She did not
hear the sound of steps in the garden. She heard them only when they rose up
the stairs to the terrace. She sat up, frowning. She looked at the French
windows.
He came in.
He wore his work clothes, the dirty shirt with rolled sleeves, the trousers
smeared with stone dust. He stood looking at her. There was no laughing understanding
in his face. His face was drawn, austere in cruelty, ascetic in passion, the
cheeks sunken, the lips pulled down, set tight. She jumped to her feet, she stood,
her arms thrown back, her fingers spread apart. He did not move. She saw a vein
of his neck rise, beating, and fall down again.
Then he
walked to her. He held her as if his flesh had cut through hers and she felt
the bones of his arms on the bones of her ribs, her legs jerked tight against
his, his mouth on hers.
She did not
know whether the jolt of terror shook her first and she thrust her elbows at
his throat, twisting her body to escape, or whether she lay still in his arms,
in the first instant, in the shock of feeling his skin against hers, the thing
she had thought about, had expected, had never known to be like this, could not
have known, because this was not part of living, but a thing one could not bear
longer than a second.
She tried
to tear herself away from him. The effort broke against his arms that had not
felt it. Her fists beat against his shoulders, against his face. He moved one
hand, took her two wrists, pinned them behind her, under his arm, wrenching her
shoulder blades. She twisted her head back. She felt his lips on her breast.
She tore herself free.
She fell
back against the dressing table, she stood crouching, her hands clasping the
edge behind her, her eyes wide, colorless, shapeless in terror. He was
laughing. There was the movement of laughter on his face, but no sound. Perhaps
he had released her intentionally. He stood, his legs apart, his arms hanging
at his sides, letting her be more sharply aware of his body across the space
between them than she had been in his arms. She looked at the door behind him,
he saw the first hint of movement, no more than a thought of leaping toward that
door. He extended his arm, not touching her, and fell back. Her shoulders moved
faintly, rising. He took a step forward and her shoulders fell. She huddled
lower, closer to the table. He let her wait. Then he approached. He lifted her
without effort. She let her teeth sink into his hand and felt blood on the tip
of her tongue. He pulled her head back and he forced her mouth open against
his.
She fought
like an animal. But she made no sound. She did not call for help. She heard the
echoes of her blows in a gasp of his breath, and she knew that it was a gasp of
pleasure. She reached for the lamp on the dressing table. He knocked the lamp
out of her hand. The crystal burst to pieces in the darkness.
He had
thrown her down on the bed and she felt the blood beating in her throat, in her
eyes, the hatred, the helpless terror in her blood. She felt the hatred and his
hands; his hands moving over her body, the hands that broke granite. She fought
in a last convulsion. Then the sudden pain shot up, through her body, to her
throat, and she screamed. Then she lay still.
It was an
act that could be performed in tenderness, as a seal of love, or in contempt,
as a symbol of humiliation and conquest. It could be the act of a lover or the
act of a soldier violating an enemy woman. He did it as an act of scorn. Not as
love, but as defilement. And this made her lie still and submit. One gesture of
tenderness from him--and she would have remained cold, untouched by the thing
done to her body. But the act of a master taking shameful, contemptuous
possession of her was the kind of rapture she had wanted. Then she felt him
shaking with the agony of a pleasure unbearable even to him, she knew that she
had given that to him, that it came from her, from her body, and she bit her
lips and she knew what he had wanted her to know.
He lay
still across the bed, away from her, his head hanging back over the edge. She
heard the slow, ending gasps of his breath. She lay on her back, as he had left
her, not moving, her mouth open. She felt empty, light and flat.
She saw him
get up. She saw his silhouette against the window. He went out, without a word
or a glance at her. She noticed that, but it did not matter. She listened
blankly to the sound of his steps moving away in the garden.
She lay
still for a long time. Then she moved her tongue in her open mouth. She heard a
sound that came from somewhere within her, and it was the dry, short, sickening
sound of a sob, but she was not crying, her eyes were held paralyzed, dry and
open. The sound became motion, a jolt running down her throat to her stomach.
It flung her up, she stood awkwardly, bent over, her forearms pressed to her
stomach. She heard the small table by the bed rattling in the darkness, and she
looked at it, in empty astonishment that a table should move without reason.
Then she understood that she was shaking. She was not frightened; it seemed
foolish to shake like that, in short, separate jerks, like soundless hiccoughs.
She thought she must take a bath. The need was unbearable, as if she had felt
it for a long time. Nothing mattered, if only she would take a bath. She dragged
her feet slowly to the door of her bathroom.
She turned
the light on in the bathroom. She saw herself in a tall mirror. She saw the
purple bruises left on her body by his mouth. She heard a moan muffled in her
throat, not very loud. It was not the sight, but the sudden flash of knowledge.
She knew that she would not take a bath. She knew that she wanted to keep the
feeling of his body, the traces of his body on hers, knowing also what such a
desire implied. She fell on her knees, clasping the edge of the bathtub. She
could not make herself crawl over that edge. Her hands slipped, she lay still
on the floor. The tiles were hard and cold under her body. She lay there till
morning.
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