Gradually the spasms the man has set going in the woman calm and subside. She's had hers and perhaps she'll even get a second helping. Quiet! Now only the senses are doing the talking. But we don't understand what they're saying, because under the seat they've changed into something incomprehensible.
The student spills his packetful into the animals' cratch, fills his packet into the animal's snatch. Now it is deepest night. Clad in deepest black. Elsewhere, people are turning over, thinking of other more finely built specimens they've seen in magazines before they dock their bodies alongside for love. When Michael unbuckled his skis, he didn't pause to consider that sport, that eternal constant of our world, which hath its dwelling place in the TV set, doesn't simply stop when you've shot down your slope. The whole of life is sport. Sports dress enlivens our existence. All our relatives under the age of eighty wear tracksuits and T-shirts. Tomorrow's eggs are on sale today so you can count your chickens before they're hatched. There are others who are better-looking or cleverer than we are, for it is written. But what will become of those of whom no mention at all is made? And their inactive unattractive penises: where shall they channel their little rivers? Where is the bed for them to flow and lay their heads to rest? On this earth they are forever worrying about their wretched little organs, but where oh where shall they spray the antifreeze to afford protection in the winter to come, so their engines don't refuse to start? Will they negotiate union, or negotiate with a union? What ridges and ranges of perfumed flesh strew the path of dalliance, all the way till the stock feel the knife on the throat and the family feel the ramrod and the lash? For those who are attractive, and who generally tend to be the most active too, are not mere decor in our lives. They want to plug their members into other people's sockets, any will do. Always bear in mind that, in their attempt to get what they want, people will hide away far inside each other, inseparable. So the atom doesn't split them.
Even before the minute hand of happiness can stroke the two of them, Michael has emitted a fluid, and that's it. But, in the woman, nuclear energy is powering her higher. These are the headwaters of which she has secretly dreamt for decades. Ah, the faithful old workhorse, pulling the man's body at the woman's whiplash behest! These forces are felt in even the tiniest remotest ramifications of the female. They spread like wildfire. The woman hugs the man tight as if he had become a part of her. She cries out. Presently, her head turned by what she feels, shell be going on her way, dripping the seeds of discord in the petty principality of her household, and wherever the seed touches the earth mandrakes and other creatures will shoot up and grow, for her sake. This woman belongs to love. Now, for sure, she has to make certain she revisits this wonderful leisure centre. Again and again. Because this young man has hauled out his tool (now next to useless) and waved it about, see you again, Gerti suddenly sees his face with the pimple at the top right in a totally new and meaningful light. It is a face she'll have to see again, of course. Her future will depend on this go-getter's talent for gun-running, the secret arms trade hidden in his trousers. From now on, his one and only joy shall be to dwell inside Gerti. But here come the windy gusts. The breezy gusto. Bang on time. For holidays over the hills and far away are ruffling and dishevelling and tousling the desire of girls and women, so that they want a good hard regular brushing. In town, where you can go dancing in the cafes, the women on. holiday congregate in deadened leaden droves. Ready to fall when night falls. Michael, who is interested in shooting off the lead in his pencil, will have to invest in rubber. And make his choice of the women dressed in their apres ski best. All of them are natural beauties with natural tastes in natural sex, naturally, that's what he likes best. Make-up painted over pimples would blow him clean away.
Long before opening time, poor Gerti is sure to be at the telephone tomorrow, pestering it. This Michael, if the signals he's sending us and has himself received from various magazines can be relied on, is a blond creature off the cinema screen. Looking as if he'd been out in the sun for some time, with gel in his hair. Prompting us to finger our own sex, he's giving us the finger, he won't give us the finger for real. He is and always will be far away from us. Remote even when he's close. He enjoys night life. Keeping the night alive, lively. Not a man who cares for restraint. It's not easy to account for lightning, either: but in middle age we women are herded together in an enclosure of weekend assignations, and the bolt will strike one of us, that's for sure, before we have to leave.
Mind how you go. You may have something about your person that men like that would find a use for!
The animals are falling asleep, and desire has drawn Gerti out of herself, has struck a spark from her little pocket lighter, but where's this draught come from that's made the flame burn higher? From this heart-shaped peep-hole? From some other loving heart? In winter they go skiing, in summer they are the children of light, playing tennis or swimming or finding other reasons to undress, other smouldering fires to stamp out. When once a woman's senses are bespoke you can be sure she'll make other slips of the tongue. This woman hates her sex. Which once she was the finest flower of.
The simpler folk hidden away behind their front gardens will soon be silent. But the woman is crying out loud for her idol Michael, long promised her in photographs that look like him. He's just been for a fast drive in the Alps, now she roars and turns the vehicle of her body in every direction. It's a steep downhill stretch. But even as she lies there whining and pining the clever housewife is planning the next rendezvous with her hero, who will provide shade on hot days and warm her on cold. When will they be able to meet without the lugubrious shadow of Gerti's husband falling across them? You know how it is with the ladies: the immortal image of their pleasures means more to them than the mortal original, which sooner or later they will have to expose to life. To competition. When, fevering, chained to their bodies, they show up at a cafe in a new dress, to be seen in public with somebody new. They want to look at the picture of their loved one, that wonderful vision, in the peace and quiet of the marital wedroom, snuggled up side by side with the one who sometimes idly juggles his balls and pokes his poker in. Every one of these images is better accommodated in memory than life itself. On our own, we pick the memories from between our toes: how good it was to have properly unlocked oneself for once! Gerti can even bake herself anew and serve up her fresh rolls to the Man in the breadroom. And the children sing the praises of their Baker.
All of us earn the utmost we can carry.
The meadows are frozen entirely over. The senseless are beginning to think of going to bed, to lose themselves altogether. Gerti clings to Michael; let her climb every mountain, she still won't find another like him. In the school of life, this young man has often been a beacon of light to his fellows, who are already taking their bearings from his appearance and his nose, which can always sniff out the genuine article from among the column inches of untruth. Most of the houses hereabouts hang aslant the slope, the sheds and byres clinging on to the walls with the last of their strength. They have heard of love, true. But they never got round to the purchasing of property that goes with it. So now they're ashamed to be seen by their own TV screen. Where someone is just losing the memory game, the memory he wanted to leave with the viewers, the bill-and-cooers at home in their love-seats, hot-seats, forget-me-not-seats. Still, they have the power to preserve the image in their memories or reject it. Love it or shove it. Over the cliff. I can't figure it out: is this the trigger on the eye's rifle, this eyeful, is this the outrigger on the ship of courting senses, this sensitive courtship? Or am I completely wrong?