Part 8 (1/2)

'Your story is so interesting it's in danger of killing desire.'

Ralf Hart laughed and agreed. They had finished one bottle of wine and he went into the kitchen to fetch another; and she sat staring into the fire, knowing what the next step would be, but, at the same time, savouring the cosy atmosphere, forgetting about the English executive, and regaining that sense of surrender.

Ralf filled their two gla.s.ses, and Maria said: 'Just out of curiosity, how would you end that story with the museum director?'

'Since I was in the company of an intellectual, I would quote from Plato. According to him, at the beginning of creation, men and women were not as they are now; there was just one being, who was rather short, with a body and a neck, but his head had two faces, looking in different directions.

It was as if two creatures had been glued back to back, with two sets of s.e.x organs, four legs and four arms.

169 'The Greek G.o.ds, however, were jealous, because this creature with four arms could work harder; with its two faces, it was always vigilant and could not be taken bysurprise; and its four legs meant that it could stand or walk for long periods at a time without tiring. Even more dangerous was the fact that the creature had two different sets of s.e.x organs and so needed no one else in order to continue reproducing.

'Zeus, the supreme lord of Olympus, said: ”I have a plan to make these mortals lose some of their strength.”

'And he cut the creature in two with a lightning bolt, thus creating man and woman.

This greatly increased the population of the world, and, at the same time, disoriented and weakened its inhabitants, because now they had to search for their lost half and embrace it and, in that embrace, regain their former strength, their ability to avoid betrayal and the stamina to walk for long periods of time and to withstand hard work. That embrace in which the two bodies re-fuse to become one again is what we call s.e.x.'

'Is that a true story?'

'According to the Greek philosopher, Plato, yes.'

Maria was gazing at him, fascinated, and the experience of the previous night had vanished completely. She saw that the man before her was full of the same 'light' that he had seen in her, entirely involved in telling her that strange story, his eyes alight now not with desire but with joy.

'Can I ask you a favour?'

Ralf said she could ask anything she wanted.

'Is it possible to know why, after the G.o.ds had split the four-legged creature in two, some of them decided that the 170 embrace could be merely a thing, just another business transaction, which instead of increasing people's energy, diminished it?'

'You mean prost.i.tution?'

'Yes. Could you find out if, in the beginning, s.e.x was something sacred?'

'If you like,' replied Ralf, 'although it's not something I've ever thought about, nor, as far as I know, has anyone else. Perhaps there isn't any literature on the subject.' Maria could stand the pressure no longer: 'Has it ever occurred to you that women, in particular, prost.i.tutes, are capable of love?'

'Yes, it has. It occurred to me on that first day, when we were sitting in the cafe and I saw your light. Then, when I decided to offer you a cup of coffee, I chose to believe ineverything, even in the possibility of you returning me to the world I left a long, long time ago.'

There was no going back now. Maria, the teacher, needed to rush to her own aid, otherwise she would kiss him, embrace him and ask him never to leave her.

'Let's go back to the train station,' she said. 'Or, rather, let's come back to this room, to the day when we sat here together for the first time and you recognised that I existed and gave me a gift. That was your first attempt to enter my soul, and you weren't sure whether or not you were welcome. But, as you say in your story, human beings were once divided and now seek the embrace that will reunite them. That is our instinct. But it is also our reason for putting up with all the difficulties we meet in that search.

171 'I want you to look at me, but I want you to take care that I don't notice. Initial desire is important because it is hidden, forbidden, not permitted.

You don't know whether you are looking at your lost half or not; she doesn't know either, but something is drawing you together, and you must believe that it is true you are each other's ”other half”.' Where am I getting all this? I'm drawing it up from the bottom of my heart, because this is how I always wanted it to be. I'm drawing up these dreams from my own dream as a woman.

She slipped off the shoulder strap of her dress, so that one part, one tiny part of one nipple was exposed.

'Desire is not what you see, but what you imagine.' Ralf Hart was looking at a woman with dark hair and wearing dark clothes, who was sitting on the floor of his living room, and was full of absurd desires, like having an open fire burning in the middle of summer. Yes, he would like to imagine what those clothes were hiding; he could guess the size of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and he knew that she didn't really need the bra she was wearing, although perhaps she had to wear it for her work. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were neither large nor small, they were simply young. Her eyes gave nothing away; what was she doing here? Why was he encouraging this absurd, dangerous relations.h.i.+p, when he had no problems finding women? He was rich, young, famous, good- looking. He loved his work; he had loved women whom he had subsequently married; he had been loved. He was someone who, according to all the rules 172and norms, should have been able to shout out loud: 'I'm happy-'

But he wasn't. While most of humanity was scrabbling for a piece of bread, a roof over their head and a job that would allow them to live with dignity, Ralf Hart had all of that, and it only made him feel more wretched. If he looked back on what his life had been lately, he had perhaps managed two or three days when he had woken up, looked at the sun - or the rain - and felt glad to see the morning, just happy, without wanting anything, planning anything or asking anything in exchange.

