly fell back onto the bed, but she righted herself, standing up to face me. When she turned away slightly and a little after that, lifted her arms behind her head, I did not know whether I should help her by undoing the fastener at the back of her dress. I didn't know whether I ought to go on looking at her as she unzipped it, her body opening out beneath it, where I could see how her bra straps had engraved deep lines from which the flesh bulged on either side. But as she fluttered her hands and then stretched them around behind her to lift her dress over her head, I jerked my face the other way, as if I didn't want to seem to be stealing furtive looks at what was being revealed in front of me. She took a step back, and it occurred to me that I should follow her example, beginning with my shirt, turning away so that she couldn't see me as I did what I was doing. After my shirt there was still my other shirt, the white cotton undershirt which, as I stood there holding onto it because I didn't know where to put it, seemed to me as shameful as it was shaming, leaving my body naked now, fully revealed.

As for her, although I was turned the other way I could tell that she had finished taking off her clothes and had lain down on the bed, covering herself with the sheet. She was waiting for me there. I didn't know whether her eyes were turned my way. The picture I had in my mind of my own body was of a sickly white mass that had never been exposed to view, and as for my large belly, whose roundness began high on my chest, I felt that I should avoid revealing it. Lowering my trousers, I saw the error I'd fallen into by taking off my shirt too far from the bed, but it didn't annoy me too much, since I could go on gripping a bit of my clothing, concealing my belly with it and not letting go of anything until I was there, like her, under the bedcovers.

When I turned to walk toward the other side of the bed, the empty side, I saw that she had brought the comforter up to her chin so that it covered her entire body. She wasn't looking in my direction. It was as if she wanted to stay hidden there, under the thick white duvet, her face visible only so she could keep her eyes open as if on guard, stationed over her concealed body. Seeing her tug the heavy bedcovers as high as she could, I recognized that it was best for me to do the same. I lay down on the empty half of the bed, keeping only my head uncovered. The sheet on the bed, like the fabric of the duvet, felt cold to the touch, and as I inserted my body between the layers of fabric I felt that now I had truly begun what I had come to do. Never before had I slept on a bed that was not mine; the smell of the fabric—the cocoon I had dropped myself into—seemed familiar. But it was an intimacy that belonged to others.

I could not go on lying there motionless, my eyes staring straight up at the ceiling, which separated this room from my mother's room. I would not stay in this position trying to imagine where and how to begin. The woman lying next to me, I thought, with the comforter held taut beneath her arms to hide her body beneath it, ought not to be so timid and embarrassed, since she must have done this many times. Wasn't it up to her to do something, to begin somehow? As for me, whatever I did first, I figured I need not do it with my hand. No, my small and not very powerful hand would not be what I would start with. If I raised it to her cheek first, or perhaps to her lips, it would be like exhibiting it to her. She would really see it as it is, small and incomplete and feeble. Or its smallness would be accented if I steered it toward a place that seemed to match it in size, her nipple for instance, which I had not yet seen.

She was completely naked beneath the comforter. I did not yet know her body, I thought. All I had preserved in my memory was the delicate skin across her legs, its fine, soft white hue captured by the light layer of fat beneath. I had not come to know her body yet. Before beginning I must expose it, look at it—all of it, lying flat and then standing upright, front and back, and from both sides. I would have to do that for the sake of distancing the woman slightly, pushing her far enough away from that image of her sitting with my mother or talking to her as the two of them sat together in their clothes that looked so similar on their bodies. But first I must do something to begin: let it be something beneath the comforter. My feet did not suffer from smallness or swelling. My legs were extended straight; now I raised my feet and brought them to the delicate pale skin that I did know, that white glow that rose from the soft fat collected beneath. I moved my foot and touched her skin, rubbing against it from high to low, and then repeated it in a single stroke that massaged the lower legs together. This is what I knew of her body. I knew what my feet were touching when they moved across the surface of her legs, held tightly together, and then up the sides of them. When she closed her eyes I withdrew my hand from beneath the covers so she would sense what I was about to do. I raised the comforter off her body. First to appear was her belly, white and slack and rounded as it sloped to either side. And then her chest: released from their prison, her breasts had spilled to either side; the circle of the nipple nearest me was broad and dark, protruding lightly from the flesh beneath. I did not need to start with my hand, cupping the nipple and what lay beneath. She might think that if this hand was tiny, then so was everything else about me. I need not start with my hand. It was no longer enough to bring my body close to her and press against her; I must turn toward her now as well. And then I would lift myself over her, beginning by kissing her, there on her mouth and around her mouth.

