I hated myself, I found myself disgusting.
And he may have had similar thoughts, or sensed what I'd been thinking, because he withdrew his hand — at last I was free of that horrible stump — stood up, kicked the armchair aside, and turned on the TV.
This was so deliberately rude, I let it go, I didn't say a word.
Then I got up, too, kicked the chair out of the way, and walked into the hallway.
Almost at random I picked a book off the shelf and, making myself believe I was really interested in it, stretched out on the soft dark rug and began to read.
At first the patterns of the rug distracted me, and the archaic style of the book was no small obstacle either, but then I got into it, reading that the only true temple was the temple of the human body, that nothing was more sacred and sublime than the human form; it was nice to stumble on these words on that friendly, warm rug, to read that when we bow down to man, we pay tribute to revelation in flesh; to touch the human body is to touch heaven.
I tried to understand the concept, inappropriate though it seemed at this moment, and not pay attention to some woman climbing out a window, clutching at the creeping ivy, plaster falling, she screams and leaps; then it seemed that everything would blow over, only one thing bothered me still, that I'd given the armchair such an angry kick; ambulance screeching to a halt, the clattering of instruments, we're in an operating room; it seemed like such an unimportant thing, plain silly, yet I couldn't help feeling I'd been rude; I should have seen what I was doing, kicking the armchair like that, and it wasn't even my chair; sounds of funereal music, the woman must have died, she's probably being buried; I shouldn't have done it, I might have damaged the thing; one shouldn't kick someone else's chair, even if the human body is a sublime temple; he could kick the armchair because it's his; I shouldn't have, yet I did and felt good about it.
Later I asked him in a rather loud voice if I should leave.
Without turning his head, he said I should do as I saw fit.
I asked him if he held anything against me, because I wouldn't want that.
He could ask me the same thing.
I emphasized I held nothing against him.
He just wanted to watch this movie now.
This particular movie?
Yes.
Then he should go ahead and watch it.
That's exactly what he was doing.
The oddest part of all this was that we couldn't possibly have avoided the real issues more objectively; we were more explicitly truthful than if we had said what was on our minds; more precisely, our lies and subtle evasions defined the situation more honestly than emotions might have, for at the moment our emotions were too violent to be true.
I couldn't go away and he couldn't hold me back.
And this bare fact, emerging from the background of his words, proved to be a stronger bond than a pact sealed in blood.
But because of our lies, something, or the emanation of something, perhaps a compelling force that had been there before, moving between us with the naturalness of instincts, now seemed to have abated; it didn't disappear completely, only stopped; at any rate, something was no longer there; and in this absence I sensed what I had felt before.