“Don’t talk.”
“Yes I will. I’m your girl Catherine and I love you please I love you always always always—”
“You don’t have to keep saying it. I can tell.”
“I like to say it and I have to say it and I’ve been a fine girl and a good girl and I will again. I promise I will again.
“You don’t have to say it.
“Oh yes I do. I say it and I said it and you said it. You now please. Please you.
They lay quiet for a long time and she said, “I love you so much and you’re such a good husband.”
“You blessed.” ‘Was I what you wanted?” “What do you think?” “I hope I was.” “You were.”
“I promised truly and I will and I’ll keep it. Now can I be a boy again?”
“Why?”
“Just for a little while.”
“Why?”
“I loved it and I don’t miss it but I’d like to be again in bed at night if it isn’t bad for you. Can I be again? If it’s not bad for you?”
“The hell with if it’s bad for me.”
“Then can I?”
“Do you really want to?”
He had kept from saying have to so she said, “I don’t have to but please if it’s all right. Can I please?”
“All right.” He kissed her and held her to him.
“Nobody can tell which way I am but us. I’ll only be a boy at night and won’t embarrass you. Don’t worry about it please.”
“All right, boy.”
“I lied when I said I didn’t have to. It came so suddenly today.” He shut his eyes and did not think and she kissed him and it had gone further now and he could tell and feel the desperateness.
“Now you change. Please. Don’t make me change you. Must I? All right I will. You’re changed now. You are. You did it too. You are. You did it too. I did it to you but you did it. Yes you did. You’re my sweet dearest darling Catherine. You’re my sweet my lovely Catherine. You’re my girl my dearest only girl. Oh thank you thank you my girl—”
She lay there a long time and he thought that she had gone to sleep. Then she moved away very slowly lifting herself lightly on her elbows and said, “I have a wonderful surprise for myself for tomorrow. I’m going to the Prado in the morning and see all the pictures as a boy.”
“I give up,” David said.
Chapter Seven
IN ThE MORNING he got up while she was still sleeping and went out into the bright early morning freshness of the high plateau air. He walked in the street up the hill to the Plaza Santa Ana and had breakfast at a cafe and read the local papers. Catherine had wanted to be at the Prado at ten when it opened and before he left he had set the alarm to wake her at nine. Outside on the street, walking up the hill he had thought of her sleeping, the beautiful rumpled head that looked like an ancient coin lying against the white sheet, the pillow pushed away, the upper sheet showing the curves of her body. It lasted a month, he thought, or almost. And the other time from le Grau du Roi to Hendaye was two months. No, less, because she started thinking of it in Nimes. It wasn’t two months. We’ve been married three months and two weeks and I hope I make her happy always but in this I do not think anybody can take care of anybody. It’s enough to stay in it. The difference is that she asked this time, he told himself. She did ask.
When he had read the papers and then paid for his breakfast and walked out into the heat that had come back to the plateau
when the wind had changed, he made his way to the cool, formal, sad politeness of the bank, where he found mail that had been forwarded from Paris. He opened and read mail while he waited through the lengthy, many-windowed formalities of cashing a draft which had been sent from his bank to this, their Madrid correspondent.