A Story In Two Parts (1)

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

PRIVATE SPACES

Their family tree was a long and personally distinguished one, meticulously searched by a firm specializing in this certain type of conceit. The money, Mother said, when Father complained of the fee, had been well worth it. "You'd never have known would you, that your great grandfather three times removed was a brilliant mathematician. Would you?" When he ignored her, still grunting as he made out the cheque, she prodded "would you?" and he turned his pallid face to hers, his complexion that same nebulous hue as of a mutant that Van der Eyck had made famous, with those same limpid blue and chilling eyes that warned her she had pushed too far; time to back off.

He would, she knew, pay for her occasional whims, but he expected her to know the limitations their relationship imposed on her. There was a restrained violence in his sinewy form, a threat of punitive treatment that would be meted out to the unruly - a character trait that equally repelled and excited her. His cold dismissal evoked in her a vague fear and a spark of something else - once it had been erotic, her immediate response, and now it was something else, she could not define and did not care to dwell upon. Her spirit had become almost as bruised as her generous and still-tempting flesh which she more frequently now begrudged him in his insatiable demands.

Just to look at him, the stern droop of his mouth, the high jutting bones resting under spare cheeks, the direct gaze, one could see the clergyman piously resting in those hollow bones. It was a diversified background, their duality, a genetic gift to their two boys to make the most of their latent talents, if they only listened to her.

Nothing new had been discovered. The old church records had simply, under the skillful prodding of the professionals she had tired, turned up certainties and verifiable dates where before everything had been handed down word-of-mouth, a family tradition of chance recollection enhanced by a soupcon of fanciful embellishment. The real difference now was that the boys had some concrete proof; the heralded, engraved and trusted certification of all she had claimed which they had shrugged off, uncaring.

There was a tradition of fine art too, on Mr. DeVreis's side; one of his forbears had been famed for his paintings of the Zyder Zee, an accomplishment and history that left him unimpressed; rather, it was the distinguished clergymen and academics that bolstered his secret pride, spread balm on the annoying canker that invariably flared whenever extravagant sums of money were demanded of him. The number of those engaged in simple market gardening on the distaff side on the other hand, confirmed his secret distaste of his wife's deplorable lack in certain values, constraints, even elegance, not to mention native intelligence. It was the peasant in her. She'd chattered on initially about 'genetic vigour', a term she had picked up God knew where - until he told her to shut up. Her formerly admired colouring which he had in their romantic years compared to some exotic fruit now served to remind him of her common roots.

Ironic then, that Mr. Devreis had always insisted the boys realize early the benefits of hard work and that his wife yearned for 'her boys' to cultivate a fine aesthetic taste, eventually make something of themselves as creative artists.

A balance had been struck and every summer for the past three years the boys had been shipped off to work on a nearby farm while their parents fled the discomfort of summers' dog days, to visit relatives in the Netherlands. And every winter during the school year the boys were given private instruction in art appreciation.

The farm work was gruelling, boring, and neither boy's ideal of summer occupation. As for the art lessons, Hans was not particularly taken with them, but he eventually discovered in himself a flair for depiction of the human form.

Hans laughed derisively at Curtis's bucolic landscapes, the scenes their instructor praised so lavishly, that their mother viewed with such rapture. Curtis himself imagined that his art was reminiscent of van Ruysdael, though his sense of self-preservation was acute enough never to be so reckless as to give voice to those fond self-referals. Older than Hans, he was the leader, he was the cautious one, the one on whom parental displeasure fell most often, as he was expected to 'guide' his brother into all the right channels; of behaviour regarding filial respect and social niceties, and finally, academic excellence.

An uneasy truce had been effected between the siblings; Curtis sounding the requisite warnings knowing Hans would happily go about doing whatever came naturally to his carefree spirit, and Hans becoming considerate enough as he matured and just incidentally overtook his brother in a sudden spurt of growth to finally stand a head taller and much broader, to behave a little more circumspectly; that is, he became foxily covert so his misadventures would not reach their parents' condemning eyes, their father's punishing edicts.

