cloak, where they were about her throat, and, moving his hands apart, drew them to the side. She put down her head and turned it to the left. She was not now in the dramatic, sensuous, so revealing, so provocative pleasure silks of the preceding evening, but in a brown work dress, simple, plain, coarsely woven, which came to a bit above her knees. In it, she would doubtless address herself to numerous domestic labors, cooking, cleaning, laundering, and such, shared with her fellow contractees in the zard’s establishment. Brenner had no doubt that women under contract, on the whole, particularly in an establishment such as the zard’s, would be well worked. Then in the late afternoon and early evening they could transform themselves into compliant, perfumed objects of desire. Even in the brown garb Brenner found her attractive, the contrast of it against her flesh at the neckline, and the way in which the turns of her delicious body were hinted at, and not at all obscurely, within that coarse cloth’s confines.
“Please, not before them,” she said.
Brenner smiled to himself. What interest could the Pons have in such a thing? To them would she not be merely a piece of meat, and merely meat, meaningless meat, and not meat in the sense in which slavers, or brutal, lusting men, might laughingly, in rude humor, use such an expression of, say, women chained naked in markets or lying helpless, stripped and collared, at their feet. To be sure, they might appreciate that Brenner might see her with desire, that he, as she was a female of his species, might find her of interest. The Pons, to be sure, were looking upon her. On the other hand, they seemed to look upon many things with curiosity, with inquisitiveness and wonder. They seemed a simple folk. It amused Brenner that she would feel shy before them. On the other hand, he supposed she, and other women, might feel that way, just as they might feel that way before children. They might be embarrassed to be revealed before them. It might not seem fitting to them. After all, it is not to children, nor to Pons, that such as they belong.
Brenner did not close her cloak.
“I thought last night that you were bold,” she smiled. “I see now that I was not mistaken.”
Brenner drew shut her cloak, and she held it together, about her throat.
They looked into one another’s eyes.
The Pons, Rodriguez, the opened gates, the operator, the light, green on the summit of the tower, might not have existed.
“I’m sorry,” said Brenner.
“Do not be sorry,” she said.
“About last night,” he said.
“Never be sorry!” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Because you did what you wanted?” she asked.
Brenner was silent.
“Why should you not do what you want?” she asked. “Why should you always do what others want?”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Because you did not do what some anonymous, impersonal other wanted? Because, perhaps for the first time, you behaved in accordance with your real self, not some false self, one imposed upon you from the outside, one taught to you as your own?”
Brenner was silent.
“Can you not see that one generation perpetuates its tortures upon the next, and that that is part of the torture, that the next, too, must be tortured?”
“It is hard to know how to live,” said Brenner.
“I do not think it is so hard,” she said. “Cannot you listen to your heart, to your blood?”
“There is reason,” said Brenner.
“Reason is empty in itself,” she said. “It is an instrument, a tool. It can be put to many uses.”
Brenner was angry.
“It can be used as readily to thwart life as fulfill it, as readily in the defense of pathology as in the pursuit of health. Do not confuse its employment in the service of negativity with its own nature. Reason is a compass. At your disposal it places paths to an infinity of possible destinations. It itself does not tell you on which path to embark. It in itself cannot decide your direction. That you must decide yourself.”
“Some things are more reasonable than others,” said Brenner.
“Surely,” she said, “with respect to given ends. If you wish to frustrate, starve, and deny yourself, then it is reasonable to behave in one fashion. If you wish to fulfill yourself it is reasonable to behave in another fashion.”
Brenner did not respond to her.
Surely he had thought such thoughts often enough to himself. Indeed, he was weary of advocating and defending positions which had come to seem