Helen And Desire

by Alexander Trocchi

  And so, one night I rose from our bed, rushes covered by a brightly coloured blanket, and made my way through the undergrowth to the dirt road which led to the main road, itself a dusty and ill-hewn highway, to Bombay. I experienced no exultation in my infidelity, but I moved on, nevertheless, and never thought once of returning.

  Chapter Eight

  The room is shuttered and hot. My companion is a girl of no more than fourteen, but in the fourteen days and nights during which we have been confined together she has grown from a slim young girl at the age of puberty into a plump little concubine whose startling whitish flesh, pale as mushrooms against her glossy black hair and the frail silken pubic hairs, hangs in pudgy rolls at her belly and thighs.

  We are being groomed for love.

  We are being fattened on a special enlarging diet of oil and semolina; closeted in obscurity, out of daylight, so that our soft flesh will acquire the oily plump whiteness of asparagus.

  The room is shuttered and hot. We are unable to speak to one another, not knowing each other’s language. For the first few days my companion merely stared at me, her eyes hostile, as though I were some strange and dangerous creature. Gradually, however, she ceased to be my enemy, and on the third day she ventured a shy and timid smile, and then, starved as we were of all other company and in the utter blackness of the fourth night as I lay at full length on the cushions which had been provided for me, I felt a sudden soft movement close at hand and the satin feel of hot flesh close to mine. A thrill of anticipation ran through me and in the comforting dark I cast off all modesty and moved over to meet the soft and tremulous front which was exposed to me. My arms encircled her. Our mouths met, shuddered in connection, and opened their secrets to one another, more furtive and yet more complete from being wordless. Then, in the hot and musky atmosphere, poignant with the nurtured flesh of two young females bred for sex, we closed with one another, wetly, softly, and with low, moaning shudders of fulfilment.

  After that, I was not afraid to continue with my task of recording my adventures. My companion watched during those long days with a quizzical look, and then, when our strange and unappetizing food was brought to us, when she saw me move quickly to conceal the incriminating document, she smiled and nodded her dusky oval head in understanding. One day, when our servant had disappeared after bringing in our bowls of semolina, she went over to where I had hidden my diary, pointed, and put one now-plump finger to her sensual lips. I smiled at her and nodded. At that, she returned to me, slipped her arms about my shoulders, and kissed me passionately on the lips.

  So I know I am safe. And I will write now, because I am anxious to complete my account so that, that done, I can sink into my new self, stripped of civilised refinements, and come to be as she is, my present lover, the plump little olive-skinned animal who, in the orchidaceous atmosphere at night, will fold her thighs about me without fear.

  I had gone some five miles along the main road before dawn, which rose redly over the brackish countryside. I walked as swiftly as I could, still clad in the blue and gold sari which Abdullah had given me. If I looked out of place there on the Bombay road, it was not because I looked like a white woman – I did not – but because my sari was too fine to have belonged to a peasant woman, and my brocaded slippers were not made to be scuffed about on the public road. Had I wished to merge with my background, I should have worn a sari of white cotton perhaps, and my feet should have been naked and stained with dust and mud.

  At the time, however, all this did not occur to me. I hoped soon to be given a lift in an ox-cart and calculated, for Abdullah had informed me that we were 250 miles from Bombay, that with luck I should reach my destination in a fortnight. I was not without money, for I had taken some of the rupees which Abdullah had stolen from the Englishmen he had ambushed seven days before. I remembered with a shudder his gory description of how he had halted them with a cry for alms and how, all unsuspecting, they had fallen victim to his terrible knife. Abdullah was an outlaw, brave and handsome, with a superb brown body on which the muscles rippled like burnished brass, but he did not kill for gain, for the pleasure he could derive from money quickly earned, but from his idealism, for revenge. Such a man, while he might be attractive to some, made little appeal to me, beyond, that is, the obvious beauty of his physique. The most I could feel for him was the kind of indulgent love that a mother feels for a silly and headstrong child.

