Sexus

  The conversation was thoroughly desultory, spluttering out with a dull thud like a bullet encountering muscle and sinew. We weren’t talking, we were simply parking our sexual implements in the free-parking void of anthropoid chewing-gum machines on the edge of a gasoline oasis. Night would fall poetically over the scene, like a shot of ptomaine poison wrapped in a rotten tomato. Hannah would find her false teeth behind the mechanical piano; Florrie would appropriate a rusty can-opener with which to start the blood flowing.

  The wet sand clung to our bodies with the tenacity of fresh-laid wallpaper. From the factories and hospitals nearby came the ingratiating aroma of exhausted chemicals, of hair soaked in peepee, of useless organs plucked out alive and left to rot slowly through an eternity in sealed vessels labeled with great care and veneration. A brief twilight sleep in the arms of Morpheus the Danubian dachshund.

  When I got back to town Maude inquired in her polite fishlike way if I had had a pleasant holiday. She remarked that I looked rather haggard. She added that she was thinking of taking a little vacation herself; she had received an invitation from an old convent friend to pass a few days at her home in the country. I thought it an excellent idea.

  Two days later I accompanied her and the child to the station. She asked me if I wouldn’t care to ride part of the way with them. I saw no reason why I shouldn’t. Besides, I thought maybe she had something of importance to tell me. I boarded the train and rode some distance into the country, talking about things of no consequence and wondering all the time when she would come out with it. Nothing happened. I finally got off the train and waved goodbye. “Say goodbye to daddy,” she urged the child. “You won’t see him again for several weeks.” Bye-bye! Bye-bye! I waved good-naturedly, like any suburban papa seeing his wife and child off. Several weeks, she had said. That would be excellent. I walked up and down the platform waiting for the train and pondering on all the things I would do in her absence. Mara would be delighted. It would be like having a private honeymoon: we could do a million wonderful things in a stretch of several weeks.

  The following day I awoke with a frightful earache. I telephoned Mara and urged her to meet me at the doctor’s office. The doctor was one of the wife’s demonic friends. He had almost murdered the child once with his medieval instruments of torture. Now it was my turn. I left Mara to sit it out on a bench near the entrance to the park.

  The doctor seemed delighted to see me; engaging me in a pseudo-literary discussion, he put his instruments up to boil. Then he tested out an electrically run glass cage which looked like a transparent ticker but which was actually some devilish sort of inhuman bloodsucking contraption which he intended to try out as a parting fillip.

  So many doctors had tinkered with my ear that I was quite a veteran by this time. Each fresh irruption meant that the dead bone was drawing closer and closer to the brain. Finally there would be a grand conjunction, the mastoid would become like a wild mustang, there would be a concert of silver saws and silver mallets, and I would be shipped home with my face twisted to one side like a hemiplegic rhapsodist.

  “You don’t hear any more with that ear, of course?” said he, plunging a hot wire into the very core of my skull without a word of warning.

  “No, not at all,” I answered, almost sliding off the seat with pain.

  “Now this is going to hurt a bit,” said he, manipulating a diabolical-looking fishhook.

  It went on like that, each operation a little more painful than the last, until I was so beside myself with pain that I wanted to kick him in the guts. Still there remained the electrical cage: that was to irrigate the canals, extract the last iota of pus, and send me out into the street rearing like a bronco.

  “It’s a nasty business,” he said, lighting a cigarette in order to give me a breathing spell. “I wouldn’t want to go through with it myself. If it gets any worse you’d better let me operate on you.”

  I settled down for the irrigation. He inserted the nozzle and turned on the switch. It felt as though he were irrigating my brain with a solution of prussic acid. The pus was coming out and with it a thin stream of blood. The pain was excruciating.

  “Does it really hurt as much as that?” he exclaimed, seeing that I had become white as a sheet.

  “It hurts worse than that,” I said. “If you don’t stop soon I’ll smash it. I’d rather have triple mastoids and look like a demented frog.”

  He pulled the nozzle out and with it the lining of my ear, of my cerebellum, of one kidney and the marrow of my coccyx.

  “A fine job,” said I. “When do I come again?”

  He thought it best to come tomorrow—just to see how it was progressing.

  Mara had a fright when she saw me. She wanted to take me home at once and nurse me. I was so used up I couldn’t stand having anyone near me. Hurriedly I said goodbye. “Meet me tomorrow!”

  I staggered home like a drunk and fell on the couch, into a deep drugged sleep. When I awoke it was dawning. I felt excellent. I got up and went for a stroll through the park. The swans were coming to life: their mastoids were nonexistent.

  When pain lets up life seems grand, even without money or friends or high ambitions. Just to breathe easily, to walk without a sudden spasm or twitch. Swans are very beautiful then. Trees too. Even automobiles. Life moves along on roller skates; the earth is pregnant and constantly churning up new magnetic fields of space. See how the wind bends the tiny blades of grass! Each little blade is sentient; everything responds. If the earth itself were in pain we could do nothing about it. The planets never have an earache; they are immune, though bearing within them untold pain and suffering.

  For once I was at the office ahead of time. I worked like a Trojan without feeling the slightest fatigue. At the appointed time I met Mara. She would sit again on the park bench, in the same spot.

