Finding the angles
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 26: Stories for Today
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Lee Kofman
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Lee Kofman's biography and other articles by this writer
‘Every woman adores a fascist.'
– Sylvia Plath
1. The puppy
With Paul sex has become vicious altruism: Come on, I'll give you what you want... This is what he teaches her: the availability of humiliation; the intolerable easiness of pleasure.
He also teaches her to play pool and she insists on daily practice. She tells him that in her country this game is the domain of criminals, played in seedy bars. Now she tastes the forbidden fruit. He leans his stick against the wall, listening attentively to her story. But in bed he does the telling: Do this. Now turn around.
They spend their days travelling across the endless landscapes of Victoria. This new country, where she knows no one but him, makes her feel disoriented. Her own country is tiny and crowded, sweating sun and nectar; it is a country of cars, people and stray animals, busy markets and synagogues, where each millimetre is in dispute. She's lucky she got away.
At a roadhouse pub she rubs her pool cue with chalk, suddenly resentful: ‘It's so empty here. Why don't Australians give us some land? We'd use it properly...'
‘Bullshit,' Paul sinks two balls with one shot. He imitates her accent: ‘We'd use it properly...You think your country is smarter? If there was something that could be done with this land, we'd have fucking done it. It's empty because it's dry and useless.'
‘We've already reclaimed one desert, so one more wouldn't be a big deal.' But these are sentences she learned at school. In this dark pub, where the distinction between day and night is blurred and the only motion is the rolling of the pool balls, her words lose their substance.
They pass by seaside villages, visiting Paul's customers. Paul sells goods to the local retailers: koala key rings, boomerangs and other trinkets. His Toyota bites hungrily into the distances and she watches his strong, curved profile. Despite his age, he has hardly any wrinkles. She'd never wanted someone so handsome, had always been afraid of becoming addicted. Now it's too late.
The George Michael ballads he insists on playing again and again transform the time into a melancholic fog through which Paul's stories of others navigate. The others' shadows sink comfortably into the back seat: the lady-boy Paul once picked up in Patpong, and Lucy who loved Paul for years, and the brown girl he and Lucy once licked together like chocolate. Sometimes the stories turn her on, with him being so experienced, so wild. Sometimes she wishes he'd shut up.
Soon they'll stop in a nearby town and perhaps Paul will sell something to an overpriced souvenir shop at the foot of a lighthouse. Meanwhile she can see the cold greenish sun melting into his eyes. His pupils, full of colour, are so large that she can't see the whites. It occurs to her then – she'll never be enough for him.
‘Please,' she says, ‘not George Michael again.' They sway on a dirt road. Ahead thick eucalypts close in on the narrow path. She feels sick and releases the seatbelt. Eventually they are back on the freeway. The roof is open and the sky is as high as a castle ceiling. She watches the spacious fabric of meadows sewn with the threads of creeks, but craves a dark corner and her favourite book: Plath's Ariel. ‘I was fucking lonely before I met you,' Paul tells her suddenly, his gaze on the road.
They stop at a Tabaret pub with beer-soured carpets and a log fire. Behind a raw-edged timber table she leans on Paul, sculpting him a pink moustache with hot chocolate. He seems unusually happy. At these rare times when his laughter flows freely, his face softens and he looks so much younger, almost her age.
She is afraid of the sudden silence as the fire goes out: ‘Tell me a story.'
‘What kind of story?'
She has had enough of the others: ‘Something from your childhood.'
‘I was a rotten kid,' he diverts his gaze, as though to divorce himself from what is about to come.
He tells her how at age ten he brought home a stray puppy; it was sad and dirty. His poor mother – dirt was her personal enemy. She fought it bravely, scrubbing the floors, the walls, her son till her palms wore thin and red. Their house always smelled of lavender soap.
He thought it might be fun, the three of them in the house. Perhaps his mother could scrub the puppy too. But she threw them both out, telling him not to come back until he got rid of ‘that monster'. He and the monster spent the night under the nearby park's pavilion. The white puppy clung to his legs.
Paul tells her that back then he hardly felt the cold; he was deep in thought. A curious story was revolving in his head. He wasn't even sure where he'd heard it – most likely from his mother. She loved educating him on different topics, like Japanese customs. Apparently some gourmet Japanese restaurants seat their customers around circular tables with holes in the centres, through which they scoop out the open brains of monkeys with their spoons. To enhance the flavour, the monkeys are kept alive in some sort of device underneath the tables. The customers don't see their faces, just the appetising brains.
‘I can't really explain it.' Paul's voice is unusually husky. ‘What was I thinking...I was confused, you know. I was just a kid. You studied psychology. Maybe you can explain why...'
He was already then a strong boy with muscles developed through hours of weights. Excessive energy, his teachers would write in their reports, hyperactive. The puppy pissed on his leg, shivering. Paul started digging a round pit with his penknife, the size of the puppy...
She pulls away from him: ‘I'm not your fucking psychologist! Just shut up.' She leaves for the only place she can think of – the toilet.
The toilet seat is filthy: a curly black hair sticks to a yellow stain. She sits down anyway with her red skirt rolled up her thighs and her panties on. She grates her teeth.
She rocks to a rhythm like a worshipper at the Wailing Wall. Why do I need him? The odour of a blood-soaked pad carries from the open bin. How odd to relate this familiar smell to another woman, a stranger. Who else has cried here?
Do I have a tendency for masochism? His beauty and the authority of his age can explain their first weeks together. But what is it now? She sniffs the rotten smell of the other woman and sees a bloodstained arena. She's in its midst, wearing a tiny gold dress and holding a whip. A green-eyed man who resembles Paul is curled at her feet. She can hear the loud calling from the audience: An encore for the tamer!
She thinks of Sylvia Plath, the queen of tragic endings, the mourner of women who adore fascists. One day, when her English is better, she might write poetry about women who tame them. She feels the urge to pee and pulls down her panties. Her buttocks touch the stickiness. The urine won't come. Perhaps it will be trapped forever inside her body, the way she is trapped every night in Paul's arms. He needs her more than she needs him, and this is his deadly pull for her. To feel so loved. She walks out with a heavy bladder.
That same night he insists on cleaning her toes, one by one. His tongue crawls on their sweaty skin: ‘Tell me you hate me.' She wonders if she'll ever be able to kiss his mouth again.
His voice suddenly becomes childlike: ‘Don't let me fuck you. Punish me, please.'
And then it comes to her. So naturally. She pushes him away, ‘You're a dog, right? Come on, little doggy, stand on all fours. Wag your tail!' He sways his firm arse in the air.
In the morning he wakes up first and opens the windows. She doesn't say she is cold, afraid of his morning surliness. He starts his push-ups; the muscles on his arms swell like cobras. She thinks that no matter what she does at night, she'll never have the fakir's skills to make him dance to her flute.
‘Thirty-five...forty-one...' His breathing remains ordered.
The motel is worn out. She lingers in the narrow bathroom tiled with 1970s green ceramic, trying to wash away the previous guests' sweat and sperm accumulated in the cracks. She has no privacy anymore. The memories of her life before Paul fade.
He shouts from behind the door, ‘If we leave now, we can be in Corowa by eight! We can stay there overnight and in the morning drive to Sydney.'
She drops her toothbrush: ‘I've already been to Sydney!'
‘But not with me. I'll show you a Sydney you don't know.'
Sure...he's always ready to go. Boredom clings to him like a wetsuit, making him wander. She suddenly realises the extent of his unhappiness: how desperate he must be, to escape into these uniform landscapes time and again. Pity softens her feelings for him.