ROGUE WOMEN
Nicholas Cutter


I

IT IS HARD TO KNOW WHEN NOT TO BELIEVE your eyes—when you have no 
evidence to the contrary. I never knew Johnny as well as I thought I did: 
I'd come to what I thought was a conclusion; then Johnny would do something
that did not fit my idea of him, and I'd have to go to the trouble of 
struggling to another conclusion. From this I concluded he was 
unpredictable. He was strange: You only had to look at him more than once.

I had been in the quarter, on and off, for some time. Long ago, for me, I
had been a sailor: To see the world, as they say. So I did, through a 
porthole; and often when I set out to broaden my experience I was beaten up
by the Naval Police, or thrown in jail, until I learned to restrain myself.
I longed at such times for a different life, where a uniform would not 
betray me, and the smiles I evoked from the dock-women would not be smiles 
of derision, as they watched their lawful prey stepping off the gang-plank 
in its ridiculous clothing. Finally of course I deserted the navy, which 
did very well without me, and even won a war—a very profitable enterprise 
to the government—leaving its defenders without a job and in no condition 
to appreciate the broadening effect of experience.

Finally I came drifting into Paris, where I found a little hotel in the 
Latin quarter. It was a good hotel. When I say good I mean cheap—dirty, 
gloomy, secluded, independent—and you could conduct a ball or a market 
there without anyone interfering or even being interested. What's more, it 
was hard to find, being down an alley, and the only way in was by the side 
entrance.

One night, on the way to my room, up the narrow stairs, I saw a gleam of 
light flick on, high above. I bent over the second-floor railing and looked
up the stairshaft. The sound of agitated voices came down to me.

I climbed another flight, the voices growing steadily louder.

“Fuck off!” a man's voice said. “Go on then, fuck off!”

I looked up the stairshaft' again, seeing nothing, then went on climbing.
As I reached the fifth and final flight a heavy woman, wearing an 
over-tight sweater and skirt, came half stepping, half stumbling down the 
stairs. Over one arm she was carrying some kind of a jacket or coat. A 
brassiere dangled from the other arm. She seemed about twenty-eight, 
twenty-nine. She pushed past me. Then, one step down, she stopped and said,
looking up, “Pardon.” Then she continued in French, “Do you know that...?” 
then a rude word which means pimp. I said I did. “Then teach him manners.” 
In fact I did not know him, I had seen him once, that morning, asking the 
landlady for a larger carpet. He was leaning over the banisters, watching 
us, with an impassive face. He had a head of heavy brown hair, and black 
eyebrows. That was all I could see. The light hit the top of his head and 
left the rest in shadow. I said I would try. I was rash. She disappeared 
downward into the gloom.

I went on up, to come face to face with the man leaning over the 
banisters. He grunted, and peered down the stairs again.

“What did she say?” he asked. I told him. “Did she?” he asked. “Never 
mind. Do you like coffee?” He invited me in to have some, adding, “It was 
meant for Etchika. But if she comes in it won't be for coffee. At least 
until breakfast.” He grinned. “She'll be as cold as the coffee by then.” He
pointed in the direction of the light.

I went into his room. He followed and shut the door. “Sit on the bed,” he
said. He grinned again. “It's the only comfortable place, that's what I 
tell them.”

He went to a gas-ring on the floor and began to arrange the cups and 
saucers. His hands were slender and sinewy, and a small silver ring shone 
on the little finger of his right hand. It looked odd, for the ring was 
rather of the kind one associates with heavier, plump ringers. In the 
signet was a red stone, glittering in the gaslight. The room was dim, lit 
sufficiently to move about in and distinguish objects, but the light would 
not have done for reading. The source of this light was a small red-shaded 
lamp clipped to the table. Then I noticed that the bedspread was red too, 
and a white bathrobe hanging over a chair had a red collar. I glanced at 
him again—a smooth, even skin, drawn tightly round his cheeks and 
forehead—he was impassive and, when expressionless, a little grim. He was 
sugaring the coffee. It occurred to me to look at the coffee-cups. They 
were black. He put them on the table then turned and sank into the chair, a
sliver of red from the bathrobe protruding beside his arm.

“Do you want a woman?” he asked me.

“Which woman?” I said.

“The one on the stairs.”

“Are you selling her to me?” I asked.

“No. Giving her to you.”

“Who are you to give her?”

He said he was Johnny Kinch.

“I've always had Johnny,” he said.

“But not Kinch?”

“That's right.”

“Yes,” I said, “and once you've given her, all I have to do is take her, 
is that what you mean?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Do I call her up?” I asked.

“Listen,” he said, “I'm just doing this out of friendship, I'm not trying
to prove anything.”

“That's all right,” I said.

“What's all right?” he asked. It was his turn.

I said, “You know, I don't care how or why at all at the time. I might 
care afterward when it's all over and there's nothing else to do. You do as
you please, yourself. I was only wondering about the effect of you on me, 
if you see what I mean. You're quite free to do What you want, so far as 
I'm concerned.”

“Just go down and tell her Johnny's gone to bed,” Johnny told me.

He didn't seem very much concerned either way himself.

There was a pause. Johnny drank his coffee. He said, “Come up tomorrow 
for breakfast. Bring Etchika, if you can. She has an appalling temper. I 
hope you calm her.”

Johnny rose and stretched. He said he thought he might go to bed. As for 
myself, I had spent the evening with a Mexican I knew. Gaxiola was a rogue 
and entertaining, but he was not a woman.

Etchika's assertive breasts would very likely have more hold over me than
the conversations of the most entertaining madman in the world. From the 
glimpse I had had of her, she seemed to be heavily bodied like a Slav, her 
body drawing you not so much because of its grace but because or its power,
and proportions. I suppose that is another form of grace.

And if I turned out to have been a fool, to have taken him at his word, I
might also be lucky. In which case I should be the bigger fool not to. I 
would go and see Etchika, I decided, as Johnny yawned.

“You'll see,” he said. “I'm doing this for the pleasure of bragging. You 
might make an ass out of yourself, I can't be expected to provide for that.
If you blunder you blunder.”

He got up and began to examine his toothbrush. He opened the windows. The
night was warm. Tranquil sounds of passers-by came into the room, agreeably
hushed from the quiet, and rendered vague by the height.

I wished him good night, and went out to the stairhead. His door closed 
softly behind me. I was in the dark, and felt my body leaning against a 
rail. I guided myself gingerly down.

I counted the flights. Etchika, it seemed, was on the second floor. That 
made three down. I felt my way to her door, and tapped on it softly, 
wondering what I was letting myself in for.

There was no reply. I tapped again. Something stirred. There was a 
whisper. I could not make out the words. It occurred to me I did not even 
know for certain who the whispers came from, let alone for whom they were 
intended.

“Etchika,” I whispered, feeling like a college-boy. Silence.

I took out a cigarette and settled down on the floor with my back to her 
door. If I had to wait, I did not mind very much. I pulled out my lighter. 
As I flicked it on, the door-handle grated and turned above my head. In the
light from the flame I saw, leaning slightly away from the door so as not 
to fall through it probably, and twisting my head, Etchika's head.

Apparently with Etchika's heavy body you hardly paid attention to her 
face, which I recognized as having seen on the stairs without being able to
tell why. She seemed to remember me, which was surprising under the 
circumstances. Still, I said, “You met me on the stairs just now.”

Etchika said, “Oh.”

“Can I come in?”

“Where's Johnny?” she asked.

“Bed,” I said.

She looked at me doubtfully. I got to my feet.

There didn't seem much point in trying to reassure her, so once having 
got up, and put the lighter away, I stayed there, more or less 
expressionlessly. I have a fairly anonymous-looking face, except for the 
teeth, which look as if they had been knocked about in a fight, although as
a matter of fact that is how they grew. There was a moment's silence, then 
she said:

“Who are you?”

There are times when this question sounds as silly as the other, which 
usually goes with it, “What are you?” It's not often I can answer it 
satisfactorily.

I said, “If s late. Suppose I come in.”

She moved aside and took her hand off the door. I went in. The room was 
dim, but not so dim as Johnny's. There was an ordinary table lamp on the 
chest of drawers. In bed, I noticed all of a sudden, there was another 
girl. All I could see of her was the head, younger than Etchika she seemed.
She was sitting up in bed holding the bedclothes round her shoulders. Her 
hair was dark, nearly black, and cut short, whereas Etchika's hair fell 
over her shoulders and had apparently been slightly bleached, in a few 
careful streaks, as if after long exposure to the sun.

Etchika said, “He's a friend of Johnny's.”

Then she said to me, “This is Lenny.”

