SLOWLY THE LIGHT CHANGES, day by day, reflected from countless old surfaces of the town. A new quality appears in it, an intensity that means death for the season. The winter months have grown weary. They are ready to be over-thrown. In the streets one can sense the imminence of this. The skies have grown bright, have freshened. The past is melting like ice.
Dean sits waiting while she makes herself up. It’s still fairly light outside. People are strolling after work, happy to have days that end before darkness. He looks through a cheap magazine while she makes the last touches. Her face is close to the mirror.
“You know, you shouldn’t read this junk,” he says, leafing through it.
She turns to see. Then she continues with the mirror.
“It’s just stories,” she says.
“They’re terrible. What do you see in them?”
She shrugs. He tosses it aside.
“I should read more books,” she says, as if to her reflection.
“That’s right, you should.”
“I like Montherlant,” she says. “And Proust.”
“You haven’t read Proust.”
“Of course,” she says.
“Really?”
Turning, she asks,
“How do you find me?”
“Too much lipstick,” he says.
She turns her head this way and that before the mirror, considering herself.
“I find it good,” she says.
“No, it’s not.”
“Si,” she insists. Nevertheless she wipes a little from the corners.
Dean sits on the bed, his head leaning back against the wall. He looks around the room. Everything seems ordinary, everything seems poor. Sometimes he is depressed by her imperfections. They should not be important, perhaps, but they often become so real, so ready to take control of her, these plain qualities hidden by the brilliance of a language and life the taste of which he has only just begun to grasp. He waits for her to put on her coat. She avoids his eyes. In silence they descend to the street. He is waiting for her to say something.
“We go to the shops?”
Dean doesn’t reply. He merely stares at her.
“Come,” she insists.
It’s chilly at this hour, the end of the day. Her cheeks are reddened, like an urchin’s. The tiny slits in her earlobes seem a mark of low caste. They walk towards the center of town. She has linked her arm in his. He seems not to notice. He has turned into lead.
“Tu es fâché avec moi?” she asks.
He shrugs. They walk along cheerlessly. Her face has the helplessness of someone who is no longer believed in.
“Phillip, tu es fâché?” she repeats.
“No.”
There are only women in the shop, mothers and daughters, wives. The owner moves among the flutter of merchandise. She is waiting on two or three customers at once. She reaches for boxes on various shelves and lays them open on the counter. Dean is uncomfortable. He stands against the wall like a shadow. He has a pose of disinterest, but although they glance at him upon entering, nobody seems to pay him any attention.
“Phillip,” she calls.
He looks up for an instant, uncertain. She had gone to the back.
“Phillip,” she calls again, “viens.”
She beckons from one of the booths.
He starts back. One of the shoppers looks up at him. He feels awkward, as if the process of movement had suddenly asserted all its complexity and everything had to be commanded. He walks as if made of wood. The curtain is pulled aside. There in the company of a large mirror she stands, naked to the waist.
“You must help me,” she says calmly.
She slips her arms into a brassiere and presents her back to him to have it fastened. He does it without a word, with the detachment of a servant, but as he watches her in the mirror regarding herself, turning slightly, then hunching her shoulders together to take it off again, he begins to have an erection.
“You must help me choose,” she says. A pause. “Phillip.”
“Yes.”
“You must help me.”
He is watching her. Her nakedness compels him. No matter what he does, he cannot commit it to memory. It seems to be given to him in a series of revelations that are like flashes. She makes her breasts comfortable in another garment which he fastens.
“Do you like it?” she asks.
“I like the other more,” he says. His first words. She gives not the slightest hint of triumph.
“This?”
“Yes.”
She strips to try it on again.
“Yes,” she agrees. “This one is the best.”
She raises her arms to allow him to feel it. After a few minutes she removes the brassiere and watches in the mirror as his touch makes her nipples hard. Someone begins walking towards the rear of the shop, and Dean starts to move away, but she tightens her arms against her sides to imprison him. They hear the curtain of the other booth being pulled aside for a young girl and her mother. In the mirror Dean discovers a smile.
They go off to dinner near the gare. The sky is unnaturally bright. In the last of day a great storm assembles. The air is alive. Across a heaven of terrifying, of Toledo blue, huge clouds are moving, dark as the sea. People begin to vanish. The open spaces of town, the promenades, the squares, become thrilling in their emptiness. A cat hesitates, then hurries across the street.
They eat with the rain coming straight down, smoking across the pavements. Dean is excited. His whole mood has changed. Great bands of water move through the darkened air and beat on the cloth of his car.
“Isn’t that beautiful?” he cries.
He is hunched over the table, looking out.
“Tiens,” she says, “are you happy now, seal? There is water.”
He nods, ashamed of how he has been, which seems childish. The storm is the first of spring. It turns one’s thoughts ahead. Her freckles—she does not know the word—will come back, she says. Not everywhere, just here, she circles her eyes and nose.
“Ah,” he says. “You’ll be like a raccoon.”
“A what?”
“A raccoon. A raccoon,” he says. “Don’t you know what that is? It’s an animal.”
“Oh, yes?” she says blankly.
Suddenly he bursts into laughter. He cannot contain it. He tries to tell her: c’est très joli, but he can’t say it, and she begins laughing, too. He starts to draw one for her on a scrap of paper. First the feet, but they are absurd. He collapses in laughter.
“It’s a rat,” she says.
“No, it’s not.”
However, he cannot keep it from becoming that. Its ears. Even its tail. The nose grows very pointed.
“It’s a rat,” she says.
They need only glance at each other to start laughing again.
In the room she tries on her new things. She slips off her clothes and puts on the pants and bra she’s just bought. Then she poses for him, laughs, and falls onto the bed. They lie together in the calm darkness. He places her hand on his prick. Her cool fingers hesitate a moment and then begin to comprehend it. She is more obedient than before. He is more devoted. The bath of anger has left them happier. It’s like a pruning. Afterwards they seem less encumbered—they move towards the very light.
A long time passes. Her head rests on his chest. She begins to kiss his stomach. The gravity of her movement betrays her. Suddenly he is certain of what she is about to do. He draws her up and presses kisses on her mouth. He can already feel it fitting over him. She moves down again. Her body is curled between his legs. Tenderly she explores him. Finally she begins. Dean touches her cheeks. He traces his finger around her mouth, outlining it. She stops as if for breath, then starts again, accepting more of it. He thrusts a little. He feels himself come. Great, clenching bursts. She doesn’t move. She draws back slightly. Finally she relinquishes him altogether. A solemn moment somehow occurs. She spreads part of the sperm on his belly with her index finger while she watches the last, reflexive spasms. Then she goes to the sink. Dean hears the water running. Was it bad, he asks. She spits out some water and says something in French. He doesn’t understand.
“What?”
She is silent.
“What is it like?” he asks.
She returns to the bed. She doesn’t know. Strange, is all she will say. Strong. It’s her first time.