neck and back. “Now everything smells of fish,” she cried. I had taken it for the lingering genital smell of another lover—she had many—but I did not say. Her fears and complaints were no different from mine, and yet—or rather, consequently—I said only bland, comfortless things. I worked my thumbs into the thick folds of skin in the small of her back. She sighed. I said, “It’s a job at least.”
I rose from the bed. In the bathroom I gazed into an ancient-looking mirror. My bag of skin lay against the cool rim of the sink. Orgasm, however desultory, brought on the illusion of clarity. The unvarying buzz of an insect sustained my inaction. Making a guess at my silence Diane called out, “How’s your little girl?”
“All right, coming on,” I said. However, I was thinking of my birthday, thirty in ten days’ time, and that in turn brought to mind my mother. I stooped to wash. Two years ago there had reached me, through a friend, a letter written on a coarse sheet of pink paper folded tightly and sealed inside a used envelope. My mother named a villagein Kent. She was working in the fields, she had milk, cheese, butter and a little meat from the farm. She sent wistful love to her son and grandchild. Since then, in moments of charity or restlessness—I could not tell—I had made and retracted plans to leave the city with Marie. I calculated the village to be a week’s walk away. But each time I made excuses, I forgot my plans. I forgot even the recurrence of my plans and each occasion was freshly determined. Fresh milk, eggs, cheese … occasional meat. And yet more than the destination, it was the journey itself which excited me. With an odd sense of making my first preparations I washed my feet in the sink.
I returned to the bedroom transformed—as was usual when I made these plans—and was faintly impatient to find it unchanged. Diane’s clothes and mine littered the furniture, dust and sunshine and objects packed the room. Diane had not moved since I left the room. She lay on her back on the bed, legs apart, right knee a little crooked, hand resting on her belly, mouth slack with a buried complaint. We failed to please each other, but we did talk. We were sentimentalists. She smiled and said, “What was that you were singing?” When I told her of my plans, she said, “But I thought you were going to wait until Marie was older.” I remembered that now as merely an excuse for delay. “She
is
older,” I insisted.
By Diane’s bed there stood a low table with a thick glass top within which there was trapped a still cloud of delicate black smoke. On the table there was a telephone, its wire severed at four inches, and beyond that, propped against the wall, a cathode ray tube. The wooden casing, the glass screen and control buttons had long ago been ripped away and now bunches of bright wire curledabout the dull metal. There were innumerable breakable objects—vases, ashtrays, glass bowls, Victorian or what Diane called Art Deco. I was never certain of the difference. We all scavenge for serviceable items, but like many others in her minimally privileged part of the city, Diane amassed items without function. She believed in interior decor, in style. We argued about these objects, once even bitterly. “We no longer craft things,” she had said. “Nor do we manufacture or mass-produce them. We make nothing, and I like things that are made, by craftsmen or by processes” (she had indicated the telephone), “it doesn’t matter, because they’re still the products of human inventiveness and design. And not caring for objects is one step away from not caring for people.”
I had said, “Collecting these things and setting them out like this amounts to self-love. Without a telephone system telephones are worthless junk.” Diane was eight years older than I. She had insisted that you cannot love other people or accept their love for you unless you love yourself. I thought that was trite, and
I rose from the bed. In the bathroom I gazed into an ancient-looking mirror. My bag of skin lay against the cool rim of the sink. Orgasm, however desultory, brought on the illusion of clarity. The unvarying buzz of an insect sustained my inaction. Making a guess at my silence Diane called out, “How’s your little girl?”
“All right, coming on,” I said. However, I was thinking of my birthday, thirty in ten days’ time, and that in turn brought to mind my mother. I stooped to wash. Two years ago there had reached me, through a friend, a letter written on a coarse sheet of pink paper folded tightly and sealed inside a used envelope. My mother named a villagein Kent. She was working in the fields, she had milk, cheese, butter and a little meat from the farm. She sent wistful love to her son and grandchild. Since then, in moments of charity or restlessness—I could not tell—I had made and retracted plans to leave the city with Marie. I calculated the village to be a week’s walk away. But each time I made excuses, I forgot my plans. I forgot even the recurrence of my plans and each occasion was freshly determined. Fresh milk, eggs, cheese … occasional meat. And yet more than the destination, it was the journey itself which excited me. With an odd sense of making my first preparations I washed my feet in the sink.
I returned to the bedroom transformed—as was usual when I made these plans—and was faintly impatient to find it unchanged. Diane’s clothes and mine littered the furniture, dust and sunshine and objects packed the room. Diane had not moved since I left the room. She lay on her back on the bed, legs apart, right knee a little crooked, hand resting on her belly, mouth slack with a buried complaint. We failed to please each other, but we did talk. We were sentimentalists. She smiled and said, “What was that you were singing?” When I told her of my plans, she said, “But I thought you were going to wait until Marie was older.” I remembered that now as merely an excuse for delay. “She
is
older,” I insisted.
By Diane’s bed there stood a low table with a thick glass top within which there was trapped a still cloud of delicate black smoke. On the table there was a telephone, its wire severed at four inches, and beyond that, propped against the wall, a cathode ray tube. The wooden casing, the glass screen and control buttons had long ago been ripped away and now bunches of bright wire curledabout the dull metal. There were innumerable breakable objects—vases, ashtrays, glass bowls, Victorian or what Diane called Art Deco. I was never certain of the difference. We all scavenge for serviceable items, but like many others in her minimally privileged part of the city, Diane amassed items without function. She believed in interior decor, in style. We argued about these objects, once even bitterly. “We no longer craft things,” she had said. “Nor do we manufacture or mass-produce them. We make nothing, and I like things that are made, by craftsmen or by processes” (she had indicated the telephone), “it doesn’t matter, because they’re still the products of human inventiveness and design. And not caring for objects is one step away from not caring for people.”
I had said, “Collecting these things and setting them out like this amounts to self-love. Without a telephone system telephones are worthless junk.” Diane was eight years older than I. She had insisted that you cannot love other people or accept their love for you unless you love yourself. I thought that was trite, and
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