Steps Read online

  I telephoned her after my return, but she wasn’t at home. Finally I reached her and arranged to meet her for lunch. She plied me with all the usual questions: How had the trip been? What had I done? Where had I stayed? Whom had I met? . . . I gave her a full account and then asked what she had been doing in the city during the past few days.

  She told me that she had gone to the baths to keep the appointment I had made for her. She had been expecting a masseuse, but there she was told that the masseur I had sent was waiting. She felt very uneasy, she said, but didn’t want to embarrass me by refusing him.

  But why did you send a man? Did you have any particular reason?

  None besides the massage. Did you enjoy it?

  He was very efficient. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

  Then you have no complaints?

  None.

  Why did you feel so uneasy?

  There was something he was doing which I didn’t know how to accept

  But you did accept it?

  I had no choice. All I could have done was to leave.

  Did you leave?

  No, I stayed for the whole session.

  Did you say anything to him? No, you allowed his hands to do whatever they were doing.

  The way you say that makes me feel you knew in advance what he would try to do. If that is so, why did you choose him?

  I wanted to know what you would do: how you would behave in that sort of situation.

  How I would behave? Don’t you think it was far more important for you to prevent him from behaving as he did? After all, you know me very well.

  I sent him to you on purpose, because I know his hands. Tell me, did you get any relief?

  They were not his hands any more. Somehow, during the massage, the thought occurred to me they were your hands. I suppose that’s what you really wanted.

  Over coffee I suddenly sprang a question: I asked whether she had met anyone interesting while I was away. She looked straight at me without answering and only pursed her lips. Then she admitted without any embarrassment that she had been seeing a man.

  Indeed? What’s he like?

  There’s nothing to say about him. I spent some time with him. That’s why I wasn’t home when you phoned me.

  I see. But you wrote me that you’d been staying overnight with your friends.

  I was lying.

  So you were seeing a man. For how long?

  Only for two weeks.

  Everyday?

  Practically.

  Did you meet him before I left?

  No. I met him just after the last time you phoned, when you said that you wanted us to live together. I went to a party. Someone introduced him. I saw him the following night, and the next, and the next.

  Why are you telling me about it?

  I would feel awkward hiding it from you. I don’t want to be separated from you by an experience you know nothing about. You see, after you told me you wanted us to live together, I had to find out whether I could still be interested in someone else, and whether someone else would appreciate me as much as you do. I felt I had an obligation to know myself better—apart from the seif you have brought me to know. I thought I might be completely bound to you simply because you had influenced me so much. Then, when you went away, I felt as if I had a judge and jury inside me, and I had to answer to them in order to justify my choice of a man to live with, and the kind of love I could give and receive.

  So to find out whether you loved me, you had to sleep with another man?

  I didn’t sleep with him.

  But if you wanted to find out how you are without me, why did you refuse such a critical test?

  I didn’t refuse; he didn’t ask me. He said he loved me and wanted to marry me. Maybe he thought that if he asked me to go to bed with him, I would refuse because of my involvement with you. You see, I told him about you, and what was between us.

  But you spent a lot of time together. He must have kissed you. You touched him.

  Yes.

  And his tongue was in your mouth, and he stroked your body. Tell me, would you have gone to bed with him if he had wanted you to?

  I was ready to.

  What is the verdict of your judge and jury?

  The verdict is that I am capable of independent judgment and that I want to remain with you.

  And him?

  I told him I wouldn’t leave you. I like him; he’s a good man; but it would be a different life with him. I know I prefer the life you and I have together. I chose that part of me which wants you over and above the self I would become with him. Above all, I know that I alone decided this.

  By the way, there’s something I hid from you.

  What is it?

  It’s simple—well, not quite so simple. Some weeks ago I was talking to the manager of the detective agency that investigates and protects the clients of the firm I work for. I asked him how people were watched and what the procedure was. Was surveillance really effective or just a sort of bogus cloak-and-dagger operation? I accepted the manager’s offer to try out the services of his agency by allowing myself to be followed. He, in turn, would test his employees by comparing his detectives’ reports with mine. The results were gratifying to both of us: every meeting I had with you—time, place, duration—was recorded. And then, when I went away, you, as my prime contact, were watched, and quite efficiently too. Every meeting you had with that man was recorded. Yet you still deny that you slept with him, that you spent your nights together.

  It doesn’t mean that I slept with him just because I spent a night in his apartment.

  But since you spent several nights there, it’s not too much to assume that he made love to you or—if you prefer—that you gave yourself to him?

  I don’t deny it, but an act of intercourse is not a commitment unless it stems from a particular emotion and a certain frame of mind. It wasn’t an act based on love; but I had to make sure, in order to discover myself, whether it would lead to love.

  You speak of your love-making with him as though it were a sort of planned program.

  That’s not so—I had to like him.

  I didn’t realize that you liked each other. I see. You both wanted each other, and there was the usual warmth and intimate caresses, each one impatiently waiting for the other to come.

