Chapter 4
I was fortunate in the moon. It was an early, slender crescent which shed just enough light for me but did not allow enough so that I would be visible to anyone else. I was concerned with such things, you see, because I was attempting to break into the chateau.
Stated boldly like that, it is a statement which amazes me still. Burglary had never been my line, nor had breaking and entering. Even trespassing, which I was also doing, had been something at which my well-regulated imagination quailed. And yet, I found myself, carefully clothed in dark, comfortable garments, wearing my climbing boots, huddled under the shelter of a copse of pines about forty yards from the back corner of the older wing of the school building. It was ten-thirty by my watch, and that was the time I had decided upon. By then, most of the lights ought to be out. I was correct. Most of them were, and those that remained were clearly coming from the instructors' apartments. One of those would be Marianne's. Before, I had just looked at the chateau with interest as the building which sheltered Marianne. Now, I had looked at it with the eye of him who would steal its secrets. Unaccustomed as I was to this manner of work, I thought it shouldn't be too difficult.
Choosing a moment when the moon was behind a cloud, I slipped from the cover of the trees and darted across the open snow field to the corner of the building. With beating heart-more from the tension than from the exertion-I crouched and looked above me. The corners of the building were ornamented with stone, and I had the idea that I could climb the stone to the second and the third floors. From there, I felt that I could probably work my way from balcony to balcony until I found the correct apartment. I would have liked to have had the advice of a good cat burglar right about then, but, as there were none about, I was forced to proceed on my own. One difficulty, of course, was the tracks which I would leave behind me wherever there was snow. In order that there not be a line of prints ending at the corner of the building, I deliberately walked along the wall until I came to a pathway. From there, I retraced my steps, using the same holes in the snow, and leaving what I hoped would be the impression of someone having wandered in an absent-minded sort of way around the building. Then I began to climb.
The stones were cold and rough and sometimes icy under my fingers. I had elected not to wear gloves since I felt I could climb more carefully without them, and soon my hands were stiff and chilled. I found the going easy enough for all that, and it was not very long before I was level with the first balcony. I had noted earlier that there seemed to be balconies along the faces of the larger windows, and I guessed that each of the living apartments would have such accommodations. I had also guessed, without any knowledge, that I could get from one to the other easily. Now was the moment. If I could not even get onto the first balcony from where I hung on the corner of the chateau, I would have to descend and figure out another plan. But it was all right. After some delicate rock work and a moment of panic when I reached blindly for something to hang on to, I swung my legs over the stone railing of the first balcony and paused for a breather and a bit of investigation. The snow on this particular balcony had all been trodden down and presented no danger as far as tracks were concerned. The light was not bright, and I imagined that I would probably be invisible if I didn't move very much. The apartment before me was still lit, but its interior was shielded by heavy curtains, and I couldn't see into it. It had occurred to me, of course, that I might not be able to see into the rooms, but I had decided to cross that bridge when I came to it. Now was the time to do some crossing.
As silently as I could, I examined everything that might provide a view, but I was unsuccessful. Whoever the occupant was, she was enamored of her privacy. The windows were actually French doors, but I could think of no way to open them silently and without causing a draft, even had it been possible to open them in the first place. I was stymied.
I decided finally to go on to the next balcony. I was somewhat disheartened though, for I felt my plan crumbling. I could envision myself stealing from place to place for the rest of the night, never finding any clues to Marianne's whereabouts, and, statistically at least, running an ever greater risk of being caught. The folly of the whole thing began to be clear to me. Certainly, Ms. Meyer had rebuffed me. Likewise, my phone calls had made no difference. The questions about Chateau Diableret I had asked around the inn where I had taken a room gave me no light. Just a school, they had said, which tried to have little to do with the village. Uppity, they thought this, but not particularly significant. And now here I was attempting to breach what I had come to think of as the Meyer bastion. What I was doing was illegal. I had no indication whatever that there was anything out of the ordinary about this place. In seeing me, The Meyer had seen a moocher, a bum, a pick-up artist, someone not for her girls to associate with. Her rejection of me was logical perhaps, if unjust. Though now, with this action, I was proving what she had seen in me to be true. I have no real explanation for why I continued to search that night. Nor have I any reason to offer for my actions at all. Something was different about me, that is all I can say.
