A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [114]
Afterwards came that bloodless interlude. The big foam bed had been made up—that housewifely service still, after what used to be passion. I was standing. She was standing too, considering her lips in the mirror.
She said, “You make me look so good. What will I do without you?” That was a standard courtesy. But then she said, “Raymond will want to make love to me when he sees me looking like this.” And that was unusual, not like her at all.
I said, “Does it excite you?”
“Older men are not as repulsive as you seem to think. And I am a woman, after all. If a man does certain things to me, I react.”
She didn’t mean to wound me, but she did. And then I thought: But she’s probably right. Raymond’s like a whipped boy. It’s all he can turn to now.
I said, “I suppose we’ve made him suffer.”
“Raymond? I don’t know. I don’t think so. He’s never given any sign. Of course, he may tell himself something different now.”
I walked with her to the landing: the shadow of the house over the yard, the trees above the houses and the wooden outbuildings, the golden afternoon light, the dust in the air, the flamboyant blooms, the cooking smoke. She hurried down the wooden steps to where the sunlight, slanting between the houses, struck full on her. Then, above the noises of the surrounding yards, I heard her drive off.
And it was only some days later that I thought how strange it was for us to have talked of Raymond at that moment. I had talked of Raymond’s pain when I was thinking of my own, and Yvette had talked of Raymond’s needs when she was thinking of her own. We had begun to talk, if not in opposites, at least indirectly, lying and not lying, making those signals at the truth which people in certain situations find it necessary to make.
I was in bed one evening, about a week later, reading in one of my encyclopaedia magazines about the “big bang” origin of the universe. It was a familiar topic; I liked reading in my encyclopaedias about things I had read in other encyclopaedias. This kind of reading wasn’t for knowledge; I read to remind myself in an easy and enjoyable way of all the things I didn’t know. It was a form of drug; it set me dreaming of some impossible future time when, in the middle of every kind of peace, I would start at the beginning of all subjects and devote my days and nights to study.
I heard a car door slam. And I knew, before I heard the footsteps on the staircase, that it was Yvette, wonderfully arrived at this late hour, without warning. She hurried up the steps; her shoes and clothes made an extraordinary amount of noise in the passage; and she pushed the bedroom door open.
She was carefully dressed, and her face was flushed. There must have been some function she had been at. Dressed as she was, she threw herself on the bed and embraced me.
She said, “I took a chance. All through dinner I was thinking about you, and as soon as I could I slipped away. I had to. I wasn’t sure you would be here, but I took the chance.”
I could smell the dinner and the drink on her breath. It had all been so quick—from the sound of the car door to this: Yvette on the bed, the empty room transformed, Yvette in that exclamatory, delighted mood which was like the mood that had overtaken her the first time we had come back to the flat after dinner at the Domain. I found myself in tears.
She said, “I can’t stay. I’ll just give the god a