Italian Sonata: Noire - Volume Two

by de Maupassant, Emmanuelle

  ‘I’m here to fuck you, slattern,’ he says, staggering towards the bed, and taking out his sweaty cock. The man keeps his clothes on, filthy as they are, with the grease of mutton chops, and the lingering odour of urine.

  He pulls Maud’s legs, bringing her closer to the edge. Pushing them wide, her lips, poppy-red in their engorgement, split for him, and her excitement trickles onto the embroidered silk coverlet.

  Three fat fingers enter her; enough to make her gasp.

  ‘Good and ready, ain’t yer, my lady?’

  He gives her a lecherous wink, then turns his head to Henry, leering.

  ‘Not enough for her, eh? Needs a real man.’

  He grasps his meat, a hefty sausage as thick as Henry’s wrist, already bobbing eagerly, and gives it a few tugs.

  ‘Dunnat you worry. I’ll do the job good and proper.’

  Henry makes to rise from his seat, itching to give the blaggard a black eye, but Maud shakes her head.

  Laughing at Henry’s ire, the ruffian turns to the job at hand, widening his stance so that he can get a good grip under Maud’s body. He pulls her up, towards his groin and, obligingly, she wraps her legs about his hips.

  Gripping his erection, he guides it to her, lining himself up before making his thrust. His cock slides in like a spade through sodden peat, buried in one fluid motion, despite its size. He holds himself there, his hands under her buttocks, fingers pressed into her flesh.

  His groan is that of a man finding where he wants to be.

  ‘That’s a nice welcome. Warm ‘n’ wet.’

  He smirks, pulling himself out slowly, to allow an extended thrust once more, clutching her to him as he re-enters, giving her the full benefit of the invasion.

  Maud’s face is impassive, her pupils wide, lips parting with each drive of the man’s cock. Her breathing is coming in shorter gasps already.

  Henry, nails pressing sharply into his palms, can hardly bear to look. At one word from Maud, he’ll land a blow on the villain’s nose. He boxed for his university club. He knows a thing or two.

  ‘Washing my dibber in your ladyship’s juices. Fancy that, eh!’ says the rogue.

  He throws his head back in laughter, pulling Maud further upwards, so that only her shoulders and head remain upon the bed, her long hair flung behind her.

  She takes his strokes in silence, as if in a trance-like state, watching his member enter and withdraw, sticky with her complicity.

  ‘And what are yer like from behind?’ he grunts, turning her.

  He peels off his braces, dropping his trousers to his ankles, but keeps on his shirt, and his boots.

  Henry sits, as he knows he must, watching as the other’s hairy buttocks clench and relax.

  Maud turns her head to one side, a golden hummingbird beside her on the quilt. Her eyes are open, her head turned towards the chair Henry sits in, but he doesn’t think she sees him. Not now.

  It’s not long before the man has built a rhythm, entering Maud with progressive speed.

  Henry looks away, to the curtains, but he can still hear: the man’s heavy breathing, and the slap of his flesh against Maud’s. Also, another sound. A soft, budding whimper, a plaintive cry.

  Henry turns in time to see his wife’s mouth open in full wail, her face pressed into the quilt.

  He is half-disgusted, half-aroused, as the man chokes out his eruption, holding Maud rigid, pumping into her. Afterwards, coughing with the exertion of his labours, he gobs up a lump of phlegm, spitting it onto the rug.

  He’s dressed again soon enough, wiping his nose on his sleeve and pocketing the two Francs Henry passes him.

  ‘Best coin I ever earned,’ says the rogue, giving Henry a final wink on his way out.

  * * *

  From Paris, they travel to Strasbourg, onwards to Munich, then Prague, and southwards to Vienna, until they reach the darkly mysterious Budapest, where Gothic turrets and Baroque palaces vie with Byzantine architecture.

  Cecile finds herself most enchanted by the Hungarian capital. Here, at last, is a sense of inscrutability. She feels the presence of the past, of interwoven centuries, offering glimpses of their secrets.

  The weather grows warmer, as the weeks pass, and they venture further south.

