As if with her earlier comment, she had opened the gates and water was now rushing toward her uncontrollably.
What she knew of the man were his lips and his tongue. She made their acquaintance on her vagina, held open by her fingers, or on her clitoris; and she was also familiar with the peculiar fragrance of his bald head, damp with perspiration, as it rose from her loins; that, and nothing more.
Yet she penetrated the depth of the man’s passion; they shared their passion.
She let him do anything, but she would never touch her admirer. As if she were afraid that he would crumble to dust in her fingers. Occasionally, she would grab the strange men in his stead, the men who in the red darkness offered her their services, their hands, lips and tongues, and also their penises.
I’d be much obliged if you told me the sources of your information, she continued, still annoyed.
What information do you have in mind.
Where did you get it.
Get what.
Maybe I misunderstood you.
I rather think that I do not understand you.
But of course you do, you little beast.
What you say surprises me, I find your choice of words unwarranted, but I guess you’re no less a monster than I am.
They understood each other so well that they now, at this juncture of their conversation, faltered in enjoyable dread. Karla blushed — to her core, she felt — given the emotions and memories evoked by the loudly spoken words.
Obviously neither of them knew where to go from here.
You can’t be serious, said the countess, her voice gliding even higher than its usual high, sharp little-girl pitch, when you say you know him so intimately.
What are you talking about, said the baroness, becoming more entangled in her own blushing, you’re the one who spoke as if you knew the secrets of his body.
How could I, this is the first time I’ve ever seen him in my life.
They stopped, simultaneously, on the shady side of the sunlit street.
There was silence between them, the baroness did not respond or give any sign, and in the great Sunday serenity only the twittering of wrens could be heard in the distance.
In fact, Countess Auenberg didn’t want to know the answer to the question she had asked or at least implied.
Shameless, how can anyone be so shameless, grumbled Baroness Thum, rather enjoying the impasse.
Yet Imola did want to ask the older woman what might happen to her in married life. In this regard, the previous day’s visit to the atelier had quite upset her. She was not very young anymore, twenty-two years old; she needed to know many things about the male sex in general. She needed objective information. If there was such a thing. Would Karla tell her in detail what Mihály might do to her. There is no way of knowing such things. How should a woman give herself to a man without seeming to be either cold or lascivious. She observed the sculptor with his thinning hair and his statues, those enormous male bodies, with this question in mind. The sculptor quite resembled Mihály. And what would this famous unfamiliar man do with her if she took off all her clothes and gave him free rein. Or would men just pull up her nightshirt to get to her. She hadn’t dared risk the question of what she would do with such a man.
How should she give in to what she feels, when she’s never seen them naked and doesn’t even want to.
Not anybody.
Except, maybe Karla.
What did Karla do when she gave in.
What comes after a kiss, what should she do, she really needs to know. For her, letting another person’s tongue and saliva into her mouth was repulsive enough. Mihály behaved like a gentleman, kissing her only dryly at first, treating her gently, with consideration — only afterward. As if initiating her gradually. This made her almost explode with jealousy when she thought about it. It gnawed at her when she thought about what he had been doing. It was truly humiliating, disgraceful.
Surely he must have learned from someone what he was teaching her.
Or perhaps he too feared what the two of them would do together eventually.
Could he have learned things from dissolute women; but then he can’t possibly teach them to her.
Yet she was young enough — or, thanks to her flawless education, lacked enough practical experience and knowledge — to believe that she could tell her thoughts and doubts to someone, that these things could be talked about.
Like telling a story.
She came to have a secret hope that there might be a person with whom she could talk about such delicate matters — or anything else. She would talk it over with Karla. Slowly this notion evaporated. First she hadn’t formulated her questions. She did not get anywhere with that. The male nudes she had seen the day before, all of them ten feet tall or more, which Breker was making for the inner courtyard of the Reich Chancellery, depressed her so much she couldn’t have asked him anything. So this, then, is what a man is or would be like, she thought to herself as she looked at the sculptor, this man who occupied himself with these men who resembled one another and whom the sculptor resembled too. Her situation was complicated by the fact that she’d spent her entire childhood around stables and greenhouses; she was well versed in questions of animal breeding and plant cultivation, and knew almost everything about the reproduction of plants and animals and about their reproductive organs. She was truly interested in genetics, and it hurt her that Schuer considered her a silly woman. She hoped for a chance at lunch to show him that she knew about Mendelism. In the studio she had moved away from the group of women so that she wouldn’t have to stare at the monumental male nudes, which, by the way, did not differ from one another in the least. The experienced women she’d been with — Margret Speer, Maria von Below, and Magda Goebbels — were all married. She felt abandoned among them, and for a while she chose to look at the statues of horses decorating the fountain, but their rearing, too smoothly sculpted muscles failed to comfort her because they too seemed to be copies.
Guided by her physical desires and repugnance, she could well imagine the act of mating. It was clear that the world of plants and animals must have a structural connection with the human world, so there could be no great difference in the essence of the reproductive practices. But she persistently overimagined what propriety demanded that she underimagine. She could not correlate her wild adolescent ideas about reproduction with her own objectivity-seeking personality and with her upbringing built on appearances and formalities, just as it would have been hard to imagine Mihály Horthy without his impeccably tailored suits and neighing with pleasure like a horse.
They looked into each other’s eyes and smiled amiably.
Each smiled to herself, the two smiles unavoidably touched, and although the smiles meant something different for each of them, they could not know that. They felt that with their smiles they were stepping into a long-desired mutual space.
The really big question is, said the unflappable Baroness Thum, what am I going to wear for that luncheon.
I too thought about what it should be, a deux-pièces or possibly trois-pièces.
I’d been counting on a nice quiet meal for the two of us — comfortable and easy.
And I have the greatest need to have a long conversation with you.
My sweet little one, I understand, I too was looking forward to it so much.
I’d like to ask your advice about so many things, answers to questions that really go beyond accepted propriety.
If I may put it that way.
Believe me, there’s no question I wouldn’t love to answer for you, provided I have an answer.