36- Open the heart to love

*She opened her eyes to contemplate the piercing joy of her liberation: she was free, free as man was, to enjoy without love. Without any warmth of the heart, as a man could, she had enjoyed
a stranger.
And then she remembered what she had heard men say: “Then I wanted to leave.”
She gazed at the stranger lying naked beside her and saw him as a statue she did not want to touch again. As a statue he lay far from her, strange to her, and there welled in her something resembling anger, regret, almost a desire to take this gift of herself back, to efface all traces of it, to banish it from her body. She wanted to become swiftly and cleanly detached from him, to disentangle and unmingle what had been fused for a moment, their breaths, skins, exhalations, and body’s essences She slid very softly out of the bed, dressed with adroit
soundlessness while he slept. She tiptoed to the bathroom.

On the shelf she found face powder, comb lipstick in shell rose
wrappings. She smiled at them. Wife? Mistress? How good it was
to contemplate these objects without the lightest tremor of regret,
envy or jealousy. That was the meaning of freedom. Free of
attachment, dependency and the capacity for pain. She breathed
deeply and felt she had found this source of pleasure for good. Why
had it been so difficult? So difficult that she had often simulated this
pleasure?
While combing her hair and repainting her eyelashes, she enjoyed
this bathroom, this neutral zone of safety. While moving between
men, lovers, she always entered with pleasure a natural safety zone
(in the bus, in the taxi, on the way from one to another, at this
moment the bathroom) safe from grief. If she had loved Philip, how
each one of these objects—face powder, hair pins, comb—each
one would have hurt her!
(He is not to be trusted. I am only passing by. I am on my way to
another place, another life, where he cannot even find me, claim me.
How good not to love; I remember the eyes of the woman who met
Philip at the beach. Her eyes were in a panic as she looked at me.
She wondered if I were the one who would take him away. And
how this panic disappeared at the tone of Philip’s voice as he
introduced her: “Meet Dona Juana.” The woman had understood
the tone of his voice and the fear had vanished from her eyes.)
What new reassurance Brenda, the fairy felt as she laced her sandals, swirled
her cape and smoothed her long, straight hair. She was not only free
from danger but free for a quick get-away. That is what she called
it. (Philip had observed he had never seen a woman dress so
quickly, never seen a woman gather up her belongings as quickly
and never forgetting a single one!)
How she had learned to flush love letters down the toilet, to leave
no hairs on the borrowed comb, to gather up hair pins, to erase
traces of lipstick anywhere, to brush off clouds of face powder.
Her eyes like the eyes of a spy.
Her habits like the habits of a spy.

How she lay all her clothes on one chair, as if she might be called away suddenly and must not leave any traces of her presence. She knew all the trickeries in this war of love. And her neutral zone, the moment when she belonged to none, when she gathered her dispersed self together again.

The moment of on-loving, non-desiring. The moment when she took flight, if the man had admired another woman passing by, or talked too long about an old love, the little offenses, the small stabs, a mood of indifference, a small unfaithfulness, a small treachery, all of them were warnings of possibly larger ones, to be counter-acted by an
equal or larger or total unfaithfulness, her own, the most magnificent of counter-poisons, prepared in advance for the ultimate emergencies. She was accumulating a supply of treacheries, so that when the shock came, she would be prepared: “I was not taken unaware, the trap was not sprung on my naivete, on my foolish
trustingness. I had already betrayed. To be always ahead, a little ahead of the expected betrayals by life. To be there first and therefore prepared…”
When she returned to the room Philip was still asleep. It was the end of the afternoon and the rain sent cooler winds over the bed, but she felt no desire to cover or nestle him, or to give him warmth.
She had only been away five days but because of all the emotions and experiences which had take place, all the inner expansions and explorations, Brenda, the fairy felt that she had been away for many years.
Jhon’s image had receded far into the past, and a great fear of complete loss of him assailed her. Five days containing so many changes within her body and feelings lengthened the period of
absence, added immeasurable mileage to her separation from Jhon.
Certain roads one took emotionally also appeared on the map of the heart as traveling away from the center, and ultimately leading to exile.
Driven by this mood, she appeared at his home.
“Brenda, the fairy! I’m so happy. I didn’t expect you for another week. What
happened? Nothing went wrong?”
He was there. Five days had not altered his voice, the allenveloping expression of his eyes. The apartment had not changed.
The same book was still open by his bed, the same magazines had not yet been thrown away. He had not finished some fruit she had
bought the last time she had been there. Her hands caressed the overfull ash trays, her fingers designed rivers of meditation on the
coats of dust on the table. Here living was gradual, organic, without vertiginous descents or ascents.
As she stood there the rest of her life appeared like a fantasy. She sought Jhon’s hand and searched for the familiar freckle on his wrist. She felt a great need to take a bath before he touched her, to wash herself rigorously of other places, other hands, other odors.

Jhon had obtained for her, as a surprise, some records of drumming and singing from the Ile Joyeuse. They listened to the drumming which began at first remotely as if playing in a distant village smothered in jungle vines. At first like small children’s steps running through dry rushes, and then heavier steps on hollow wood, and then sharp powerful fingers on the drum skins, and suddenly a mass of crackling stumpings, animal skins slapped, and knuckled, stirred and pecked so swiftly there was no time for echoes. Brenda, the fairy saw the ebony and cinnamon bodies through which the structure of the bones never showed, glistening with the sea’s wild baths, leaping and dancing as quick as the necklaces of drum beats, in emerald greens, indigo blue, tangerines in all the colors of fruits and flowers, flaming eucalyptus of flesh.
*