Wretched Man
I looked around our tiny stateroom, and wondered how you were going to fit into it. When you came after me through the door, you had to almost bend over by half to get in, but at least your head didn't scrape the ceiling. You carefully locked the stateroom door behind you and went to wash your face and hair.
The crisp sheets on the top bunk crackled as I ran my hands over them, and their blue blankets were pulled tight as skin. Everything was sharp and fresh, scrubbed clean. A small desk bolted to the wall had a sort of swivel chair attached to it, and another chair was wedged into the corner opposite the bunks.
A large mirror hung over the washstand, and there I saw you, cleaning the silver out of your hair with quick efficient strokes. Then you got out your long straight razor and mixed up some soap. I had never watched a man shave before. Such a risky business, the long slices with the blade over the tenderest portions of the neck. When you got to the wrinkled side of your face, you carefully edged around it with the straight razor; it looked like no hair grew there.
We stood near the deep center of the Liverpool Line's "City of Paris," on its way to New York City. The water line fell right below the porthole, and you closed the blue checkered curtain to close out the late afternoon sun. I had already strapped our new small carpetbags down so they wouldn't slide about.
This closet of a room would be our home for the next ten days. "Top or bottom?" I asked shyly, twisting my ring.
You took off your shoes and placed them carefully into the drawer under the bed, then stretched your long frame out on the bottom bunk, with only a few centimeters to spare on either end. "So that means I get the top?" I asked.
"It makes no difference to me," you said, and rolled over, turning your face to the metal wall of the cabin.
A small trickle of sweat ran down my head from underneath the wig. There was no wig stand, so I tried to prop it up as best I could when I took it off, but it still lay there like a flat, dead thing. I sat in the swivel chair and watched your shoulders rise and fall with deep regular breaths. In the mirror I caught a glimpse of my hateful head, made worse by the high velvet collar of my dress.
Water sloshed behind the curtain and cast wildly careening lights around the room. The floor swayed to and fro and I waited for the sickness to come, the sickness everyone talked about when crossing the Atlantic, but I stayed steady on my feet and no sickness came.
What made this black mood? Were you ill? I sat down carefully on the bunk and touched your shoulder. You made a little noise, halfway between a sob and a moan, and I shook you, this time.
"What's wrong? Are you seasick?"
No answer.
My hand rested on you, and underneath your shirt, I felt a fine tremor. At first I thought it was the humming of the ship's engines. You rolled over and you didn't look sick as you stared off at some point somewhere on the wall of the other side of our little metal cell.
"Please tell me if you're seasick," I asked again.
"I don't get seasick, even in storms. My stomach's resolutely unaffected by them."
"That's good," I said. "On Channel crossings I never got seasick." Thirty centimeters at most separated our hands, but it felt farther. In the dark, under the deepest cellar, I could pull you onto my breast with no hesitation, but here in the blue and steely light, I sat shy and motionless.
At this rate, I thought, it's going to be a long ten days.
I got up, and your gaze followed me, cold and predatory, like a cat watching a bit of fluff blowing across the garden. I'm not sitting here in this dress, I thought. The design was simple and plain, and so I could get it off easily myself. Clever of you to think of that, as I pulled it off and hung it in the closet. Then off came the corset cover, and the corset. How useful, it unties on the side. I stood cold and forlorn in my chemise with no pantalettes.
I'm going up into the top bunk, to pull the covers over my head. If you want me, that's where I'll be, I thought. But first I have to turn around. I have to go past your eyes to climb up to the top, or worse, I have to go past your closed eyes as they ignore me, or the back of your shaggy head shutting me out.
The full weight of what I was doing, of what I had done that morning, of what was ahead, pressed down on me like kilos of stones. The ship gave a lurch and I grabbed ahold of the closet doorframe to steady myself.
I went back towards the bunk, and you stared at me openly. There was an apprentice stage hand, a boy of about fifteen, who on his first day at the Opera dropped a sandbag on his foot as he stared at the dancers, especially me. That's how you stared, and instead of walking past you to climb up to the top, I sat down again on the low bunk.
I could wait. I was used to waiting.
You pulled the sheet back a little, and you'd unbuttoned your shirt. It was all the invitation I needed.
My eyes closed against your chest and the soft hair tickled my nose. Lightly, almost shyly, you put an arm on my shoulder and pulled me toward you. You smelled like shaving soap and a faint trace of cinnamon. Then you pushed me away from you, but not roughly. You just wanted to see my face, and you went all over it as if searching for something, but I couldn't tell what.
"My love," I said, finally.
You looked away as if I'd hurt you, and made little lip movements, as if some words were trapped there and couldn't get out.
"Why can't I call you 'my love?'" I asked.
Back on your back you flopped, staring at the wire mesh that held up the bed above us. "You don't deserve this," you said in a choked voice. "You're young, you're lovely, you're fresh. I'm a walking dead man, Meg. You're saddled with a corpse, a corpse who wants nothing more than to push himself into your flesh." Then you leaned your face away from me and said softly, half to yourself, "Wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death?"
"If you're a corpse, then so am I."
You looked back at me, puzzled.
"Remember the words you said not so long ago? 'With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship?' It seemed unfair that I didn't get to say it too. Because it's how I feel."
A tear leaked out of the corner of your eye.
"One flesh." I put both my hands on your face, not bringing you forward for a kiss, just holding them there. "All your flesh, too. Please don't ever be ashamed to want me."
