He had breakfast, watched Donahue, went to work. Paid some bills, replied to some correspondence, labored over some revisions on an essay requested by an academic quarterly. He made another pot of coffee, and while it was brewing he went into the bedroom to get something, and there was the bear.
“Hang in there,” he said.
He found he was dating less.
This was not strictly true. He no less frequently took a companion to a screening, but more and more of these companions tended to be platonic. Former lovers with whom he’d remained friendly. Women to whom he was not attracted physically. Male friends, colleagues.
He wondered if he was losing interest in sex. This didn’t seem to be the case. When he was with a woman, his lovemaking was as ardent as ever. Of course, he never spent the night, and he had ceased to bring women back to his own apartment, but it seemed to him that he took as much pleasure as ever in the physical embrace. He didn’t seek it as often, wasn’t as obsessed with it, but couldn’t that just represent the belated onset of maturity? If he was at last placing sex in its proper proportion, surely that was not cause for alarm, was it?
In February, another film festival.
This one was in Burkina Faso. He received the invitation in early December. He was to be a judge, and would receive a decent honorarium and all expenses, including first-class travel on Air Afrique. This last gave him his first clue as to where Burkina Faso was. He had never previously heard of it, but now guessed it was in Africa.
A phone call unearthed more information. Burkina Faso had earlier been Upper Volta. Its postage stamps, of which his childhood collection had held a handful, bore the name Haute-Volta; the place had been a French colony, and French remained the prevailing language, along with various tribal dialects. The country was in West Africa, north of the Equator but south of the Sahel. The annual film festival, of which this year’s would be the third, had not yet established itself as terribly important cinematically, but the Burkina Fasians (or whatever you called them) had already proved to be extremely gracious hosts, and the climate in February was ever more hospitable than New York’s. “Marisa went last year,” a friend told him, “and she hasn’t left off talking about it yet. Not to be missed. Emphatically not to be missed.”
But how to bring the bear?
He obtained a visa, he got a shot for yellow fever (providing ten years of immunity; he could go to no end of horrid places before the shot need be renewed) and began taking chloroquine as a malaria preventative. He went to Banana Republic and bought clothing he was assured would be appropriate. He made a couple of phone calls and landed a sweet assignment, thirty-five hundred words plus photos for an airline in-flight magazine. The airline in question didn’t fly to Burkina Faso, or anywhere near it, but they wanted the story all the same.
But he couldn’t take the bear. He had visions of uniformed Africans going through his luggage, holding the bear aloft and jabbering, demanding to know what it was and why he was bringing it in. He saw himself, flushing crimson, surrounded by other festival-goers, all either staring at him or pointedly not staring at him. He could imagine Cary Grant, say, or Michael Caine, playing a scene like that and coming out of it rather well. He could not envision himself coming out of it well at all.
Nor did he have room for a stuffed animal that measured twenty-seven inches end to end. He intended to make do with carry-on luggage, not much wanting to entrust his possessions to the care of Air Afrique, and if he took the bear he would have to check a bag. If they did not lose it in the first leg of the flight, from New York to Dakar, surely it would vanish somewhere between Dakar and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s unpronounceable capital.
He went to a doctor and secured a prescription for Seconal. He flew to Dakar, and on to Ouagadougou. The bear stayed at home.
The customs check upon arrival was cursory at best. He was given VIP treatment, escorted through customs by a giant of a woman who so intimidated the functionaries that he was not even called upon to open his bag. He could have brought the bear, he could have brought a couple of Uzis and a grenade launcher, and no one would have been the wiser.
The Seconal, the bear substitute, was a total loss. His only prior experience with sleeping pills was when he was given one the night before an appendectomy. The damned pill had kept him up all night, and he learned later that this was known as a paradoxical effect, and that it happened with some people. It still happened years later, he discovered. He supposed it might be possible to override the paradoxical effect by increasing the dosage, but the Burkina Fasians were liberal suppliers of wine and stronger drinks, and the local beer was better than he would ever have guessed it might be, and he knew about the synergy of alcohol and barbiturates. Enough film stars had been done in by the combination; there was no need for a reviewer to join their company.
He might not have slept anyway, he told himself, even with the bear. There were two distractions, a romance with a Polish actress who spoke no more English than he spoke Polish (“The Polish starlet,” he would tell friends back home. “Advancing her career by sleeping with a writer.”) and a case of dysentery, evidently endemic in Burkina Faso, that was enough to wake a bear from hibernation.
“They didn’t paw through my bag at Ooogabooga,” he told the bear upon his return, “but they sure did a number at JFK. I don’t know what they think anybody could bring back from Burkina Faso. There’s nothing there. I bought a couple of strands of trading beads and a mask that should look good on the wall, if I can find the right spot for it. But just picture that clown at Customs yanking you out of the suitcase!”
They might have cut the bear open. They did things like that, and he supposed they had to. People smuggled things all the time, drugs and diamonds and state secrets and God knew what else. A hardened smuggler would hardly forbear (forbear!) to use a doll or a stuffed animal to conceal contraband. And a bear that had been cut open and probed could, he supposed, be stitched back together, and be none the worse for wear.
