Give My Heart Ease

Prologue-January 1985

Sitting on his boat (I always thought of it as his boat, although it wasn’t really, he was only the hired man), the wind and the sun very strong and the waves slapping her sides. The light makes crazy patterns on the insides of my sunglasses, confusing me. I hold my son on my lap and his hair tickles my face. I bend down so my lips touch his face, hiding my lips, not that anyone’s looking. My husband is in the seat in front of me. Next to me, an enormous black man in a bush shirt, carrying an attaché case, wearing sunglasses also. I watch Moses’s back. He handles the speeding boat with ease, and the muscles stand out all along his back and arms through his thin T-shirt. His arms black against the white of the shirt, and the back of his head beautifully shaped, accented by the close-cut, woolly hair, very soft to the touch.

The inside of the boat is lined with strips of highly polished wood, set in stripes of different shades like this—dark, light, dark, light, everywhere you look, even overhead. They reflect the light back at you, as does the water, as does the sky.

At Marigot my husband goes off to see about the car. I sit the boy in a shady spot and pick up the camera. Down at the dock I take some pictures of the drab pelicans and the boat, now bobbing in the water. I feel foolish but I can’t bear to go away and I can’t just stand there and stare. It’s better to take pictures.

They are unloading the boat. From the hold they heave out great sacks of beans, cartons of beer bottles, a few tourists’ bags (mostly ours, we have so many). A tiny, leather-brown old woman hoists an enormous bag onto her head and sets off for the market. One of our bundles is missing. I will have to speak to him about it. I could ask one of the others. But I won’t.

He is balanced on the prow as she bucks in the water. He looks at me shyly.

Is there anything else in there? I ask him.

No, no more. Wait, I’ll have a look. He disappears into the hold. He is back.

That’s it. What do you miss?

A package. It was some towels, rolled up.

Towels? He looks skeptical. I think, How can he not laugh? And wish he won’t laugh. My voice sounds very flat and American, I’m ashamed of it here for the first time. They speak with such a lilt, such a musical hum, a song almost in my ears, when he speaks.

"You know, beach towels, I say. But it doesn’t matter, it’s OK. Never mind about it. They must have been left behind. It’s not important."

You be here a while? He looks at me, his eyes are very dark. I nod.

I bring them back for you, next time.

What time about?

You be here, nine-thirty?

Sure, nine-thirty? That’s fine.

OK, nine-thirty. He looks angry now. He nods, and turns to speak to Carter, gets on with the work at hand. He’s very busy. I’m not. I’m waiting for my husband to come with the car. I walk over to my son, sitting on a bench in the shade. His smooth skin is very tanned, he is four years old, he is watching things sleepily. It is twenty past eight in the morning.

Are you OK, punkin? I ask him. He pushes my hand off his head.

Mommy, I see some more of those pelicans.

Yup, aren’t they neat? Do you want to go down and take a closer look at them?

No, I’m too hot. Did you see that lady carrying the big bag on her head? Why does she?

Well, it’s a custom. They carry things that way in Africa, too.

When is Daddy coming?

Soon.

I’m hot.

You’ll be OK.

The sun is dancing on the water, dazzling my eyes. I put the sunglasses on again.

I see Daddy! I see Daddy with a white car! Roy comes in a Toyota. We put all the bags in the trunk.

What happened to the towels? he asks me.

We left them on the dock. The guy says he can bring them back on the next boat. It gets in at nine-thirty.

OK, let’s go park and we can wander around for a while.

That’s what I figured. There’s supposed to be a nice market here and we could do some shopping and stuff.

We park on a narrow street just a few blocks away, in front of a clothing store with a red shirt and a man’s denim jacket hung outside the door. We walk back towards the market.

The market is on the waterfront, just a few hundred feet down from the dock. The vegetables are laid out on the pavement—heaps of green and yellow bananas, and sacks of beans. I see the old woman from our boat with her beans in front of her. We walk past racks of gaudy cotton clothing, and tables spread with bandanas and polished seashells. There are a lot of French tourists, a lot of Americans too. There are West Indians buying, selling, chatting, the men sexy in their tight, dark pants over slim, long-legged bodies, the beautiful women in bright dresses. I examine some shell necklaces and keep an eye on the dock. Moses is talking to a very pregnant girl in a bright yellow dress. Later she drives away with a man in a pickup truck, and I feel relief. Roy is looking at the necklaces, turning them over in his white hands. He never tans at all.

Which one do you like? I ask him.

I don’t know …

Here, get this one for your mother, and I want this one. They are softly shaded in coral pink. I doubt his mother will like hers. She never likes anything from us.

Do you think Mother will like it?

Of course she will. Go ahead. They cost eight dollars each.

Mommy, I’m hot.

