Lix and Mouetta had traveled twice across the two bridges of Navigation Island, annoyed and arguing, before they decided what to do. Past one o’clock already. It was a little too late and far too early to wake friends and ask for refuge, too late to phone a lawyer for Freda, naive to think they’d find a hotel still with beds to spare. They had the keys to Freda’s flat as well as her office, but that was on the campus, too, and almost certainly unreachable. And possibly unsafe. And there were cats inside and awful litter smells which only Freda had grown used to. They could, of course, return to the theater and rouse the janitor. Lix had done exactly that one New Year’s Eve, at this same theater. They could, in a pinch, sleep in Lix’s dressing room or even onstage. The Molière demanded three chaise longues. But the chances of the janitor still being awake himself at that hour, let alone responding to someone hammering at the doors on this of all nights, were pretty thin. They did what many other people had been forced to do. They drove the car again onto the island and took the first gate into Deliverance Park, looking for a parking space or turnout. Or Lix looked at least; Mouetta, disappointed, tired, had fallen asleep already, suddenly, her body falling, as he drove, against the webbing of the seat belt.
There were no parking spaces in the park or room for their long Panache in the already overcrowded turnouts. The park had turned into a dormitory of cars. So Lix bumped up onto the grass, careful not to wake his wife. He could have parked right there, just on the corner of the lawns, next to the road, illuminated by the headlights and the streetlamps. Safe. But he had other plans for their anniversary. He headed for the clump of ornamental pines, the darkest planted corner of the park, a place he had spotted as a possibility many times before but never used.
At first the grass, immersed by the rain, was soft and muddy. He had to drive slowly, in the lowest gear. He churned up ruts and wakes of earth and water. He damaged tended grass. Soon the formal grasses gave way to raised picnic squares and cindered ball fields which were hard and gravelly. He switched the headlights off and bumped forward toward the shielding canopy of trees with the help only of his side lamps. And then—heroically—he switched the side lamps off. The gray Panache had disappeared from view. He knew that he was breaking Rules. That he’d be fined if caught. Imagine what the gossip columnists would say. He also knew that he was taking greater risks. The river had been known to swell and break its banks. In 1989, as he could testify, Navigation Island had been entirely submerged. No resident mammal had survived. But he was determined not to waste the opportunity. The sudden looming darkness and the frieze of foliage and the possibility of floods were thrilling. He’d found a spot where, even if the storm abated and there was moonlight, they’d be completely hidden from the road. Here was another chance to fix that oversight he had failed to fix just an hour earlier: they had not had sex in the car for months, not since their Sunday drive down to the lakes that spring when Mouetta—midcycle and ovulating, according to her charts and her thermometer—had tried to stop him from using any contraception and what had started out as love had ended up as argument. He would not take the risk of having one more mouth to feed (even on alternate weekends). He’d pulled the comic condom on and Mouetta had reluctantly allowed him to continue. To be so fertile was a curse.
To be so timid was a curse as well.
Here was a predicament, then, tricky and elaborate, but so familiar to men, especially that night with so many couples unexpectedly accommodated in their cars and keen to make the most of it. Lix’s wife, already irked by him, was sleeping, snoring slightly even. Making love to her right then would require a degree of subtlety and patience that, obviously, at pressing times like these, he did not have. Sod’s Law. Catch-22. The mocking Science of Perversity.
Like other men with complex and attractive wives, he’d fantasized, of course, so many times, so many tense and sleepless times, of waking in the middle of the night, Mouetta dead asleep, as innocent as a cat curled up on her side of the bed, and simply helping himself to her. Helping himself in both the sense of rescuing and the sense of stealing. Just reaching out and piling up his plate with her, as if she were as ready and quiescent as a slice of cake. Her body, almost naked underneath the rucked and pushed-up nightclothes, would wake before she did, as he imagined it. Or perhaps she’d wake only after he’d pushed into her, alarmed and shuddering and animated by the wet and warm conjunction of their limbs. She’d wake aroused. This would be arousal in both senses of the word for her. She had to wake aroused. That was the whole point of his dream.
