“Knight errant!” she said.
“Eurydice! Eurydice!”
The rains of autumn started up again.
I carried her in my arms across dark streets. I held her high above the muck.
“You are still the same, sweetheart,” she said.
We were approaching the railroad embankment, toward which something was always drawing us. Memories. And piles of faded leaves in the ditch.
I placed her on a bed of foliage and began to recall her embraces. Her eyes. Her scents.
“Your hands have grown harder, sweetheart.”
“From the oars,” I said. “From the winds.”
No, I didn’t say anything. I inhaled her breasts, went blind.
The next day I cleaned up the attic a bit and reached once more for my lute. I spent the entire morning tuning its strings. It had fallen ill during my absence, grown deaf. It must have perceived my fingers on its slender neck as caresses.
Otherwise, why would it have lamented?
It took several hours of great patience for me to find its former resonance and tone. All at once — that is, completely by itself — it remembered its voice; from out of its dark insides poured a flood of pearls, as if from a colossal shell.
Then it seemed to me that someone was knocking, and I stopped playing for a moment.
“Would you knock it off already?” said the cleaning lady, rapping on the plywood door with her key.
“I’m done,” I said. “Excuse me.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you can strum on that thing as much as you like. But the tenants are complaining that they can’t enjoy their siestas after lunch because of your flute.”
“It’s a lute,” I said.
“Well, fine,” she said to appease me. “A flute.”
I drank bitter woodland tea and ate half a pack of zwieback with butter. Then I stretched out in the rocking chair to rest, since I couldn’t play. There I sat, with my eyes closed, for about half an hour, and then I stared at Venus’s thighs on the ceiling. Above one stately knee the dampness had drawn a dark blot that resembled a large wart. I shifted to my side and lit a cigarette.
That’s when Igor arrived.
“Sorry to wake you,” he said.
“Have a seat,” I said. “I was just napping a bit.”
“Okay,” he said, sitting down on the bed. “I need to ask something of you.”
“Say. . You haven’t gotten into a jam with her, have you?”
“How did you know? Did the cleaning lady tell you?”
I burst out laughing.
“I just had this presentiment,” I said. “You fell out of the stars and right onto her!”
“You’re in a joking mood,” Igor responded. “But this is a very pressing matter.”
“How many months along is she?” I asked.
“Two.”
“What do you intend to do now, Billy?”
He shrugged his shoulders and turned his eyes upward. That was how God looked when he surveyed the world on that seventh and final day of Creation.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why I came to you.”
“Write a novel,” I said.
“Can I have a cigarette?” he said. “I’m nervous.”
“But of course.”
“I have to confess something to you,” he said, after we had lit up. “Only, please don’t misunderstand me.”
“I’m listening.”
“I started it,” he said. “The novel.”
“Well? Go on.”
“That’s not the issue,” he said. “The problem is that I don’t know how it is going to end. I don’t know how all these things are going to unfold. . And I’ve got no money for the abortion.”
All at once I grasped the seriousness of the situation.
The girl can die, I thought. Or she can give birth to a baby girl. Or she has the option of aborting.
My God — so many possibilities!
But she definitely has to have the abortion.
This is as urgent as it gets. Otherwise—voilà, a new character!
I am very much afraid, Billy, you dimwit, know-it-all, sonofabitch, Igor, devil—I am very much afraid that you might become a hero.
What will become of you if you don’t scrape together the money? You’ll get all kinds of notions that you are a hero, a martyr, a Don Juan, a man of sorrows, cavalier, victim of your passions, he-man, sensualist, seducer, daredevil, father, husband, citizen, debtor, spouse; you will become socially aggrieved, politically reactionary, sectarian, conspiratorial, humiliated and marginalized, insurgent, ostracized, oppressed; you will be a good-for-nothing, a gelding, an accursed poet, a defender of the poor and needy, patron, man of compassion — to sum it up in a single word, you will be something like a character in a novel, a hero, or even — a category.
Believe me, I would never utter your name again.
Alas! If only I could contribute something toward this abortion of yours with my old lute!
But for that kind of money you couldn’t even get the lowliest midwife from the other side of the tracks to soil her hands.
It rains so often here that the moonlight is splashing.
Eurydice, put your arms around me!
You aren’t always the same, either, you who appear in the likeness of Eurydice, from out of the words, shadow, and veil. On the outskirts of the city your voice spreads luxuriantly, peacefully across the windows, like dusk, blue. In the moonlight it starts to resonate — like a harp, like. .
But in the attic, toward evening, when your breasts are bare, your voice becomes a caress, a miracle, a violet blossom.
“My beloved, you’re kind of quiet today,” she said. “How can you be sad when I love you?”
We were standing under the bridge, watching as the cloudy green water whirled off into the twilight.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why do people always flip off the lights when the caresses begin? There’s only the occasional flicker of a candle or glimmer of twilight.”
“Oh,” she agreed. “You’re right. Tenderness is. .”
“Why did you stop? Say it: tenderness is. .?”
“I don’t know, it’s. .”
“This dreary rain is to blame for everything,” I said. “And this gloomy water. Let’s get away from here. To the movies. Or to a café.”
“It’s late,” she said. “I’m also feeling a bit melancholy. I can’t put my finger on it. .”
“It isn’t late. I’ve got an idea. Let’s go to the attic. Why didn’t we think of this before?”
And there we were, climbing up the slick steps, holding hands as lovers have done since time out of mind. Upstairs the glow from the streetlights overcame the gloom. The rain fluttered like a swarm of tiny insects around the chandelier. Our pale shadows quivered in the puddles on the shimmering asphalt.
“You’re wearing a new dress,” I said, as an excuse for gazing at her. And then I heard her answer.
“New? You are conversant with my wardobe?”
“I am right, am I not?”
“Yes. I recently had it made here. Do you like it?”
“Very much,” I said, letting my gaze pass over her again before casting my eyes down. “Do you want to dance?” I added.
“Would you like to?” she asked, her brows raised in surprise, but still with a smile.
“I’d do it, if that’s what you want.”
“You’re not quite as well-mannered as I thought you were,” she said. When I dismissed this with a laugh, she added: “Your cousin has already gone.”
“Yes, he is my cousin,” I confirmed quite unnecessarily. “I also noticed a while ago that he had left. I’m sure he’s taking his rest cure.”