She was taking him home, she said. She would spend tonight with him.
It seemed true, thought Haffner. She did not seem to be one of Haffner's visions. In the words of the very old song, the dream was real.
And yet, the dream life of Haffner was troubled.
It did seem all too possible that the brief moment of his triumph in relation to the villa was now over. The ordinary rules would soon reassert themselves. He doubted if the deal with Niko and Viko was still on. This seemed even less likely if he chose to allow Zinka to spend the night with him. Presumably, he could return to Viko and Niko and offer them the agreed sum. Presumably, he could try. But their goodwill might well be lacking.
Was Haffner to blame for this sudden fiasco? It seemed possible to plead that he was not — not responsible, in the end, for Niko's rages, for Viko's pride. He consulted the shade of Livia: would she really have wanted him to play the coquette with another man, simply to ensure her inheritance?
He could imagine the shade of Livia smiling.
Then Haffner was interrupted in this vision by a strong sense of nausea. A shiver took possession of his body, then relinquished it.
Yes, this, thought Haffner, was his return to the everyday. All his ingenuity had failed him. The Committee would have to be wooed all over again. So Haffner only felt a tired disappointment.
And yet, he thought, in compensation he seemed to have Zinka, in this party dress, beside him. But Haffner realised that even his joy in her was tempered. On arrival at this club he had felt so confident, so victorious. If he had been told he would leave with Zinka, it would have only made him a happy Haffner. Yet now here he was, still burdened with the problem of the villa, walking slowly through the dark streets of a spa town so marked with Livia's memory. And whether Zinka was a digression or in fact some covert route to Livia, Haffner did not know.
He still felt confident of his innocence. He had tried to remain faithful to Livia, and he would continue to try. But he was a connoisseur of Haffner's ability to be defeated. That Haffner had done his best, he was coming to realise, sadly, didn't mean he wasn't still guilty.
In this unaccustomed melancholy, Haffner followed after Zinka: his halting walk now embellished by the iambic rhythm of a limp.
But I am not so sure that Haffner should have felt so divided. Perhaps there is no such thing as a digression.
Zinka, it's true, was thinking in the same way as Haffner. She thought that it was an unusual event in Haffner's life — this dejected progress through the empty streets. She was moved by Haffner's comical plight. And it moved her more because she assumed that this comedy was all her fault. There was no way this man could have previously suffered the indignity from which he was suffering now. She didn't realise that in this story, as in all of Haffner's stories, there were certain patterns, certain repeats. She didn't know that farce was Haffner's constant mode.
This form was not new in the life of Raphael Haffner. Free from his ordinary customs, let loose in the wild East, Haffner was just allowed to become even more Haffnerian than ever — his own exaggeration.
So that every zenith was also a nadir, as usual, and all victory consisted of beatings. And, as usual, while illuminated with desire for Zinka, Haffner didn't know that a bruise was beginning to develop around his eye and on his cheek, like a Riviera sunset, the backdrop to a promenade bordered with palm trees, illuminating the night in green explosions, accompanied by the muzak of the rhyming cicadas.
Haffner Translated
So, said Zinka, as they entered Haffner's bedroom. Here they were.
It seemed undeniable. Here they were, at Haffner's finale. But Haffner was worried that his body was going to prove unequal to this finale. He was quite sure that he was getting ill. True, he was drunk. It could be just the drink. But Haffner knew about his body: its breakdowns and malfunctions. And this feeling was unusuaclass="underline" the dizzy sweating ague of it. He felt for his palms. They were sweating. He brushed the hair which still remained to him down with the Brylcreem of his sweating hand. As if to simultaneously produce a suavely dry palm and a suavely plumed forelock.
He offered Zinka a smile.
Tonight, Zinka explained to him, there was only one rule. Haffner asked what it was. The rule, said Zinka, was that everything came from her. Everything was her decision.
She liked Haffner, this was true, and she felt for his bruised pathos. But this did not mean that this was going to be Haffner's evening.
And Haffner said yes, absolutely.
He had never been one for the fantasies of permission: the allowed and the disallowed. But if rules were going to be a condition of this night with Zinka, then he didn't care. He revelled in them. He would content himself with the little which he was offered. Whatever the modern age would give him. At no point could Haffner touch himself, said Zinka; at no point could he touch her without permission. If at any time he broke these rules, the night was over.
Let Haffner submit! Let Haffner be debased!
All his life, the erotic for Haffner had been a matter of apertures: all the exits and entrances. And now he discovered that the apertures were something, but the rest was something else. There was so much else to play with.
Zinka pushed him gently to the bed, where he slumped down: his head raised, expectantly, like a yawning sea lion.
— You will do what I tell you, said Zinka. Yes?
— Yes, said Haffner, meekly.
Zinka stood between his legs, bent her head, and told him to open his mouth — which Haffner obediently did — then she let her spit dribble out: a thread slowly fastening with its own weight, then falling, gathered in by harmless Haffner.
Zinka went into the bathroom, crowded with the male accoutrements of Haffner, bought from a chemist in the town — a shaving brush, the tube of shaving cream, doubly creased in a sine curve which a parsimonious History had borrowed from the smudged blackboards of Haffner's prep school. With the door still open, she crouched on the toilet. She beckoned to Haffner. From below her crotch came the whispering sound of her pissing.
She told Haffner to come closer. He tried to sit down, like the men in Oriental street scenes exhibited at the Academy: a neat bobbing squat. It hurt too much. Instead, he therefore watched her on his hands and knees. Crawling, Haffner approached her closely. He could see her stream — braided, splurging.
— You like this? Zinka asked him.
— I do, yes, said Haffner.
As if there was nothing of the bodily about her, no smell emerged from Zinka. And Haffner, as he waited there, on all fours, only felt an overwhelming happiness. He was in the paradise of women; an island of intimacy, like Gulliver among the giants — whose travels Haffner had read when he was ever so young, so much younger than he would ever be again, in a miniature, octavo, red-leather edition. The eighteenth-century disgust remained with him now. It was there in his stomach, in his nervous system. But also the erotics. Gulliver astride a giant nurse's nipple! Even now, he felt himself rise up in applause. The rough pitted areolae which little Gulliver observed; by which Gulliver was entranced and perturbed. And when Gulliver — or did he? was this just a mistake of Haffner's imagination? — went on to describe the gaping maw of her crotch, Haffner, the delinquent eight-year-old, was not stricken by disgust at the human animal. Instead, he was overtaken by an acrid pleasure. The minuscule Haffner longed for this closeness to the women: the fur and softness. What was small was large, and what was large was small. The world was just a trick of perspective. It all depended, he supposed, on how good you were at magnifying, or diminishing.