Mortals

own cubicle, if a cubicle could be taller in the vertical dimension. If she was determined to come in and chat she could drag in the hamper from the toilet room, or bring in a chair, though she had never done that. He ran fresh hot water into the tub.

He thought, All hail the monster bathtub, the one true good thing the British left in Africa: Oversized because the imperial classes were so large in stature they hated to be hunched up when it came to bath time and time to relish their conquests that day.

Iris was back. He turned to look at her in the doorway. She was down to her bra and panties now, fanning herself. She still wanted to talk. We have talked our extinction to death was the one line he remembered from the whole corpus of Robert Lowell. He thought, Nobody talks about Lowell these days. The fading of great reputations was a hazard for people doing English… He was lucky with Milton. She wanted to talk about Morel and so did he, as much as you could want something to happen that you simultaneously dreaded, for no good reason.

“How long might you be in there?” she asked.

“I don’t know. This is a treatment, I.” She was going to be surprised at that. The use of I as a nickname for her, or a diminutive, one or the other, had fallen away years ago. It had been his earliest nickname for her. She’d never liked it much, actually.

“Treatment for what?” she asked.

“For what ails me.”

“You’re going to dissolve.”

“That would be okay,” he said, reaching for a tone that would suggest to her that he was midway in a process of some importance to him that he wanted to continue with, but that wouldn’t sound unfriendly. They were going to talk. Of course she was already paying someone else to talk to her, if he wanted to be childish about it. He was certain she was well into some sort of talk therapy with Morel. He thought, Every man whose wife goes out to get help of this sort from a male, another male, feels something like this. He knew he was being a cartoon, but it made a difference that the therapist was male, whether it should or not. It was a stupid fact, but a fact. She was getting therapy, but therapy for what? What was the subject matter? His guess was that a certain proportion of what he was paying for was what could be called general conversation or general thoughts on how difficult life was, that kind of thing, and why couldn’t she get that at home? But no, she wanted to warm her hams at the fire of another intellect, Morel’s intellect and not his… This is a good place to have unworthy thoughts, he thought.

Silently Iris entered the bathroom, carrying a camp stool. She had put on a dark green silk kimono, his favorite out of the four or five kimonos she owned. These costume changes were about something. She was very deliberate in the way she opened and lowered the camp stool, setting it down at the foot of the tub. By being so delicate about it she was giving him space to object, he supposed. It was comical.

He arranged his washcloth over his genitals, for no reason. Apparently this was going to begin.

But instead of seating herself, Iris went to the basin, posted herself there, and proceeded with brushing her teeth. After a moment she said something that sounded to him like “I can’t stand the world.” Then she left the room, still brushing.

She was one of those people who have a need to walk around while they brush their teeth, in whom the act of brushing sets up a tension over the basic nullity and boringness of the procedure that they have to release by strolling while they do it, holding one hand cupped under the chin as they go. People in that category were always assiduous brushers. More nominal brushers like himself could stay in one place until they finished.

She passed by the doorway and said something unintelligible, completely unintelligible this time. She was under the delusion that she could say whatever she wanted while she was brushing her teeth and that it would be comprehensible to him because of the care with which she enunciated. It was his fault, because during their life together, since he had usually been able to divine what she was trying to say, he had never revealed his true feeling about it, which was that it was annoying and uncouth, like talking with your mouth full of food. So he had led her to believe she was being normal. He was unable to translate what she had just said.

At the basin again, she concluded by brushing her tongue.

“I couldn’t make out what you said, your last thing,” he said, when she was done.

“Just as well.” She extended her tongue and studied it in the mirror.

It would be hostile to add more hot water to his bath at this point. He asked her to sit down if she wanted to.

His offer went unacknowledged. She said, “I do everything I’m supposed to…” The tone of grievance was there. He waited.

“I read somewhere that it’s good hygiene to brush the back of your tongue when you do your teeth, so I do that. I sterilize my toothbrush, same reason. Nobody we know does that. The same with our diet. Whatever, if you’re supposed to do it, I do it.”

“I don’t exactly follow you,” he said, but in fact he had an idea where this was going. What was unstated was the conclusion her declarations implied, something along the lines of “I do all this and what does it get me?” she meant, get her in general. She was all over the place with her declarations of dissatisfaction, which was what this amounted to. Not that she would put her dissatisfaction as nakedly as he had.

She sighed, turned, and said musingly, “Do you know that I don’t know if your penis is particularly large or not?”

It is, by God, he thought, outraged. But what was this? It was pure provocation.

She said, “You claim it is, but how do I know, really? I’m almost a virgin, I mean I was almost a virgin when I met you.”

He was agitated. He had to keep himself under control. The tone had to be light. This was new. He could say “Gulp he said,” but that was witless. Anxiety was doing this to her. She was flailing. She was being random.

She left the room, which was not possible.

“Iris, come and sit down,” he called after her.

“It’s so hot in there.”

“Please, though. Please.”

“The heat is too much.”

“It’s cooling down,” he called. He wasn’t going to give his treatment up. He needed it. “Please,” he said. “I would like to reassure you about my penis. I think that’s important.”

“I have to come and sit in that steambath? All right, I will.”

He listened intently. She was doing something.

She came in naked, and sat on the camp stool. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said.

He thought, on the contrary. But somehow it was completely apposite that the discussion they were going to have would be conducted with both of them stark naked. She was comfortable naked. Maybe that should worry him. Her breasts were small and full. She had never nursed, of course, but her nipples were on the tan or darker side, away from pink, which he assumed went with her coloring. And she had larger areolas than you would expect for someone who had never nursed, he thought. He was glad she was sitting down. The body of a naked woman standing in front of you could be a face looking at you, the breasts, the navel, the pudendum. He needed to be serious. She was intelligent about her nudity. She rationed it. She kept it a treat. She always wore something to bed. That was strategy, it was smart, and he loved her for it. But this just now was nudity for political reasons. It was coercive, to show what she had to put up with in order to come to grips with him. Sometimes after a bath his cleanness would provoke her into immediately sucking him off.

She said, “You know that was just kidding, about your penis. Just to get your attention.”

“I know,” he said. And he did know.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. There is the fact of your limited exposure, due to marrying me when you were a child bride. That’s real.”

“Well, and I also never saw my father naked. And of course I had no brothers, and then I was in girls’ schools. Men have endless opportunities to check the full range of breasts and everything else in the movies, and magazines, and nudes in paintings. There’s no parity. And of course in pornography the men they select would represent an extreme. So. And nude paintings are mostly females… and of course if it’s a male, it’s a flaccid male…”