Death, Sleep the Traveler: Novel by John Hawkes

Author:John Hawkes
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Literary, Psychological, Crime, Fiction, Thrillers
ISBN: 9780811222594
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 1974-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“And now,” Ursula said, clutching her red pillow with one hand and thrusting the other hand up the leg of Peter’s corduroy trousers, “now you are drinking too much.”

“But one thing is certain,” Peter said, laughing behind the leather mask of his elongated face, “and that is that Allert can always hold his schnapps.”

“Any way you drink it,” I whispered, “it is pure gold.”

I heard the drifting snow, the poignant harmonics of the baroque recorders, Peter moving about on his hands and knees. I heard the birds collecting in their white flocks, heard Ursula humming in the random suffusion of both her comfort and her discontent. I smiled and closed my eyes. Ursula’s doglike shadow was crouching above me among the beams of the ceiling. Peter was crouching at the hearth and smoking his pipe.

“But Peter,” Ursula said, as I opened my eyes, “what are you doing?”

“Peter,” I said in my deep and quiet voice, “are you smearing body lotion on her underpants and not on the skin? A novel idea. I would not have thought of it.”

“But it’s sticky, Peter. It feels peculiar!”

Ursula laughed, Peter said nothing. Ursula made no attempt to defend herself against the handfuls of heavy lotion which Peter, as I could now clearly see, was smearing across the tight rounded surfaces of Ursula’s translucent underpants.

I knelt clumsily on my hands and knees, sat back on my heels, raised the half-drained glass to my teeth. I became the willing witness of Peter’s labors, since by now Ursula had returned her face to the crimson pillow while Peter, rising upward from his spread knees, had positioned himself directly in front of her, so that by leaning forward he could grip her buttocks in his two determined hands. Her eyes were closed, her head was lying beneath the apex of Peter’s crotch. In his own turn Peter was wreathing his head with the smoke from his pipe and kneading Ursula’s backside with his expert hands.

“It’s lovely, Peter,” Ursula whispered, with her eyes closed, “it feels so lovely. Like going into the bath with your panties on.”

She sighed, she laughed, Peter shifted his position, I shifted mine, Peter inched forward so that he was straddling the small of Ursula’s broad back.

“More,” Ursula whispered, “do it some more.”

One of the plastic containers lay spilled on the hearth, slowly I dropped my empty glass into the burnished depths of the water buffalo hide. The schnapps had done its night’s work, reminding me of the white chateau in the village where I was born, and now I smelled the schnapps in my nose, the desert-blossom scent of the body lotion, the aromatic smell of Peter’s pipe, the ice in the eaves of the uninhabited house. And now I felt too large, too sick, too purposeless, too awakened, too much in need of the lavatory to sustain my presence in our triad sprawling in the luxury of blanket, pillows, rugs, in the smoky light of Peter’s fire.

The recorders faded. The darkness became to the coldness as light to the fire.

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