At that moment, the music began again. But it came to us from a distance, and only intermittently, seeping into the air about us, to be sucked into our consciousness of the situation only at those instants at which our sexual gyration hung fire, slewed into relief, shadowy flesh transfixed for an instant in time, and hushed voices on the deck outside, to merge with a suggestive bar of music, urgently, as we whirlpooled down again to become the minute electric ebb and flow which caused waves of sexual hunger to pass through our quivering flanks and in the end caused such delectable devastation at our loins. There was something massive about that act of love. Its force was tidal. The small seismic disturbance in the hollow of my belly increased to the force of an avalanche. It transmitted itself to every sinew and reigned there like an all-embracing quake, sweet and needling at its depth, until every belly and buttock muscle of my big girl’s body, all the gimbals of my flesh, creaked, broke, and cracked in delirious pain, indefinitely shadowed by a movement as vast as that of shifting continents.
Suddenly, in the next room, I heard Nadya laugh softly, and then Devlin’s voice like the voice of a conspirator. I reached up the bed with my hand, turned down the soft sheet, and with a soft persuasive movement of my body encouraged Mario to follow me into it.
Shortly afterwards, another door in the suite closed. As my new lover mounted me again, I thought of Nadya’s young body knowing a male for the first time.
‘Aren’t men wonderful?’ Nadya said at breakfast.
‘Are you sure you were careful, darling?’
She pouted. ‘Of course I was! Anyone would think I was a child!’
I smiled. ‘I just don’t want you to have any trouble, that’s all.’
‘I don’t see that it would matter, anyway!’ she said rebelliously. ‘I’d love to have Harry’s child!’
‘Oh, you would, you little bitch!’ I said sweetly. ‘And what would your father say?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘Harry and I could get married, and then Papa would be a grandfather and he’d like Harry too, I know.’
‘Is that what Harry said?’ I asked drily.
‘Well, he told me he loved me.’
‘That is quite immaterial to me,’ I said sharply. ‘Did he say he wanted to marry you?’
‘Of course it’s too early to tell,’ Nadya said brightly. ‘But he hinted at it.’
‘Ughuh,’ I said gently, ‘I think I’d better speak to Mr Devlin.’
‘You will not! I’ll never speak to you again if you do!’
‘You will do just as you’re told, my pet,’ I said calmly. ‘Otherwise, I’ll send you straight back to India.’
‘You wouldn’t dare! You couldn’t!’ Her lovely features were contorted in anger.
‘Listen, Nadya,’ I said softly. ‘You can sleep with Harry Devlin to your heart’s content, but I don’t want to hear one word about marriage. Do you understand?’
‘Anyone would think he was a leper!’
‘As far as marriage is concerned, he is.’
‘What have you got against him? Anyone would think you wanted him for yourself!’
‘Think that if you want,’ I said coolly, ‘but if you make one move towards marriage, I’ll take him away from you. Do you understand?’
‘You couldn’t!’
She said it desperately, unable to conceal the fear in her voice.
‘Eat your breakfast, darling,’ I said. ‘Why can’t you be sensible? There are a million better men than Harry in this world.’
‘You’re just jealous!’ she fired back, and rising abruptly, she threw open the door and went out on deck.
Trouble already. That is the difficulty about men like Harry Devlin. They cannot make love to a girl without becoming sentimental. Had Nadya slept with Mario, there might have been the same problem, but the issues would be quite clear. He would be thinking calmly of her money. But with men like Devlin it is different. He came obviously of a good family. I suspected that he had money but that he was not a millionaire. Such a man does not marry for money, but peculiarly often he does marry money. That is to say, while consciously he would prohibit the base thought, the knowledge of a girl’s fortune is the oil upon which a profitable sentimentality slides, and the thought that he is marrying money is subtly countered by the knowledge of his own worth, his family, his background, his eligibility. That eligibility, however – I mean Devlin’s eligibility – while it might seem an important factor to the spinsters in Boston, was merely funny in relation to the Pamandari Empire. For I had discovered that the Pamandari wealth was legendary, and the fortune fabulous even in terms of India. The match, therefore, was quite impossible. I would have to take measures to prevent it.
When I went on deck, the conspirators were already together, leaning over the guardrail in approximately the same position as Mario and I had occupied the previous night. When I approached, I could sense the coolness in Devlin’s manner. They had evidently been discussing me. Things were moving quickly. Needless to say, I was angry about the whole thing. In the first place I was not accustomed to having men act coolly towards me, and, secondly, I had looked forward to a long and pleasant trip with Nadya. The trip was now in danger of ending before it had begun. I spoke briefly and inconsequentially to them and then went in search of Mario.
By this time, I had decided that I needed an ally. I could think of no one more qualified to aid me in this piece of intrigue than my lover of the previous night. I found him in the centre of a group of young American women at the swimming pool. At a glance from me, he detached himself from the group and came over. ‘I must talk to you at once,’ I said.
He said he would meet me in the bar in five minutes.
