August Is a Wicked Month by Edna O’Brien Read Free Book Online Page A

crossed over and drew down one strap of her dress so that it fell on her arm. The white sagging top of one breast came into view. Above it was a line of raw pink where she had boiled in the sun that morning in an effort to get a tan for him. He photographed her like that and then with both straps down so that the sag of both breasts was in view and then he brought her dress down around her waist and photographed her naked top. It had been too hot to put on a brassière. From his position, stooped behind the camera, he indicated that she hold one breast, perkily, as if she enjoyed showing it off.
    ‘I’m not well formed,’ she said stupidly, and remembered, stupidly again, that breasts ought to be the shape of champagne glasses. Then she asked him to talk. Desire had snapped since the previous night, and she thought of elastic snapping and the ugly pimply look it got. She felt ugly like that.
    ‘Take your dress…’ and then he frowned. ‘Your name?’ he asked.
    ‘Ellen,’ she said, flatly.
    ‘Ellen,’ he said, and dwelt on it for a second, to please her. ‘Ellen, take your dress right off, show the body,’ he said. He pulled an imaginary dress down the length of his own body.
    ‘I can’t,’ she said, her voice strangled with embarrassment.
    ‘You are a holy woman,’ he said.
    ‘I am not a holy woman,’ she said, although it would have been simpler to say yes.
    ‘I want to talk,’ she said. ‘I want you to tell me about you and where you’re from and who taught you the violin and why you do this.’ She pointed to the camera and then looked for the other camera on the wash-stand. It was a small one with a treacherous little eye. Beside it a bundle of new towels in a Cellophane wrapping. On the Cellophane there was printed an English name. Her eye rested there, as if by looking at the English name she would escape the indignity happening to her.
    ‘A gift,’ he said, ‘from Englishwoman.’
    ‘Nice,’ she said.
    ‘They are nice,’ he said. ‘They are thought to be cold.’ He repeated the word cold as if to confirm its meaning.
    ‘You mean frigid,’ she said, but he didn’t seem to understand.
    ‘The unmarried girls they only want cuddle, no business,’ he said. ‘No juice.’
    ‘No juice,’ she said, and asked about the Englishwoman who had sent him the gift. He said a nice lady she had been, and handsome. Ellen thought of some woman – bound to be in her thirties – going home to her husband with a guarded look, and having to keep the violinist’s address in the toecap of her shoe and have the towels posted directly from the shop. Sadness began to wash over her, and thinking of lying in a sea of sadness she saw the waves as patient, painless and unceasing.
    ‘You are from where ‘she said, seriously trying to get on to another plane of friendship with him. He was from Vienna and had a flat separate from his parents. He had a sweetheart too, who sewed all her own dresses and looked smarter than any of the girls who spent fortunes in shops. He was engaged, and hoped to be married at the end of the summer, which was why he had to save and could not buy spirits for Englishwomen, not even nice Englishwomen.
    ‘And how would you feel if your sweetheart was unfaithful?’ she said trying to stir his conscience so that he would make no scene when she drew her dress up.
    ‘Sad,’ he said. ‘ Très, très sad.’ And she wished that she had never come and the jacket had been something she saw and stroked without knowing its owner.
    ‘We not talk about such things, I think it a little beet un-natural,’ he said.
    ‘Un-natural,’ she said, sitting there with the top of her dress bagging around her middle. She tried to hold her breasts up but the effort was extreme. Then she fanned herself with her silk purse and said,
    ‘You and I will be special friends and not make love.’
    ‘Oh yes, yes.’ He rushed over.
    If she resisted and screamed, would she be heard? Did other rapists occupy