Anyway, I did continue. I traced my way along the entire wing of the building without once finding a window through which I could see. Movement from one balcony to the next was reasonably easy, and, judging by the way the snow was trodden, I was not the first to make the journey. It would not be unlikely for the girls to have secret parties in each other's rooms and to travel by this means, and I began to fear that I might be standing on some balcony when its inhabitants suddenly popped out to climb up, down, or across. I had a vision then, like something out a bedroom farce movie, of all of us shifting from balcony to balcony without ever seeing each other throughout the long night.
Upon reaching the end of the wing, I discovered that there were no balconies on the back of the central portion. I was forced to climb the corner once more until I reached the third story. Here my luck was better. In the first two rooms I came to, I was able to see instructors at their ease. Perhaps, being higher off the ground, they cared less about their curtains. At any rate, I watched one woman in a bathrobe smoking a cigarette and painting her toenails what I thought of as an awful color of maroon, and another most fetchingly displayed in her underwear lying on her bed, twining her ankles in the air, and reading a book. As might be expected, I spent an extra minute or two on that particular balcony.
The third balcony was dark, but the fourth offered much of interest. The interior of this particular room was dimly lit by a table lamp which had had a red cloth draped over it. I saw a bed, a desk, many, many books, and a wall dominated by hanging plants of various kinds. There were paintings on the walls, of the kind one knows are the work of the room's inhabitant, and interesting knick-knacks were scattered here and there. It was an attractive room, and I was disappointed that the owner was not at home. I would have liked to see her. But then, as I was on the point of stealing across the balcony and trying the next, the door to the corridor was opened, and two women came in. It was not only their looks which caught my attention. There was an atmosphere of tension and almost of furtiveness between them, one scuttling in through the opened door while the other looked back along the corridor. Immediately the door had begun to open, I had dropped to one knee in the snow and hugged myself against the wan beside the window in the .hope that I would not be seen. I guess I was not, for the two women spent a moment in quiet conversation after their door was closed, but then one of them began walking right toward me! Her face was staring right at me, and it was only when she reached the window itself that I saw that her eyes were preoccupied. There was nothing I could do except hold my breath and pray that she would not look down and see me. I was only two feet from her, through the glass, when she turned and spoke to the second woman, who had sat upon the edge of the bed. "What can we do," was what I think she asked.
They were keeping their voices low. The woman on the bed-who, incidentally, was thirty-five-ish, well dressed in a suit, and dark of hair and complexion-answered the question with what appeared to be another question. The woman with her back to me-younger, blonde shading-to-honey coloring, with slim hips and slim arms-replied, "But Agnes won't allow it. You know she won't. You remember what happened when Marianne tried it."
There was such an air of plaintiveness in her voice that it sounded as though she were about to weep. Her stance, also, betrayed her tension. But Marianne! I had begun to fear that she didn't even exist. I strained my ears to hear more, but the blonde woman moved slowly away from the window then, and I lost the sound of her voice. The two continued to talk animatedly, though apparently with some fear of discovery, and I stayed where I was, my knee gradually growing wetter and colder, in anticipation of hearing more.
Several minutes had passed when the blonde again approached the window. This time, however, she unfastened the catch and pushed one side open a little way. I saw that she had an unlit cigarette in her mouth, and I assumed she was opening the window to spare the other's air while she smoked.
"We'll just have to stick it out," she murmured as she struck a match, her back once again to the glass.
"I suppose so," the dark woman replied.
"No one would believe it anyway, and I don't suppose it's so bad as we sometimes feel it is."
"Perhaps not."
There was silence for a time while the two looked at each other intensely. Then the blonde said "Damn" vehemently, and she stubbed out her cigarette.
"Yes," her friend replied.
"Damn, damn, damn, damn!"
"I know."
"Oh, Marsha!"
With small, tottering steps, the blonde walked toward her friend. She seemed suddenly to have become awkward and disjointed as she approached, and then stood over, the woman called Marsha. "Marsha," she repeated. "Oh, Marsha."
"Yes, darling."
Marsha placed her hands upon the blonde's hips, and she pulled her slack body close into an embrace. She placed her face against the blonde's belly, hugged her hips, and spread her knees so that the blonde's thighs were between her own. In her turn, the blonde hugged Marsha's head against her abdomen, bending over so that her small breasts were pressed tight into the embrace. She kissed Marsha's dark hair and whispered into it, "What will we do?"
