Then I could put them on and leave. Anything will do. Just a dressing-gown.”
“I have something to say first.”
“Everything’s been said.
Ad nauseam.
”
“Oh no it hasn’t.” The naked young woman gives a silent sigh and puts her clenched left hand on her hip, the elbow cocked, in a gesture of resignation under duress. He stares at her back, then speaks in a quieter voice. “I will concede that I have made one grave error. Not about you, but about her. All right, perhaps she doesn’t exist in a historical or scientific sense. But as you’re so subtle-minded I’m sure you’ll agree that she has acquired a kind of apostrophic and prosopopoeic reality.”
“Do get on with it. And I wish you’d try to stop talking like a dictionary.”
He draws a breath. “But as she doesn’t exist, and we both now agree that you aren’t her, I can speak frankly. My mistake was embodying, if she did exist, a totally immoral and persistent old tart like that in an at least outwardly quite attractive girl like you. I mean what would she really be by now – if she had existed? She’s been a hot night out for every pen-pushing Tom, Dick and Harry, a pair of ever-open legs, for four thousand years. I ought to have made her a raddled old syphilitic hag. At least that might have been within spitting distance of the truth. Don’t you agree?”
“Are we finished?”
“Moreover, she ought – if she did exist – to do a little market research on herself. Try knocking on a few doors. ‘Hi. My name’s Erato. I sell inspiration on the never-never. Can I interest you in an epithalamion? May I show you our new bargain line in personalized alcaics?’ They’d just laugh in her face. If they didn’t think she’d escaped from the nearest nuthouse.” He eyes the turned back. “Anyway, they can do all she used to do by computer and word-processor now, and fifty times better. I could even feel faintly sorry for her, poor old milked-out cow. If she did exist.”
Now it is the girl on the bed who takes the deep breath. But she remains silently staring away into the corner of the room.
“I’ve only to look at you lying there, in that Rokeby Venus pose, to see how ridiculous it was. Obviously by now she’d be some old biddy bundled in an overcoat fishing around dustbins and muttering… if she did exist.”
This somewhat abrupt ending (or aposiopesis) is caused by a previous movement from the figure on the bed. At the mention of the Rokeby Venus, she has turned and sat up. Now, her arms folded, she regards the man on the chair with tight-pressed mouth and eyes gone as hard as obsidian.
“Have you quite finished now?”
“Yes.”
“I bet she wishes she was a raddled old hag. Then at least she could retire. Somewhere where men don’t exist.”
“But it scarcely matters, does it? As she doesn’t, either.”
“I’m simply speaking on your own assumption.”
“Which is laughably hypothetical.”
“And typically chauvinist.”
He tilts his head and examines the cocked toes of his crossed leg. “I’m surprised you should say that.”
“That I take my own sex’s side?”
“Just that if she did exist, yet wasn’t here, it would have to mean she was leaving all the dirty work to you. It’s your body that has to undergo the vile sexual humiliation of having to please mine. Which makes her no better than a procuress. No?”
“I notice you’re very characteristically leaving out of account her whole historical situation.”
“I’m not sure I like this purely theoretical element you’re introducing.”
“Unlike you, I happen to have considerable powers of empathy. I am merely putting myself in her existential place.”
“If it existed.” She raises her eyes to the ceiling. “Just as long as we’re both clear we are conducting a completely abstract and unreal disputation. Essentially in the same category as the old scholastic one about the number of angels who can play hopscotch on a needle’s
“I have something to say first.”
“Everything’s been said.
Ad nauseam.
”
“Oh no it hasn’t.” The naked young woman gives a silent sigh and puts her clenched left hand on her hip, the elbow cocked, in a gesture of resignation under duress. He stares at her back, then speaks in a quieter voice. “I will concede that I have made one grave error. Not about you, but about her. All right, perhaps she doesn’t exist in a historical or scientific sense. But as you’re so subtle-minded I’m sure you’ll agree that she has acquired a kind of apostrophic and prosopopoeic reality.”
“Do get on with it. And I wish you’d try to stop talking like a dictionary.”
He draws a breath. “But as she doesn’t exist, and we both now agree that you aren’t her, I can speak frankly. My mistake was embodying, if she did exist, a totally immoral and persistent old tart like that in an at least outwardly quite attractive girl like you. I mean what would she really be by now – if she had existed? She’s been a hot night out for every pen-pushing Tom, Dick and Harry, a pair of ever-open legs, for four thousand years. I ought to have made her a raddled old syphilitic hag. At least that might have been within spitting distance of the truth. Don’t you agree?”
“Are we finished?”
“Moreover, she ought – if she did exist – to do a little market research on herself. Try knocking on a few doors. ‘Hi. My name’s Erato. I sell inspiration on the never-never. Can I interest you in an epithalamion? May I show you our new bargain line in personalized alcaics?’ They’d just laugh in her face. If they didn’t think she’d escaped from the nearest nuthouse.” He eyes the turned back. “Anyway, they can do all she used to do by computer and word-processor now, and fifty times better. I could even feel faintly sorry for her, poor old milked-out cow. If she did exist.”
Now it is the girl on the bed who takes the deep breath. But she remains silently staring away into the corner of the room.
“I’ve only to look at you lying there, in that Rokeby Venus pose, to see how ridiculous it was. Obviously by now she’d be some old biddy bundled in an overcoat fishing around dustbins and muttering… if she did exist.”
This somewhat abrupt ending (or aposiopesis) is caused by a previous movement from the figure on the bed. At the mention of the Rokeby Venus, she has turned and sat up. Now, her arms folded, she regards the man on the chair with tight-pressed mouth and eyes gone as hard as obsidian.
“Have you quite finished now?”
“Yes.”
“I bet she wishes she was a raddled old hag. Then at least she could retire. Somewhere where men don’t exist.”
“But it scarcely matters, does it? As she doesn’t, either.”
“I’m simply speaking on your own assumption.”
“Which is laughably hypothetical.”
“And typically chauvinist.”
He tilts his head and examines the cocked toes of his crossed leg. “I’m surprised you should say that.”
“That I take my own sex’s side?”
“Just that if she did exist, yet wasn’t here, it would have to mean she was leaving all the dirty work to you. It’s your body that has to undergo the vile sexual humiliation of having to please mine. Which makes her no better than a procuress. No?”
“I notice you’re very characteristically leaving out of account her whole historical situation.”
“I’m not sure I like this purely theoretical element you’re introducing.”
“Unlike you, I happen to have considerable powers of empathy. I am merely putting myself in her existential place.”
“If it existed.” She raises her eyes to the ceiling. “Just as long as we’re both clear we are conducting a completely abstract and unreal disputation. Essentially in the same category as the old scholastic one about the number of angels who can play hopscotch on a needle’s
Similar Books