Do you want something cool to drink? You want one of those lemon sodas? We walk over to a pushcart where a woman sells us a Sprite. She smiles at Addie, who drinks it and looks happier. He’s sulking because he doesn’t want to go home. We’re supposed to get a plane for Boston at three-thirty.

The sun is getting hotter. The boat has left. Smells of roti, barbecue, and pungent spice drift from the cooking stalls. I wonder how anyone can eat barbecue at nine in the morning. Half an hour. I look at Roy and Addie, speculatively behind my secret glasses.

Why don’t you two go do a little sightseeing, and I’ll wait for the towels?

Roy looks brighter, so does Addie. They like to get away from me, especially Roy. I make him nervous, still. We’ve been married five years. It was always like that, but I thought it would change. I thought with my all-embracing love, my heart, I could turn him. I thought a lot of things then, when I was nineteen and first met Roy. What he thought I never knew. I could only guess from what I saw. He was all burnt up with desire, that’s for sure. God, was he on fire, it woke him up for the first time since he’d left the seminary; he felt something out of control. But how was I to know, when the fire has burnt low, you find, underneath, the ice is still intact?

They look at me with their same gray eyes. Gray seems an out-of-place color here. In Boston everything is gray, especially now, in winter. Plenty of ice, too. OK, they’re going, they’ve made up their minds. They will climb to the top of the hill to see the old fort (Addie will like that, I explain). Finally I’m alone.

I walk slowly back to the dock and look down at the water. The sun is very hot on my head and shoulders. I put on my hat, but the breeze blows it off. I put in on again. I sit down on the bench and drink the rest of the Sprite. It makes me feel slightly sick. I shut my eyes and feel the sun on my face, a languid caress. The soft West Indian voices and snatches of patois fade and I hear only the gentle rush of the surf.

I run my favorite movie through my head one more time. I’m back at Rendezvous Bay, lying in a cove, and his body, so hard that you think there can’t be a single tender spot on it anywhere, is on top of mine. We made love in that cove. There’s no one for miles and miles, only the turquoise sea and the open sky, the bananaquits in the brush, and the whispering water. I remember the way he smells, a sweet, pungent smell, like everything else here. It makes me giddy to smell such things. I’d better stop. I open my eyes. His boat, the Grace of God, is just putting in, Carter is throwing the sandbags over the side and securing them, the water is sloshing up over the pier, and the boat is rocking on the dancing water. It always seems to keep its balance, and Moses and Carter can walk on it like they’re on dry land.

I take a deep breath and let it out, and walk down to the dock. Moses is unloading again. There are fewer tourists this time. The luggage is mostly sacks, more beans I guess. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t say if the towels are in there or not. The towels are the last thing up, he hands them to me. He looks very serious, but then he usually does.

Thank you very much, I say. Stupid thing to say, but what else is there? He grips my arm.

You leaving? he whispers. I don’t say anything. You leaving now or what? I start to cry, he’s hurting my arm. He jumps off the boat and grabs my arm again.

What you want to leave for? I shake my head, I’m blinded by my tears and can’t make out his expression.

Look, what you hanging around for? You got to make up your mind, what you want? Like I say, you want me bleed and die for you, I do it, right now. You stuck inside my heart so sharp, she hurt. You leaving, get the fuck away from me now. I can see him better now. He’s bending over me and sweat is running down his smooth, dark brown forehead, down his face, into his close-cut beard. His eyes look hard, fierce, the way Addie’s are fierce when he’s afraid.

I’m coming with you, I say. He hugs me hard and quick, then looks around, embarrassed. It’s not the way here to do that in public.

Good girl! I’ll take good care of you. You get in the boat now. I’ll take care of everything, no problem.

PART ONE

"If you don’t love me

Love whom you please,

Throw your arms ’round me

Give my heart ease."

May 1980

Oxford, to which I had followed Roy from Paris, leaving the ballet in the middle of a tour, without telling anyone. Following the wildest dictates of my heart, my hopes for the two of us, that things could change, that it could all be different. I took a room in a bed and breakfast in the Banbury Road and wrote notes to him at the college: breezy notes, guess-who’s-turned-up notes, impassioned notes, but I tore them all up. Three days of this, I was almost out of money, I couldn’t sleep, or think any more. I hung around the gate of the college, garnering suspicious looks from a ferocious, one-eyed porter who lurked in a sort of stone cage at the gateway. Finally we met by accident at Blackwell’s. I was on the second floor, turning over Russian novels in the dark. The only light came from the sun filtering weakly through the windows, distinct shafts full of dancing motes. There was no one else up there, not even a clerk. I had picked up Anna Karenina and was rereading the scene where Anna decides to throw herself under a train, when I felt his eyes on me. I didn’t look up, I didn’t need to.