Lenny grinned, like a boy, then lay down and pulled the covers up round 
her neck. Etchika, wearing a thin flowing wrap like a kimono, stepped onto 
the bed and up to the end, where Lenny's head stuck out of the sheets. She 
stood there for a moment, then slipped out of the kimono, which she dropped
beside the bed. Naked now, she first knelt down, her breasts trembling with
the unsteady movements forced on her by the softness of the bed, then dug 
her toes between the sheets and slid into bed, beside Lenny. Her shoulders 
were white and rounded so that you could not see the bones under the skin.

From this position they seemed ready to begin talking again.

“Were you looking for a pad from Johnny tonight?” Etchika asked me.

I considered this. Finally I said: “No. I live here too. I just came down
to see you.”

“To see me?” Etchika asked, “Or Lenny?”

“You,” I said. “I didn't know of Lenny, until now.”

By this time I was sitting on the rug alongside the bed. Lenny in a slow 
heavy voice murmured: “Are you in with Johnny?”

I said: “Perhaps. I'm not sure.”

Then I asked Etchika: “How long have you known him?”

“A few months.”

As Etchika said the word, “months,” her mouth went slightly down and I 
found myself looking at it and hardly listening as she began to explain how
she had met Johnny. But once it had penetrated to my mind that it was this 
she was talking about, I listened more carefully, watching her face at the 
same time however, and her throat, which-swelled and relaxed as she talked.
It seemed Johnny had found her in a bar on the waterfront in Genoa, where 
she had been employed to encourage the clients to drink. Johnny had not 
been susceptible of encouragement for nothing, for that night Etchika left 
with Johnny on the Rome-Paris Express, which passes through Genoa, and 
stops at the frontier, after which Etchika woke the next morning in Paris.

I was curious to know how the few months since that morning had been 
occupied, but it seemed best to restrain my curiosity for the moment.

For a little I said nothing, my eyes on Etchika's hand lying along the 
sheet. I had been watching it for several seconds. Soon I understood why. 
Her hands were usual enough and not unexpected, when you had seen her body,
they were heavy yet shapely and, like her arms, almost without the 
straw-colored down which faintly blurs the surface of the skin. But the 
nails were not long, and not pointed, but trimmed round close to the quick.
I laid my head on her lower arm, with my cheek against the skin, and slowly
moved my cheek along it. She murmured, barely audible. I turned my head to 
look at her.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I wanted to feel the surface of it,” I said, my cheek still on her arm. 
I kept my eyes on her. Her expression stayed the same, impassive, waiting 
to see what I would do.

“You play the piano,” I hazarded, “that's why your nails are trimmed so 
close.”

“Sometimes,” she said.

“Is that the only reason?” I asked.

“No.”

I waited, my hand resting on her arm, fingers straying gently.

She turned her arm so that now the palm lay upward, and began, I realized
with a tremor of excitement, to stroke the nape of my neck and then to 
explore the contours of my face with her fingers. Then as I felt her 
fingertips on my skin I realized too that her nails had been trimmed so 
that, among other reasons, they would not scratch.

I lifted my head and moved toward her. As my eyes came near her face, and
I could see the skin and its texture and the slight sparkling of the 
moisture on the eyes, I looked down and saw her mouth beginning to open and
the tip of the tongue inside, waiting. Our mouths met, softly, and her 
tongue pushed its way past my lips, searching for and meeting the tip of my
tongue, teasing it, inviting it. The kiss became more violent. I pulled the
sheet away from her shoulders so that it fell over her bosom, stopping just
above the nipples caught between the pressure of our two bodies. My hand 
slid down her back, stopping at the waist to encircle it and then move 
round it again so that it lay over her belly, at the base of which by 
stretching my fingers I could feel the soft hair beginning, over the mound 
of Venus. And then I withdrew my hand again, to send it firmly down her 
back, and try the deep cleft between her buttocks; but from the posture I 
was in I could not reach her thighs, try as I might, and all the while our 
mouths were fastened together. But soon I felt her hand beginning to ferret
inside my shirt, which she unbuttoned, and pushed down, so that only the 
cuffs were left. I straightened up, and soon undid them, at the same time 
kicking off my shoes. But as I stood, naked to the waist, and in bare feet,
beside the bed, preparing to unfasten my belt, she whispered: “Come here.” 
I went closer, the blood pounding in my head, and also in that of all man's
possessions the most treasured, now undergoing such a violent erection that
it seemed made of concrete, or of steel.

Etchika deftly drew off my belt, unfastened first the top button, and 
then, leaving the remaining buttons still in place, inserted her hand 
between the cloth and my heated skin, stroking from side to side, like a 
fan.

I for my part extended my arms until my hands were cupped under her 
breasts, feeling against each palm the hard contact of her nipples, each 
erect and jutting forward from her breasts like rivets. Grasping the top of
my pants Etchika had suddenly ripped open the fly and as if miraculously 
they had fallen round my ankles, and I was stark naked, my member so hard 
it felt as if bursting, the beating of my blood causing me to sway slightly
from dizziness. I stared down at Etchika, unable to move. Supporting me 
with one hand under the groin she placed the fingers of the other under the
base and drew them slowly along until they were round the glans, which she 
fondled, coaxing it, swollen and fiery, holding her mouth, pursed to the 
shape of a kiss, less than an inch away from the menacing red tip. She 
played with it, putting her tongue out toward it and then an instant before
it touched drawing back. She made as if to kiss it, then did not. She bent 
forward and pressed her mouth to the base, but drew off and held it between
her fingers as lightly as gossamer. Opening her mouth she held her mouth 
open round it, but did not close her mouth, or her lips. Then she did close
it. I felt the embracing circle of her lips, they were warm and damp, and I
felt a warm wave rush over me, beginning in the groin and traveling like a 
tide over my whole body, as if the air had become extraordinarily 
overheated. I fell to the bed, holding her head in my hands.

Then for the first time I remembered that we were not alone, that Lenny 
was there with us, and that far from lying discreetly under the sheets in 
the attitude of sleep, she had evidently been lying on her back, head 
against the pillows, eyes wide open, watching us.

She was apparently undisturbed. I looked into her black unfathomable 
eyes, which did not seem to care what they saw, from beneath the heavy 
lashes, and I must have paused, for Etchika stretched and lay back. My head
was reeling. I took the bedclothes and drew them off her body, sideways so 
that Lenny was still covered. Etchika did not move, but lay still, looking 
at me, breathing fast. In the light her white skin gleamed. Her belly in 
particular, rounded, shone like a huge white moon. I bent low over it, 
pressing my mouth into the soft flesh, the warm body scent in my nostrils. 
Very slowly I moved until I lay beside Etchika, with my head at her belly, 
and began to explore the resilient skin with my tongue.

Etchika's hips began to sway from side to side, rolling as if in dance. I
felt once more the exquisite touch of human lips about my member, and 
brought my own mouth down voraciously to burrow in her loins. She gasped, 
and her thighs drew apart, as if involuntarily. She raised her hips, as if 
to facilitate my task, and I encircled them with my arms. I spread my hands
over her buttocks, gripping the silky flesh between my fingers the better 
to force her on to my mouth. The insides of her thighs, I could feel them 
against my cheeks, twitched spasmodically for a few seconds and then, as my
tongue protruded and made its way into her lower belly, she clamped her 
legs together and held my head captive, and then for me the world became a 
darkness of hot coiling flesh, in which I lost myself; and all my senses 
seemed only to bring my sensations to me from afar, I no longer thought 
what to do, but I did, and that was all. Etchika's hands, fumbling at my 
loins, seized my member and held it fast, I was caught, in spite of my 
writhings, and I felt the pressure of two hot lips, which began slowly to 
close over my member and move downward. All at once I realized that this 
was no mouth, and that it did not belong to Etchika. But instead it was 
Lenny who had freed herself from the bedclothes and, drawing herself up so 
that her buttocks were on a level with Etchika's head, had introduced my 
member into the open cavern of her sex, and forced herself down on me, with
no initiative of my own to aid her. And now indeed I could feel Lenny's 
slender agile legs twined about my own, pulling me toward her and pulling 
me also more powerfully against the twisting hips of Etchika. Soon I was 
imprisoned, Lenny had wound her legs about my waist, and I was holding 
Etchika close to my mouth with one arm only, while with the other I 
caressed first the heavy opulent bosom of Etchika, then the delicate 
thrusting breasts of her young companion. And then I felt Lenny grip my 
buttocks between her fingers as if she would force my entire body to be 
engulfed within her, as Etchika's hands, at the base of my member, seemed 
to delight in caressing us both. Lenny's movements became more agitated, 
and Etchika's body began to convulse, Like a succession of springs 
unleashed, she reared up, bearing the load of both Lenny and myself on her 
belly and breast, I could no longer contain myself, I was as if in the 
throes of a fit, shaking my body to its source, and the spring of life 
poured out of me. And then we all three uncoiled and fell apart, to lie 
still in the light for several minutes, without saying a word, breathing 
long and deeply, in uncontrollable, dying shudders.

