Desire Page 8

  And in real grief, tormented by her own double consciousness and reaction, she began to weep. He took no notice, or did not even know. The storm of weeping swelled and shook her, and shook him.

  “Ay!” he said. “It was no good that time. You wasn’t there.” – So he knew! Her sobs became violent.

  “But what’s amiss?” he said. “It’s once in a while that way.”

  “I... I can’t love you,” she sobbed, suddenly feeling her heart breaking.

  “Canna ter? Well, dunna fret! There’s no law says as tha’s got to. Ta’e it for what it is.”

  He still lay with his hand on her breast. But she had drawn both her hands from him.

  His words were small comfort. She sobbed aloud.

  “Nay, nay!” he said. “Ta’e the thick wi’ th’ thin. This wor a bit o’ thin for once.”

  She wept bitterly, sobbing. “But I want to love you, and I can’t. It only seems horrid.”

  He laughed a little, half bitter, half amused.

  “It isna horrid,” he said, “even if tha thinks it is. An’ tha canna ma’e it horrid. Dunna fret thysen about lovin’ me. Tha’lt niver force thysen to ’t. There’s sure to be a bad nut in a basketful. Tha mun ta’e th’ rough wi’ th’ smooth.”

  He took his hand away from her breast, not touching her. And now she was untouched she took an almost perverse satisfaction in it. She hated the dialect: the thee and the tha and the thysen. He could get up if he liked, and stand there, above her, buttoning down those absurd corduroy breeches, straight in front of her. After all, Michaelis had had the decency to turn away. This man was so assured in himself he didn’t know what a clown other people found him, a half-bred fellow.

  Yet, as he was drawing away, to rise silently and leave her, she clung to him in terror.

  “Don’t! Don’t go! Don’t leave me! Don’t be cross with me! Hold me! Hold me fast!” she whispered in blind frenzy, not even knowing what she said, and clinging to him with uncanny force. It was from herself she wanted to be saved, from her own inward anger and resistance. Yet how powerful was that inward resistance that possessed her!

  He took her in his arms again and drew her to him, and suddenly she became small in his arms, small and nestling. It was gone, the resistance was gone, and she began to melt in a marvellous peace. And as she melted small and wonderful in his arms, she became infinitely desirable to him, all his blood-vessels seemed to scald with intense yet tender desire, for her, for her softness, for the penetrating beauty of her in his arms, passing into his blood. And softly, with that marvellous swoon-like caress of his hand in pure soft desire, softly he stroked the silky slope of her loins, down, down between her soft warm buttocks, coming nearer and nearer to the very quick of her. And she felt him like a flame of desire, yet tender, and she felt herself melting in the flame. She let herself go. She felt his penis risen against her with silent amazing force and assertion and she let herself go to him. She yielded with a quiver that was like death, she went all open to him. And oh, if he were not tender to her now, how cruel, for she was all open to him and helpless!

  She quivered again at the potent inexorable entry inside her, so strange and terrible. It might come with the thrust of a sword in her softly-opened body, and that would be death. She clung in a sudden anguish of terror. But it came with a strange slow thrust of peace, the dark thrust of peace and a ponderous, primordial tenderness, such as made the world in the beginning. And her terror subsided in her breast, her breast dared to be gone in peace, she held nothing. She dared to let go everything, all herself and be gone in the flood.

  And it seemed she was like the sea, nothing but dark waves rising and heaving, heaving with a great swell, so that slowly her whole darkness was in motion, and she was Ocean rolling its dark, dumb mass. Oh, and far down inside her the deeps parted and rolled asunder, in long, fair-travelling billows, and ever, at the quick of her, the depths parted and rolled asunder, from the centre of soft plunging, as the plunger went deeper and deeper, touching lower, and she was deeper and deeper and deeper disclosed, the heavier the billows of her rolled away to some shore, uncovering her, and closer and closer plunged the palpable unknown, and further and further rolled the waves of herself away from herself leaving her, till suddenly, in a soft, shuddering convulsion, the quick of all her plasm was touched, she knew herself touched, the consummation was upon her, and she was gone. She was gone, she was not, and she was born: a woman.

