Hunger and Thirst (56 page)

“I don’t like him,” she said.

“I thought you liked everybody,” he said.

She looked down at the floor without answering. He looked her over, wondering just how many men she knew at the school. It must have been a lot. And he was
the
one. Or had been at least.

He put his arm around her. “That’s some dress,” he said.

“Gown. It cost too much to be a dress.”

“Gown.”

“Mmmm.”

“Go get a coke?” he asked.

“No, thank you.”

The next set began and they started to dance. He liked dancing with her, he realized for the first time. She was the best dancer he’d ever known. He couldn’t even feel her motion, it seemed to parallel his exactly. No matter what he did, how he altered his motion or timing, she followed without a struggle.

“I like the way you dance,” he said.

“That’s good.”

He pulled her closer and their cheeks rested together again. He kissed her cheek, letting his mind go as blank as it could. Their outstretched hands came down and rested on his left shoulder. He closed his eyes again.

He sighed and rubbed his cheek against hers as they danced. Her left hand tightened on her shoulder. He heard her throat contract and a slight gasp passed her lips. Her breath was warm on his cheek. She made a slight grumbling noise.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Oh.”

“Oh, what?”

“I’m …”

“You’re what?” He kissed her hair.

“I’m mad at you and …”

“Mad? Why?”

She pressed against him pugnaciously. “Because you’re not nice. Because you’re … oh, I don’t know.”

“Oh.”

“Every time I want to be cool you do thisssss,” she said, the last word extending into a hiss as he kissed her ear lobe.

He locked his arm tightly around her. They danced slower and slower, circling in small motions. Finally, they stopped completely. He bent over and their warm lips touched. He felt as though he were floating in dark space with rustling winds about them and far off music playing.
Deep in the dark center of life
…

She looked at him through half-closed eyes.

“Oh,” she sighed, “Here we go again.”

* * * *

When he took her home she fried some eggs for him. He liked sitting there at the kitchen table watching her, noting the odd pleasing contrast made by the homey little apron and the sophisticated gown.

They sat at the kitchen table smiling at each other. He seemed to sense a new warmth coming into their relationship. So much was past. Separations, arguments, everything. They had weathered all of them. They were still together, smiling at each other.

But time was passing. He felt that again too, felt a chill in realizing that he would be leaving soon. He had to make up his mind. Yet there was still no consuming fire of love as there had been with Melissa. He wondered why. Sally was just as beautiful, her dark brown hair framing her well shaped face, her kind shining features soft with affection. He reached over and took her hand.

“I like to be with you,” he said.

“What, hon?”

“I said I like to be with you.”

She smiled and her eyes glistened a little. She shook her head slowly.

“Erick,” she whispered, “Oh,
Erick”

And then sighed with gentle despair as a patient mother might sigh over her impossible son.

* * * *

Again the doubts. It wasn’t as though he were a downright cynic. If he were as cynical as he pretended to be, he probably would have hanged himself long before, he decided. But he wasn’t. He just had an abiding humor that was all. He couldn’t relax.

That night he wondered again for one of those brief incredible moments if he was all wrong about people. It was at times like that that he wondered. And Sally always seemed to be with him when it happened. When he wondered if maybe he were full of hot nothings. And if his iconoclasm was a derelict commodity.

Then again he knew it wasn’t so.

It was just that there were brief moments of pleasure to offset the manifold stupidities, he thought. There were wonderful seconds when man, for all his ignorance and bigotry, attained a divine beauty of love and friendship.

I know these people, he thought that night, I have seen them in their paths. I have heard their brutal laughter and seen the leer behind their smiles. I have seen the cruel currents flowing behind their every word. Their lowness and their loss of dignity.

Yet for all that, he thought, I have found beauty in them.

He went to a Christmas carol sing. There were hundreds of people in the dark street. They came from all over. It looked like a Ku Klux Klan meeting at first with all the torches. But there was peace and not hatred. There were songs of pity on lips instead of oaths and screams of intolerance.

