Seed on the Wind

“You know what I said.” He had picked up the breadknife again, but now dropped it back on the table and went to her and gently grasped her arms from behind and smoothed them up and down. “I want whatever you want. I really don’t care a damn, I argued against it at first for your sake. I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want anything to hurt you...”

As they sat and ate their sandwiches and all the implications of this news began to find their places in his mind, he became more and more enthusiastic, more and more satisfied. “I begin to understand the patriarchs,” he declared. “Doubtless I shall understand them better. But I could never be one. To me you could never be a means, dear Lora; you justify yourself; I welcome this only because you want it. How I shall feel after he comes I don’t know — or she—”

He stopped, and suddenly exclaimed:

“When Momma hears of this! And Leah! Poor Momma. She’ll hang me by the beard of Moses, she’ll put a dybbuk in your soup — do you remember The Dybbuk?”

“I didn’t care for it,” said Lora. As a matter of fact, she had hated that play, and had left after the second act.

So much for that, she thought to herself that night in bed. He had really been very sweet about it. He would be. She wished he hadn’t mentioned the dybbuk, and then laughed at herself for having any feeling about it. Such demons were invented to scare children. Enough things could happen, god knows, enough to make you hold your breath till you die, until there was no more breath, without dragging in nonsensical fairy tales. She remembered the white face of that girl in the play, the slender beautiful arms uplifted in terror, the shriek of fear... It was wicked to put such things on the stage, people were fools to make up lies like that...

“My baby, my little live baby,” she whispered in the dark.

“What is it, dear?” Max murmured.

“Nothing. Prayers. I thought you were asleep.”

“Prayers?”

“Nothing.”

She stretched out her hand and patted his shoulder and then turned over, away from him.

As spring became summer and the weeks passed until half her time was gone it was increasingly a surprise to her that she did not resent Max. She didn’t understand it and it amused her. She would lie passive, aloof, her whole body relaxed and attending indifferently to its own affairs; that was to be expected; but why did she not with repugnancy close her lids upon his hot red face and staring devouring eyes, her ears to his gasping breath and incoherent murmurings; why did her lips and skin not shrink from his loose kisses and his clutching caressing hands? Even as she felt them she would lie idly and wonder; perhaps, she thought, it was because he demanded nothing of her, because she felt in him no tinge of resentment against her own passivity; he too was aloof, playing his own game as she was playing hers, though he would have been astonished and indignant if she had told him so. Once, as he dropped his head on her shoulder and for a moment did not move, she smoothed his hair and said quietly:

“It’s a terrible waste, isn’t it, Max?”

“My love,” he murmured.

“I thought so,” she smiled.

A little later, as he sat on the edge of the bed lighting their cigarettes, he asked, “What was it you thought?”

“What?”

“You said you thought so.”

“Oh. Nothing.”

“No, tell me, what was it?”

“Nothing. I just thought you wouldn’t hear me.”

“I did hear you.”

“You don’t know now what I said.”

“Sure I do, something about a waist. A terrible waist. I don’t know if you meant mine or yours. Yours isn’t terrible. It’s lovely, it gets lovelier every day.” He reached over and smoothed her body, languidly and tenderly on the thin nightgown, not without difficulty, for she was shaking with laughter at the inane and ridiculous pun.

“Go on and laugh,” he said. “Half the time I don’t know what you’re about. I don’t care. I know there’s a lot of you I haven’t got. Sometimes when you are in my arms I have a feeling it isn’t you at all, and if your eyes are closed I ask you to open them and when you do it is less than ever you. Then I forget, I no longer care, I do not even feel you, I feel only myself. And when it is all over there you are back again, beautiful, more beautiful than ever, smiling into my face. Where do you go? Why are you not with me? It doesn’t matter. I am happy.”

“Maybe it’s you who go.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He lifted her hand and covered her bare arm, systematically, with kisses to the shoulder.