  Cecile has lost count of how many galleries and museums she’s visited, how many cathedrals. It astonishes her that so many churches are filled with the voluptuous. Paintings and sculpture of earthly flesh, in close proximity with the divine. There’s something compelling in those outstretched hands, which reach, upwards, to the Heavens. Hands of sinners and saints, seeking something beyond themselves.

  Finally, they head towards Italy, via Zagreb. In Venice, a gondola takes them down the Grand Canal, and through the maze of smaller waterways. They visit the gilded Palace of Ca' d'Oro, with its courtyard of ancient marbles, and ornate balconies, then take a tour of the Doge’s Palace. As the sun lowers to the last quadrant, they take a table at a café in Piazza San Marco, drinking coffee and watching passers-by: young men walking out with their sweethearts; mothers shepherding their children, who throw breadcrumbs to the birds; grandmothers selling posies of flowers from brimming baskets. Maud points out a pickpocket in the crowd, one she has seen sidling up to people in the throng.

  ‘He brushes against them as lightly as an insect pollinating a flower, taking what he needs, while leaving nothing in return but the promise of dismay,’ she observes, sipping from her cup of rich, dark coffee.

  ‘How dreadful,’ exclaims Cecile. ‘We should alert the polizia!’

  She is a little testy today. So many hands, always reaching to touch her, to stroke the white-blonde of her hair, to take some ownership of her person. She is irritated by old women presuming to pinch her cheek, so fair in comparison to the olive tones of Southern European skin. In truth, Cecile is dissatisfied with herself. She had hoped to feel changed by these travels, to have her mind opened to new possibilities. Instead, one city tends to seem much like another. They each have their monuments and their beauties but, everywhere, there is the same congregation, the same grasping, pressing confluence.

  ‘Everyone must make their living, as best they can.’ Maud shrugs.

  Cecile looks to Henry for his opinion, but he keeps his eyes lowered to his copy of Baedeker’s Handbook for Travellers. She is left to fume in silence.

  Maud and Henry continue to include Cecile in their excursions, and her every comfort is accommodated, yet she cannot help but feel a strange discomfort, a sense of exclusion that has grown with the passing weeks. Henry is content in his marriage, she’s sure. He’s happy, she feels certain. And yet, at times, there’s something feverish about him.

  Having read in a story by Mr. Doyle, about Sherlock Holmes, of addiction to opium, she wonders if Henry has fallen into this habit. Sometimes, she wakes in the small hours, hearing her brother, and Maud, return from some performance, or entertainment. She roused herself, one evening, soon after they had crossed into Hungary, to knock on their connecting door. Henry, opening it to her, was so unlike himself, eyes huge and dark in his pale face, as if a spectre were upon his shoulder.

  Some unknown force sits between them, separating her from Henry, and from his bride. She’d hoped to become closer to Maud during their travels, yet their rekindled friendship, in London, seems an age away. Maud, now a wife, and privy to things Cecile cannot imagine, occupies another universe.

  Cecile cannot fathom it, but Maud appears to have a closer affinity to Claudette, her new maid, hired in Paris, than to Cecile, her own sister-in-law.

  All things change, Cecile tells herself. Perhaps, one day, when I am married, and wise, I shall look back on myself, and not recognize the girl I was.

  The Wager

  Within the Castello di Scoglieri, two sit by candlelight. The woman’s eyes are strangely bright, as if the twinkling crystals of the chandelier had dropped into those dark pools. Her fingers raise her glass, her lips drinking deeply.

  ‘Do you have a consci
ence, brother? Or were you born without the capacity to feel guilt, or shame?’

  ‘You know me better than anyone, sister dear. If you say it’s so, I must believe you,’ he replies, raising his own glass to hers.

  ‘I’d declare you the blackest villain, were it not that I know your sometime softness towards those of your own blood. The paradox is that you derive such pleasure from tormenting us. There are many types of prison, and you appear a master in their creation.’

  ‘My dear Lucrezia, what form would your rebellion take, had you not my little cages to rail against? I merely feed your desire to disobey. In this, I know you better than you know yourself.’

  The matter of their argument is for the moment set aside, as Vittoria has entered, bringing with her the chocolate tartufo.

