Go then, my feet are quite cold too.
But where is the place.
And if that wasn’t enough, I feel mildly nauseated. Maybe I’m pregnant. I swear it feels like it. And as soon as she said this, not only did she instantly remember the man’s remark about how advantageous the position of their bodies was if he wanted to impregnate her, but she also realized she might forever have missed out on something when she failed to voice her wish, and by now she’d be trying the man’s patience beyond all limits, which meant she was messing things up again.
I startled you, the man giggled, I’m sorry.
I’m fucking it up again, the woman thought.
One feels nausea when forcibly startled awake, the man continued, as if he knew well what this woman reminded him of; but amply gratifying as they might be, such old-fashioned sentences had no validity. Which caused a sharp pang of fear to course through him. They might have no validity, but they might have abundant consequences, which women can feel after a few hours. No matter how much he had promised, he had not been careful enough. Not only had he been careless but he must have emptied himself of every drop of his sperm. It’s really mean to startle someone, he said aloud, and because the thought was depressing, his loud remorse sounded quite credible. You know, I also woke up because of shouting or something. And before that there was buzzing, he went on, it sounded like a big car coming closer, now I remember its headlights.
He indeed remembered the headlights of his car when they passed through the villa’s entrance gate hidden among tropical shrubs and trees, but he did not tell the woman that the reason he remembered was that he had had someone murdered in that villa, a person who happened to be a childhood friend.
To forget this, he’d need continuous strong stimuli. But ever since he’d been ordered home because of the murder, he’d found his surroundings unbearably void of stimuli, or rather, the unpleasant memory always surprised him precisely when he’d finally managed to find a bit of stimulus that might help him to forget. Murder seemed to cause a more powerful excitement than lovemaking.
You didn’t wake me up, not at all, said the woman, but she was influenced by her bad conscience, it was probably thirst. Believe me. That’s why I probably dreamed so much about water, I was dying of thirst and my feet were so cold. There was dead silence under the water.
Come on, let go of me, said the man.
But I’m not holding you, said the woman, amazed.
Their torsos barely touched; in fact, they were leaning away from each other, keeping each other captive not with their hands but with their strong thighs.
The realization was strange in this darkness stabbed through with reflected darts and specks of city light while they stared at the dim outlines of each other’s features, lengthening along with the shadows.
As if they were late in becoming aware of their bodies’ existence. Or as if they couldn’t properly match the sensations of their bodies with the sight of them or with their words. Only now did they notice that they were lying almost crosswise on the bed, all but falling off under the weight of their numb, intertwined lower parts. One of the man’s legs, hanging down to the floor, was supporting their combined weight, the entire mass resting on his heel. This meant that in their sleep they’d had to find their balance by holding on to each other at the edge of the bed. They couldn’t understand how they had done that. With one hand the woman grasped the painted bed frame.
Their cool skin glimmered in the draft; on the intricately convoluted surfaces of their noses and ears their zeal cooled off.
It now became clear that they must have fallen asleep in the middle of a semi-consciously executed involuntary movement.
The man felt that he was not merely pressed against her but in fact still inside her; he had, by chance, with righteous indifference, overstayed his welcome. Humiliating. Frightened at having been unconscious, his entire body shuddered. The woman realized he was still stiffly inside her not because of the movements that rippled through her body but because of his odor. As if for the duration of their sleep she had sinfully forgotten the acrid fragrance of the man’s body, now permeated with the scent of his sperm intermingled with cooled-off exudations, saliva, and vaginal secretions. She was filled with them again. Which is what made her realize that the man was still taking up her inner space. She had not let go of him. She won’t let go of him. And she quickly promised herself — very quickly because she feared she was losing her mind — that at the first opportunity she would seek out the source of this fragrance on his body, she would smell and taste every little pore, bend, and curve of it.
So we must have fallen asleep like this, but this is wonderful, she whispered rapturously, her voice expressing contentment. Something like this had never happened before. And she was frightened too, that with her enthusiasm she’d do something wrong, lose him.
It would be interesting, wait, don’t be in such a hurry, the man responded, though he’d have liked to withdraw himself, stand up, and at last go to the toilet. But that would have required his cock to set out on a long, complicated journey. I’ll just explain this one thing before I go.
He fell silent and did the opposite of what he wanted to do: he pushed and penetrated a little bit more deeply.
Which was part of his explanation. At least that was the impression he gave for the other person and for himself.
Yet he had no explanation. The strong sensation of his cock was disturbing him in many ways. Not so much the enduring pleasure, of which he had become aware a moment before, but the fact of his erection, for which he saw no reason or motivation. And this, in turn, reminded him of their profound gratification, left behind somewhere in the depth of time, which someone might even have heard when it occurred. He attributed his enduring erection to the need to urinate — the most convenient explanation — but it made him a little ashamed. Why was he lying to himself. Why was he defending himself, or going on the offense; why couldn’t he give himself over to the feeling that this is how things are right now and no other way, and his cock couldn’t be calmed down. And he was misleading the other person too, but certainly not intentionally. Put another way, he had an organ that had decided to be independent or at least was behaving unexpectedly. And contemplating this, he concluded that in all their playacting, the leading role had been assigned to a deceptive maneuver. Nothing surprising would ever happen again, everything would simply repeat itself. He made contact with the woman only at a tiny point, though he wished it were otherwise. He did not feel her on his cock, not even close to it, but rather at the spot where he should be feeling his cock; through a single point, he felt the entirety of the other person. Through the little point, no larger than the head of a pin, everything streamed into the other person. He was taking in everything from the other person that until now he could not have seen or felt or had sensed only dimly. But starting now, he would be aware of everything that had happened or was happening in the other person, including things of which the woman was unaware or about which she was not yet ready to talk.
He perceived her among her double-dealings, trickery, exaggerations, lies, sins, intrigues, infantilisms, indecencies, and painful inhibitions.
Wrapped in her dark velvety skin, untouched by these unfavorable disturbing characteristics, she stood before him.
The image glowed so brightly in his mind that it threatened to burn out the tiny point of contact. It hurt. He wanted to say that in his view they were now mutually dreaming each other’s dream into each other. One person’s dream is somehow penetrating or flowing or seeping into the other’s, because just a moment earlier, when Gyöngyvér mentioned her stupid whirlpool, he dreamed that water bubbling up was reaching the boiling point.