Steps Read online

  The instructor launched himself, at first swooping down in long, graceful curves, avoiding the shoulders of raw rock that broke through the snow and gave die trail its reputation for danger. He picked up speed continuously, skiing with the suppleness and precision of a master. I wondered whether he would stop at the post that marked the foot of the trail or end with a spectacular turn at the feet of the girl. Everyone was silent The long, almost horizontal rays of the sun caught the woman and the tourist as they stood at the foot of the run.

  The instructor swung into the last hundred yards, moving fast and straight. The girl shook off the tourist’s hand, which was resting on hers, and stepped forward, raising her arms and calling out the instructor’s name. The tourist lurched after her, grabbing her by the shoulder. In a second the instructor soared into the end of the run and gathered himself up as he might at the start of a jump, but instead of throwing himself forward and up, he seemed to thrust to the left in an unnaturally abrupt twist. No longer able either to turn or slow down, his skis lifted and he soared on, with the entire force and impetus that the long run had built up within him crashing suddenly with his shoulder into the man’s unprotected chest. Both bodies slid for some distance down the slope, finally coming to rest at the edge of the terrace. The crowd rushed to them; blood dripped from the tourist’s mouth and he was carried unconscious into the café. The instructor sat on the terrace steps for a few minutes, with his head in his hands, while the woman loosened his parka. Then the ambulance drove up, and the tourist, still unconscious, was strapped onto the stretcher. As the bearers picked him up I glanced toward the terrace steps. The instructor and the woman were no longer in sight.

  I did not see the instructor again until much later. Then I saw him one evening with a woman.

  They were sheltered in a recess in the stonework of the hotel wall. All around a storm raged, and the snow in the fields churned like water in a frenzied bay. Foaming drifts roared and formed, only to collapse like mounds of goose feathers into unfathomable clefts. Leaning against the wall and touched occasionally by the wavering light of the lantern that dangled above a footpath, the man stood below the woman and drew her close to him. The woman bent toward him, clinging to his chest, yielding and tender. Her arms clasped his shoulders. The whirlwind tugged at her coat, pulling it open. For a moment they looked as if they had both suddenly grown wings which would carry them away from that niche, from those powdery fields and out of my sight I made up my mind.

  The next afternoon I found a pretext to visit the sanatorium. Patients in brightly patterned pullovers and tight pants strolled about the corridors. Others slept huddled in blankets. Filmy shadows cut across the deserted deck chairs on the sunny terrace, and the canvas snapped in the sharp breezes that scattered down from the peaks.

  I saw a woman reclining in a chair. Her shawl, casually thrown around her shoulders, exposed her long, suntanned neck. As I lingered, gazing, she glanced at me thoughtfully, and then smiled. My shadow fell across her when I introduced myself.

  The visiting rules were very strict, and I was permitted to spend only two hours a day in her room. I couldn’t get too close to her: she would not let me. She was very ill and coughed continually. Often she brought up blood. She shivered, became feverish; her cheeks flushed. Her hands and feet would sweat.

  During one of my visits she asked me to make love to her. I locked the door. After I had undressed she told me to look into the large mirror in the corner of the room. I saw her in the mirror and our eyes met Then she got up from the bed, took off her robe, and stepped over to the mirror. She stood very close to it, touching my reflection with one hand and pressing her body with the other. I could see her breasts and her flanks. She waited for me while I concentrated more and more on the thought that it was I who stood there within the mirror and that it was my flesh her hands and lips were touching.

  But in a low yet urgent voice, she would stop me whenever I took a step toward her. We would make love again: she standing as before in front of the mirror, and I, a pace away, my sight riveted upon her.

  Her life was measured and constantly checked by various instruments, recorded on negatives, charted and filed away by a succession of doctors and nurses, reinforced by needles piercing her chest and veins, breathed in from oxygen bottles and breathed out into tubes. My brief visits were interrupted more and more frequently by the intrusion of doctors, nurses, or attendants who came to change the oxygen cylinders or give new medicines.

  One day an older nun stopped me in the corridor. She asked me whether I knew what I was doing, and when I said I didn’t understand, she said the staff had a name for people like myself: hyaenidae. As I still failed to understand, she said: hyenas. Men of my kind, she said, lurked around bodies that were dying; each time I fed upon the woman, I hastened her death.

  As time went on her condition visibly deteriorated. I sat in her room, staring at her pale face lit only by an occasional flush. The hands on the bedspread were thin, with a delicate network of bluish veins. Her frail shoulders heaving with every breath, she surreptitiously wiped off the perspiration which rose steadily on her forehead. I sat quietly and stared at the mirror while she slept; it reflected the cold, white rectangles of the walls and ceiling.

  The nuns glided silently in and out of the room, but I succeeded in never meeting their eyes. They bent over the patient, wiping her forehead, moistening her lips with wads of cotton, whispering some secret language into her ears. Their clumsy dresses flapped like the wings of restless birds.