  This time the doctor merely took a look at the ear, picked away a fresh scab, swabbed it with a soothing ointment, and plugged it up. “Looks fine,” he mumbled. “Come back in a week.”

  We were in good spirits, Mara and I. We had dinner in a roadhouse and with it some Chianti. It was a balmy evening, just made for a stroll over the downs. After a time we lay down in the grass and gazed up at the stars. “Do you think she’ll really stay away several weeks?” asked Mara.

  It seemed too good to be true.

  “Maybe she’ll never come back,” I said. “Maybe that’s what she wanted to tell me when she asked me to ride part of the way with her. Maybe she lost her nerve at the last minute.”

  Mara didn’t think she was the sort to make a sacrifice like that. It didn’t matter anyway. For a while we could be happy, could forget that she existed.

  “I wish we could get away from this country altogether,” said Mara. “I wish we could go to some other country, somewhere where nobody knows us.”

  I agreed that that would be ideal. “We’ll do it eventually,” I said. “There isn’t a soul here whom I care about. My whole life has been meaningless—until you came along.”

  “Let’s go and row in the lake,” said Mara suddenly. We got up and sauntered over to the boats. Too late, the boats were all padlocked. We started strolling aimlessly along a path by the water; soon we came to a little resthouse built out over the water. It was deserted. I sat down on the rough bench and Mara seated herself on my lap. She had on the stiff dotted Swiss dress which I liked so much. Underneath it not a stitch. She got off my lap a moment and lifting her dress she straddled me. We had a wonderful close-knit fuck. When it was over we sat for a while without unhitching, just silently chewing one another’s lips and ears.

  Then we got up and, at the edge of the lake, we washed ourselves with our handkerchiefs. I was just drying my cock with the tail of my shirt when Mara suddenly grasped my arm and pointed to something moving behind a bush. All I could see was a gleam of something bright. I quickly buttoned up my pants and taking Mara by the arm we regained the gravel path and started slowly walking in the opposite direction.
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br />   “It was a cop, I’m sure,” said Mara. “They do that, the dirty perverts. They’re always hiding in the bushes spying on people.”

  In a moment, sure enough, we heard the heavy tread of a thick-witted Mick.

  “Just a minute, you two,” he said, “where do you think you’re going?”

  “What do you mean?” said I, pretending to be annoyed. “We’re taking a walk, can’t you see?”

  “It’s about time you took a walk,” he said. “I’ve a good mind to walk you back to the station with me. What do you think this is—a stud farm?”

  I pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about. Being a Mick, that enraged him.

  “None of your lip,” said he. “Better get that dame out of here before I run you in.”

  “She’s my wife.”

  “So . . . your wife, is it? Well now, ain’t that nice? Just doing a little billing and cooing, eh? Washing your private parts in public too—I’ll be damned if I ever saw the likes of it. Now don’t be in too great a hurry. You’re guilty of a grave offense, me lad, and if this is your wife she’s in for it too.”

  “Look here, you don’t mean to say. . .”

  “What’s your name?” he demanded cutting me short, and making to reach for his little notebook.

  I told him.

  “And where do you live?”

  I told him.

  “And her name?”

  “The same as mine—she’s my wife, I told you.”

  “So you did,” he said, with a dirty leer. “All right. Now then, what do you do for a living? Are you working?”

  I pulled out my wallet and showed him the Cosmodemonic pass which I always carried and which entitled me to ride free of charge on all subway, elevated and streetcar lines of the city of Greater New York. He scratched his head at this and tilted his cap back on his head. “So you’re the employment manager, are you? That’s a pretty responsible position for a young man like you.” Heavy pause. “I suppose you’d like to keep your job a little longer, wouldn’t you?”

  Suddenly I had visions of seeing my name plastered in headlines over the morning papers. A fine story the reporters could make of it if they wanted to. It was time to do something.

  “Look here, Officer,” says I, “let’s talk the thing over quietly. I live nearby—why don’t you walk over to the house with me? Maybe my wife and I were a little reckless—we’re not married very long. We shouldn’t have carried on like that in a public place, but it was dark and there was nobody around. . .”

  “Well, there might be a way of fixing it,” says he. “You don’t want to lose your job, do you?”

  “No, I don’t,” says I, wondering at the same time how much I had in my pocket and whether he would sneeze at it or not.

  Mara was fumbling in her bag.

  “Now don’t be in such a hurry, lady. You know you can’t bribe an officer of the law. By the way, what church do you go to, if I’m not too inquisitive?”

  I answered quickly, giving the name of the Catholic church on our corner.

  “Then you’re one of Father O’Malley’s boys! Well, why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? Shure, you wouldn’t want to disgrace the parish now, would you?”

  I told him it would kill me were Father O’Malley to hear of it.

  “And you were married in Father O’Malley’s church?”

  “Yes, Fath—I mean Officer. We were married last April.”

