Grimus by Salman Rushdie Page A

further without his support.
    Virgil Jones thought: We are like two frightened, ugly virgins. He found the power of his limbs returning and moved the few steps to Dolores’ side.
    —My arm, he offered. She made a brief bob.
    —I thank you, sir, she said, and took it.
    —This way, I think, said Virgil Jones; there is a soft hollow of grass adjacent to the well.
    She inclined her head in agreement. They walked to the edge of the clearing in a formal, deliberate gait, and then the trees moved around them.
    Virgil Jones sat down heavily in the hollow, exhaling air in a gush. He was at a loss to know what Dolores might do now, and equally at a loss in himself. Alas, poor Yorick.
    Dolores remained standing, her eyes fixed upon him in a glassy, cocked glance; her hands moved slowly to her shoulders, where rough bows held her shift in place. Something near panic flooded through Virgil as he realized their purpose; but she was fixed now, determination set in her chin. The hands reached their goal and tugged; the shift fell.
    —It is a warm night, thankfully, essayed Mr Jones. The mist is all but cleared. The words sounded idiotic as he said them, but Dolores showed no sign of disapproval, standing before him shyly, one hand half-accidentally poised at the joining of her thighs. In the dark, she semed less wrinkled, her hunched body less broken.
    Virgil extended an arm, and she came to him, jerking her way to the ground, to lie motionless, yet expectant.
    He kissed her.
    Their hands were slow at first, slow and unsure, learning once more the touches of skin and skin, weaving inelegant patterns upon the fellow-bodies. But slowly they found their purpose, kneading away the knots of tension in necks and shoulders and backs, finding a natural rhythm, glad hands.
    So now the hands remembered, and the lips, lips feverishly seeking each other out, parting and joining, tongues twisting in the elation of rediscovery.
    —Not bad for a pair of youngsters, said Virgil Jones, and Dolores O’Toole laughed. It was so long since he had heard her laugh; it was to him a delightful thing, and he laughed too.
    It was the laughter that did it; the floodgates opened and drowned their hesitations. Their bodies assaulted each other.
    Dolores cried out at some time: —My hump! Hold my hump!
    And Virgil’s hands had grasped the forbidden deformity, to stroke and scratch and grasp; she shuddered with the pleasure of it, of feeling disfiguration transmute into sexuality.
    She lay beside him for a moment; then sprang up to straddle him, her hands grasping great folds of his flesh, to squeeze and twist them in a child’s delight. Again they laughed; Virgil, too, was freed from the disadvantages of his shape. —It’s like making bread, she giggled, pretending to work his belly into a loaf.
    He came only once, and she not at all. All organs atrophy through disuse. But their limitations were important to neither of them; their achievement was what concerned and satisfied them. For a long time he simply lay over her, spilling over her on both sides, enveloping her in himself, feeling her bones, hard and near the surface of her as they lay covered in his flesh, and they were one beast, four-handed, four-legged, two-headed and wreathed in a smile.
    Her breasts were as small as pendulous dried figs, while his were as fleshy as watermelons. His penis lay short and fat in the hard hollow of her hand.
    —Don’t be thin, she said. Don’t ever be thin. Stay fat. Stay Virgil.
    —I scarcely have any option, he replied, having a Condition as I do. The thyroid gland does not respond to dieting.
    —Good, she said.
    —By the same token, said Virgil Jones, I couldn’t imagine you being overweight.
    —Nothing will change, she said. We shall still sit upon the beach and feed the chickens and listen to the birds and dust the house and…
    The expression on his face stopped her.
    —Virgil, she cried. Nothing will change I Nothing!
    The expression on his face did not