  I would step out onto the terrace, quickly closing the door behind me. The wind was ceaselessly driving the snow over the crusted fields, filling the deep footprints and diagonal tracks left from the previous day. I held the soft plump cushion of fresh snow from the frozen railings. For a moment it shimmered in my warm palm before turning into dripping slush.

  More and more often I was denied access to her room, and I spent those hours alone in my apartment Later, before going to sleep, I would pull out from the desk drawer several albums filled with my photographs of her, carefully enlarged and painstakingly pasted onto stiff cardboard. I would place these enlargements in a corner of my bedroom and sit in front of them, recalling the events of the hospital room and the images within the mirror. In some of the photographs she was naked; now I had them before me, for myself alone. I looked at these pictures as if they were mirrors in which I could see at any moment my own face floating ghostlike on her flesh.

  Then I would step out on my balcony. Around the sanatorium the lights from the windows touched the snow, which no longer seemed fresh. I would gaze at the faint lights until they began to disappear. From beyond the breadth and width of the valleys and hills, streaked by wooded slopes, the moonlight lit up frozen peaks and streams of vaporous clouds being lured from the shadows of narrow defiles.

  A door clanged shut; a car horn sounded in the distance. Suddenly figures appeared between the snowdrifts. They scrambled through the fields toward the sanatorium, now and then lost, as if straining against the stifling dust storm of a drought-stricken plain.

  I got off the train at a small station. As it pulled out I was the only one eating in the station restaurant I stopped the waiter and asked if there was anything of interest happening locally. He looked at me and said there was to be a private show that afternoon in a nearby village.

  He intimated that the performance would be rather unusual and that if I were willing to pay the price, he could arrange for me to see it I agreed, and we left the station. Half an hour later we reached a paddock with a large carriage house at one end. About fifty middle-aged peasants had gathered under the trees near the building, where they sauntered about, smoking and jesting.

  A man dressed in city clothes came out of the carriage house and began collecting money from all of us. The price represented about two weeks of a peasant’s income, yet they all seemed willing to pay.

  Then the organizer disappeared into the house, and we formed a circle screene
d by the trees. The peasants waited, whispering and laughing. A few minutes passed; the door of the carriage house opened and four women in colorful dresses walked into the circle. The organizer followed behind them leading a large animal. The peasants suddenly stopped talking. The women now stood next to each other, turning around so the men could see them, while the organizer paraded the animal.

  The women seemed to represent particular types: one was very tall and powerfully built, another was a slender, fragile young girl whose appearance suggested she came from the city. All the women wore heavy makeup and tight short-skirted dresses. The peasants began discussing the women aloud, arguing excitedly. After a few minutes the organizer asked for quiet and explained that a vote would be taken to determine which woman would be chosen. As the women strolled around the arena, stretching, bending, and caressing their bodies, the crowd grew even more animated. The organizer called on them to vote for each woman in turn.

  From the final count it became clear that the majority had elected the young girl. The three other women joined the audience, giggling and whispering with the men.

  The chosen girl now sat alone in the circle. I scrutinized the men’s faces; they seemed curious whether the girl would prove too frail and weak to survive her ordeal.

  The organizer led the animal into the center of the arena, prodding its slack parts with a stick. Two peasants ran up and grabbed at the animal to keep it still. The girl then stepped forward and began playing with the creature, embracing and hugging it, fondling its genitals. She slowly began to undress. The animal was now aroused and restless. It seemed inconceivable that the girl could accommodate it.

  The men became frantic, urging her to undress completely and couple with the animal. The organizer tied several ribbons on the animal’s organ, each colored bow an inch apart. The girl approached the animal, rubbing oil into her thighs and abdomen and coaxing the animal to lick her body. Then, to shouts of encouragement, she lay down beneath the animal, clasping it with her legs. Raising up her belly and thrusting it forward, she forced an insertion up to the first bow. The organizer took control again, asking the audience to pay extra for each additional inch of the animal’s involvement. The price was raised for each consecutive bow removed. The peasants, still refusing to believe that the girl could survive her violation, eagerly paid again and again. Finally the girl began to scream. But I was not sure if she was actually suffering or was only playing up to the audience.

  I went to the zoo to see an octopus I had read about It was housed in an aquarium and fed on live crabs, fish, mussels—and on itself. It nibbled at its own tentacles, consuming them one after another.

  Obviously the octopus was slowly killing itself. One attendant explained that in the part of the world where it had been caught, an octopus was believed to be a god of war, prophesying defeat when it looked landward and victory when it loooked seaward; this particular specimen, the natives had claimed, had only looked landward when captured. A man jokingly remarked that by eating itself it was presumably acknowledging its own defeat.

  Each time the octopus bit into itself, some of the spectators shuddered as if they felt it eating their own flesh. Others were impassive. Just as I was about to leave, I noticed a young woman staring at the octopus without any apparent reaction, her lips relaxed. There was a serenity about her that went beyond unconcern.