Justine? I looked up. His eyes were hidden by the light reflecting off the surface of his round glasses; he was smiling nervously. He gave one of his nervous laughs. Hello, he said. I kept looking at him. I thought, You’re not getting out of it that easily, not this time.

He comes up to me. How are you? I won’t say. If he says, What are you doing here? I’ll go away and never come back. I continue to look at him, I know that my whole undisciplined heart is there in my eyes. I can feel the tears forming at the back of my throat, and I will them not to. Silence, the sort that hums inaudibly. Finally he puts his arms around me, holding me, crushing me, his arms shaking, and then he’s kissing me, his tongue soft and quick, the beloved, remembered smell of him and the taste, sourish, penitential, with a heavy dose of gin.

We walk back to the college, not touching, not talking, side by side, and he waves me past the one-eyed porter, who registers no reaction. I want very much to stick my tongue out at him, so I do, but only after we’re past and he can’t see me. Roy squeezes my arm. What are you doing? He’s laughing, and smiling at me; he looks very happy.

Oh, only that porter. He was always giving my fishy Hooks, I mutter. He steers me up a flight of narrow steps, pale yellow stone all worn down in the center and slippery as hell. We’re going so fast I’m afraid I’ll fall, but he has my arm and is practically dragging me. He’s remarkably strong for a small man.

At the top of the stairs is an office. There is a lot of furniture in it, a very worn oriental rug, a mahogany desk, a sofa in dark red leather, two armchairs in chintz, two or three other chairs, some file cabinets. There are red curtains at the window, and the sun coming through them gives everything a hellish glow. A bottle of sherry and a nearly empty bottle of gin stand on the desk, and a pile of disordered papers. The walls are lined with books. There’s a bust of a Madonna and child in terracotta on the wall.

He slams the door shut and undresses me as quickly as he can. Naked, I stand watching him pull off his clothes. He is quick and methodical about it.

We make love on the old sofa, with the Madonna watching us. I know she is watching because I keep opening my eyes. I feel afraid; maybe someone will hear us, rattle the door, come in. Our need for each other is fierce, immediate, brooking no interference from time or circumstance, with very little tenderness. The leather sofa is cold under my naked ass, and we are slipping all over the place, until we slither to the ground. We go on and on like this, for how long? I can’t tell, ten, twenty minutes, half an hour? I feel delirious, I feel hot, I feel cold, I can’t feel anything anymore, and still he’s pounding the floor with me. When he comes he lets out a deep scream, like a man dying, like a drowning man going down for the last time, a sad, sustained wail, and I think: it is the loneliest sound I’ve ever heard. And now someone is rattling the door. Or rather, rapping on it.

Steiner? I say, Steiner, are you all right? says a male voice. Oh God, I think, and shut my eyes, and wonder if the door is locked. Probably not, they probably have no locks in this goddamn medieval world. And I wonder what will they do to us, what is the penalty for fucking in college? Perhaps the Dean will give Roy a lecture, or send him home with some sort of dishonorable discharge. But it’s all right, Roy has heard, he lifts his head and calls out.

Fine, fine, everything’s OK!

Are you sure? asks the Voice. Oh God, go away.

Yes, just napping, had a dream I think. Thanks, it’s OK. The footsteps recede down the stone corridor. I start to breathe again. We look into each other’s eyes. Roy, your eyes will always be the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, slate gray, deep-set eyes, with black lashes; Addie was to have just the same eyes.

He pulls out of me and we sit up, still looking at each other. There is a different sort of silence between us now, a tender, palpable silence you can almost stroke. We are shivering in the cold English afternoon. Slowly he stands up and begins to dress, his pale, well-muscled body disappearing into the familiar tweeds. He has rubbed some skin off his knees from contact with the rug, and they are slightly bloody. I dress quickly; my hands are shaking so I have trouble. Then we sit side by side on the sofa and look at each other again. He takes my hand and kisses it, strokes my hair. It was as if to say, well now, let us begin, what were we talking about?

Roy, I say, I missed you. Are you all right? He screws up his face in that comical way he has. It’s a peculiar habit of twisting everything around as if it were made of rubber, pushing out his lips, distending his cheeks, screwing up his eyes, then suddenly letting it all go slack. I don’t think he’s aware of it. I wonder why he does it?

OK, I guess. All right. I have a lot of students. I give lectures and stuff like that, you know what I mean, tutorials to a few kids, hmm? I love his high-pitched, drawling New Yorkese, I love his funny faces, I love him.

Well, he says, How’ve you been?

Fine, I say. Insane, I think. Dying, slowly, day by day without you, bastard.