II

I MUST HAVE DOZED, FOR WHEN I LOOKED up I saw Johnny sitting on the 
carpet, his back against the wall, smoking a cigarette and talking softly 
to Lenny. She had her head in his lap and was looking up at him 
expressionlessly, with what I had begun to learn was her habitual 
expression. She must have been up for some time, for she was dressed, or 
dressed in a manner of speaking. That is to say she was wearing a brief 
pair of skin-tight shorts, so cut that they ended at the sloping joint of 
hip and thigh, and appeared to be made of blue satin very dark in hue. 
Above this she was wearing a loose white cotton jersey, with very deep 
armpits, so that she seemed to move not with it but inside it. I could see 
her mound pushing upward so that the lower triangle of the satin shorts 
bulged neatly with only two little creases at either side, for the shorts 
were just large enough to cover her sex, no more. I longed to take it in my
hands and rip the satin aside, and then I remembered Johnny was there, and 
began to wonder why he had come, although the longing to take off Lenny's 
sparse coverings and penetrate the agile belly remained. And I began to 
wonder too what kind of people there were, or rather to be amazed at the 
kind of people they seemed to be.

I felt a movement behind me, and Etchika wriggled round me and rolled 
over off the edge of the bed, and stood up. There, heavy and with her hair 
shaking over her shoulders, she stood a moment and then slouched over to 
the wash-basin in the opposite corner of the room. She hoisted herself up 
on it, resting her thighs on the edge, and reached behind her to turn the 
tap on. The slight sound of the jet which came from her merged in the rush 
of water from the tap. She quickly reached between her legs and splashed 
water in brief flights upward, then slid off the edge of the wash-basin, 
reaching for the towel. As she dried herself, standing with her legs apart 
in a rather awkward but fluent movement, her breasts gently jumped from 
side to side, as the towel moved in and out under the little brown apex of 
pubic hair. She flung the towel over the rail and walked back. As she 
passed Johnny he reached up and with one hand over her belly prevented her 
walking further. Then he pulled her back slightly and down so that her 
round muscular rump was presented to him. He increased his pressure on her 
belly until a buttock was nearly against his mouth, and then he kissed it. 
He must have nipped it slightly between his teeth, for Etchika gave a tiny 
squeak of pain and collapsed to her knees. She was kneeling alongside 
Lenny, who hardly seemed to notice her. She had noticed her however, for as
Johnny, his hands now on her breasts, which hung into them like ripe fruit,
kissed her and then more sharply bit her a second time, Lenny's hand came 
up and I saw it plunge deep into Etchika, from whom a sudden little cry 
came, as she went forward onto her hands and knees. Lenny sat up, in her 
tiny shorts and voluminous jersey and with her long legs out beside her, 
and attacked, for a moment it seemed very like an attack on the hindparts 
of Etchika. Johnny drew back, and rose to his feet.

Not before all this had taken place did Johnny vouchsafe me so much as a 
recognition, let alone a word. But now he came over to me and sat on the 
edge of the bed, quite ignoring Lenny and Etchika, and drew out a cigarette
which he lit and began to smoke.

“They are very pleased with you,” he said. He did not seem to think it 
necessary to say anything else, for he relapsed into silence after this 
remark, which he had made rather in the spirit of one who says something to
pass the tune than to serve as the beginning of a conversation. He was 
watching the two women on the carpet, apparently. I could not see them now 
however, for he was in my line of vision. After a little I asked him for a 
cigarette. He turned and gave me one, flicking on the lighter and holding 
it out to me so that I saw once more the dull glitter of the red stone on 
his finger. He flicked it off again and went back to watching Lenny and 
Etchika, of which I heard only the latter's quickened breathing. I wondered
why he had chosen roe to participate in his group, it was obviously his 
group, and given me the freedom of his city so to speak. But I decided not 
to question him on the subject, instead I would wait until he volunteered 
something of his own accord. And if he volunteered nothing, and left me in 
ignorance, then I would leave it a mystery, and thank my stars for the 
existence of mystery, till the end of my days, for Etchika was a woman in a
million, and Lenny was another, and I had enjoyed them both, a thing which 
falls to the lot of few, and had hardly ever befallen me before this 
curious night. But I did not think it would remain a mystery. For when 
people let you in for this kind of thing the reason for their doing so is 
part of the letting-in. In this way they are usually compelled to tell what
is to be told. Not always. But fate has a way of turning on you if your 
force it, as the gamblers say.

I sat up, turned my eyes to Lenny and Etchika. Etchika was lying 
spread-eagled on her back, her arms out and fingers snatching at the tufts 
of carpet under them, her legs open. Bent above her, looking impassively 
down at the head turning from side to side among its skeins of hair, hands 
fastened into Etchika's thrusting mound and with toes hooked under her 
thighs, Lenny looked like a great curving swan making its capture. And then
I saw that she was gradually lowering herself, and as she lowered herself 
going slightly forward, and this, because of her ankles under Etchika's 
thighs, was forcing Etchika's legs to rise higher and higher in the air. As
they rose they bent, until Lenny had forced her almost double and her sex 
was bared to the invading fingers moving rapidly inside it. And then, 
emitting alternate cries of pain and pleasure, she suddenly sent her legs 
round Lenny's waist, and locked them behind it. Lenny let herself fall 
straight down between Etchika's thighs, and at the sudden pressure the 
heavy magnificent victim shook, contracted her limbs spasmodically for a 
moment or two and with a dry, rasping groan sank back to the carpet, 
twisted twice from side to side and then lay still.

Lenny got to her feet, looked about, and without another glance at 
Etchika wiped her hands on her shorts until they were dry of all the juices
in which they had been immersed, and crossed over to the bed, where she sat
down between Johnny and me.

Johnny said, “I was going to wait till tomorrow, before I asked you 
this.” “You mean me?” I asked.

“You in particular, anyway,” he said. He turned and glanced at me over 
Lenny's shoulder.

I was disturbingly conscious of Lenny's shapely hips crammed into the 
tiny shorts which, now that she was sitting up, cut into her sleek thighs. 
“I think you're safe enough,” Johnny added. “Yes,” I said. My blood was 
drumming at my temples, and I hardly heard him. Lenny shifted slightly and 
I saw her mound pushing at the tightly stretched satin. My prick was erect 
and so hard it swayed in the same rhythm as the pulse. Slowly, as if 
self-propelled, my hand crept out, over Lenny's thigh and down, between 
thigh and belly, until it covered the prominent hypnotic crotch.

Lenny did not move. Then, as my hand began firmly to grasp her, she 
leaned a degree or so forward, her mound pressed on my hand and held it 
locked, between it and the bed.

I began carefully to contract and release, contract and soften the 
pressure of my fingers on her. I could feel divisions of the flesh outside 
her sex, and the vagueness of the surrounding fur.

As I held her more firmly it began to feel as if I were holding her 
entire body in my single hand, through the medium of her sex. And indeed it
had become sovereignly light and soon I could feel that Lenny was 
increasingly abandoning it to me. So that when I made to lift her, with 
that one hand, she rose slightly from the bed and seemed as light as a 
feather.

Johnny said in the same tone of voice as he had used a short while 
before, as if he were indifferent to what we did, Lenny and I, “In a little
while we'll all go out, and have a quiet party together.”

Lenny gave a short grunt in reply. I replied nothing. Johnny's voice 
seemed to reach me from afar. I saw that Etchika had rolled over and was 
now lying at Johnny's feet, and her head was in his lap. I heard her saying
she was sorry for something or other, but I did not catch the rest of her 
sentence. I supposed it had something to do with the scene I had 
accidentally happened on earlier that evening, climbing the stairs, a scene
which seemed so long over, so far a cry from the present, I could have 
thought it belonged to a different life, of which this evening had come to 
be merely a curious reincarnation.

I carefully raised Lenny to her feet, and myself as well. As I did so I 
caught a glimpse of Johnny's face. It was calm and his eyes rested on us 
for an instant as we rose, and then returned to Etchika, whose head was 
buried still in his lap and whose arms were round his buttocks.

