Yes, he lay down next to her, but seemed immediately to retreat. Some kind of trance, a state of practised absence, his body withdrawing into a cool cocoon of a world, no, it was not womb-like, it had no heat, no life. Then she too sank into a coolness, a chaste calm that reduced the indefinable desire (was it desire, was that all it was?) she felt in her stomach, her trembling hands, the frenzied murmur of blood somewhere in the region she supposed was her sexual domain, belly, thighs, groin. God, how trite, how banal it all seemed now.

And yet, that kiss was indelible, a gesture impossible to withdraw. Like Du Boise's penis, an irredeemable act of intrusion. Mikey had saved them from a truly cruel pleasure. If they had made love, there would have been terrible repercussions, unimaginable consequences – but there would also have been energy, even if it was a vile energy, filled with self-loathing and hatred. Now there is only this silence, this utter soundlessness that emanates from Mikey, who insists, when he does speak, upon being called ‘Michael’, an aloof name for an aloof person. It began the moment she shook him: ‘Mikey, Mikey, wake up, you must go to your bed.’ He rose, as if snapping out of a hypnotist's sleep, walked away without saying a word, without blinking, without a gesture of greeting, without a backward glance, as if afraid he would turn into a pillar of salt. She winces at these archetypal images of mortal sin, Sodom and Gomorrah, the biblical condemnations she is calling down on herself, perhaps in order to find forgiveness. Is that not what God and all His religions are there for, to demand repentance and grant forgiveness?

No, it is much worse. Mikey walked away as if nothing had happened. As if she, his mother, had not kissed him carnally, had not asked him into her bed, as if he had not spurned her. She sometimes hopes that he indeed remembers nothing, that the trauma has induced an amnesia in him, thus sparing him the scars of her sexual desire for him.

In her heart, she knows better, knows instinctively that his desire was as strong as hers, that there was pure lust in him, but that they were saved by his arrogance, his wish to test his self-taught ascetic discipline: the ability to withstand even the most exotic temptations. He could so easily have had sex with her just to prove his capacity for the forbidden. She sees in Mikey an enslavement to another, even more puritan God: his will.