“Yes,” he says.
“Ah!” she cries.
“Sure. Come on.”
They begin to walk and in the end have come back to the hotel. The dining room is dark. The desk seems empty.
“Do you want to ask?” he says.
“No,” she says. “It’s late.”
He takes their key from the little board, and they walk up the carpeted stairs. The room seems plainer than before. He brushes his teeth. He is ready to sleep.
“Non,” she says. One doesn’t begin a married life like that.
“I’m really tired.”
“Maybe for dancing,” she says.
He may not be interested, but she knows what is best for him. It’s like a bowl of hot soup. She makes him undress and lie down with her. She starts to caress him, he cannot escape her hands. Finally he begins, obediently, to make love, working himself in from side to side like a lever. It’s a little dry, this prescription, but she suffers it. She knows a woman must be prepared for that.
In the morning light enters through the thin curtains. She has hold of his prick. She kisses it sweetly to start the day. It is hers now, she says.
[31]
DAYS OF MARRIAGE. They live in connubial bliss above the sea. The room is small, but there is a balcony and beneath it the water breaking softly. The hotel is more than they can afford.
Morning. Her hair streamed across the pillow, the covers drawn up to her chin. Outside, the cries of seabirds float in the still air. Mon mari, she calls him. He smiles.
In the dining room they sit near a family with two sons. The mother is strict with them—they are fifteen years old, sixteen, it’s hard to say. They’re allowed a little wine, that’s all. Most of the time they sit stiffly while the parents talk. She would like a son, Anne-Marie says. The room is filled with the sound of forks, the smell of bread. A son.
Dean is glancing at the family.
“What will his name be?” she says.
“I don’t know. What?”
She wants him to guess.
“Jean-Pierre.”
“No.”
“Maurice? Robert? Not Phillipe?”
“No.”
“I give up.”
“Dmitri,” she says.
He makes a gesture with his hands.
“You faked me out,” he says.
“What?”
“You fooled me.”
“He will be educated in America until he is eighteen,” she says. “Your father was great [she will tell him], but sometimes a little boring.”
“A little boring?”
“Oui.”
“You mean me?”
She nods.
“It’s my son?”
Her reply is soft,
“Of course.”
The young boys are watching them, their uncertain glances settling for a moment and then bolting away. Anne-Marie is clever, she can feel their eyes. She knows exactly when to look up and send them scurrying.
Days of marriage by the sea. They walk far out on the rocks, the hotels, the curve of beach passing from view as they turn the point. They come to a large, flat block around which the sea boils, sucking and running, welling up in the faults. She removes the top of her suit and lies down, first on her stomach, twenty minutes later on her back. The sun’s silence seems to overcome the noise of water. Dean’s skin is a kind that turns dark quickly. His lips crack a little, but his eyes are white, his teeth. His face takes on a hardwood brilliance. His limbs seem stronger. Beneath his trunks is a white like fresh bandages. His buttocks are like the inside of an apple.
“You are lovely,” she says.
They are making love afterwards, burned a little, their flesh tasting of salt. The room seems still, like a school after hours. On the bidet, she farts, a tiny, delicious sound. She is embarrassed.
“Pardon,” she says.
Silence. Dean’s eyes are closed. He says nothing. She wonders if he has fallen asleep. She glances around the partition. Dean lies very still, but he cannot prevent a smile. She gets in bed again and covers up. She feels a little sick, she tells him. Her period is coming.
“Good,” he says.
They sit through elaborate meals, soup, fish, meat, dessert, fruit, wine, in the long room, always in daylight, with its gallery of windows beyond which the sea lies silent, the many tables. At night they sleep like birds in a nest. Rain beats against the windows. Dean gets up to close them and finds nothing—it’s only the sea.
At the casino there’s dancing and second-rate films. They haven’t the money to gamble. Anyway, she’s too young. It’s on her identity papers. They sit in the empty salon of the hotel. In the evening darkness, it’s like a great, abandoned liner. Anne-Marie takes all the small cards out of the deck. She’s going to teach him a game. He tries to listen to the explanation. His face feels tight, like dried paper. His eyes move distractedly from one thing to another. He yawns. He can see the wide, carpeted stairway and the people slowly ascending. The family comes in, from the cinema probably, and goes up, the boys looking dejected, absolutely spiritless. The light is dim. After a while his eyes begin to ache from staring at the numbers on the cards. The symbols are ugly. The black of the spades seems to be running. The hearts have turned blue. With the sad insistence of a tent flapping, the edge of the sea curls on the shore, curls and falls. As he listens, the sound seems to swell, to become broader, to overwhelm everything.
Along the dim corridor they walk, the floor groaning under their feet. There is no music from the closed doors, no voices. The sheets are damp. Nights of marriage. Dean is worried about the salt air ruining the chrome of the car. He should have coated it with something. There’s no garage—it’s parked behind the hotel, covered with moisture. In the morning the sun dries it off.
They stay six days, talking to no one, walking the steep, piney roads to the upper town, passing large, family villas, dark and silent, arranged on the hillside to face the sea. The grounds of these houses are beautiful, hidden by dense trees.
They are like invalids. Their hours are long and uneventful. They eat three times a day. In the mornings, on the way to the W.C. the hall is lined with breakfast trays, napkins soiled, rolls broken, abandoned outside the doors. The patients have already gone out, walking slowly in the sunlight. Years of marriage. After breakfast it is quite a long time until lunch, and after lunch, the whole afternoon… On the beach in front of the hotel the cries of children rise shrill as birds’. Anne-Marie walks naked around the room. Her bare feet make no noise. Her tampon has a bit of white string which hangs, curled a little, between her legs. Her breasts are pale, but not white. It is only her loins which are emblazoned so brilliantly it seems like a garment.
In the early morning, elated just to be putting their things in the car again—Dean lowers the top, the interior brims with sunlight—they leave.
[32]
AT NIGHT THEY COME to a strange, démodé town, like a great sanitarium: Bagnoles. France is dotted with aging spas, their days of elegance long past, the damp hotels no longer filled, the voices vanished, the ceremonies of an idle life. They enter on curving roads, past the silent lake. The buildings all seem empty. It’s like a great estate, the master of which has disappeared. Still, it’s kept open, it continues an existence exactly as if he were there. It’s like an old letter, a suite in which an heiress has died.
Graceful as a bird they circle in the dusk, passing the worn façades: the Gayot, Terrasse, Castel, Bois Joli. The shops are closed. The trees have turned black. Not a soul on the dim streets, not a sound except that of the car. The casino is bleak and forbidding, its green chairs abandoned, its curtains drawn. The silence of woods at evening, of still waters, is everywhere. After the second rime around, Dean stops.