There were hundreds of them. And the torches touched their orange fingers against the face of the night. Gently with a touch that sent sparks and smoke into the sky. There were boys and girls all over. Arm in arm, singing. And a chubby man on a truck with a microphone directing their singing and inserting pat little aphorisms here and there.

“That’s right!” he said, “And Christ is really on his way! Take a tip folks! Christ is with us! And now let’s sing …”

Dividing of the audience to see who could sing
Jingle Bells
the loudest. The man shouting, “That was pretty good but I bet you-could sing it-louder if you tried!” Cheers after the singing. Religious tone of the carols. Those beautiful and hypothetical carols, he thought.

He whispered to Sally and Leo that Jesus was born in Nazareth when they sang
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
. He told them that no records verify the presence of royalty at the nativity when they sang
We Three Kings of Orient Are
. And he suggested that Jesus was born about ten fifteen when they sang
It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
.

Leo laughed out loud.

Sally only smiled tenderly and squeezed his hand. And, as she sang, he got the feeling that she was much closer to reality than he was.

That was when he stopped short in the middle of the milling crowd. With the myriad voices surrounding him. And wondered if maybe he was all wrong.

There was goodness here, wasn’t there? Couldn’t he go on ranting and raving for a century without even touching it once? He could scorn at carols and people and simplicity until his dust swirled away. But the carols and the people and the simplicity would still be there. Bringing smiles of joy to little children as they flew into their living rooms and looked at the lovely tinseled trees. As they played with their toys. As they romped in the snow. And bringing joy to their elders as they stood around a piano and sang carols. As they sat together in warm comfort and knew each other’s presence and were happy. As they talked and felt the sweet caress of a loved one’s hand and saw the smile on a loved one’s face.

I cannot have these things. It was what he thought.

I’m no good for them. It’s not that I’ve put myself apart.

It seems to be someone else’s doing. These things have gone away from me. I have only done what seems natural. And yet I am no longer in the city of men. I am out on a mountain looking at the distant lights. Reaching out to warm my hands from it and feeling only the cold winds that chill unto death.

I’m exaggerating, he thought, I’m being too damn melodramatic.

No, I’m not.

I do sense a parting of the ways with these things. I can appreciate them, sure. I can see the glory of man. I can also see the paltry dust of him. The passing faith of him. I would like for him to be all good. But he never has been. And am I alone to effect it now? I think not.

No, I can never do anything but look and suggest. I could write a million tracts for the people. But they would do no good. All that needs to be written about the truth has already been written. People are still the same.

I will go on with my silent, my hungry needs. I must write. I must create what is within me, symbolize my hunger. It must come out of me so I can die in peace when the time comes. And what I do will make me happy. If I never marry. If I lose every friend I have. If there is nothing but my writing. I will be happy. It will be a miserable happiness probably. Sometimes I’ll want to die. But in the end, I’ll not be sorry for what I’ve done.

Was it wrong to think these things? He wondered. Was it wrong to hate ugliness? When he understood quite well that within this ugliness there had to be beauty. For if there was no beauty, what was there to call ugly?

* * * *

School was out.

Like an uptilted saucer the town drained itself rapidly of its student body. Erick could almost sense the exit of them as he lay on his bed in the room looking at the ceiling. Lynn was sitting on the other bed in his underwear.

“Why don’t you go home?” Erick said, “You’ve got money.”

“Why should I?” Lynn said, “I have less than you have to home to. At least your father is dead. Mine is a disgustingly healthy, jowly, repugnant salesman. My mother is a driveling clubwoman. My only hope in life is that my father was, in actuality, the iceman who had some philosophy as I recall.”

Erick grinned. “Filial affection.”

“Yeah,” Lynn said, “To quote your Brooklyness.”

“Well you and I will probably be only ones left in the whole town,” Erick said.

“How chummy,” Lynn said, “Sally gone yet?”

“I’m going out tonight to say goodbye, she’s leaving in the morning.”

Lynn looked over at the package on Erick’s desk.

