Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [109]
‘Do you love me? ‘ he asked her one night. He knew she didn’t. But perversely he wanted to have his knowledge confirmed, made explicit.
‘I think you’re a darling,’ said Lucy. She smiled up at him. But Walter’s eyes remained unansweringly sombre and despairing.
‘But do you love me?’ he insisted. Propped on his elbow, he hung over her almost menacingly. Lucy was lying on her back, her hands clasped under her head, her flat breasts lifted by the pull of the stretched muscles. He looked down at her; under his fingers was the curved elastic warmth of the body he had so completely and utterly possessed. But the owner of the body smiled up at him through half-closed eyelids, remote and unattained. ‘Do you love me?’
‘You’re enchanting.’ Something like mockery shone between the dark lashes.
‘But that isn’t an answer to my question. Do you love me?’
Lucy shrugged up her shoulders and made a little grimace
‘Love?’ she repeated. ‘It’s rather a big word, isn’t it?’ Disengaging one of her hands from under her head she raised it to give a little tug to the lock of brown hair that had fallen across Walter’s forehead. ‘Your hair’s too long,’ she said.
‘Then why did you have me?’ Walter insisted.
‘If you knew how absurd you looked with your solemn face and your hair in your eyes!’ She laughed. ‘Like a constipated sheep dog.’
Walter brushed back the drooping lock. ‘I want to be answered,’ he went on obstinately. ‘Why did you have me?’
‘Why? Because it amused me. Because I wanted to. Isn’t that fairly obvious?’
‘Without loving?’
‘Why must you always bring in love?’ she asked impatiently.
‘Why?’ he repeated. ‘But how can you leave it out?’
‘But if I can have what I want without it, why should I put it in? And besides, one doesn’t put it in. It happens to one. How rarely! Or perhaps it never happens; I don’t know. Anyhow, what’s one to do in the intervals?’ She took him again by the forelock and pulled his face down towards her own. ‘In the intervals, Walter darling, there’s you.’
His mouth was within an inch or two of hers. He stiffened his neck and would not let himself be pulled down any further. ‘Not to mention all the others,’ he said.
Lucy tugged harder at his hair. ‘Idiot!’ she said, frowning. ‘Instead of being grateful for what you’ve got.’
‘But what have I got?’ Her body curved away, silky and warm, under his hand; but he was looking into her mocking eyes
‘What have I got?’ Her body curved away, silky and warm, under his hand; but he was looking into her mocking eyes. ‘What have I got?’
Lucy still frowned. ‘Why don’t you kiss me?’ she demanded, as though she were delivering an ultimatum. Walter did not answer, did not stir. ‘Oh, very well.’ She pushed him away. ‘Two can play at that game.’
Repelled, Walter anxiously bent down to kiss her. Her voice had been hard with menace; he was terrified of losing her. ‘I’m a fool,’ he said.
‘You are.’ Lucy averted her face.
‘I’m sorry.’
But she would not make peace. ‘No, no,’ she said, and when, with a hand under her cheek, he tried to turn her face back towards his kisses, she made a quick fierce movement and bit him in the ball of the thumb. Full of hatred and desire, he took her by force.
‘Still bothering about love?’ she asked at last, breaking the silence of that languid convalescence which succeeds the fever of accomplished desires.
Reluctantly, almost with pain, Walter roused himself to answer. Her question in that deep silence was like the spurt of a match in the darkness of the night. The night is limitless, enormous, pricked with stars. The match is struck and all the stars are instantly abolished; there are no more distances and profundities. The universe is reduced to a little luminous cave scooped out of the solid blackness, crowded with brightly lit faces, with hands and bodies and the near familiar objects of common life. In that deep night of silence Walter had been happy. Convalescent after the fever, he held her in his arms, hating no more, but filled with a drowsy tenderness. His spirit seemed to float in the warm serenity between being and annihilation. She stirred within his arms, she spoke, and that marvellous unearthly serenity wavered and broke like a smooth reflecting surface of water suddenly disturbed.