But while I was getting myself ready to actually do these things she turned toward me and put her hand on my body, just below my belly. And now she pressed her palm into me while bringing it close to the heart of the matter: to the core of what we would do. She closed her eyes, not from embarrassment at what she was doing but for the sake of capturing what she was about to feel, bringing it inside herself and keeping it there.

We were naked on the bed, visible to anyone who might be peeping through some tiny hole or spying from a place we couldn't see. The heavy coverlet beneath which we had concealed ourselves was now jumbled into a heap and sliding down to the bottom of the bed where my feet were. We were naked and visible to anyone who might spy on us. I didn't need to verify the presence of my mother, waiting in the sitting room, perhaps moving among its chairs. She was there; perhaps she would get to her feet every few minutes to stand behind our closed door trying hard to listen. Before I lifted myself off my side of the bed to get atop the woman next to me I must see her body, all of it, from there, where her legs are splayed wide apart as if waiting, or as if making space for that thing that will come forth from here where I am, at her feet, passing upward between her thighs to reach their furthermost, innermost point. I wasn't much preoccupied or bothered that the spying eyes were likely to be in place, staring. What those eyes would see was exactly what they would be imagining anyway, and what they already knew. The woman still had her eyes closed, and it looked as though whatever she was doing or receiving, she was sending straight to her dreams or somewhere inside herself, to hold it there. She gave no appearance of wanting to change position, stretched full length and spreading her legs, leaving only her hands free to touch me. When I put my hand out to the margin of her body and then to its center, doing the same thing, she let out a series of little sighs that I could see as much as hear, as though they were emerging from her absence itself, slightly rough and dry, completely unrelated to her voice.

She no longer flexed or moved her body, having turned toward me and then flipped over onto her back. It was as if, having spread her legs apart, she needed to do no more; she was offering what lay at the very end, that uppermost place that she had opened even as she seemed to guard it inside of her, while I remained at the outer limit. In this position, which she apparently wished to be her final one, and which she would not alter, I would not be able to make her curve toward me or to make any part of her move. I could not do anything but climb on top of her, advancing upward from her open legs. When I raised myself to her, my hands gripping what encircled the part of her she had opened, it seemed the only effect was to make her more rigid, more distracted with whatever was going on inside of her. Only her one hand that had reached for me remained against my body, clutching me. And when her hand came back to my sex, it seemed she would keep a firm grip on it, too, keeping me from moving closer to her, halting me where I crouched above her. Like the little groans she let escape that were so unlike her usual voice, the grip she held on me seemed to have issued from some obstinate fantasy in her head that became concentrated into a single, fixed and unchangeable image. Taking hold of me that way, and not budging from her own stiff position, she seemed to want to arrest my motions, keeping me frozen, hunched above her in a kneeling position with my hands clutching at what surrounded her sex. I even thought that the most she must want was exactly this; she would reach the summit of her pleasure that she could only find deep inside, on her own. To extract myself from this predicament she had created, and wanted, I had to enter her open sex. To touch the rim of it, first, with my tiny hand; and I wondered whether, in her state of absence—or trance—she would sense it as small, or sense it not at all, as it came into her, the size of a small child's hand. I didn't know whether she might be conjuring images in her head of what she felt, as if she were actually watching my hand rather than simply feeling it—perhaps—as it moved, hardly any bigger than her open sex. When I began to move my hand as if I was seeking out my path, I knew that I was beginning to awaken something inside of her, something happening in that closed space inside. She let out more sounds and gripped my sex hard. When she moved her legs further apart, opening her eyes a little as she did so, I understood that she wanted me to be right on top of her now and penetrate her. Indeed, the way she tightened her grip on me, down there, said it; she pulled me toward her, dragging me with her forceful hold.

