Basic Black with Pearls Read online

  In the kitchen, each time I turned off the tap, I could hear Francesca’s voice in a light, gossipy tone telling Zbigniew something. When she came to the end of the account, there was silence again until she began another diversion. Against the silences I found relief in the familiar things around me: the patterns of the wallpaper, the patterns of the floor tiles, the patterns on the china. My hands and feet went about their kitchen business without thought on my part. There were even a few moments of pleasure as I put away knives, pots, towel, apron and broom, exactly where they were supposed to go. I worked quietly. My curiosity was aroused: he allows her to chatter, as he did me, without comment; but when he ultimately speaks, as he does just once before he goes back to his newspapers, will he reveal anything I want to know? What he tells her I have heard a thousand times.

  – When I was fourteen my grandfather gave me a thoroughbred Arab mare for my birthday. She was of a breed from Hungary called Furioso. They were well named, those proud, beautiful animals. I called her Fury. She was high-tailed, white, with a silky white mane. She had wide, dark eyes, neat ears and flared nostrils. Oh but she was spirited. No one could come near her, let alone ride her. Even my grandfather, a former Cossack and cavalry officer was afraid of her. My grandfather intended to beat her into submission, but I asked for a chance to tame her. It was agreed: if I could not ride her within one week, she would be turned into a workhorse. I had one of our servants lock me in the stall with Fury. In the morning, at the first light of day, the same terrified servant opened the lock, certain he would find me trampled to death. Instead, I walked out, leading Fury, who was as submissive as a donkey. I was her master. On two occasions I raced her in Warsaw. We won. How did I subdue her? That will remain my secret forever.

  – I imagine it was a matter of superior malice, Francesca said.

  Her remark must have ended the table talk, for she came into the kitchen. She went around the room closing the three doors that lead into it. Zbigniew would be back in the family room with his newspapers. Francesca and I faced one another on stools at the kitchen counter.

  She said – Your summer things have been packed in marked cartons. I put white shoe polish on your sandals; they’ll be ready to wear the first hot day next summer.

  I said – Those long hot days. Those long hot useless weekends.

  She said – Zbigniew is pleased that I learned to prepare Polish dishes. I can cook cabbage in many different ways — cabbage rolls, hot cabbage soup with meat or cold cabbage borscht with sour cream, coleslaw; there’s a crock of cabbage in the basement for sauerkraut.

  I said – Those long hot nights. I woke in the middle of the night and went out to lie down on the deck in the garden. He didn’t stir.

  – I have registered for a course in French cooking. I think Zbigniew will like French cooking, the Poles and the French got along well: the French loved Chopin. Zbigniew reads Baudelaire in the original. Did you know your husband wrote a book of poems in French, Les Illuminations d’Amour?

  – In September I drove to High Park every day. I left the car near the Bloor Street entrance and walked deep into the park. There were lovers everywhere. On the slopes in the sun, behind bushes, on top of picnic tables. They looked as if they might be foreigners. Don’t misunderstand me, I mean only that, possibly, where they came from there was not that freedom to hug and kiss in the open. Perhaps there were some Canadian lovers also. I couldn’t tell. I always took a book and held it open in front of me so that they wouldn’t catch me staring.

  – Zbigniew is so clever, he speaks eight languages and several Slavic dialects. I asked him to help me with my French, but I don’t believe he has the patience to think in two languages at night when he must do that all day as a translator in the courts. He didn’t say he wouldn’t help me: he just didn’t.

  – In October the light was bright, the air dry and sharp, leaves crunched underfoot. The lovers didn’t see me. They never took their eyes off one another.

  – Last Thursday, Zbigniew had a particularly trying day. I read about it in the paper. The defendant was from Jugoslavia, his wife Italian and the witness, their landlady, was Portuguese. The husband was accused of keeping his wife tied to a chair, her mouth gagged, while he was at work. The landlady discovered her when she knocked on the door to borrow a cup of oil. The magistrate looked down at the wife who was seated before him on her chair, still bound and gagged. Why didn’t the landlady untie her? the magistrate asked. The translator — that’s Zbigniew! — said, Your Honor, she says it is dangerous to interfere in the affairs of married couples. She thinks he must have had good reason for what he did to his wife. Find out, the judge instructed, why he binds and gags his wife. Your Honor, Zbigniew said, he says he does it for her sake, for her safety. He says she comes from Genoa and goes wandering down around Toronto Harbor and talks to sailors like in the old country.

