'Now,' said Birkin, 'I will show you what I learned, and what I
remember. You let me take you so--' And his hands closed on the naked
body of the other man. In another moment, he had Gerald swung over
lightly and balanced against his knee, head downwards. Relaxed, Gerald
sprang to his feet with eyes glittering.
'That's smart,' he said. 'Now try again.' So the two men began to struggle together. They were very dissimilar.
Birkin was tall and narrow, his bones were very thin and fine. Gerald
was much heavier and more plastic. His bones were strong and round, his
limbs were rounded, all his contours were beautifully and fully
moulded. He seemed to stand with a proper, rich weight on the face of
the earth, whilst Birkin seemed to have the centre of gravitation in
his own middle. And Gerald had a rich, frictional kind of strength,
rather mechanical, but sudden and invincible, whereas Birkin was
abstract as to be almost intangible. He impinged invisibly upon the
other man, scarcely seeming to touch him, like a garment, and then
suddenly piercing in a tense fine grip that seemed to penetrate into
the very quick of Gerald's being.
They stopped, they discussed methods, they practised grips and throws,
they became accustomed to each other, to each other's rhythm, they got
a kind of mutual physical understanding. And then again they had a real
struggle. They seemed to drive their white flesh deeper and deeper
against each other, as if they would break into a oneness. Birkin had a
great subtle energy, that would press upon the other man with an
uncanny force, weigh him like a spell put upon him. Then it would pass,
and Gerald would heave free, with white, heaving, dazzling movements.
So the two men entwined and wrestled with each other, working nearer
and nearer. Both were white and clear, but Gerald flushed smart red
where he was touched, and Birkin remained white and tense. He seemed to
penetrate into Gerald's more solid, more diffuse bulk, to interfuse his
body through the body of the other, as if to bring it subtly into
subjection, always seizing with some rapid necromantic fore-knowledge
every motion of the other flesh, converting and counteracting it,
playing upon the limbs and trunk of Gerald like some hard wind. It was
as if Birkin's whole physical intelligence interpenetrated into
Gerald's body, as if his fine, sublimated energy entered into the flesh
of the fuller man, like some potency, casting a fine net, a prison,
through the muscles into the very depths of Gerald's physical being.
So they wrestled swiftly, rapturously, intent and mindless at last, two
essential white figures working into a tighter closer oneness of
struggle, with a strange, octopus-like knotting and flashing of limbs
in the subdued light of the room; a tense white knot of flesh gripped
in silence between the walls of old brown books. Now and again came a
sharp gasp of breath, or a sound like a sigh, then the rapid thudding
of movement on the thickly-carpeted floor, then the strange sound of
flesh escaping under flesh. Often, in the white interlaced knot of
violent living being that swayed silently, there was no head to be
seen, only the swift, tight limbs, the solid white backs, the physical
junction of two bodies clinched into oneness. Then would appear the
gleaming, ruffled head of Gerald, as the struggle changed, then for a
moment the dun-coloured, shadow-like head of the other man would lift
up from the conflict, the eyes wide and dreadful and sightless.