My entire body lay on top of her. From the midpoint of our bodies where they were pressed against each other as closely as could be, when I came into her it was as if I woke her up. The skin around her eyes looked wet and her eyeballs rolled as she stared at me, moving her midsection up and down as if to insist on a rhythm I must follow too, as I moved up and down. That pair of spying eyes staring at us, from overhead this time, from some tiny hole in the ceiling that was the best vantage point, would be thinking that we must have reached the end, or that at least we were in the final stage of what we were doing. The woman under me trembled harder as she tried to hurry her climax. Here she was with her arms around my middle, pulling fiercely, pulling my whole body down.

IT AMOUNTED TO NOTHING MORE
than a rushed attempt that went badly askew. I had to climb down and go back to exploring with my hand. She had stopped moving beneath me when she sensed me slowing down, lagging in the rhythm we had reached together. As I fell off her to lie next to her again, I realized she hadn't been at her climax after all, for she was able to come out of her frenzied state very quickly. She relaxed the hands that had been pressed tensely flat against my middle and slid them down to the mattress. Seeing me sit up, she began to look steadily at me, not bothered by the sight of my sex—damp, dangling loosely, once again limp. We had to go back to the beginning, understanding now that perhaps we had been too hasty that first time. Lying next to her, now I felt embarrassed by the pair of spying eyes. I no longer knew from what vantage point they were looking, where they were concealed. Because of those eyes I tugged the sheet up to cover the lower half of my body, but not the exposed body next to me, which was at once lifeless and expectant.

When I begin the next attempt—and I cannot wait long—it will be for the sake of the pair of spying eyes more than anything else. Perhaps, as we lie inert, those eyes are judging the time passing now as the final moment before we climb out of bed. But we must start all over again. We must begin at the very beginning and not from the point we reached. Not only that: it will have to seem as though we're seeing these two bodies for the first time, unclothed, exposed, naked. I reach my hand to her shoulder and touch her lightly, as if apologizing for something and also, with this one caress, firmly separating what we just did from what we will return to doing very soon.

But it turns out that returning to it—for a second round—is not slow and gradual. Between touching her shoulder and then slipping my hand lower on her body there were no fateful touches. This time it was like a test we would have to pass well and with no delays, as if it were a timed exam and speed was essential to our success. She was dry inside, as if her body had sucked in the moistness she'd had, or had sent it back, where it had been before, deeper inside. I knew, though, that my touch could make her go wet again in there. This time the woman had opened her eyes and she rested her head on her fist, in the pose of the thinker. Apparently my caresses, going deeper, were not coming close to that intimate pleasure of hers that closed her eyes and took her far away. She leaned her head on her fist as if she were thinking about something completely unrelated to what was going on down there at the very center of her body.

I knew I had to work quickly and return her to that state she'd been in, and so I figured I must redouble my speed because I was doing this alone. And then, her open eyes, dreamy and given over to whatever thoughts held them, pushed me to exert still more effort in an attempt to banish their obliviousness. I shoved my hand deeper inside, toward the wetness, which, just when it seemed I was almost there, eluded me, for she withdrew my hand and turned her body away. But I knew this was not the end. It was simply her complaint against our swift progress that was dragging her, against her will, out of her remoteness. I would be able to begin again after a pause, a space of detachment that she needed. I would begin by extending my hand, just like this, as if to placate her with a half-neutral, half-affectionate little touch.