Or then again, perhaps she’d persevere with sleep despite his unignorable embraces, and he would have to penetrate her dreams, so that the husband would become a sleeper’s chimera and only prove himself as flesh again within her slumber and her reveries. Fat chance of that. Because, of course, that was the stuff and nonsense of a dream, his dream, not hers. (Well, that’s a sham. Not dream. This never was a dream. In men, these fantasies are conscious and contrived. They are the product of a concentrated mind, not slumber.)
Now, in this muddy and secluded place, their privacy protected by the darkness and rain, there was a chance at last—he seemed to have waited all his life for this—to make the fiction real. Except he dared not touch. He dared not seize the opportunity—though he thought of touch, he contemplated it, while Mouetta slept. He dared not even put his finger on her leg, let alone invade her skirt or slip a hand beneath the wide lapels of her cocktail jacket to pick at gaps and buttons on her blouse. He knew, of course, he was a disappointment to his wife, that waking her would wake her irritation, too. He understood. It was his fault, his never-ending fault, that Freda’s student would not be saved by them, that if he always had his way, then nothing brave would ever happen in their world. If only this were on the stage, a semblance of a car parked, tilted, and spotlit on the boards where all the audience could see inside, then he’d have the nerve to act. He’d have the script. He’d be rehearsed. He wouldn’t hesitate. He’d know no fear—although he’d have the tremors, possibly. That was the bitter joy of acting. It was the business of not being yourself, but knowing you could only be your best when you were being someone else.
Lix got out of the car as quietly, meekly, as he could—he was ashamed—and hurried behind the nearest tree, beneath its canopy of rain-drummed leaves, to urinate onto the piles of peeling bark. It would, of course, be considerate, quick, and wise to masturbate. Then Mouetta could continue sleeping. He could join her, easily. He was immensely tired—and angry, too. Angry with his wife that she was not like him, not “passionate,” not idolizing flesh, not ruled and motivated by a husband’s cock like women in the cinema.
His cock, indeed, was full and stiff by now. His urine, steered by his erection, made a confident and steaming two-streamed arc. He pulled his foreskin back and shook himself. It was a tempting moment, difficult to navigate. To masturbate would only rob a minute from their lives. To masturbate would make good sense. To masturbate would not annoy or wake his wife or spoil their disappointing anniversary. But masturbation never is enough. Our populations would be decimated if it were. The joyless pleasure we can give ourselves is only dancing for the mirror. It’s air guitar. It’s sending flowers to yourself without the validation of a grateful kiss.
Lix required some courage in his life. He’d “let the student down.” Betrayed the boy. He’d confirmed his lack of fortitude, his recent, growing fear of taking risks, of giving any offense. “Dear cousin Freda” had defeated him again. He’d lied to Mouetta and he’d disappointed her. Masturbation would not help him make amends. Besides, the rain was soaking him again. He licked the water from his upper lip. He took deep breaths. He tried to draw some daring from the air.
No one who knew him could say that Lix was bold or unpredictable. He was, as you’d expect, rehearsed and hesitant in everything, including sex. Now, for once, he was an activist. What he was doing was a risk. He tucked his penis in his pants, zipped up his trousers, not without difficulty, fixed his belt, squ
elched through mud and water yet again, and got back in the car as noisily as he could. He turned the interior light on. He banged about. He almost hit the buttons of the radio, to fill the car with jazz and rock.
Mouetta was still sleeping, though she’d swung her body around, away from him, and was still making a pillow from the tightly stretched webbing of the seat belt. Her back was arched, her jacket high, her blouse pulled free of its moorings at her waist, two vertebrae and the top centimeter of her underpants adding to Lix’s resolve.
His plan was adolescent and barefaced. He would wrap his arms around his wife to wake her, an innocent embrace, then he would say—a worthless promise, as he well knew—that he had decided they should, at first light, return to the campus to collect her cousin’s student. That was their duty as progressive, decent citizens. The militia would surely have dispersed by then, and in any case, he was certain he could bluff his way through, flaunt his name maybe, offer a bribe. Signed photographs of Lix were almost currency. He’d kiss her face, perhaps. Remark how beautiful she was. Remind her that the third year of their marriage had begun. Apologize for being grumpy in the restaurant. Indeed, he’d use apologies to make her twist her body back to his.