  Yes, but it could not be planned. I liked him; it was spontaneous. And because it was that, it became a good test: it answered the questions I asked myself.

  I WON A PRIZE in a photographic contest sponsored by a society for the aid of the old and infirm, and I was commissioned to supply the society with a collection of portraits. The photographs were supposed to depict the serenity and peace of old age. I was required to make up a portfolio of sixty portraits, but I encountered great difficulty in finding suitable subjects. There were very few elderly people left in the cities because the government had set up homes for them in the rural districts.

  To reach the nearest home, I had to make a difficult journey, laden with flood lamps, film, cables, transformers, and screens. I also took a portable darkroom so that I could determine on the spot the results of my work. When I arrived, the director of the home showed me around. It was an enormous old manor house converted into a score of wards, eight beds in each. All the patients here were aged, and the majority of them were also sickly, crippled, or senile. It occurred to me immediately that the task I was about to attempt was far more difficult than I had imagined. I was surrounded, pushed, pulled, spat on and cursed by some of these old people, and, on occasion, physically soiled. The wards with public toilets were dark and poorly ventilated. There was an oppressive stench of sweat and urine, against which no disinfectant could make headway.

  The next day I returned with my cameras and equipment Some of the patients I selected refused to pose, claiming they were blinded by the spotlights; others, shaking and spitting, crowded in front of my camera to flaunt their wrinkled, flabby bodies, pulling back their lips and drooling through
shrunken and toothless gums. Still others tried to cut the cables running from the electric sockets to the lights; they stepped on my equipment, kicked at the tripod, or plucked at me with hands smeared with excrement. I was unable to take a single successful picture, and one of my cameras was broken. Just before retiring to my quarters I stopped at the director’s office.

  While I waited, a nurse came into the room. After sipping a glass of water she sank wearily into a chair, and although I had been staring at her she ignored me completely. I felt an urge to touch her face and hair and to smell her skin. I did not care whether or not she was beautiful; it was enough that she was clean and healthy. I desperately wanted to reassure myself that I had nothing in common with the inmates. If she would be willing to help me, I knew I could complete my work.

  Abruptly she acknowledged me, asking if I was visiting a relative. When I told her about my project, she reluctantly agreed to work with me, if the director was willing.

  The director agreed to assign her to me for the next few days, adding casually that she was a student of psychology. She was especially interested in the psychological problems of the aged and the retarded, so much so that she had requested an additional year’s training before taking her degree. Almost three years had passed, and she was still there, working as chief nurse. According to him, she was completely devoted to the patients.

  We started photographing early next mom* ing. Our presence in the wards continued to create difficulties. Many of the male patients tried to attract the nurse’s attention with inviting gestures; the women, on the other hand, tried to upset her with offensive remarks. She told me it was only to be expected.

  When interruptions made work impossible, I would move toward her and put my arm on her shoulder or let my hand brush against her hair as I bent down to pick up a lens from its case. She showed no sign of embarrassment. I continued to touch her whenever our work gave me the occasion.

  There was nothing to do outside the home: the local village was small and the nearest town was forty miles away. We had no cinema, no theater, no restaurant.

  Apparently my companion was without friends. The rest of the staff was middle-aged, either married or, from her point of view, unsuitable. She mentioned a boy friend in the navy, to whom she wrote regularly.

  She was a secretive person, giving no reason for staying so long at the institution and no explanation for not returning to the university to finish her studies. All she said was that her life was her own. Her complacency irritated me. I began to resent the fact that my presence made no difference to her, that she could endure for years an environment which I found unbearable even for a few days. To her, perhaps, there was nothing different or unusual about me. I might have been just another patient, merely a little younger, a little less decrepit than the others.

  I began finding certain points of similarity between myself and the inmates. Nor could I avoid the realization that one day I would become what they were now, that the forces which had reduced them to their present state would also take me prisoner. I watched the sick in their endless torment, crawling like broken crayfish. As I worked in the wards I saw the dying inmates, rheumy-eyed and hollow-faced, their bodies shrunken by disease, lying on their narrow beds gaping apathetically at the faded portraits of saints or at the wooden crucifixes stippled with wormholes. Some clutched photographs of their children.

  In moments like these I would turn away and stare at the girl for a long while. So complete was my illusion of possessing her that I would experience the most intense rapture amid the most commonplace distractions.

  It was always the same. She would help me to pack my equipment and store it for the next day; then she would leave. One afternoon, however, I left the ward and walked down to the basement. I knew she was there. The basement was cold and damp and I stood in darkness. She called my name; I moved toward her voice.

  I touched her uniform and knelt in front of her. I lifted her skirt The starched fabric crackled. She was naked beneath; I pressed my face into her, my body throbbing with the force which makes trees reach upward to drive out blossoms from small, shrunken buds. I was young.