  I approached and engaged her in conversation. She turned out to be the wife of a well-known public official whose family lived in the city. Before the afternoon was over she invited me to a dinner party she was giving at her home.

  It was an imposing household, and the dinner party flawless. The hostess behaved very naturally, attending equally to her family and guests, and yet somehow she seemed quite remote. I thought she had glanced at me with a suggestion of intimate interest, and I wanted proof of this. I planned to leave the city the next day. This would be my only opportunity.

  She had just turned away from a departing couple, and stood, drink in hand, near one of the library bookcases. With an assumed casualness I told her I wished to see her alone, for I couldn’t free myself from the images she excited in me.

  I proposed a meeting. I suggested the capital of the neighboring country to which I was going the next day. She was just about to answer when several guests approached us. She turned toward them but first handed me her glass as though it had been mine, quietly stating the name of the hotel where she would join me.

  During the next few days I thought of her constantly, recalling every moment I had spent near her. I speculated about the other men at the party, about which of them might have been her lovers, and about various situations in which she had made love. The more I meditated about her, the more concerned I became about our first encounter.

  . . . We were both naked. There was nothing I wanted so much as to be at ease with her. But the very thought of what she might expect from me made me less aroused. It was almost as though my thinking had to subside before my body could perform.

  Yet I could not conceal my inadequacy, for in her mind, it seemed, my desire was reflected only in one part of me, a part suddenly grown very small. She blamed herself for what she insisted was her lack of finesse in gratifying me. She became increasingly frustrated and upset I dressed and left her, walking the streets and trying to understand what had happened. I tried to decide how, in the future, I would explain my predicament to her; I was afraid she might reject any discussion as merely an excuse for a second futile attempt at physical intimacy.

  On the street I approached a woman: her face was thickly painted and the shape of her figure lost in an ill-fitting dress. After some talk, she agreed to accompany me.

  In the room she helped me to undress and then, still clothed herself, she began to caress me. There was a familiarity to her touch, as though her hands were guided over my skin by the current she felt pulsing underneath it; had I desired to use my own hands on my body, I would have guided them along the same path.

  I looked again at her dress and suddenly realized my partner was a man. My mood altered abruptly. I felt the longing for pleasure and abandonment inside me, but I also sensed that I had been accepted too readily, that everything had suddenly become very predictable. All we could do was to exist for each other solely as a reminder of the self.

  When I was in the army, many of the soldiers used to play a game in which about twenty or twenty-five men would sit around a table, each of them with a long string tied to his organ. The players were known as the “Knights of the Round Table.” One man, whom we called King Arthur, held in his hand all the ends of the strings without knowing who was at the other end of each.

  At intervals King Arthur would select a string and pull it, inch by inch, over the notched markings on the table top. The.soldiers scanned each other’s faces, aware that one of them was suffering. The victim would do all he could to conceal his pain and maintain his normal posture. It was said that the few men who were circumcised could not play the game as well as those who were not circumcised, whose shaft was protected by a foreskin. Bets would be made to see how many notches the string would pass over before the torture victim would cry out. Some soldiers ruined themselves for life by sitting out the game just to win the prize money.

  I remember the occasion when the soldiers discovered that King Arthur had conspired with one of the men by tying the string around his leg. Naturally, this soldier was able to endure more pain than the others, and thus King Arthur and he succeeded in pocketing large sums of money. The cheated knights secretly selected the punishment they thought fitting. The guilty men were grabbed from behind, blindfolded, and taken into the forest There they were stripped and tied to trees. The knights, one after another, slowly crushed each of the victim’s parts between two rocks until the flesh became an unrecognizable pulp.

  Later, in the army, there was a group of twelve of us, and at night in our tent we used to talk about women. One of the men griped that he could never really do all he wanted to do—or at lea
st, never for long enough—while making love to his woman. Some of the others seemed to have similar problems. I wasn’t sure I understood, but it struck me that they might all be suffering from something curable, so I advised them to see a doctor. They assured me that no doctor could help—it was nature’s verdict, they believed. All that could be done, they maintained, was to hold oneself in while making love, to avoid thinking about the woman, to avoid concentrating on what one was doing, feeling or wanting to feel.

  They complained that a woman seldom if ever tells a man how he compares with other men with whom she has been intimate; she fears revealing herself. This is a barrier, they argued. A man is condemned never to know himself as a lover.

  I recalled the girl friend I had when I was in high school. We used to make love when my parents were out One day the telephone rang during our love-making; since it stood on the night table, I answered it without interrupting our love-making and talked for a while to the friend who had called. When I hung up, the girl told me she would never make love with me again.

  It upset her, she said, that I could have an erection purely through an act of will—as though I had only to stretch my leg or bend a finger. She stressed the idea of spontaneity, claiming I should have a sense of wanting, of sudden desire. I told her it didn’t matter, but she insisted it did, claiming that if I made a conscious decision to have an erection, it would reduce the act of making love to something very mechanical and ordinary.