  – One Sunday morning I went to the park but I didn’t stay very long. It was November, the trees were bare. Dry leaves whirled and sailed in the wind. The lovers seemed obsessed: in their faces, in the way they clutched each other, was a desperation that one associates with the classic tragedies of star-crossed lovers. There were not many people about; we all seemed resigned to something; the old men to walking their dogs, the dogs resigned to the pace of the old men; the lovers to being satisfied with just a glimpse of the other’s face and a touch of the hands; and I to my solitary walks. When it began to rain I took the streetcar at the Howard Park entrance, leaving the car behind. I did not go home. I walked on Yonge Street, north, on the east side, a walk I had often taken when I was young and when this part of the city was foreign to me. There was a cold drizzle. There were few pedestrians. There were some middle-aged people in Murray’s out for their Sunday dinner — I could see their heads over the top of the short window curtains. The shops no longer interested me, with their pseudo-exotic displays, with their dusty shoes, with their limp clothing. A bookstore was open and for a moment I found it strange, until I remembered that the Sunday “blue” laws had changed. I went in and picked up and put down endless numbers of books. For the first time, I had no wish to read. Before I knew it, it was nine o’clock. I was cold, wet and tired, yet I still was not ready to go home. Outside, the marquee of the New Yorker Cinema shone bright against the gloom, with Children of Paradise in large letters. I went in.

  – Zbigniew and I were alone in the living room that same evening. I asked him how the case had ended. Zbigniew said it had been such a terrible ordeal for him — instructions from the magistrate, the principals all speaking at once, the wife when untied screaming obscenities in Italian which he found difficult to translate — that he asked to be taken off the case.

  – I stayed to see the film twice. I had to see again that part near the end when Garance and Baptiste embrace and she says to him, I never forgot you. You have helped me to live through all these years. It’s you who has prevented me from becoming old, and stupid, and spoiled. And Baptiste replies, I’ve thought of you every day. Garance whispers, My life was so empty, and I fell so alone. But I told myself, You have no right to be sad, you are one of the happy ones in spite of everything, because someone really loved you.

  – Zbigniew said that his grandfather would have known how to deal with a wayward wife. Then he took the riding crop off its hook at the side of the mantel and struck his palm with it, then thrashed the air around him.

  – I came home about two in the morning. The lights were on in the living room. I glanced in before I hung up my coat. Zbigniew was standing beside the fireplace, his hands behind his back. He followed me up the stairs to the bedroom. In his hand was his grandfather’s riding crop, which always hangs on a hook beside the mantel. He didn’t say a word. He raised the riding crop. I bent my head, protecting myself with my arms.

  The riding crop belonged to his grandfather, it is only a memento. Zbigniew never uses it, not even on his horse. He put it back on its hook.


  I was afraid. At the same time I was aware of a contradiction: Zbigniew had often told me he would never whip a horse. I believed him. I have never known him to lose his temper. I used to wonder what would happen if we quarreled: I would scream accusations at him; perhaps he would hit me — with his hand. I could understand that. I straightened up; I faced him.

  It was only Thursday, but even so I suggested it would do him good to relax in bed, we could make love and he would get a good sleep. He would not make an exception. He said, Tomorrow is a long day in court; I must get up early; I have to have all my wits about me. He went to sleep after the ten o’clock news as usual.

  I said – He wouldn’t look at me. He struck me three times. I felt the whip on my face, my breasts and my legs. He said nothing. We went to bed. We had intercourse as we always do on Sunday.

  She said – His refusal was not directed against me; I didn’t mind. He is an honorable man — he has never taken the scissors to my credit cards, as I’ve heard other husbands do. I am satisfied. It is a good life, this, to live with a virtuous man.

