'That's ridiculous, Anna. Okay, I'm sorry I spoke. Forget it.'
'Go away!' she cried. 'Go away! Go away! Go away!'
She tried to push him away from
her, but he was huge and strong and he had her pinned.
'Calm yourself,' he said. 'Relax. You can't suddenly change your mind like this, in the middle of everything. And for heaven's sake, don't start weeping.'
'Leave me alone, Conrad, I beg you.'
He seemed to be gripping her with everything he had, arms and elbows, hands and fingers, thighs and knees, ankles and feet. He was like a toad the way he gripped her. He was exactly like an enormous clinging toad, gripping and grasping and refusing to let go. She had seen a toad once doing precisely this. It was copulating with a frog on a stone beside a stream, and there it sat, motionless, repulsive, with an evil yellow gleam in its eye, gripping the frog with its two powerful front paws and refusing to let go...
'Now stop struggling, Anna. You're acting like a hysterical child. For God's sake, woman, what's eating you?'
'You're hurting me!' she cried.
'Hurting you?'
'It's hurting me terribly!'
She told him this only to get him away.
'You know why it's hurting?' he said.
'Conrad! Please!'
'Now wait a minute, Anna. Allow me to explain...'
'No!' she cried. 'I've had enough explaining!'
'My dear woman...'
'No!' She was struggling desperately to free herself, but he still had her pinned.
'The reason it hurts,' he went on, 'is that you are not manufacturing any fluid. The mucosa is virtually dry...'
'Stop!'
'The actual name is senile atrophic vaginitis. It comes with age, Anna. That's why it's called senile vaginitis. There's not much one can do...'
At that point, she started to scream. The screams were not very loud, but they were screams nevertheless, terrible, agonized stricken screams, and after listening to them for a few seconds, Conrad, in a single graceful movement, suddenly rolled away from her and pushed her to one side with both hands. He pushed her with such force that she fell on to the floor.
She climbed slowly to her feet, and as she staggered into the bathroom, she was crying 'Ed!... Ed!... Ed!...' in a queer supplicating voice. The door shut.
Conrad lay very still listening to the sounds that came from behind the door. At first, he heard only the sobbing of the woman, but a few seconds later, above the sobbing, he heard the sharp metallic click of a cupboard being opened. Instantly, he sat up and vaulted off the bed and began to dress himself with great speed. His clothes, so neatly folded, lay ready at hand, and it took him no more than a couple of minutes to put them on. When that was done, he crossed to the mirror and wiped the lipstick off his face with a handkerchief. He took a comb from his pocket and ran it through his fine black hair. He walked once round the bed to see if he had forgotten anything, and then, carefully, like a man who is tiptoeing from a room where a child is sleeping, he moved out into the corridor, closing the door softly behind him.
Bitch
I have so far released for publication only one episode from Uncle Oswald's diaries. It concerned, as some of you may remember, a carnal encounter between my uncle and a Syrian female leper in the Sinai Desert. Six years have gone by since its publication and nobody has yet come forward to make trouble. I am therefore encouraged to release a second episode from these curious pages. My lawyer has advised against it. He points out that some of the people concerned are still living and are easily recognizable. He says I will be sued mercilessly. Well, let them sue. I am proud of my uncle. He knew how life should be lived. In a preface to the first episode I said that Casanova's Memoirs read like a Parish Magazine beside Uncle Oswald's diaries, and that the great lover himself, when compared with my uncle, appears positively undersexed. I stand by that, and given time I shall prove it to the world. Here then is a little episode from Volume XXIII, precisely as Uncle Oswald wrote it:
PARIS
Wednesday
Breakfast at ten. I tried the honey. It was delivered yesterday in an early Sevres sucrier which had that lovely canary-coloured ground known as jonquille. 'From Suzie,' the note said, 'and thank you.' It is nice to be appreciated. And the honey was interesting. Suzie Jolibois had, among other things, a small farm south of Casablanca, and was fond of bees. Her hives were set in the midst of a plantation of cannabis indica, and the bees drew their nectar exclusively from this source. They lived, those bees, in a state of perpetual euphoria and were disinclined to work. The honey was therefore very scarce. I spread a third piece of toast. The stuff was almost black. It had a pungent aroma. The telephone rang. I put the receiver to my ear and waited. I never speak first when called. After all, I'm not phoning them. They're phoning me.
'Oswald! Are you there?'