  As the sun rose over the rustling vegetation I was surprised by the musical horn of a motor car which urged me to move over to the side of the road. I was so surprised that the scarf fell off my head, revealing the flowing locks of my golden hair. At that the car, which had been about to pass, halted, raising dust under its white-walled tyres about five yards behind me. It was a Rolls Royce. The rear door at my side opened and a fat, almost white Indian in a white suit stepped onto the roadway. He regarded me with a smile for a moment and then, approaching me, said:

  ‘You are going far?’

  I smiled at him. ‘As far as Bombay,’ I said.

  ‘My dear lady!’ His plump face broke into a beaming smile. ‘You were going to walk?’

  ‘I have no other means of transport, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Then I insist, madam, that you allow me to drive you there. For that is my destination, and there is plenty of room in the car.’

  ‘With great pleasure,’ I said pleasantly and stepped into the roomy car as he held the door open for me.

  When he had reseated himself, puffing, beside me, he patted me in a fatherly way on my knee and said charmingly:

  ‘I shall not embarrass you, my dear, with questions as to how you came to be in such a predicament, miles even from the nearest village, and in your present attire. You may tell me what you wish, but if you would rather not say anything then I shall be quite content to accept your company for what it is, a gift from the gods!’

  I thanked him with a smile.

  He leaned forward, tapping with his fat knuckles on the glass partition. ‘Drive on, Ahmed,’ he said to the chauffeur.

  When he heard that I had made no arrangements for a hotel, Mr Pamandari – for that was the name of my benefactor – insisted that I accept his hospitality at his own home, a gigantic villa a few miles from the centre of Bombay. He would like, he said, to introduce me to his daughter, a girl of eighteen whom he proposed sending in the near future to Europe, Paris to be exact, where she would enter a finishing school. She was a lonely girl, he said, his only child, and if I would care to stay with them for a few weeks he was certain that she would be delighted with my company. She was called Nadya, after her mother who had been a Russian. In some ways, he said, she was a very lucky girl, for she alone would inherit his great fortune when he died.

  I can truthfully say that I had no conception of what real wealth was until I entered the home of this rich Parsee. His house, a vast snow-white edifice standing in a large private park, boasted two swimming pools, stables which included some of the finest thoroughbreds in India, tennis courts, and a vast array of hothouses which contained all varieties of orchids and other exotic plants. Two private helicopters stood beyond a line of plane trees at the extreme end of the lawn. The vast garden was cultivated immaculately by a corps of fifty gardeners, stable boys, and other retainers. As for the house itself, it contained an indoor swimming pool of black marble, a large library, and a veritable catacomb of reception rooms, lounges, dressing rooms and bedrooms, and one vast sun room completely draped in soft white silks. It was in this latter room that I first saw Nadya, a dark and beautifully proportioned girl of eighteen, her superbly subtle curves draped in turquoise Shantung silks, her slender, almost hazel-coloured arms holding a wonderful mauve and white orchid above her head where she lay, examining its sensual curves from under her long jet-black eyelashes. She was obviously bored. She was lying on her back on the white silk-covered divan, one knee exposed through the split in her turquoise gown.

  ‘Nadya!’ her father called eagerly. He obviously
doted upon this only child.

  Lazily, she turned her head and her beautiful sensuous face relaxed in a radiant smile.

  ‘Father!’ she said in a voice at once gentle and husky. ‘How wonderful you are back at last! Look, isn’t this a wonderful orchid?’

  ‘Beautiful, you naughty child!’ the father said in an adoring voice. ‘You have been at my prize orchids again!’ He turned to me. ‘Nadya has a passion for orchids. I have told her not to pluck them, they die so soon that way.’

  ‘Ah, but father,’ she said in a sweet voice, ‘I couldn’t resist this one. Surely you don’t grudge your own daughter one of your orchids?’

