Kissing Through a Pane of Glass (8 page)

Most importantly, if you start bringing all that love nonsense into the bed- room, all you’ll succeed in doing is screwing up one of the few genuine pleasures left to human beings. Sex was both and fun; like eating and drinking, you should it often, change the menu frequently, and always be a hungry before you start. Don’t discuss the ingredients afterwards, and don’t complain about the cost or the service; if you’re not enjoying it, eat somewhere else.

I could not help but be full of admiration for Richard and his approach. It was so uncomplicated, hedonistic, easy, and I don’t suppose he would have cared the least bit if I’d told him that his ideas were all well and good, but that he’d never be a poet.

Liana and I stayed in Udaipur for a further week. On the second day I left my hotel and moved in with her. We took a double room which also had a balcony and spent every afternoon and most of each night making love. I had expected the hotel owner to express disapproval of us - we exercised little discretion - but he merely smiled whenever he saw us, a mischievous grin which, if anything, sanctioned our liaison.

For the first two days, we left the bedroom only to perform necessary functions like washing and eating. Our evenings were spent at the rooftop restaurant where we had dined on that first, fateful evening. We would sit close together, holding hands. Our hours and days were marked with a seemingly endless flow of fun and laughter. We revelled in each other. It was not just in bed that we communicated so completely. We would happily talk for hours about our lives, our worlds, travelling, philosophy, art, creativity. We rarely spoke of love. There seemed no need; words were a poor medium for expressing something that coursed through every vein, saturated every cell, electrified our spirits.

For the time being, I was happy. The memory of Liana’s outburst faded but did not disappear, and if I was self-conscious in any way, it was only with regard to my movements; that is, I avoided making any swift motions of my hands or arms. If, as was often the case, I wished to stroke Liana’s cheek, I would usually place my hand first upon her shoulder and slide my fingers gently upwards to meet her face. In time this became an habitual movement rather than a conscious one, its origins soon obscured.

We returned often to the terrace overlooking the lake where we had first met; sometimes Liana would bring her notebook and make sketches of the surroundings, although she would never let me look at them. I questioned her about this and she said that, being a perfectionist, she didn’t like to exhibit incomplete work, and that sketches were by definition unfinished. Even though I longed to see her drawings, I didn’t push her on this; although I had yet to write anything of any value, I felt sure I’d feel much the same about my own work, unwilling to let anyone read it until it was complete, polished, ready for publication.

On those occasions, whilst Liana sketched, I would simply sit and look at her. I would watch her intently, as if I could not be worthy of her until I was able to hold the whole of her in my mind, every square inch of skin, every hair, every pore. I examined her movements, the way she held her pencil, the manner in which she glanced at her watch or looked up for just a moment with the hint of a smile. I studied her breath, the way she shrugged, the flickering of her perfect eyelashes; I took stock of every action, memorised it, stored it away. If it would ever be necessary to reconstruct Liana from scratch, I held entire blueprints in my head.

I did not write any of these impressions down; it was essential that it was all committed to memory. I wanted to have instant access to her, day or night, in my waking life and in my dreams, whether she was sitting beside me or a thousand miles away. I wanted to ensure that she would be with me always, that I could always relish that extraordinary beauty, that I need only close my eyes to visualise that exquisite loveliness.

Liana didn’t seem to mind me staring at her; she never said anything about it, accepting my behaviour as normal. Consequently I did not feel selfconscious about it. I was as happy looking at Liana as I was making love to her. Sometimes I could hardly believe that such a wondrous beauty as she was sleeping with me, Michael Montrose.

Making love lost not an ounce of fervour, not a wisp of passion; each time was as steamy, as exhilarating, as totally exhausting as the last. After each occasion I felt certain my heart would scream “enough!” and stop beating in protest at the punishment I was putting it through. Our lovemaking was the perfect amalgam of love and lust, of tough and gentle, a wondrous blend of the expected and unexpected. We seemed to guide each other through some extraordinary moves, and I found myself performing acts that I had not thought myself capable of, going beyond normal limits, reaching for greater ecstasies.

On our last night in Udaipur, as we lay in bed together after a particularly frenetic session, Liana turned to me and began running her fingers through my straggly beard.

‘What do you look like without this, I wonder?’ she said in a half-mocking tone.

I smiled. ‘Like an accountant’ I said. ‘Like a bank clerk.’

Liana laughed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The original chinless wonder. You wouldn’t have given me a second look.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘It’s true. Before I grew this beard, the exquisite combination of nose and chin was guaranteed to have to have pretty girls running for the hills.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re very handsome; you have a lovely nose.’

It was my turn to laugh. ‘It’s very sweet of you to say so.’

Liana’s expression changed. She looked bemused; half quizzical, half offended. ‘You think I’m lying to you.’

‘No, no . . . it’s just, well, I
know
I’m not a good-looking bloke...’

‘You’re crazy,’ she said. ‘You’re completely crazy.’

‘What?’

Liana shifted her position until she was looking down on me. She placed her hands on either side of my face, and held me firmly so that I would have had to struggle if I’d wanted to move. ‘You’re the most attractive man I’ve ever met, Michael.
The
most. You’re more than handsome. You’re beautiful.’

I was quite taken aback by her vehemence. No one had ever referred to my looks as handsome. No one had ever called me beautiful. And the strangest thing was, these were not just lover’s words, designed to please. Liana was deadly earnest. She believed I was beautiful. I could have cried.

***

The noose tightened. The water rose another inch. I was a hanged man, a drowning man, and I did not even know it.

