“I suppose you’d be annoyed if I said you were like any other ten-year-old boy. I don’t know, Larry. You were a nice boy.”
“Do you remember the Soldier and the Whore?”
“What?”
“Do you remember my green pants?”
“You’re getting silly….”
“I wish you remembered everything.”
“Why? If we remembered everything we’d never be able to do anything.”
“If you remembered what I remember you’d be in bed with me right now,” he said blindly.
Lisa was kind, wise, or interested enough not to make a joke of what he said.
“No, I wouldn’t. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t. I’m too selfish or scared or prudish, or whatever it is, to risk what I’ve got. I want to keep everything I have.”
“So do I. I don’t want to forget anyone I was ever connected with.”
“You don’t have to. Especially me. I’m glad I met you tonight. You have to come over and meet Carl and the children. Carl reads a lot, I’m sure you’d enjoy talking to him.”
“The last thing I intend to do is talk books with anybody, even Carl. I want to sleep with you. It’s very simple.”
He had intended by his recklessness to reach her quickly and disarm her, but he succeeded only in making the conversation fashionable.
“It’s not simple for me. I’m not trying to be funny. Why do you want to sleep with me?”
“Because we once held hands.”
“And that’s a reason?”
“Humans are lucky to be connected in any way at all, even by the table between them.”
“But you can’t be connected to everyone. It wouldn’t mean anything then.”
“It would to me.”
“But is going to bed the only way a man and woman can be connected?”
Breavman replied in terms of the flirtation, not out of his real experience.
“What else is there? Conversation? I’m in the business and I have no faith in words whatever. Friendship? A friendship between a man and a woman which is not based on sex is either hypocrisy or masochism. When I see a woman’s face transformed by the orgasm we have reached together, then I know we’ve met. Any thing else is fiction. That’s the vocabulary we speak in today. It’s the only language left.”
“Then it’s a language which nobody understands. It’s just become a babble.”
“Better than silence. Lisa, let’s get out of here. Any moment now someone’s going to ask why I didn’t bring my guitar, and I’m liable to smash him in the mouth. Let’s talk over coffee, somewhere.”
She shook her head gently. “No.”
It was the best no he ever heard because it had in it dignity, appreciation, and firm denial. It claimed him and ended the game. He was content now to talk, watch her, and wonder just as he had when the young men in white scarves had taken her away in their long cars.
“I’ve never heard that word spoken better.”
“I thought it was what you wanted to hear.”
“How did you get so damn wise?”
“Look out, Larry.”
“Look what we found.” The hostess beamed. Several guests had followed her over.
“I’ve never heard you play,” Lisa said. “I’d like to.”
He took the unfamiliar guitar and tuned it. The record-player was turned off and everyone drew chairs around or sat on the thick carpet.
It was a good Spanish instrument, very light wood, resonant bass strings. He hadn’t held a guitar for months but as soon as he struck the first chord (A minor) he was happy he’d agreed to play.
The first chord is always crucial for him. Sometimes it sounds tinny, bland, and the best thing he can do is put the instrument away, because the tone never improves and all his inventions jingle like commercials. This happens when he approaches the instrument without the proper respect or affection. It rebukes him like a complying frigid woman.
But there are those good times when the tone is deep and lingering, and he cannot believe it is himself who is strumming the strings. He watches the intricate blur of his right hand and the ballet-fingers of his left hand stepping between the frets, and he wonders what connection there is between all that movement and the music in the air, which seems to come from the wood itself.
It was like that when he played and sang only for Lisa. He sang the Spanish Civil War songs, not as a partisan, but as a Tiresian historian. He sang the minor songs of absence, thinking of Donne’s beautiful opening,
Sweetest love! I do not go
For weariness of thee,
which is the essence of any love song. He hardly sang the words, he spoke them. He rediscovered the poetry which had overwhelmed him years before, the easy line that gave itself carelessly away and then, before it was over, struck home.
I’d rather be in some dark valley
Where the sun don’t never shine,
Than to see my true love love another
When I know that she should be mine.
He played for an hour, aiming all the melody at Lisa. While he sang he wanted to untie the red string and let her free. That was the best gift he could give her.
When it was over and he had put the guitar away carefully, as though it contained the finer part of him, Lisa said, “That made me feel more connected to you than anything you said. Please come to our house soon.”
“Thank you.”
Soon he slipped out of the party for a walk on the mountain. He watched the moon and it didn’t move for a long time.
18
Four days later the phone rang at one-thirty in the morning. Breavman bolted for it, happy to break his working schedule. He knew everything she was going to say.
“I didn’t think you’d be asleep,” Lisa said.
“I’m not. But you should be.”
“I’d like to see you.”
“I’d like to see you too, but I’ve got a better idea: put down the telephone and visit each of your children’s rooms and then go to bed.”
“I did that. Twice.”
It was a free country. The old taboos were in disrepute. They were grown up and wouldn’t
