But now she was slender and tall. Her ripe lower lip curved over its own little shadow. She moved heavily, though, as if her limbs were still bound with the mass of flesh she remembered with bitterness.
“Do you know one of the main reasons why I want her?”
“I know the main reason.”
“You’re wrong, Krantz. It’s because she lives one street away from me. She belongs to me for the same reason the park does.”
“You’re a very sick boy.”
A minute later Krantz said: “These people are half right about you, Breavman. You’re an emotional imperialist.”
“You thought about that for a long time, didn’t you?”
“A while.”
“It’s good.”
They shook hands solemnly. They exchanged umbrellas. They tightened each other’s ties. Breavman kissed Krantz on each cheek in the manner of a French general awarding medals.
The chairman hammered his gavel to preserve the meeting.
“Out! We’re not interested in a vaudeville show. Go perform on the mountain!”
The mountain meant Westmount. They decided to accept his advice. They practised a soft-shoe routine at the Lookout, delighting in their own absurdity. Breavman never could master the steps, but he liked swinging the umbrella.
“Do you know why I love Communist women?”
“I do, Breavman.”
“You’re wrong again. It’s because they don’t believe in the world.”
They sat on the stone wall, their backs to the river and city.
“Very soon, Krantz, very soon I’m going to be in a room with her. We’re going to be in a room. There’s going to be a room around us.”
“So long, Breavman, I’ve got to study.”
Krantz’s house wasn’t far. He meant it, he really went. It was the first time Krantz had –
“Hey!” Breavman called. “You broke the dialogue.”
He was out of hearing.
8
“Don’t you see it, Tamara, don’t you see that both sides, both sides of every fight, they’re both always using germ-warfare?”
He was walking with her in the park behind his house, telling the secret of conflict and the habits of nocturnal goldfish and why poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
Then he was in a room undressing her. He couldn’t believe his hands. The kind of surprise when the silver paper comes off the triangle of Gruyère in one piece.
Then she said no and bundled her clothes against her breasts.
He felt like an archaeologist watching the sand blow back. She was putting on her bra. He helped her with the clasp just to show that he wasn’t a maniac.
Then he asked why four times.
Then he stood at the window.
Tell her you love her, Breavman. That’s what she wants to hear. He came back and rubbed her back.
Now he was working in the small of her back.
Say I love you. Say it. One-two-three, now.
He was getting an occasional finger under the elastic.
She crossed her ankles and seemed to squeeze her thighs together in some kind of private pleasure. This gesture shivered his spine.
Then he dived at her thighs, which were floating and damp. The flesh splashed up. He used his teeth. He didn’t know whether the wetness was blood or spit or lubricating perfume.
Then there were the strange strained voices which had turned into whispers, rushed and breathless, as though time were against them, bringing police and parents to the keyhole.
“I better put something on.”
“I’m afraid I’m tight.”
“It’s beautiful that you’re tight.”
Who was she, who owned her body?
“You see, I’m tight.”
“Oh yes.”
Congratulations, like slow-falling confetti, covered his mind with sleep, but someone said: “Tell me a poem.”
“Let me look at you first.”
“Let me look at you too.”
Then he walked her home. It was his personal time of the morning. The sun was threatening in the east. The newsboys were limping with their grey bags. The sidewalks looked new.
Then he took her hands in his hands and spoke with serious appreciation:
“Thank you, Tamara.”
Then she slapped his face with the hand that was holding the key.
“It sounds so horrible. As if I let you take something. As if you got something out of me.”
She cried for the seconds it took until a line of blood appeared on his cheek.
Then they hugged to repair everything.
When she was inside she put her mouth to the window of the door and they kissed through the glass. He wanted her to go first and she wanted him to go first. He hoped his back looked good.
C’mon, everybody! He exulted as he marched home, newest member of the adult community. Why weren’t all the sleepers hanging out of their windows cheering? Didn’t they admire his ritual of love and deceit? He visited his park, stood on the nursery hill and looked over the city to the grey river. He was finally involved with the sleepers, the men who went to work, the buildings, the commerce.
Then he threw stones at Krantz’s window because he didn’t want to go to bed.
“Steal a car, Krantz. Chinese soup time.”
Breavman told everything in three minutes and then they drove in silence. He leaned his head against the window glass expecting it to be cool, but it wasn’t.
“I know why you’re depressed. Because you told me.”
“Yes. I dishonoured it twice.”
It was worse than that. He wished he loved her, it must be so nice to love her, and to tell her, not once or five times, but over and over, because he knew he was going to be with her in rooms for a long time.
Then what about rooms, wasn’t every room the same, hadn’t he known what it would be like, weren’t all the rooms they passed exactly the same, wherever a woman was stretched out, even a forest was a glass room, wasn’t it like with Lisa, under the bed and when they played the Soldier and the Whore, wasn’t it the same, even to the listening for enemy sounds?
He told the story again, six years later, to Shell, but he didn’t dishonour it that time. Once,
