The Catastrophist: A Novel (6 page)

The time will come when I am no longer engrossed in her idea. That time may be soon, but it has not come yet.

She is on her side facing the wall with her knees drawn up, feet free from the tangle of the sheet. The room is airless and hot. I undress and get in beside her, molding against the contours of her narrow back and hips. In an automatic movement, she lifts her wing-folded arm to allow me to put a hand on her breast. It’s our way of sleeping together. She has solace fingers between her legs.

“Did you file your story?”

I brush aside a strand of hair and kiss the nape of her neck.

“The Sûreté were preventing journalists to use the telex, but I got a boatman to take me to Brazzaville.”

Her voice is remote and wounded, the dregs of the argument lie between us still.

“Where have you been?”

“With Stipe.”

She makes a little grunt. She is not impressed.

“He’s not what you think,” I say.

“The Americans and the Belgians are on the same side. They are enemies of the independence movement.”

“Maybe it’s more complicated than that,” I suggest.

“That is very naive.”

Pots and kettles, but I want to placate. I lean over and kiss her ear. She does not move, she does not respond to me. Her eyes are shut.

“Inès,” I say softly. “I came here for you.”

“Let’s not talk about this now.”

“When will we talk about it?”

She makes a little sleepy sound. I squeeze her breast gently and press against her hips. In London—during our first year at least—she would have turned to me, hungry and ready. Tonight she uses sleep.

“Inès,” I whisper.

I listen to her breathe as she settles into her own deep stillness, her refuge where I cannot go. I close my eyes and hold her tightly. Inès . . . Inès . . . You were fast and I was slow. You used to say before we lived together, When can I see you, when can we meet? You used to say, You can’t even imagine how much I love you, don’t forget. And I answered, Never. I said,
Mai, mai
—the way you taught me. When we first became lovers I had no intention of falling in love. I liked you, I was charmed by you and I wanted you, but I did not want to love you—different reasons, different things. Too complicated, too unsettling. I am slow. It takes time with me. And you—your declaration was fast, it caught me unawares.
I am already loving you
. Mine was, as is my way, slower. It took time—in Belfast and in Donegal, in Rome and Bologna, and finally in London.

You sleep beside me. At this time of night, after the day we’ve had, all this takes on the self-pitying proportions of a tragedy, but the truth of my situation is banal; it happens every day, to others. Now it’s happening to me. It is painful, it is sad. I said,
Mai
. I said it quietly, I meant it. Now you who demanded have forgotten your question, and wait for no answer, want none.

We met at a party at my publisher’s house in London. She was on her way to Ireland for
L’Unità
after she failed to persuade the paper to send her to Algiers. Someone had mentioned my name and she asked to be introduced. One of my books had recently come out in Italy. She had not read it, but had seen some notices. Alan, my publisher, brought her over. I took her small hand in mine and was struck immediately. Not by her looks so much as by her vitality, her openness, and also—I have to be honest—by her evident interest in me. Maybe it amounted to no more than a man being flattered by the attentions of a pretty young woman. I could give it this defensive construction—mock myself from my own mouth to forestall the ridicule—but I know in my heart it was more than this.

The following day we met for lunch in Soho and spent the afternoon and evening together. I did not press her, and I think this disconcerted her a little. Next morning she rang. She was leaving for Dublin at midday. We talked and talked—this is not usual with me. I felt I had known her a long time and wanted to know her more. After perhaps an hour we were both aware that our tone had altered, that we had arrived at a sort of threshold. Her voice became softer. Little silences crept between us. She gathered her nerve and asked if I would join her in Ireland.

In many ways, I suppose, the week turned out as I’d expected. I went for an adventure and I got one. But that was not all.

I used the opportunity to visit my mother in Belfast, whom I had not seen for two years. Her life is filled with pain and patience; I do not know that my presence provides her with much comfort, but I had to see her of course.

I met Inès off the train at the GNR—she was coming up from Dublin. I was, as usual, too reserved, too cautious (what if she had changed her mind?) to greet her the way I would have liked. I took her bag and we got her booked into Robinson’s in Donegall Street.

We took the Greencastle trolley-bus as far as the terminus, then walked to Whitehouse and along the shore of the lough where my sister and I used to bring our dog when we were children. She talked and talked—she laughed and said talking was a fault of hers. But she could not be quiet; nor did I want her to be.

She told me how much she loved Ireland. She told me about a holiday she had taken here as a child with her father. She told me excitedly about the interviews she had had with the IRA in Dublin. She had been to Carrickmore, where the people were brilliant, and to Edentubber, where the terrible bomb had gone off the month before. I held my tongue. The peculiar enthusiasms of the political believer have always left me unmoved; and political anger—of all things—provokes in me, depending on the circumstances, mirth or contempt. There would be time enough for correctives, time enough to set her right on Ireland, and in the meantime her idealistic pronouncements gave me the opportunity to be older, wry and amused.

I caught her looking at me once or twice as we walked—it was a look I recognized from other lovers: she did not know if she was going to be petted or pushed away. It had nothing to do with desire or lack of it, but with my internal argument. What was I getting into? And at the same time wanting, wanting . . . desperately wanting . . . I was not feeling all that strong.

The sky was cloudy and sad. It began to rain and we took shelter under the railway bridge at Whitehouse Park. There we kissed for the first time. She kissed me with her mouth wide, with licks and flicks of her tongue. It is not my style of kissing but I was terribly aroused. The rain eased to a drizzle and we moved on in search of a more private place. We went behind a wall under some trees where we kissed again and I pulled up her sweater and kissed her breasts and stomach. She said we could make love. She undid my trousers and her little fingers gripped me. But I stopped it there, confusing her more I think. I held her and she said, “What if I fall in love?” I said, “You won’t.” She pinched my cheek. “I am already loving you.
Ti amo
.”

