It was the third movement of the symphony and as I took in the music, I looked at her through half closed eyes. She sat on the couch, her face seeming to reflect the mood the mood of the music.
The first and second movements of the symphony draw the listener ever more deeply into the darkness of the human condition. The pain and suffering, our greed and self-indulgence, then the third movement plunges still deeper, drawing us into the horrors, the torture chamber of the tyrant, concentration camps, the casual carelessness of nature’s despoilers, war and its useless destruction. Ever deeper into the dark corners of the subconscious it leads the listener on.
The bass strings sank growling into miasmic gloom. Her enigmatic face, partially shielded by her black hair, melancholy as she absorbed the sombre phrases, sadly reflective and combining with that sadness an odd look of yearning.
I continued to watch her. One would not call her beautiful or pretty. Her looks were something less and something more than that. They were uniquely her own; not to be compared to the standards set by advertisers or television soaps. Her black hair, dark eyes, bronze complexion and her slender physique gave her a mysterious yet sensuous look.
If an artist wanted a model for an enchantress, she would be ideal. I saw her in that moment as a weaver of spells, the creator of love potions. This she conveyed to me sitting in tranquil sadness, letting the music carve her mood.
Then the fourth and final movement burst forth.
From the brass a paean of triumph, followed by the strings taking up the theme in a hymn of praise, then the whole orchestra proclaiming the victory of the human spirit over suffering and adversity. Despite all, we shall prevail!
I looked up at her again and the new, victorious mood had taken over. Seeing me looking at her she gave me that beguiling yet ambiguous smile of hers, displaying white even teeth. Within that smile, there was a hint of danger. It made me think of a huntress as she detects her prey. I returned her smile in no way disconcerted by that which others found slightly disturbing about her. I had, after all, known her since birth, she being my mother.
If, as I have said, she might not be described as beautiful, this had not stopped men seeking her, supplicating for her slightest attention, imploring her to join them in everything from a one night stand to marriage. The story is that on the way back from my father’s funeral she had received her first proposition. She had disallowed them all.
To reverse my metaphor of the huntress, I sometimes think it was a sort of animal grace that attracted men to her. Perhaps like the tigress, beautiful in its lissome movements, yet dangerous, she must have presented a challenge to her male admirers, as those who hunt the real tiger pit themselves against it.
From my youthful observations of the male maneuvers around her, it seemed that she was a sexual rampart to be stormed, and before which all fell in the attempt. Yet still the hopefuls came. Her magic drew them to her, only to be sent away disappointed or even angry at being repulsed.
Some women, noting her resistance to men, decided that her sexual orientation was more in their direction. They too were repulsed from sexual fortress Salome, some departing in tears.
Mother seemed to have the sexual allure of the girl whose name she bore, who was rewarded by Herod with the head of John the Baptist for her “Dance of the Seven Veils.”
In all the years after my father’s death, I never saw any signs of a sexual relationship between mother and a man – or woman for that matter. Men visited our house or were met at social gatherings elsewhere, but none became my stepfather or temporary “uncle.” If there was any sexual relationship, it was kept very concealed from a jealous young boy resentful of any man who might win his beloved mother’s affections.
Why mother kept herself so chaste, I knew no better than those who came in pursuit of her. I can recall no signs that she was unfulfilled. She had no difficulty in talking to me about sex, emphasising its beauty and the bond it built between a man and woman. I gathered from the way she spoke, that the sexual relationship with my father must have been a deeply satisfying one.
So, as I approached adulthood, and having my own sexual needs to wrestle with, I puzzled over why a woman, still sexually in her prime, and clearly desirable, had no lover or lovers.
Perhaps it was a case of the “pot calling the kettle black”? Unusual for our times, at eighteen I was still a virgin. I of course knew that most of my university acquaintances, both male and female, engaged in plenty of promiscuous sex.
I didn’t seem to lack opportunities, and certainly, I had my sexual needs, but one night stands or scuffles on the back seat of a car did not seem to appeal. Perhaps I was greedy and wanted something more? If some people would like to have said to mother, “Get thee to a nunnery,” they might equally have said to me, “Get thee to a monastery.”
The symphony was drawing to its triumphal close. It is odd, but this sort of music can have a sexually teasing effect on me, and now I could feel a tingling in my groin. At the end of the work mother rose and came across to where I was sitting. Leaning over me she said, “I shall go to bed now, darling.”
As so often before, as she came close I detected her aroma. It is not the aroma of perfume or deodorant, but that of woman, sweet and tantalizing. She kissed me and as she did so the top of her dress fell open slightly to give me a vision of unrestrained breasts, firm and pink nippled, like those of a young girl. Her lips on mine were soft and moist, seeming to engulf mine with tenderness.
“Goodnight, Matthew. Sleep well and dream beautiful dreams.” Then she quietly left the room.
Her alchemy worked on me as well. The Sorceress had me under her spell. With my olfactory memory still relishing my mother’s aroma, and the finale of the music exulting in my head, I went to my bed.
In the early stages of sleep, when the guardian of the subconscious begins to relax thoughts and desires repressed during waking hours begin to surface. Among the repressed material are our hidden sexual cravings. On this night as I began to drift off, fantasies of nubile maidens, sweet breasted and willing, floated before me. One feature of these phantom images was that they had no faces until suddenly, and seemingly unbidden, one took on the face of mother.
It had happened before a number of times, and on each occasion, my guardian of the depths startled me awake. I woke now, and as before I began to wonder if I was psychologically sick – a moral idiot to conjure such imagery of my mother.
I fought against sleep for a while fearing I might produce the same fantasy, but after a while drifted off and this time passed into deeper sleep where most times dreams are unremembered upon waking.
Tonight, however, I was not to be granted the mercy of unremembered dreams. Having descended to the depths of sleep, a dream more startling, more vivid than I had ever had before brought me back to wakefulness, sweating and shaking.
Mother was naked under me, smiling and saying gently, “It’s time Matthew.” The tip of my penis approached her opening; then, about to enter her, I woke.
I had a fiercely throbbing erection and had to masturbate to relieve the unbearable tension of it, spraying semen over my belly in a great pool. When I finished a wave of self-loathing swept over me. How could I even begin to consider mother in that light? She had never by hint or gesture ever implied a sexual interest in anyone, and certainly not in me.
“Oh God, what sort of an animal am I to desire even in dreams, my own mother?”
I slept poorly for the rest of that night.
Fortunately, I had my university studies to keep me occupied, and for the next week mother and I saw each other only in passing as we went about our work. No more vivid dreams occurred, but I found myself trying to avoid any close contact with mother. It was as if I sensed danger. Perhaps I might in an unguarded moment say or do something that would reveal the thoughts and feelings I strove to repress.
I began something like a process of self-analysis, seeking to understand why I should be experiencing erotic dreams about mother. That I loved her was certain. I refused to escape into denial of my love. Such rejection would be to denigrate all the love and care she had conferred on me from the time I can first remember.
What I wanted to know was how or why my love had started to assume a sexual content. I understood about infantile sexuality, but according to the therapists, it eventually transferred itself to a safe object. Why was this not happening to me? Why did I not accept the suggestions of my girl acquaintances, and bed them?
The answer continued to evade me.
Mother and I had always been very tactile with each other, touching and hugging. I began avoiding this tactility, and mother noticed and was hurt.
I don’t think I was a surrogate for my dead father. I am sure her holding and touching was out of genuine affection for me, and mine certainly was for her.
One evening she asked, “Is something wrong, Matthew?”
“No, why?”
