August Is a Wicked Month by Edna O’Brien

to busy himself about the room, picking up instruments, putting them down again, looking into his camera, looking through the window, frowning. She drank it down and left. He was putting on his shirt as she went out and he twiddled his fingers, but she could not see his face because it was lost in the vest. She would never forget the whites of his eyes.
    Down in her bedroom she locked the door and sat straddled on the bidet, too fearful to wash herself. Because of the awful heat and what she’d told him she really felt that she might be bleeding. She could see nothing from her position on the bidet except one of the palms with the huge conical top. No matter where she went she saw one. They were beginning to be the only thing she noticed, the trees with the long trunks and their tops thrusting out from the sheath of whittled palms. She recalled everything they said, and thought if all the people in the world were as desperate as they then the world was a desperate place to be in. She sat for a long time but did not soap herself.
    By dinner time she felt too despondent to go downstairs and ordered a meal to be sent up. The room-service boy wheeled the trolley in shortly after seven. He lifted the plate covers triumphantly as if he had been responsible for cooking the veal and dressing the salad and buttering the tiny little string beans.
    ‘Mademoiselle, I fear I have mislaid my bus ticket,’ he said, beaming at her.
    ‘I fear I have too,’ she said wryly. She sat quite still before the trolley and offered no resistance as he unfolded the cone of the napkin, shook it apart and then pressed it inside her shirt collar under her chin. She thought he petted her neck but could not be sure.
    ‘Bon,’ he said looking at the shirt. She had put on another stiff white shirt and a black silk skirt slit at one side. It seemed a waste to be eating in her room by herself, but she had dressed up simply to give herself some occupation.
    ‘Merci,’ she said, and waited with the knife and fork held in the air, above the plate, until such time as he went out.

Chapter Eight
    S HE APPLIED HERSELF TO her dinner. She gobbled everything together, tasting nothing, washing each mouthful down with the wine until her plate was suddenly and appallingly empty. It had taken seven minutes.
    ‘Oh,’ she said, as the door opened again and she leaped to her feet, thinking it was the chambermaid who had come to take off the outer bedspread. Her face was guilty from having eaten so fast.
    ‘Listen,’ she said then, the expression of guilt giving way to one of anger. It was him again. In plain clothes. Tight trousers. Open shirt. Wrist-watch. Hair on his arms.
    ‘I fear I have mislaid my bus ticket,’ he said, beaming because he knew the password, and delivered it so well. She took the tray, plonked it in his arms, and then walked towards the window, away from him. Foreign or not, he could not but perceive an insult like that. Behind her back she heard him open the door and place the tray outside, and then he said ‘Look’ very urgently as if disaster had struck. She turned towards him but saw the he was pointing to the window balcony and when she looked that way she saw that in the draught from the open door the pants hung there to dry had fallen down. Charged with shame she rushed across to pick them up and stuff them somewhere. When she stooped he came and put one hand on her breast and one lower down on her stomach. She straightened quickly and turned, but his face was upon hers in an attack of kissing. It took some seconds to realize what was happening.
    As she rose he moved one hand to the butt of her back and helped her up and then laid her quickly on the bed. She thought ridiculously that if the chambermaid came in there would be a scandal, and through the onslaught of kisses she said, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ but it was heard only as a mumble.
    ‘How dare you,’ she said then, clearly, getting her mouth free. She was angry with