"I don't know, Celeste. I just don't know."
She withdrew her head from the hug, and, looking up into Celeste's face, she smiled some what sadly and continued, "But I do know one thing."
There was implication in her statement, and Celeste smiled back through her tension. After holding the smile for a moment, she asked "What?"
The faces of the two were close together, and their intensity of staring was beginning to affect me. I grew embarrassed. There was something going on here that I had no business watching but I was unable to move away without attracting their attention. The silence had grown enormous.
"You can guess," Marsha whispered coyly.
"Never."
"I believe you can."
"I don't know what you mean." But Celeste was smiling slightly and all the disjointedness had focused now, and she seemed poised for some explosion.
As a reply, Marsha deliberately removed her right hand from Marsha's hip, dropped it between her knees, and raised it again all the way up between her thighs, lifting the hem of her skirt with her forearm. As her hand reached its goal, Celeste's head tipped back in a shuddering ecstasy, and her entire weight seemed to drape itself over that supporting hand at her hot center. Her eyes closed, and her nostrils widened, and her breath came out in one long, hissing sigh.
"Now you know what I mean, darling," Marsha crooned, and she dropped her face back against Celeste's belly. "Now you know what I mean."
The tableau held like that for a time. Celeste placed her hands lightly on her friend's head. Whatever was going on inside the skirt caused her hips to undulate ever so slowly. Her eyes remained shut, and the smile on her face betokened a gentle and fulfilling reverie.
I was torn. What was going on in there was their own business. That it was exciting me, I had no doubts, but taste and gentlemanliness dictated that I withdraw. On the other hand, I could always convince myself that any movement would alarm them and bring ruin to my cat burglaring schemes. In fact, they were so absorbed in that unctuous masturbation that I might well "have been able to walk right in on them without their realizing it, but I allowed myself the treat of watching on the grounds of safety to myself. This was wrong, I knew all along, but the wrongness of it somehow added to the thrill. And I could always pretend that they might say something useful about Marianne later on. I did take the opportunity of their involvement very slowly to rise off my knee and, creaking, to stand upright. The night, fortunately, was warm enough so that I could be happy where I was. And had it not been, the scene inside might well have warmed me by itself alone.
The tableau had broken now. Celeste's skirt was of the wrap-around variety, and Marsha was unfastening its clip at the blonde's waist. Their eyes were locked on one another once more, and I could almost feel the hammering hearts beneath their soft breast flesh as my own increased its speed. As Marsha's slow fingers drew her lover's skirt from her body, I found that my breath was short, and that I felt suddenly dizzy. My eyes glued themselves to the woman's pale skin as it was revealed to me. The skirt fell away from her slender ass first, showing long lines of rising leg, beautiful columns in the rosy light, which terminated in an attractively molded bottom, now hugged by a skimpy pair of pale panties. And now the skirt fell away from her in front as well and was carelessly draped on the edge of the bed. Both Marsha's and my own eyes were eager to examine the rest of the form before us. I felt as though my eyes followed the smooth trailing of Marsha's fingers and palms as they spread lightly across Celeste's gently swelling belly and then slipped downward along the front of her thighs to pass by her delicately encased vee. Her cunt hair must have been a slightly darker shade than the hair on her head, for I felt that I could see the outline of the darkness inside her whispy, light material.
Marsha continued to trail her fingers up and down the front of Celeste's thighs in a caress which grew maddening for the latter. I watched as she found herself unable to do other than roll her hips the more and pout her cunt forward toward her friend's face. She lifted her hands to her own breasts and began rolling them slightly beneath her sweater. Finally, unable to contain herself any longer, she whispered, "Come on: Oh. come on. Hurry, darling. I want you to do it to me. Please."
"Well ... "
"No, don't tease me. I'm excited enough, for God's sake. Make love to me. Come on."
