'Well, it never got off the ground,' I admitted.
'Good for it,' he said.
'I've been thinking of another one,' I said. 'It's about peasants.' Unknown to us both at the time, this idea would become my third historical novel, my book about Andreas Hofer, the hero of the Tyrol.
'Please don't tell me about it,' my father said. 'I feel like flattering you; your taste in women is admirable. I think it exceeds your literary taste. The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, indeed!' he scoffed. 'Well, it looks like Lent lost. That girl is Carnival through and through! If I ever saw a less Lenten figure, I do not recall it. Bravo, Carnival!' he cheered. The old lecher.
But he was right, Utch was a Carnival character all the way.
For example, how she slept. She did not curl tight and protect herself; she sprawled. If you wanted to cuddle against her, she didn't mind, but she herself was not one to cuddle. Edith slept like a cat - contained, a fortress, snug against you. Utch spread herself out as if she were trying to dry in the sun. When she lay on her back, she didn't seem to notice where the covers were, and she lay on her stomach like a swimmer frozen at the instant of the breaststroke kick. On her side she lay like the profile of a hurdler. In the middle of the night she would often lash an arm out and swat the bedside lamp off the night table or bash the alarm clock across the room.
I attempted to have humorous conversations with Severin about Utch's flamboyant shapes asleep. 'It's obviously a kind of violent reaction,' I surmised, 'no doubt a rejection of being cramped inside the cow.'
'I sleep that way myself,' he said seriously, and that was that.
Edith and I were the snugglers; we tucked ourselves up against each other, neat and small. We often joked about Severin's and Utch's loose sprawls, trying to imagine them fitting on a bed.
'That's obviously why they went to the wrestling room,' I said to Edith. 'It's the biggest bed in town.'
Edith sat up suddenly and turned on the light. I blinked. 'What did you say?' she asked. Her voice was oddly dead. I had never seen her face look ugly before; perhaps it was the sudden, harsh light.
'He took her to the wrestling room,' I said. 'Last week, when we thought they were acting so strange? They went to the wrestling room.' Edith shivered and hugged herself; she looked as if she was going to be sick. 'I thought Severin told you everything,' I said. 'What's wrong? Doesn't it suit them? Can't you just see them rolling around on the mats?'
Edith swung her legs off the bed, stood up and lit a cigarette. She clutched her fists against her thighs; I had never noticed how thin she was; the veins at her wrists and on the backs of her hands stood out. 'Edith?' I asked. 'What's wrong with them going to the wrestling room?'
'He knows what's wrong!' she wailed awfully; she seemed so unaware of her own body that I felt ashamed to be looking at her. She paced back and forth beside the bed. 'How could he do that!' she cried. 'He must have known how he'd hurt me.' I didn't understand; I got out of bed and went to her, but she made a startled awkward move back to the bed and drew up the bedcovers to hide herself.
'Go home, please,' she whispered. 'Just go home. I want to be alone.'
'Edith, you have to talk to me,' I said. 'I don't know what's wrong.'
'It's where he used to take Audrey Cannon!' she screamed.
'Who? What?'
'Ask him!' she yelled at me. 'Go on! Please get out, go home. Please!'
I stumbled out in the hall, dressed on the stairs, found my car keys and drove home. I heard her lock the bedroom door behind me. There is nothing so confusing as finding out that you don't know someone you thought you knew.
Severin's car was parked in my driveway. At least they weren't at the wrestling room again. As I crossed the sidewalk, I heard Utch's German song. It was her coming song, but it was going on longer than usual. Through the walls of my house, through the shut windows, I heard my wife coming. What a voyeur's treat our sidewalk was. Something was knocked over, and Severin snorted like a certain hooved species. Utch was a soprano, though I'd never known it; I had not heard her sing quite that way.
I looked down the dark street, imagining the crude conversation I could have with a sudden passer-by. 'Boy, someone's really getting it in there,' he'd say.
'Sure is,' I'd say, and we'd listen.
'Boy! She goes on and on!' he'd say.
'Sure does.'
'Some guy sure has a lively one,' he'd say, the envy showing on his streetlit face. 'That guy must have some wang on him.'
And I'd say, 'Oh that's a lot of bullshit, an old myth. It's got nothing to do with your wang.'
And he'd listen to Utch's highest aria and say, 'Oh yeah? If it's not a wang making that happen, there's somebody who knows something I don't.'
Finally Utch came. I heard her broken voice and saw a faint light flicker in our bedroom. No doubt their breathing had blown the candle out. I thought of the children and how scared they'd be if they ever woke up to that sound. I thought of what a long time it had been since I had thought of the children. And down the dark street I looked for my accuser, the man with the hole in his cheek. 'I am hearing that,' he'd say. How had he put it? I am feeling my pistol cock, I am feeling it in my lungs. It seemed like a good time for him to come save Utch. I would have hung my head if I'd seen him; I felt I had let her get into trouble though I didn't exactly know what kind.
I closed the door of my house loudly, opened the closet and rattled th