“What’d you get her?” he asked.

“A record album.”

“Not an engagement ring?”

Erick turned and looked at him. Lynn’s face was unrewarding.

“You nuts?” he asked.

“Thumb me a female,” Lynn said.

* * * *

“Hello honey!” she said, throwing her arms around his neck.

He kissed her. “How are you?” he asked.

“Wonderful!”

They sat down on the couch and he put his arms around her. She snuggled close. “This is for you,” he said, taking the package off the table and putting it on her laps.

“Oh, thank you darling,” she said, “I didn’t want you to get me anything.”

He wondered where his present was. Then it occurred to him that maybe there wasn’t any. So what? He told himself. But he felt a little resentful.

She looked at the record album. “Oh I love that!” she said happily and kissed him.

“When do you leave?” he asked.

She seemed to hesitate a moment. Then she said, “In the morning.”

“Leo gone yet?”

She nodded.

They sat in silence. She kept leaning against him. He could feel her breath on his neck, feel the warmth of her body through his shirt. It was toast warm in the house. He felt a little drowsy. The radiators thumped gently and, a hundred miles away, a bus churned down the icy stretch of Main Street.

They sat there for about an hour, talking a little, mostly just making casual love and watching the room get dark. It seemed as if the day were a stage production and the curtain were slowly drawing shut. They were in the audience sitting in near blackness now that the performance was over. Sitting close together in warmth and darkness.

He ran his hand slowly over her arm.

“How are you going home?” he asked.

He heard her throat contract. “I don’t know,” she said, “I … train I guess.”

“Mmm-hmm. How long does it take?”

“Oh. Eight hours. Nine hours. I don’t know.”

“All packed.”

“Erick. I … packed?”

“Yes,” he said, “Are you?”

“Yes. I mean no.”

“Which is it?”

She pressed against him and drew in a ragged breath. Her arms slid around him and clamped around his chest.

“Oh,” she murmured.

“Oh?” he asked.

She seemed to shake her head a trifle, as though she were baffled. The movement of her body against him was a breathless movement in the night.

“Oh,” she said again, more plaintively.

“What is it, Sal?” he asked.

She sat up and pulled away a little. She looked at him.

“Erick,” she said.

He felt his heart begin to beat, rapidly. Suddenly he felt his hands tremble in his lap. The way she said his name …

“What?” he said, almost afraid to say it.

She drew in another heavy breath.

“I …” she started. Then she turned away. He heard her heavy breathing. He seemed to know what she wanted to say. But he couldn’t help, he was powerless.

It seemed endless.

But suddenly she got on her knees on the couch and moved close to him. She put her hands on each side of his face and kissed him with moist hot lips.

Her teeth were clenched. He could tell by the way she said,

“Come live with me,” leaning forward and breathing in his ear, “And be my love.”

He sat there with her body pressing against him. He felt as if he were frozen fast to the couch. Only his heart still moved, hammering fiercely.

Terrible silence. He trembled.

“Darling?” she said.

He tried to speak, failed. He took a deep breath and swallowed. “What?” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

He found himself start to laugh, then broke it off in sudden shock. “Why?” he asked in a thin wavering voice.

“I … I’m just … sorry.”

The penitence in her voice made him feel strong for a moment. He put his arms around her impulsively. “Don’t be,” he said. Then he twitched as she pushed close. Now you’ve done it! His mind cried.

Her arms clamped around him, tightly and suddenly, as if trapping him. Her lips were hot and moving in the darkness. Her wet tongue licked over his lips and his cheeks and ears. He was struck dumb. He felt his stomach throbbing excitedly and felt heat gushing through his system. He moaned, only half with physical excitement. But she didn’t know. She kept on.

His hands moved out automatically and dug into her breasts half to push her away. She dragged up her sweater and he felt the smoothness of her brassiere under his fingers. No! His mind shouted. “Oh,” his voice altered it.

Her flesh was burning hot. He felt it almost with horror, found himself automatically unhooking her brassiere.