Mouroir

Forefinger

Flashes of light and, prevalent, zones of darkness. A veritable book of darkness, the paler flip of pages being turned. He related of how they had crossed the border into C — — in the dark. (All the while as it were weaving among the words, weaverbirds, experiencing the obstacles, becoming enmeshed, woven into the fabric of sound and its cessation, limitations which are possibilities, hesitantly; lighting up the road to see the darkness.) They must have gone over the line illegally. At the least surreptitiously. On the other side of the barbed wire they stumbled by many people lying in the dark fully clothed in vestments which were as fluttering patches or wads of undarkness. Some of these old ones, he continued, were squatting by the footpath along which they had had to walk. He thought that they must be either drunk or very melancholy. True, some were only gurgling or expectorating. But many were humming. It sounded like humming. Crooning the sad songs in Spanish; more correctly Argentinian — he heard the word “Argentine” caught in the refrain. Soft wind from the nearby marshes rustled the clothes of the bearded old drunkards and their equally ancient female companions. Undigested flowers. Bone-bags spread on the mushy soil, in voluminous skirts and pantaloons. Also the colour of vomit.

The bird had grown accustomed to its cage; outside that captivity it was wing-blind — a state of freedom — its flesh sprung and useless. Thus his hand strangely vulnerable and bald as it perched above the board. Before it came down to coax one of the men into a position of defence or attack, temporarily questioning. As if every move were a murmured j’adoube. He was playing white. The forehead was white too.

They had walked on through the night until they came to a hotel. Nearby the hotel there must have been a beach with the constant lap-lapping of water too heavy with the weight of the moon by night and the glare of the sun by day to be still active. And in the several buildings constituting the hotel, he remembered, there was quite a mumbo of mirrors in the halls and down the corridors. He kept on preening, glancing at his vitreous self as he passed by them. Then it would take some time before the images faded from the surfaces. Something to do with the afterglow of fires on the retina. Wet ashes. He was wearing dark glasses and already his eyesight had grown weak. He noticed but always only in the glass, the reflection of an old man with completely white hair and similarly wearing black spectacles. He could see that this old man obviously disapproved of his narcissism, establishing a silence. Yet his behaviour was not self-loving — oh, he was quite vehement about that — but merely the total surprise at meeting his own or supposed likeness again in the light dressed up in a suit now clean-shaven except for the shades. He couldn’t be sure that the old fellow was his aged alter ego, a Doppelgänger preserved in the quicksilver of time. And so he vigorously shook his head denying himself whenever he noticed the old one’s reflection at his back. One has to pretend. One has to construct. One has to proceed. (Or complete.) One has to create an image of distance. At default what may pass for objectivity.

He and the woman shared a spacious room with another elderly lady. Quite spry this old lady was. There was the reminiscence of something enticing about her movements: perhaps, he reflected, she had been a voluptuary in her youth. The flesh, of course, tends to sag later on. She had white teeth, or a smile anyway. It was difficult imagining her in the act of osculation. The lips were spread as wide as a purse opened. Maybe the hairy enclosures were too shrivelled to cover the porcelain dentures. The aged female often had a big handbag standing open on the shiny floor. He couldn’t withhold himself — he mentioned this rather ruefully — he couldn’t refrain from scrabbling around in that handbag when the owner was absent in the shithouse. There were some chopped-up lengths of bamboo in there, short and useless, and many purplish beads. He considered that these constituted the elements of a primitive bead curtain such as one could see forever clacking in poorer houses. Like trying to capture the essence of wind. He also came upon a name tag during one of his secret searches. The old lady was called “Holy Spirit”. He said that was what he had read engraved upon the tag. Actually Santa Something or Other which when translated meant “Holy Spirit”. The grinning sparrow.

What the room was like? He looked up from the board and away through the barred windows giving on to the day outside. The sky was of the palest birdbreast, flecked with clouds which would absorb the night shortly. Of a similar blue as his eyes, bulging slightly from the sockets, screening the light, and obviously very poor. The pale face growing into the forehead where the light lies. And the freckles on his hands a kind of concentrated shivering. No, there was little enough to remark upon in the room. It was situated some distance away from the principal complex of buildings. The outside he seemed to remember was decorated down the façade with stucco scrolls and curls. Inside? He turned his wide eyes away from the patches of fading sky framed in the bars, stared down at the squares of the board, some of them occupied and others vibrating, a skein of tension and the many small decisions leading to a further involvement, fumbling. Where does it all lead to? The inside of the room was empty. There was the handbag naturally. Certainly also some scrawled graffiti pertaining to moths. And, it came to him, mirrors in ormolu frames. Also as the swathes of gleaming darkness. Enclaves really.

They had spent the first day flopped very still on the beach. Like seals beached and skinned. A little distance away his old man also reclined on the sand, just fixing him with dark lenses very open and staring and strong. The thing was really to try and trap more than the words only; also the decomposing spaces around them, and their relationships: for words are the husks of dead hindrances. His body was white then and the old man’s body was white and flabby in the same way. They had forgotten all about time. The shadows sailing through the sky. He had wanted to ensconce himself in the sand, completed in whiteness. Gulls flipped around the seam of expended wavelets. Eventually, he recounted, the owner of the hotel, a bustling lady of a vulpine appearance — but her hairstyle was too vulgar — had walked down to the beach in her apron and berated them for keeping the personnel in the kitchen waiting. She had used words like “tarde” and “tonto” and “también” upon them. So they had returned and showered until their bodies were tinted a deeper shade of white and then they had walked over to the main building housing the dining room.

