The single bulb burned at the end of a cord, shaded by a magazine page pinned about it and already turned brown from the heat.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all right.” She didn’t answer nor move.
He thought of the darkness outside, the night in which they had been alone before. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Go?” she said.
Then he looked at her. “Go where?” she said.
“What for?” Still he did not understand her.
He watched her come to the bureau and set the box of candy upon it.
While he watched, she began to take her clothes off, ripping them off and flinging them down.
He said,
“Here?
In here?” It was the first time he had ever seen a naked woman, though he had been her lover for a month.
But even then he did not even know that he had not known what to expect to see.
That night they talked.
They lay in the bed, in the dark, talking.
Or he talked, that is.
All the time he was thinking,
‘Jesus.
Jesus.
So this is it.
He lay naked too, beside her, touching her with his hand and talking about her.
Not about where she had come from and what she had even done, but about her body as if no one had ever done this before, with her or with anyone else.
It was as if with speech he were learning about women’s bodies, with the curiosity of a child.
She told him about the sickness of the first night.
It did not shock him now.
Like the nakedness and the physical shape, it was like something which had never happened or existed before.
So he told her in turn what he knew to tell.
He told about the negro girl in the mill shed on that afternoon three years ago.
He told her quietly and peacefully, lying beside her, touching her.
Perhaps he could not even have said if she listened or not.
Then he said,
‘You noticed my skin, my hair,” waiting for her to answer, his hand slow on her body.
She whispered also.
“Yes.
I thought maybe you were a foreigner.
That you never come from around here.”
“It’s different from that, even.
More than just a foreigner.
You can’t guess.”
“What?
How more different?”
“Guess.”
Their voices were quiet.
It was still, quiet; night now known, not to be desired, pined for.
“I can’t.
What are you?”
His hand was slow and quiet on her invisible flank.
He did not answer at once.
It was not as if he were tantalising her.
It was as if he just had not thought to speak on.
She asked him again.