“Ugh, you’ve been drinking,” she made a grimace of disgust, “brandy!”
“Never mind now, never mind! Enka, Enka …” There was no time for explanations.
“But … take your clothes off … and come to me. Look what I’m like.”
She showed herself to him under the cover, naked. A small, plump, perfect body.
He made an irresistible onslaught. He pushed his way into the bedclothes next to her. He wanted to have her just as he was, fully dressed, out of some sort of spite, because of the morning’s laughter over the phone, because of “the fourth ape.” He wanted to pass off his insult as “mad desire,” as lust’s mindless whim. It flattered her.
“All right then … the shoes at least, the shoes … you madman, you! …” she tittered with glee.
Not even the shoes! Nothing! He had taken full control and was delighting in his superiority. Indeed delighting in it more than in her. There was something vengeful in his lovemaking, as if he were killing her. And she was grateful to him with every finger, every joint; with her nerves, breasts, eyes, mouth, teeth. She bit him on the chin.
“Oww, no!” he mumbled from the softness of the pillow where he had buried his face.
“Priapus! … Priapus! …” she cried out, demented. “It’s a miracle, a miracle! Priapus!”
Suddenly, how strange! he remembered Maestro. “All my sins.” “Thou poor ghost.” And there emerged something disgusting, something slimy. What was that urinating business all about?
And the tempest subsided. All was now reduced to a gentle rhythm of sailing across bobbing waves. Soft rolling in long amplitudes. A marital outing. “Kiooo?!” she called from somewhere inside, below deck, in a panic, as if she were sinking.
He didn’t hear her. What kind of death is he up to? Brand new? Medicinally pure? Can beer kill you?
“Kior, what’s happened?” She had come up on deck, tussle-haired, sweaty.
“Tell me, can beer kill you?”
“God, what a question!” She lifted her arms to her head in astonishment and her small breasts went flat. “Why do you want to know now?”
“What’s wrong with now?” he asked from his pinnacle of power. “Know anything about it? You’re a doctor’s wife after all.”
God, what a life! he complained pleasurably. Why, she’s actually nagging! I have my Viviana (“mine”!), so you needn’t think you can … And her breasts are two buns with a tiny raspberry in the middle. …
“Where were we, Kio?” she asked, nestling up to him.
“At beer being a potential killer.”
It was no longer Maestro on his mind. This was for her benefit: he wanted to show her she could not disturb his train of thought, that his head was in the right place.
“You’re crazy … and a bore!” She turned away from him and furiously lit a cigarette.
He got up. She gasped in horror, the smoke billowing out of her mouth as from a miniature hell. But when she saw him undressing, she put out her cigarette in a conciliatory fashion and clucked in delighted laughter … caw-caw-caw-caw-caw …
“You’re crazy,” she repeated with an unmistakable undertone of great admiration. “A man apart,” was what it meant. The element of surprise. The strategist.
It flattered him. He pulled his legs out of his trousers with the smile of a general heading for an easy victory. Calm; no haste. His innate neatness nearly made him fold them. He threw them across the chair for all its pull. He might change his mind after all, the enemy will ask to be defeated. She’ll be asking me to mount her, she’ll get down like a hen, humbly. Viviana? Just another bird … in the bush.
“Come here, my little sparrow …” he said to her throwing himself carelessly on the bed.
“Small, aren’t I? A teeny-weeny sparrow?” But she was acting more like a little bitch. “You like me for being small? Tell me, Kio! Tell me! You like me? Small, yours, all of me … yours … Kio!”
Desdemona and Cassio … Did they have this kind of thing going? Maestro believes they did, with her, on her. The Venetians. Sweet Desdemona, let us be wary, let us hide our loves! Should I ask her for a handkerchief of Coco’s? He is even now holding somebody’s heart in his hand, up at the clinic. Massaging it, saving a life. “Dear heart,” meaning her, this one here, little Enka, dear heart.
That was how Melkior carried on with her, nose above the deluge. He was able to think, to listen (as he had done recently) to the radio announcing the murder of Trotsky (stabbed in the head with an ice pick), to watch things being quiet in the room. The witnesses. The trousers across the chair, legs splayed, running; the jacket extending a sleeve to reach for a silver fifty-dinar piece lying on the floor, having dropped from a pocket. He had been hurrying after all. He laughed at the sleeve’s fussy-miserly gesture: it would finish by sucking the coin up. A little something for Four Eyes.
“Stop laughing, you tormentor!” Enka managed to surface for an instant and sank into the silt again, as Maestro would have put it.
Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore! But who can ever prove it? Extract a grain of truth from the silt, thou cruel Moor. Would not this one, too, be able to sing the willow tree song tonight? And to die innocent for all the world. And the world is her world. A happy marriage, for all the world, a love match. I love you, you love me … A parasitic opera: ivy all over Shakespeare.
He had his “erotic rheostat” turned on. Those were his words for the resistance he offered his pleasure, the search for disturbing thoughts, the toying with the small, small ones. …
Steady on, children, the world is too small for the lot of you. All right, I expect some room could be found for the little girls … but the little boys? Not so fast, youngsters! Where do you think you’re going? To the barracks? To the wars? Here, look at that eager-beaver little general! Carlo Buonaparte inadvertently sired Napoleon at twenty-three, he was four years my junior. Who knows what hydrocephalic essayist could now be conceived if I were not at the helm? And he laughed dryly: heh, heh.
“You are definitely crazy today!” said Enka crisply, soberly, firmly down on earth.
This third “you’re crazy” was final. She sat up and spitefully began to smooth her hair. He turned on his back without a word. He wore a cold, distant smile. He fell to fingering her vertebrae one by one. She felt it on the tips of his fingers — they were indifferent through satiety. She shook them off with hostility, let go of me. He then suddenly hugged her tight and pressed her down on her back. And took her furiously and candidly, no longer thinking about anything.
They were lying on their backs and sharing a cigarette. She had her head on his bicep, he was toying with her breast: the tiny raspberry had swollen angrily under his teasing. A trivial conversation.
“And why did you laugh that silly laugh?”
“Offended are we? It’s how I always act … when he’s in.”
“Not to mention ‘the fourth ape this morning’ … I’m that fourth ape! You purposely said it with the phone still on, you wanted me to hear I was the fourth ape.”
“I wanted him to see …”
“To see what? That I’m an ape? I can see that myself.”
“To see that I was speaking without hanging up first, that I didn’t care if he heard what I said …”
“That you didn’t care if he heard, or rather if I heard, that I was an ape?”
“Not you, he.”
“The ‘he’ is me.”
“Not at all. I wanted him, Coco, to hear …”
“That I’m an ape? You could have hung up, he would’ve heard you anyway. But then I wouldn’t have!”
“Oh, you’re horrible! You’ve got me all confused … You are an ape!” She was angry. “He’s my husband! He’s a man doing a serious job and I don’t propose to torment him with suspicions. Human lives depend on him, he must have inner peace. I love him and respect him. Don’t laugh, you demon, I do love him. He’s a nice man, hard-working and intelligent.”