Which brings us again to Hans's drawings. For he conceived a compelling fascination with the female form, a not-altogether unnatural attraction for a boy of fourteen, when the sensuous and hitherto largely unknown contours of a woman's body took on all the mystery of most secretive, forbidden, alluring fevers. Hans became inspired thinking of the hidden valleys, moist and warmly inviting, the thrusting, teasing, maddening mounds of quivering flesh. He went through a period of wild obsession, pouring his artistic inspiration onto paper - not any paper, but an artist's vellum as fluid and soft to the touch as the sinuous undulations they yielded under his devoted hand. Nudes, endless depictions of nude women were given birth through the feverish manipulations of his accurate hand, fuelled by his baffling dissatisfaction of society's denials.

"Good", Curtis admitted grudgingly. "But if Father ever gets a hold..."

"He won't", Hans responded confidently, not even certain that he cared. "He never snoops around".

"If he does", Curtis insisted, "I'll get slammed, you know that. Hide the damn things; better yet why keep producing them? Isn't one enough? Or even half a dozen? Why the hell do you keep drawing them?"

"What's the matter with you? Don't tell me they don't do anything for you, old boy."

"Can it analpore, don't bother trying to get a rise out of me. It isn't worth it. And for Chrissake, put the damn things out of sight, will you? You're getting careless, left one out last week. I got in here a few minutes before Mother did, on her cleaning rounds."

"What? It's damn good art! Better than your pissy landscapes. You ever try to do the human form? I'm good, damn good Curt, admit it!"

"Yeah."

So was it capricious chance or deliberate provocation that their mother did come across a few drawings tossed carelessly on Hans's desk. An insufferable challenge to her stubbornly-held belief in the purity of thought and deed of some teen-age boys; her own. She recoiled as though struck, as though one of her boys had seen her undressing, had thoughtfully assessed her gradually creping skin, her sagging mounds. She removed them wordlessly, saying nothing to their father, fearing the art lessons would be discontinued. And she dreamed, oh how she dreamed of one day being the proud mother of famous artists.

Hans became aware, mourned the loss of his precious nudes. He found them destroyed, their luscious mystique profaned. He pieced them tenderly together, the shredded paper with its loving and now discontinued lines matting the bottom of his wastebasket in hurt reproach. He continued his replications of Lilith, Undine, the universal siren; cleverly cached them beneath schoolwork, wool sweaters, in his desk and bureau drawers; behind the accumulation of books and childhood paraphernalia he'd outgrown still on his bookshelves. He hadn't though, quite considered his mother's steely determination and she ferreted out the proscribed and to him, living presences.

Curtis turned an implacable face toward Hans's bitter loss. In this instance at least, he wasn't held responsible for his brother's lapse from respectability. His art, after all, was safe, predictable, admired and admirable. He set a sterling example. He had nothing to do with Hans's perversions.

A silent war had been declared, was waged just as stealthily with no quarter given and none expected, as Hans finally realized he was playing a game with someone whose dedication was fully as rich as his own. She destroyed them, his priceless, peerless companions of the flesh. He felt outraged that his privacy was being invaded.

"Don't draw them any more", Curtis advised; removed, without empathy, artist to artist.

"Right! Draw trees and rivers, like you. There's nothing the matter with me, Curtis, I'm normal, what the hell's the matter with you? How can you keep doing those damn landscapes, they don't mean anything. You're less a person than a puppet!"

"Arsewipe!", Curtis hissed back. "Just because I keep my thoughts to myself doesn't mean I don't have any. I compromise between what I want and what they expect of me. No hassles for me, see? You like the frustration ... have it, keep making those drawings. One of these days she'll get tired of playing your game and go to Father...

But she did not. Their game became a neurotic compulsion of mutual need; their annoyance with each one produced and discovered blossomed from anger to bleed into an impotent hatred as one tried to outdo the other in cunning; he through avoidance and she by sheer perseverance. Curtis remained aloof, on the safe side, a disaffected onlooker, painting his circumspect landscapes, removing himself from the conflict, perceiving Hans's frustration and their mother's stolid determination as an exercise in mindless futility.