‘The trouble with a man of Devlin’s type,’ Mario said smoothly, ‘is that he has an obstinate conviction of his own worth. All problems must be solved in relation to that conviction. Now, if you were dealing with a man like myself, the problem would be quite different. I, Mario Vassari Ratsonli, Hereditary Duke of Veraggio, with more blue blood in my little finger than that ape has in his whole body, am as poor as a church mouse. If I were the offender, you would only have to say: “Look here, you Hereditary Duke of Veraggio, Mario Vassari Ratsonli, this match is ridiculous. Here are twenty thousand dollars. Now take yourself off like a good boy and let’s hear no more of it.’ Et voilà! I am gone. But with a Bostonian of Devlin’s type, the aristocratic tiara is too new and of too doubtful an origin for him to come down off his high horse quickly. For, being essentially a democratic aristocrat, a queer fish altogether, he might find it impossible to remount his horse again! Unlike mine, his title to aristocracy ends when his honour is compromised – ha ha! This is indeed a queer type of aristocracy! But we must treat it seriously, yes, or the consequences may be very serious.’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘Is the girl in love?’
‘She’s got hot pants, if that’s what you mean.’
‘And of course it’s very romantic! But her position is from our point of view both advantageous and disadvantageous. This is what I mean. She is spoiled, romantic, and obvious, but it is my guess that she has, unlike him, not a moral fibre in her body, yes?’
‘Correct.’
‘Very well. Then, in that case she would not listen to a word against him. She would be very obstinate in her defence of him. But, having no morals, she is very vulnerable in another way.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that I might be able to seduce her.’
‘What good will that do?’
‘Ha! There you have it! Perhaps, if there were only her to consider, no good at all. But do you not see that it would be the end as far as Devlin was concerned? It would touch his honour. He would think no more of marriage. If he were I, yes, it would make no difference; he would be after the money. But as that is only, shall we say, an ‘afterthought’ with him, it would be the end. He would never marry a nymphomaniac.’
‘And that’s precisely what she is.’
‘Of course, and we have only to prove it to him!’
‘Do you think you can manage it?’
He hesitated. ‘It would mean, I fear, cutting myself off entirely from your society for the rest of the trip.’
‘Well, that’s alright.’
‘Ah, but it would be very painful for me!’
‘I will write you a cheque for the equivalent of two thousand dollars if you succeed.’
‘Three thousand,’ he said quickly. ‘There will be certain little expenses . . .’
We agreed upon it. As he kissed my hand, I said, ‘And don’t try anything with her yourself.’ He smiled charmingly:
‘You can trust me,’ he said. ‘I’m a venal man.’
By the time we had passed through the Suez Canal, Nadya and Harry Devlin were no longer on speaking terms. Mario had accomplished his task efficiently and with little apparent effort.
It was about this time that Devlin began to show signs of having an interest in me. The poor young man seemed to be determined to fall in love. I found him handsome enough but wished to keep him as far as possible out of Nadya’s sight. I felt that if she could be alone with him for half an hour he might swallow his pride and make a nuisance of himself again.
Meeting Mario on deck one day, he took me aside. He had some information for me, he said. We went to the bar and took a seat in the corner. There, over a drink, he explained to me that, although Nadya was sleeping with him, she had confessed to him that she was still in love with Devlin and had asked him to help her to win him back. This information determined my course of action. I would have to ensnare Devlin myself. We had already rounded the heel of Italy and were making for Marseilles, where Nadya and I were scheduled to disembark and catch the train for Paris. Devlin, as it happened, was catching the same train. As I knew from my own experience, anything might happen during a corridor meeting.
I explained my plan to Mario. It required him to travel to Paris with Nadya and remain there for at least three weeks. He was to see to it that Nadya didn’t form any new and equally ridiculous attachments. In return, I offered to pay him seven hundred dollars a week plus expenses. I, meanwhile, would elope with Devlin, carry him off to somewhere on the French Riviera, and join Mario and Nadya in Paris as soon as possible. Mario was delighted with the idea. He had begun to realise that I held the purse-strings of Nadya’s entourage, and without being immodest, I believe he was looking forward to the day when we could take up intimacy again at the point at which we had left off. Nadya’s childishness had begun to bore him. Once again we parted and once again he assured me in a charming voice that I could have confidence in his venal nature. As we walked round a deserted part of the deck, he took me in his arms, kissed me on the lips, and said: ‘Don’t be long, Helen.’
I returned immediately to our suite, where I sat down and wrote a long letter to Mr Pamandari. I described in detail the events of the voyage, the reason for the apparent desertion which would take place at Marseilles. I ended saying that I hoped to join Nadya within three weeks at Paris and that meanwhile I felt that Mario, a kind of male counterpart of myself, could be trusted as long as he was paid to look after his daughter’s interests. If, however, something prevented me from telegramming him within three weeks, Mr Pamandari should himself look into matters as they concerned his daughter. I signed the letter affectionately and posted it at the ship’s post office.