Lenny's black eyes confronted me as we stood for a second face to face 
while I searched for the opening of her shorts. At first I could not find 
it, and then I saw a concealed hook at the waist. Undoing this revealed a 
zip-fastener down the side. The zip-fastener ran the length of the shorts. 
I ripped it open. The whole of her left thigh and side was exposed to the 
waist of the loose jersey, and I sent my hand round to clasp the lovely 
rippling buttock thus bared to view, pressing my mouth to the tender groin.
There still remained one leg of the shorts constraining her nakedness, and 
so tightly fitting it stayed in place in spite of its loosened partner. I 
realized there was yet another zip, so exactly fitting were they that they 
could only be fastened when in place. This too I ripped open, but with my 
other hand under her mound so the shorts were not yet free to fall to the 
ground. And with the same hand that opened the shorts I pushed the jersey 
above her breasts and drew it off her head, and I withdrew my other hand, 
leaving the flimsy satin shorts to drop to the carpet. And pressing my 
mouth to the soft underbelly I caught her above the knees with my hands and
lifted her from the ground, she was so light that to my surprise her feet 
left the ground in a slow soar and she was in the air, supported half by my
hands and half by my mouth, without my having to make any particular effort
to raise her. And there I held her for a moment or two, delighting in my 
conquest, my conquest of she who needed so little conquering, for with her 
as with Etchika the act of love was shorn of its usual pathological 
battles, it became what it is among the sane and healthy, a natural 
exultation in the sense of life. And I opened my mouth as wide as it would 
open, and let my tongue go upward into her, with such effect that, leaning 
forward over me, so that my hands went naturally to support her back, she 
clasped her legs about my neck, and then let her upper body sink back, 
lower and lower, as my mouth moved at her sex, until her head was against 
the floor. As she went back, in a slow curve, I saw her expressionless 
features as they passed the light, shining directly on her distended neck. 
When her shoulders were against the floor I released my mouth, and, hardly 
knowing now what I was doing, for the objects in the room had become 
confused and my sight was blurred slightly, my eyelids-swollen, I fell upon
her and penetrated her with one movement, resembling rather a swoop than a 
movement. Her legs now pointing upward, she seized me violently with one 
arm round the neck and with the other about the buttocks, digging her nails
into me so that I gasped in pain. She began to buck upward at me in an 
astonishing excess of strength and of fury, and her sex to grip me round 
with the agility of a human hand. We were like things possessed, and in a 
veritable frenzy. If the house had fallen about our ears we should not have
heard it. From my throat as if from someone else I was aware of a kind of 
rattle forcing its way out. My ears, till now impervious to sound, were 
filled with a roaring noise like the rush of waters, or a high wind. My 
member seemed to hold itself poised an instant, and then render itself up 
to a prolonged spasm as the juices coursed out of it. Lenny's body suddenly
went limp, and I myself slid away to the carpet, where a leaden weariness 
overtook my limbs, which stirred vaguely till they found the least arduous 
position, and darkness filled my mind, like the descent of inward night.

When I opened my eyes again, Johnny was holding a lighted cigarette out 
to me and saying, “Up you get. We're going out.”

I looked around. Lenny was dressed. She had discarded her shorts, for the
moment. Instead she wore a thin pleated skirt, and shoes composed of very 
high heels and a number of straps narrow in width crossing from one side of
the sole to the other. But she had retained her loose white jersey. Her 
nipples were visible as tiny peaks pointing through it. She wore no 
brassiere. She did not need one.

Etchika too had changed her clothes, and now was clad in a black velvet 
dress with a wide belt of red suede. The belt was fastened over her belly 
with a huge copper buckle, reflecting the color of the crimson belt. The 
tawny hair flowing over the black dress was a powerful contrast to Lenny 
with her short black hair and slender body. And then I realized that this 
was exactly the purpose for which they were dressed, for Lenny's skirt was 
almost the same color as Etchika's wide suede belt. Side by side, they were
an impressive pair.

Suddenly I felt ridiculous lying naked on the floor smoking a cigarette 
as if I were in a stylish salon. I said, “How long have you been waiting 
for me? And how long have I been asleep on the floor?”

Johnny smiled and said, “About half-a-minute. Have you been asleep?”

Etchika said, “It never takes us long to dress.”

“But you need more than half a minute to get yourself up in that rig,” I 
objected, getting to my feet.

“It's simple when you know the secret,” Johnny told me, “Look!”

He went over to Lenny and deftly seizing her skirt by the hem swiftly 
bared her body to the waist. I caught a glimpse of the supple thighs and 
the triangle of inviting fur before the skirt swirled down again about her 
legs. Then he looked at me and made a gesture toward Etchika which needed 
no interpreting. I bent and slid my hands up her thighs, encountering the 
naked flesh and silken belly. Certainly, when women dress with such economy
it cannot take them long.

“Come,” Johnny said, as I lingered over my discovery. “Get ready. We have
to celebrate our first general appearance in public!”

I crossed to the wash-basin, and turned on the tap. Above the basin, on 
the glass shelf, reposed a single tooth-brush, and some toothpaste. 
Evidently two people used it, probably three. Why not a fourth? I covered 
it liberally with the refreshing paste. Then I doused my head and my prick 
with cold water, took up the tooth-brush and quickly brushed my teeth. I 
bared them to the mirror an instant. When I opened my mouth I looked like a
prize-fighter. Never mind. I slipped on my clothes. At last it seemed as if
I might find out why it was Johnny had offered these two women, and how it 
was he had been able to offer them, apparently knowing they would accept, 
and whether there was something else behind their readiness to acquiesce, 
something besides a simple readiness.

“O.K.,” I said, “where do we go from here?”

“Have you any appointments tomorrow?” Johnny asked me.

“None that I can't postpone,” I replied.

“Could you postpone them now?” Johnny asked.

“I think so,” I said, remembering Gaxiola, a man of easy habits.

“There's a phone-booth down the street,” said Johnny.

He turned and opened the door. Etchika and Lenny walked or rather sailed 
out of the room, and as they Went through the door, one after the other, in
an explosion of color against the darkness of the landing, Johnny patted 
each on the rump like a farmer exhibiting a couple of peacocks, to be 
handled tenderly but otherwise with impunity. Me he did not touch, as he 
waited for me to precede him onto the landing, but he gave me a grin, a 
duplicate or nearly of the grin I had first seen on his face at our meeting
in the dawn of the evening, if such an expression is possible. For that 
evening to my memory has something of the melodramatic quality with which 
dawn heralds a fine day.

We must have been a striking group as we entered the deserted street from
the side-alley, and Lenny and Etchika walked onto it as if the street were 
a stage and the street-lamps spotlights. And to a watcher at the end of the
street that is how it could have appeared, without there being any need of 
imagination. Life does not always need imagination, for it to be 
interesting. Often it is the contrary.

We walked along the street for half-a-block and at the turning Johnny 
stopped, under a street-lamp. He pointed to an anonymous-looking 
convertible drawn up at the curb, in the street intersecting our own.

“Can you drive?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“Pine. You drive us there. I want you to learn the way. I'll tell you as 
we go.”

“Isn't it wiser to keep that sort of thing to yourself?” I asked him.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Get in. All in the front.”

I helped shove Etchika in, and got in after her. It was a warm Spring 
night. The air was soft. The women were soft too. I began to hum. But I 
hummed out of tune, so I stopped.

Johnny gave me the keys. He pointed to a button on the dash-board. The 
starter. I pressed it.

“No,” he said, “the key.” He grinned.

I put the key in. Then I pressed the starter again. The car burst out 
with a sudden astonishing roar. I put it in gear.

We shot forward as if on a race-track. Everybody's head except mine gave 
a jolt.

Lenny said, “Hey!”

My hands stiffened on the steering-wheel. Then I slowed down and began to
get used to it. Gradually, the others relaxed their grip on the door-handle
and the seat.

I looked at Johnny. He grinned again and began carefully explaining the 
way.

We drove down to the quais, turned left and went along by the embankment,
under the lights which on the pavement, since they are interspersed with 
trees, seem always to cast a cheerful rather than a dreary light. This is 
not an exaggeration. It is that the light, falling on the constantly 
shifting leaves, is made to seem active, moving, rather than a merely 
passive illumination. Etchika too perhaps felt something of this, for she 
began to sing one of those songs of Paris which Parisians never tire of 
writing. Probably Paris is the city more appreciated by its occupants than 
any other. Etchika had a clear, gay voice, and I heard the song, a lament, 
above the throb of the engine,

J'ai le mal de Paris ...

as we crossed the Seine and went into the Avenue de l'Opera, where Johnny
told me to head for Mont-martre.

Many people were still about, in spite of its being nearly three o'clock 
in the morning, what Scott Fitzgerald called “the real dark night of the 
soul.” But that was for his age, and now the darkest of night for Parisians
was perhaps on their yearly birthday, causing them to set out if not to 
cheat age, at least to rob it of some of its sting. And I had not seen two 
such beautiful robbers in my life!

And as we drove along the boulevard Montmarti past the succession of 
cafes, glittering with lights, and the pavements flocked with people and 
echoing with their voices, I slowed the car the better to watch, to 
remember the girls and their painted faces, some young but by no means all,
and the aged as painted as the young, and as brightly colored. For this is 
a part of the world where people hang on to life with their last gasp, and 
where it would be trivial to interpret the paint, the heavy lipstick, the 
cheeks garishly rouged, the dyed hair, as a mere disguise or as hypocrisy. 
But it is also a sign of their lust for life, and that they are hanging on 
to it so long as their strength allows.

And there you find old women disguised as girls, and being paid for it, 
and old men disguised as boys, and being paid for it too, and they are not 
to be scorned nor despised, rather are they the conquerors, for they 
survive where those who scruple to imitate them do not. And the scrupulous 
in that profession end washing the lavatories.

