He’d said this last sentence without seeking a look of complicity from me, as if simply stating something he’d worked out himself. This did, I reflected, chime with my first image of Luciana: a determined young woman who’d mastered the basic arts of sexual attraction and was keen to extend her repertoire.
“As I said, at first, that’s all it was: small attentions. Little things. She was always solicitous, attentive. But then I realised that Luciana was seeking more than gratitude: she wanted me to notice her. She started keeping her hand on my shoulder a little longer when we kissed goodbye, she dressed differently, she sought my gaze more often. I found it amusing and didn’t attach much importance to it. I thought it was simply teenage vanity, the arrogance of pretty women who want all men to look at them. At the time I was dictating an erotic section of the book to her. Actually, now that I knew about her background I was worried that she’d run away, terrified. In the novel, the two women seducing the central character had large breasts and I’d described them at some length. I suppose it might have wounded her pride and made her want to prove to herself that in spite of her disadvantage she could nevertheless attract me.
“In the next chapter I mentioned that one of the women had a mark on her arm from a viper’s bite-the wound had festered, leaving a deep scar, the size of a small coin. It was early spring and Luciana was wearing a fine long-sleeved T-shirt. She said she had a similar scar from a vaccination, and she pulled the T-shirt off her shoulder to show me. I was standing beside her and saw her bare shoulder, the bra strap she’d moved, the slight dip’between her breasts, and her arm, innocently held up for inspection. For a moment, I stood frozen at the sight of the scar: it was deep and round, like a cigarette burn. Above all, I realised she wanted me to touch it. I placed my thumb there, and made a gentle circling movement. I think she sensed my agitation. When I looked up and met her eyes I saw the briefest flash of triumph before she hitched up her bra strap and T-shirt again casually. For a time, nothing else happened. That small victory seemed to be enough for her. She’d wanted to attract my attention and she’d succeeded. I realised, reluctantly, that I was now watching her every morning, waiting for another signal or glance. Then, one day, she began this little pantomime with her neck: she’d tilt her head from side to side, making the bones crack, or lean it back every so often, as if she was in pain.”
“Yes, that’s right,” I broke in, unable to believe it. “The thing with her neck. She did it with me too.”
But Kloster didn’t seem to hear and went on, absorbed in his account.
“I asked what the matter was, of course, and she gave me an explanation I only half believed, about posture, and tension in the arms and neck when typing. Apparently, anti-inflammatories didn’t relieve the pain so she’d been advised to take up yoga and get massages. I asked where exactly it hurt. She leaned forward slightly, sweeping her hair out of the way with her hand. It was a trusting, spontaneous movement. I could see her long bare neck, proffered to me, and the precise outline of the vertebrae. She pointed to a spot somewhere in the middle. I placed my hands on her shoulders and slid my thumbs up and down her neck. She sat rigid, motionless…expectant. I think she was as agitated as I was. But she didn’t say a word and gradually I felt her give herself up to the movement of my hands. A wave of heat rose into them from her shoulders. I could feel her neck and everything in her yielding, melting beneath the pressure of my fingers. But then I think she suddenly sensed the danger, uneasy at having lost herself for a moment. She sat up, pushed her hair back, and thanked me, as if I’d really helped the pain, saying she felt much better. Her face was flushed but we both pretended it had been something unimportant, not worth mentioning. I asked her to make coffee and she got up without looking at me. When she came back, I went on dictating as if nothing had happened. I’d say that was the second move in the sequence.
“I thought it would all end there, that she wouldn’t want to take it any further. But still, every day, I waited for the next move. I was starting to find it hard to concentrate on my novel, always watching for any tiny signal she might give. I had arranged a trip to a writers’ retreat in Italy, for a whole month, and now I regretted it. Since I’d started dictating my work to Luciana, I couldn’t imagine sitting in front of the computer, working alone again. But of course I couldn’t take her with me. I think I was afraid that the growing unspoken closeness between us would be interrupted. She didn’t mention her neck again, but the day before I left, she cracked it, as if the pain had never gone away. I slid my hand under her hair and pressed. I asked if it was still painful and she nodded, without looking up. I started massaging the area with one hand and she leaned her head forward slightly as my fingers moved upwards. I placed my other hand on the side of her neck, to support her head. She was wearing a loose blouse, with the top button undone, and when I slid my hands round her neck I shifted the fabric and another button came undone. She didn’t do it up. We were both rigid, as if hypnotised, the only movement my hands on her neck. At one point I slid them down to her shoulders and realised she wasn’t wearing a bra. I leaned forward slightly and glimpsed the small points of her breasts, like those of a little girl, barely covered by the blouse. For some reason this sudden unexpected nudity made me stop. This time it was I who drew back, feeling I was one step from the abyss. I moved away, while she gathered her hair in her hands, twisting it nervously. Still not looking at me, she asked if I’d like her to make coffee. I suppose this was the decisive moment in the sequence. But I let it pass.
“When she returned from the kitchen she’d done up her blouse, and it was as if nothing had happened between us. We agreed that I’d ring her when I got back from my trip and I paid her for the whole month I’d be away, hoping she wouldn’t take another job. We said goodbye as if it was any other day. I bought her a present in Italy, though I never got to give it to her. The month passed and I called her as soon as I got back. I thought it would all be as before and we’d continue where we’d left off, with that subterranean, almost imperceptible, current between us, moving us in only one direction. But something-everything-had changed. When I asked what she’d done while I was away she mentioned you. From her tone of voice, the way her eyes shone, I thought I understood everything.”
“Everything?” I interrupted, unable to stop myself. “But it was nothing. She only let me kiss her once.”
Now, Kloster looked at me closely. He sipped his coffee, peering at me again over his cup, as if unsure whether he could trust me.
“It didn’t seem like that from what she said. Or rather, from what she implied. Of course I couldn’t ask her directly, but from something she said the message was clear, and somewhat humiliating. She gave me to understand that you’d moved quickly during that month. Anyway, I couldn’t dictate a single line. I was furious, and obsessed with the thought that I’d lost her. She seemed like a stranger, sitting there in her chair, someone I really knew nothing about. I couldn’t focus on my work at all. I realised bitterly that using typists and stenographers had worked for Henry James because he was indifferent to the charms of women. The great Disrupter is not Evil-nor the infinite as our Poet believed-but sex. Like my wife, I had underestimated Luciana. And now I was abject, in thrall to her, like a sex-obsessed teenager. I despised myself. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me again at my age. Several days passed like this: I grew increasingly tense; I couldn’t dictate at all. It was as if the silent barrier she’d erected had also blocked the flow of my novel. I couldn’t move forward with her but I was afraid now that I couldn’t move forward without her either. What I’d once considered the perfect system had become a nightmare. My most ambitious novel, the work I’d spent years nurturing in silence, to which all my previous novels had been precursors, was now halted, interrupted, as I waited for a vibration, a note, from her motionless, closed-off body.