There were, he said, trees with preposterously large green leaves making a crackling sound. And the keening of many sad voices singing their sad songs drifted out of the windows in the dusk. It had been a glorious day (with its splotches of darkness) and now it was red and fading. The head waiter with his gules-coloured waistcoat had received them at the door. They entered, he continued, over a polished floor. But inside they were immediately surrounded by a pack of mangy dogs, furiously snarling and barking, so that they were unable to reach their table or even to see the faces of the many diners peering at them through the gloom. All that they noticed in the room filled with shrill noises were the light areas, the clothes of those sitting at the tables. Moths perhaps. Or ashes. Or fingers.

“Naked like a Turkish saint.” Desperately mouthing an orison. Putting out the words not sure whether they will please, could bring relief. Like so many votive offerings to the voracious god of silence. A moanologue. Experiencing structure, exploring gaps, fingering strictures, strange wounds, finding the illusion of relationships, fumbling. Slip-finger. Outside the day was constantly falling (with consistency). Pink, and then the first sick mauve. Later even a moon will be fashioned from the ornamental clouds, distilling their brightness. Sucking. The quiver of pain around the mouth.

Yes, he said that at the outset he had been a greenhorn, inexperienced. Technique, as it were, still raw. And the whole set-up was bedevilled by the absolute darkness. He had, he stated, of course pulled his wire many a time before. Beating the meat briskly when it had become unavoidable. To relieve the tension and absorb the illusion. To hover for a brief instant, the duration of a spasm, over the lips of communication. As near as he could come to the Other. Which was the Self. Obscurely. Not much of a lover really. When he had met her and after having exposed himself, that is, after having built up the teetering idea that she might accept or incept him, he had confessed his ignorance of the usages of that proboscis, admitting to the skin of insensitivity preventing him from penetrating knowledge (ignorance is insensitivity at heart) and she had volunteered to put him wise. She was as a sister to him. She knew — had soaked up from previous experience — the knack of stretching the haunches.

But, he repeated, she was adamant that he should not come inside her and laid out to him why this was not to be. Obviously he promised not to. Isn’t the woman the all-wise teacher, initiator and priestess of eternity? And fumbled. She was skitterish. Rejected him with a vigorous kick of the hind legs. Eyes like moons. Moans.

Again and again the hand fluttering imperceptibly hung above the pieces. The flank of his attack had been turned, a bishop (le fou) sacrificed to no avail. White was in a predicament. The hand had to choose while the forehead caught the light through the barred windows. Stuttering. And becoming enmeshed, woven into the dislocation of parry and thrust and probe, of commitment finally.

So he had promised her that he would obtain some means of prevention. From a medical friend, an old man with white hair and smoked lenses, he managed to procure a contraceptive jelly. Something, apparently a spermicide, which would kill the seeds. Rather like an insect extermination. She, he said, had claimed to know all about the product and the method. And he had remembered about a farm in the North where they could enjoy the desired romantic isolation. It had been his grandfather’s, used for growing tobacco, but now it was run by his nephew. His grandfather had died, buried in the mirror. His grandfather had penetrated the soil. Was rotting (in) the dark earth. He recalled the fine tobacco the old man was fond of making for his own consumption: carving up the odd leaves, sprinkling the little curls with rum essence before exposing them in glass jars for three days to the sun.

They had driven to the farm. The nephew wasn’t at home. The main building — the master’s house — was closed up, but the barn they found unlocked. They went in there. It was utterly dark and she didn’t wish him to open any door, afraid that their intimacy might be observed. The empty barn had been used for the storing of tobacco — the enormous crackling leaves becoming wrinkled and veined with controlled decomposition. There was a fine layer of tobacco dust over the floor. He kneeled before her thinking about how his trousers were getting soiled, and she hitched her skirts above the hips. He was to insert the jelly using an instrument somewhat like a small pump with a nozzle. He couldn’t quite describe it. Didn’t know how to manipulate it. The knees were getting tired. Above all he was afraid of hurting her by introducing the spout too deeply. And didn’t dare strike a match for fear of embarrassing them both. Hesitated thus. Fumbled. A bird in the dark having to decide its movements.

Eventually, he said, he felt that the right amount had been injected. Since it was so uncomfortable — unhygienic — consummating the act in the barn, he talked her into rather going down to the dam with him. She was reluctant to be taken outside, had very sensitive buttocks. The soft wind from the nearby marshes was rustling their clothes. The water itself was dead and weighted down. But when they came around the wall by the soft and furry grass they just about stumbled over a black labourer and his companion, naked and glowing, doing that which they themselves had in mind naturally. They would end up lying very still, he thought. He thought he knew.

Night had fallen like a hood. He then noticed, he recounted, lights going on in the central building, the one housing the dining room and kitchen and bedroom. His nephew must have returned from wherever he’d gone to. He led the woman to the house through the darkness. The dogs, he said, the dogs were snarling most viciously around their legs. In the house he asked his nephew for the use of the bedroom. To fuck the lady, he explained. They undressed by the bed in the big dark room. Her handbag on the floor. A vortex of emotions when finally unclothing. Her dress of muslin slightly lighter in the dusk. Discarded wings and sprung muscles. Flashes of light and, prevalent, areas of darkness. An orifice. As if he’d taken narceine. And the smell of vomit. Also her eyes turned up white.

“And then?”

It was, he said, a muddy matter of the vulva. Or valves perhaps.

“I couldn’t stay in her. Kept on flip-flopping out. She was too slippery. It was a sticky situation. I had used far too much of the stuff you see. There was no way. The wetness.”

(The sadness of his white finger with its stains of smoked tobacco. The sustained shiver. But it was too late: the queen had already been removed and now he was mated. The combination of black knight and black rook was fatal. There was no way out.)