Both women were grinning now, and Celeste pushed her friend back on the bed. Without pausing a moment, she tossed Marsha's skirt high, revealing handsome, womanly legs, and pressed her face between them on a high and wide cunt. It didn't surprise Celeste, but it surprised me, to see that Marsha was wearing nothing whatever under her skirt. Her dark cunt hair spread wide across the bottom of her belly, and her red slit, what I saw of it before Celeste's face was pressed to it, looked wet and deep. Celeste's face sank lusciously into that hairy groin, and Marsha moaned as she felt her lover's tongue and lips working deeply inside her.
Celeste was kneeling on the end of the bed, her slim loins in the air, her ass pointed in my direction, and I could see the side of her body sunk between Marsha's wide-spread and gleaming legs. I saw Celeste's pretty face dipping up and down in the juicy cunt of the other woman, and I realized that she must be sliding her tongue repeatedly from asshole to cm. I imagined the coated nostrils in which would be suffused the heavy musk of Marsha's cunt. I longed to press my own face into that hot and yearning cunt, to lick it and to suck it. I wanted to drink down her thick cunt water. I pressed my hand against the end of my slowly engorging cock and felt a wonderful sensation of lust and eagerness,
Celeste herself was growing vibrant in her excitement. I saw that her panties crotch had ridden up tight into the crack of her ass. Her white cheeks shone pink in the soft light, and the straining of her thigh muscles as she humped herself in the air was plain to see. As I watched, I saw her fingers cupping her hanging, hot cunt, and I realized that she must be beating herself off while she ate her lover's cunt. Her fingers churned in her wet, clinging folds, pressing her nylon strap deeper into her sex until it nearly disappeared from view, so deeply had it sunk. Now her ass was even more excitingly divided, the material pressing her crease apart and disappearing in the working, writhing center where her fingers rubbed and rubbed at her drenched lips.
As I pressed my cock once more with my fingers, I heard Marsha moaning and crying. Her head was lashing from side to side, her dark hair tangled.. "Oh, yes, darling. Darling, yes. I'm ... I'm ... Oh, darling!"
She must have come then, for Celeste slowly raised her shiny face from Marsha's crotch, her eyes dancing with joy, her tongue out and licking Marsha's cunt juice from her lips. Marsha herself lay quietly for a moment, but then she sat up suddenly and took Celeste in her arms. "Oh, I love you," she whispered. "I love you, Celeste."
But Celeste was too close to her own orgasm to respond well. Her fingers were still working on her cunt, only now, as I saw when she turned over and slumped back against Marsha's comfortable form, her hand was inside the top of her panties. She had pushed the band back out of her slit so that her fingers could sing their song upon her clit. Now Marsha lay her hand upon her friend's masturbating wrist and whispered love words in her ear as she held the wrist more tightly against Celeste's lower belly.
"Come now," I heard her urge Celeste. "Come now, my darling. Make it come. Make it come so very good. Make it a deep, deep one for me. Make it a good one, and I'll come too."
With that, she slipped her hand between their bodies, and I saw her eyes close and her lips twitch as she massaged her own cunt close to another orgasm.
Both women were now on the verge. I squeezed my cock again as I watched them top their climbs, shudder, jerk, and grow still. I realized that I might have masturbated as well, but the oddity of the situation continually impinged itself on me, and I was self-conscious.
Marsha and Celeste lay still for some time after their orgasms had ended, but presently they rose and undressed each other completely. Celeste's body was as I had envisioned it, blonde, slim, small, straight. Marsha, on the other hand, reminded me of Marianne. She was voluptuous, round, heavy, womanly: a Michelangelo. I couldn't stop myself from staring at her. Once she was naked to the extent of wearing only a bra, she was enough to make my cock stir once again and to make me forget my self-consciousness. Her ass was rounded and wide, her thighs were shapely, her belly descended to a wide, dark, hairy cunt which cried out to be fucked. And then Celeste reached behind her and unfastened her bra, and I was treated to the sight of substantial breasts and long, dark nipples. I didn't see them long, for Celeste's blonde head intervened then, and she never again released her sucking lips from Marsha's tits until the women were lying down once again. Then they reversed themselves and I watched Marsha's terrific ass descend over Celeste's eager face. She spread her knees wide in order to press her succulent cunt down on Celeste's mouth, and I very nearly came at the sight of her from that direction.
In fact, I did then allow my stiff cock to come out of my pants, and to be stroked in the cool night air. The show went on for a long time, and I came heavily, jetting my hot seed against the side of the building and dribbling it down into the snow.