  ‘A letter arrived this afternoon, sister, from my dear aunt Agatha. It seems she’s invited a guest to spend her honeymoon at the villa, and requests a room with us for a few weeks, to allow the newlyweds their fun.’

  ‘A guest?’ interrupts Lucrezia. ‘Her grand-daughter, isn’t it? The same Maud, a renowned beauty, who was staying with your mother — in London?’

  Lorenzo’s knife slices into the tartufo with more aggression than is necessary.

  ‘A handsome marriage to a young aristocrat, I hear…’ Lucrezia adds.

  Lorenzo waves his hand in dismissal.

  ‘My time in London was brief. I barely spoke to the lady in question. She was tolerably attractive,’ he admits, ‘Though I fear will not age well.’

  ‘I wonder at your forgetting her so easily,’ asserts Lucrezia. ‘A little bird told me that Isabella had hopes that this pretty thing might ensnare you.’

  ‘I do not say that I forget,’ replies Lorenzo, his eyes narrowing.

  ‘Agatha requests accommodation for the groom’s sister also, a girl barely presented to society. No doubt, she will be a bore, with no conversation or other talent to recommend her. I must leave her to you Lucrezia. Your tolerance for dullness exceeds my own.’

  Lorenzo finds the cherries within the tartufo, and lifts them to his mouth so that, when next he smiles, the stain of the scarlet syrup is evident upon his teeth.

  ‘I’ll do as you wish, as always,’ answers Lucrezia. ‘But I must be rewarded. I’ve kept my side of too many bargains, and I’m yet to see the benefit.’

  Lorenzo licks his spoon thoughtfully.

  ‘I’m listening, though you’re hardly in a position to make demands of me.’

  ‘You know perfectly well what I want,’ hisses Lucrezia, her fists clenched tight upon the table. ‘A larger income, so that I might make my own way, and leave here. Away from you!’

  ‘The money is easily arranged, of course,’ sniffs Lorenzo. ‘But you would miss me, would you not?’

  Lucrezia, for once in command of her temper, declines to answer.

  ‘Perhaps we might play a game, to while away the tedium of entertaining our young houseguest. My aunt, I know, will amuse herself, but young women are so… needy.’

  Lucrezia knows Lorenzo’s games of old.

  ‘I wonder, sister dear, which of us might first make a conquest of this squeaking mouse? Show me the little pet, tamed and compliant in your paw, and I will fulfil your request: an allowance of a million Lira a year, in whichever currency you prefer.’

  He pauses to allow the sum to hang before Lucrezia, laden with possibilities.

  ‘If her soft fur finds its way between my teeth, I’ll devise an amusement of my own choosing, to which I will expect you to comply.’

  Lucrezia has grown a little pale. There are few things she has denied Lorenzo, grateful to him for his having claimed her, his half-blood, from the orphanage in which she was raised, but she is wise to the intricacies of his thinking, and the paths of his cunning.

  ‘I know how well you rise to a challenge. Your performance for the padre passed the carriage journey most pleasurably. You have a talent for play-acting, like your mother before you. Sleep on it, my Lucrezia,’ he offers. ‘And may your dreams be sweet.’

  * * *

  Lucrezia removes the rubies from her ears, and fingers the expensive bottles upon her dressing table. Her wardrobe is filled with the latest fashions, from Rome and Milan. He has been generous, and where would she be without that generosity?

  However, the price to be paid, she finds, is too high. She is as much a prisoner here as… any other. All under his roof are his to command, not just the scullery maids. The yoke is becoming heavier than she has the will to bear. His torment of her, devising new ways in which she must bend herself to accommodate his whim, is insufferable.

  The fate of the young woman soon to join them is nothing to her. What does she care for some spoilt and silly English girl, who cannot begin to imagine the life Lucrezia has endured. It will be easy enough to win her trust. She shall extract a kiss from her within the week. Perhaps more.

  Harder shall be the task of keeping Lorenzo from her girlish fancies. His roguish charm, when liberally applied, rarely fails.

  Her imagination envisions well the forfeit she will pay if he wins this wager. It is the one thing she has refused him, though not on grounds of morality or fear of the Almighty. To offer that part of herself to him would be to give herself in entirety, and this she cannot allow. No man, she has decided, will have her so utterly in his power.