Actually he need not have slammed the door, turned on the light, or persevered with this duplicity with such juvenile clumsiness. Mouetta had been dreaming, not sexual dreams, but something frightening. Her cousin Freda had been tortured, killed; Mouetta had been handcuffed, too, and they—the police, the waiters in the Debit restaurant, her aunts and uncles, long since dead—were kicking her and tugging at her clothes. Freda’s purse was pulled apart. Her body was a sack, changing shape as every toe cap struck. She herself was kicking Freda, harder than the rest, kicking her for George. It was a dream too real to face alone. Lix only had to touch her lightly on the back, between the jacket and the belt, on her cool flesh, for Mouetta to respond to him. She wanted hugs and kisses anyway, to save her from the nightmare. So when her husband’s hand insinuated itself underneath her blouse and held her breasts, she was quite happy to be touched. It seemed like tenderness. He’d rescued her. She turned her face to his and they were kissing before she had a chance to say a word about her cousin Freda and the horrors they had shared.
She was hospitable and motherly at first. Her usual expertise. She welcomed him. She catered for his hands. She gave encouragement. Soon the enterprise engulfed her, too. Her heart was thunderous and beating on her ribs, as loudly and passionately as the rain was drumming on the Panache’s glass and metal roof. She had been quickly comforted, but there was something else to satisfy. The drama of the banking riots and the drive across the wayward city to save the student crouching underneath the desk had animated her. How good it was to have survived the dream, to be alive and sensitive to tongues and fingertips. Her hand had reached for him, his urinous and rain-soaked lap, before he’d even dared to touch and lift the hem of her skirt. She wanted him, or somebody, at once. It wasn’t long before she was in charge. She imagined she’d started this herself and was delighted and blushing. She liked herself when she was powerful. This was the way cousin Freda must behave with men.
Mouetta was unstoppable, but she was shocked as well, shocked by the suddenness. And possibly she recognized her own opportunity, subconsciously. The chance of pregnancy. She drove her husband forward, hardly wanting him to think. Although Lix was normally the most careful and responsible of men, “with good cause” he always said, given his already proven fertility, he would not on this occasion give much thought to condoms, although he had a packet in his trousers’ back pocket, although there was a single Lubricated Shadow in Freda’s shoulder bag that surely, on this night of incarceration, she could spare. So when Mouetta said, “It’s safe. It’s safe,” he hurtled on. He took the risk. He gambled on the moon and on her honesty.
We are not animals—not simple monkeys, certainly—although, of all the apes, we are the luckiest, if it is good fortune and not a calamity to take such pleasure in the passions of the flesh. We fornicate in private (if we want), and that’s a blessing, isn’t it? We can simply mate for fun, at any time and any season we choose, no matter if the woman’s already pregnant, menstruating, ovulating, or in the middle of her lunch. The lesser apes, of course, don’t suffer from the jealousy and pain or lose control.
Now they were truly clumsy in the car. She had to get her underpants off, his trousers down, the two front seats reclined, while still attending to his kisses and his urgencies and still accommodating seat belts, steering wheels, and the gear shift. Sex in a car is never dignified or comfortable. The cinematic shot would edit out the jump and jerk of it, the gracelessness. There’d be a gently rhythmic car, the rain, the night, the shifting latticework of shadows from the branches of the trees, the heartfelt throbbing of the sound track symphony fast turning music into light, fast turning tear gas smoke (for let us not forget what brought them to the park) into unoffending mist, fast turning darkness into a grainy dawn.
The truth of Lix and Mouetta, this night of riots and anniversaries, was even grainier. Their lovemaking, if that is what it was, was speedy and uncomfortable and somewhat disappointing for them both, though mostly for Mouetta. Human biology is unequal in its distributions and rewards. Haste cannot often satisfy any more than it can dodge the rain. It can impregnate, though. The sperm do not require sincerity before they can proceed. The eggs are not judgmental. They do not even favor love.