And indeed life in a certain sense is a progress from the bed to the 
shithouse, and they delude themselves who try to make it decorous.

This funereal meditation was happily interrupted by Johnny, who said, 
“Turn up there, to the right.”

We left the glare of the main boulevard, and its turbulent crowds, to 
turn into a road weirdly unpeopled, and a hundred yards on swung round 
another corner to stop at an apparently blank wall. I switched off the 
engine, and passed the keys to Johnny.

“Keep them,” he said..

We got out of the car. And then I saw there was a door in the wall. We 
followed Johnny through it and down a flight of stone steps. Halfway down 
there was a woman sitting at a table in an alcove, with a cash-box and a 
book of tickets in front of her.

Johnny said, “Two tickets.” The tickets were double, apparently.

The woman did not reply. Johnny looked at her a moment, then shook her. 
She was asleep. She woke up and sold us two tickets, and went back to sleep
again. We went on downstairs.

The stairs led into what is known in Paris as a cave, that is to say a 
cellar. The Parisian cellars are particularly large and spacious. This one 
was no exception, and we entered a large room where people were dancing a 
three-piece band. The music was very slow and eerie and the dancers were 
not very active, just standing together and shifting slightly. It was full 
of smoke so that you could not see the faces clearly until you were almost 
on top of them. And then, when you saw them, they looked half-asleep. As 
Lenny and Etchika went by them, several people stopped moving altogether, 
and stared at them, until they had passed.

Johnny led the way through the dancers and into a curtained archway, and 
then through a door off the archway. This door gave onto another room like 
the one through which we had just passed, but it was different in that 
there were tables all the way round the three walls facing us, transformed,
by small partitions jutting from the wall, into separate alcoves, each with
its table, some provided with two and some with four chairs. Not much else 
was visible for the light was not strong enough to see more than the 
collection of alcoves, each with its private light, illuminating the table 
and no more, except for the penumbra! gloom cast on the chairs or, for more
than half were occupied, on those seated on them. Such a setting, with such
players, promised an interesting evening.

III

A STATELY NEGRESS IN AN EVENING ROBE of sequins rose from the nearest 
table as we entered and approached us with that lurching walk recalling 
man's and more particularly woman's reptilian descent. Facing us, her 
breasts shimmered in the half-light.

“Where can we sit?” Johnny asked, her. “This is a friend of mine,” he 
added, gesturing in my direction, and then, to me, “Maria.”

Maria came round to me and patted me with both hands over the ribs. I was
not quite sure whether she was feeling the proportions of my chest or 
testing me for a gun. She smiled and turned, her ample hips caressing each 
other under the sequins, and said, “Over here.”

The four of us went over and sat down at a table. Next to us, against the
wall, the curtains were thick and family muffled our voices.

As we sat down, my nostrils picked out an odor with which, as the night 
drew on, the air became more heavily laden, the heavy scent of sweet 
almonds. Resembling sweet almonds, it was in reality the drowsy smoke of 
marijuana and of hashish.

Through an arched, Turkish-style doorway I saw a small swimming-pool, a 
naked couple reclining on the long, marble seat, smoking. My curiosity 
grew.

In this room too there was a band, and the fact that there were four 
members to it instead of three as in the first room went perhaps to show 
that this part of the establishment was the one holding pride of place. The
band, all Negro players, was sandwiched in the room beside the curtained 
wall, the wall without alcoves or tables, next to the door. And after 
peering intently through the murky air I made out that all were stripped to
the waist, and wore only trousers of some heavy undistinguishable cloth, 
and sandaled feet.

Maria stood beside us for a few moments, exchanging pleasantries, and 
chuckling gently in such a way that the slow agitation of her throat crept 
over her breasts and communicated itself to her long, rippling thighs, 
stirring at her belly. This was all the more exciting in that it was 
obvious her dark luxuriant body was naked under the evening robe; and I 
could see the sequins dipping unmistakably in at the deep navel, and the 
triangular rise below.

Soon however she moved on to talk with the occupants of another table, 
and Johnny said, without warning and as if he were telling me the time of 
day, “You know, Karen told me of you. We're not such strangers as you 
think.”

I exclaimed, astonished, hardly believing my ears, “Karen! How do you 
know Karen?”

“Old friends,” Johnny threw out laconically, in a cloud of smoke. He 
added, “Our swords often cross! Ever since we split up, we've been the best
of friends.”

“You and Karen,” I said, “you were together?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Johnny said.

“And our hotel,” I said. “Didn't we meet...”

“An accident,” Johnny said imperturbably. “But that wasn't the real 
accident. We'd have met anyway, as we did, through Karen. The real accident
was your meeting Karen. She was very grateful. The cage for her would have 
been—”

“—worse than dishonor!”

“Ah, yes,” Johnny chuckled. “Honor.”

“Yes,” he said at length, “I knew you were there. Karen sent me a card. 
It's very simple. Of course I shouldn't have taken any chances without the 
card, you can call that an accident if you like. It's the second time I've 
had a card from her. The first time was over a year ago.”

“Johnny,” Etchika said in a voice like a sigh, “ask for a cigarette for 
me, I want a cigarette.”

“There's a girl somewhere,” Lenny said, “I'll go call her.” She stood up 
and shifted past Johnny, snaking her body between Johnny and the table. 
Then she paused, hiding him from sight, in the middle of the step past him,
so that she was straddling his legs. The pause seemed strangely long, and 
then her hands, which had been resting against the table, moved round 
behind her hips, and suddenly her skirt billowed outwards over her thighs 
as the contours of his arms were visible, encircling the naked lower body 
beneath the skirt. Lenny's eyes, like the automatic eyes of a doll, jerked 
peculiarly upward and seemed to focus somewhere in the infinity above my 
head. She relaxed and began to fall slowly backward until she was 
spreadeagled before me. Her breath seemed gradually to leave her as I 
imagined Johnny's upward searching member making its way into her lower 
belly, and her hands again came round to pluck away the skirt. She sent 
them down between her thighs. I watched as if a coma had descended on me, 
fascinated as her hips, directed from the supple waist, started smoothly to
revolve. She leaned forward then, poised as if brooding over her own 
thighs, dwelling on the inward course of the solid rod of flesh buried in 
her body, and I could see the hard pointed nipples erect beneath the flimsy
cotton jersey, thrusting too.

And then she stiffened, her mouth opened a small space so that I could 
see the even rows of teeth behind her lips, and her body was seized with a 
rigid flight of shudders, as if it had been plucked, like the strings of a 
musical instrument, and had momentarily vibrated. The shudders died away, 
and she sank down, as if the life had gone from her, swaying over to the 
right, so that for the first time since she had risen I was able to see 
Johnny. He kept his arms about her, kissing her tenderly once and then 
again. Finally he stood up, and I saw his long limp glistening member 
packed about with a thick bush of black hair, and he reached down, hiding 
it again from view and buttoning the fly.

He said to me, smiling, “This is one of the few remaining parts of the 
world where life pursues its natural course!” He stopped to glance at 
Lenny, who had become impassive once more, as she rose and the pleated 
crimson skirt swirled back about her knees. Lenny moved off until she was 
almost out of sight amidst the haze of smoke and the darkness and, turning,
I saw her white jersey vacillate an instant, like the scut of a rabbit, as 
she searched for the opening in the long undulating draperies, and 
disappear.

Johnny leaned forward and said to me, as I fondled Etchika's head, which 
she had rested lazily on my shoulder, “What I've been wanting to tell you 
is that there is a place for you, in this establishment, if you like.”

“What do you mean, place?” I asked. “What could I do, besides enjoy it?”

“Well,” said Johnny, “part of the business of keeping it going is 
precisely that, to enjoy it. But our activities are manifold and stretch 
over several frontiers, and more than one continent. And we need someone, 
from time to time, with abilities and interests of a very special kind. 
Don't get me wrong. I'm not offering you a job, in the usual sense. Sure, 
there'll be some money about, when you need it. Sometimes you'll go on a 
mission for us. Apart from that, nothing's changed, just come down here 
when you feel like it. For the moment all you have to do is keep living.”

This was surely the strangest offer of a job one man ever made to 
another. I reflected that, for those who want to know what life is capable 
of, in a world where most of the more interesting pleasures are also 
against the law, anyone who has the most natural and simple wish to avoid 
dying ignorant and uninstructed, the very state of things compels to break 
the law. And so it Would always be, until the laws were changed. Nowadays 
there is too much faith in the authority of the laws, and too little in 
human feeling. The lawmakers, following their preposterous calling with its
dual task of maintaining power in the hands of the few and of giving 
expression to the general fear of life, are of course inviting trouble. And
so ordinary people are given to such proverbs as “laws are made to be 
broken.” But they are also made to break us. Thus, having declared war on 
us, we are all condemned to struggle until our laws more closely follow the
dictates of curiosity instead of power and of fear.