Just shortly before they left, the boys for their summer on the farm, and their parents for their European jaunt, she came across a maliciously humorous drawing of a couple having intercourse. The paper had been neatly divided into four rectangles, the activity sectioned into innovative and seemingly improbable positions. How, Curtis wondered when Hans displayed it before him, could he have envisioned such lasciviousness? The limbs twisted so convincingly in their agony or lust, the buttocks jutted so generously, the mouths devoured so hungrily that he knew, just as he knew his mother would know if she saw it, that Hans drew on more than imagination now. He had assuredly gained experience. Curtis looked at his brother with a new and grudging respect, took pains not to alert Hans to his knowledge, felt mortified that his groin was hot, tumescent.

"Good, eh?"

"You're crazy, you're just crazy-dumb. Why'd you do something like this?"

"Good, isn't it?"

"I've never seen anything like it."

"Like it?"

"I don't know. But I do know who won't. You'd better not keep this one. Doesn't matter where you hide it, she'll sniff it out."

"Bitch!"

"Hey, Hans!"

"Okay, what do you think she is, eh?"

"Never mind. Never mind, just remember she's our mother, okay?"

"You may be older than me Curt, but you're a little fart, aren't you? Scared of your own shadow."

"No, you are, not me. I'm smart, that's all. Self-preserving. I don't go looking for trouble. You want it, you've got it. At least this can't be pinned on me. So go ahead, bring things to a head. Hell, why bother hiding it? She's going to find it anyway, so just leave it out. You must be absolutely crazy. Yeah, you're right out of your head!"

When next Mrs. DeVreis entered the boys' room, inured by now to feelings of residual guilt that she was making too much of an ultimately harmless albeit disturbing preoccupation, that she was driving her boys from her; their hostility had become almost palpable,though she felt Curtis was being unfair since she had said nothing to either of them. She hadn't expected to discover a drawing right out in plain view. Before she even approached the bed where it lay in wait for her, she suspected something new. It lay there, a mailed gauntlet, waiting to strike her helpless psyche with the threat of its mocking obscenity. He'll tire of it, she promised herself, approaching the bed. Probably has already; this is a note, nothing more, he's never left one of those out in plain view before.

And when, finally, she stood glowering above it, the drawing seemed to leap at her. The vulgarity, the squatting ugliness of the depiction, the profaning of an act of love. Love? an inner voice sneered at her. Love, what love? is it love when he insists, when he thrusts at your unwilling and unready, your dying body? Is it love that impales you time and again, pounding you closer to your grave? These fleeting thoughts were just that; anarchic and consigned to the waste heap of her helpless resentment.

This time, she felt, the game would have to stop. She would face her son. Rescue him from the filth he wallowed in, bring him back to sanity and decency. Facing him, the offending drawing trembling visibly in her hand, the soft vellum edges seemed sharp with venom, biting her melting flesh as though diseased.

"Hans - what filth!"

"It's not", Hans replied calmly, eyeing his mother with unconcealed distaste; her mauve-wool enveloped bulk, dark blond hair straying from its accustomed hug around her broad face. He stood his ground, himself tall and solid, broad and muscular, youth's face beginning to fade behind the man's positively flaring nostrils, lips curled in a male's rejection of female hysteria. "It's human nature after all, isn't it?", he probed cleverly, like a surgeon deftly inserting a knife to remove an unwanted growth. Oh, innocence!

"Not this - this filth!", she shuddered. Feeling herself grow faint, the paper fluttered from her nerveless hand, came to rest at her feet. Her eyes were drawn to it again, that couple writhing in Godless lust; an abomination. God give her the strength to see this through. Her own child, her son doing this to her. What had she ever done to deserve this?

"It's just a couple, coupling", he said lightly, deliberately contrasting his calm reaction in response. So that hers would assume proportions of madness. Oh, clever boy! "Nothing", he said offhandedly, "to get so mad about".