Then you kissed me, and I shut my eyes so nothing would be in the way of that kiss, nothing in between the smell and taste of it, nothing to distract me from the little sounds you made as your mouth moved around mine. We kissed a long, long time. The first time we had come together, you were hot and quick, but now you were slow, almost cool, as you teased one kiss after another from me.
Around and around your hands went, and in delight my hands explored you as well. All of you, so long and tall and warm, and what a marvel that you let me touch you.
I pulled your shirt off and saw your body for the first time, all ribbed with muscle and soft with hair. At your waist I found only a confusing barrier of flaps and buttons. You contained yourself until you could hold yourself in no more, so you opened the flaps and naked under the covers we slid.
Your mouth stayed on mine, breaking away only to breathe or shift. Then I cried out as you took me with movements dark, slow, and powerful, rocking like the waves themselves. It still hurt, but not as much as before, and all I could think was I'm allowed, I'm allowed. Deep from inside you a new motion started, expectant and eager, moving in rhythm with the sloshing of the waves.
The rhythm broke when you stopped and hesitated, then pulled away from me, and my heart sank.
I reached around you and tugged you toward me. With a tiny movement you retreated. "What is it?" I said. "What's wrong?"
You looked away from me, embarrassed. "A child … I wanted to avoid giving you a child. For your sake."
"No," I cried out. "Don't do that. Don't ever pull away from me like that. Besides, there may be a child already. From the cave."
Inside me you slowly softened, then slipped out altogether. You rolled over onto your side, facing the blank steel cabin wall.
"Oh, God," you said to yourself. "What have I done?"
If we hit an iceberg, I thought, that bunk above us could come crashing down. It would crush us. It couldn't hurt as much as this.
Your bare back trembled, layered with muscle but vulnerable too, speckled with brown moles.
"Why don't you want a child?" I said.
The sheet flew off me as you whipped around, pulling it with you. With a wild expression, you snarled, "Are you blind, girl? What if this obscenity were passed on to some poor unfortunate? Why would I want to inflict that on him, much less on you? Could you hold a face like this up against your breast?"
"I already have," I said softly.
Fits of temper didn't scare me. My mother had showed enough of them. All I had to do was wait, and they passed. Getting excited over them just made them last longer. So I stared coolly at you, even though my stomach churned with anxiety.
Panting, you looked away and pressed your head into the pillow. Cold and sticky, I rolled over and stared at the rough metal door across this closet of a room. What is he going to do if my courses don't come? Try to find an "angel maker" in America? They're all over Paris; I'm sure New York has them too. But never. Never, never, never. I'll fight him. I'll run away. I wrapped my arms around my stomach as water leaked out of my eyes, and a thin trickle of wetness went down my leg.
"I want you," I said to the metal door across the room in a voice thick with tears. "That goes for any child that would come, too. Or that has come already. The two go together."
I could feel you shiver on the other side of the bed.
"Even if its face looks like mine," you said, muffled by the pillow.
Over to you I slid.
"Especially if its face looks like yours."
"You can't mean that," you said. "My own mother would never touch me."
"Someone touched you. Someone had to change you and dress you. Someone had to wash your face and comb your hair. Someone had to nurse you."
Instead of saying anything, you buried your face in my breast, shaking and trembling. I stroked your hair and watched the moonlight move across the wall and soon you grew quiet, your breathing rhythmic.
The ache inside of me opened into a maw of emptiness and confusion. We were supposed to be husband and wife, one flesh. But why did you slip out of my flesh, with mine still on fire for you?
I went into the washstand and tried to clean myself as best I could, my body all tender and swollen, my heart pounding with desire. Instead of slipping back into my wet and soiled chemise, I pulled your shirt right out from under your arm, your sleep so vast and deep that nothing of you stirred, and I put it on.
After I washed and hung out my own garment, I went to the porthole, opened the curtains, and watched the purple sunset play over that almost infinite mass of black sloshing water, before sliding in the small bunk next to you. As the swollen ache in my flesh slowly leached away, I slept.
Thirst woke me up. It was dark, but the moon had risen and I knew that hours had passed. The full moonlight played on the water, and some of it crept over onto your face and the sloping line of your shoulder.
Sleep transformed you. If I had a candle, I could see better how the tense angle of your shoulders relaxed; how your jaw hung soft and loose instead of twisted and tight; how your hand lay open on the pillow. In the dim reflected moonlight, your beauty wrenched my heart.
But thirst won out, though. Over the washstand were two spigots. I couldn't remember which was salt and which was fresh, so I tasted the first experimentally, and then spat into the sink. Even after fresh water, the brackish taste stayed in my mouth.
An apple, I thought. That would take care of it. I saw you put some in your brown bag. I crept through the darkness to your stained khaki bag. I'll let you sleep, I said to myself, no need to bother you.
I pulled out an apple, a chunk of cheese wrapped in paper, and then my fingers bumped a small item that felt like leather, a small leather purse with a flap tied with a series of complicated knots. Inside was something hard. The ship must have changed course, for a long slant of moonlight through the porthole made you shine like silver in the bed.
The stagehand who dropped sand on his foot followed me like a puppy for weeks, and he showed me knots, how to tie them, and how to loosen them.
I worked away at the lacing, forgetting my hunger or your sleeping form, obsessed with curiosity. Finally the last knot slipped loose, and I reached around to find something hard and cold against my fingertips.
Inside the flapped pouch was Christine Daae's ring. And from across the room you stared at me with fierce, glittering eyes.
(To be continued)