Of course I accepted Johnny's offer without hesitating.

“That's your job,” he repeated, “just keep living, and add to your 
experience. Make yourself an interesting past!” And he added, “We sometimes
have strange tastes to cater for.”

“Who are 'we'?” I asked.

“Oh, it's a queer collection,” he replied. “Here and now, Maria and 
myself, some of the people in this room. People come and go. You'll 
probably meet some of them, and some you'll probably never meet.”

“Here?” I inquired. “What happens here?”

“Here,” he answered, “here, people come to buy freedom, for a night, two 
nights, sometimes longer, a week, two weeks. Here there are no laws, and 
there are no punishments. In this place crime pays, and a so-called crime 
committed is a pleasure gained. When you come in here you shed the outside 
world, like a cocoon, and liberty is here while the real prison is the 
world outside. You not only shed the punishments of the outside world, but 
you shed its ties. Those who bring their wives here have wives no longer, 
once inside this door, nor do wives in here have husbands. Some bring their
wives, some their mistresses, and some the wives of others. But we do not 
care where they come from, or who they are, in the world outside. Once in 
here they are themselves alone, to follow their feelings, wherever their 
feelings may lead them. They lead them to interesting places sometimes. 
You'll see, if you hang around long enough,”

At that moment Lenny returned, and wriggled past Johnny, who this time 
did not retain her. She was not alone. Standing beside the table was an 
olive-skinned girl of slender build, almost completely naked, but for a 
heavy green sash that, knotted below the navel; released its two ends to 
fall loosely over her mound and an inch or two only below it. So that, 
though never visible in entirety, it was always partially visible, the sash
swaying abruptly from side to side whenever she moved. Her breasts were 
small and high and of a form as to point not forward but a degree or two 
off, outward, so that when she walked they accentuated the jutting, 
assertive effect. And under them, when her body leaned to the left or to 
the right, the sternum and the cage of her ribs were visible, and the 
inward swerve to the lumbar region.

A silver cigarette-box glittered between her fingers. She opened it, and 
placed it on the table. Then she straightened and went off in the direction
of the band, which until now had been dilatorily improvising, but little 
more, for a few minutes every now and then, but without sustaining any 
piece for longer. She bent over the drummer, her firm swelling buttocks the
only spare flesh on her body. He handed her a box of matches and she came 
back to our table. When Etchika took a cigarette the girl leaned forward, 
and lit it for her. She had long black hair, quite straight, and it fell 
past her ears as she leaned over, and brushed at her breasts. When we all 
had lighted cigarettes in our mouths, she went off to another table, 
providing them with cigarettes and lighting them as she had done for us.

Etchika leaned back luxuriously and drew the sweet smoke into her lungs. 
With the first lungful, I felt creep over me an exhilarating headiness and 
at the same time a kind of glowing languor. And so I sat, musing on what 
Johnny had been saying, and conscious as of a sweet excitation at the end 
of my nerves of the slow low hum of conversation from the surrounding 
tables and of Etchika's sensuous languid form beside me, close against my 
own body. And I began too to take an interest in what I was able to see of 
the other people in this strange outlandish room, an interest provoked by 
the sight of a couple on the other side of the room, and almost diagonally 
across from where we were sitting. I could not see them very clearly 
through the gloom and heavy haze, I could see them only enough to make out 
their forms, but not their features. They had risen from their table and 
were standing beside it. The woman, when I first noticed her, a heavy 
creature with upswept hair and a great shifting bosom, was moving round to 
the front of the table. She put her hands to her throat and began to undo 
the high collar of her dress. I could not see the buttons, but it was not 
difficult to recognize the expert jerk of the fingers at her throat. They 
crept steadily downward, jerking once or twice and then sliding down to the
next button, as the dress began to gape at the bosom as she loosened those 
at the belly, and then finally bent, while the man too reached down to 
caress her bosom, and undid the last button. While still bending the dress 
fell open, and from there she slipped to her knees, and it suddenly gaped 
wide, exposing two great breasts resembling in their proportions those of a
wet-nurse, and a pair of vast powerful thighs, a formidable adjunct to the 
thick furry apex of her body. From this position she thrust her hands into 
her partner's loins, a man seemingly far younger than herself but a 
well-built, sturdy adversary. And soon his trousers fell around his ankles,
and he stepped out of them, exposing to her hands a thick and erect member,
which she caressed and drew toward her. While she did so he himself swiftly
stripped off his shirt, and dropped it to the ground. She drew it to her, 
and held it for a second to her cheek, and then drawing back her head she 
enveloped the threatening thing in her mouth, her arms about his hips and 
her hands clenching at his hard, muscular buttocks. But then he swiveled to
one side, so that his member slid from her mouth, and taking her by the 
shoulders first pushed off the dress, over her arms, and then forced her 
back to the ground, where she lay, her body heaving, on the thick woolen 
rug which covered most of the floor in this room, so curiously but, I was 
beginning to understand, so usefully furnished. For a few brief seconds he 
stayed bent over her, as if wondering how best to take his pleasure of her,
and then knelt between her thighs, lifting them from the ground the better 
to penetrate her and, his member in one hand, he moved above her and guided
it into the dark cavern of her sex. At first it was visible between her 
thighs, not only when he half-withdrew, in preparation for the following 
thrust, but at the termination of the thrust. But gradually he sank deeper 
and deeper into her until not even the base of his member was to be seen, 
only the two hard buttocks and the straining muscles behind his thighs. And
the woman's own wide hips, and her upward pointing legs, which after a 
moment set their heels on the floor. As his thrusts became more furious she
herself, making of her shoulders the first and of her heels the second 
fulcrum, raised her body from the ground so that it slanted from the 
shoulders upward and then downward very gradually from the sex to the knees
and of course suddenly in a sharp angle from knee to foot. And in this 
manner she lifted him bodily up, he resting on her belly, rocking up and 
down and, as she swayed, from side to side. Quite brusquely, he withdrew 
his hands from wherever they had been, in front of him, in the obscurity I 
could not very clearly distinguish, and sending them about her hips 
clutched violently into her buttocks so that his fingers sank deeply into 
the straining flesh. And at the same time her own right hand came into 
view, creeping up from underneath between her own buttocks, and took hold 
of the taut yet nonetheless perceptibly pendulous bag of skin with its two 
little spheres, and seemed at the same time both to caress him and with 
this agent to pull him even more deeply into her. Their movements became 
frantic, increasing in speed and fury so that at each thrust into her he 
displaced her whole body, forcing it backward a fraction of an inch each 
time across the black woolen rug. Until the moment when both paused, 
arrested in that final tension; and he reared up his head as if in an 
attempt to lodge his member there forever, the two of them locked together,
as if time had unaccountably stopped, and found them as they were. And then
together both sagged, and time again moved forward, as her legs relapsed, 
and her body, and he melted on top of her, and there they lay, panting, a 
pile of loose white limbs over the black rug, like softened models in clay.

In the big room no one spoke, silence lay in the foggy air like a spell 
until somewhere someone quietly clapped their hands, and the buzz of 
conversation broke out again renewed in strength, eerily, as if one had 
just come into a room, and the conversation had rolled out and broken on 
the walls like a wave on the shore. Whispers of admiration came to my ears.

IV

I OPENED MY EYES. IT MUST HAVE BEEN early afternoon. But since it was 
also early Spring, there still remained that fresh exhilarating tang to the
air that passes, in the Summer, with the morning. I was conscious of the 
beneficent after-effects of the marijuana we had smoked the night before. 
Unlike alcohol, it does not eject you after a bout with a throbbing head, 
to feel abandoned like a discarded corpse, to rot. But on the contrary, 
following upon a night's long sleep, you awake to the sense of a great 
calm, and of soothed nerves. And marijuana, which does not interfere with 
the digestion and is not habit-forming, and because it does not leave you 
with feelings of remorse, so characteristic of the heavy drinker, is a 
great aid to thought and contemplation, the following day. Thus I lay, on 
waking, between the warm sheets, vaguely musing on all that had happened to
me, since I had unsuspecting climbed the stairs, the night before, and 
nearly collided with Etchika, in her downward rush.

I had asked Johnny, when we returned, and he bade me good night for the 
second tune, what had made him come downstairs again, and so set the scene 
for all that happened afterward.

“Nothing,” he said, “a triviality.”

He thought for a moment, then said, “I was having an argument with 
Etchika. I expect that was obvious to you.”

I said that it was; but that it must have been over or he wouldn't have 
come down.

“No,” he said, “it wasn't over. But arguments between two people are 
mostly rather ridiculous. There are few that can't be settled, with a 
little care. At least there are few real differences possible. The real 
differences are usually impossible to settle. The rest are usually not much
more than a mere matter of nerves.”

“And this one?” I asked.

“Yes?”

“Was this one only a matter of nerves?”

