All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [149]
Kathleen came to my rescue. She began to talk about her life, her quiet childhood and turbulent adolescence. Her father was Irish and her mother Indian, and she felt torn between two traditions, two cultures, two loyalties. I wondered when she would get around to her fiancé. She spoke as though he didn’t exist. Shraggai must have made a mistake. I loved her slightly husky voice. As her eyes carefully examined the tip of her shoes, she spoke slowly, as though fearful of revealing a buried secret. At one point her hand touched mine, perhaps inadvertently. I took it. She said nothing, nor did I. She raised her head. I could feel her hair. Her face was very close to mine. Her breath burned my eyelids. Her lips sought mine. I didn’t know a kiss could last so long, nor that it could blossom so deeply. Kathleen was teaching me a lot about my capacities—but unfortunately not enough. When she whispered softly that it was time to make love, the fool that I am protested. “We mustn’t,” I said almost indignantly “Believe me, we mustn’t.” Her eyes widened. “Why not?” Why shouldn’t a man and woman who will love each other, who already love each other, make love when they feel like it? My body, tense with desire, wanted to—I was certainly attracted to Kathleen—yet I resisted her. Was it lack of experience or fear of disappointing her? She guided me to her bed, under a purple canopy. We embraced, falling onto the thick bedspread. I felt her body’s warmth. I would have given anything to receive what it offered me. But I was not ready to give—or receive—anything. Imprisoned by my inhibitions, religious or otherwise, I rejected the offering. Caresses, kisses, yes. But no more. I stopped myself at the last instant, on the threshold of joy, for deep down I was sure Kathleen was still a virgin. In those days I was convinced that all women were virgins until they married, and how could I, my father’s son, “sully” them? “What we do must be pure,” I whispered to her. “Do you understand?” She didn’t. I launched into a philosophical lesson on love’s theological components. Did she know that in the Bible the terms kedosha and kedesha, which are strangely related, mean “saint” and “prostitute” respectively? Did she know the Gitas? Now I was back on familiar ground. Between two passionate embraces I told her what I had learned in India about sacred eroticism. And had she ever heard of Jewish mysticism? Did she know that every union is a re-union? Is there any union more mysterious and pure than that of two beings imbued with the same need, the same desire? I expressed myself awkwardly, speaking many words but saying nothing, becoming agitated without doing anything she expected of me or anything I expected of myself.
At about three in the morning she gave up, exhausted. “Will I see you again?” she asked. Maybe she was afraid she had disappointed me. I reassured her: I loved her more than ever. I loved her body’s beauty and grace as much as the purity of her soul. So of course we had to see each other again. We kissed one last time, and I left.
The métro had stopped running, and the rare taxis were expensive, so I walked home. Hardly anyone was in the street, even on the Champs-Élysées, though it was spring and the weather was fair. I was accosted by prostitutes. An old woman, heavily made up and leering unpleasantly, touched my arm. I jerked it away. Farther on, near the Madeleine, a much younger girl tried to lure me: “I have a baby and no money to feed him.” I wondered why I didn’t take her up on it. She could give me lessons I sorely needed. But I thought about