She pictured the grass; conjured the ruins; saw the tall fragile gray arches of the Cathedral rising from the glen, and it seemed she was really there and free.
A sound jolted her.
It was the key in the lock.
She grew still and quiet. Yes, the key turning. The outer door was closed loudly and fearlessly, and then she heard his tread on the tile floor. She heard him whistling, humming.
Oh, God, thank you, God.
Another key. Another lock, and that fragrance, the soft good fragrance of him as he drew close to the bed.
She tried to feel hate, to grow rigid with it, to resist the compassionate expression on his face, his large glistening eyes, so very beautiful as only eyes can be, and filled with sorrow as he looked at her. His beard and mustache were now very black and thick and like those of saints in pictures. His forehead was exquisitely shaped where the hair grew back from it, parted in the center with the smallest widow’s peak.
Yes, a beautiful being, undeniably beautiful. Maybe he wasn’t there. Maybe she was dreaming. Maybe it was all imagined that he had finally come back.
“No, my darling dear, I love you,” he whispered. Or did he?
As he drew closer, she realized she was looking at his mouth. There had been a subtle change to his mouth. It was more a man’s mouth, perhaps, pink and decisively molded. A mouth had to be that way to hold its own beneath the dark glossy mustache, above the curling close-cut locks of the beard.
She turned away as he bent down. His warm fingers wound around her upper arms, and his lips grazed her cheek. He touched her breasts with his large hand, rubbing the nipples, and the unwelcome sensation ran through her. No dream. His hands. She could have lost consciousness to shut it out. But she was there, helpless, and she couldn’t stop it or get away.
It was as degrading as anything else to feel this sudden utter joy that he was here, to kindle beneath his fingers as if he were a lover, not a jailer, to rise out of her isolation towards any kindness or gentleness proffered by the captor in a swoon.
“My darling, my darling.” He rested his head on her belly, nuzzled his face into the skin, oblivious to the filth of the bed, humming, whispering, and then he gave off a loud cry, and drawing up began to dance, round and round, a jig with one leg lifted, singing and clapping his hands. He seemed to be in ecstasy! Oh, how many times had she seen him do it, but never with such gusto. And what a curious spectacle it was. So delicate were his long arms, his straight shoulders; his wrists seemed double the length of those of a normal man.
She shut her eyes, and against her darkened lids the figure continued to jig and to twirl, and she could hear his feet thudding on the carpet, and his peals of delighted laughter.
“God, why doesn’t he kill me?” she whispered.
He went silent and bent over her again.
“I’m sorry, my darling dear. I’m sorry.” Oh, the pretty voice. The deep voice. The voice that could read Scripture over a radio in a car in the night as you drove endless miles all alone with it. “I didn’t mean to be gone so long,” he said. “I was off on a bitter and heartbreaking adventure.” His words became more rapid. “In sorrow, in discovery, witnessing death, and beset with miseries and frustrations…” Then he lapsed as always into the whispering and humming, rocking on his feet, humming and murmuring, or was it a whistling, a tiny whistling through his dry lips?
He knelt as if he had collapsed. He laid his head on her waist again, his warm hand dangling between her legs, on her sex, ignoring the filth of the bed once more, and he kissed the skin of her belly. “My darling, my dear.”
She couldn’t prevent herself from crying out.
“Let me loose, let me up. I’m lying here in filth. Look what you’ve done to me.” And then her anger clamped down on her voice, and she went motionless and soundless, paralyzed with rage. If she stung him, he might sulk for hours. He might stand at the window and cry. Be silent. Be clever. He stood watching her.
Then he drew out his knife, small, flashing, like his teeth, a flash like that in the sterile twilight of this empty room.
He cut through the tape so quickly! Nothing to it, this spindly giant reaching over her, slice, slice, slice.
Her arms were free-numb and useless-and free. With all her might and main she tried to lift them. She couldn’t lift her right leg.
She felt his arms sliding under her. He lifted her, and rose to his feet with her, tumbling her against his chest.
She cried. She sobbed. Free from the bed, free, if only she had the strength to put her hands around his neck and-
“I’ll bathe you, my darling dear, my poor darling love,” he said. “My poor beloved Rowan.” Were they dancing in circles? Or was it only that she was so dizzy? She smelled the bathroom-soap, shampoo, clean things.
He laid her down in the cold porcelain tub, and then she felt the first jet of warm water. “Not too hot,” she whispered. The glaring white tile was moving, marching up the walls all around her. Flashing. Stop.
“No, not too hot,” he said. His eyes were bigger, brighter, the lids better defined when she had last looked at them, the eyelashes smaller yet still luxuriant and jet-black. She noted this as if jotting it down on a laptop computer. Finished? Who could guess? To whom would she ever give her findings? Dear God, if that package had not reached Larkin…
“Don’t fret, my darling dear,” he said. “We are going to be good to each other, we are going to love each other. You will trust me. You will love me again. There’s no reason for you to die, Rowan, no reason at all for you to leave me. Rowan, love me.
She lay like a cadaver, unable to work her parts. The water swirled round her. He unbuttoned her white shirt, pulled loose the pants. The water rushed and hissed and was so warm. And the dirt smell was being broken. He hurled the soiled clothes away.
She managed to lift her right hand, to tug at the panties, and rip at them, but she hadn’t the strength to pull them off. He had gone into the other room. She could hear the sound of sheets being ripped from the bed; it was amazing all the sounds our minds registered; sheets being thrown in a heap. Who would have thought that such things even made a sound? And yet she knew it perfectly well, and remembered foolishly an afternoon at home in California when her mother had been changing the beds-that very sound.
A plastic package torn open; a fresh sheet let to fall open and then shaken out to loose its wrinkles and land on the bed.
She was slipping and the water was rising to her shoulders. Once again she tried to use her arms; she pushed and pushed against the tile and managed to sit forward.
He stood over her. He had taken off his heavy coat. He was dressed in a simple turtleneck sweater, and as always he looked alarmingly thin. But he was strong and stalwart in his thinness, with none of the twisted neurotic apology of the very lanky and the underfed and the overgrown. His hair was so long now it covered his shoulders. It was as black as Michael’s hair, and the longer it became the looser its curl, so that it was now almost wavy. In the steam from the tub, the hair at his temples curled somewhat, and she could see a glistening sheen on his seemingly poreless skin as he bent down again to caress her.
He steadied her against the back of the tub. He lifted his little knife-Oh dare she try to get hold of it! — and he cut loose her soiled panties, and pulled them up out of the bubbling water and threw them aside. He knelt by the tub.