  I was trying to count the bills in my pocket without extracting them. It seemed as if there were only three or four bucks. I was wondering how much Mara might have. The cop had started walking and we fell in with him. Presently he stopped short. He pointed ahead with his club. And with his club in the air and his head slightly averted, he began a slow monologue about a coming novena to Our Lady of the Flying Buttress or something of the sort, saying as he held out his left hand that the shortest way out of the park was straight ahead and mind you, be on your good behavior and so forth.

  Mara and I hastily stuffed a few bills in his hand and, thanking him for his kindness, we lit out like a bolt.

  “I think you’d better come home with me,” I said. “If it wasn’t enough we gave him he may be coming to pay us a visit. I don’t trust these dirty bastards. . . . Father O’Malley, shit!”

  We hurried home and locked ourselves in. Mara was still trembling. I dug up a little port wine which was hidden away in a cupboard.

  “The thing to happen now,” I said, as I downed a glassful, “is for Maude to come back and surprise us.”

  “She wouldn’t do that, would she?”

  “Christ only knows what she might do.”

  “I think we’d better sleep down here,” said Mara. “I wouldn’t like to sleep in her bed.”

  We finished the wine and got undressed. Mara came out of the bathroom in Maude’s silk kimono. It gave me a start to see her in Maude’s outfit. “I’m your wife, am I not?” she said, putting her arms around me. It gave me a thrill to hear her say that. She walked about the room examining the things.

  “Where do you write?” she asked. “At that little table?”

  I nodded.

  “You ought to have a big table and a room of your own. How can you write here?”

  “I have a big desk upstairs.”

  “Where? In the bedroom?”

  “No, in the parlor. It’s wonderfully lugubrious up there—would you like to see it?”

  “No,” she said quickly, “I’d rather not go up there. I’ll always think of you as sitting here in this corner by the window. . . . Is this where you wrote me all those letters?”

  “No,” I said, “I wrote you from the kitchen.”

  “Show me,” she said. “Show me just where you sat. I want to see how you looked.”

  I took her by the hand and led her back to the kitchen. I sat down and pretended I was writing her a letter. She bent over me and putting her lips to the table she kissed the spot encircled by my arms.

  “I never dreamt I would see your home,” she said. “It’s strange to see the place which is to have such an effect upon your life. It’s a holy place. I wish we could take this table with us and this chair—everything—even the stove. I wish we could move the whole room and build it into our own home. It belongs to us, this room.”

  We went to bed on the divan in the basement. It was a warm night and we went to sleep in the raw. About seven in the morning, as we lay entwined in each other’s arms, the rolling doors were violently pushed open and there stood my darling wife, the landlord who lived upstairs, and his daughter. In flagrant delectation we were caught. I sprang out of bed stark naked. Snatching a towel which was on the chair beside the couch I flung it around me and waited for the verdict. Maude motioned to her witnesses to step in and take a look at Mara, who was lying there holding a sheet over her bosom.

  “I’ll ask you to please get this woman out of here as quickly as possible,” said Maude, and with that she turned on her heel and went upstairs with her witnesses.

  Had she been sleeping upstairs in our own bed all night? If so, why had she waited until morning?

  “Take it easy, Mara. The goose is cooked now. We may as well stay and have breakfast.”

  I dressed hurriedly and ran out to get some bacon and eggs.

  “God, I don’t see how you can take it so calmly,” she said, sitting at the table with a cigarette to her lips, watching me prepare the breakfast. “Haven’t you any feelings?”

  “Sure I have. My feeling is that everything has worked out splendidly. I’m free, do you realize that?”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to work, for one thing. This evening I’ll go to Ulric’s place—you might meet me there. I have an idea my friend Stanley is behind all this. We’ll see.”

  At the office I sent a telegram to Stanley to meet me at Ulric’s that evening. During the day I had a telephone call from Maude suggesting that I find myself a room. She said she would get the divorc
e as soon as possible. No comments upon the situation, just a pure businesslike statement. I was to let her know when I wished to call for my things.

  Ulric took it rather gravely. It meant a change of life and all changes were serious to him. Mara on the other hand was thoroughly in possession of herself and already looking forward to the new life. It remained to see how Stanley would take it.

  Presently the bell rang and there he was, sinister-looking as usual and drunk as a pope. I hadn’t seen him that way for years. He had decided that it was an event of the first importance and that it should be celebrated. As far as getting any details from him was concerned it was absolutely impossible. “I told you I’d fix it for you,” he said. “You walked into it like a fly into a web. I had it figured out to a T. I didn’t ask you any questions, did I? I knew just what you’d do.”

  He took a swig from a flask which he was carrying in his inside coat pocket. He didn’t even bother to remove his hat. I could see him now as he must have looked when at Fort Oglethorpe. He was the sort of fellow I would have given a wide berth, seeing him in that state.

  The telephone rang. It was Dr. Kronski asking for Mister Miller. “Congratulations!” he shouted. “I’m coming over there to see you in a few minutes. I have something to tell you.”

  “By the way,” I said, “do you know anybody who has an extra room to let?”

  “That’s just what I was going to talk to you about. I’ve got a place all picked out for you—up in the Bronx. It’s a friend of mine—he’s a doctor. You can have a whole wing of the house to yourself. Why don’t you take Mara with you? You’ll like it there. He’s got a billiard room on the ground floor, and a good library, and . . .”