Still, something within him recoiled at the thought.
One night he dreamed about the bear.
He rarely dreamed, and what dreams he had were fragmentary and hazy. This one, though, was linear, and remarkably detailed. It played on his mind’s retina like a movie on a screen. In fact dreaming it was not unlike watching a movie, one in which he was also a participant.
The story line fell somewhere between Pygmalion and “The Frog Prince.” The bear, he was given to understand, was enchanted, under a spell. If the bear could win the unconditional love of a human being it would cast off its ursine form and emerge as the ideal partner of the person who loved it. And so he gave his heart to the bear, and fell asleep clutching it, and woke up with his arms around the woman of his, well, dreams.
Then he woke up in fact, and it was a bear he was clutching so desperately. Thank God, he thought.
Because it had been a nightmare. Because he didn’t want the bear to transform itself into anything, not even the woman of his dreams.
He rose, made the bed, tucked the bear in. And chucked the bear under its chin.
“Don’t ever change,” he told it.
The woman was exotic. She’d been born in Ceylon, her mother a Sinhalese, her father an Englishman. She had grown up in London, went to college in California, and had lately moved to New York. She had high cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes, a sinuous figure, and a general appearance that could have been described as Nonspecific Ethnic. Whatever restaurant Paul took her to, she looked as though she belonged there. Her name was Sindra.
They met at a lecture at NYU, where he talked about Hitchcock’s use of comic relief and where she asked the only really provocative question. Afterward, he invited her to a screening. They had four dates, and he found that her enthusiasm for film matched his own. So, more often than not, did her taste and her opinions.
Four times at the evening’s end she went home alone in a taxi. At first he was just as glad, but by the fourth time his desire for her
was stronger than his inclination to end the evening alone. He found himself leaning in the window of her cab, asking her if she wouldn’t like a little company.
“Oh, I would,” she assured him. “But not tonight, Paul.”
Not tonight, darling, I’ve got a . . . what? A headache, a husband? What?
He called her the next morning, asked her out to yet another screening two days hence. The movie first, then a Togolese restaurant. The food was succulent, and fiery hot. “I guess there’s a famine in Togo,” he told her. “I hadn’t heard about it.”
“It’s hard to keep up. This food’s delicious.”
“It is, isn’t it?” His hand covered hers. “I’m having a wonderful time. I don’t want the night to end.”
“Neither do I.”
“Shall I come up to your place?”
“It would be so much nicer to go to yours.”
They cabbed to Bank Street. The bear, of course, was in the bed. He settled Sindra with a drink and went to stow the bear in the closet, but Sindra tagged after him. “Oh, a teddy bear!” she cried, before he could think what to do.
“My daughter’s,” he said.
“I didn’t even know you had a daughter. How old is she?”
“Seven.”
“I thought you’d been divorced longer than that.”
“What did I say, seven? I meant eleven.”
“What’s her name?”
“Doesn’t have one.”
“Your daughter doesn’t have a name?”
“I thought you meant the bear. My daughter’s name is uh Paula.”
“Apolla? The feminine of Apollo?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s an unusual name. I like it. Was it your idea or your wife’s?”
Christ! “Mine.”
“And the bear doesn’t have a name?”
“Not yet,” he said. “I just bought it for her recently, and she sleeps with it when she stays over. I sleep in the living room.”
“Yes, I should think so. Do you have any pictures?”
“Of the bear? I’m sorry, of course you meant of my daughter.”
“Quite,” she said. “I already know what the bear looks like.”
“Right.”
“Do you?”
“Shit.”
“I beg your—”
“Oh, the hell with it,” he said. “I don’t have a daughter, the marriage was childless. I sleep with the bear myself. The whole story’s too stupid to go into, but if I don’t have the bear in bed with me I don’t sleep well. Believe me, I know how ridiculous that sounds.”
Something glinted in her dark almond eyes. “I think it sounds sweet,” she said.
He felt curiously close to tears. “I’ve never told anyone,” he said. “It’s all so silly, but—”
“It’s not silly. And you never named the bear?”
“No. It’s always been just The Bear.”
“It? Is it a boy bear or a girl bear?”
“I don’t know.”
“May I see it? No clothing, so there’s no help there. Just a yellow ribbon at the throat, and that’s a sexually neutral color, isn’t it? And of course it’s not anatomically correct, in the manner of those nasty dolls they’re selling for children who haven’t the ingenuity to play doctor.” She sighed. “It would appear your bear is androgynous.”
“We, on the other hand,” he said, “are not.”
“No,” she said. “We’re not, are we?”
The bear remained in the bed with them. It was absurd to make love in the bear’s company, but it would have been more absurd to banish the thing to the closet. No matter; they soon became sufficiently aware of one another as to be quite unaware of the bear.
Then two heartbeats returning to normal, and the air cool on sweat-dampened skin. A few words, a few phrases. Drowsiness. He lay on his side, the bear in his arms. She twined herself around him.
