The axe is falling. Last ruminations. Honeymoon Express and all aboard: Memphis, Chattanooga, Nashville, Chickamauga. Past snowy fields of cotton… alligators yawning in the mud… the last apricot is rotting on the lawn… the moon is full, the ditch is deep, the earth is black, black, black.
VOLUME TWO
5
The next morning it was like after a storm— breakfast as usual, a touch for carfare, a dash for the subway, a promise to take her to the movies after dinner. For her it was probably just a bad dream which she would do her best to forget during the course of the day. For me it was a step towards deliverance. No mention of the subject was ever made again. But it was there all the time and it made things easier between us. What she thought I don’t know, but what I thought was very clear and definite. Every time I assented to one of her requests or demands I said to myself: «Fine, is that all you want of me? I’ll do anything you like except give you the illusion that I am going to live the rest of my life with you.»
She was inclined now to be more lenient with herself when it came to satisfying her bestial nature. I often wondered what she told herself in making excuses to herself for these extra-nuptial, pre- or post-morganatic bouts. Certainly she put her heart and soul into them. She was a better fucker now than in the early days when she used to put a pillow under her ass and try to kiss the ceiling. She was fucking with desperation, I guess. Fuck for fuck’s sake and the devil take the hindmost.
A week had passed and I hadn’t seen Mara. Maude had asked me to take her to a theatre in New York, a theatre just opposite the dance hall. I sat throughout the performance thinking of Mara so close and yet so far away. I thought of her so insistently and unremittingly that as we were leaving the theatre I gave voice to an impulse which I was powerless to quelch. «How would you like to go up there?» I said, pointing to the dance hall, «and meet her?» It was a cruel thing to say and I felt sorry for her the moment it left my mouth. She looked at me, Maude, as if I had struck her with my fist. I apologized at once and, taking her by the arm, I led her quickly away in the opposite direction, saying as I did so— «It was just an idea. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I thought you might be curious, that’s all.» She made no answer. I made no further efforts to smooth the thing over. In the subway she slipped her arm in mine and let it rest there, as if to say—«I understand, you were just tactless and thoughtless, as usual.» On the way home we stopped off at her favorite ice cream parlor and there, over a plate of French ice cream which she doted on, she unlimbered sufficiently to eke out a thin conversation about domestic trifles, a sign that she had dismissed the incident from her mind. The French ice cream, which she regarded as a luxury, combined with the opening of a fresh wound, had the effect of making her amorous. Instead of undressing upstairs in the bed-room, as she did ordinarily, she went to the bathroom which adjoined the kitchen and, leaving the door open, she took off her things one by one, leisurely, studiedly, almost like a strip-teaser, calling me in finally as she was combing out her hair to show me a blue mark on her thigh. She was standing there naked except for her shoes and stockings, her hair flowing luxuriantly down her back.
I examined the mark carefully, as I knew she wanted me to, touching her lightly here and there to see if there were any other tender spots which she might have overlooked; at the same time I kept up a running fire of solicitous queries in a calm, matter of fact voice which enabled her to prime herself for a cold-blooded fuck without admitting to herself that that was what she was doing. If I said to her, as I did, in the calm, dull, professional voice of the M.D.—«I think you’d better lie on the table in the kitchen where I can examine you better»—she would do so without the least coaxing, spreading her legs wide apart and letting me insert a finger without a qualm, because now by this time she remembered that since a fall which she had had some time ago there was a little bump inside her, at least so she thought; it worried her, this bump; perhaps if I would put my finger in ever so gently she could track it down, and so on and so forth. Nor did it appear to disturb her in the least when I suggested that she lie there a moment, on the table, while I removed my clothes because it was getting too warm for me in the kitchen, next to the red hot stove, and so on and so forth. And so I removed my things, all but my socks and shoes, and with an erection fit to break a plate I stepped blandly forth and resumed operations. Or rather, I in turn had now become aware of things past, such as bumps, bruises, spots, warts, birthmarks et cetera, and would she kindly give me the once over while we were at it, and then we would go to bed because it was getting late and I didn’t want to tire her out.
Strangely enough she wasn’t tired at all, she confessed, getting down from the table and solicitously squeezing my cock and then my balls and then the root of my cock, all with such firm, discreet and delicate manipulations that I almost gave her a squirt in the eye. After that she was curious to see how much taller I was than she, so first we stood back to back and then front to front; even then, when it was jumping between her legs like a firecracker, she pretended to be thinking of feet and inches, saying that she ought to take her shoes off because her heels were high, and so on and so forth. And so I made her sit down on the kitchen chair and slowly I pulled off her shoes and stockings, and she, as I politely rendered her service, thoughtfully stroked my cock, which was difficult to do being in the position she was, but I graciously abetted her strategy by moving in closer and hoisting her legs up in the air at a right angle; then, without any more ado I lifted her up by the hind quarters, shoved it in to the hilt and carried her into the next room where I tumbled her on to the couch, sank it in again and went at it with sound and fury, she doing the same and begging me in the most candid, non-professional, non-casual language to hold it, to make it last, to keep it in forever, and then as an after-thought to wait a minute while she slipped out and turned over, raising herself on her knees, her head sunk low, her ass wriggling frantically, her thick gurgling voice saying in the English language openly and admittedly to herself for her own ears to hear and to recognize: «Get it in all the way… please, please do… I’m horny.»
Yes, on occasion she could trot out a word like that, a vulgar word that would have made her curl up with horror and indignation if she were in her right senses, but now after the little pleasantries, after the vaginal exploration by finger, after the weight lifting and measuring contest, after the comparison of bruises, marks, bumps and what not, after the delicately casual manipulation of prick and scrotum, after the delicious French ice cream and the thoughtless faux pas outside the theatre, to say nothing of all that had transpired in her imagination since the cruel avowal a few nights ago, a word like «horny» was just the right and proper word to indicate the temperature of the Bessemer steel furnace which she had made of her inflamed cunt. It was