Apart from those few days, the rest of his existence had been wasted on dreams, both frustrated and realised - a desire to go beyond himself, to go beyond his limitations; he had spent his life trying to prove something, but he didn't know what or to whom.

He looked at the beautiful woman before him, who was discreetly dressed in black, someone he had met by chance, although he had seen her before at the nightclub and thought that she seemed out of place.

She had asked him to desire her, and he desired her intensely, far more than she could imagine, but it wasn't her b.r.e.a.s.t.s or her body, it was her company he desired. He wanted to put his arms around her and to sit in silence, staring into the fire, drinking wine, smoking the occasional cigarette; that would be enough. Life was made up of simple things; he was weary of all the years he had spent searching for something, though quite what he didn't know.

And yet, if he did that, if he touched her, all would be lost. For, despite the 'light' he could see in Maria, he wasn't 173 suure she realised how good it was for him to be by her side. Was he paying? Yes, and he would continue paying for as long as it took to win her, to sit with her by the lakeside and speak of love, and to hear her say the same thing. It was best not to take any chances, not to rush things, not to say anything.

Ralf Hart stopped tormenting himself and concentrated once more on the game they had just created together. The woman before him was right; the wine, the fire, the cigarettes and the company were not enough in themselves; another kind of intoxication, another kind of flame was required.

She was wearing a dress with shoulder straps; she was revealing one breast; he could see her skin, more dark thanpale. He desired her. He desired her intensely.

Maria noticed the change in Ralf's eyes. Knowing that she was desired excited her more than anything else. It had nothing to do with the automatic formula - I want to make love with you, I want to get married, I want you to have an o.r.g.a.s.m, I want you to have my child, I want commitment. No, desire was an entirely free sensation, loose in the air, vibrating, filling life with the will to have something - and that was enough, that will carried all before it, moved mountains, made her wet.

Desire was the source of everything else - leaving her country, discovering a new world, learning French, overcoming her prejudices, dreaming of having a farm, 174 loving without asking for anything in return, feeling that she was a woman simply because a man was looking at her. With calculated slowness, she slipped off the other strap, and the dress slid down her body. Then she undid her bra. There she was, with the upper part of her body completely bare, wondering if he would leap on her, touch her, utter vows of love, or if he was sensitive enough simply to feel s.e.xual pleasure in desire itself.

Things around them began to change, all sound disappeared, the fire, the paintings and the books gradually vanished, to be replaced by a kind of trance-like state, in which only the object of desire exists, and nothing else is important.

The man did not move. At first, she felt a certain shyness in his eyes, but that did not last long. He was looking at her, and in the world of his imagination, he was caressing her with his tongue, they were making love, sweating, clinging to each other, mingling tenderness and violence, calling out and moaning together.

In the real world, though, they said nothing, neither of them moved, and that made her even more excited, because she too was free to think what she liked. She was asking him to touch her gently, she was opening her legs, she was masturbating in front of him, saying the most romantic things and the lewdest things, as if they were one and the same; she had several o.r.g.a.s.ms, waking the neighbours, waking the whole world with her cries. Here was her man, who was giving her pleasure and joy, with whom she could be the person she really was, with whom she could talk 175 about her s.e.xual problems, and tell him how much shewould like to stay with him for the rest of the night, for the rest of the week, for the rest of her life.

Beads of sweat began to appear on their foreheads. It was the heat from the fire, one said mentally to the other. But both the man and the woman in that room had reached their limit, exhausted their imagination, experienced together an eternity of good moments. They needed to stop, because if they took one more step, the magic would be undone by reality.

Very slowly, because endings are always more difficult than beginnings, she put on her bra and hid her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The universe returned to its normal place, the things around them re-emerged, she pulled up the dress that had fallen about her waist, smiled and very gently touched his face. He took her hand and pressed it to his cheek, not knowing for how long he should hold it there, or how tightly.

She wanted to tell him that she loved him. But that would spoil everything, it might frighten him or, worse, might make him say that he loved her too. Maria didn't want that: the freedom of her love depended on asking nothing and expecting nothing.

'Anyone capable of feeling knows that it is possible to experience pleasure before even touching the other person. The words, the looks, all contain the secret of the dance. But the train has arrived, we each go our separate ways. I hope to be able to join you on this journey to ... where?'

'Back to Geneva,' replied Ralf.

176 'Anyone who is observant, who discovers the person they have always dreamed of, knows that s.e.xual energy comes into play before s.e.x even takes place. The greatest pleasure isn't s.e.x, but the pa.s.sion with which it is practised. When the pa.s.sion is intense, then s.e.x joins in to complete the dance, but it is never the princ.i.p.al aim.'

'You're talking about love like a teacher.'

Maria went on talking, because this was her defence, her way of saying everything without committing herself to anything.

'Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they're not. When two bodies meet, it is just the cup overflowing. They can stay together for hours, even days.

They begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or - such is the pleasure they experience - they may never finish it. No eleven minutes for them.''What?'

'I love you.'

'I love you too.'

'I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm saying.'

'Nor do I.'