Funeral Rites Read Online Free PDF Page A

be noted that the pocket never had any religious character; as for the sacredness of the box, it never prevented me from treating the object familiarly, from kneading it with my fingers, except that once, as I was talking to Erik, my gaze fastened on his fly, which was resting on the chair with the weightiness of the pouch of Florentine costumes thatcontained the balls, and my hand let go of the matchbox and left my pocket.
    Jean's mother had just gone out of the room. I uncrossed my legs and recrossed them in the other direction. I was looking at Erik's torso, which was leaning slightly forward.
    “You must miss Berlin,” I said.
    Very slowly, ponderously, searching for words, he replied:
    “Why? I'll go back after the war.”
    He offered me one of his American cigarettes, which the maid or his mistress must have gone down to buy for him, since he himself never left the small apartment. I gave him a light. He stood up, not straight but leaning slightly forward, so that in drawing himself up he had to throw his torso backward. The movement arched his entire body and made his basket bulge under the cloth of his trousers. He had at that moment, despite his being cloistered, despite that sad, soft captivity among women, the nobility of a whole animal which carries its load between its legs.
    “You must get bored.”
    We exchanged a few more trivialities. I could have hated him, but his sadness made me suddenly believe in his gentleness. His face was slightly lined with very fine wrinkles, like those of twenty-five-year-old blonds. He remained very handsome, very strong, and his sadness itself expressed the lasciviousness of the whole body of this wild animal that was reaching maturity.
    He spoke to me very quietly. Perhaps he was afraid I might denounce him to the police. I wondered whether he was carrying a gun. My eyes furtively questioned his blue denim trousers, pausing over every suspect bulk. Though I intended my gaze to be light, it must haveweighed on the fly, for Erik smiled, if I may say so, with his usual smile. I blushed a little and looked away, trying to veil my blush by exhaling a cloud of smoke. He took advantage of this to cross his legs and say in a casual tone:
    “Jean was very young. . . .”
    He said “Djian,” pronouncing the “an” very curtly.
    I did not reply. He said:
    "Aber, you too, you Jean.”
    “Yes.”
    I was thinking of the warm, wide, heavy Louis XV bed covered with Venetian point lace in which Jean's mother pressed against Erik at night and no doubt during the day, either in a nightgown or naked. The bed was alive in the darkness of the bedroom, was emitting its rays, which reached me despite the walls. It was certain that one day or another Erik's and Paulo's thighs would constrict me there, they themselves getting their bellies all raddled with the maid and the mother, in a room watched over by the memory of Jean.
    At the end of my fourth visit, Erik accompanied me alone to the entryway. It was late, it was getting dark. The entryway was very narrow. He pressed against my back. I felt his breath on my neck, and, close to my ear, he murmured:
    “See you tomorrow, nine o'clock, Jean.”
    He took my hand and insisted:
    “Nine o'clock, yes!”
    “Yes.”
    The gesture of surprise he had just made on realizing that the two names were the same tightened the trousers against his buttocks and enhanced them. The outline of the muscles excited me. I tried to imagine what his relationship had been with Jean, whom he hated and who hated him. Erik's strength probably enabled him to seemvery mild as he bullied the child. I looked at his eyes and composed in my mind the following sentence:
    “So many suns have capsized beneath his hands, in his eyes. . . .”
    When I left the apartment after our first meeting, I attempted to retrace the course of his life and, for greater efficiency, I got into his uniform, boots, and skin. Drunk with the somewhat blurry vision of a tall, young Negro behind the