After my orgasm, I grew aware of my surroundings again. Clouds had slid across the sky, and the first hint of snow was in the air. Marsha and Celeste seemed to have dozed off. At any rate, after their last event, they lay still with eyes closed, Marsha's handsome hand cupping Celeste's small, pink-tipped breast. As I began to move away, Celeste sleepily reached for a comforter to draw across their perspiring bodies. The light clicked out as I slipped across to another balcony.
By this time, I reckoned, it must be after midnight. The moon was gone, but I estimated, it at about one in the morning. Snow slid down from the dark sky increasingly thickly. There was only one more light on in the row of balconies I was climbing along, and that was in the last room next to the corner. I decided to investigate there and then climb down again before I got caught in the snow storm. The snow muffled any small noises I may have made as I climbed. I had grown stiff and cold from standing so long on one balcony, and the exertion of climbing was a relief to my muscles.
The last balcony showed an empty room. Again, it was a comfortable-looking room. It had a fireplace in which the embers of a fire were still glowing. The color was blue and cream, the walls were decorated with black-and-white photographs of rocky headlands, ships, harbors, and mountain scenery. Over the head of the bed hung an embroidered cloth, of many colors; done in a stylish design of animals and flower shapes. There was a blue and black and white peasant-type rug on the floor. An armchair, a rocking chair, an antique desk and desk chair, bed tables beside the wide, blue-covered bed: it was all tasteful and warming. Books covered one wall, and there were papers spread about here and there. A French edition of Proust lay open on the floor beside the armchair. The whole was so inviting that I longed for my comfortable bed back in the inn. I swung one leg over the edge and began groping for the stone ornamentation down which I was proposing to climb, but at that moment Marianne walked into the room.
My sensation upon seeing her there, after such exertion to find her, was enough almost to make me slip from my precarious perch. I hauled myself back onto the balcony quickly. She looked as beautiful as ever. Her hair framed her face as I remembered it doing. Her body was unbelievable: any lingering thoughts of Marsha were banished from my brain forever. She wore only a red-and white checked bathrobe, which she had been holding closed around herself with one hand. After she had closed the door, she picked a hairbrush from the top of the bureau and, looking at herself in the mirror, began to brush back her dark hair. Her motion was vigorous, and the robe, no longer secured, hung open. Reflected in the mirror, I was able to watch her from the neck to the tops of her thighs. Her great, dark cunt bush stared at me. Her breasts, so large and firm, jutted behind the material, sometimes seen, sometimes not. Her long, rolling belly, with its dark navel and its few stray hairs, was white and soft-looking. I longed to bury my face in her opulent flesh, and my aching cock began to stir erratically at the memory of how I had jetted hot streamers of come all over her there.
Watching her at her toilet, I was in an agony of suspense. I wanted to throw myself at her, but at the same time a great shyness came over me. Suppose I really had simply been a one-night stand with her. Suppose she had disliked me. Suppose there was someone else for her. What would I do if she had me thrown out? She would can the help of other women, and they would scorn me, and I would be justly humiliated. This sneaking around-like-a-thief-in-the-night business had its difficulties, I began to realize.
But the problem was taken out of my hands. Swiftly, before I had a chance to do anything about it, she left her hair brushing before the mirror and strode to the window. The catch was released and the window thrown open to the snowy night air, and there I stood on the balcony before her. For an instant, she was so startled that she forgot to cover her nakedness with the folds of her robe. The wash of light from inside was diffuse here on the edge of the night, but her great, dark pelt at the center of her being held my gaze.
As she turned to flee, I managed to stammer, "It's me, Alex."
She turned, hesitantly. "What?"
"It's me, Marianne. Alex. From the train."
She took a step closer to me. I realized that I was half covered with snow, and that she probably couldn't see me well. I shook some of the snow off my cap and shoulders and moved a step or two toward her.
Then she recognized me, and she spoke confusedly, "But what are you ... I thought ... "
"You thought I was something else, perhaps, and I'm sorry," I soothed her, as I stepped confidently toward the window. "I didn't mean to startle you. I've been trying to get through to you for what seems like days."
"I don't understand. I thought you were in Geneva."
"I was, but I couldn't get you out of my mind, and I decided I had to come along here and see how you were doing. Under the circumstances, I'm glad I did."
