13, Rue Therese - Elena Mauli Shapiro [49]
This is too much, too much to bear. She cannot wait.
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the year 1928, this flame burns.
Possession
SHE STANDS AT THE gate. She has made herself pretty for this encounter, painted her lips vivid red and put on her violet cloche hat. She forces herself to stand completely still, clutching her pocketbook with both hands. She will not be found pacing like an animal. She will not be seen to be anxious.
There he is, walking up the street toward the appointed place. For a moment his eyes slide over her, then make contact. Now they are fixed on her, and that half smile begins to play on his lips again. That mouth of his makes her want to scream; it smirks with hidden knowledge. For all his smugness, there may be something disarming about that lopsided expression, something like embarrassment, as if he were shy. She cannot be sure.
As he passes her, his shoulder brushes against hers. He stares straight ahead and continues walking, as if the touch were accidental. In that moment she sees the side of his face, sees the flash of a network of faintly exploded blood vessels just at the place where his left ear meets his cheek. His handsomeness seems enhanced rather than marred by the discovery of this small defect. She follows him, walks in step next to him. For several minutes, they wind their way through the streets of the cemetery without speaking. They take in this strange city of the departed with its cobblestones and its mausoleums, a walled-in, dead, miniature Paris ensconced within the live Paris. It’s a romantic place, and couples must come here often to reflect on the glorious love affairs of all the rich and glittering people buried here.
Suddenly Xavier stops, and Louise stops with him. They are before a flat-topped grave, and she wonders with a shiver whether he intends to have her sit on the grainy stone, relieve her of her undergarments, and penetrate her in this place. It would make quite a story, if she could tell anybody. Perhaps a child would issue from such a moment (her heated body tells her the timing might be right for this) and perhaps the child would be a girl. The child and Louise would be close. They would share all their secrets. One day after the child is grown, Louise could tell her of this moment. What a revelation that would be, to learn that your father is not your father! Louise’s heart feels a pinch of empathy for this nonexistent girl. She is dying for this girl to exist, possibly even more keenly than she is dying for the intrusion of this man’s sex into her own.
Xavier makes no move to touch her and instead reaches into the breast pocket of his coat to pull out a small book—what is this? Is he taking out a Bible? Is he going to tell her she is impure, with no virtue, and that she mustn’t do this and that she must go home and pray? Perhaps she has utterly dreamed all his oblique lewdness.
“I’ve been teaching my boys something interesting,” he says, “a Flaubert text called Salammbô. It is mostly about the butchery of war, and it is about Oriental women too, though all women really. Flaubert wrote his mistress a letter on the subject of Oriental women; it’s here in this book. I am thinking of sharing this letter with my students, you see. Academically, it’s fascinating. Would you like to hear it?”
Is this his method of seduction? Louise leans against the grave and puts her hand on the granite slab to steady herself. It is faintly cool and moist, almost like earth. There is nothing to do but accept the moment. She nods, lets him read:
The Oriental woman is a machine, and nothing more. To smoke, to go to the baths, to paint her eyelids and drink coffee, this is the circle of occupations where her existence revolves. And as for her physical pleasure, it must be quite light, because quite early in life, that famous button, the seat of her pleasure, is cut from her. And this is what makes her, this woman, so poetic from a certain point of view, it’s that she reenters nature absolutely.
I have seen dancers whose bodies swung