A dangerous ejaculation, then, for Lix. Deep in the park. Deliverance Park. Three hundred million tempest-tossed sperm, the wretched refuse of his teeming shore—and no contraception to impede them. Three hundred million! More than the total population of the United States of America, as the Planned Parenthood posters with their Statue of Liberty photograph so often remind us. There has to be a god of mischief to overcater so dramatically. That’s why, of course, an ejaculation is known in this City of Kisses as “a huddled mass.” A tribute to America, the land of opportunity and sex. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” the torch-bearing lady says as she succumbs to suitors. Three hundred million. Oh, what a prospect, all those newcomers, each time a man dares lift his lamp beside her golden door.
It was not long before Mou (as Lix had called her in his throes, rather than the more usual diminutive, ’Etta) and her husband were left to disunite their limbs and clothing, to clean themselves with tissues dampened by rain wiped from the side panels of the car, and to at least pretend that their embraces should and could outlive the sex.
Mouetta turned her back against her husband once again. Lix wrapped himself around his wife. Her mouth was bruised. She had not been compensated with an orgasm. Yet she was contented, unaccountably. Her husband had surprised her for a change. She had surprised herself. “That’s not like you,” she said, not facing him. She’d only meant to tease him, say how glad she was to have him to herself for this third year. Yet it was also an accusation, in a way.
Both of them were too tired to take offense for long and both of them had earned the right to fold up in the cushions of the car and fall asleep. Untroubled dreams. Untroubled by the activist, himself curled up but hardly sleeping underneath the desk in Freda’s office, while down the fourth-floor corridor the caretaker with master keys and soldiers at his heels (tipped off by Lix when he was being questioned by the roadblock volunteers) was heading for the student’s hiding place. They’d flush out all the troublemakers who’d thought they might find refuge in their rooms.
Untroubled, too, by Freda, sharing her strange cell with eleven other women, five blankets, and two beds, already bruised, traduced, and undermined, fearful of the day ahead, determined, though, and proud. And so relieved that her young student lover would be saved and would by now be sleeping on her cousin’s study couch.
Untroubled by those three fresh bodies in the city morgue, the youthful and impatient victims of the truncheons and the gas, the careless armored jeep, the interest rates, the gulf between the ruling and the ruled.
Untroubled, even, by the thought of Lix’s five offspring (yes, five. There’s one who’s undiscovered yet), now sleeping somewhere in the world, produced by the only four women, other than Mouetta, he’d ever slept with. A jackpot of a sort.
So this is our opportunity to welcome Mouetta’s first and Lix’s sixth child into the corridor. Whom should we thank, and what, for this chance winner of the lottery? Those things that made the night so bad for everybody else? The riots possibly. The traffic barriers. The idiotic militiamen who (or so Lix falsely claimed) were not bright enough to recognize the actor in their midst? The rain with its own three hundred million random pellets, the fertile, unforgiving rain that still was beating on their car? The shame Lix felt? These were the settings for this single conception, the only cast and scenery and props that could produce this child. Change anything and you change everything. Another place, another time, produces someone else.
“CHOOSE ONE,” Mouetta said. “Choose one. If you could go to bed with anybody here, which one?”
This was a question she’d posed to Lix a dozen times before, in public places, very often as a postscript—and not, despite her husband’s best endeavors, as a prologue—to their lovemaking.
It was hardly 8:30 in the morning, Friday, not seven hours since their close encounter in the car. The early hours of her undiscovered pregnancy.
That coming night, revitalized by the drier weather, there’d be new disturbances, better organized and more venomous than Thursday’s. Nine dead, this time, including three cadets trapped in a burning transporter. And, dramatically, the firebombing of the Bursary Chambers Club where—wrongly—it was thought some bankers and some military were dining. The wounded victims were, in fact, two waitresses, a cloakroom clerk, a fireman, and fourteen members of an investment club who hadn’t had the lungs or legs to get away from their third-story dining suite.