They were both gripped by the fright they had caused each other.
The residual sensation of the other’s lips clung to their own like a painful mark that brands rather than rewards. But it was not so easy to dismiss the whole thing. To arrive at the bedside of a dying man with one’s loins swelling with blood, squealing and laughing, as they were doing now, was a bit much. Sane persons do not behave like this; they expect better of themselves. In their confusion they froze for a few moments, the silence turning icy between them.
At the same time, she was suckling a baby on an unupholstered Dutch chair.
Gyöngyvér moved first; bending down, she began to collect the pills from the rubber mat.
Oh, I’m so ashamed, she said, switching back to her plaintive tone, I’m so sorry. Don’t be angry with me, I always wind up making trouble.
Come, come, never mind, replied Lady Erna, and she too bent down to look for the etui, which had disappeared under the front seat. She had to be careful not to crumple the documents in her lap. There was also the danger of bumping into each other again.
Oh, leave it, let me, I’m so sorry.
Oh, come on, you silly little thing.
I’ll pick them up.
To do the job, Gyöngyvér had to remove her gloves. The little white pills were stuck between the ribs of the rubber mat. In taking off the gloves she felt as if she had indecently bared herself in front of the wrong person.
She did not understand why she would feel this way about the mother.
And then, like a huge splash, the mass and loud noise of the wave filled the entire cavity in the rocks. For a second, between the uprights of the bridge railing, she could see the churning, windblown water below.
Would you mind giving me back my hat, said Lady Erna to the cabbie.
Right away, give me a moment, please, replied the cabbie, coolly and readily.
The young men, glittering with perspiration, interrupting their even and until now most powerful strokes, suddenly drew in their oars with a single decisive movement. She could not take her eyes off them. All she could think of was that they too were capable of it, and might have even done it during the night. She saw, and she wanted to shout to them, that in the next instant they’d be smashed against the rock. This sight appeared to be closer than the nape of Gyöngyvér’s neck; she was still looking for the pills on the taxi floor. With a loud report, the waves slapped against the side of the boat. It was a light, narrow boat, but much heavier than the dinghies on the Tisza.
Signora, heads down, mind the hats, Signore, your head, down, the young men shouted in their bright voices, in the early sunny hours, as they were tossed by the murmuring gentle waves of the sweetly fragrant sea; then the boat slipped through the narrow, craggy opening of the cave.
They were in nocturnal darkness and silence. She could continue to moan to herself, as she had done all night long, often outdoing the crickets. Nothing separates the different worlds. Impossible to separate pain from pleasure.
She put on her gloves again, adjusting them on her fingers as if that were the most important task in the world. She leaned forward a little, reached across the back of the front seat, but the driver still hadn’t returned her hat.
She had to press her knees close together to keep from feeling in her vagina this rapid little slipping across the seat as the powerful, rhythmic slippings of the night before. It was still sore. Just as it was back then, years later, when with her knees apart she sat on the hard Dutch chair suckling the baby, and the weak wintry light glimmered through the long, tall row of square-grid windows. Barely penetrating the fog and clouds. But under the gaze of the other woman she did press her knees together. To the demanding sound of the little mouth’s sucking, her womb contracted. She had plenty of milk, though. She had to press her bottom to the seat to lessen the pain when her womb’s opening convulsed; she could not help emitting tiny hissing sounds. Which she found pleasurable. The soft, glowing countenance of the other woman pampered, all but caressed her. The other woman knew well what caused those little hissing sounds. Wanted confirmation of her impression. When their eyes met, she knew the woman’s body was hungry. In the meantime, the opening of her womb repeatedly contracted and relaxed and she couldn’t have said, not even to herself, what she was hoping for and what she wanted to devour.
A sober, bright morning; the baby is working on her swollen breast. Does she hope that the turgid body of the cock and the large mass of its head, taut to the point of explosion, will still reach the mouth of her womb; or that this senseless and humiliating pain will dissolve in the enormously grotesque mouth of this woman, and that her parts will never be pried open again.
The first time they journeyed to the island of Capri was in the first year of their marriage, in the spring of 1924.
They stayed in the Villa Filomena, in Anacapri, the quieter, less expensive side of the island. The villa, with its antique columns and decorated terraces built on the edge of cliffs, hovered about a hundred meters above the sea. That morning, they went down to the water on the narrow, ominously steep steps cut into the rocks. There was no end to them. She said not a word of complaint about the steps, though her knees were trembling, albeit not only from fear. The small boat with the men floated below them like a blown dry bay leaf fallen onto the back of the waves. She held on, moved step by step; the depths attracted her irresistibly, as though another being were breathing inside her, one she ought to fear because it was ready to fall and take her with it. A gentle breeze kept her light blue silk dress close against her skin.
This provided enough pleasure to stifle complaints.
Down below, the little boat rose, then dipped gracefully, and on the shady rocks the waves kept roaring and rumbling, the water foamed white.
The woman who years later in the wintry light glimmering through the thick northerly fog watched the suckling was Geerte von Groot, daughter of the hotelier in Groningen. A peculiar creature, to whom she could not help returning in her mind because she never saw her again. Geerte was a few years older, herself a mother of two. After a few years of marriage, for reasons they would not talk about for a long time, she and her little ones moved back to her parents’ home. In a tall, narrow, Gothic house in Groningen, maybe the wallpaper changes, but otherwise everything stays the same for centuries. Geerte von Groot lived in the mansard apartment of the house adjacent to the hotel, in the same little room where she had lived as a little girl.
A connection between the apartment house and the hotel was made by tearing down the wall between the two on the second floor.
The baby slowly had its fill and grew tired. It stopped sucking, only kept munching on her breast, at times on empty air, though its little lips retained enough suction to not let go of the nipple completely. The small body sank into sleep, relaxed; there was a moment when it could be seen struggling against sleep. As if the approaching slumber were taking the milk away from her and she would get no more. What sleep had to offer had no taste, was unfamiliar and therefore was rejected. It would not satisfy the baby. The little face twisted in pain, the legs kicked a little. She almost cried out, then added two quick smacking sucks. All these tense efforts seemed to exhaust her completely.
Well then, let sleep have its way. The baby’s open little mouth remained as it was, a bit of milk dripping from its corner.
The mother used a damp rag to wipe off first the baby’s mouth and then her breast. Geerte von Groot sat opposite her on an identical hard-backed chair.
This wasn’t a hotel room, but a veritable hall of knights with a row of tall square-grid windows that now stared into fog. Neither the bare crowns of trees in the palace garden on the other side of the small river nor, through the other row of windows, the red facades of houses on the old city’s narrow streets could be seen. The sun twinkled through the fog, wearily, with a silver sheen. In the hall, it was cool and dead silent. The fire in the fireplace barely flickered, crackling and fizzling now and then.