  ‘They are all yours, Nadya darling,’ her father said in a tone of happy resignation, and he moved towards the divan on which she was reclining and kissed her on the forehead.

  ‘Whom have you brought to see me?’ she said in a soft engaging voice.

  Her father turned towards me.

  ‘Come and meet my daughter, Helen.’

  I moved forward. Her dark eyes flickered over the blue and gold sari which I was still wearing. Her first words were:

  ‘That’s not a very pretty sari, is it Daddy?’ And then to me: ‘I shall give you much more pretty clothes than that.’

  Her father chuckled indulgently. ‘She is such a generous child!’ he said half-apologetically, and turning to his daughter again: ‘This is Helen, Nadya. She is going to be our guest for a few weeks.’

  ‘Oh, how lovely!’ said Nadya delightedly, slipping on to her feet from the divan and kissing me on both cheeks. Her beautiful young body exuded a perfume of jasmine, warm from her pale dusky flesh. ‘And she must have the room next to mine!’ she said, turning to her happy father again. ‘And I can give her all the clothes she wants!’

  ‘Take her, then, child,’ her father said gently. ‘She is your guest. Your old papa is tired after the long journey. He must rest tonight. Take care of your guest, Nadya.’

  With that, he shook hands with me and left us alone. When he had gone, Nadya took me by the hand and led me upstairs to the bedroom adjoining her own. ‘I’ll run your bath,’ she said eagerly, and slipped into the adjoining bathroom. I hesitated long enough to take in my surroundings, a richly carpeted room hung with flame-red silks, and then, docile as a lamb, I followed Nadya into the bathroom. This latter room was an amazing sight. It was decorated in a flame-red colour to match the room to which it formed an ante-room, and the bath, in the shape of a deep shell, was large enough to hold four people. Nadya was bending over the edge, stirring the water about with her hand. As I entered she looked round with a flashing smile and said: ‘Get undressed, Helen, I’ll help you bathe!’

  Again just as meekly as before – this wonderful nymph had, as I was subsequently to discover, a way of getting just what she wanted in life, which was not surprising considering her physical beauty and her vast wealth – I did as I was told, slipping the sari off my firm breasts, down over the shadowed rise of my haunches to a blue and gold heap at my feet. ‘How beautiful you are!’ Nadya said delightedly. ‘Wherever did my father find you? I think you’re the most beautiful person I’ve seen in my whole life!’

  ‘You should look in the mirror,’ I said drily.

  ‘Oh I do! Do you? But it’s not much fun looking at oneself. It’s much nicer to look at someone else!’

  I agreed with a smile.

  ‘Why don’t you undress and bathe with me,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, could I?’

  ‘Of course!’ I laughed. Her childish delight was infectious.

  ‘Oh, I’d love to! Oh, how glad I am you came, Helen!’

  ‘I’m glad to be here,’ I said, and I felt that that at least was the truth. Somehow, my previous existence, with all its excitements, even at its peak – I suppose that was with poor Hawkes – seemed lacking in scope beside all this. Nadya had literally everything, and she was offering, for the moment at least, to share it with me. ‘You’d better get undressed,’ I added. ‘You can’t bathe with your clothes on.’

  She giggled and in a trice she was naked beside me.

  A dusky flush appeared on her cheeks as she felt my eyes move downwards over her figure, from the smooth column of her neck over her dark pink pouting nipples to the warm wall of her adorable and delicately whorled belly below which, at the junction of her dully sensual thighs, her mound, a shadowy undergrowth, thrust itself cheekily forward. She gazed down at herself under her alluring eyelashes and then, looking up at me again, she said tentatively:

  ‘I’m not as beautiful as you are . . .’

  I laughed.

  ‘Of course you are,’ I said. ‘You’re the most adorable creature I’ve ever seen!’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  I couldn’t resist opening my arms to her. Without hesitation she ran into them, pressing her firm young body against mine and crushing my lips against hers in a passionate embrace. Poor child! What a violent surge of unsatisfied sex mounted within her! No wonder she was happy to have me there! Her father, with more money than he would ever know what to do with, had given her everything except an outlet for her passion.