  One evening I decided to surprise her with a visit When I reached her room the other occupant told me she was on the fourth floor of the building. Only as I turned away from her room did it occur to me that I had never been on the fourth floor, which was used mainly for storage. It was quiet when I reached the stairs. Alert to everything, I mounted cautiously, and when the staircase opened into the hallway I found myself facing an ironbound door leading into a narrow, windowless corridor. Inside, it was dark. For a moment I trailed my hands over the walls. There were grates on each side of the passage, but they were all bolted. Then I noticed a single shaft of light escaping from under a door at the far end of the hall. Before I could reach it, I heard her voice. As I moved closer, I stumbled over a small sandbag and crashed against the door. Even as I clutched at the lintel I was halfway into the room.

  She was lying naked on the bed, half covered by the furry body of a creature with a human head, pawlike hands, and the short, barrel-chested trunk of an ape. My rapid, blundering entrance frightened them: the creature turned, its small brown eyes glittering maliciously. With a single leap it reached its crib, and whining and yelping, began to burrow under the covers.

  The girl pitched forward, her thighs closing as though to protect herself. Her trembling hands searched about her like the claws of a dying chicken; she clutched her dress and begun pulling it over her belly. I thought for a moment that she would crawl into the wall or scuttle through the floor boards. Her eyes looked stony and unfocused; a broken word rose to her lips, but she was unable to utter it. I stared at the crib and realized that the creature in it was human. Turning, I put out the light

  I hurried to my cottage in the village and immediately started to fill the bath. Sitting back in the warm water, I could hear only the measured dripping of the tap.

  I can’t make love to you now. Why do you insist?

  I want to make love to you when you’re menstruating. It’s as though a part of me were caught in you and your blood were mine, pulsing out from a vein that belongs to us both. What do you feel then?

  I feel the blood staining our bodies as if your hardness made me bleed, as if you had flayed my skin, and had eaten me, and I was drained.

  The girl and I were talking under the dark shrubbery of the park when our path was blocked by four men. We quickly turned aside, but heard others breaking through the bushes a few steps behind us. They called out to one another, and I realized that they were in collusion with those we had seen on the path. I was sure that we would be attacked and robbed unless we could meet other strollers or find a place to hide. I knew where we were: a stream lay ahead, and I recalled a deserted gazebo, once a lovers’ rendezvous, behind the bushes that lined the bank. We stooped to push our way through the spiky dwarf pines, shielding our faces from the sharp branches. I thought for a moment that we had escaped our pursuers, but suddenly we heard their voices again. They had only paused at the edge of the pine copse.

  We reached the gazebo and crawled into the narrow space between its foundation and a stack of benches. But our pursuers crashed through the pines and found us. Instantly a dozen hands pulled at us. We were dragged to our feet. The girl gave a desperate cry; as I turned, a blow stunned me.

  When I came to, I could see the men tearing off the girl’s clothing. She fought, kicking and biting. I braced myself and almost managed to get up, but the men pushed my head back against the ground. I looked toward the girl: she had been forced down on her back, her legs flailing; they were upraised and spread apart, like oars suspended above the water before striking.

  The men assaulted her, their trousers tangled around their ankles, their jackets thrown over the nearby bushes. They took turns. Those still waiting turned their flashlights on her writhing body. Then they began to act in concert, several of them bending over her at once, gripping and kneading her flesh,
locking her head between their thighs. She no longer screamed; I heard only her broken gasps and occasional sobs. Then she vomited and was silent.

  When the men had done, they released me and ran off. They were snickering to each other and calling out obscenities, as their voices died away among the trees and the dark walks and alleys. At last I was able to pull myself to my feet, aware that my only injuries were a spinning head and pain in breathing. I went over to my friend and picked up the remnants of her clothes. I helped her to a bench near the stream. She fell back shivering, her breath hot and sour. She moved her hands over her body, her fingers tracing the scratches and bruises which had been inflicted on her. I struck a match and caught a glimpse of her haggard face, the dark bruises on her chest, the streaks of blood on her thighs and hips.

  We made our way slowly along the bank of the stream until we reached the open ground and the park exit We turned into a dimly lit road. A policeman cycling past stopped just ahead of us. My friend whispered urgently to me to say nothing, and clutching her torn dress, she jumped off the path into the shadows. The policeman informed us that the park closed at dusk and that we were committing an offense by remaining there.

  As we walked on I felt an increasing apprehension, realizing she expected to spend the night with me. I wondered whether there would be any change in her when we made love in the future. Of course, I very much regretted what had happened to her, but a sense of revulsion was also beginning to settle in me. I still saw her flattened on the damp earth, her legs spread apart, her body plumbed and polluted by others. I couldn’t think of her except as a body to make love to.

  Early in the morning she went to the clinic for an examination. I hoped she would recover soon, so we could again make love. I reminded myself that I would have to be tender and gentle to her, but the thought was unwelcome. I recalled watching a ballerina whose skill and balance I admired; when I learned that she was pregnant, I could not avoid imagining her unborn child thrown about inside her with every leap she made.