You look very thin, he says, even for a ballerina. You haven’t been dieting or something have you? It’s true, I’ve lost a lot of weight, all my bones are sticking out, even my breasts are smaller. How can I tell him, when he shows me that mocking smile, I can’t eat without you, I can’t breathe, can’t live without you?

No, I say, smiling, It’s nothing, I’ve been a little sick but I’m OK now.

Well, we’ll have to get you something to eat. I know a nice little Italian restaurant around here, we can go there for dinner, huh?

I nod faintly. He squeezes my knee, then runs his hand up the inside of my thigh, under my skirt. Then suddenly he throws himself down on the floor, arms around my waist, head in my lap, and cries as if his heart would break. I stroke his head and murmur things like you do to a child, like I would do to our child many years later. Hush, it’s all right. It’s all right. Don’t cry, sweetheart, don’t cry.

We went to dinner at a restaurant called La Vita Nuova. It was in the Banbury Road, too, across the street from the bed and breakfast where I had a room. We ate fettucine and drank a great deal of cheap red wine; I hadn’t eaten anything of substance for several days so I wound up throwing it all up in the bathroom, but I didn’t tell Roy. The wine had made me dizzy and I saw everything through a painful haze. The red and white checked tablecloths, the flickering candles, the smell of the food, and Roy’s face, all whirled past me in sickening eddies, like the blackish, oil-slicked water that swirls around a gutter in a rainstorm.

At the next table four Americans had sat down, two men and two girls. One of the men seemed to be a filmmaker and was explaining his latest project, which was something to do with Oxford, at the top of his voice.

"The thing about this place is the fantastic au-then-ti-city, he said. There’s nothing like it in California. In fact, he waved his fork at them, there’s nothing like it in the States." They were all watching him carefully. It made me sad to see them all watch him.

I asked for white wine instead of red, and sipped a small mouthful. It seemed to clear my head a little. Roy was leaning back in his chair, his eyes fixed on me, glittering in the dark.

Where are you staying? he asked.

In a B-and-B right here, over there across the street, but I can’t stay, I’m out of funds.

I don’t think we’d better stay in my rooms. Women aren’t supposed to overnight in the college.

What about women dons?

They don’t have any at Dedham. He let out a sigh. His curly, light hair was unruly at the back; I reached over and smoothed it. He caught my hand and held it in a tense grip.

I know, he jumped up. Let’s get out of here. You want to go for a drive? I’ll show you a very interesting place. Come on. He was practically running to the car, pulling me along again.

Out on the street, an English summer evening of amethyst dying light, the moon rising. In pink neon among the quiet shopfronts, La Vita Nuova. I stopped at the B-and-B to collect my things and settle the bill. I had five pounds left and a return ticket to Paris.

He opened the car door for me and I got in.

What’s the matter, don’t you feel well? he said.

I feel OK, why? Don’t I look OK?

You look beautiful. He climbed in on the other side. It was an old, well-tended Rover; its fat lemon-colored body had a pregnant look. The seat was soft leather and I settled back in it gratefully. Soon we were going down the motorway at eighty miles an hour. I leaned my head against the window. The cool glass felt good against my forehead.

Roy, where are we going?

You’ll see. I know a terrific place, you’ll really like it.

Is it far?

Well, a few hours. It’s down in Cambridgeshire. He swerved past a truck, the speedometer edging ninety. I closed my eyes.

Isn’t that a bit far?

We’ll be there in a few hours. I want to get the fuck away from here, you know? Too many assholes around. You’ll like this place, I know you will.

But don’t you have to teach tomorrow?

Not really. It doesn’t matter. Someone will cover. He fiddled with the dial and Radio Luxembourg came in. A man was reading the news in French. Roy speaks flawless French. After the news, a Beatles song. My eyes felt glued shut. Sleep hunched over me, a lurking giant. We were hurtling through the dark, the nightwind whistling through the window cracks, the empty world shapeless before us. I slept.

When I awoke the music had changed to Mozart and we were going more slowly. We were on a narrow road with a lot of twists and turns, occasional farmhouses looming up in the moonlight. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, hard.

Where are we? Roy looked at me, I could just make out his face in the dark.

We’re getting close, another hour maybe. This fucking road … there’s no highway for this part.

It’s OK. Did I sleep a long time?

Quite a while. How do you feel?

Oh, better thanks. I was awfully tired.

The car felt like a spaceship and the dark night all around like the endless reaches of space. We might be explorers, travelling towards a marvelous destination unknown to the earthbound. It was cozy in there, with all the blackness on the other side.

Well, how is your book on Hegel going? I asked.

Kant.

I thought it was Hegel.

"It was but I changed it. The thing is, it’s very difficult to discuss Hegelian concepts outside the context of Kant. Kant is the precedent, he’s got to be analyzed, in that sense, you know? So first, I get Kant out of the way, then maybe