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RUSSELL BANKS
plowed (huge, orange plows would cruise up and down the road
from Portsmouth to Concord all night long), and consequently the
driving was much easier than I had anticipated.
Although I am in love with the woman, the pressure of living
with her doesn't let up, even after ten years. The kind of pressure
I'm talking about has nothing to do with my being me, or being
male, even. Yet it can't be the same for her, because of the fact that
she is
there,
on the one hand, and is talking, constantly talking,
prodding, shoving, probing, on the other. The words alone would
not be sufficient to box me in. The words alone, when they happen
to be true (that is, accurate), merely disappear as quickly as they're
uttered; and when they're not true, the words,
her
words, just fall
to our feet and flop over on their sides, dead, like so many flat slabs
of rock. But the fact that she is
there,
undeniably so, coupled with
the fact that she is talking, talking, talking - these two constantly
present-tense facts produce in me the need to answer, and suddenly
I find myself boxing myself in with my
own
words. They swirl out
of my mouth like an odor, and as soon as they have separated them–
selves from my body, they solidify, as if by magic, and make a wall.
Then more words follow, making a wall inside the first. Then still
more words, and yet another, nearer wall. Until my body has been
jammed into a rectangular cube of precisely my body's volume. No
more, no less. And comfortless, I go silent.
As a result, over the years the women who have attracted me
more and more frequently have been silent women. I think, no,
I'm
sure,
that I was attracted to Rose, for example, purely and simply
because of her silence. She almost never speaks, except to refer to
some particular, physical circumstance. I am cold. I am too warm.
I am tired. I am not tired. And so on. In place of words, Rose offers
an infinite number of tones of silence, each of which, when heard,
can be understood in countless ways. She smiles with her lips, and
I start asking myself,
Wanly? Condescendingly? Coyly? Idly? Cruelly?
Seductively?
In other words, she creates for me the possibilities of a
specific attitude towards me, an attitude she will gladly bear, yet one
that I am free to determine.
Seductively,
I decide, with a bit of
Coyly
tempered with
Idly.
And so I go ahead and place my two hands onto
her waist, sliding them down to her hips, pulling her to me, and as
she turns her face up to mine, her eyes wide open, I
kiss
her on the
mouth and ear and throat.
'
