The Seal Wife - Kathryn Harrison [33]
Bigelow wades through dry grass on the hillside, trampling it down with his boots, pulling the sledge behind him. The runners make a hissing noise.
After playing it for her once, he’d left his gramophone at the Aleut woman’s house, and it sat in a corner, unused, until she left and he reclaimed it. He is sure that even in his absence, even in privacy, she didn’t listen to the recordings he brought.
Of course, his motives had not been honorable. As he walked to her house with the machine he told himself he was bringing a gift, but really he’d hoped the thing might unnerve her as it had the work crew. He saw himself comforting her, assuaging her fear with kisses. When he reached her door, he pushed it with his shoulder and it swung open; she put her arms out to take his burden from him. Her head was tilted to one side, as if in question. What strange animal did he have? Bigelow set the device on the table, unwrapped it carefully, folding the oilcloth and winding the length of twine around his hand as she sat by her stove, arms crossed.
Caruso held a note for longer than anyone might reasonably expect, and she pursed her lips in what could have been interpreted as grudging admiration, either that or boredom. With one hand on the table’s edge to keep her balance, she tipped backward in her chair, and, when he came to her, she looked up. She lifted an eyebrow as if to ask whether he didn’t have company enough with all those voices he’d brought with him, their keening and clamor.
Bigelow studied her face, looking for condescension, found it in her imperturbable eyes. Was she as she seemed, serenely selfsufficient, like a stone or a star, a single skin boat hurrying through the waves? He ground his face into her silence until their teeth clacked together.
On the bed, he studied her, tracing his thumb over the lines on her chin. He put a finger near one of her eyes and she blinked, but without looking at him, and when he lay above her, both of them still dressed, she struggled only if he let his weight rest too heavily on her ribs, only when he pressed the breath from her lungs.
Feeling her move under the layers of fabric that separated them, the collar of his shirt pulling uncomfortably against his neck, Bigelow was suddenly aroused. He fumbled with his own buttons, then turned his attention to hers, eager to get to her body: to armpits with their sparse straight black hairs, lines that strangely echoed those on her chin, to the shriveling dark aureoles of her nipples, the humped back of her littlest toe.
If she would punish him with her vacancy, if she would leave him alone with her body, he would trespass over all those parts she usually kept from him. He rolled her over and played with her braid. He bit at the tendons lying tight behind her knees. Slid his hand like a knife between her buttocks.
The phonograph wound down, and he left her side to crank the arm and replace the needle. Carrying the lamp back to the bed, he spread her legs to look at the dark place from which she always removed his exploring hand, the place where for months he drove himself into her. A drop of oil fell onto her smooth leg, but she didn’t protest. Her face, as expressionless as her knee, betrayed nothing.
Bigelow set the lamp on the floor by the bed, and the woman’s body disappeared into a well of shadow. The phonograph wound down again, but he didn’t get up to crank it. Instead he remained where he was, listening to the sudden sound of rain.
After a while, the woman sat up. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, walked naked to her stove. Bigelow disassembled the phonograph, removed the trumpet and latched the tone arm so it wouldn’t swing, took the recording from the turntable and slipped it back into its envelope. He