'I couldn't sleep. I got up and wandered around your house in the dark. Then I went to the garden. The air was cool and there was no breeze at all. I sat by the stream, and I could see the dark flicker of the water. I was staring at it, not thinking of anything in particular, then all at once I... it was a feeling I almost remember having when I was a child. All at once, all the pressures and confusions and fears were gone. They dissolved away, and I felt light. I felt like I was transported somewhere else, someplace I've never been to, but I know very well. It was sunny and still, and there was grass all around me; and I seemed to understand everything. Almost as though I was... I don't know. Almost as though I was—ouch!' She snapped her hand back and sucked the singed finger.
He laughed and shook his head, and she laughed too.
'That was a stupid thing to do,' she said.
'True. I think you were going to say that it was almost as though you and the grass and the sun were all one being, parts of the same thing.'
She stared at him, her finger still to her lips. 'How did you know that?'
'It's an experience others have had. You said you remembered similar feelings when you were a child?'
'Well, not exactly remember. No, not remember at all. It's just that when I was there, I had the feeling that this wasn't new and strange. It was something I had done before—but I don't actually remember doing it before. You know what I mean?'
'I think I do. You might have been participating in the atavistic—'
'I'll tell you what! I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. But I'll tell you what it's like. It's like the very best high on pot or something, when you're in a perfect mood and everything's going just right. It's not exactly like that, because you never get there with hooch, but it's where you think you're going. You know what I mean?'
'No.'
'You never use pot or anything?'
'No. I've never had to. My inner resources are intact.'
'Well. It was something like that.'
'I see. How's your finger?'
'Oh, it's fine. The point is that, after the feeling had passed last night, I found myself sitting there in your garden, rested and clear-minded. And I wasn't confused any more. I knew there was no point in trying to punish the Septembrists. Violence doesn't get you anywhere. It's irrelevant. Now I think I just want to go home. Spend a little time getting in touch with myself. Then maybe—I don't know. See what's happening around me, maybe. Deal with that.' She poured herself out another glass of wine and drank it down, then she put her hand on Hel's arm. 'I guess I've been a lot of trouble to you.'
'I believe the American idiom is 'a pain in the ass.''
'I wish there were some way I could make it up to you.'
He smiled at her obliquity.
She poured another glass of wine and said, 'Do you think Hana minds your being here?'
'Why should she?'
'Well, I mean... do you think she minds our spending the night together?'
'What does that phrase signify to you?'
'What? Well... we'll be sleeping together.'
'Sleeping together?'
'In the same place, I mean. You know what I mean.'
He regarded her without speaking. Her experience of mystic transport, even if it was a unique event prompted by an overload of tension and desperation, rather than the function of a spirit in balance and peace, gave her a worthiness in his eyes. But this new acceptance was not free from a certain envy, that this vague-minded muffin should be able to achieve the state that he had lost years ago, probably forever. He recognized the envy to be adolescent and small on his part, but this recognition was not sufficient to banish the feeling.
She had been frowning into the candle flame, trying to sort out her emotions. 'I should tell you something.'
'Should you?'
'I want to be honest with you.'
'Don't bother.'
'No, I want to be. Even before I met you, I used to think about you... daydream, sort of. All the stories my uncle used to tell about you. I was really surprised at how young you are—how young you appear, that is. And I suppose if I analyzed my feelings, there's a sort of father projection. Here you are, the great myth in the flesh. I was scared and confused, and you protected me. I can see all the psychological impulses that would draw me toward you, can't you?'
'Have you considered the possibility that you're a randy young woman with a healthy and uncomplicated desire to climax? Or do you find that psychologically unsubtle?'
She looked at him and nodded. 'You certainly know how to put a person down, don't you? You don't leave a person much to cover herself with.'
'That's true. And perhaps it's uncivil of me. I'm sorry. Here is what I think is going on with you. You're alone, lonely, confused. You want to be cuddled and comforted. You don't know how to ask for that, because you're a product of the Western culture; so you negotiate for it, bartering sex for cuddling. It's not an uncommon negotiation for the Western woman to engage in. After all, she's limited to negotiating with the Western male, whose concept of social exchange is brittle and limited, and who demands earnest money in the form of sex, because that's the only part of the bargain he is comfortable with. Miss Stern, you may sleep with me tonight if you wish. I'll hold you and comfort you, if that's what you want.'
Both gratitude and too much wine moistened her eyes. 'I would like that, yes.'
* * *
But the animal lurking within is seldom tethered by good intentions. When he awoke to her attentions and felt emanating from her the alpha/theta syncopation that attends sexual excitation, his response was not solely dictated by a desire to shield her from rejection.
She was exceptionally ripe and easy, all of her nerves close to the surface and desperately sensitive. Because she was young, there was a bit of difficulty keeping her lubricated, but beyond that mechanical nuisance he could hold her in climax without much effort.
Her eyes rolled back again and she pleaded, 'No... please... I can't again! I'll die if I do again!' But her involuntary contractions rushed closer and closer together, and she was gasping in her fourth orgasm, which he prolonged until her fingernails were clawing frantically at the nap of the rug.
He recalled Hana's injunction against dimming Hannah's future experience by comparison, and he had no particular impulse to climax himself, so he brought her back down slowly, stroking and cooling her as the muscles of her buttocks, stomach, and thighs quivered with the fatigue of repeated orgasm, and she lay still on the pile of pillows, half-unconscious and feeling that her flesh was melting.
He washed in frigid meltwater, then went up to the overhanging balcony to sleep.
Some time later, he felt her approach silently. He made space for her and a nest in his arms and lap. As she dipped toward sleep, she said dreamily, 'Nicholai?'
'Please don't call me by my first name,' he murmured.
She was silent for a time. 'Mr. Hel? Don't be scared by this, because it's just a passing thing. But at this moment, I am in love with you.'
'Don't be foolish.'
'Do you know what I wish?'
He did not answer.
'I wish it were morning and I could go out and pick you a bunch of flowers... those Eyes of Autumn we saw.'
He chuckled and folded her in. 'Good night, Miss Stern.'
Etchebar
It was midmorning before Hana heard the splash of a slab of rock into the stream and came from the chateau to find Hel rearranging the sounding stones, his trouser legs rolled up, and his forearms dripping with water.
'Will I ever get this right, Hana?'