She felt me slide away. I did not have to say anything, she
felt
it. There was the evidence. I could not help myself; it was worse than embarrassing, it was cruel. We fell silent while it sunk in for her that there were limits to this. My heart was low, I felt empty and weak.

We walked slowly back to the terminus. There were few words. It was cold and damp on the trolley-bus and I put my arm around her. Her spirits could not be tamped down for long. She pointed to a notice—
No Spitting
—and said she had never seen this before on a bus. She thought it very funny and was amused by my embarrassment. She said I should be proud of my hometown. But what’s there to be proud of in this bitter, hard place? I asked her about Italy, where I had never been but about which I had read much. I asked her about Florence and the Palazzo Vecchio, about Venice and St. Mark’s Square. She told me about the foundation of the Communist Party of Italy, about Gramsci, Togliatti, the partisans and the
svolta di Salerno
. She talked as though I had knowledge of these people, these events. On my return to London I went to St. Pancras library.

The following morning I left my mother’s house in St. James’s and went to meet her at the Abercorn in Castle Lane. She was not there when I arrived. I waited, and I began to get nervous. Forty minutes later I paid the bill and was on my way out to go round to the hotel when she entered. She beamed a broad smile, embraced me and sighed.

“Where do you want to go?” I asked softly.

“I don’t care.”

As long as she was with me she didn’t care. I was filled up with happiness and confidence. I could see brightness in the gray wash of the day.

We hired a car and set off west. It was drizzling and cold and filthy. We came out of the fog on the Glenshane Pass to see the sky, blue and slate, bending dramatically over Lough Foyle. We stopped in Derry. I have family in the city, but for reasons to do with family I did not go to see them. Instead we went to a pub in Shipquay Street, where we sat among the shoppers at a rough wooden table and had a bowl of stew, white pan bread and a glass of stout. The atmosphere between us was warm and intimate and funny. I surprised myself by being relaxed and talkative.

We crossed the border and arrived in Carrigart, not by any design; we were going where the fancy took us. We parked by the strand and walked and kissed. There was a piercing veer to the December wind, my uncovered head felt the squeeze of its vise. Her long nose was red and wet and cold. She told me she loved camping, that if she’d brought her tent we could have pitched it here. I said I was too old for that. She was twenty-six.

We found a hotel. Before we entered she produced from her pocket—she never carried a handbag—a thin gold band. She grinned as she slipped it on her finger. Her preparedness set up sudden doubts in me. Who is she? How often does she do this? She took my arm gaily and we marched up to the desk. I forget what name we used.

In the room we took off our clothes almost at once. She had a small, slight body; it was not so bony then. She came by getting me to be still and holding me tightly by the waist or buttocks and rubbing herself against me. She came quickly and, it seemed, easily. She made little noise. The pattern was quickly established. After wildness and abandon she would slow me down with a whisper to be still. The sex would continue afterwards, though the first time she whispered to me she was coming I came with her. But once I got used to her I let her come in her own manner and stayed hard inside her afterwards.

We had sandwiches and then went to the pub where I heard more of her likes and dislikes, and their vital declaration. Milan had too many banks and the people spoke with arrogant accents; Turin’s buildings were too big and in any case fascist, though they were not as bad as the university in Rome—a true monstrosity of “the fascism”; Naples, where the red of the traffic light was only an opinion, was brilliant, and the people of the south were like the Irish—warm and always hospitable.

We returned to the hotel at midnight. I lay on my back while she kissed me. She turned around and presented herself to me. I worked on her with my mouth, and she on me. Later we made love again. She talked and I fell asleep thinking,
Do her eyes never close?
I always seemed to be the sleepier. Whenever I looked at her during the night, her eyes would be open, big and bright and gazing into mine.

“Why do you not sleep?” I asked.

“Because I love you more than you love me.”

I could have said something, perhaps even convincingly. I rested my hand on her tight, flat stomach and pushed my fingertips into the spring and curl of her hair. I was confused, struggling; the words had come too soon, too soon—I wasn’t sure I believed her. But I could not deny it to myself: I liked what I had heard. A need came up from somewhere deep and unknown, rushing as though to the promise of light. I shut my eyes to keep within the darkness and turned away from her.

We had four more days together.

I drove her to Dublin airport. She talked hardly at all. We sat in the lounge drinking coffee and reading the papers, Inès not interested in anything very much, and still quiet. When we parted she was crying. I can’t say I felt as strongly as she did. Our adventure was over, our time together had ended. I had accepted the inevitable trajectory of this affair and kept part of myself in reserve to deal with any sudden surges of emotion. I kissed her goodbye and made lame jokes about the tears in her eyes.

With me, emotional reactions are delayed, but by the time I was back in London I was aware of being without something I had had. I felt jaded and lethargic; my mood was inward. When Margaret rang I made some excuse.

Inès wrote to me from Rome.

“I feel lost,” she said in her letter. “In Italian the word is
perso,
but I think it has a different meaning. I don’t know how else to say it. My eyes are lost and my voice is lost. I am
persa
.”

A month later I went to Rome, and sometime after that she managed to arrange with the paper that she could come to London.

I fell in love with Inès in bed. I fell in love with her in the street, and in bars, and in the company of others, watching the expressions on her face as she talked and argued, listening to the little grunts and sighs and sharp inhalations of breath. Most of all, I believe, I fell in love because she was promising me a way out of myself.

I look at her now asleep beside me, fetal, guarded. I am angry, tense and doubtful, but I am not yet emancipated from my need for her. Our disagreements are fundamental, our minds dispar, but I live in our differences: my blankness draws on her vitality. She exists me.