her hard, while he presses his legs against her sex and runs his hands all over her to make her keep still. She gasps a little, her fingers damp, and lets her head lean back against the hard chair.
She wonders if the doctor touches himself sometimes even now. Surely not. She cannot imagine it! And perhaps all he has to suck on are his terrible, foul-smelling cigars. Perhaps that is his problem. He seems a very controlled and diligent person and probably did not dare touch himself anymore, even as a child, once his nursemaid or his mother had told him it was dangerous, that it would make his penis drop off, or would make his brains rot. Perhaps he is not even able to make love to his wife anymore. Does the doctor have sexual intercourse with his wife, she wonders, and thinks that probably he does not and that is why he wants his patients to talk so much about their secret desires.
VIII
----
SUBTERFUGE
T O HIS SURPRISE SHE DOES come back the very next day, and on time, sweeping into his office, looking flushed and a little disheveled. On such a cold day, her head is uncovered, her long, glossy hair whipped by the wind, in unruly curls on her shoulders, her cheeks pink. She lies on his couch, fidgeting distractedly, pulling at her gloves, and coughing from time to time as she goes on talking monotonously about her father’s lies.
That
is what is making her ill, she insists.
“Which ones this time?” he asks, stifling a yawn.
She says she will tell him if he really wants to know. She might just as well get it over with.
“Start away,” he says.
She tells him about what she calls the “subterfuge.” She explains how she and her family had met the Z.’s in the spa town south of Innsbruck. Actually, it was thanks to her that they all met.
He notices with some satisfaction that she seems for the first time willing to answer him, to talk of the Z.’s, speaking more easily without coughing as much. He is finally getting somewhere, he thinks, despite her bad temper, and relaxes a little in his chair, listening to her tale with interest.
“It was their little girl I noticed first, actually,” she says. She was having tea on the terrace of a hotel in Meran one afternoon with her parents. They had gone there for a treat—perhaps it was even her mother’s birthday—she doesn’t remember exactly, she says, or perhaps it was simply because of the splendid view over the valley. She was sitting on the terrace, feeling bored, when she first noticed the family. She was eating creamy chocolate cake and drinking cool lemonade. Her brother was not there, and she missed him particularly as there were no other children. She looked up and saw the couple enter with their two children: the little boy, fair headed and rosy cheeked like his mother, in whose arms he wriggled, and the pale, dark-haired girl, who held her father’s hand and looked so old-fashioned as she gazed at them with her large eyes.
From the start the child intrigued her. There was something so serious and contained about the small girl, and she had felt from that moment that something might happen to her, though she wasn’t sure what it might be.
Besides, she has always liked playing with younger children, teaching them, playing school, and this little girl had such a strange and grave expression.
The Z.’s were led to a less favorable table than theirs, she remembers, one with limited shade that hot summer afternoon. She watched the little girl with her old-fashioned face, her dark hair tied back from her high forehead, whom she caught staring at her with her light blue eyes. She looked like a child in an old painting, sitting there so quietly, unnaturally still for someone that age. Hardly moving, she seemed pinioned by the white mountain light, her skin almost transparent. Her stillness contrasted with her wriggling brother, who was making a terrible fuss, kicking his red boots against the table leg and spreading strawberry jam all over his smart sailor
She wonders if the doctor touches himself sometimes even now. Surely not. She cannot imagine it! And perhaps all he has to suck on are his terrible, foul-smelling cigars. Perhaps that is his problem. He seems a very controlled and diligent person and probably did not dare touch himself anymore, even as a child, once his nursemaid or his mother had told him it was dangerous, that it would make his penis drop off, or would make his brains rot. Perhaps he is not even able to make love to his wife anymore. Does the doctor have sexual intercourse with his wife, she wonders, and thinks that probably he does not and that is why he wants his patients to talk so much about their secret desires.
VIII
----
SUBTERFUGE
T O HIS SURPRISE SHE DOES come back the very next day, and on time, sweeping into his office, looking flushed and a little disheveled. On such a cold day, her head is uncovered, her long, glossy hair whipped by the wind, in unruly curls on her shoulders, her cheeks pink. She lies on his couch, fidgeting distractedly, pulling at her gloves, and coughing from time to time as she goes on talking monotonously about her father’s lies.
That
is what is making her ill, she insists.
“Which ones this time?” he asks, stifling a yawn.
She says she will tell him if he really wants to know. She might just as well get it over with.
“Start away,” he says.
She tells him about what she calls the “subterfuge.” She explains how she and her family had met the Z.’s in the spa town south of Innsbruck. Actually, it was thanks to her that they all met.
He notices with some satisfaction that she seems for the first time willing to answer him, to talk of the Z.’s, speaking more easily without coughing as much. He is finally getting somewhere, he thinks, despite her bad temper, and relaxes a little in his chair, listening to her tale with interest.
“It was their little girl I noticed first, actually,” she says. She was having tea on the terrace of a hotel in Meran one afternoon with her parents. They had gone there for a treat—perhaps it was even her mother’s birthday—she doesn’t remember exactly, she says, or perhaps it was simply because of the splendid view over the valley. She was sitting on the terrace, feeling bored, when she first noticed the family. She was eating creamy chocolate cake and drinking cool lemonade. Her brother was not there, and she missed him particularly as there were no other children. She looked up and saw the couple enter with their two children: the little boy, fair headed and rosy cheeked like his mother, in whose arms he wriggled, and the pale, dark-haired girl, who held her father’s hand and looked so old-fashioned as she gazed at them with her large eyes.
From the start the child intrigued her. There was something so serious and contained about the small girl, and she had felt from that moment that something might happen to her, though she wasn’t sure what it might be.
Besides, she has always liked playing with younger children, teaching them, playing school, and this little girl had such a strange and grave expression.
The Z.’s were led to a less favorable table than theirs, she remembers, one with limited shade that hot summer afternoon. She watched the little girl with her old-fashioned face, her dark hair tied back from her high forehead, whom she caught staring at her with her light blue eyes. She looked like a child in an old painting, sitting there so quietly, unnaturally still for someone that age. Hardly moving, she seemed pinioned by the white mountain light, her skin almost transparent. Her stillness contrasted with her wriggling brother, who was making a terrible fuss, kicking his red boots against the table leg and spreading strawberry jam all over his smart sailor
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