I am trying to say that midway through his very long journey as a virgin, he already knew what it is to be bored with the female body. Even before he ever experienced climax, he had already arrived mentally at the end of arousal. He had experienced its exhaustibility.
From childhood on, therefore, he had lived within sight of that mysterious border on the other side of which female breasts were merely soft globes hanging from the chest. That border was his lot from the very beginning. At thirteen, the Jan who dreamed of other erotic areas of the female body was as aware of it as the Jan of thirty years later.
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12
It was windy and muddy. The mourners stood in an uneven semicircle in front of the open grave. Jan was there and nearly all his friends, Hanna the actress, the Clevises, Barbara, and of course the Passers: the wife and son, in tears, and the dry-eyed daughter.
The ceremony seemed to have ended, and two men in threadbare clothes were lifting the ropes the coffin rested on. Just then a nervous man with a sheet of paper in his hand came up to the grave, turned around to face the gravediggers, and, raising the sheet of paper, began to read aloud from it. Looking at him, the gravediggers hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to put the coffin back down on the ground, then began to lower it slowly into the grave, as if they had decided to spare the deceased the obligation of listening to yet a fourth speech.
The coffin's sudden disappearance disconcerted the speaker. His whole speech had been written in the second person singular. Directly addressing the deceased, it made promises to him, agreed with him, reassured him, thanked him, and answered supposed questions from him. The coffin having reached bottom, the gravediggers pulled out the ropes and remained standing humbly motionless beside the open grave. And seeing that the speaker was haranguing them with so much fire, they were intimidated and lowered their heads.
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The more aware the speaker became of the incongruity of the situation, the more his attention was attracted by the two doleful men, and he nearly had to tear his eyes away from them. He turned to the semicircle of mourners. But even that did not much improve his second-person speech, because it gave the impression that the dearly departed was hiding somewhere among them.
Where should the speaker have looked? In anguish he stared at his sheet of paper, and even though he knew the text by heart, he kept his eyes riveted on it.
The entire gathering gave way to a nervousness heightened by the hysterical gusts of wind. Papa Clevis had carefully pulled his hat down over his temples, but the wind was so violent it tore it off and dropped it on the ground between the open grave and the Passer family in the first row.
Initially he wanted to slip through the gathering and dart out to pick up his hat, but that, he realized, might make it appear he thought his hat more important than the solemnity of the ceremony honoring his friend. So he decided to stand still and pretend nothing had happened. But it was not a good solution. From the moment the hat landed on the vacant ground before the grave, the gathering of mourners had become still more nervous and utterly unable to follow the speaker's words. Despite its humble immobility, the hat was disturbing the ceremony much more than Clevis would have done by taking a few steps and picking it up. So he finally said "Excuse me" to the
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person in front of him and stepped forward. He now found himself on the vacant ground (as if on a small stage) between the mourners and the grave. Bending down, he stretched out his arm, but just then the wind started up again, carrying the hat a little out of his reach and dropping it at the speaker's feet.
No one now could think of anything but Papa Clevis and his hat. Even the speaker, who was still unaware of the hat, felt something happening to his audience. He raised his eyes from his sheet of paper and was amazed to see someone standing two steps away and looking at him as if he were getting ready to pounce. He quickly lowered his eyes back to his text, hoping that maybe by the time he raised them again the astonishing vision would have vanished. But when he raised them again, the man was still there and still looking at him.
Papa Clevis could neither advance nor retreat. He thought it unseemly to swoop down at the speaker's feet and ridiculous to go back without his hat. So he just stood there, nailed to the spot by indecision, trying in vain to find a solution.
He wished someone would come to help him. He glanced at the gravediggers. They were standing motionless on the other side of the grave, staring at the speaker's feet.
Just then another gust of wind sent the hat sliding slowly toward the edge of the grave. Clevis made up his mind. He took an energetic step forward, bent down, and stretched out his arm. The hat slipped away, kept slipping away, he almost had it in his
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grasp, when it slid along the edge and then fell into the grave.
Clevis stretched out his arm yet again, as if beckoning the hat back, but then he suddenly resolved to act as if the hat had never existed and he had found himself at the grave's edge by some trifling chance. He tried to be totally natural and relaxed, but that was difficult with everyone staring at him. He was tense; he made an effort not to look at anyone and went over to stand in the first row, where Passer's son stood sobbing.
When the menacing specter of the man who was getting ready to pounce had vanished, the man with the sheet of paper calmed down and raised his eyes to the gathering, which no longer was hearing him at all, to pronounce the last sentence of his speech. Turning to the gravediggers, he very solemnly declared: "Victor Passer, those who loved you will never forget you. May the earth rest lightly on you!"
