August wrote his careful letters, the dark ink like tiny windows on the thin paper. “Your words are windows to your soul”, his mother had once said of his letters. August occasionally wrote her still, though these letters were never sealed, never posted. His mother had been dead nearly sixteen years. He was aware that these intermittent refusals to let go were morbid, but it was a morbidity threaded through by a live, brimming surfeit of tenderness. His father, a quiet man and much longer dead, had often spoken to him on the discipline of restraint, with that one unique exception: ‘Words of love ought never to be hoarded.’ And so they musn’t, not even words of love to the dead. August finished the letter to his mother and folded it over, sliding it between the pages of a thick volume, Lou Andres-Salome’s letters to Leonid Pasternak. He began another letter, this one to his grand-nephew David, who would be eight years old in the spring. As he wrote August glanced up now and then through the window nearest his desk. The thick blue curtain was gathered and tied aside with a yellow tassel. The sky, a headache of perfect blue, perfect cold. The approach of winter still left August disarmed with pleasure but he found it increasingly difficult to endure its relentless occupation of the city. More than any other season, winter was the realization of a closed city, the necessity of shelter, the fear of straying too far in the late hours of the day. His grand-nephew’s letter was brief, barely two small pages. There would be more to say in the spring.
He put down his pen and sat still, eyes closed, breathing as though near to sleep. After a moment he rose and went to stand at the window. He looked down from his fifth floor window to the street below. At the far corner across, a woman stood waiting for the bus, stamping her feet every so often, her breath dissipating in the regular blasts from behind her scarf. August moved closer to the window. In spring and summer he would leave the window opened wide, and at night, reading at his desk or watching the television, the fragrance from Mrs. Solomon’s garden boxes would float upwards to him. Daisies, lilies, sometimes orchids. For now, Mrs. Solomon was content with artificial flowers, gaudy and hideous.
The apartment building across the street was similar to the one August lived in. he had observed a higher proportion of Blacks, of young people, of single women of all races who seemed to live there. He often saw them going into the downstairs lobby and minutes later a dark square would be lit, the interior of a kitchen, living room, bedroom. In summer, when everyone’s windows were opened, the building reminded August of his sisters’ dollhouse, the one they called ‘Tallinn’. Less interesting in terms of color, detail, cleanliness, but at least the dolls moved. There was little to watch this morning.
On the floor opposite and one apartment over was the elderly Black gentleman, August’s own age perhaps, whom he often passed in the street on his way to or from the grocery or pharmacy or liquor store. Most evenings the old man sat at his kitchen table wearing white pajamas and a maroon bathrobe, a small radio before him, playing an old and tarnished saxophone. Now he sat smoking a cigarette and staring at the ceiling, a bottle beside him on the table. August looked for the radio. Perhaps it was there on the kitchen counter, behind the yellow toaster. Lower down, near the ground floor, lived the ‘babysitter’. This was a redhaired woman of indeterminate age who appeared to do nothing but watch television. Near her armchair was a dark sleeper sofa upon which August could see four babies, abandoned in their various postures of sleep. The number of babies on a given day fluctuated from three to six, without apparent pattern. Once, August had counted seven. White babies, Black babies, Oriental or Latin babies. He had never seen the woman holding or touching any of them. Nor had he seen their mothers arriving or departing with them. They just appeared. August did not allow himself to speculate.
He sat back down at his desk, pulling a blank sheet towards him. He had one more letter to write: to the editor of one of the two remaining daily newspapers. He had been writing these for over twenty years. They had once appeared on a regular basis but not for some time now. august tried to imagine them arriving on the editor’s, or assistant-editor’s, or sub-deputy-editor’s desk. Young, healthy, artificially cynical faces. “Another one from the old crank, Mel.” “File it with the rest, alright?” World-weary laughter. So they didn’t print his careful letters any longer, probably didn’t even read them, but they couldn’t keep him from writing them. No, but he could. August smiled. Would they notice? The thought made him smile some more.
He went back to the window and began to clean his glasses. Something moved in the window of the apartment directly across from Mrs. Solomon’s place. August replaced his glasses, peering down.
Judy lay on her back, her head hanging over the edge of the bed. Somewhere near the center of the mattress was her boyfriend. Kneeling between her legs, his hands covering her sharp little hipbones, his lips grazing her inner thighs, his tongue lapping in quick darts. There was a long way to go and he was in no haste to arrive. The work of a technician. Judy was naked except for a thin pink top which was crumpled high up around her shoulders, leaving her breasts bare to her boyfriend’s spidery touch, the irregular creeping tenderness of his fingers.
Judy gazed through the window, three feet from her head. From this prospect she could stare with ease at the blue, cloudless, winter skies. In the face of such blue Judy now and then mistook spots in her eyes for birds, thousands of feet above her. But their paths would stutter down bat-like as she blinked, to fade in a still corner of the curtain. Out of sight, her boyfriend stalked her still, soft moist noise not yet pushed to its earnest, businesslike suckling. Turning her head Judy could see along the edge of the bed, the floor, and the frayed not-quite-authentic Kashmiri rug. In one direction the lower shelves of the bookcase, titles turned frenchwise on their brown, blue, and red spines. In the other direction, a corner of the small gas heater, sickly orange flames simmering in a fat round ring, blanching now and then as the heater paused in its deep hissing to fart. The formica counters of the kitchen, dull in the winter light, the cat lying in its nest of old tee-shirts on the kitchen stool, looking up to stare over the bodies of Judy and her boyfriend, looking down to wash its paws. Judy’s knee grazed her boyfriend’s shoulder as he shifted his weight on the mattress. His breath soughed, brief and warm through her damp pubic hair.
