Rituals by Cees Nooteboom Page A

her and stroked the back of his neck. With a voice that came from beside his face, she told him about her life. She still had her father and mother, and she had been to domestic science school, and she had eight brothers and sisters, and she preferred to work for his aunt rather than at the factory, and her fiancé was a volunteer in Korea, and when he came back in two weeks' time, they were going to get married.
    Then she turned around, a girl transformed into a cloud of infinite tenderness. He was no longer able to see what she was doing, but he could feel how she ran cool fingers over his belly, a trail followed by equally cool lips, continually interrupted by tiny, warm licks of her tongue. He raised his head to look at her. She was lying half on top of him. Of her head he saw only the mass of dark hair. Her right hand, the hand that an hour earlier had placed a dish of ham before Arnold Taads, stood firmly braced among the moss and the dead, softly crackling beech leaves. For the first time he felt that blend of love, longing, and emotion for which he would from now on have to search all his life. Her head moved gently. He had a feeling as though he were being drunk from, and then he no longer had any feeling or thought. He saw only the black hair and the firm hand in the moss, detached from everything. And then he spilled out into her mouth, at the same time suddenly grabbing her hair and, as she said later, hurting her.
    For a while they lay without moving. Then she raised her head and, still with that hand as a pivot, swung a quarter turn towards him. In her eyes there was still a trace of mockery, but mingled now with triumph and tenderness. She smiled, opened her mouth briefly so that he saw his white seed on her pink tongue, rolled her eyes as though imitating a film star, and swallowed. Then she turned around altogether, stretched herself headlong on top of him, kissed him full on the mouth, and said, "Come on, let's go."
    They walked back in silence. By the first houses of the village she asked him if he would go home a little after her. Leaning against a wall, he watched her as she slowly, rockingly, walked away from him, not looking back once. When he arrived home, he did not see her anywhere.
    *       *
    Dinner was a greater catastrophe than lunch. The uncle who had hitherto existed only in name had become flesh and was sitting at the head of the table, wrapped in massive drunkenness. Taads looked with disdain at the army of crystal wine glasses by his plate, and Inni's aunt was in such a state of agitation that Inni feared she would not last the evening. The fourth man at the table was addressed as Reverend Uncle by the uncle. He was wearing a purple sash, purple buttons on his cassock, and a purple skull cap. "Monsignor Terruwe is private chamberlain to the Pope," his aunt had told him, but he had had no idea how to imagine such a person. The man had a long, exceedingly white face with mud-coloured eyes. He was a professor at the theological academy in Rome. During grace before the meal, which he said in a slow and rasping voice, Inni saw him looking at Taads, who had not crossed himself, as if he were setting eyes on a rare reptile for the first time.
    The hors d'oeuvre consisted of calf's tongue in a green sauce. His aunt tinkled a little bell. His heart pounded. The girl entered. Her gait had something of a dance, and he noticed that the priest followed her all around the room with his eyes. When she bent forward to pour out the wine, they both saw the high start of her breasts. Their eyes met, and the priest cast his down. Inni hoped she would look at him, that the mockery of those green eyes would briefly flutter over him in confirmation of what had happened that afternoon — that he and no one else had caressed those now concealed breasts at which the mud-coloured eyes were looking so covetously. But nothing happened. She filled his glass last, that same small, strong hand holding the bottle of