Sleep, blissful sleep.
He woke, clutching the bear but unclutched in return. The bed was full of her scent. She, however, was gone. Sometime during the night she had risen and dressed and departed.
He called her just before noon. “I can’t possibly tell you,” he said, “how much I enjoyed being with you last night.”
“It was wonderful.”
“I woke up wanting you. But you were gone.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“I never heard you leave.”
“I didn’t want to disturb you. You were sleeping like a baby.”
“Hugging my bear.”
“You looked so sweet,” she said.
“Sindra, I’d like to see you. Are you free tonight?”
There was a pause, time enough for him to begin to regret having asked. “Let me call you after lunch,” she said.
A colleague had just published an insufferably smug piece on Godard in a quarterly with a circulation in the dozens. He was reading it and clucking his tongue at it when she called. “I’m going to have to work late,” she said.
“Oh.”
“But you could come over to my place around nine-thirty or ten, if that’s not too late. We could order a pizza. And pretend there’s a famine in Italy.”
“Actually, I believe they’ve been having a drought.”
She gave him the address. “I hope you’ll come,” she said, “but you may not want to.”
“Of course I want to.”
“The thing is,” she said, “you’re not the only one with a nocturnal eccentricity.”
He tried to think what he had done that might have been characterized as eccentric, and tried to guess what eccentricity she might be about to confess. Whips and chains? Rubber attire? Enemas?
“Oh,” he said, light dawning. “You mean the bear.”
“I also sleep with an animal, Paul. And sleep poorly without it.”
His heart cast down its battlements and surrendered. “I should have known,” he said. “Sindra, we were made for each other. What kind of animal?”
“A snake.”
“A snake,” he echoed, and laughed. “Well, that’s more exotic than a bear, isn’t it? Although I suppose they’re more frequently encountered than bears in Sri Lanka. Do you know something? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a stuffed snake.”
“Paul, I—”
“Squirrels, raccoons, beavers, all of those. Little cuddly furry creatures. And bears, of course. But—”
“Paul, it’s not a stuffed snake.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a living snake. I got it in California, I had the deuce of a time shipping it when I moved. It’s a python.”
“A python,” he said.
“A reticulated python.”
“Well, if you were going to have a python,” he said, “you would certainly want to have it reticulated.”
“That refers to its markings. It’s twelve feet long, Paul, although in time it will grow to be considerably larger. It eats mice, but it doesn’t eat very often or very much. It sleeps in my bed, it wraps itself around me. For warmth, I’m sure, although it seems to me that there’s love in its embrace. But I may very well be imagining that.”
“Uh,” he said.
“You’re the first person I’ve ever told. Oh, my friends in L.A. knew I had a snake, but that was before I started sleeping with it. I never had that intention when I bought it. But then one night it crawled into the bed. And I felt truly safe for the first time in my life.”
An army of questions besieged his mind. He picked one. “Does it have a name?”
“Its name is Sunset. I bought it in a pet shop on Sunset Boulevard. They specialize in reptiles.”
“Sunset,” he said. “That’s not bad. I mean, there but for the grace of God goes Harbor Freeway. Is Sunset a boy snake or a girl snake? Or aren’t pythons anatomically correct?”
“The pet-shop owner assured me Sunset was female. I haven’t figured out how to tell. Paul, if the whole thing puts you off, well, I can understa
nd that.”
“It doesn’t.”
“If it disgusts you, or if it just seems too weird by half.”
“Well, it seems weird,” he allowed. “You said nine-thirty, didn’t you? Nine-thirty or ten?”
“You still want to come?”
“Absolutely. And we’ll call out for a pizza. Will they toss in a side order of mice?”
She laughed. “I fed her just this morning. She won’t be hungry for days.”
“Thank God. And Sindra? Will it be all right if I stay over? I guess what I’m asking is should I bring the bear?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “By all means bring the bear.”
Something to Remember You By
He picked her up at her dorm. She was out in front with her suitcases and her duffel bag and he pulled up right on time and helped her load everything. She got in front with him and he waited until she had fastened her seat belt before pulling away from the curb.
“I’ll be glad to get home,” she said. “I didn’t think I was going to live through finals.”
“Well, you made it.”
“Uh-huh. This is a nice car. What is it, a Plymouth?”
“That’s right.”
“Almost new, too.”
“Two years old. Three in a couple of months when the new cars come out.”
“That’s still pretty new. Does the radio work?”
He turned it on. “Find something you like,” he said.
“You’re driving. What kind of music do you like?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She found a country station and asked if that was all right. He said it was. “I’ll probably just fall asleep anyway,” she said. “I was up most of the night. Will that bother you?”
“If you fall asleep? Why should it?”
“I won’t be much company.”
“That’s okay,” he said.
When they got out onto the interstate she let her eyes close and slumped a little in her seat. The car rode comfortably and she thought how lucky she was to be in it. She’d put a notice up on the bulletin board outside the cafeteria, ride wanted to chicago end of term, and just when she was beginning to think no one would respond he had called. All she had to do was pay half the gas money and she had her ride.