The smile in his eyes was very astonishing, as he looked at the other man. It was the pure gleam of relief His face was pallid and even haggard.
“The right woman, I suppose you mean,” said Birkin spitefully.
“Of course, for choice. Failing that, an amusing man.”
He laughed as he said it. Birkin sat down near the fire.
“What were you doing?” he asked.
“I? Nothing. I’m in a bad way just now, everything’s on edge, and I can neither work nor play. I don’t know whether it’s a sign of old age, I’m sure.”
“You mean you are bored?”
“Bored, I don’t know. I can’t apply myself. And I feel the devil is either very present inside me, or dead.”
Birkin glanced up and looked in his eyes.
“You should try hitting something,” he said.
Gerald smiled.
“Perhaps,” he said. “So long as it was something worth hitting.”
“Quite!” said Birkin, in his soft voice. There was a long pause during which each could feel the presence of the other.
“One has to wait,” said Birkin.
“Ah God! Waiting! What are we waiting for?”
“Some old Johnny says there are three cures for
ennui,
sleep, drink, and travel,” said Birkin.
“All cold eggs,” said Gerald. “In sleep you dream, in drink you curse, and in travel you yell at a porter. No, work and love are the two. When you’re not at work you should be in love.”
“Be it then,” said Birkin.
“Give me the object,” said Gerald. “The possibilities of love exhaust themselves.”
“Do they? And then what?”
“Then you die,” said Gerald.
“So you ought,” said Birkin.
“I don’t see it,” replied Gerald. He took his hands out of his trousers pockets, and reached for a cigarette. He was tense and nervous. He lit the cigarette over a lamp, reaching forward and drawing steadily. He was dressed for dinner, as usual in the evening, although he was alone.
“There’s a third one even to your two,” said Birkin. “Work, love, and fighting. You forget the fight.”
“I suppose I do,” said Gerald. “Did you ever do any boxing—?”
“No, I don’t think I did,” said Birkin.
“Ay—” Gerald lifted his head and blew the smoke slowly into the air.
“Why?” said Birkin.
“Nothing. I thought we might have a round. It is perhaps true, that I want something to hit. It’s a suggestion.”
“So you think you might as well hit me?” said Birkin.
“You? Well—! Perhaps—! In a friendly kind of way, of course.”
“Quite!” said Birkin, bitingly.
Gerald stood leaning back against the mantel-piece. He looked down at Birkin, and his eyes flashed with a sort of terror like the eyes of a stallion, that are bloodshot and overwrought, turned glancing backwards in a stiff terror.
“I feel that if I don’t watch myself, I shall find myself doing something silly,” he said.
“Why not do it?” said Birkin coldly.
Gerald listened with quick impatience. He kept glancing down at Birkin, as if looking for something from the other man.
“I used to do some Japanese wrestling,” said Birkin. “A Jap lived in the same house with me in Heidelberg, and he taught me a little. But I was never much good at it.”
“You did!” exclaimed Gerald. “That’s one of the things I’ve never even seen done. You mean jiu-jitsu, I suppose?”
“Yes. But I am no good at those things—they don’t interest me.”
“They don’t? They do me. What’s the start?”
“I’ll show you what I can, if you like,” said Birkin.
“You will?” A queer, smiling look tightened Gerald’s face for a moment, as he said, “Well, I’d like it very much.”
“Then we’ll try jiu-jitsu. Only you can’t do much in a starched shirt.”
“Then let us strip, and do it properly. Hold a minute—” He rang the bell, and waited for the butler.
“Bring a couple of sandwiches and a syphon,” he said to the man, “and then don’t trouble me any more to-night—or let anybody else.”
The man went. Gerald turned to Birkin with his eyes lighted.
“And you used to wrestle with a Jap?” he said. “Did you strip?”
“Sometimes.”
“You did! What was he like then, as a wrestler?”
“Good, I believe. I am no judge. He was very quick and slippery and full of electric fire. It is a remarkable thing, what a curious sort of fluid force they seem to have in them, those people—not like a human grip—like a polyp—”
Gerald nodded.
“I should imagine so,” he said, “to look at them. They repel me, rather.”
