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Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
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have ever been.
“Tignor. I want you! I want you inside me. I want you…”
He’d urged her to say his special words to him: fuck, fuck me. Hurt me some .
The more hesitant she’d been, the more embarrassed, shame-faced, the more Tignor had loved it. You could see that the man’s pleasure was increased immeasurably, a tall stein into which ale was being poured, poured-poured-poured until, foaming, it overflowed.
He’d been her only lover. Niles Tignor. What he did to her, what he taught her to do to him. How painful it was to lie here in this bed and not think of him, not think of those things, her heartbeat quickened in desire.
Futile, this desire. For even if she touched herself it was not Tignor.
Before Tignor she had never slept in so large a bed. She didn’t feel that she deserved so large a bed. (Yet it was just an ordinary bed, she supposed. Secondhand, bought here in Chautauqua Falls. It had a slightly tarnished brass frame and a new, hard, unyielding mattress that had quickly become stained with Tignor’s salty sweat.)
She turned, to lie on her back. In the adjacent room, turned low, the damn radio was playing. She couldn’t hear the music but she felt the beat. She spread out her arms, her armpits were wet. Her thick hair dense as a horse’s mane had dried at last and was fanned out around her head on the pillow in that way that Tignor, face taut with a hard, sensual pleasure, sometimes arranged it with his clumsy hands.
This is what you want, Gypsy-girl, eh? Is it?
He had other women, she knew. She’d known before she married him what he was. In the hotel in which she’d worked there were tales of Niles Tignor. Through the Chautauqua Valley, and beyond. She understood it wasn’t reasonable for any woman of Tignor’s to expect a man like him to be faithful in the way that ordinary men are faithful to women. Hadn’t Tignor said to Rebecca, shortly after they were married, not cruelly but with an air of genuine surprise that she should be jealous: “Jesus, kid�they like me, too.”
Rebecca laughed, remembering. Knuckles jammed against her mouth.
But it was funny. You had to have a sense of humor to appreciate Niles Tignor. He expected you to make him laugh.
She lay on her back now. Sometimes that worked. Her muscles began to twitch. There was her damn hand drifting near the God damn stamping machine…She drew it back just in time.
In some other universe it might’ve happened. Her hand mangled like meat. Severed from her arm. What she deserved, stupid cunt not watching what she was doing.
How Tignor would stare! Rebecca had to laugh, imagining.
He’d hated her big-whale belly. Staring in fascination, and couldn’t keep his hands off.
The way the wind blew in the yew trees. A sound like voices jeering. This was the old Wertenbacher farm, so-called still in the neighborhood. By now, three years later, Rebecca would have thought they would have their own house.
He did love them. Her and Niley. In his heart he was not unfaithful.
In his heart, her father Jacob Schwart had loved her. He had loved them all. He had not meant to hurt them, he had only meant to erase history.
You are one of them. Born here .
Was this so? She hugged herself, smiling. Drifting at last into sleep as into a stone well so deep it had no bottom.
milburn, new york
1
November 1936. By bus the Schwart family arrived in this small town in upstate New York. Out of nowhere they seemed to have come, with bulging suitcases, valises, bags. Their eyes were haggard in their faces. Their clothes were disheveled, their hair uncombed. Obviously, they were foreigners. “Immigrants.” It would be said of the Schwarts that they looked like they’d been on the run from the Führer (in 1936, in such places as Milburn, New York, it was possible to think of Adolf Hitler with his mustache and military posture and stark staring eyes as comical, not unlike Charlie Chaplin) without stopping to eat, breathe, wash.
The smell that
“Tignor. I want you! I want you inside me. I want you…”
He’d urged her to say his special words to him: fuck, fuck me. Hurt me some .
The more hesitant she’d been, the more embarrassed, shame-faced, the more Tignor had loved it. You could see that the man’s pleasure was increased immeasurably, a tall stein into which ale was being poured, poured-poured-poured until, foaming, it overflowed.
He’d been her only lover. Niles Tignor. What he did to her, what he taught her to do to him. How painful it was to lie here in this bed and not think of him, not think of those things, her heartbeat quickened in desire.
Futile, this desire. For even if she touched herself it was not Tignor.
Before Tignor she had never slept in so large a bed. She didn’t feel that she deserved so large a bed. (Yet it was just an ordinary bed, she supposed. Secondhand, bought here in Chautauqua Falls. It had a slightly tarnished brass frame and a new, hard, unyielding mattress that had quickly become stained with Tignor’s salty sweat.)
She turned, to lie on her back. In the adjacent room, turned low, the damn radio was playing. She couldn’t hear the music but she felt the beat. She spread out her arms, her armpits were wet. Her thick hair dense as a horse’s mane had dried at last and was fanned out around her head on the pillow in that way that Tignor, face taut with a hard, sensual pleasure, sometimes arranged it with his clumsy hands.
This is what you want, Gypsy-girl, eh? Is it?
He had other women, she knew. She’d known before she married him what he was. In the hotel in which she’d worked there were tales of Niles Tignor. Through the Chautauqua Valley, and beyond. She understood it wasn’t reasonable for any woman of Tignor’s to expect a man like him to be faithful in the way that ordinary men are faithful to women. Hadn’t Tignor said to Rebecca, shortly after they were married, not cruelly but with an air of genuine surprise that she should be jealous: “Jesus, kid�they like me, too.”
Rebecca laughed, remembering. Knuckles jammed against her mouth.
But it was funny. You had to have a sense of humor to appreciate Niles Tignor. He expected you to make him laugh.
She lay on her back now. Sometimes that worked. Her muscles began to twitch. There was her damn hand drifting near the God damn stamping machine…She drew it back just in time.
In some other universe it might’ve happened. Her hand mangled like meat. Severed from her arm. What she deserved, stupid cunt not watching what she was doing.
How Tignor would stare! Rebecca had to laugh, imagining.
He’d hated her big-whale belly. Staring in fascination, and couldn’t keep his hands off.
The way the wind blew in the yew trees. A sound like voices jeering. This was the old Wertenbacher farm, so-called still in the neighborhood. By now, three years later, Rebecca would have thought they would have their own house.
He did love them. Her and Niley. In his heart he was not unfaithful.
In his heart, her father Jacob Schwart had loved her. He had loved them all. He had not meant to hurt them, he had only meant to erase history.
You are one of them. Born here .
Was this so? She hugged herself, smiling. Drifting at last into sleep as into a stone well so deep it had no bottom.
milburn, new york
1
November 1936. By bus the Schwart family arrived in this small town in upstate New York. Out of nowhere they seemed to have come, with bulging suitcases, valises, bags. Their eyes were haggard in their faces. Their clothes were disheveled, their hair uncombed. Obviously, they were foreigners. “Immigrants.” It would be said of the Schwarts that they looked like they’d been on the run from the Führer (in 1936, in such places as Milburn, New York, it was possible to think of Adolf Hitler with his mustache and military posture and stark staring eyes as comical, not unlike Charlie Chaplin) without stopping to eat, breathe, wash.
The smell that
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