  I said – Virtue is not capacity. To you, however, I offer gratitude, if you require it. Tell me, how soon after I was gone did you move in?

  – You left the door unlocked. I was here when Zbigniew got home from work.

  – Then despite everything, he has been able to maintain his schedule?

  – To the minute.

  Again the household sounds held me. Overhead I recognized the children’s quick steps; a door shut, then another. We both heard the (anticipated) click of the bathroom lock, which we knew meant that Zbigniew had started his bath. Francesca and I simultaneously glanced at the clock on the wall. A sense of communion sprang up between us, so that, in a manner of speaking, we became one mind. A nod, a glance, and wordlessly we confirmed that since it was 9:30 on a Sunday night, we, twin-like, would go up and await our husband in bed. Zbigniew’s instructions, apparently have been explicit for her, too; she opened the freezer at the top of the refrigerator, took out a bottle of vodka, poured a tumbler full, replaced the bottle. She will carry the drink up to the bedroom, and when she hears the bathwater draining in the adjoining room, she will stand at the bathroom door which will open about six inches and she will put her hand holding the glass through the opening. The tumbler will be taken from her hand by his (unseen) hand. For my part, right now, temptation in the form of habit prompts me to want to take the vodka from her and carry it upstairs myself. The ennui of well-ordered events has a cozy appeal. So that when Francesca invites me to spend the night, she catches me in a hiatus of purpose. It would be a relief to fall into a familiar bed. My agreement to stay came largely from indecision.

  The bedroom has been redecorated. An effect has been created of a lovers’ bower, even though the point finally becomes redundant: pink roses clamber up and around blue trellises everywhere: on the walls, drapes, all over the bed on the comforter, and under one’s head on the pillowcases. I think: this is as close as I’ll ever come to a bed of roses. The king-size bed takes up most of the room, so that there is only the airspace overhead and a few feet here and there between dressers and night tables and bed that are free of false roses. I prefer the neutrality of stripes or geometric figures. I wondered if my toothbrush is still in its holder. I will have to wait until Zbigniew is finished to find out. It is possible I won’t get a chance to brush my teeth, as so often happened on Sunday night, unless I brushed my teeth before he began his ritual for the night. I find a clean nightgown in its usual place in the left-hand corner of the bottom drawer of my dresser. When Francesca bustles in with the glass of vodka in her hand she has the look of a hospital nurse making the rounds with medications for the night. We listen to the bathwater gurgle down the drain and hear the click of the lock and see the door open slightly. Francesca puts the glass through the opening, then withdraws her hand, empty.

  I lie down in my accustomed place at the side of the bed near the door, maintaining the feeling that I can slip out of bed anytime, should I find it necessary to do so for one reason or another. Francesca stands before me in one of my nightgowns that hangs on her as had the dress, straight down, without a curve anywhere. She invites me by gestures to sleep beside Zbigniew in the middle of the bed and I, also using gestures, indicate I wish to remain where I am. She comes into bed, plumps her pillow, yawns, the yawn ending in a sigh of contentment. And at that moment my unspoken question is answered: she is completely adaptable. She is not beautiful, or even handsome; her attractiveness possibly lies in a kind of simple willingness, a compliance uncluttered by second thought. Soon Zbigniew emerges in his blue velour robe. He stands at his side of the bed, his hand on the light switch. He looks in my direction, his expression not unkind, waiting, it seems, for me to say something, but waits only briefly, then he turns off the light and in the dark he removes his robe (I remember).