"What circumstances?"
"May I come in? It's freezing out here."
"Of course, I'm sorry."
I stepped into the warm room, shuffled most of the snow off my boots and body as I did so, and stood steaming in one corner of the fireplace, Composedly, Marianne sat in the armchair, collected her robe demurely around herself, and looked at me with expectation. "What circumstances?" she repeated.
"Judging from the fact that you didn't know I was here, I see that things are as absurd here as I feared. What kind of a place is this anyway?"
"What do you mean?" she asked, but she looked away, and her evasion told me that she knew something of what I was referring to.
"I have spent eight or ten hours trying to get through to you. I was here this afternoon-"
"You were here?"
"I was here, and that Meyer woman threw me out. What an icy lady she is, to be sure."
"Rather."
"And then I called all afternoon and all evening. I even hung around the gates hoping that you might come in or out, or that I might see someone who would get a message to you. I was pretty certain that The Meyer hadn't delivered my message. She didn't even trouble to get my name."
"She didn't."
"I thought not."
There was a pause. The heat of the embers was beginning to seep through the chill of my muscles, and I felt better. On the other hand, I realized that I was talking to this woman whom I had known so short a time with the familiarity and the assumption of agreement that I would employ with a long-time friend. How did I know what sort of relationship she had with The Meyer I What toes had I been treading on as I so glibly put myself in command of the situation? Judging by the standards of my former way of presenting myself to the world and to women, I might have directed a 'Who do you think you are?' to myself. But there was no time for that. Even in the event-the likely event, when you think about it-that my feelings for Marianne had matured over the last two days at a different rate from her feelings about me, I was not to be gainsaid. I bulled ahead, emotionally speaking, and let the devil take the hindmost.
"But why were you on the balcony?"
"I climbed up."
"How did you know which was mine?"
"I didn't. I checked them all out."
"All of them!" The humor and the absurdity of the situation was penetrating to her, and she was smiling at me.
"All."
"Jesus." She looked away, chuckling and shaking her head.
"Listen, Marianne, what kind of a place is this?"
"Just a school," but she avoided my eye.
"Some school. I've never heard of a place where I couldn't get a civil message through to a teacher."
"Well, it has its characteristics ... "
"I guess the hell."
Again there was silence. I grew aware that it must be late, and that I was probably keeping her from her sleep. I think it was only in these gradual steps that I began to realize what a ridiculous thing it was that I had done. Here I was, having climbed all over the outside of this building, in the middle of the night, in an unknown town in Switzerland, talking with a woman I had slept with on a train three days previously and had hardly had a decent word with since, who was sitting most fetchingly swathed in a thin robe before me, in a room belonging to some kind of a school or a prison or whatever out of which I had already been forcibly and painfully ejected. What, in the name of all that is wonderful, was I doing there?
Marianne, intuitive as she is, was right with me in my thinking. "What are you, doing here?" she asked.
When she had voiced the question, her eyes had been on the fire, but now she looked up at me with a penetration I found somewhat odd. There was a force behind the question which I didn't understand.
"I, well, I came to see how you were, don't you know."
"Yes." Her eyes shifted away.
"Marianne?"
"What is it?"
"What's wrong?"
"You just came to see me, is that it?" There was such vehemence in her voice that I didn't quite know how to take it.
"Um, well, and to help in any way I could ... "
"You just wanted to fuck me some more, isn't that it?"
"Oh, come now."
"Isn't it?"
"Marianne, I-"
"Admit it. You just want to fuck me."
"No. I like you, damn it. This isn't fair."
"Oh? Is that right? Well, listen here, buster, there are plenty of men around who aren't interested in anything except my cunt, and you're just like all the rest as far as I can see." She had stood up, and she was pacing back and forth, her body rigid with anger, her nostrils white.
"But I-"
She whirled on me when I dared to speak.
"Don't give me any of that shit, friend! I've had it up to here with men! Men! Ha. Some god damned men." Her anger was such that she had forgotten for the moment to hold her robe together, and her body inside it thrust its way into view. In addition to this, her face, when angry, was livid and full of light. She was, as is the conventional statement, beautiful.
"Look, Mari-"
"No, you look! I'm sick to death of men who can't get their minds off cunt. Do you understand me?"
