The glass jars

She took him down to the cellar, where she kept her unusual collection
August 19, 1998

Let me show you something," she said, rising from her armchair and smiling a little knowingly. "Since we're talking of collections... I think mine is probably unique."

He raised an eyebrow; "You? You have a collection? I didn't know you were interested in collecting things."

'"Well, I'm not really. You can't exactly call my collection a collection of 'things.'"

"I'm intrigued," he said, sipping the last drops of his tea. It felt a little strange, being back in this house after so many months of absence. He stood up, adjusting the creases on his trousers. "So what exactly is it that you collect?"

She smiled demurely. He had always loved that smile; it concealed so much innocent wickedness, so much naughty humour. In fact he had always loved everything about her; her very white skin, her perfectly black hair that caught the light and shone even in the dark; her slim calves, her modest but impertinent breasts, and the way that her hips moved when she walked. He thought of her as a woman who would always be untouched, pristine, whatever she did and whatever happened to her. For some time now he had loved her like a sister, or perhaps as one loves a person whom one no longer has to touch, since the proximity of her loveliness has become enough.

"Come this way," she said, '"I keep them in a big cupboard in the cellar." Outside in the hallway, she pressed a light switch and tugged open an uncooperative door under the side of the staircase. The steps downward were scuffed and bare, but solid. The bricks were distempered, and dirty strands of spiders' webs floated in the draught.

He shivered in the unheated and slightly damp atmosphere as he descended, but was comforted by the typical smell of cellars. There were old rolls of carpet, things waiting to be mended, things left by previous occupants of the house, miscellaneous empty bottles and a pile of logs. Against one wall was an impressive rack of wine bottles. "Yum yum," he said, surveying them, and pulling out a bottle or two in order to see what they were.

"My husband's," she smiled, "touch them at your peril. They're probably too sacred to drink. We don't actually seem to drink anything except what we get at the off-licence."

"How is your husband?" he asked.

"Busy," she replied, "as usual. And, as usual, he's off somewhere on business."

"Where's your collection, then?"

"I'll show you. Patience is a virtue, remember?"

She took his elbow, and he was touched by the natural intimacy of the gesture. He greatly enjoyed the evenness of their feelings for each other these days.

She drew him towards a very large but tattered cupboard which stood against the far wall, tilted back a little by means of small wedges forced beneath its front feet, so that it could not fall forwards on account of the irregular level of the floor. It was not a deep cupboard at all.

She turned a small key of the kind that usually gets lost and turns up generations later, only to be put in a drawer that contains dozens of other such forlorn, rusty, unemployable, and homeless keys. She pulled the doors open and he realised that the cupboard was rather like a set of bookshelves that had simply been provided with a means of concealing the contents. He imagined a Victorian paterfamilias locking away his collection of penny dreadfuls and novellas detailing the exploits of sapphic nuns in France.

"Pretty, isn't it?" she asked, indicating with a sweep of her hand the rows of small glass jars, with their exuberant rainbow-coloured contents.

"Where did you get them all?" he asked, puzzled and a little taken aback.

"Oh, the jars are what my sun-dried tomato pat? comes in. From the deli. You know I always get through tons of it because of having pasta for lunch every day."

"I remember the pasta," he replied. "No, I was wondering what was actually in the jars."

"My orgasms," she said, smiling that demure smile once again.

"Your orgasms?" he repeated, startled.

"Yes. Well, it seems such a shame to have so many, and then just forget about them altogether, doesn't it? I mean, when you're having one you feel as if you're immortal. You think there's nowhere else you'd rather be, and nothing else you'd rather be doing, and then later on you just forget about nearly all of them. It seems such a shame to lose the memory of so much bliss, so I put mine in jars, and keep them down here."

"That's pretty unusual," he said, with a laugh in his voice, "I've never heard of an orgasm collection before. You always were one of God's originals. What does your old man think about it?"

She smiled, "Well, you know him, he's a bit stuffy in his own way. I haven't told him exactly what they are. He thinks I've got this strange hobby of mixing bright-coloured paints and pouring them into jars."

"They remind me of those jars of multi-coloured sands," he said, "you know, when you've got layers in different colours, and sometimes even pictures. I got one from the Isle of Wight when I was a little boy. These are much more vivid, though, much more joyful."

"I have some vivid orgasms," she said happily.

"I remember," he said, his voice a little sad.

"Don't," she said, touching his arm again, and looking up into his face with a pleading expression.

"How do you know which is which?" he asked, "I mean, there's not much point collecting them like this unless you know which is which."

"I put the date on the lid," she said, taking one down and pointing to the markings on the lid of a particularly bright jar, "and I have a code."

"That looks like Greek writing," he said, frowning, attempting to decipher the information that she had written there with a fine black marker-pen.

"It's Russian," she corrected him, "you know... Cyrillic. I studied it once." She took the jar from him and scrutinised her code. She brandished it, smiling with warm remembrance. "This one was on holiday in Tunisia a couple of years ago."

"Why are some of them very bright and cheerful, and some of them just a dull brown?" he asked.

"Oh," she replied, "I decided to keep the fake ones too."

"The fake ones?" he repeated, somewhat shocked, "you keep the fake ones?"

"Well, why not? Interests of balance and so on. I thought it would be fun." She looked up at him, amusement shining in her face.

"I didn't know you did fake ones," he said. He scanned the rows of jars, and noticed that the fakes mostly seemed to come in groups, as if she had hit dull patches from which she had later emerged, springing happily back into the light.

"Don't be so na?ve," she said cajolingly, her voice full of playful reproach, "obviously I fake one now and then. We all do. All my friends do, anyway." She caught his look of alarm, "Don't be so shocked. Sometimes you're just too tired, or you've got something on your mind, or you don't feel too horny, or you don't fancy the bloke at that moment, or you feel sorry for the poor fellow because he's been going on for hours and hours and you want to reward him for his efforts. It's just good manners, really. Sometimes you can be especially nice by pretending to come at the same time as he does; it makes him feel great."

He was still shocked; "You're so cynical. Honestly, it's the worst thing you can do to a man. Anyway, a man can always tell."

"I'm not cynical, I'm just considerate. And a man can't tell, I can assure you. Believe me."

Suddenly he had an appalling thought. Rapidly, compulsively, he picked up one jar after another, reading the dates from the lids, his heart thumping, a light perspiration breaking out on his temples and his upper lip.

"Don't," she said, "please don't." She put a restraining hand above his, but he shook it away, continuing to rifle through the jars.

His hand paused above a significant group of jars whose contents were all of the same murky brown colour, a kind of dismal khaki. "Don't," she repeated, "please don't." One after the other he read the dates.

He hung his head and closed his eyes. A great anger and disappointment seized him, rising from the abdomen to the throat. His mouth screwed itself up like that of an injured child, and he tried to speak, but was strangled by the emotions whelming up in his breast. He threw his head back and a tear ran down each cheek. He put his left hand to his forehead and wept silently.

"Don't take it so badly," she said softly, her long, cool, elegant fingers lightly caressing his cheek.