The pair of spying eyes had widened, there somewhere overhead, in the ceiling. In her own way, the woman who had just bent her body away from me seemed to be in a state of preparation for this new round. She launched it hastily, as if the desire she was summoning back had returned suddenly, unexpectedly. Without any preliminary move she took my sex in both hands. She began pulling me toward her wetness, which seemed to have returned and must have welled up from its source somewhere deep inside. It was she who assumed control of this acceleration after that moment of rest she had wanted. As she began to quiver, one tremor following another rapidly, I knew I should abandon myself to her pace. My hands went to the dark aureoles on her chest, pressing hard on what lay below them, reckless enough to cause pain that would send the woman's voice all the way to the ears plastered to the other side of the door. No, I must not abandon myself completely to her tempo, just as I must be careful not to appear as if I am slowing down if she should go on ahead of me. I will remove myself just as I am reaching the pinnacle of my own onrush above her, just at that point, as if to deliberately delay our completion, after which we'll get up from the bed. I will make her follow my tempo as I move up and then down on her, and meanwhile I am recharging myself with the desire that keeps me pushing above her.

This time, too, the high wave that had borne me upward soon troughed. Immediately I lowered myself off the woman. Trying to make me stay, pulling my body back toward her, she was apparently still a little way from reaching the pleasure she sought. When I lay back next to her she turned away from me to be alone as she went the small distance left on her own. But I restrained her, lifting her hand from where it lay and barricading that part of her body. I knew, though, that I must not leave her in this state for long. Without delay I must climb on top of her again to begin again where I had left off. If her wetness recedes or dries up this time it will no longer rise from those depths where it lies in wait.

But when we returned again to the point we had reached earlier, in our first try, we seemed unable to recapture the yearning that would press us together in a series of rapid shudders that pushed us on. Whatever it was that had urged us on then, now seemed to have fallen asleep in both of our bodies at once. Our movements seemed futile, and I began to imagine my body as if seeing it with the eyes that watched us furtively: how I would bend my body toward hers in order to lift myself and cover it, or how I would turn on my side to pull her to me. I envisioned my body, and imagined it, in its weak and passionless tossing. And beneath me or next to me, she would have her eyes open as if waiting for that wave of longing that had dwindled to come over her again, as suddenly this time as before. The spying eyes wherever they were in the ceiling were narrowed now as they accompanied us; perhaps now they were about to pull back from the peephole concealing them. No doubt they knew that the scene they had watched so furtively was at an end; and, as they withdrew before we did, that they were wiser than we were to the state we were in now. Or they knew now that being alone together in this room—me and the woman whose body I did not know, whose body I had memorized not at all—was not likely to bring us anywhere. It was a test, and the spying eyes knew, as they left the spot where they had secreted themselves, to descend rapidly to the rooms giving onto the room with the closed door, that they must show utter indifference as they focused on whatever ordinary object their gaze might encounter. The spying eyes would certainly reach the sitting room before we did, or the hallways, the spaces of departure and return. When she got up from the bed the woman's body sagged as if the only muscle keeping it together in a taut mass had gone limp, letting its parts dissipate. The woman returned to the body she inhabited when she was at home or on her outings with my mother, even if right now it lacked the clothes that normally covered it. Beginning to dress, she turned her face and body away from me, looking as though she intended to veil a nakedness whose exposure had been nothing but a mistake. So I knew, as I went over to my heap of clothes, that I must leave the room before she would. That way I could vacate the house quickly, emptying it wholly of me. We began putting on our clothes, backs to each other, and as I brought my belt up to my middle I thought how she would have to do her zipper up herself. I must leave the room first. Behind me she went over to the mirror on her table sitting next to the old bottles of perfume and began removing from her face, as far as I could tell, any trace that might still linger from our encounter. I must do that too; or, once outside, I must check on how I am looking and holding myself. I must not show anything that my mother—waiting in the sitting room or in a hallway leading to it—would notice. Or perhaps she would be waiting in our apartment, so that I'd be by myself when she saw me. Anyway, she could behave in exactly the same way even if she encountered me here—in the sitting room and not far from the door I would open, appearing as if I had done nothing and had not been where in fact I had been. She would turn toward me then, and as I walked over to where she stood she would straighten her back, and when I came up to her, she would give me her look, fierce and inquiring but nevertheless certain that when she turned I would follow her wordlessly to our home.