I don’t know.
Why can’t you tell Shell?
My voice would depress her.
Shell touched Breavman’s cheek.
“Tell me the rest of the story.”
7
Tamara had long legs, God knows how long they were. Sometimes at the meetings she used up three chairs. Her hair was tangled and black. Breavman tried to select one coil and follow where it fell and weaved. It made his eyes feel as though he had walked into a closet of dustless cobwebs.
Breavman and Krantz wore special costumes for hunting Communist women. Dark suits, vests which buttoned high on their shirts, gloves and umbrellas.
They attended every meeting of the Communist Club. They sat imperially among the open-collared members who were munching their sandwich lunches out of paper bags.
During a dull speech on American germ-warfare Krantz whispered: “Breavman, why are paper bags full of white bread so ugly?”
“I’m glad you asked, Krantz. They are advertisements for the frailty of the body. If a junkie wore his hypodermic needle pinned to his lapel you’d feel exactly the same disgust. A bag bulging with food is a kind of visible bowel. Trust the Bolsheviks to wear their digestive systems on their sleeves!”
“Sufficient, Breavman. I thought you’d know.”
“Look at her, Krantz!”
Tamara appropriated another chair for her mysterious limbs. At the same moment the chairman interrupted the speaker and waved his gavel at Krantz and Breavman.
“If you two jokers don’t shut up you’re getting right out of here.”
They stood up to make a formal apology.
“Siddown, siddown, just keep quiet.”
Korea had swarmed with Yankee insects. They had bombs filled with contagious mosquitoes.
“Now I have some questions for you, Krantz. What goes on under those peasant blouses and skirts she always wears? How high do her legs go up? What happens after her wrists plunge into her sleeves? Where do her breasts begin?”
“That’s why you’re here, Breavman.”
Tamara had gone to his high-school but he didn’t notice her then because she was fat. They took the same route to school, but he never noticed her. Lust was training his eyes to exclude everything he could not kiss.
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
