Again we had to retreat, because the ethics of love do not tolerate the presence of the slightest foreign element, everything must be directed exclusively at one's partner, and only through one's partner can a third person have any relevance; this retreat again turned me into a means: she held on to me only insofar as she needed to get closer to Melchior, and we once again found ourselves in a rather dark territory where I also had to stick to my objective of reaching her through Melchior.
So, this meant, I stammered, that she didn't love me; in her language this could be expressed by using a more mundane, less emotionally charged word, as if I were to say in Hungarian that she didn't care for me all that much.
But she did love me, she did.
The last syllable was uttered on my neck, blown onto my skin from a kiss of parting and quickly closing lips.
Of course all the feelings we had had until then ceased in the wake of that kiss.
However, we were holding each other, filling up with many little details of ever-intensifying sensations, standing there, our arms entwined, a little lost, stunned by the newness of the other's body, not sure our minds could or even cared to name or analyze this new situation so deprived of logic; and it all turned out as if two coats were embracing, a little too theatrical, a little too rigid; what should have dissolved did not, for no matter how tightly we clung to each other, there was not enough passion in our bodies meant just for the other, or not enough details in the passion each of us had hoped would be exclusively ours, as if no power could dispel or neutralize the sensation that we were just two coats.
In such or similar situations our love experience can rush to our aid; with tiny, slow, cautious, and barely touching kisses I could have opened her lips resting bashfully on my neck; four little kisses like that could have opened her lips, and if at the same time I eased her body away from mine, broke the closeness, then she would again kiss my neck so that the rapid little kisses buried in our necks would rouse our desire for closeness, which could be quenched only by the closeness of lips, and so on, until we reached the state of no-closeness-is-close-enough.
It wouldn't have taken much to find the way to our bodies' biological urges, and without resorting to anything false or vulgar, for we did love each other, after all, and neither the coats nor our own clumsiness hindered us; but if that had happened, we would have transgressed against the ethics of love.
She had to stand on tiptoe to reach me, which I found especially endearing; her lips rested on my neck for a little while longer, waiting, as if wondering whether I would do what experience dictated now; and my mouth was on her neck, waiting for the possibility of a mutual response that would make a third partner vanish; at the same time I felt the wind's gentle little thrusts on my body.
Yet she couldn't have wished my mouth to make any of the experienced moves; she was the first to yield to Melchior's intrusive presence, and this was natural, since she wasn't as close to him as I was, and only if you're sure of possessing someone can you afford to stray; she pushed me away a little, but we did not break our embrace; she looked into my face with all of hers, she was so close that my eyes, trying to focus, ached a little, but the dull pain felt good, because at this close range the other's face can be superimposed on your own and the blurry sight is absorbed into your own uncertain vision.
Her senses had never deceived her, she said in a choked, agitated voice, her saliva's scent, mixed with nicotine but still sweet, pleasantly surprising my nose so unaccustomed to a woman's scent, what she said referred to both of us, as well as to the one who stood between us.
But the attraction of her scent was not strong enough to overcome a sudden revulsion, an urge to get away from this voice, from this face! for the face was not only distorted, like mine, it wasn't merely responding to my bewilderment with her own; hers seemed maniacal and possessed, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that she might be insane.
Everything she said and did, every ounce of her strength, every wish, every aspect of her curiosity sprang from a tiny, sensitive, painful, and balm-seeking point of her being, and everything penetrating her from the outside world in the form of strength, desire, and curiosity was channeled back to the same point; if by some miracle I could have freed us of our clothes, and my body could have begged hers for mercy, and kissing and clinging to her I could have sunk into her wetness, I still wouldn't have reached her.
At the moment I saw her as someone willing to oblige but not to reciprocate.
In a way it was ludicrous to discover this about her in that situation, but she frightened me; I was alarmed that she might indeed be crazy, and then I must be crazy, too.
And against my better judgment I had to admit that Frau Kühnert, though she may have been driven by jealousy, was probably right: for Thea, people and feelings were only tools, means to some end; but since at that moment I myself was this tool, exposed and at the mercy of her sensitive touch, the fragrance rising from her neck and lips, I found this state of affairs tragic rather than amusing.
How did I ever get myself into this?
Whoever she picked out, she whispered hoarsely into my mouth, had to be one who had also picked her, she could be wrong about anything else, and also crazy and ugly and old.
No, no, she must be deranged or crazy, I thought, for thinking it made it less scary.
She might be vulgar and a fool, but she was never wrong about these things, and I must tell her — she was speaking right into my mouth and only a very abrupt, rough movement could have freed me from this position — because sometimes she felt, actually she felt for the first time, that she might have been deceiving herself in this case, so I must tell her whether Melchior had ever loved a woman.
Only madness could make somebody expend such an inordinate amount of physical and mental energy on so witless a question.
I pushed her away gently, but not so gently as to make it not seem cruel, for I had no intention of sparing her this cruelty.
Our arms fell helplessly to our sides, our bodies tilted back to their respective, balanced postures; as she looked at me, her face was so naked, as mine must have been looking at her, that it was as if we were seeing not each other's skin but the flesh, the bones, the rushing blood, the dividing cells, everything in the body that is selfish and self-serving and has nothing to do with another person; and at this point I should have said, It's over, let's quit, we're playing an impossible game, she's playing with me, at the expense of a third one, though we pretended to be playing for his sake.
I wanted to say all this but didn't.
It even seemed that the rudeness of my movement was useful in hiding a more calculating, more far-reaching act of kindness with which I could budge the moment of impasse into the next moment, delay and put off things and still leave her with a ray of hope.
Her hopelessness hurt me more than it hurt her, for she at least, by expressing it, could relieve herself of its pressure, and indeed, a faint glow of forced satisfaction did appear on her face, an almost audacious, sad smile that harked back not only to the question of Melchior's relation to women but also to the more provocative one about what Melchior and I could possibly do with each other that was so different from what she could be doing with me or with him, or could these things be completely identical? but this very common, pedestrian question only reinforced in me the feeling of hopelessness from which I wanted to save Melchior.
I was wrong, I thought, almost out loud, one could want another person only through that person's sex, except this was not to be, since everyone was more than his or her own sex, or maybe one never really wanted that other person; I was either wrong or crazy.