The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [68]
—You’ve made a study of this, she said.
—I have. For something that I’m working on. Have you read The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis?
—How amazing. I’m reading Report to Greco.
—Kazantzakis presents Magdalene as a local whore, someone Jesus had yearnings for since childhood. Someone with whom he had a lifelong sexual relationship. Some think she bore him children.
—All the institutions for unwed mothers are called Magdalene.
—I remember, he said.
—Did you see Jesus Christ Superstar?
—“I don’t know how to love Him.”
—I’ve never stopped loving you, she said.
His breath caught, and he closed his eyes. Behind them, the pure pain of time lost was a star exploding. He put his hands on his thighs, as if bracing himself against some great hurt.
—I’d come to think of it like childhood, she said. Something I once had that I shouldn’t expect to have again.
He looked up toward the ceiling, as a man does when he doesn’t want to admit to tears. Why didn’t you let me know? he asked, his voice husky.
She crossed her legs and then had to bend them sideways in the narrow pew. For all the reasons I told you. I assumed you’d moved on, forgotten me.
—Never.
—I knew that you had married. My aunt couldn’t wait to tell me. I think she actually called me on the phone as soon as she heard.
—Oh, Linda.
—And that was that.
He couldn’t touch her in the church. No matter how passionately she hated her God, he knew she would mind such an overture. Nor, when they left the church, could he touch her then, the children having waited for them patiently and followed them along the path. Not until they had left the village behind and were out of sight did he reach ahead and stop her. She turned — so willingly, he might have thanked God — and folded herself into him. The first kiss was not familiar, and yet he felt himself arrived, come home, safe to shore. And might have told her this, had she not stopped his mouth with a second kiss, her taste reminding him now of a thousand others. She laced strong fingers around the nape of his neck and bent his head helplessly toward hers. He stumbled and then knelt, not intentionally, his balance gone. She pulled him toward her so that he was drawn up against her bare midriff. The pleasure so great, he groaned with gratitude. She bent her head to his.
—Linda, he said, relief lowering his voice.
* * *
He tried to take in the room and make it his, even as she lay upon the coverlet. The kanga unknotted now, the halter top untied, her breasts a white shock against the color of her skin. He could not then remember anything of how they had been before, and yet they moved together as if they hadn’t ever been apart. He had never felt himself so thoroughly at home in time. It was a revelation that this could be his, that she might give him this again and again and again, that discontent might ease. She rose above him and said his name, her hair a damp curtain at the sides of her face. She lowered her shoulders and offered her breasts, which he took into his hands and mouth, wanting all of her.
Sweet recompense for all the days and nights unlived.
November 27
Dear Thomas,
Today we had a visit from the MP for Nyeri. Unexpected, because he had come from Nairobi to negotiate a bride-price for a second wife, whom no one is supposed to know about; the first wife, to her grave misfortune, is infertile. He arrived in a Mercedes, and came in with such pomp, I expected to be blessed. He sat on a bench at the back of the room and listened to a lesson on multiplication, nodding from time to time, as if there were points about which one might agree or disagree, all the while picking his teeth with a twig. The children were cowed and kept sneaking surreptitious looks at the big man who had come from the city. He wore a gold watch, and I don’t know much about men’s clothing, but the fabric of his suit looked expensive. He had a retinue of eight. He travels with a car in front of him and a car in back as a security measure against thieves and political opponents. Should he be stopped by