Letting her gaze descend from the sky Judy stared through the window at the apartment building across the street. The edge of the roof, 8th story, 7th story, 6th, 5th, 4th. She stared at the window opposite her own. The shade was drawn down, white and clean. A narrow balcony with two small pots of plastic geraniums. Judy was cheered by the colors, despite herself. Her eyes moved to the 5th floor, the window above the geraniums. The shade was up, a dark blue curtain gathered and tied aside with a yellow tassel. There was a something, a shape in the window. It hovered to one side. A face. She closed her eyes, feeling the probe and push of her boyfriend’s stiffened tongue. Her mind hung in the air, still, concentrating. The tongue flicked a nerve and her body jerked lightly. She opened her eyes. The face was still there, white flecked with shadow. A man’s face, bespectacled, bearded, old. Judy strained her eyes towards the old man but it was becoming difficult to divert her attention from the wave flooding her body. She felt her legs give in to a spasm disembodied from the point of ivory of her lover’s methodical tongue. She cried out, lifting her head into the air, the muscles in her neck tensing as she slid her hands through her boyfriend’s hair to grasp him by the ears, holding his head in place, beginning to come. When she could no longer stand it she let her hands go limp alongside his face, her fingers laid against his lips. He pulled back, resting his wet face upon her thighs before raising himself and entering her, more slowly than was necessary, a slight smile parting his lips as he looked down into her half-closed eyes. When he was inside her he lowered himself, grazing his skin lightly back and forth against her breasts. Sliding an arm under her waist he lifted her to him, plunging his face into her hair, his tongue searching out the tender cavity of her ear. Judy opened her eyes and laid her head back, the building through the window wavering wildly as her boyfriend rocked her in his arms. She tried to focus. The face. Still there. Old man watching. Judy wondered what he must see. A young man fucking a young woman. Heraldic copulating youth. Her boyfriend moaned, low and wounded. Judy pressed her face against his shoulder, bucking him as he came, gasping to the finish.
The violent movement subsided. August watched the young man disengage himself from the girl. She turned on her side, knees drawn up to her lover’s waist, her face and dark hair fallen against his. The young man slowly turned his head towards her and then away, his body relaxing, moving in towards sleep. August watched until both bodies were still. Then he drew away, undoing the yellow tassel so that the curtain fell, darkening the room.
The little death, the aftersleep. That was the most remembered thing. Free of burdens, ambitions, illnesses, of the harsh, urgent fever of love itself. Rose, Helene, Minna. A window into memory. As well as something else. But August felt no shame. Rules formed out of habit admitted no shame. Regrets certainly, plenty of regrets but no shame. No harm done where none intended. August put a finger to his forehead, tapped it down along the bridge of his nose. It was true what Julius had said and Julius was even older than him, practically bedridden now. Lechery is the particular domain of old men, the thoughts behind those glassed-in and gentle eyes, if only the world knew! And why Julius’s particular emphasis on the world ‘particular’? An old trick of his, too old indeed to be accounted senility. Julius’s favorite phrase was ‘what do you think?’ precisely because it was a phrase of as many meanings as it had words, depending on the placement of stress. How would Julius have reacted to the scene played out across the way? By throwing back his head, abandoned to laughter at the delight and mystery of the beautiful young, a laughter marked by the sincerity of one who had lived and who had fewer regrets than August.
He knew the girl had almost certainly seen him. Would she tell the young man? No. It would be her secret just as it now was his. August remembered that he must post the letter to young David. A cup of tea first, the day was viciously cold.
When Judy woke up she had rolled away from her boyfriend, lying with her back to him. He slept on his stomach, one hand beneath him, cradling his groin. She sat up, pulling a blanket over him. He slept on, deathlike. She glanced up. the window was still and blue. Empty. Reaching to the floor she lifted her boyfriend’s leather jacket. Keys, address book, pillbox. No cigarettes. Judy dressed slowly, layer of sweater over shirt over tee-shirt. Her jeans were freezing cold, as though recently fished from some pond. Closing the door quietly behind her she descended the stairs towards the lobby, two at a time. Outside, she walked quickly towards the grocery store down at the end of the long block, made longer by the ice of the whipping wind. The display windows were steaming from the overheated interior. Cigarettes, tea, three tins of cat food. Back outside she retraced her steps slowly, fumbling at the cellophane of the cigarette packet. She withdrew one with chill fingers. The wind thwarted her lighter. As she stopped, turning sideways to cup the flame to her cigarette, Judy saw something moving among the river of pedestrians on the opposite sidewalk. The face from the window. As the cigarette caught she sucked hard, her lungs filling, fighting both the ice and the smoke. He seemed to be watching her as he walked along, stepping with the curious grace of the feeble. Did he recognize her? As he came level with her, Judy lifted her cigarette, shrugging her shoulders in a parody of her youth, smiling at the old man across the gleaming surfaces of the speeding cars. He nodded once, his head turned to her, glasses glinting with an instant of caught light. And nodding, walked on.