Stolen Pleasures. Gina Berriault

everyone, along with the obviousness of her own person when she was by nature seclusive, brought on desperate nights, and she had quit; yet she had chosen not to work in lackluster places. She wanted only to read. The only persons besides Gerald whom she could converse with were the celebrated writers and some obscure ones whose work she came upon unguided. It was always like a marvelous telepathy going on, both ways. While she read their thoughts, they seemed to be reading hers.

      This night she took less care than usual with her clothes. Wherever she went she always took extreme care with her appearance, afraid of critical eyes. And always her head was bare, because the blondness of her hair was a loving gift from Scandinavian ancestors. The mauve silk blouse she put on was stained from wine and near the hem of the gray wool skirt was a small spot. To wear these clothes without embarrassment was, she felt, an acceptance of the stain on the soul of the woman who allowed herself to dream of another existence.

      She left the old, raffish convertible by the small, dim park and walked along the sidewalk bordering the water that, a yard or so below, lapped the stone wall, and the reflection on the dark water of low-lying fog out near the channel, and the clear, faintly starred sky, and the cluster of seagulls floating where the waters were lit by the restaurant globes, all evoked the promise she had experienced in Paris. Just before she reached the restaurant that stood on pilings over the water, she heard a low whistle at her back, and a man fell into step behind her. She felt his close gaze, she felt his bumbling, beastly obstinacy, and she wanted to turn and shout at him to get away, a woman had the right to go out into the night alone, and, at the same time, she wanted to run away and escape her accusation that she had enticed him with her long, rippling, moonlit hair, her legs in black nylons, her white silk scarf with its fringed ends. On the restaurant step he spoke to her, some word to halt her or caution her about the step, and she pushed the door wildly open, banging it into a young man leaving. She chose the farthest table from the door, up close to the window over the water. The encounter with the man whose face she was afraid to see marred this night in which she had meant to be released, harmlessly, into an old dreaming of another future. She saw her hands trembling, they couldn’t lift the fork without dropping food back to the plate. Able to manage only a few morsels, she waited to leave, waiting until the man must have wandered away, waiting for her heart to calm down.

      But after she had gone several steps along the sidewalk, she heard his heels again. This time he did not speak, he followed as if she had spoken, as if they had become invitation and answer. Her heart knocking crazily, she climbed into her car, slamming the door. Her heavy skirt and coat lumped under her legs but she was afraid to take a moment to jerk them free. She swung the car around and, long before the time she intended to return, she was returning up the hill. Just before she took the first curve, her rearview mirror flashed headlights, and she took the curve too fast, almost crashing into somebody’s quaint iron gate.

      She stood in the unlit house, her grip on the curtains causing the brass rings to clink against the rod. If Gerald had experienced a foreboding before his seizure, this sensation must be the same. The man was standing out under the gate lamp, an obscene clod out of doorways, following a woman whom he could not believe would turn him away, a woman waiting in the dark house to open the door to him and draw him down upon her. Raising his arm to tend off the branches, he came up the path. She heard his step on the stone doorstep and heard his two raps, and heard her voice shouting, “Get away! Get away!” She clung to the curtains until she heard a car’s motor start up and saw the red taillights reflected on the foliage in the yard and heard the car go down the hill.

      A desolation came over her, then, as she moved through the dark house. The obscene dolt must have stolen away her dream of herself in the future, the dream that was only a memory of herself in the past, that brief time in Paris, alone, desirous of a destiny, desirous of the one with a destiny, the man who would break the hull of her guilt, guide her into the intricacies of his intellect, anoint her with the moisture of his kisses. The intruder must have stolen away the past and the future, and she was nowhere else but in this dark house where she might be forever. Her slender heel was caught by the grille of the floor heater in the hallway, and she left both shoes on the cold, trapping metal.

      By the time Gerald came home all the lamps were lit and his late supper was on the stove, plates were set out on the table, and wine was cooling; and facing him across the small table she complained about the number of days they must wait before his appointment.

      “Must be lots of people throwing fits,” he said. And later, tossing the covers over himself, “Anyway, the serious things are nothing to worry about. By the time you’ve got a symptom you’re usually too far gone to do much about.” For a minute he lay gazing up, then he switched off the lamp to conceal his face. She heard him mutter half a word and then he was quiet. With his few words tonight he had expressed more pessimism than in all the years of their marriage. To indulge in pessimism, as to give way to anger or criticism, was to weaken the marriage, and he did not care to weaken it. He had never appeared to be dissatisfied with his life. He had not mapped out his life for a grand endeavor and been diverted. Everything about him gave evidence of his stolidity—his deliberation over small things, his way of absorbing circumstance rather than attacking it, the almost perverse unnecessity to change his existence, to strike, to wrestle, and she had clung to him for that enduring nature. But now, lying beside him, she felt in his being the invasion of futility, she felt his resentment of the specialist for his inaccessibility, and of her, his wife, for belittling him with her other life without him. The seizure and the suspense, the possibility that he might be at the mercy of physicians and of some malady and even of the end itself, all was enough of a belittlement. The husband who had always slept with a trusting face turned up toward the coming morning lay fearfully asleep, and she was afraid to touch him. She fell asleep with her hands tucked in under her heart.

      Oh, God, what was going on? The obscene dolt, the faceless presence, the stranger in the night had lifted aside the hanging branches and was there, and he was cutting off her hair, crudely, with large, cold scissors. It fell in rippling, palely shining strands, moonlit, alive. It fell to the floor and the bedcovers, and her rage against that faceless presence gave way to an awful weakness as her hair was shorn. But was this really herself in a bed alone, a narrower bed? Was she really the young woman with the cropped hair, with the suffering face, the face gone beyond suffering? Was this herself? Oh, God, dear God, it was herself and she was dying years before Gerald. And how young she was, this woman, herself, who was never to know that old age she had so senselessly feared. Wailing, she struck weakly at the faceless presence cutting off her hair, but he went on cutting. In the bed someone suddenly moved, someone beside her rose up and bent over her. It was Gerald, and her terror over herself was over him instead. With both hands she gripped his wrist, calling his name into his large, gentle hand that was soothing and calming her into waking.