  Ah, too lovely, too lovely! In the ebbing she realized all the loveliness. Now all her body clung with tender love to the unknown man, and blindly to the wilting penis, as it so tenderly, frailly, unknowingly withdrew, after the fierce thrust of its potency. As it drew out and left her body, the secret, sensitive thing, she gave an unconscious cry of pure loss, and she tried to put it back. It had been so perfect! And she loved it so!

  And only now she became aware of the small, bud-like reticence and tenderness of the penis, and a little cry of wonder and poignancy escaped her again, her woman’s heart crying out over the tender frailty of that which had been the power.

  “It was so lovely!” she moaned. “It was so lovely!” But he said nothing, only softly kissed her, lying still above her. And she moaned with a sort of bliss, as a sacrifice, and a newborn thing.

  And now in her heart the queer wonder of him was awakened.

  A man! The strange potency of manhood upon her! Her hands strayed over him, still a little afraid. Afraid of that strange, hostile, slightly repulsive thing that he had been to her, a man. And now she touched him, and it was the sons of god with the daughters of men. How beautiful he felt, how pure in tissue! How lovely, how lovely, strong, and yet pure and delicate, such stillness of the sensitive body! Such utter stillness of potency and delicate flesh. How beautiful! How beautiful! Her hands came timorously down his back, to the soft, smallish globes of the buttocks. Beauty! What beauty! a sudden little flame of new awareness went through her. How was it possible, this beauty here, where she had previously only been repelled? The unspeakable beauty to the touch of the warm, living buttocks! The life within life, the sheer warm, potent loveliness. And the strange weight of the balls between his legs! What a mystery! What a strange heavy weight of mystery, that could lie soft and heavy in one’s hand! The roots, root of all that is lovely, the primeval root of all full beauty.

  She clung to him, with a hiss of wonder that was almost awe, terror. He held her close, but he said nothing. He would never say anything. She crept nearer to him, nearer, only to be near to the sensual wonder of him. And out of his utter, incomprehensible stillness, she felt again the slow momentous, surging rise of the phallus again, the other power. And her heart melted out with a kind of awe.

  And this time his being within her was all soft and iridescent, purely soft and iridescent, such as no consciousness could seize. Her whole self quivered unconscious and alive, like plasm. She could not know what it was. She could not remember what it had been. Only that it had been more lovely than anything ever could be. Only that. And afterwards she was utterly still, utterly unknowing, she was not aware for how long. And he was still with her, in an unfathomable silence along with her. And of this, they would never speak.

  When awareness of the outside began to come back, she clung to his breast, murmuring “My love! My love!” And he held her silently. And she curled on his breast, perfect.

  But his silence was fathomless. His hands held her like flowers, so still and strange. “Where are you?” she whispered to him.

  “Where are you? Speak to me! Say something to me!”

  He kissed her softly, murmuring: “Ay, my lass!”

  But she did not know what he meant, she did not know where he was. In his silence he seemed lost to her.

  “You love me, don’t you?” she murmured.

  “Ay, tha knows!” he said.

  “But tell me!” she pleaded.

  “Ay! Ay! ’asn’t ter felt it?” he said dimly, but softly and surely. And she clung close to him
, closer. He was so much more peaceful in love than she was, and she wanted him to reassure her.

  “You do love me!” she whispered, assertive. And his hands stroked her softly, as if she were a flower, without the quiver of desire, but with delicate nearness. And still there haunted her a restless necessity to get a grip on love.

  “Say you’ll always love me!” she pleaded.

  “Ay!” he said, abstractedly. And she felt her questions driving him away from her.

  “Mustn’t we get up?” he said at last.

  “No!” she said.

  But she could feel his consciousness straying, listening to the noises outside.

  “It’ll be nearly dark,” he said. And she heard the pressure of circumstances in his voice. She kissed him, with a woman’s grief at yielding up her hour.