“Repel and attract, both. They are very repulsive when they are cold, and they look grey. But when they are hot and roused, there is a definite attraction—a curious kind of full electric fluid—like eels.”
“Well—, yes—, probably.”
The man brought in the tray and set it down.
“Don’t come in any more,” said Gerald.
The door closed.
“Well, then,” said Gerald, “shall we strip and begin? Will you have a drink first?”
“No, I don’t want one.”
“Neither do I.”
Gerald fastened the door and pushed the furniture aside. The room was large, there was plenty of space, it was thickly carpeted. Then he quickly threw off his clothes, and waited for Birkin. The latter, white and thin, came over to him. Birkin was more a presence than a visible object; Gerald was aware of him completely, but not really visually. Whereas Gerald himself was concrete and noticeable, a piece of pure final substance.
“Now,” said Birkin, “I will show you what I learned, and what I remember. You let me take you so—” And his hands closed on the naked body of the other man. In another moment, he had Gerald swung over lightly and balanced against his knee, head downwards. Relaxed, Gerald sprang to his feet with eyes glittering.
“That’s smart,” he said. “Now try again.”
So the two men began to struggle together. They were very dissimilar. Birkin was tall and narrow, his bones were very thin and fine. Gerald was much heavier and more plastic. His bones were strong and round, his limbs were rounded, all his contours were beautifully and fully moulded. He seemed to stand with a proper, rich weight on the face of the earth, whilst Birkin seemed to have the centre of gravitation in his own middle. And Gerald had a rich, frictional kind of strength, rather mechanical, but sudden and invincible, whereas Birkin was abstract as to be almost intangible. He impinged invisibly upon the other man, scarcely seeming to touch him, like a garment, and then suddenly piercing in a tense fine grip that seemed to penetrate into the very quick of Gerald’s being.
They stopped, they discussed methods, they practised grips and throws, they became accustomed to each other, to each other’s rhythm, they got a kind of mutual physical understanding. And then again they had a real struggle. They seemed to drive their white flesh deeper and deeper against each other, as if they would break into a oneness. Birkin had a great subtle energy, that would press upon the other man with an uncanny force, weigh him like a spell put upon him. Then it would pass, and Gerald would heave free, with white, heaving, dazzling movements.
So the two men entwined and wrestled with each other, working nearer and nearer. Both were white and clear, but Gerald flushed smart red where he was touched, and Birkin remained white and tense. He seemed to penetrate into Gerald’s more solid, more diffuse bulk, to interfuse his body through the body of the other, as if to bring it subtly into subjection, always seizing with some rapid necromantic foreknowledge every motion of the other flesh, converting and counteracting it, playing upon the limbs and trunk of Gerald like some hard wind. It was as if Birkin’s whole physical intelligence interpenetrated into Gerald’s body, as if his fine, sublimated energy entered into the flesh of the fuller man, like some potency, casting a fine net, a prison, through the muscles into the very depths of Gerald’s physical being.
So they wrestled swiftly, rapturously, intent and mindless at last, two essential white figures working into a tighter closer oneness of struggle, with a strange, octopus-like knotting and flashing of limbs in the subdued light of the room; a tense white knot of flesh gripped in silence between the walls of old brown books. Now and again came a sharp gasp of breath, or a sound like a sigh, then the rapid thudding of movement on the thickly-carpeted floor, then the strange sound of flesh escaping under flesh. Often, in the white interlaced knot of violent living being that swayed silently, there was no head to be seen, only the swift, tight limbs, the solid white backs, the physical junction of two bodies clinched into oneness. Then would appear the gleaming, ruffled head of Gerald, as the struggle changed, then for a moment the dun-coloured, shadow-like head of the other man would lift up from the conflict, the eyes wide and dreadful and sightless.
At length Gerald lay back inert on the carpet, his breast rising in great slow panting, whilst Birkin kneeled over him, almost unconscious. Birkin was much more exhausted. He caught little, short breaths, he could scarcely breathe any more. The earth seemed to tilt and sway, and a complete darkness was coming over his mind. He did not know what happened. He slid forward quite unconscious, over Gerald, and Gerald did not notice. Then he was half-conscious again, aware only of the strange tilting and sliding of the world. The world was sliding, everything was sliding off into the darkness. And he was sliding, endlessly, endlessly away.