  * * *

  Sitting alone at the table, Lorenzo clicks his fingers and, from the shadows, a dark figure emerges. It is Serpico, who hears all, and says little.

  ‘I have unfinished business with the new Lady McCaulay,’ the Conte explains. ‘We’ll bide our time, but —be ready to act when the opportunity presents itself. Go to the villa, Serpico. Watch, and listen.’

  Gooseberry

  Cecile joins Henry and Maud in taking a vaporetti across the viridian waters of the Venice lagoon, to the isle of Murano, where Henry orders fifteen chandeliers of hand-blown glass, each tiny crystal droplet threaded with gold, for delivery to his London residence.

  ‘So many, my love?’ comments Maud. ‘We’ve barely four reception rooms at Eaton Square.’

  ‘Ah, but we shall require something bigger, will we not, Lady McCaulay?’ Henry smiles. ‘A married man requires a larger home, most certainly, and there must be space for children.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Maud’s eyebrows rise. ‘And how many are you hoping for?’

  ‘One to start with,’ answers Henry quietly, dropping a kiss upon her glove.

  Cecile’s cheeks grow warm, at this mention of private matters. She is feeling, more than ever, that to live as a supplicant under the roof of her brother and his wife is a state she cannot long endure. She is the gooseberry, set against their wedded ease. As kind as Henry and Maud have been, her place is untenable.

  What choices await? Marriage to someone ‘sensible’, of Henry’s choosing? Or spinsterhood, living with her aunt, in Oxfordshire? Both visions cause her to shudder. Her daydreams of emulating the noble Ms. McTavish, in her exploration of the wild territories, are no more than flights of fancy. Her spirit, she likes to imagine, is willing, but the practicalities of such an existence are beyond her, even were Henry to allow it, and release funds to indulge her independent travel. He never would allow it, she is certain. Her own pocket-book income is too small to conceive of true independence.

  Cecile must marry. There can be no way around it. But where are the suitors of her star-gazing? Where is her brave soldier? Her dashing prince? Her noble knight?

  * * *

  As they sit at breakfast in the dining car, Henry hungrily consuming kedgeree, Maud sips from her teacup, looking at the passing countryside, the terrain growing more mountainous.

  How many trains have they taken since leaving Paris, slicing through the miles, and the hours, by day and night?

  She is thinking of Henry, inside her, moving in syncopation with the engine’s forward motion, and the rhythmic rocking of their carriage. Henry staring intently into her face, eager to possess her, wh
ich he does, if only for that moment. His hands are full, of her breasts, of her buttocks, of her hair, long and silken. His mouth also, full of belly and thighs, his teeth biting gently, wishing to devour her. His tongue is sweet between her legs.

  She can see him, wrapped in her, inside and out, flying through the dark.

  His kisses tell her everything she wants to know. They can be as reverential as those of an angel kissing the hand of God, but they can be something else too. She prefers the latter. Henry is apt to be tender, when what she needs is a little brutality.

  Beneath the table, she kicks off her slipper and touches her stockinged foot to his leg, eliciting a smile from her husband. Cecile, sitting beside Henry, begins to make conversation on the weather, speculating on how hot it might become. Pointedly, she turns her face to the window.

  We’ve been discreet… or discreet enough, Maud thinks. It’s too tiresome to be always checking my behaviour, and with my own husband! Really, it will be as well when Cecile has a husband and home of her own.

  Most nights, Maud lies awake until late, watching Henry sleep, just as she knows he watches her in the morning. Exhausted by their love-making, his cock spent, and Maud’s thighs damp with the evidence, his face is noble in repose, eyelids fluttering as he dreams.

  She dreams too. Dreams of the living but, also, of the dead. Haunted by her past as severely as if the ghosts of the departed sat upon her bed. She’d wondered if the nightly presence of Henry might drive those ghosts a little further off. Perhaps, but not yet.

  * * *

  They travel south, to the marvels of Florence. After trips to Pisa and medieval Siena, their journey takes them onwards, to the attractions of Rome, and the sultry heat of Naples.