  I ran my fingers over the smooth and trembling flesh of her buttocks. She moaned with pleasure and hid her face in my neck. But I had no intention of satisfying her there and then. Later there would be time for that. And so I pushed her away from me gently and held her beautiful longing torso at arms’ length.

  ‘Softly, you pretty girl,’ I whispered. ‘Let us bathe now, we shall have all the time in the world for that later.’

  She obeyed immediately and threw one of her pretty long legs over the side of the bath to test the heat of the water. As she did so, I noticed that the poor child’s sex was wet with passion. I almost pitied her, but desisted.

  We sat in the water facing one another and tickling one another with our feet.

  ‘Oh, Helen, I have never enjoyed myself so much!’ she said, sinking dreamily back into the water.

  ‘You lovely child!’ I said. ‘You have everything in the world you can possibly want!’

  ‘I have now!’ she said contentedly.

  I laughed.

  ‘You silly girl, you want a man, not me!’

  She chuckled. ‘Helen,’ she said, ‘have you ever made love with a man?’

  ‘I did once,’ I said with a smile.

  ‘What was it like?’ Her question rang out like a pistol shot.

  ‘You little bitch in heat!’ I exclaimed.

  She pouted.

  ‘It’s alright for you!’ she said stubbornly. ‘You’ve slept with a man. I’ve hardly even seen one except for my father.’

  ‘Your father is protecting you,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I know all that! That’s what he says! I just wish he would forget to protect me one day!’

  ‘Never mind, Nadya,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you about it and one day you’ll have a man too.’

  ‘Will you, Helen?’ She half-swam through the water towards me. ‘Kiss me like a man does!’ she said.

  I took her beautiful head between my hands and kissed her long and passionately on the mouth, forcing her lips apart with my tongue and sliding the latter into her mouth. She breathed heavily, her beautifully-formed breasts tilted and tightening in passion, and sucked softly and contentedly at my proffered passion. But I drew away from her.

  ‘That’s how a man kisses,’ I said.

  ‘It’s wonderful!’ she exclaimed. ‘Can we do it often, Helen?’

  ‘I intend to get washed now,’ I said firmly. ‘I’ve travelled a long way and I’m hot and sticky.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ she said, suddenly repentant. ‘What a beast I am not letting you have your bath in peace! But I like you so much, Helen. You will stay for a long time, won’t you?’

  ‘If you want me,’ I said.

  ‘I want you more than anything else in the world!’ she said extravagantly.

  ‘Except a man,’ I said drily, and began to soap my arms.

&nbs
p; Nadya’s bedroom opened onto a broad balcony. There, by the silver light which was shed through the open windows of the bedroom, we took dinner together, looking out across the great park. The night air was soft and scented with exotic vegetation brought from all corners of the globe to be transplanted in this haven of a loved daughter’s girlhood, and these natural scents, of the flowers, exhalations of the budding trees, blended subtly with the delicate aromas distilled in the perfumeries of Arabia and France which clung to our bathed and silk-draped limbs. The room behind us glittered with silver and gold cloth and projected a suffusion of enchanted light over the delicacies which lay on the table before us. Faint night-noises came to us across the park.

  ‘What’s that light over there?’ I asked Nadya.

  ‘It’s the headlights of a car on the road about a mile away,’ Nadya replied sweetly. ‘Sometimes I watch them for hours,’ she sighed. ‘They are all going somewhere. I never go anywhere. The park is lovely but it’s a bore.’

  ‘Your father said that he was going to send you to school in Paris,’ I said. ‘Do you not know about it?’

  She smiled wistfully. ‘He would never send me without a chaperone. He might say he is going to but he never will. My mother wanted it. My mother was a beautiful woman, a woman of the world. My father is in some ways very provincial. My mother used to laugh at him.’