Cain’s Book by Alexander Trocchi Page B

failure, too familiar even then to shrug off easily. And then, when I entered the flat there was Moira wearing her drop earrings, waiting, hoping, at
the portal of her day’s thoughts, and I walked past her surlily, with no greeting.
    Moira was sitting opposite me. This was before our divorce and before either of us came to America. I had put the incident of the man in the lane out of my mind. It was nearly
ten o’clock. Two hours until the New Year. One day followed another. Relief at having attained the limit of the old year made me uneasy. It wasn’t as though I were walking out of
prison.
    Moira was hurt at my isolation. I could sense the crude emotion run through her. It was abrasive. She said I was selfish, that it showed in my attitude, on that of all nights. I knew what she
meant.
    She felt the need to affirm something and in some way or other she associated the possibility with the passing of the old year. “Thank God this year’s nearly over!” she
said.
    That struck me as stupid so I didn’t answer.
    “Do you hear what I say?” she demanded.
    I looked at her speculatively.
    “Well?” she said.
    She began to speak again but this time she broke off in the middle. And then she walked across the room and poured herself a drink. She moved from one event to another without ever coming to a
decision. It was as though she were trapped outside her own experience, afraid to go in. I don’t know what it was she was going to say. She poured herself a drink instead. I watched her from
where I was sitting. Her thighs under the soft donkey-brown wool were attractive. She has still got good thighs. Her flesh is still firm and smooth to the touch: belly, buttocks, and thighs. The
emotion was there, at all the muscle and fibre. And then she was opposite me again, sipping distastefully at her drink, avoiding my gaze. She was trying to give the impression that she was no
longer aware of me and at the same time she sensed the absurdity of her position. That made her uncomfortable. For her the absurd was something to shun. She had a hard time of it, retreating like a
Roman before Goths and Vandals.
    It occurred to me that I might take her. She didn’t suspect. She didn’t realize her belly was more provocative when it had been run through with hatred. Hatred contracts; it knitted
her thicknesses. She was hotter then, only then. As she began to doubt my love she became a martyr and unlovable. But anger sometimes freed her; her muscles had experienced excitement... To walk
across to her. She would pull herself up defensively and refuse to look at me. But her distance was unconvincing. She was not inviolable. That was the moment when I had to be in control of myself,
for my lust tended to become acid in my mouth. I preferred her anger to her stupidity. It was something against which I could pit my lust. When I was confronted by her stupidity there took place in
me a kind of dissociation, like the progressive separation in milk as it turns sour. I was no longer, as it were, intact, and she was no longer interesting.
    I thought of the man in the lane. I had suddenly felt very close to myself, as though I were on the edge of a discovery. I was perplexed when I couldn’t find him in the bar. I supposed he
must have left while I was in the lavatory. The torso was cut deep in the wood, an oakleaf of varnish left where the pubic hairs were. I touched it with my forefinger, scratching varnish off with
my fingernail. It struck me that it was too big. My wife had a big cunt with a lot of pubic hair, but not as big as that. It was heavily packed into her crotch. When I thought of it I always
thought of it wet, the hairs close at the chalk-white skin of her lower belly and embedded like filings in the pores. That made me think of her mother. I don’t know why. The torso held my
attention. I ran my fingers over it. The pads of my fingers were excited by the rough wood. I felt a slight prickling at the hairs at the back