Even so, it had unquestionably been a factor in her overwhelmment that, however it was they got together again at e, Ambrose revealed himself this time around to be an amateur no longer in the sexual way. I abbreviate: at age 38 she learned from him how to fuck, and by her own admission the experience set her a little crazy. It also inspired in her — focussed, channelled, whatever — a passion for him which, alas, he scarcely measured up to and but feebly reciprocated. This part was painfuclass="underline" for Magda especially, of course, but for Ambrose too (and for me to hear). Early on in our own connexion he had mentioned “a Dido whose Aeneas can neither return her love nor leave her palace…” She had no wish to divorce Peter and marry Ambrose; she had not really expected him to love her as she loved him, though hope was hope; neither did she think their affair would last long. On the other hand she could not imagine — it would have appalled her to imagine — an experience so important to her as being without consequences. She begged him to “run off” with her; she was ready to put by the family she genuinely prized and give herself exclusively to her lover for the vague “year or two” she could imagine them together, in Italy… More than anything else she prayed he might make her pregnant, before he left her, with
a little Aeneas to play in the palace
And, in spite of all this, to remind me of you by his looks…
Then she would return to Cambridge and take the consequences, whatever they were.
But that’s not our Ambrose, what? He was moved; she believed his testimony that if he had taught her what sex was all about, she had taught him, just as belatedly and more considerably, what love was all about; made him realise that he’d never truly been loved before. Surely that tuition was what kept him from cutting his anchor cables: it was a remarkable, new, and of course very flattering business, to be loved like that! And he did both admire and love Magda, though not quite so much as at c and at a…
And not enough. No help for that, but it must have hurt. The truth was — he felt a fool, a beast, a sexual snob for feeling it, but there it was, and she sensed it without his saying it — she no longer aroused him very much; he could be seduced away by the first trim 22-year-old at Marshyhope. He deplored this fact, and resented having to deplore it. Very painful for the pair of them, whilst Peter, humble and ashamed, looked the other way.
Thus e: as if circumstances and want of heroical destiny had held Aeneas in Carthage not for a winter but for a year and more, with a Dido less queenly than Dido and whose passion he found himself ever less able to return, despite his esteem for her… Ambrose didn’t oblige Magda to dress like his undergraduates (she’s but a year his senior), but he said cruel things, and hated himself for having done: she was not dainty; she was not fresh; he made her douche; he made her shave her legs and underarms daily, and the fleece between her navel and her fleece. Clumsily she went at any perversion, tried to dream up new ones, anything to keep him.
Last September, not to beggar her self-respect altogether, Ambrose finally managed to put an end to this 5th Affair; would have moved out of the Castle as well, down to Redmans Neck or somewhere, but for Peter’s insistence, which frantic Magda seconded: Angie needed them both; all three. Through the fall and winter, whilst she went crackers with desperation, he humped the odd ex-student; by March she knew he’d got Serious again with someone. The knowledge went into her like Dido’s knife, for she still much loved him.
But not, she acknowledged, as much as before. Surely I must see (I saw) that she did not resent me; on the contrary. She was not yet over her Grand Passion, but she was getting over it, rather to her own surprise and much to her relief. She bore him no grudge for having been unable to match her feeling for him; what would be the sense in that? She could not imagine ever falling in love again; was glad her marriage had been no worse scarred; was as prepared as one could be to face the prospective widowhood that now shockingly loomed. But like Héloïse her Abelard, she could not forget the things she and Ambrose had done, the places where they’d done them…
Hm. I was, to be sure, as busy noting and assessing the differences between our cases as sympathising with Magda’s confidences. Ambrose had not taught me how to screw; André had, in Paris, an age ago. Our mighty April sessions were as much a refresher course for him as for me. The Baby business — which I understood better now — was his idea, not mine (Magda tearily prayed me luck for July, and belied her statement of a paragraph ago by wishing fervently she could feel again the joy of pregnancy). Nevertheless, the ground resemblance was plain enough to promise that Stage 5 is going to be no picnic: my Aeneas-Come-Lately has stripped me of my queenship, demanded of my worn-out womb that it find the wherewithal to germinate his feeble seed, and in the meanwhile makes a fool of me with the dockside whores of Carthage!
Even “the meanwhile” may be optimistic. I’m at the period of my period, but July has yet to see him reinseminate me. As I write this it is Bea Golden he ploughs, down in Barataria; for all I know he may nevermore dip his pen at 24 L.
My friend La Giulianova assures me otherwise: last night and its consequences, she’s certain, are Just Part of the Movie. Bea Golden is scarcely literate, much less literary: surely I don’t believe she’d throw over her darling last hope for movie stardom just because Ambrose apparently got the better of him in a single encounter?
I replied that the evening’s end, like its beginning and its mad middle, had the aspect not only of open-ended Scenario — written by “Arthur Morton King” but directed by Reg Prinz — but also of an Episode, with further episodes to follow. Jerome Bray and Marsha Blank — improbable new allies! — have withdrawn together back up the flyway; Bea is in her new lover’s arms on Bloodsworth Island; the Baratarians are dispersed (shooting is suspended for at least a week, till the 13th); Prinz himself has retired up the Amtrak to Manhattan, apparently put down by last night’s “defeat.” Oh, no doubt it is all acting, only another Sequence; they’ll be back. Meanwhile, however, whether at Prinz’s behest or her own, Bea is unquestionably down there with Ambrose, shagging away; and 30 pages have not assuaged my misery, only lengthily recorded it!
Unfilmable Sequence! Magda declares that it was nothing more than a letter, John, like this one: another of those dum-dums in a bottle from “Arthur Morton King” (Whom It Still Concerns) to “Yours Truly,” in reply to the blank one Ambrose picked up 29 years ago! There they all were (not I) on their expensive prop: the O.F.T. II done over in part to “echo” the Chautauqua Lake Gadfly III. The musicians and actors from Chautauqua Institution were replaced by the pit orchestra and repertoire troupe of the Floating Theatre; the Baratarians were assembled, with a sprinkling of Cantabridgeans; no sign of M. Casteene, but grim-visaged “Pocahontas” was aboard, in surprising deep parley with “Captain Bray” after returning Angela postprandially to Magda. Those two and Peter Mensch were there also, at Prinz’s invitation: ostensibly to flavour the crowd with extra locals, possibly to add a notch or two to the general tension. Todd Andrews was on hand, too, looking like death itself, reports Magda. No sign of Jane Mack. All of County Dorchester gathered about Long Wharf, several thousand strong, to witness the fireworks and the filmmakers, by now notorious in the area. The late sun goes down; the O.F.T. II chugs out through the swarm of anchored pleasure boats into the river channel, its amplified (tape-recorded) calliope loudspeaking patriotic airs. The cameras roll, the fireworks fire…