“Partly. Still, partly not. She wanted to travel, take a trip.”

“So why can't she?” I said.

“Well, she can. But she wanted to go with me, and I don't like traveling 
with women. Then out of pique she said she would go alone, so I told her to
go alone, and leave me in peace. As I said, it's all rather foolish, 
because she doesn't really mind traveling alone either. Except that she has
been here for some time now, and she wanted a change, and I suppose she 
thought I could show her an interesting change. But I still prefer 
traveling alone.”

“What has that to do with your coming downstairs?” I asked.

Johnny gave his grin. “I thought in the end it would be better to smooth 
her over. Anyway, I decided to come down and see how you were getting on.”

He had said no more, on the subject. But it. was clear he did not think 
of his women in the way most men do, he did not think of them as his, not 
irrevocably, for eternity, nor yet temporarily, for a night.

Johnny thus, when in the cave he talked to me of the cave's conventions, 
and of the release and freedom which the cave was able to offer its 
denizens, was speaking more than the literal truth. He was expressing a 
fact of his own existence, a state he himself exemplified.

This of course, all labored and naive, labored and dead, is so when said 
apart from the actual hard facts of such a life.

For what it meant was a complete surrender of all one had thought he was,
on entering the cave, and a complete surrender of judgment, and all 
sanctions and rights, to the chopping-block.

And this to ordinary conventional men and women can be a terrible thing. 
It can raise anger, righteous indignation, horror, disgust, and naturally, 
and of course, fear. But once overcome, although most never do, and, more 
difficult, for people are so loath to part with the shallow mask they wear 
in public, once it had been expressed why, then there was the enormous, 
immeasurable rewards of life unstunted, natural in a sense, obliged, 
because of the indignities imposed on us by authority and our own fear, to 
resort to a cave, clandestine, secret, on the run, to protect its skin.

But the cave seemed a worthwhile place and I would go back to it.

And the same I felt was true of Johnny.

And then I began to wonder whether the same was not true of Karen. I 
remembered again it was through Karen I had met not only Johnny, but 
Etchika also, and Lenny.

This was unexpected.

... I went back in memory to Karen, for whom I had for a while abandoned 
my vagabond's existence, for which in turn I had abandoned Karen. These 
choices I had made, in turn, without any rancor and with many regrets. Many
landmarks in my life have been constructed almost entirely of regrets. I 
can never, when I choose, quite bring myself to shrug my shoulders and 
mouth some such evasive phrase as, Life is like that, or, You can't have 
your cake and eat it, and so on, interminably.

The way we met is very strange. I met her thanks to the police. It does 
not happen often that I have to thank the police ... It was in Nice.

I was in bed one morning when a staccato pounding on the door awoke me. I
could hear the tramp of heavy shoes in the room below. They were probably 
making a surprise raid. I went to the door, and opened it cautiously, 
wondering whether they wanted anything of me, in particular. But a blonde 
girl, in a thin nylon nightdress, and breasts so heavy they left only a 
narrow cleft between them, was standing there, apparently panic-stricken. 
When I opened the door she flung herself past me into the room. I shut the 
door. When women force their way into your room you don't stop them. She 
stood there a moment, catching her breath.

“Hide me,” she said, “hide me quickly, the police are coming.”

“Good,” I said. “When you knocked, I thought you were the police.”

I looked about the room for a hiding place. I could ask my questions 
afterward. It's easy enough to hide money, or dope, or watches, but a 
woman! Hotel rooms aren't usually made to hide women in. But this time, 
after a moment's thought, I realized I was in luck. This hotel room had a 
typical hotel bed. There was a deep hollow in the middle. The springs 
hadn't been mended for years. Usually of course when the police search your
room, even for people, or perhaps particularly for people, the bed is the 
first place they look. Still, they don't as a rule take it to pieces. 
Downstairs, I heard several voices all speaking loudly at once, then 
silence. A door banged. They would be on their way up. One more room, 
perhaps two, then mine.

I went to the top of the bed, took off the pillows, rolled the mattress 
right back. There were the springs, a network of coiled wire with a huge 
hollow in the middle running the length of the bed. Naturally enough, the 
hollow was exactly the shape of a human body, having held thousands of 
human bodies, and I supposed it would go on holding them, and sagging lower
and lower and lower, until one happy night it broke and jettisoned its 
occupants onto the floor, or into the pot de chambre. Still, for the time 
being it was sturdy enough. And it was easily big enough for the Swedish 
girl, standing naked and trembling with fear in the middle of the floor, 
but still curious in spite of her fear to be interested in what I was 
doing. I took one of the blankets off the bed and spread it over the 
springs.

It would be most embarrassing if one of the policemen were to look under 
the bed, and see a plump breast or a long white thigh, or a furry triangle 
pressing its way through the springs. Anyway, it would be more comfortable 
for her, that way.

I told her to lie on it, face down so she could breathe.

“Don't move,” I said, “you're supposed to be a mattress.”

She went over, apprehensively, and lay down, on the blanket. Her hair 
fell down over her back, leaving a pair of soft shoulders bare to the line 
of her nightdress. Her face was pale, but I do not think it was from fear 
alone, and her brow, clear and wide, ended in the composure of two long, 
sweeping eyebrows whose line was unaided by cosmetic pencil. I took the 
liberty of pressing her buttocks, which rose rather more than a mattress 
should, into the springs. She was very well formed, they were round and 
resilient. She gasped, however.

I said: “Be quiet! Do you want, to be discovered? Put your hands down at 
your sides.”

I helped her, then smoothed the nightdress over her body.

“Or the mattress,” I told her, “might scratch you.”

Then I took the mattress and rolled it back into place. It was perfectly 
flat but for a very slight mound in the middle, which could easily be put 
down to faulty manufacture.

“Are you comfortable?” I asked her.

A muffled noise from the bed answered me. I could not make out the words.
However, she could still breathe apparently, which was what mattered. I 
arranged the bed to look as if I had just left it. I left a fold of blanket
and sheet over the mound in the middle, which I patted once or twice, to 
reassure her.

Then I went over to the wash-basin and began to shave. I had lathered my 
face and was making the first stroke with the razor when there were three 
firm raps on the door.

I said: “Yes?”

“Police!” a man's hard voice said loudly. “Open up!”

“One second,” I said in what I hoped was a polite voice.

I crossed the room and whispered almost soundlessly under the bed, “Don't
budge. You're quite safe.” And I went to the door, in my dressing-gown, 
holding the shaving brush in my left hand and the razor in my right. I 
transferred the razor to the other hand, opened the door wide, and 
transferred it back again, wondering what was going to happen.

The stony eyes of two plain-clothes policemen glared back at me. One of 
them spoke to me in English, with a slight accent. This was in the south of
France, remember, in the city of Nice. On the beach-front, Nice looks like 
any other coastal resort. But it is different from most in this, that 
behind the plush bland concrete and glass facade of the beach-front there 
is a big and active industrial city. The police of that city are familiar 
with foreign criminals, many go there to hide, from where it is a simple 
matter to cross the frontier, a mere thirty miles away, through Monte Carlo
into Italy.

The police are by no means unaware of such obvious facts as these.

The shorter of the two policemen said: “Your papers, please.”

Still with my shaving things in hand, I went to a chair and reached for 
my passport, inside my jacket. I put the razor down by the wash-basin. But 
I kept the shaving-brush in my hand, for effect, to remind them I was being
interrupted at the delicate task of shaving. Doubtless it made no 
difference to them whether I held the brush or not. It certainly would not 
make them feel pressed. They had their job to do. But if even such a 
triviality as this reminded them that it was their task to inconvenience me
and others besides, and if because of this the very faintest flicker of 
discomfort crossed their minds, so much the better.

And I had the strongest of personal interests in thwarting their hunt, 
apart from my conviction that each person saved from their clutches is a 
victory. I also hoped that if they in the end did not have the Swedish 
girl, then perhaps I would have her myself. . And thinking of Karen, toward
whom I did not dare to look, I was careful to give them my passport 
directly, in a movement which I hoped was uninterrupted and unhesitating, 
and I was particularly careful to avoid turning my eyes in the direction of
the bed. In fact I did my best to behave as I would have done, so far as I 
could imagine, if no one else had been there. This is by no means easy, as 
anyone knows who has ever hidden anything, during a search for it. I found 
that the most effective method was simply to try and forget that there was,
in fact, anything hidden or out of the ordinary in my room.

The policeman looked at my passport, opened it and flicked through the 
pages, stopping from tune to time. He passed it to his colleague, who did 
the same.

“You travel a lot,” he said.

“Yes,” I said innocently, “I like traveling, when I can afford it.”

“Have you been long in France?” he asked.

“Six weeks.” The stamp of the frontier police was in the passport, as 
usual, to confirm what I said. He glanced through it, until he found the 
stamp, and nodded.

“This is not your first visit.”

“No.”

