The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [39]
He tried another tack. “You’re an American,” he said with contempt. “You Americans are all prudes, and you are probably frigid.”
I had never heard that word in its sexual sense; I interpreted glaciale in the sense of unfeeling, which I was not, or reticent, which I unfortunately was, to my embarrassment. “You French,” I said without reticence, and forgetting that he was not French but Slav, “are all libertines, and you are lecherous.”
“We appreciate sex as we appreciate wine. Life without it is inconceivable.”
“But not at every meal.”
“Why not? You say you are not a virgin, my Viridis, and I believe you, but have you ever indulged to satiety? Have you ever even done it twice in one night? No, I think not. Sex is a thirst, and an appetite. Have you ever been satisfied? Are your orgasmes powerful?”
I had not heard of orgasmes and could not guess that what he was referring to was…what was that expression you used? “Get over the mountain”? Yes, I did not know that he was referring to getting over the mountain. I was not a virgin, no, not by a long shot, but je n’avais jamais joui comme ça, I had never been satisfaite, I had never been made to go over the mountain. Willy seemed to be waiting for an answer—this man who never wanted answers to his self-answering questions. I said nothing.
He took a different slant. “Show me your paintings. Let me look at your art. If I cannot admire the beauty of your unadorned body, let me see your most intimate croquis.”
“All of my pictures,” I told him, “are in my cabinet at the Académie Julian. I have nothing here.”
He sighed, and seemed about to give up, but tried once more, one last ploy. “Are you ovulating and afraid you’ll get pregnant? Very well, let me try ta neuvième porte.”
“My ninth door? What is that?”
“Don’t be naïve. Count your openings. Which is ninth and last?” When I seemed puzzled, he guided me: “Start with your ears, two, your eyes, two, your nostrils, two, your mouth, one, downward.”
“Oh,” I said. “No,” I said.
“Ta douce rose. You are still a virgin there, no? I will be gentle. I will take your rose very slowly and with the most delightful sensations. You will love it. You will become addicted to it, so that whenever I ask again, it will be mine, alone. You will even beg me to have it whenever I am able to stiffen my monument.”
I laughed as an escape from embarrassment. I laughed at those words, faire raidir mon monument, such a conceited conceit. I drew a picture in my mind of his penis as a monument approaching my ninth door, and found it hilarious, and couldn’t stop laughing. Willy’s face began to grow very red, and he gave me a disdainful look and vanished.
I did not tell Coco of the visit, of course. Whenever I saw Willy after that, always in the company of Coco, I couldn’t suppress a short, quiet giggle, like a spontaneous belch, or a short hike partway up the mountain, and he tried very hard to pretend that I did not exist. But I found myself in private, lonely moments imagining what it would be like if I allowed Willy’s monument to enter my ninth door.
I ran out of money. The funds that my father had calculated would last me a year in Chicago did not last a year in Paris. I had put off writing home to ask for more. Now I had to. It was a difficult letter, and an apologetic one. I described the Académie Julian and my teachers there, particularly Monsieur Lévy, who was responsible for my having the rating of No. 3 in the school and who had encouraged me in resisting the temptation to become more fauve. I explained, or tried to explain, what Fauvism is, but then I realized that these pages were not going to make any impression whatsoever on my father, so I brought my letter quickly to its conclusion: that I was fulfilling myself, that I wanted very much to stay another year or so in Paris, that I hoped he would understand, and that I hoped he would send the money as expeditiously as possible.
I mailed the letter but realized that a month or more could pass before it reached him and brought his response back to me,