Liana slept most of the day today, while I tried to complete a piece about Chitwan National Park in Nepal. It’s the final article in a series on the Himalayan kingdom, and it’s causing me all sorts of difficulties. That’s the trouble with writing a series of articles on just one country; by the time you’ve written twelve thousand words, you’ve run out of suitably appealing adjectives and original descriptive scenarios. There is only so much you can say about mountains, blue skies, medieval Asian architecture and wizened old men with faces like decaying boot leather.

Thankfully with Chitwan there’s the jungle to provide the setting and the animals to furnish the action. Still, my heart’s not really in it, and I wish I hadn’t promised the editor that I’d have it finished by the weekend. I’m sure he doesn’t intend using it for at least another three months, but I daren’t renege at this stage. My reputation is shaky enough as it is, and besides I need the money (even if I won t see it for an eternity).

Liana’s exhausted. She didn t sleep well. Late last night she suffered another panic attack, and I was up until four this morning trying to calm her down. She gets so scared at the thought of me leaving, and her anxiety is heartbreaking. I have to remind myself constantly that, within a week of my departure, she will have forgotten all about me. The staff at The Sanctuary will attend to all her needs. She’ll have a comfortable room with her own television, she’ll have three decent meals a day, and she’ll never be short of company as there are at least a dozen other loonies wandering around the place.

Don’t give me that look. I know I shouldn’t say such things, but you have no right to criticise me. You don’t know what it’s like. This is my way of dealing with it, my way of coping with the sad truth: my wife is a loony, a crazy, a madwoman, a paranoid schizophrenic, a manic depressive; she has lost her marbles, she is no longer playing with a full deck, she is fucked in the head. As opposed to her loving husband who is merely fucked, period.

I no longer wake up in the mornings thinking it’s all been a bad dream. My life is a hollow, pathetic thing. If, as sometimes occurs, I suffer the agonies of a nightmare, when I wake it is not to relief, but to greater anguish. For my reality is worse than the most frightening of dreams.

I look not for pity or understanding; just, perhaps, acceptance. I hold no one responsible, I harbour no resentment, least of all towards Liana. I have brought all this on myself.

Richard would never have understood. Nobody has to do anything, he would say. You’re a free man, a free spirit, restricted only by society’s conditioning and imposed moralities. If you want to kill somebody, you can do it. You make the decision, you pay the price, but you’re free to do whatever you want. Richard loved
Crime and Punishment
but thought Raskolnikov was a jerk for making such a song and dance about his own guilt. Guilt was another of Richard’s pet hates. Like love it was another figment. It all came down to insecurity; be certain of your actions and you need never feel guilty. Richard couldn’t stand ambivalence, procrastination, indecision or bleeding-heart liberalism. He’d have made a great fascist. “Personal choice, Michael; that’s all there is.”

Perhaps he was right. Perhaps our views were not so far removed from each other. If you come to a fork in the road where the left-hand path leads to freedom and the right to incarceration, and, having chosen (for whatever reason) the latter path, you are then forced by someone to take the former, just how free does that make you? Personal choice, Richard? There are some concepts that Richard will never understand, like the idea that there exist things beyond mere self-interest. Richard’s path may well lead to freedom, but it would be a lonely, isolated sort of place. When he arrives, he may well be shocked to discover that he is the only person for miles around.

When I stood at the fork in the road, Richard, I was free to make my choice. The path to the left - your route - was open, spacious and silent. To the right the way was dark, narrow, claustrophobic, and away in the distance a sad, troubled beautiful voice called my name...

We sat on the lawn of the Pushkar Hotel looking out over the holy lake with its fringe of blue-white buildings nestling beside the ghats. Pushkar had an improbable Mediterranean feel to it, a wonderfully peaceful ambience, so unlike any other place in India I had visited.

We had arrived at Ajmer in the early morning, taken the bus over Snake Mountain, and by ten o’clock were settled in a delightful double room with - luxury of luxuries - our own hot shower. Even though we were tired and grubby from the overnight journey, such was our joint obsession with each other, that no sooner had we undressed to take a shower than we found ourselves tumbling on to the bed, embroiled in a sexual frenzy.

***

Liana’s willingness and desire to make love - wherever and whenever - was a source of constant delight to me. She was every man’s fantasy, and she was mine. The only thing I found perplexing was how this stunningly sexy woman had managed to avoid the clutches of the millions of rampant males who would, like myself, have given anything to be with her.

Aligned with this thought (and still suffering from the sort of self-deprecation that had become a trademark with me) was the question that, if she had been saving herself, saving that precious gift, why had she given it to me of all people? I mean, I was a nice enough guy, certainly, but Liana was special; she was unique. I surely was not a worthy recipient of her affections, her love, the intimacy with her body.

I kept these thoughts, bothersome though they were, pretty much to myself. I knew what Liana would say: that it was she who did not deserve such riches. I was handsome, beautiful, sexy; I was warm, loving, caring. I was a great lover. She was so lucky, she would say whenever the mood took her, so lucky to have met me.

I was bewitched, of course. It was not long before I began to believe all her words. How I kept my ego in check I’ll never know. But such is the nature of enchantment. If not for this then perhaps my suspicions would have been aroused. Perhaps I would have been more concerned about the dreadful incident on our first night together. Perhaps I would have wondered about her inventiveness in the bedroom, her seemingly natural abilities, the ease with which she adapted to new positions and variations. Perhaps I would have questioned how she knew what would turn me on, and queried her skilful use of hand, tongue, lips.