"I was with Al. I told you. It was his scene, not mine."
She had lost her hold and was falling. She scarcely knew how she had slipped, or who had stamped on her fingers. Perhaps she had just grown tired and let go. Perhaps she had wanted to all along.
"And how often would you say you indulged yourself in this fashion, Charlie? Talking hot air. Smoking hash. Participating in free love innocently while others engaged in terrorist training? You speak as if it was a habitual thing. Correct? Habitual?"
"No, it is not habitual! It's over, and I did not indulge myself!"
"Want to say how frequent?"
"It wasn't frequent either!"
"How often?"
"A couple of times. That's all. Then I got cold feet."
Falling and spinning, and the dark getting darker. The air all round her but not touching her.
Joseph, get me out of this! But Joseph had got her into it. She listened for him, sent messages to him with the back of her head. But she received nothing in return.
Kurtz looked straight at her and she looked straight back.
She'd have looked clean through him if she could, she'd have blinded him with her defiant glower.
"A couple of times," he repeated thoughtfully. "Right, Mike?"
Litvak glanced up from his notes. "A couple," he echoed.
"Want to say why you got cold feet?" Kurtz asked.
Without allowing his gaze to leave her face, he reached for Litvak's folder.
"It was a rough scene," she said, dropping her voice for effect.
"It sounds it," said Kurtz, opening the folder.
"I don't mean politically. I mean the sex. It was more than I wanted to handle. Don't be so obtuse."
Kurtz licked his thumb and turned a page, he licked his thumb and turned another page; he muttered something to Litvak, who breathed a couple of words in return, and they were not in English. He closed the buff folder and slipped it into the briefcase. " ‘A couple of times. That's all. Then I got cold feet,' ‘ he intoned thoughtfully. "Want to revise that statement at all?"
"Why should I?"
" ‘A couple of times.' That correct?"
"Why shouldn't it be?"
"A couple is two. Right?"
Above her, the light wavered, or was it her mind? She turned deliberately in her chair. Joseph was bowed over his desk lamp, too busy even to look up. She turned back and found Kurtz still waiting.
"Two or three," she said. "What the hell?"
"Four? Is a couple four as well?"
"Oh, get lost!"
"I guess it's a matter of linguistics. ‘I visited my aunt a couple of times last year.' Well, that could be three, couldn't it? Four is possible. Five, I guess, five is around the limit. With five it's ‘half a dozen.' " He continued slowly shuffling through his papers. "Want to revise ‘couple,' make it ‘half a dozen,' Charlie?"
"I said a couple and I mean a couple."
"Two?"
"Yes, two!"
"Two then. ‘Yes, I have been to this forum on two occasions only. Others may have engaged in warlike practices but my interests were sexual, recreational, and social. Amen.' Signed Charlie. Want to put a date on the two visits?"
She gave a date last year, soon after she and Al had got together.
"And the other one?"
"I forget. What does it matter?"
"She forgets." His voice had slowed almost to a halt, yet lost none of its power. She had an image of it lumbering towards her like an ungainly animal. "Did the second time come soon after the first time, or was there a gap between the two occasions?"
"I don't know."
"She doesn't know. Your first weekend was an introductory course for novices. Correct?"
"Yes."
"What were you introduced to?"
"I told you--group sex."
"No discussions, no seminars, no instruction?"
"We had discussions, yes."
"On what subjects, please?"
"Basic principles."
"Of what?"
"Of radicalism, what do you think?"
"Remember who addressed you?"
"A spotty lesbian on Women's Lib. A Scotsman on Cuba, someone Al admired."
"And the next occasion--date forgotten, the second and last--who addressed you that time?"
No answer.
"Forgotten that as well?"
"Yes!"
"That's unusual, isn't it? That you remember the first occasion intimately--the sex, the topics of discussion, the tutors. And the second not at all?"
"After staying up all night answering your crazy questions--no, it's not!"
"Where are you going?" Kurtz asked. "You want the bathroom? Rachel, take Charlie to the bathroom. Rose."
She was standing. From the shadows she heard soft feet approaching her.
"I'm leaving. Exercising my options. I want out. Now."
"Your options will be exercised at specific stages, and only when we invite you. If you forget who addressed you at this second seminar you attended, then perhaps you will tell me at least the nature of the course."
She was still standing, and somehow being upright made her smaller. She glanced round and saw Joseph, head in hand, his face turned away from the lamplight. To her frightened eye, he seemed to be suspended in a kind of middle city, between her world and his. But wherever she looked, Kurtz's voice kept filling her head and deafening the people inside it. She put her hands on the table, she leaned forward; she was in a strange church without friends to advise her; not knowing whether to stand or kneel. But Kurtz's voice was everywhere and it wouldn't have mattered whether she had lain on the ground or flown out through the stained-glass window and a hundred miles away, nowhere was safe from its dinning intrusion. She took her hands off the table and put them behind her back, holding them tight because she was losing control of her gestures. Hands matter, hands speak. Hands act. She felt them comfort each other like terrified children. Kurtz was asking her about a resolution.
"Did you not sign it, Charlie?"
"I don't know!"
"But, Charlie, there is always a resolution passed at the termination of a session. There is discussion. There is a resolution. What was the resolution? You trying seriously to tell me you don't know what it was, you don't know whether you signed it even? Might you have refused to sign it?"
"No."
"Charlie, be reasonable. How can a person of your much underrated intelligence forget such a thing as a formal resolution at the end of a three-day seminar? A thing which you draft and redraft--and vote about--and pass and don't pass--sign and don't sign? How do you do that? A resolution, that's a whole laborious series of incidents, for goodness' sake. Why are you so vague suddenly, when you are capable of such fine precision on other matters?"
She didn't care. She cared so damn little she couldn't be bothered to tell him she didn't care. She was tired to death. She wanted to sit again but she was stuck standing. She wanted an interval and a pee and time to fix her make-up, and five years' sleep. Nothing but a leftover sense of theatrical proprieties told her she must stand and see it through.
Below her, Kurtz had dug himself out a fresh piece of paper from the briefcase. Having worried over it, he decided to address himself to Litvak. "She said two occasions, right?"
"Two was maximum," Litvak agreed. "You gave her every chance to raise the bidding but she stuck at two."
"And what do we make it?"
"Five."
"So where does she get two from?"
"She's understating," Litvak explained, contriving to look even more disappointed than his companion. "She's understating by like two hundred per cent."
"Then she's lying," said Kurtz, slow to accept the inference.
"She sure is," said Litvak.
"I didn't lie! I forgot! It was Al! I went for Al's sake, that's all!"
Among the gunmetal pens in the top pocket of his bush jacket, Kurtz kept a khaki handkerchief. Taking it out, he now passed it in an odd dusting motion over his face, ending with his mouth. Then he put it back in his pocket. Then he moved his watch again, from left to right in a private piece of ritual.
"You want to sit down?"
"No."