And somehow or other, in the midst of all of this – the fretting, the embarrassment, the averting, the philosophising, to say nothing of an attempt on his part to loosen his tie, which has begun to choke him (why on earth is he wearing a tie?) – somehow, clumsily yet not as clumsily as might have been, shamefacedly yet not so shamefacedly as to paralyse them, they manage to slip into it, into the physical act to which they have willy-nilly contracted themselves, an act which while not the act of sex as generally understood is nevertheless an act of sex, and which, despite the truncated haunch on the one hand and the blasted eyes on the other, proceeds with some dispatch from beginning to middle to end, that is to say in all its natural parts.
What disquieted him most in Costello's account of Marianna was what she said about the hunger or thirst raging in her body. He has never been fond of immoderacy, immodesty, wild motions, grunts and shouts and cries. But Marianna seems to know how to contain herself. Whatever is going on inside her she keeps to herself; and, once they have concluded, she swiftly makes everything decent again, more or less. The sole intimation he has of either raging thirst or raging hunger comes in the form of an unusual but not unpleasing heat at the core of her body, as though her womb or perhaps her heart were glowing with a fire of its own.
Though the sofa was built neither for sexual coupling nor for subsequent philosophic languor, and though, without a covering, they are soon going to be chilled, there is no question yet of groping their way to a proper bed in a proper bedroom.
'Marianna,' he says, testing the name on his tongue, tasting the two ns: 'I know that is your name, but is it what people call you? There isn't another name you use?'
'Marianna. That is it. That is all.'
'Very well,' he says. 'Marianna, Mrs Costello says we have met before. When was that?'
'A long time ago. You took my photograph. It was for my birthday. You don't remember?'
'I don't and can't remember because I don't know what you look like. And it can't be that you remember me because you don't know what I look like. Where did it take place, this portrait session?'
'In your studio.'
'And where was the studio?'
She is silent. 'It is too long ago,' she says at last. 'I can't remember.'
'On the other hand, our paths did cross much more recently. We shared a lift at the Royal Hospital. An elevator. Did Mrs Costello mention that?'
'Yes.'
'What else did she say?'
'Just that you were lonely.'
'Lonely. How interesting. Mrs Costello is a close friend of yours?'
'No, not close.'
'What then?'
There is a long silence. He strokes her through her clothes, up and down, thigh, side, breast. What a pleasure, and how unexpected, to have the freedom of a woman's body again, even if the woman is invisible!
'Did she just walk in on you?' he says. 'She just walked in on me.'
He feels her shake her head slowly from side to side.
'Does she intend, do you think, that you and I should become a couple? For her entertainment perhaps? The halt leading the blind?'
The remark is meant lightly, but he can feel her stiffen. He hears the lips part, hears her swallow, and all of a sudden she is crying.
'I am sorry,' he says. He reaches out to touch her cheek. It is bathed in wetness. At least, he thinks, she has tear ducts left. 'I am sorry, truly. But we are grown people, so why are we letting someone we barely know dictate our lives? That is what I ask myself.'
She gives a gasp that is presumably a laugh, and the laugh brings on sobs. She sits up beside him, half dressed, sobbing freely, shaking her head from side to side. Now is surely the time to slip off the blindfold, wipe the muck from his eyes, behold her as she is. But he does not. He waits. He tarries. He delays.
She blows her nose on a tissue she seems to have brought with her, clears her throat. 'I thought,' she says, 'this was what you wanted.'
'It is, make no mistake about it, it is. Nevertheless, the idea came from our friend Elizabeth. The first impulse. She issues instructions, we follow. Even when there is no one to see that we obey.'
See. Not the right word, but he lets it stand. She must be used to it by now, to people who say 'see' when they mean something else.
'Unless,' he goes on, 'she is still in the room, observing, checking up.'
'No,' Marianna says, 'there is no one here.'
There is no one here. Being blind, and therefore attuned to the subtler emanations of living beings, she must be right. Nevertheless, the feeling has not left him that he need only reach down and his fingers will encounter Elizabeth Costello, stretched out on the carpet like a dog, watching and waiting.
'Our friend advocated this' – he waves a vague hand – 'because in her eyes it represents the crossing of a threshold. She is of the opinion that until I have crossed a certain threshold I am caught in limbo, unable to grow. That is the hypothesis she is testing out in my case. She probably has another hypothesis to cover you.'
Even as he speaks he knows it is a lie. Elizabeth Costello has never used the word growth in his hearing. Growth comes out of the self-help manuals. God knows what Elizabeth Costello really wants, for him or for herself or for this Marianna; God knows to what theory of life or love she really holds; God knows what will happen next.
'Anyway, having crossed her threshold, we are now free to proceed to higher and better things.'
He is just talking, making the best of an uncomfortable situation, trying to cheer up a woman suffering the tristesse that descends after coitus with a stranger. From his envelope of darkness, not yet giving up hope of forming a picture of her, he reaches out again to touch her face; and in the act plunges into a dark gulf of his own. All his larkiness deserts him. Why, why did he put enough trust in the Costello woman to go through with this performance, which seems to him now less rash than simply stupid? And what on earth is this poor blind unlucky woman going to do with herself in these less than welcoming surroundings while she waits for her mentor in her mercy to return and release her? Did Costello really believe that a few minutes of inflamed physical congress could like a gas expand to fill up a whole night? Did she believe she could throw two strangers together, neither of them young, one positively old, old and cold, and expect them to behave like Romeo and Juliet? How naive! And she a noted literary artist too! And this damned paste which, though she swore it was harmless, is beginning to irritate his eyes as it dries out: how could she have imagined that being blinded with flour and water would change his character, make a new man of him? Blindness is a handicap pure and simple. A man without sight is a lesser man, as a man with one leg is a lesser man, not a new man. This poor woman she has sent him is a lesser woman too, less than she must have been before. Two lesser beings, handicapped, diminished: how could she have imagined a spark of the divine would be struck between them, or any spark at all?
As for the woman herself, growing colder minute by minute at his side, what can be running through her mind? What a load of poppycock she must have been told to persuade her to come knocking at the door of a strange man and offering herself to him! Just as in his case there was a long preamble to this lamentable encounter, a preamble stretching far enough back into the past to constitute a book in its own right, beginning with Wayne Blight and Paul Rayment setting off from their respective homes that fatal winter morning, oblivious as yet of each other's existence, so in her case there must be a prelude beginning with the virus or the sunspot or the bad gene or the needle or whatever else is to blame for her blinding, and proceeding step by step to a meeting with a plausible old woman (all the more plausible if you have only the voice to go by) telling you she has the means to quench your burning thirst if only you will take a taxi to a cafe called Alfredo's in North Adelaide, here is the fare, I am putting it in your hand, no need to be nervous, the man in question is quite harmless, merely lonely, he will treat you as a callgirl and pay you for your time, and I will be there anyway, hovering in the background, watching over you – if you have only the voice to go by and cannot see the mad glint in the eye.