  He rose, and turned up the lantern, then began to pull on his clothes, quickly disappearing inside them. Then he stood there, above her, fastening his breeches and looking down at her with dark, wide-eyes, his face a little flushed and his hair ruffled, curiously warm and still and beautiful in the dim light of the lantern, so beautiful, she would never tell him how beautiful. It made her want to cling fast to him, to hold him, for there was a warm, half-sleepy remoteness in his beauty that made her want to cry out and clutch him, to have him. She would never have him. So she lay on the blanket with curved, soft naked haunches, and he had no idea what she was thinking, but to him too she was beautiful, the soft, marvellous thing he could go into, beyond everything.

  “I love thee that I can go into thee,” he said.

  “Do you like me?” she said, her heart beating.

  “It heals it all up, that I can go into thee. I love thee that tha opened to me. I love thee that I came into thee like that.”

  He bent down and kissed her soft flank, rubbed his cheek against it, then covered it up.

  “And will you never leave me?” she said.

  “Dunna ask them things,” he said.

  “But you do believe I love you?” she said.

  “Tha loved me just now, wider than iver tha thout tha would. But who knows what’ll ’appen, once tha starts thinkin’ about it!”

  “No, don’t say those things! – And you don’t really think that I wanted to make use of you, do you?”

  “How?”

  “To have a child – ?”

  “Now anybody can ’ave any childt i’ th’ world,” he said, as he sat down fastening on his leggings.

  “Ah no!” she cried. “You don’t mean it?”

  “Eh well!” he said, looking at her under his brows. “This wor t’ best.”

  She lay still. He softly opened the door. The sky was dark blue, with crystalline, turquoise rim. He went out, to shut up the hens, speaking softly to his dog. And she lay and wondered at the wonder of life, and of being.

  When he came back she was still lying there, glowing like a gipsy. He sat on the stool by her.

  “Tha mun come one naight ter th’ cottage, afore tha goos; sholl ter?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows as he looked at her, his hands dangling between his knees.

  “Sholl ter?” she echoed, teasing.

  He smiled. “Ay, sholl ter?” he repeated.

  “Ay!” she said, imitating the dialect sound.

  “Yi!” he said.

  “Yi!” she repeated.

  “An’ slaip wi’ me,” he said. “It needs that. When sholt come?”

  “When sholl I?” she said.

  “Nay,” he said, “tha canna do’t. When sholt come then?”

  “’Appen Sunday,” she said.

  “’Appen a’ Sunday! Ay!”

  He laughed at her quickly.

  “Nay, tha canna,” he protested.

  “Why canna I?” she said.

  From THE MAGUS

  John Fowles

  John Fowles was born in Bedford. After graduating from Oxford University, where he studied French, he went on to teach in France, and then for several years on a Greek island, the setting for his novel The Magus (1965). The Magus is considered to be a masterpiece of contemporary literature. It is about a young Englishman, Nicholas Urfe, who accepts a teaching position on a Greek island, where his friendship with the mysterious and reclusive owner of a magnificent estate on the island leads him into a nightmare. As reality and fantasy are deliberately blurred by staged deaths, erotic encounters, and terrifying violence, Urfe becomes a desperate man fighting for his sanity and his life.

  As we approached the colonnade, a barelegged figure in a brick-red shirt stood from the steps in the sun where she had been sitting.

  “I nearly started without you. I’m hungry.”

  The shirt was unbuttoned, and underneath I could see a dark blue bikini. The word, like the fashion, was very new then: in fact it was the first bikini I had ever seen outside a newspaper photograph and it gave me something of a shock... the bare navel, the slender legs, brown-gold skin, a pair of amusedly questioning eyes. I caught Julie wrinkling her nose at this young Mediterranean goddess, who only widened her smile. As we followed her to the table set back in the shade beneath the arches, I remembered the story of Three Hearts... but banned the thought before it grew. June went to the corner of the colonnade and called for Maria, then turned to her sister.

  “She’s been trying to tell me something about the yacht. I couldn’t work it out.”

