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Authors: Patrick White
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persistence, and listen to each other’s breathing.
In the distance there was the sound of a ship, the grumbling of a city’s traffic, farther still the explosions and guns, the cries of those who are wounded, which your blood and your dreams know everything about.
After a while, when they slid into what felt like a shallow backwater, halfway between thoughts and sleep, he thumped his limbs against the mattress and started getting at her again, ‘Tell me about the pneuma .’
‘I told you, I can’t. Not in English.’
‘But you could if you wanted to.’
‘You can’t! You can’t! It’s the sort of thing you can’t talk about.’
‘If I was dying,’ he croaked, twisting his head from side to side, grinding a feverish body against the mattress, ‘you’d hold out on me?’
She could feel her teeth grow very small as she smiled at the darkness.
‘It’s like the moon.’
‘The moon’s pagan, isn’t it?’
‘Not always.’ She was very happy to discover this.
‘I bet you’re not telling me anything of what you know.’ In his expostulation and feverish tossing, his wrist brushed against hers. She was surprised to find it covered with minute hooks.
She would have liked her wrist to give into his but did not dare. Then again, she didn’t want to, did she?
‘Hadn’t we better go to sleep?’ she said, and turned her back on him.
She got a surly grunt.
Not long after she didn’t know what had happened to Gilbert Horsfall. She was sitting by herself at the small round table its top moulded out of pig’s brawn edged with a pie-crust in some kind of metal. Not by herself really there was the small white cup with its sludge of Turkish—no, Greek coffee, and the glass with the half-finished Café Liegeois (more than the solid glass and its half-drunk contents she was conscious of the voice which had ordered it.) Her own consommation was out of focus except as something sweet and sticky. Like your fingers. Mamma hated sticky fingers.
Now it was the music stickily revolving inside the oval of this patisserie that Mamma should have condemned. This Cruel Tango . Like a sticky drum revolving and revolving. Leaning forward chin in hand brought you closer to the dancers, stamping a point into the floor (brawn again). The thick ankles in wartime shoes, Mamma says it is impossible to look elegant in wartime, Maltese, Jewish, Greek, Armenian, Hungarians and Romanians are different, because professional, or dishonest. As she revolves, with the axiomatikos who has brought them to the patisserie . She can’t resist the sticky dance any more than the old lady’s loulou beside her on the gold chain can resist the strawberry tartlet served by the Arab on the surface of the pig’s-brawn table.
As the dancers revolve to the repetitive music of the Cruel Tango , bump and stamp, the Greek, the Maltese, the Armenian, the thick ankles, the short-legged Jewesses, and more professional Romanians and Hungarians. Stamp and swerve. The pistachio eyes of some dancers. Eyes beaded with Egyptian flies. O Cruel Tango .
Mamma twists and turns in the arms of the Greek axiomatikos . His badly fitted uniform, particularly between the legs, Mamma is the one who cuts and thrusts. He is her dummy. Her lips wear something brittle in the cruel tango. For Papa who died? For the Greek cause? For herself? Never for you. The sticky tears rain down on the unfinished consommation in this cruel dream.
She awoke crying. Gilbert, too, must have been asleep. He felt hot and moist as they lay against each other, tumbled into the same heap. Now he started lashing about, perhaps to show he had been awake all the while. It was only she who had been a prey to dreams.
‘What you were dreaming about. Was it bad?’ he asked.
‘Not really.’ She paused, wondering how far her conscience, according to Aunt Cleone, would condone a lie. ‘Actually,’ she said, in her best Miss Adams voice, ‘I was dreaming about the moon.’
‘That old pneuma
In the distance there was the sound of a ship, the grumbling of a city’s traffic, farther still the explosions and guns, the cries of those who are wounded, which your blood and your dreams know everything about.
After a while, when they slid into what felt like a shallow backwater, halfway between thoughts and sleep, he thumped his limbs against the mattress and started getting at her again, ‘Tell me about the pneuma .’
‘I told you, I can’t. Not in English.’
‘But you could if you wanted to.’
‘You can’t! You can’t! It’s the sort of thing you can’t talk about.’
‘If I was dying,’ he croaked, twisting his head from side to side, grinding a feverish body against the mattress, ‘you’d hold out on me?’
She could feel her teeth grow very small as she smiled at the darkness.
‘It’s like the moon.’
‘The moon’s pagan, isn’t it?’
‘Not always.’ She was very happy to discover this.
‘I bet you’re not telling me anything of what you know.’ In his expostulation and feverish tossing, his wrist brushed against hers. She was surprised to find it covered with minute hooks.
She would have liked her wrist to give into his but did not dare. Then again, she didn’t want to, did she?
‘Hadn’t we better go to sleep?’ she said, and turned her back on him.
She got a surly grunt.
Not long after she didn’t know what had happened to Gilbert Horsfall. She was sitting by herself at the small round table its top moulded out of pig’s brawn edged with a pie-crust in some kind of metal. Not by herself really there was the small white cup with its sludge of Turkish—no, Greek coffee, and the glass with the half-finished Café Liegeois (more than the solid glass and its half-drunk contents she was conscious of the voice which had ordered it.) Her own consommation was out of focus except as something sweet and sticky. Like your fingers. Mamma hated sticky fingers.
Now it was the music stickily revolving inside the oval of this patisserie that Mamma should have condemned. This Cruel Tango . Like a sticky drum revolving and revolving. Leaning forward chin in hand brought you closer to the dancers, stamping a point into the floor (brawn again). The thick ankles in wartime shoes, Mamma says it is impossible to look elegant in wartime, Maltese, Jewish, Greek, Armenian, Hungarians and Romanians are different, because professional, or dishonest. As she revolves, with the axiomatikos who has brought them to the patisserie . She can’t resist the sticky dance any more than the old lady’s loulou beside her on the gold chain can resist the strawberry tartlet served by the Arab on the surface of the pig’s-brawn table.
As the dancers revolve to the repetitive music of the Cruel Tango , bump and stamp, the Greek, the Maltese, the Armenian, the thick ankles, the short-legged Jewesses, and more professional Romanians and Hungarians. Stamp and swerve. The pistachio eyes of some dancers. Eyes beaded with Egyptian flies. O Cruel Tango .
Mamma twists and turns in the arms of the Greek axiomatikos . His badly fitted uniform, particularly between the legs, Mamma is the one who cuts and thrusts. He is her dummy. Her lips wear something brittle in the cruel tango. For Papa who died? For the Greek cause? For herself? Never for you. The sticky tears rain down on the unfinished consommation in this cruel dream.
She awoke crying. Gilbert, too, must have been asleep. He felt hot and moist as they lay against each other, tumbled into the same heap. Now he started lashing about, perhaps to show he had been awake all the while. It was only she who had been a prey to dreams.
‘What you were dreaming about. Was it bad?’ he asked.
‘Not really.’ She paused, wondering how far her conscience, according to Aunt Cleone, would condone a lie. ‘Actually,’ she said, in her best Miss Adams voice, ‘I was dreaming about the moon.’
‘That old pneuma
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