Chaconne. Diana BlackwoodЧитать онлайн книгу.
under the staircase, he enquired whether people actually sat on them. Did she have parties, meetings? Oh, orgies, she said, every second Thursday. He peeked under the Indian printed cloth draped over the trunk that served as a coffee table. He ran his fingers down the hardened rivulets of candle wax on the bottle of Mateus rosé, which neither Ruth nor Eleanor would admit to having drunk. Maybe that was what philosophers did, wander and exclaim and question. He wanted to know why she didn’t insist that the landlord repair the balcony overlooking the street; it was unsafe and blocked off with a sheet of masonite. Eleanor explained that he was in no hurry because they were students. Besides, he would only put up the rent if he fixed it, which was the last thing they wanted. Julien then asked politely about the rent. Quelle chance: so much space, so much freedom.
Over lunch, to her relief, he declined the cheap red wine that was all she had to offer, saying he would drink a glass of champagne if he absolutely had to – she wondered in what circumstances a person would absolutely have to – but he didn’t drink wine any more than he wore a beret or sported a moustache. He praised the pumpkin soup and the cheesy eggplant bake and pronounced the brown rice, which he had never eaten – Jamais? Jamais! – delicious. As she eased into French, she let go of her conversation-class rigidity. Now that she could focus less on the effort of putting one word after another and more on him, she noticed some tension in the way he held himself and wondered if he was unsure of how to behave. She suggested they go for a walk and leave the tart he had brought till later. Across the pond of lemon curd the pastry chef had piped the word citron in chocolate cursive. It seemed almost a shame to breach the tart’s calm surface. After excusing herself she went to the bathroom, which adjoined the kitchen as an historical afterthought.
She dithered, took deep yogic breaths, combed her hair, applied lipstick, wiped it off. Then she looked resolutely into her grey, reflected eyes. Courage, les hommes ne sont pas compliqués! Deep down men are simple creatures: that was what women believed, or at least that was what she’d heard plenty of women say. God, how she wanted him. How could she let the world snatch him away? She washed her hands, put in her diaphragm, washed her hands again and walked out of the bathroom.
Julien had left the table, which took up the dimmest corner of the front room, and was sitting on a cushion, leaning back against the wall with arms folded across his chest and legs stretched out before him. He had to try it, he said, as if life would never again offer the opportunity of parking himself on an absurdly oversized cushion in a dingy Victorian terrace house in an inner working-class suburb of Sydney at the end of a decade that would not be remembered for its good taste. She smiled down at him, and he up at her. Straddling his legs, she held out her hands to him and asked if he was cold. A little, he replied. He grasped her hands firmly, tucking in his legs with one swift movement and springing to his feet. As he steadied himself he laced his fingers through hers. She stared at his throat, at the fine blue stripes on the button-down collar of his shirt. She could feel the vehemence of his breath; her breast rose and fell to its rhythm. Then he released her and brought the back of one smooth hand to her face, slipping it tenderly from cheekbone to chin and from chin to cheekbone. His eyes roamed her face and then settled on her mouth. With his index finger he traced the fullness of her lips.
“You’re so beautiful. I suppose they all tell you that.”
“No, they don’t – this is Australia.” There was more truth to that than coyness. Only her grandmother, and Ruth in her half-serious way, had told her she was beautiful. One or two brave and hopeful boys might have hinted at it.
“Fools,” he said. “What fools your compatriots are.” He took her face in both hands, looked into her eyes and at last, at last, brought his lips decorously to hers, as if asking permission for the kiss that would spin her out into a wild, gasping joy.
Afterwards she would recall the aching ascent to the bedroom and the shivering plunge onto the cold futon, but little of the progress of hands and lips and tongues. His body delighted her, though she was unprepared, never having been acquainted with one, for his foreskin. He came too soon and apologised, but he stayed inside her, as if he could not bear to part his body from hers. She stroked the dark waves of his hair, warm in the glow of him; she drew knowledge of him in through her skin. It was then, or so it seemed to her later, that love stole in and lodged in her so firmly that not even the long separations and bodily rationing could evict it.
2
Body and Soul
ON A WET SEPTEMBER evening in 1981, Eleanor’s sanctioned life in Europe was about to begin. She was not a gawping tourist but a resident, or would be as soon as she had her permit. A job of sorts awaited her, and tomorrow Julien would take her to the studio flat in Rue Dauphine. But tonight, as he had explained on leaving the Gare du Nord, they were going to celebrate their reunion in a little hotel in the Latin Quarter.
After so much yearning and imagining, sustained for two years across the earth’s vast distances, Eleanor and Julien were now a couple in a dark blue Peugeot, breathing the same polluted air and driving through the same rain towards a solidifying of expectation. On two occasions at red lights, and once between gear changes, he took her hand and kissed it. She felt tipsy with jet lag. Light and movement taunted her like the aura of a migraine: she had to close her eyes against the shop lights cast back by slick streets and the reckless manoeuvrings of pedestrians.
He dropped her at the hotel and went to search for somewhere to park, and in the time he was gone she checked into the room and fell into animal oblivion under the shower. On his return he announced that he was starving: how about Vietnamese? Lying on the bed, barelegged and partly clothed, she arched her back voluptuously and let her bent leg fall open. She needed him to lunge at her, to say all the things she had been longing to hear. He did lunge, more or less, but he said not quite enough to satisfy her, and for her there was only pale pleasure in their lovemaking.
Back in the hotel lobby after dinner, Julien handed her the key to the room and said he had to make a quick phone call. The telephone was under the curve of the staircase. Their room was on the second floor, but Eleanor climbed to just past the point where she was hidden from below. It was more out of old habit than suspicion or curiosity that she stopped and waited. As a child she had taken to eavesdropping in the hope of hearing something about her father from Mavis or her grandmother. She had heard many things – how babies born to heroin-addicted mothers screamed in withdrawal, how cruelly the ‘Japs’ had treated prisoners of war – but never what she sought.
Bonsoir, maman. Julien was telling his mother that he wouldn’t be home tonight because he’d decided to stay at Jean-Marc’s after all. They were working on a project together, remember? Eleanor did not wait for the deferential affection of his parting words.
Once, and only once, when Eleanor had wounded her with a glib deflection, had Ruth become angry with her. “You’re not cold, you’re not unaffectionate, you’re not ungiving … You just withhold too much. And don’t tell me it’s all to do with your mother. Of course I know that. But I’m your friend, not your mother, and you’re not a child any more, so just open up a bit, will you?”
Eleanor had apologised, meek with shame. Ah, but restraint, she thought now in the hotel room, restraint was the virtuous twin of withholding. Restraint was the child of discipline and diplomacy; restraint got all the praise. As if tasting bile, she held her tongue about the phone call.
Later Julien sank into sleep like a man with an uncurdled conscience. Beside him, as she waited to be sure he was truly sleeping, Eleanor remembered the first night she and Ruth had spent in Paris on the fourth floor of a one-star hotel. She had been drifting towards unconsciousness when Ruth said something. Eleanor had grumpily removed one earplug: now what?
“How would we get out of here if there was a fire? There’s no fire escape. We’d be trapped.”
“We could go down the stairs,” said Eleanor.
“But the fire might funnel up the stairs. They’re made of wood, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Then we’d jump out the window onto something.”