  We sat, and Maria appeared. She spoke to Julie. I followed well enough. The yacht was arriving at five, to take the girls away. Hermes was coming to take Maria herself back to the village for a night. She had to see the dentist there. The “young gentleman” must return to the school, as the house would be locked up. I heard Julie ask where the yacht was going. Then xero, despoina. I don’t know, miss. She repeated, as if that was the nub of her message. At five o’clock? Then she bobbed in her usual way, and disappeared back to her cottage.

  Julie translated for June’s benefit.

  I said, “This wasn’t planned?”

  “I thought we were staying here.” She looked doubtfully at her sister, who in turn eyed me, then drily queried Julie back.

  “Do we trust him? Does he trust us?”

  “Yes.”

  June gave me a little grin. “Then welcome, Pip.”

  I looked to Julie for help. She murmured, “I thought you claimed to have read English at Oxford.”

  There was suddenly a shadow of reawakened suspicion between us. Then I woke up, and took a breath. “All these literary references.” I smiled. “Miss Havisham rides again?”

  “And Estella.”

  I looked from one to the other. “You’re not serious?”

  “Just our little joke.”

  Julie regarded her sister. “Your little joke.”

  June spoke to me. “Which I’ve tried to get Maurice to share. With total unsuccess.” She leant her elbows on the table. “But come on. Tell me what great conclusions you’ve reached.”

  “Nicholas has told me something extraordinary.”

  I was given one more chance to test a reaction; and found myself once more convinced, though June seemed more outraged than amused by the new evidence of the old man’s duplicity. As we went over it all again, I discovered (and might have already deduced from their names) that in terms of delivery June was the older twin. She also seemed it in other ways. I detected a protectiveness in her towards Julie, which sprang from a more open personality, greater experience of men. There was a shadow of reality in the casting of the masque: a more normal and a less normal sister, or one more assertive, the other more fragile. I sat between them, facing the sea, keeping an eye open for the hidden watcher – though he stayed hidden, if he was still spying on us. The girls started questioning me, my own background and past.

  So we talked about Nicholas: his family, his ambitions, his failings. The third person is apt, because I presented a sort of fictional self to them, a victim of circumstances, a mixture of attractive raffishness and essential inner decency. Alison came up again briefly.
I put the main blame there on hazard, on fate, on elective affinity, one’s knowing one sought more; and let them feel, copying Julie, that I didn’t want to talk in detail about all that. It was over and done with, pale and sour beside the present.

  Something about that long lunch, the enjoyable food and the retsina, all the debating and speculating, the questions they asked, the being between the two of them, the dressed and the near-naked, feeling closer to them both all the time – we got on to their father, their having lived their childhood in the shadow of a boys’ boarding-school, then their mother, they kept capping each other’s affectionate stories about her silliness... it was like entering a deliciously warm room after a long, cold journey; an erotically warm room, as well. Towards the end of the meal June slipped out of her shirt. In return Julie slipped out a sisterly tongue, which was met by an impervious little smile. I began to have trouble keeping my eyes off that body. The bikini top barely covered the breasts; and the bottom half was tied at the hips by white laces that let the skin show through. I knew I was being visually teased a little, innocently flirted with... some small revenge, perhaps, on June’s part for having been kept so long in the wings. If human beings could purr, I should have done so then.

  About half past two we decided to go out of Bourani and down to Moutsa to swim – partly to see whether we should be allowed to. If Joe blocked our way, I promised not to challenge him. The girls seemed to share my own view of his physical strength. So we strolled down the track, expecting to be stopped, as June had been once. But there was no one there; only the pines, the heat, the racket of the cicadas. We installed ourselves halfway down the beach, near the little chapel in the trees. I spread two rugs where the needled earth ran into the shingle. Julie, who had disappeared for a minute before we left the house, peeled off her schoolgirl stockings, then pulled her dress over her head. She was wearing a white one-piece bare-backed costume underneath, and she managed to look shyly ashamed at the weakness of her own tan.