XI

MIDNIGHT, OR THEREABOUTS. In the small house in the small clearing by the grey cliffs above the grey beach, silence. In the dark forests on the dark slopes of the magic mountain, silence. Even the sea and sky were hushed.

Flapping Eagle was asleep; but the worried, ugly woman on the mat across the floor was wide awake.

Virgil Jones sat, an ample mound of flesh partly-concealed by a less-than-simple blanket, in his rocking-chair. Its irregular movements betrayed that he, too, was some way from dreams. His eyes closed for a moment; when, inexorably, they inched open again, he saw that Dolores stood in front of him, a bent body in a crude shift, spindleshanked and shaking slightly. The invitation in her eyes was unmistakable. They remained thus for a long instant, obesity and attenuation linked by the naked expression of desire. Then Virgil’s mouth twitched briefly in an unconvincing attempt at a smile; and he hauled himself from the chair, his nerves crying outrage in his tired frame. He walked to the door and drew back the sackcloth, standing with stiff gallantry as Mrs O’Toole hobbled out.

In the clearing, amid the sleeping chickens, they came to a halt again, uncertainty paralysing their half-willing limbs. Virgil’s tongue licked its outsize way around his lips; Dolores O’Toole’s hands fluttered limply at her sides, like a sparrow with a broken wing.

—Virgil.

His name floated discreetly across the paralysis; Dolores had voiced it with the care of a woman revealing a secret treasure. It lanced its way into him through the old nightshirt, and abruptly he felt less ridiculous.

—O, Virgil.

A second call; his eyes moved until they were looking at Dolores’ eyes, and saw the shine. He found himself full of the charm of those eyes, so alive, so fond.

—Madam, he said, as fright coursed once more through his body, Madam, I fear I may not be…

—Dolores, she said. Not Madam. Dolores.

He opened his mouth; the name emerged to cleanse him.

—Dolores, he said.

—Virgil.

And again the hiatus; now it was the woman who waited upon the man, unwilling to move further without his support.

Virgil Jones thought: We are like two frightened, ugly virgins. He found the power of his limbs returning and moved the few steps to Dolores’ side.

—My arm, he offered. She made a brief bob.

—I thank you, sir, she said, and took it.

—This way, I think, said Virgil Jones; there is a soft hollow of grass adjacent to the well.

She inclined her head in agreement. They walked to the edge of the clearing in a formal, deliberate gait, and then the trees moved around them.

Virgil Jones sat down heavily in the hollow, exhaling air in a gush. He was at a loss to know what Dolores might do now, and equally at a loss in himself. Alas, poor Yorick.

Dolores remained standing, her eyes fixed upon him in a glassy, cocked glance; her hands moved slowly to her shoulders, where rough bows held her shift in place. Something near panic flooded through Virgil as he realized their purpose; but she was fixed now, determination set in her chin. The hands reached their goal and tugged; the shift fell.

—It is a warm night, thankfully, essayed Mr Jones. The mist is all but cleared. The words sounded idiotic as he said them, but Dolores showed no sign of disapproval, standing before him shyly, one hand half-accidentally poised at the joining of her thighs. In the dark, she semed less wrinkled, her hunched body less broken.

Virgil extended an arm, and she came to him, jerking her way to the ground, to lie motionless, yet expectant.

He kissed her.

Their hands were slow at first, slow and unsure, learning once more the touches of skin and skin, weaving inelegant patterns upon the fellow-bodies. But slowly they found their purpose, kneading away the knots of tension in necks and shoulders and backs, finding a natural rhythm, glad hands.

So now the hands remembered, and the lips, lips feverishly seeking each other out, parting and joining, tongues twisting in the elation of rediscovery.

—Not bad for a pair of youngsters, said Virgil Jones, and Dolores O’Toole laughed. It was so long since he had heard her laugh; it was to him a delightful thing, and he laughed too.

It was the laughter that did it; the floodgates opened and drowned their hesitations. Their bodies assaulted each other.

Dolores cried out at some time: —My hump! Hold my hump!

And Virgil’s hands had grasped the forbidden deformity, to stroke and scratch and grasp; she shuddered with the pleasure of it, of feeling disfiguration transmute into sexuality.

She lay beside him for a moment; then sprang up to straddle him, her hands grasping great folds of his flesh, to squeeze and twist them in a child’s delight. Again they laughed; Virgil, too, was freed from the disadvantages of his shape. —It’s like making bread, she giggled, pretending to work his belly into a loaf.

He came only once, and she not at all. All organs atrophy through disuse. But their limitations were important to neither of them; their achievement was what concerned and satisfied them. For a long time he simply lay over her, spilling over her on both sides, enveloping her in himself, feeling her bones, hard and near the surface of her as they lay covered in his flesh, and they were one beast, four-handed, four-legged, two-headed and wreathed in a smile.

Her breasts were as small as pendulous dried figs, while his were as fleshy as watermelons. His penis lay short and fat in the hard hollow of her hand.

—Don’t be thin, she said. Don’t ever be thin. Stay fat. Stay Virgil.

—I scarcely have any option, he replied, having a Condition as I do. The thyroid gland does not respond to dieting.

—Good, she said.

—By the same token, said Virgil Jones, I couldn’t imagine you being overweight.

—Nothing will change, she said. We shall still sit upon the beach and feed the chickens and listen to the birds and dust the house and…

The expression on his face stopped her.

—Virgil, she cried. Nothing will change I Nothing!

The expression on his face did not change.

Perhaps it was wrong to lie with him. Now I have given him what he wanted. Now I have nothing for him, nothing held back, nothing to hold him.

Perhaps it was wrong to lie with her. Another duty, another obligation, another potential source of guilt. Was I lying to her in lying with her?

Perhaps it was right to lie with him. Now there is no secrecy, all of it out in the open and fixed and unchanging. Now he will know that he loves me.

Perhaps it was right to lie with her …

—I love you, said Dolores O’Toole.

—I love you, said Virgil Jones.

They both felt very, very sad.

—It was him, said Dolores fiercely.

—Who?

—Flapping Eagle, she said. If he were not here, we would not be. Here.

—We have much to thank him for, then, said Virgil Jones.

—Yes, said Dolores, unhappily. We have everything to thank him for.

But the risk of grief, thought Virgil, and the risk of guilt: could one not lay that, very properly, at the door of Grimus?

Dolores stared at the mountain with a possessed intensity.

—Nothing will change, she said, between clenched teeth.