Chapter Ten
We were separated yesterday evening. Veiled, I was led out across the courtyard between walls ringing with the white sun and transported in a closed donkey cart across the town. I saw little of it and cannot even guess at the size of it. The building into which I was led is located somewhere near the market. Men and donkeys loaded with fruits were turning a corner nearby and from that direction came the usual market sounds, the guttural voices, an occasional shout and the cries of whipped beasts. Up a flight of wooden stairs, through a door, and into a long passage. They left me in this room at the end of the corridor. The shadows grew longer towards evening. From the slit window I could see the last reflection of the sun on the uneven planes of the roofs. The strains of pipe and zither music rose from somewhere below. A muezzin was crying in a weird singing voice from a minaret. It soon became dark in the room.
The bed is comfortable, broad enough for two.
A short while afterwards a fat Arab woman entered. She grinned at me. Her teeth protruded slightly and she had one gold one. She carried a small oil lamp which she left on the table. She handed a small bowl to me. It contained a mixture which seemed to be of crushed almonds and honey. ‘Gut!’ she said in pidgin English, rolling her eyes and rubbing her fat paunch with the flat of her hand. I tasted the mixture. It was very pleasant, slightly gritty, and seemed to cause my mouth to tingle slightly. ‘Gut!’ she repeated with a broad smile. Evidently she was going to remain there until I had finished it. I did so, but quite slowly, partly because the mixture was so sweet and partly because with each successive swallow my stomach tightened, again not unpleasantly, but I found myself breathing more heavily. As I finished the mess in the bowl I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes. Some unknown force seemed to have taken control of my body. I could feel the blood push its way through my veins, my heart seemed to be pounding, and I was involved deliciously and completely in a hypersensitive world of feeling. ‘Gut?’ she said. I nodded vaguely and she went out.
After she had gone I realised that I had been drugged. My body attained a terrible immediacy of consciousness. If I touched my thigh, it quivered and prickled. I had an urge to bare my belly and watch it rise and fall beyond all knowledge of breathing. The very atmosphere seemed to have weight. It lay on my sensitized skin like an invisible hand. My temples were throbbing. A vast expansion was taking place inside me. I tore off my clothes and lay naked on the bed. In the vast eddying whirlpool of my sensations I lost all consciousness of time. My very breathing afforded me a sexual pleasure. When I touched my mound with my fingertips the acuteness of my pleasure almost caused a spasm, or rather, the sensation was as deliriously brittle as an ordinary spasm, but below, suppurating like a vast nuclear potential, the actual spasm lay in wait, willing blindly to be stimulated. On the other hand, my mind appeared to be unaffected. I saw clearly that I had been drugged for one purpose. For this reason I fought and quenched the desire to precipitate the spasm myself. Instead, I contented myself with brushing the skin of my belly and thighs with my fingertips, and felt my buttocks heave and thrill with an almost unbearably ecstatic sensation. Soon I gave way to an urge towards unconsciousness and seemed to hang impotently between two worlds, heedless of direction. A prickling seizure mounted in the extremities of my limbs, rising gradually and deliriously through every fleshy drain till it lay like steel bands of paralysis at my thighs and armpits. I found myself unable to move a muscle, my consciousness wheeling farther and farther backwards towards utter extinction. At the same time, by thinking casually of my genitals, I hung ecstatically in the balance, a knife of pleasure to its hilt in my sex. This led to the realisation that my throat muscles were not constricted and I uttered a hoarse sob of lust. My eyelids were tightly closed, leadweight, and I lacked the strength to open them. I became, except for the palest eidolon of consciousness, a seamy and pullulating furrow, dark and warm as earth awaiting the sprinkle of seed. Vaguely, through the misted vision of this hothouse paralysis, I heard the door open. A bearded man was bending over me.
As he lowered his naked front on top of me, my bodily reactions were beyond my control. I had the sensation of being a voracious gullet which had been starved for a score of centuries. As his dark member entered me every hair on my bristling body partook of the pleasure. It is impossible to express in any word known to man the impossible peak of pleasure to which his sex transported me. On one level, my vital juices rose up within my belly like the waters of a dam of infinite capacity. I thought it would never end. Literally, no matter how high the waters rose, the limiting walls of potentiality to
wered massively above. On another level, I experienced a thousand spasms each minute at every pore. On a third and more dispassionate level I was conscious at every moment of the marvellous soft texture of his skin, of the fibrous strength of his short hairs, and of the voluptuous putty-like quality of his tongue. Towards the end, however, I passed out of personality entirely. I became a vessel which threatened and willed at any moment to burst. That burst, when it finally did come, was the most excruciating thing I have ever experienced. If giving birth were pleasant – perhaps it could be – I would compare it to that. The excessive difficulty of the orgasm, the final frantic lurch of the hips in their ecstasy – these things are beyond description. The sting of the reality cannot be contained in words. What, under normal circumstances can be compared with an extremely pleasurable shifting of sands in the womb, became, for a seemingly endless space of time, a vast broiling cauldron of shooting planets. The universe itself suffered annihilation within my womb, and when my limbs, their soft surfaces, swung back into consciousness it was in the sureness and certainty of an utter and oblivious peace.
The man, whoever he was, left as silently as he had come. I lay alone, sweating profusely, and too contented to move. Some time later, another man came. The vast convulsion began all over again. And again, for I counted six others before dawn broke out like a disease on the epidermis of the sky.
Helen And Desire Page 13