"I understand."
"If you want cunt, I'll give you cunt." And with that, she grabbed the skirts of her robe and pulled it up and away to bare her legs and her hairy sex to my view. She was a magnificent sight, eyes flashing, breasts heaving inside their containment, thighs quivering, her big crotch with its deep red divide open and wet. I felt myself respond: and for the first time that night, it was with a genuine, and not a made-up, lust.
"See?" she jeered.
"No. Come on now. Put that away. Don't demean yourself."
"Demean myself! Demean myself, for God's sake. You haven't any idea about demeaning myself."
"Calm down, Marianne!"
"Calm down. He says 'Calm down." Goddamnit, Alex, how can I be calm? It's the middle of the bloody night, I find you standing on my balcony out of no where like a jack-in-the-box or something, and you tell me to be calm. You know what I've been thinking about for the last three days? You know? I've been thinking about your body, and I've been mourning you, and I've been wishing to god damned hell I could get away from this fucking school so that I could find you somewhere. And if you've just come for my cunt, buster, you'll get such a cunt as you'll never forget. But then I'll probably kill you."
This tirade had carried her around the room twice-all this intense bitterness was carried on sotto voce-and she now collapsed on the bed. "Oh, shit, Alex," she whispered, and then she began to cry.
I had been going through all sorts of things during her raving. At first, I was ashamed of myself, chagrinned that I should have come. Obviously, she didn't want me. It occurred to me even that she might be a lesbian, like those other two, and that the experiment on the train had been just that, an experiment. I hadn't actually fucked her, when you came to think about it. But then when she said that about my body ... well, egotist that I am, I realized right away that all problems were over. Everything would be all right, I felt, and, now that she was weeping quietly, I grew terribly tender and protective. I walked over to the bed and sat down beside her. I put an arm around her shoulders and began gently kissing her hot and blotchy face. There is something about women in extremity-in tears, in anger, when vomiting, in any sort of overwhelming physical activity-which is exciting to the animalian male. It is a lust for the totally possessed woman that we respond to, the completely unthinking, completely passionate woman. I had to fight hard to hold back laughter at the sudden swelling of my desire for this woman. I had been right after all! I had followed the right one. I was going to have her, no matter what else had to change, forever. This was another point of my escape. Now, however, I was no longer working in the dark. Whatever happened after this time, I knew, deep within myself, that I was going to have Marianne to myself for all time, and that I would do anything to make that possible. She stood for my freedom and my future, but more than that, she was the vindication of the changes that I wanted to make. Without her I was powerless to stop being Arthur Alexander. With her, the world was mine. Take your mind into the mind of the leading dog in a race after some bitch in heat. He knows he has her. He knows that there isn't another dog in the country big enough and tough enough to take her away from him. His exultation was my own, but on top of his, I. was adding lifetime ideals, the gentlemanliness and courtesy without which I would shrink to nothing in my own eyes. My conquest of Marianne (at least in my own mind) was .more subtle than the dog's, for I was conquering her with the power of my willingness to do all things for her. This was not a sexual thing alone, or, to be more accurate, not a genital thing alone. It was all sex, of course, but it was not all genital sex. Much of it was man-woman sex in the classic manner, the acknowledgement of each other's fullness, and the fulfilling of each other's destiny. Such a philosophy, of course, is anathema in the chic, feminist society around Boston. We two sexes are different nations, is the cry, different tribes, and we have no real need of each other. We use each other for convenience alone, that is all. The castrated, powerless, subservient, willing males-one of whom I used to be-retreat to their bars for a bit of disgruntled male companionship, and they exert their ancient force with bouts of arm wrestling. But, other than that, there is nothing for them to do. No one wants a windmill-tilter, no one has any dragons to slay.
But Marianne struggled under the weight of dragons. She was trapped, and she cried out for a hero, and she didn't even know that she was crying out. Nor did she know that she had found someone who was willing to try his hand at sword-wielding. Whatever it was, I was delighted to gallumph out onto battle with it. Of course, she couldn't know that. Of course, she just knew me as a vacationing accountant, that least heroic of all unheroic things. But I would show her, I swore to myself, as her weeping ceased and she began to worry once again about her appearance, I would show her.
And so we made love.