At the grave's edge he bent over a pile of earth with a small shovel stuck in it, picked up some earth with the shovel, and then leaned over the grave. Just then all the mourners started to shake with stifled laughter. For they all knew that the speaker, looking down paralyzed with the shovel of earth in his hand, was seeing the coffin at the bottom of the grave and the hat on top of the coffin, as if the deceased, in a futile desire for dignity, had not wanted to remain bareheaded during that solemn moment.
The speaker got himself under control and shoveled earth onto the coffin, making sure none of it landed on
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the hat, as if it really were covering Passer's head. Then he handed the shovel to the widow. Yes, they all had to drink the chalice of temptation to the dregs. They all had to live through the horrifying battle against laughter. They all, including the wife and the sobbing son, had to pick up some earth with the shovel and lean over the grave, where there was a coffin with a hat on it, as if Passer, with his indomitable vitality and optimism, was trying to stick his head out.
13
About twenty people had gathered at Barbara's villa. They were sitting in the large living room, on the couch, in armchairs, on the floor. In the middle of the room, within a circle of not very attentive onlookers, a girl who apparently came from a provincial town was twisting and turning in every possible way.
Barbara sat enthroned in a huge plush armchair. "Aren't you dragging this out too long?" she said, giving the girl a severe look.
The girl looked back at Barbara and rotated her shoulders as if to refer to the people there and complain about their indifference and inattentiveness. But the severity of Barbara's look brooked no silent excuses, and the girl, without interrupting her inex-
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pressive, unintelligible movements, began to unbutton her blouse.
From then on Barbara no longer concerned herself with her but looked at the guests one after the other. Understanding that look, they halted their conversations and obediently turned their eyes to the girl, stripping. Then Barbara hitched up her own skirt, put her hand between her thighs, and again leveled her provocative eyes
at all sides of the room. She was watching her gymnasts closely to see if they were following her demonstration.
In their own slow but sure rhythm, things were finally getting started, the girl from the provinces, now long since naked, lying in some man's arms, the others scattered in the various rooms. Barbara, however, was everywhere, always vigilant and infinitely exacting. She did not allow her guests to pair off and hide away somewhere. She flared up at a young woman whose shoulders Jan had his arm around: "Go to his place if you want him to yourself. This is a party!" Then she grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the next room.
Jan caught the eye of a pleasant-looking bald young man who was keeping to himself and had observed Barbara's intervention. They smiled at each other. The bald man came over to Jan, who said to him: "Field Marshal Barbara."
The bald man laughed and said: "She's a coach training us for the Olympics."
Together they watched Barbara's sequence of activities:
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Kneeling next to a man and woman making love, she inserted her head between their faces and pressed her mouth against the woman's lips. Out of consideration for Barbara, the man withdrew from his partner, no doubt thinking Barbara wanted her to herself. Barbara took the woman in her arms and clasped her tightly while the man stood humbly and respectfully over them. Still kissing the woman, Barbara made a circle in the air with her raised hand. The man understood that it was meant for him but did not know if she was ordering him to stay or go. He watched tensely as the hand's motion became more and more energetic and impatient. Finally Barbara removed her lips from the woman's mouth and told him what she wanted. The man nodded, slipped down to the floor again, and nestled up against the back of the woman, who was now sandwiched between him and Barbara.
"We're all characters in Barbara's dream," said Jan.
"Yes," replied the bald man. "But it never quite works. Barbara is like a clockmaker who has to keep moving the hands of his clock himself."
As soon as she had put the man in position, Barbara lost interest in the woman she had just been kissing passionately. She got up and went over to a corner of the room where a pair of very young lovers with anguished expressions were curled up against each other. They were only half undressed, and the young man was trying hard to hide the girl with his body. Like supernumeraries on an opera stage who open their mouths without emitting a sound and absurdly
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wave their hands to create the illusion of a lively conversation, they were struggling to make it clear that they were totally absorbed in each other, because all they wanted was to go unnoticed and thus avoid the others.
Not at all fooled by their dodge, Barbara knelt down beside them, caressing their hair and telling them something. Then she vanished into another room and came back with three naked men. Again she got down on her knees next to the two lovers, taking the young man's head in her hands and kissing it. The three naked men, guided by the silent commands of her look, bent over the girl and removed the rest of her clothes.
"When it's all over, there'll be a meeting," said the bald man. "Barbara is going to summon all of us, she's going to put us in a semicircle around her, stand in front of us, put her glasses on, analyze what we did right and what we did wrong, and praise the industrious pupils and reprimand the lazy ones."
