A Sport and a Pastime

looking ahead at the road like any couple. Her fingers form a ring which she gently slips onto it and then causes, cool, to descend. Her slim fingers. She turns to see what she is doing. Dean sits like a chauffeur. He is barely breathing.

“I like your profil,” she says. “How do you say that?”

“Profile.” His voice seems lost.

“I like your profile. No, I love your profile. Like is nothing.”

She is in a good mood. She is very playful. As they enter her building she becomes the secretary. They are going to dictate some letters. Oh, yes? She lives alone, she admits, turning on the stairs. Is that so, the boss says. Oui. In the room they undress independently, like Russians sharing a train compartment. Then they turn face to face.

“Ah,” she murmurs.

“What?”

“It’s a big machine a ecrire.”

She is so wet by the time he has the pillows under her gleaming stomach that he goes right into her in one long, delicious move. They begin slowly. When he is close to coming he pulls his prick out and lets it cool. Then he starts again, guiding it with one hand, feeding it in like line. She begins to roll her hips, to cry out. It’s like ministering to a lunatic. Finally he takes it out again. As he waits, tranquil, deliberate, his eye keeps falling on lubricants—her face cream, bottles in the armoire. They distract him. Their presence seems frightening, like evidence. They begin once more and this time do not stop until she cries out and he feels himself come in long, trembling runs, the head of his prick touching bone, it seems. They lie exhausted, side by side, as if just having beached a great boat.

“It was the best ever,” she says finally. “The best.”

He is staring upwards in the dark.

“Phillip?”

“Yes,” he says.

“What a machine, eh?” she says. “Was it always so good?”

“I don’t think so.”

She touches him. He is still quite large.

“I think it’s bigger,” she says.

“A little, perhaps.”

“We must type more letters,” she says.

The night is not cold. It is quiet, piercingly clear. Across the dark roofs, crowded close, the spires of town rise, illuminated, steeped in terrestrial light.

[20]

THESE SLOW DAYS WITH their misty beginnings, the fields all cool and quiet, the great viaduct still. Everything is white, everything empty, everything except the earth itself which seems to have awakened. There is an odor in the air that means France still lives. As the morning continues, the mist disappears. Slowly now, the shape of things is revealed. Roofs emerge. The tops of trees. Finally the sun. I am making an extraordinary record of this town. I am discovering it, bringing it to light. There are photographs of the house alone, nothing but that, the surfaces of furniture, the broad doors, reflections in mirrors, that are the most compelling I have ever made. It almost seems the work of a sick man, work of great patience and simplicity. It has a radiance, a tubercular calm. The children playing by the fountains will become old men, but nothing of this will have changed. There are periods when I am certain of that. My work begins to seem huge. I will be able to enclose myself in it, to have people introduce me.

Near the edge of town there are sheep, a large flock, and two black dogs, lean and endlessly circling, that move it along. They seem to be carving the flock. They curve in behind and mould it. I never hear them bark, but the bleats carry faintly across the still air. Near the front, one old ram limps along. The sun is warm now. The sheep move in a current, like a stream—the edges cling, the center continually flows. The pattern is always changing. Segments seem to break away and vanish farther on. Eddies appear. The sheep hesitate and clog. Some lambs have already been born, and they hurry along behind their mothers. Then, quite mysteriously, the entire flock stops. Slowly it begins to spread. The animals graze outwards. The dogs linger. It’s at this moment I see the shepherd in a dark, tattered coat. He walks along quietly, an old man who has watched over them since daylight when the mist hid them all. Probably he has slept in his clothes. The lambs look very young. They have long legs. They hurry to keep up with the fat, indifferent ewes.

It’s still too early in the year for Claude to go down to the river and swim before work. She always goes on her bicycle. She has no car. Perhaps when she is married again…because I have heard she is about to become engaged to a student from Bourges. He’s younger than she is. Some say twenty-two. I visualize him sitting between the voluptuous mother and that wise, level-eyed child. Perhaps he doesn’t recognize the dangers. Or maybe they have their own appeal for him. In any case, it’s generally agreed Madame Picquet is very fortunate to have this suitor. A little shrug after that. It’s quite plain how it was done.

I see things now in a different light. In a way, I’m quite relieved to hear about it. There’s a good reason why I’ve never been able to fulfill my longings—she’s been in love with someone else the whole time. He came to visit practically every weekend. So really, I would have been unsuccessful anyway. It’s comforting to realize that. And a student, well, one doesn’t mind envying a student. It’s much better than a jeweler, say, or the owner of a bar. Eventually I discover his name: Gerard.

These calm mornings. Anne-Marie crossing the Place du Carrouge. It’s very small. There’s a grocery, a little cafe, a fish store. She walks to work, her heels echoing on the pavement like shot, still a bit of warmth from the bed clinging to her, her flesh warm still and unwary, her mouth sullen. Dean is still asleep. His clothes are strewn about. The shutters are closed. He never dreams. He’s like a dead musician, like a spent runner. He hasn’t the strength to dream, or rather, his dreams take place while he is awake and they are marvelous for at least one quality: he has the power to prolong them.

Duration is everything. One knows that instinctively. It hangs over the two of them like an unpronounced sentence. It lies in their bed. All of Anne-Marie’s joy proceeds from the hope that they are only beginning, that before them is marriage and farewell to Autun, while like the negative from which her dreams are printed, he perceives the opposite. For Dean, every hour is piercing because it is closer to the end. I’m not sure he is conscious of it. Can he really sense his own destiny? Perhaps—I cannot tell.

Tuesday night. A sandwich at the Foy. Dean’s throat is sore, and she has a little cough. She’s tired. It’s been a difficult day, and she wants to go to bed early.

“Good,” he agrees.

“But not alone.”

“I’m tired, too.”

“No.”

“Come on,” he says. “We’ll see.”

“No!” she insists.

They walk through the long, melancholy passage off rue de la Terrasse. On the ground floor are little shops, apartments above. There’s a glass roof with laundry hanging beneath it. In daylight one can see the sky. It’s like a ruined palazzo. Their shoes scuff on the tiles. Through the far end, the trees of the place can be seen.

He is chilly and feels weak. He lies in the bed hugging himself and trying to get warm as he watches her undress. Her small navel appears, a bead of a navel and a belly flat and smacking as a flounder. She glances at herself in the mirror, over her shoulder. She likes her behind. It’s not shaped like a drop of oil, she says, which one sees all the time, but rather like two pommes. Dean is indifferent.

“I don’t have anything,” he warns as she slips in beside him.

“You don’t need it.”

“It’s safe?”