  Zbigniew has never been seen naked. And when he gets under the cover, we three pull and tug gently at the eiderdown to divide it fairly between us. The room, however, does not remain entirely dark; he has neglected to close the Venetian blinds in the dressing room that shut out the light from the street lamp. In the dimness I can also make out the forms beside me. As I feel them stirring I wonder if he has begun to stroke her back. Even though I am (once) removed, I can smell the stables on him, a not-unpleasant odor that persists despite (his) prolonged bathing — it is an odor I have come to associate with having my legs spread by his knees and his immediate entry. The mattress heaves and I imagine that now Zbigniew is inside her. I close my eyes. Now he will roll over on his right side, remaining inside her, pinning down her left leg with his iron thigh, so that she cannot move, even if aroused. Any other touch between them will be accidental: he will not caress or kiss her. He will fuck her with slow deliberation, sometimes stopping, then starting up again. Whether my presence has increased their ardour I have no way of knowing. I notice only that the small movements and the absence of words are the same as when I lay immobilized beneath him. In visualizing them together the (persistent) image of Zbigniew on his mare crowds my mind and an anger rises: Why can’t (won’t?) he be as vigorous, maintain the same stamina with Francesca as he does with his mare!

  Despite myself, I am overcome by the ache of lust. The desire that comes flooding is not for Zbigniew. Behind my eyes I conjure up Coenraad. He appears before me, naked and splendid. In this big bed I can spread my legs without touching anyone. Unexpectedly, my lover’s image gives way to Andy’s, who also is naked and splendid. As I open for him, his figure, in turn, vanishes and I see a golden wasp enter the purple centre of an orchid. I place an arm over my eyes and put my other hand between my legs. When I come, I stifle the sound that might betray me. What is unusual is that this is the first time I have climaxed at the same time as my husband. I become aware that he has rolled away from her; we lie very still.

  While Zbigniew slept, Francesca and I slipped out of bed. I left behind my basic black dress where I had tossed it earlier over the back of a chair. I picked up my pearls on the dresser. Then, on my way out I reached into the cupboard beside the door and even in that faint light I was able to put my hand on a certain silk dress, more appropriate for spring perhaps, but it was the one I wanted to take with me. I remembered it had an abstract design in slashes of red and blue and yellow on a green background, copied, I felt at the time I bought it, from the paintings of Hundertwasser. Francesca, meanwhile, of her own accord, gathered up the rest of my things. It was not very late; bands of light shone from under Dina’s and Anton’s doors. I paused in the hall, then, sad, I descended the stairs. In my letter I will try and explain why I could not stop to kiss them good-night.

  Francesca, handing me my coat in the hall, said,

  – You need have no jealousy; I never have an orgasm.

  – Just the same, I said, I must leave. Would you like my pearls?

  She held the strand up to the light.
r />   – They’re beautiful. Thank you.

  – You must understand I no longer belong here.

  – Yes, of course. I’ll call a cab. I hope you know what you’re doing — you’ll never find another man as decent as your husband.

  – Empty virtue repels me.

  – You would think twice if you knew the world as I know it.

  For the first time in this house I laughed out loud.

  My driver remarked that he liked Yonge Street on Sunday night because there was hardly any traffic. He sat at the wheel with his head tipped back slightly to let me know, I guessed, he would listen to me. I huddled in the right-hand corner of the backseat, unable to say a word. At Castlefield, I could tell he gave up expecting anything from me because he leaned straight forward over the wheel. There was no activity on the streets; the small shops were closed, only the billboards were bright; and, at Bloor, Children of Paradise was still spelled out on the marquee. Tonight the invisible multitude behind closed doors were putting in time somehow until they could stream out into the streets and roads on Monday morning. As we taxied across town, I thought: out there the city goes on being the city, more or less seductive, more or less comforting. In this city, I decided, I will continue to walk: walk beside the lake, walk along the old streets, walk into new neighbourhoods, noting the ways of people, keeping my step light. But I won’t be trying to recognize my lover.

  I think I will miss Coenraad. I will miss the joy when he appears; I will not miss the pain of our partings.

  And I will miss airports. Even though all time is dead time until the gates open; even though waiting for my plane an hour, or six hours, I become like a lung fish sealed in mud in the dry season; even though I revive only when my flight is called — I will miss the anticipation of getting on a plane that takes me to Coenraad. I will miss the ride in from the airport, wanting to look at both sides of the road at once, seeing houses different from any I’ve ever seen before. I will miss the fascination of a strange city, especially when it appears below me at night like another firmament ablaze with synthetic stars.