The two shy lovers ended up sharing their bodies with others. Barbara then dropped them and headed for the two men. She gave Jan a quick smile and turned to the bald man. At about the same moment, Jan felt the delicate touch of the girl from the provinces whose strip show had set things going. Barbara's clock, he said to himself, wasn't working so badly.
The girl from the provinces took care of him with fervent zeal, but his eyes kept straying to the other side
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of the room, where the bald man's member was being worked on by Barbara's hands. Both couples were in the same situation. Bent over, both women were making the same motions, attending to the same task; they resembled assiduous gardeners leaning over a flower bed. Each couple was a mirror image of the other. The two men caught each other's eye, and Jan saw the bald man's body shaking with laughter. And because they were united, united like an object and its reflection in a mirror, one of them was unable to shake without the other shaking as well. Jan turned his head away from the other couple so as not to offend the girl caressing him. But his reflected image was irresistible. When he looked over there again, the bald man's eyes were bulging with suppressed laughter. They were united, at a minimum, by a fivefold telepathic current. Not only did each know what the other was thinking; they both knew the other knew. All the comparisons they had applied to Barbara earlier came back to mind, and they were inventing new ones. They were at once looking at each other and avoiding each other's eyes, because they knew that laughter was as sacrilegious here as it is in church when the priest is elevating the host. But from the moment that comparison passed through both their heads, their only desire was to laugh. They were too weak. Laughter was stronger. Their bodies were seized by irresistible convulsions.
Barbara looked up at her partner's head. The bald man had capitulated and was letting his laughter burst out. As if guessing the cause of the evil, she turned to
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Jan. Just then the girl from the provinces was murmuring to him: "What happened? Why are you crying?"
But Barbara was already near him, hissing through clenched teeth: "Don't think you can pull on me what happened at Passer's funeral!"
"I'm sorry," said Jan; and he laughed and the tears ran down his cheeks.
She asked him to leave.
Edwige did not accept traditions that burdened mankind. She refused to acknowledge that a linked face is innocent and a naked behind shameless. She did not understand why the salty fluid that trickles from our eyes is sublimely poetic and the fluid we emit below our bellies is disgusting. It all seemed stupid., artificial, and unreasonable to her, and she treated such conventions the way a rebellious girl treats the rules of a Catholic boarding school.
Coming out of the bathroom, she smiled at Jan and let him kiss her on both cheeks: "Shall we go to the beach?"
He nodded.
"Leave your clothes here," she said, removing her bathrobe to uncover her nakedness.
Jan always found it a little strange to undress in front of others, and he almost envied Edwige the way she came and went in her nakedness as in a comfort-able housecoat. She was in fact much more natural naked than dressed, as if in rejecting her clothes she was also rejecting the difficult condition of woman-hood in order to become simply a human being, with-out sexual characteristics. As if sex resided in clothes and nakedness were a state of sexual neutrality.
They went naked down the steps to the beach, where groups of naked people were relaxing, walking around, and swimming: naked mothers and naked children, naked grandmothers and naked grandchil dren, naked men young and old. There was a tremendous number of female breasts in the greatest variety of shapes: beautiful, less beautiful, ugly, huge, shriv-
14
Before his departure for the United States, Jan took Edwige to the seashore. It was on a forsaken island with a few tiny villages, meadows with apathetically grazing sheep, and a single hotel on a fenced-off beach. They took separate rooms.
He knocked at her door. Calling from the far end of the room, she told him to come in. Inside, he saw no one. "I'm making pee," she shouted through the half-open bathroom door.
That was familiar to him. Even with a bunch of people at her house, she would calmly announce she was going to make pee and then would chat with her guests through the partly open door. It was neither flirtatious nor shameless. Quite the contrary: it was the absolute abolition of flirtatiousness and shamelessness.
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harmony between them. Wonderful solidarity based on lack of understanding. He was well aware of it and almost took pleasure in it.
They strolled slowly along the beach, the sand burning underfoot, the bleating of a ram mingling with the sound of the sea, a filthy sheep grazing on an islet of withered grass in the shade of an olive tree. Jan remembered Daphnis. He is lying down, spellbound by Chloe's nakedness, aroused but with no knowledge of what that arousal is summoning him to, so that the arousal is endless and unappeasable, limited and interminable. A great yearning gripped Jan's heart, a desire to go back again. Back to that boy. Back to man's beginnings, to his own beginnings, to love's beginnings. He desired desire. He desired the pounding of the heart. He desired to be lying beside Chloe unaware of fleshly love. Unaware of sexual climax. To transform himself into pure arousal, the mysterious, the incomprehensible and miraculous arousal of a man before a woman's body. And he said out loud: "Daphnis! '