It was she who’d returned his manhood to him. A previous relationship had ended so disastrously that he had been impotent, desireless, for more than a year. He threw himself into his work in Spain; he almost hoped to get killed. The first night he was with Elena he’d apologized and warned her, smiling in embarrassment (he never in his life learned that his embarrassed smile was the same as the cheerful one he put on for journalists and opening nights) that he might no longer be a man; he was very afraid, but with her it all came back, not just once but twice and three times, and it was not just delicious but it was tender from the very first; sentimental as such things sound when they are spoken of, it was the most romantic lovemaking that he had ever known, especially when she was riding on top of him, not rapidly and ruthlessly the way many women did (not that he didn’t like that, too), but with extreme concentration and grace, riding him very very slowly so that he almost couldn’t bear it, gazing at him, sometimes teasing him, sometimes concentrating very carefully on her own pleasure, taking her time, stopping sometimes or just barely moving, clenching and contracting herself around him with extreme deliberation while his desire and sexual suspense rose up like the smoke from her half-extinguished cigarette in the ashtray behind them. Even when her own orgasm was upon her she didn’t ride much faster, although she flung back her head at the last moment and her mouth opened and she uttered a high-pitched cry.
When she lay underneath him she had a way of gripping the headboard when she was coming, or sometimes simply raising both hands above her head. After they had been together for a few months she began to lay her wrist across her eyes right before she climaxed. He didn’t think anything of it at first. But then, more and more, that wrist was there across her face whenever he tried to kiss her.
One morning they lay just awoke and he rolled over, took her in his arms, and started to kiss her, but she averted her mouth. She said that his breath wasn’t good. He felt hurt, but said nothing.
After that he began to notice that she almost invariably turned her face away when they were making love and he wanted to kiss her, or else her hand was there between their faces, keeping him a little away. Perhaps it was his beard. One time at breakfast she remarked that she thought that moustaches made men look stupid, so he shaved off his moustache, but that night when they made love her hand was there, gently pushing his face away from hers, so all he did was kiss her fingers. Sometimes when she was on top of him, she still kissed him, never as deeply as he would have wanted, never the way she used to; he learned to be passive at those moments, to let her kiss his lips in the gentle, shallow, half-nibbling licks that she liked; he didn’t want to frighten her away.
It wasn’t at all, or at least not exactly, that she was withdrawing from him, or didn’t want him to see her. In her way she was actually a bit of an exhibitionist. She loved herself at the same time that she didn’t. She liked him to photograph her nude, but when she picked the pose, it was of herself lying on her stomach, averting her face, offering her buttocks. If he had seen any such image of another person, he would have thought: Here’s somebody who doesn’t want to be photographed. And yet she had asked him to photograph her.
That was the crux of it; that was how he would have told the story if he were making a newsreel about his life: First she used to squeak like a mouse when she came, then she grunted, finally she made no sound at all!
He told her how when they made love he felt connected to her, soul to soul, and she gazed at him in silence.
Isn’t it that way for you, Elena?
I don’t want to hurt you.
That shot away his confidence, so from then on he thanked her with weepy gratitude every time she made love with him.—Don’t thank me, she’d sadly whisper.
I love you, he said.
I love you, too, very very much.
I need you.
No you don’t! she cried in a panic. You don’t need to need anybody. You love me. That’s enough. It makes me happy to think of you being strong and going to Spain or China by yourself, being self-reliant. That’s why you’re my hero.
And then, raising herself up on one elbow, she said: I want you to be happy for me. I think of you as that laughing man in “Volga-Volga.”
He often dreamed of seeing Elena through a window. He wondered whether Shostakovich, who they said had been extremely attached to Elena, had ever had such dreams; the only reason he hadn’t left his wife for her, it seems, was the man’s weak character. Hopefully he’d managed to forget Elena by now. Elena’s present husband had no intention of forgetting her; quite the opposite; but even in his dreams he no longer succeeded in being quite present with her. They quarreled in bed; she turned her back to him; miserably and tediously he fell asleep. Where was he now? In this other world, everything went on forever. He hovered and shimmered, not even knowing that he existed. Then through the window he saw Elena, naked, receiving the face of another naked woman against her own; she was reclining with her head bent a little forward, cradling the other woman’s head in her hands, her fingers buried in the other woman’s hair; and the other woman had closed her eyes in ecstasy, almost crying out, her mouth wide open and her tongue coming out; while his wife, whose eyes had also closed, nuzzled gently at this other woman’s upper lip almost like a baby sucking at a nipple, her lips tranquilly parted. It was the other woman, whom he’d never before seen, who was the active, eager partner, gasping with need for his wife, who so sweetly held her and offered herself; and yet, although she was the passive one, the giver, not the taker, there was a sense of indescribably sweet exploration in the way that Elena nuzzled the other woman’s mouth; the stunning, perfect tenderness between them bereaved him into agonizing insanity, because nowadays even when Elena allowed him to make love to her, she hid her face behind her hand, especially when she climaxed; she hadn’t yet forbidden him from looking her in the face but he knew for a certainty that his looking irritated her; everything about him irritated her. When they’d first become lovers he used to be the one to close his eyes; the intensity of her scrutiny as he neared his climax made him feel shy; she’d been so present then that it was almost too much, but that hadn’t meant that he didn’t love her, only that giving himself to her would be an irrevocable step. Perhaps she now felt the same; at any rate, he sought out her face because he was losing her; for exactly the same reason that he needed to have his camera with him when he saw “history,” so that none of it would get lost, he needed the little bits of Elena which remained available to him. And she interposed her hand between her mouth and his whenever he tried to kiss her! Yet she loved him; she attempted to be understanding (she was always saying: I understand); she admitted that she didn’t know how to be reassuring—she’d chosen to live with him, after all! She could have been living with a woman instead, not to mention with D. D. Shostakovich.
Elena had telephoned him once from Leningrad, very cheerfully, so that he felt nothing amiss, to say that all was well. She’d chatted with him about nothing; he had glowed to hear her voice. Then she telephoned him right back and said: I was unfaithful to you last night.
With whom?
Dmitri Dmitriyevich. He was drunk and he came into my room; he started crying and I felt sorry for him; oh, Roman, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…
And then what happened? he said wearily.
There’s not much to tell you. He and I, we—we… He was so drunk he couldn’t do as much as he wanted. And he kept crying. It was awful. Afterward I told him that we couldn’t ever do this again, because I felt bad about betraying you. I told him it was over, and he got really sad. I’d rather not talk about it anymore unless there’s something you really need to ask me. And I promise you that it will never happen again.