“I am as real as you care to make me,” she answered. “I was hunting for a comb in my valise when the train came in. Combs always elude me.”
She mentioned the name of a hotel and they walked to it in silence, for speech to them demanded an impregnable privacy that was violated by even the swiftly passing eyes and ears of other people. When they were alone in the hotel-room he watched her remove outer garments and don a kimono, with a pleasure that coerced sensual longing into an enslaved contemplation—a fire that glowed without burning.
“When I see your flesh then you are most unreal,” he said. “It becomes a last garment that you have neglected to unfasten because you wish to pretend that you belong to the earth. The cupped appeal of your breasts is the subtle lie with which something infinitely abstract evades the weight of a world. There is a surprised element attached to your legs and they never seem assured in their task of supporting your torso. And yet, when your body is beyond my actual sight your reality is still doubtful, for then I lack even the uncertain evidence of your flesh. I am helpless—I cannot mingle you with cities and men, and even country roads seem heavily unwilling to hold you.”
“And is it impossible for you to accept this body as a necessary, insincere contrast to my thoughts and emotions?” she asked, with lightness. “You are tensely morbid, Max. Now I shall sit on your knee. The scene is prearranged. You must promptly clutch me, in that involved manner that has made novelists famous and blurred the integrity of poets. The earth has anointed and pointed riots waiting for you!”
His fingers studied the short brown curls on her head and his lips touched the less obvious parts of her face—her chin, the tip of her inwardly curving nose, her temples, the meeting-place of forehead and hair.
“I can see two men looking at me now,” he said. “To one I am an emasculated fool who places a dainty overtone upon his weakness, and to the other I am chaining strong desires with the lies of vain and pretty gestures. Olga, the earth is bulky and profane, and dreads anything that delicately, aloofly disputes its size!”
She carefully fitted her head between his shoulder and neck.
“This listening peace that you bring me, and the softer intentions of your hands, they are more important than the lunges of men,” she said. “We are spontaneous in ways whose breathlike intensity has not been corrupted by the screaming of nerves, and Oh, we must prepare ourselves for the indifference and ridicules of a coarser audience. They cannot peer into this room, yet afterwards something within the buoyant removal of our bodies tells them to punish us with poverty and little food.”
He grinned, and crowded flights of defiance were on his face.
“I’ve been eating onions and bread for the last week,” he said. “I cut the onions into various shapes, making them resemble different articles of food. With an imaginative seriousness one can almost overcome the sense of taste. Almost.”