The Marriage Portrait(52)
He lifts her hand away from his chest and places it on his shoulder, again mirroring the motion so that his palm lands on her shoulder, curving over the rounded bone there. With a smile, he next moves her hand to his throat, then his cheek, then his ribs, then his waist, with his hand following suit. The places where he has touched her feel seared and cold at the same time, as if his hand has printed her shift with some kind of invisible marker or ink. Her hand, meanwhile, as he guides it, is learning the different textures of him: the rough grain of his stubble, the puckered skin of his lips, the satin of his bare shoulder, the whorled hair on his chest. It is interesting to her, and the repetition, the game of it lulling. Chest, shoulder, throat, cheek, waist, then back again to chest. They are still talking at this point, about his three hunting dogs, and their different natures, about the food she likes most of all to eat, and everything between them is strange, yes, but calm. She feels soothed by the repetition of his mirroring game; she can do that, she can cope with that. Perhaps, she thinks, things will go no further tonight; perhaps he means to do this game and nothing else.
She is unprepared, then, unready, when after they are touching each other’s waists, he moves her hand not back to his chest but down, further down, much further, to a place she has never seen, never allowed herself to dwell on.
There are statues of naked men and gods and cherubs, all over her father’s palazzo: no mystery, then, what is down there. She grew up with brothers, of course. She saw them, as young children, standing in tubs of water as the nurses washed them. She has seen what males have, the pouched appearance of it, and the appendage, so vulnerable-looking, so comic, all curled and folded into its own little jacket, like a creature afraid of showing its face to the world. Her sister Isabella had intimated to her that men varied in size in this respect, and Lucrezia had asked how Isabella could say this as, surely, she had known only one man in this way, her husband, Paolo, and, mystifyingly, it had made Isabella let out a peal of laughter as she landed a somewhat painful smack on Lucrezia’s leg.
She had not expected this. She had not thought she would be required to touch it with her hand. That someone would take her fingers—those same fingers that have turned pages and tied ribbons and sewn with needles and broken bread and lifted cups and written words and drawn pictures—and wrap them reverently yet firmly about it so that they could learn its ways. She had not known of the transformation this part of the body undergoes, how it alters its form, metamorphoses into something quite other. And she had not known that this change spreads itself throughout the man, that he becomes a different person, enslaved to this part of himself, losing himself, that everything beyond that moment is different and swift and charged.
The talk is mostly silenced now. There are no more questions about favourite frescos. He asks, in a voice hoarser than usual, if he may remove her shift, and when she says yes—because what else can she say?—he does it with the urgency of a creature under a spell, and then his hands, like ravenous animals, begin to rummage about, insistent, purposeful, as if searching for something lost in the crevices of her.
She had not known he would need to lie on top of her, that she would be pinned down, covered by his body. She had not known that she would be required to fold up her legs in such an ungainly way, like a cicada, or that the bones of her spine and pelvis would creak under his weight.
He says again that he will not hurt her, she must not be scared, he will not hurt her, he will not, he promises, the words whispered in his new rasping voice.
And then he hurts her anyway.
The pain is startling, and curious in its specificity. It tunnels a scalded route into a most private space in her, a place of which she had previously only the dimmest sense. She has never felt discomfort like it: burning, invading, unwelcome, overfull. She is aware of her face twisting into a grimace, of a whimper escaping her lips.
He hears this, she is sure. He brings up a hand to cradle her head. In apology, she believes, and now he will stop, surely. Because he promised her that he wouldn’t hurt her—he may not have meant to but nevertheless he has. Because he has done what he intended to do. Because he has fulfilled his part of the marriage contract, and so has she. Because he cares about her, loves her perhaps, and would not want her to be in pain. Because now it can finish and be over, he has done what he came to do, she has done what was required, he can let her go.
Strangely, though, he does not stop. He does not withdraw. He remains in the place of pain, inscribing more pain over the original pain. He says to her that she is fine, that she should hold still, that all will be well, she is fine, she is fine. But how can he say this, how can he think this? I am not fine, she wants to hiss, it hurts, you are hurting me, you are breaking your promise.
She had thought she knew what would happen. She had believed herself prepared; but she had not been, not at all. Isabella told her that it might be sore for a moment and then it would stop, and later she would come to enjoy it. These statements swoop through her mind, backwards and forwards. They are the only thoughts she can allow.
She, herself, her frame, her being, is pressed between mattress and another person, like a sheaf of papers between the covers of a book: it goes beyond astonishment, beyond shock.
The heat, the labour, the noise of it, is appalling—she had had a vague expectation of a mingling of a celestial or spiritual sort, a gentle confluence of beings, in silence—but how close this seems to fury, with its constant and repeated motion, its pounding action, its invasion, the distortion of his features, the panting like one possessed.