He came to consciousness again, hearing an immense knocking outside. What could be happening, what was it, the great hammer-stroke resounding through the house? He did not know. And then it came to him that it was his own heart beating. But that seemed impossible, the noise was outside. No, it was inside himself, it was his own heart. And the beating was painful, so strained, surcharged. He wondered if Gerald heard it. He did not know whether he were standing or lying or falling.
When he realised that he had fallen prostrate upon Gerald’s body he wondered, he was surprised. But he sat up, steadying himself with his hand and waiting for his heart to become stiller and less painful. It hurt very much, and took away his consciousness.
Gerald, however, was still less conscious than Birkin. They waited dimly, in a sort of not-being, for many uncounted, unknown minutes.
“Of course—” panted Gerald, “I didn’t have to be rough—with you—I had to keep back—my force—”
Birkin heard the sound as if his own spirit stood behind him, outside him, and listened to it. His body was in a trance of exhaustion, his spirit heard thinly. His body could not answer. Only he knew his heart was getting quieter. He was divided entirely between his spirit, which stood outside, and knew, and his body, that was a plunging, unconscious stroke of blood.
“I could have thrown you—using violence—” panted Gerald. “But you beat me right enough.”
“Yes,” said Birkin, hardening his throat and producing the words in the tension there, “you’re much stronger than I—you could beat me—easily.”
Then he relaxed again to the terrible plunging of his heart and his blood.
“It surprised me,” panted Gerald, “what strength you’ve got. Almost supernatural.”
“For a moment,” said Birkin.
He still heard as if it were his own disembodied spirit hearing, standing at some distance behind him. It drew nearer, however, his spirit. And the violent striking of blood in his chest was sinking quieter, allowing his mind to come back. He realised that he was leaning with all his weight on the soft body of the other man. It startled him, because he thought he had withdrawn. He recovered himself, and sat up. But he was still vague and unestablished. He put out his hand to steady himself. It touched the hand of Gerald, that was lying out on the floor. And Gerald’s hand closed warm and sudden over Birkin’s, they remained exhausted and breathless, the one hand clasped closely over the other. It was Birkin whose hand, in swift response, had closed in a strong, warm clasp over the hand of the other. Gerald’s clasp had been sudden and momentaneous.
The normal consciousness, however, was returning, ebbing back. Birkin could breathe almost naturally again. Gerald’s hand slowly withdrew, Birkin slowly, dazedly rose to his feet and went towards the table. He poured out a whiskey and soda. Gerald also came for a drink.
“It was a real set-to, wasn’t it?” said Birkin, looking at Gerald with darkened eyes.
“God, yes,” said Gerald. He looked at the fine body of the other man, and added: “It wasn’t too much for you, was it?”
“No. One ought to wrestle and strive and be physically close. It makes one sane.”
“You do think so?”
“I do. Don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Gerald.
There were long spaces of silence between their words. The wrestling had some deep meaning to them—an unfinished meaning.
“We are mentally, spiritually intimate, therefore we should be more or less physically intimate too—it is more whole.”
“Certainly it is,” said Gerald. Then he laughed pleasantly, adding: “It’s rather wonderful to me.” He stretched out his arms handsomely.
“Yes,” said Birkin. “I don’t know why one should have to justify oneself.”
“No.”
The two men began to dress.
“I think also that you are beautiful,” said Birkin to Gerald, “and that is enjoyable too. One should enjoy what is given.”
“You think I am beautiful—how do you mean, physically?” asked Gerald, his eyes glistening.
“Yes. You have a northern kind of beauty, like light refracted from snow—and a beautiful, plastic form. Yes, that is there to enjoy as well. We should enjoy everything.”
Gerald laughed in his throat, and said:
“That’s certainly one way of looking at it. I can say this much, I feel better. It has certainly helped me. Is this the Bruderschaft you wanted?”
“Perhaps. Do you think this pledges anything?”