"You're mocking me!", she wailed, desperately.

"No, why would I?" he denied reasonably.

"You're making love appear obscene, and that's unforgiveable", she finally said, equilibrium, dignity regained. "And for that, my son, you've lost my respect."

Later, Hans told Curtis he'd never known his mother to respect him. And it was sex, S E X, he'd been depicting, not love. And if she thought lovemaking was so great how come he heard scurries in the night and urgent whispers of "leave me alone!".

And he didn't so much mind that he'd lost her respect, he said, but it rankled that he had to forego two straight weeks of dessert, after a harder penalty of no dinner the first two days, as penance for her sanctimonious rejection of him. Not that she was a great cook anyway, but because he was a growing lad, he said, and he had a sweet tooth, and to deny him the simple pleasure relishing food was punishment unsuitable to his age; it was demeaning discipline and stupidly vengeful.

He stoked up at the school cafeteria but resented the desperate stealth, the melting away of his allowance, the gnawing dissatisfaction of an evening's bleak anticipation. His stomach rebelled at the heavy burden imposed on it during the day and it groaned its depletion in the evenings. His metabolism refused to adjust to this unfair new distribution of fuel and he was miserable with discomfort.

"I can't sleep on an empty stomach", he told her after two days.

"Too bad", she responded with obvious satisfaction. Having sacrificed his oral needs and pleasures to his sexually-obsessed determination, denied him one sensuous pleasure after the other, she scented vindication.

"What's the use if I can't tell someone?" Hans snapped.

"Look, keep it to yourself. I just don't want to hear about it", Curtis objected. Useless, though. Hans described with minute relish his surreptitious rummaging about in their father's night-table paraphernalia; the locating of the condoms, the careful pinpricks and conscientious replacing of every last object in the position in which they were discovered.

And they waited.

When their mother's bluffly red-brick colour took on a pasty cast, when she complained of nausea, they locked eyes, one with mild trepidation, the other amusedly triumphant, to the thickening of her form. But they were precipitate; they were destined to be disappointed, as the doctor diagnosed it as nothing but an iron-deficient condition that medication would alleviate. The sterile psyche was lodged in an inert casing whose ovum passed listlessly on a red tide, never to be fecundated by their father's impotently seeking fishlets.

And not long after the sex-cartoon episode, Father discovered Curtis pleasurably passing the time in mild flirtation and badminton across the back fence with a neighbouring girl. Painfully shy, jealous of his brother's assured manner and good looks, hating the spare meanness of his own physique and lean face so closely resembling his father's, Curtis had been overjoyed at this minor success, this casually bantering exchange and sport-fun with the girl.

Although nothing was said later directly about the lapse - the lazing about in the sun - a series of odd 'little jobs', as Father called them, such as scraping recalcitrant paint off outside window-frames and painting them in that same gangrenous green; cleaning out the impolite accumulation cluttering the cellar; and patching the hugely growing gaps in the cement of the garage floor - arduously mixing new cement and trowelling it on, were assigned to Curtis.

Much after, tired and foul-tempered, longing now for the few days to pass when they would be at the farm where the work load was no more palatable, but the pretense of a happily engaged familial environment could be dispensed with, Curtis ruminated on the therapeutic value of revenge. Hans had done it, got away with it, why not him?

Rising out of bed two nights running, ducking threatening sounds in the night-settling house, he made his dark way to the bathroom, groping along the walls to pluck his father's dentures out of the glass tumbler they gleamed within, and pissed on them, holding them carefully over the toilet bowl. Serves him right, he told himself; angry for succumbing to the juvenile trick; for leaving them in the bathroom where we all have to look at the damn things. He'd always hated seeing them there, sneering, as if there was to be no privacy in the loo either. The teeth appeared distorted, hugely grinning in the water-filled glass, contortions they never assumed when Father wore them.

Revolting things, they seemed to wink conspiratorially at Curtis, as though he and they shared a private little joke.

c. 1978 Rita Rosenfeld