A Woman, In Bed. Anne Finger
Jacques took a blanket from his rucksack, spread it on the sand, seated himself, and unbuttoned his flies. He yanked up her skirt, pulled off her drawers, tucking them in the rucksack so they wouldn’t blow away, lowered her roughly onto him, facing away.
The world beyond them disappeared. Even her breasts, their limbs, their mouths, their smells were inconsequential. There was only his sex, her sex, the bare and frank conjunction of their movement. The God she’d worshipped all her life, the God of good and evil, of sin and virtue, was killed as they made love, murdered by his ancient mothers and fathers. The stout gods and goddesses of the barbarians reigned again, squatting around campfires, gnawing on the gristle of roasted bone, picking their teeth, farting—gods who did not know the meaning of the word shame.
And then the world came back.
The wind.
The fog.
The two of them.
The plash and funk of the ocean.
A sound, something between a honk and a bark, slowly distinguished itself from the rumble of the ocean, the cries of the gulls, the flap of the wind against their clothing.
“We aren’t the only lovers on the beach today,” Jacques whispered. Steadying herself with one hand against his hip, she turned.
A few feet beyond them, two monk seals were coupling lackadaisically on the strand. Their bodies, so graceful in water, were slug-like on land. The cow moaned as the bull flopped on top of her.
“Slowly, slowly,” Jacques’ whispered, as she pulled herself off of him. She sat on his lap, his arms wrapped around her, sheltering her. She whispered, “They can’t smell us?”
He shrugged, mouthed the words, “The wind—the wrong direction—”
The seals both bellowed, roars of pleasure, cries of pain echoing off the rocks and waves.
It was quite acceptable for a married woman to put her hand into the crook of the elbow of a man who was not her husband, who was a guest of the family, as the two of them walked through the streets of Juan-les-Pins, as this constituted an act of everyday masculine protection to the frail sex of which Simone was a member, although none of her family friends and acquaintances, passing them and offering a smile, a nod, a tip of the hat, could have known the pleasure it gave her to have her thin fingers wrapped around his arm, could have known she was thinking: I never before knew my hand, my very hand itself, could experience joy.
It was also quite within the realm of that which was proper for a young woman of a good bourgeois family to stand on the railway platform with said lodger, even though it might be observed that the smile upon her face revealed she was quite smitten. It was not quite acceptable, but still these things happen, it’s not comme il faut, but nonetheless, a shrug, a wink, for Simone to have her fling with Jacques. After all, women were weak, easily tempted, and men had desires that were like the engine of that train now entering the station.
But to step onto the train with this man with the brooding eyes and furrowed brow, to travel with him to Carcassonne to visit the poet Joë Bousquet, was to cast herself outside the bounds of decency.
Simone, right foot on the step, left on the platform, hesitated for a fraction of a second, not filled with second thoughts, but rather with the desire to prolong this moment, her break with the past.
She drew a deep breath, grabbed hold of the bar, and hoisted herself onto the train.
Chez Vidal, Odette was wailing: “Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama,” holding out her arms. “Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama.”
They were lucky enough to find a compartment alone.
“Did I ever tell you,” Simone said, leaning her head against Jacques’ shoulder, “that the first man I ever loved was wounded in the war?”
Did I ever tell you…she said, as if she had told him many, many things about her life. The fact is, they have said very little to one another, and most of that in the presence of others: Albert, the guests crowded together in the parlor after dinner. The words they have spoken to one another when alone have mostly been monosyllables: yes, there, oh, hold me, oh, yes, my God, oh, oh; oh yes, yes, right there, oh.
He knew she had had a stout sister named Elise who had died of Spanish influenza leaving behind a dress of cornflower blue; a husband named Luc who had an ornate and ridiculous mustache and had gone to a costume party as a concubine; a father who had died some years before—his portrait hung in the lodging-house parlor. Quite frankly, he did not want to know the year of this husband’s birth, his place of origin nor particulars about Simone’s mother’s social background, any facts that might enable him to create a smooth narrative of her life.
“I like the way things are between us now. When I feel I know everything essential about you and nothing superfluous.”
She fell silent and when he realized, belatedly, that his words had wounded her, he said, “Go on,” and stroked her hand affectionately.
“My father died when I was twelve years old. For a while I became very devout. I’d set penances for myself—walk with my head bent down, looking for jagged pebbles to put in my shoes. I went to Mass every day—the old crones, and me. They kept urging me to kneel on a prie-dieu but I liked—wanted—the sensation of the flagstone against my knees. And then there was the war—I became devoted to France—”
“Rather than to God?”
“I wasn’t devoted to God so much as to my father’s salvation. My mother’d say, ‘You’d better pray for him. He needs every single one of your prayers.’ But then, when France was invaded, it was so—concrete. I kept a map, with colored pins—black for Germany, red for France. At school, we were allowed to knit. For the soldiers at the front, as long as we used wooden needles and not steel ones. The clack of steel ones drowned out the teacher. One day, my teacher, Mme. LeDuc—I idolized her—held up my socks and said, ‘These are socks for deformed feet.’”
“I suppose that was the end of her as your idol.”
“Oh no. After that I loved her even more.”
When vexed by her pupils’ vast, collective stupidity, Mme. LeDuc slapped implements against her open palm—a ruler, the rod kept propped in the classroom corner. Sometimes she used these to rap knuckles, the tender spot where the shoulder and neck meet. Simone never felt the bite of the rod or the ruler, although she often imagined she did.
“Don’t weep when you are being reprimanded,” Mme. LeDuc said to her. “It’s like allowing a dog to see your fear. It’s true, I’m harder on you than I am on the other girls. You’re not hopeless.”
A trace of contempt is like a hint of bitterness in the mouth: the flesh of a veal roast can be insipid, unless dusted with tart hyssop.
“And then, Robert, who lived down the lane from us, returned from the front minus a leg. I brought him bunches of wildflowers and—even though food was so scarce then—turnips and beets and parsnips. I knitted one of my odd scarves for him. He must have already been falling in love with me then because he exclaimed over it so. He still wasn’t completely recovered: there was a suppurating wound on his flesh. After a while, it began to seem that—we were intended for one another.”
(Her mother had sighed and said, “Better a one-legged husband than no husband at all.”)
She looked Jacques fully in the face. “I was quite frightened of him. Physically. Not frightened that he might be aggressive with me—untoward, nothing like that. Frightened of the smell of him. His wound it—it stank—it was the smell of his masculinity too. The musty wet wool. As if the smell of the trenches