“What is your business here.”

“Pleasure,” I said. But the truth is not always so convincing as fiction,
so I added, “I came to watch the motor-racing, as a matter of fact.”

I could say this with confidence since there happened to be a week of 
stock-car racing at the opening of the Spring season on the Riviera. The 
town had been plastered with announcements for the past month.

Apparently it satisfied him for he changed the subject and asked me: “Are
you alone in this room?”

I said: “Yes,” nodding my head slightly but as if I attached no 
importance to the question.

“I'm afraid we must ask you to permit us to verify the room is empty, 
apart from yourself,” the policeman who was doing the talking said. Perhaps
he was conscious of using official and slightly ridiculous language.

I said: “Oh. Why, yes, certainly.” During the foregoing colloquy they had
been standing half in and half out of the room, that is to say the talker 
in and his companion, the watcher, slightly behind him, at the doorway; but
now I stepped aside to let them pass. They came in, and stood for a moment,
staring about, as if they knew Karen had come in here and it was only a 
matter of finding her. My heart beat faster, and something seemed to rise 
in my throat. To calm myself I inspected my shaving-brush, forcing my eyes 
to pick their way among the configuration of surfaces in the little 
bubbles, and to sort a kind of order among the drying suds that clung to 
the bristles.

The taller one went over and opened the cupboard. Then he went over to 
the long French windows giving onto the veranda, a small one, and better 
described as a balcony, of the kind common in the South of France. In this 
hotel the balcony of one room was separated from the next not by a space 
but merely by a low intervening wall, and it would have been possible to 
pass from one room to another by this means.

While he did this the shorter one was looking under the bed.

I said nothing. But I began to think, with relief, and with an eagerness 
which became more difficult to contain than my apprehension in case they 
should strip off the mattress, of the round cloven flesh making the now 
immobile mound in my mattress, and of the small waist on which her hips had
seemed to swivel as she readied herself before lying down, and I thought of
the unambiguous patch of heavy fur visible quite clearly through the sheer 
nightgown, which I was longing to tear off her, as soon as the policemen 
had finished their stupid task and gone, and left me in peace. I knew 
better than to ask in feigned innocence what they were looking for. Such 
people do not themselves take kindly to inquiries.

But I said: “You must excuse me if I finish shaving. Please satisfy 
yourselves there is no one here. But you know how soap dries on the skin.”

The shorter policeman broke silence for the first time and said 
impatiently: “Yes, yes,” and taking hold of the foot of the brass bedstead 
he dragged it away from the wall, with difficulty I am glad to say. I 
feared for my poor Swedish girl, who must have been terror-stricken at that
moment. It says a lot for her strength of mind that the little hillock in 
the middle of the bed didn't move. It did not even move when the policeman 
seized the blankets and the top sheet and dragged them off, nor when he 
lifted the pillows up, and dropped them again. But I sensed in the first 
movement a hint of despairing frustration, and I saw that he dropped them 
more or less perfunctorily, turning to his companion, with a sign he was 
ready to go.

Then he said to me: “I am sorry to have disturbed you. We are bound to 
fulfil our instructions.”

I turned from the shaving mirror, through which I had been watching the 
final operations, and said, towel in hand, “Of course.”

I wiped my face, and when I remembered that but for them the lovely Karen
would never have come to ask me to hide her, I added, “I must congratulate 
you on your efficiency.”

Being French, they looked at me a little strangely, but when it was 
evident I meant what I said, they both said good-bye with extreme courtesy.

That was that. I shut the door behind them. Then I stood where I was for 
a few seconds, until I heard their feet going down the stairs. And I heard 
them begin to talk, and their voices die away with their footsteps.

I crossed rapidly to the bed and raised the mattress, and piled it at the
foot of the bed. There lay Karen, apparently in a kind of stupor. I picked 
up the prostrate body, kicked the mattress back into place, and laid her 
down on it. Then I went and got her a drink of water. She shook her head, 
screwing her fists into her eyes, as if awakening from a deep sleep. A 
double mattress is a very heavy thing. I sat down and held her head up, the
glass next to her lips. They were wide and even, the corners slanted 
neither up nor down. She sipped at the water.

“Oh,” she said, “how can I thank you.”

One of her shoulders was exposed. I kissed the hollow where the flesh, so
white it was nearly blue, left that gentle line of the collar-bone visible.
She smiled. I let her sink slowly into the mountain of bed-clothes, feeling
my hand slide from behind her head to her shoulder. And with the other hand
I supported the soft underpart of her thighs.

There we stayed awhile, and I was aware of her body softening and growing
relaxed, as the nervous tension from the ordeal she had undergone of fear 
and discomfort gradually dissipated. .

Then of course I went to kiss her, but her hand came up in that most 
exasperating of gestures to place itself across my mouth.

“Come,” I said, “we are old friends now. We have won a battle together. 
There is no modesty between us any longer. Besides, the time for sparring 
is gone, for me.” But it depresses me when I talk in this way, although 
there is sometimes no alternative. However, I shifted ground.

“What is it, anyway?” I asked her.

“I owe you an explanation,” she replied.

“Nothing,” I said, “you owe me nothing.”

“But I am grateful,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, “I am grateful too. But I am not asking you to express 
your gratitude now, except by not expressing it, and you, you are not 
asking me to express mine. Let us agree, instead.”

“Agree to what?” she said.

“Let us first agree to stop talking,” I said, “so that I can admire you.”

“But we will talk later,” she whispered, “won't we?”

“Yes,” I said, “we shall talk later.”

The preceding futile discussion seems to occur, in some form or other, 
whenever two people, who do not know each other, try each to be agreeable 
to the other, and search for the least offensive way to say exactly that, 
that they would like to be agreeable but do not know as yet what the other 
will find most reassuring. It is perhaps interesting, since it happens so 
often. So long as conventions last, it is probably inevitable.

Her hand, which had been resting calmly against my cheek, crept around my
neck. I took her head in my hands and began to explore it. I found that the
crevices of her ears, among the heavy yellow hair which flowed about them, 
held the touch of a perfume I could not determine, for I am no expert in 
perfumes, but which was not the everyday odor of rose-petals or even any 
other flower I was familiar with. But I am no expert in horticulture 
either. But it was a gentle scent in keeping with the very white skin about
which it floated, and which every now and then my nostrils caught and lost.
I allowed the tip of my tongue to escape from my mouth and very slowly 
savored with it the delicate flesh, that flesh softest of all behind the 
ear, and faintly pervaded with the perfume which still eluded me. She 
quivered suddenly. I realized with delight that the touch of my tongue 
tantalized her, as did me the contact of her skin.

Her hands began to move evenly at my waist, and made their way inside the
thin pajama top to slip, with a sudden shock, to the bare skin. Kneeling 
still, I leaned about to draw my lips over the nape of her neck, among the 
silky yellow strands. And now, as the heady drunkenness began to overcome 
me, she was not merely caressing my waist, but clutching at it, causing the
nerves to jump, regularly, so that the skin experienced something like a 
series of needle-pointed pricks, in many different places simultaneously. 
And as I moved, I looked up to see the line of her cheekbones, that sharp 
round line bespeaking a face that will keep its shape for years to come, 
and the almost invisible sheen of down over the cheek, whose presence you 
would ignore but that in the light it shines. Her mouth, with parted lips, 
was now beside my own, and as I turned my head my nostrils were momentarily
warmed by her breath, until our lips touched, delicately at first, brushing
each other, and then pressed hard, crammed against each other as children 
cram fruit into their mouths. Quickly the hard point of her tongue drew out
and then darted at me twice. After which it relapsed into a soft formless 
presence of flesh, round which my mouth coiled.

With movements it is hard to make anything but clumsy I bent my legs to 
shake off my pajamas. But I was saved much fumbling and blundering, for her
legs drew up under me, and catching her toes in the waist of the pajamas 
she straightened her legs again, drawing the pajamas off neatly.

As her legs straightened I slowly stroked her thighs, until under the 
influence of the insinuating pressure I tried to impart to my hands her 
legs fell apart, and my hands like two small animals made their way to the 
hair and to the now saturated flesh between her thighs. But there they 
became entangled with her nylon nightdress, so that I raised her buttocks 
with one hand and with the other dragged it upward, so exposing her breasts
completely. They were very full and loose enough to fall a little to each 
side of her chest. What full breasts are not? They resembled those of a 
certain well-known Italian film-star, and I fell upon them with a joyful 
ardor. I later also found that they were of the obtrusive kind that swayed 
and lurched when she walked. My hands were not large enough to cover them. 
In the East attempts are made to explain their attraction for us on the 
grounds that they are the symbols of motherhood. This is as ridiculous as 
to explain the reverse attraction Of a man's virile member as a symbol of 
fatherhood. What is certain is that the sight of them and of Karen's long 
curving body excited me enormously. I put my mouth over one nipple, careful
not to touch the nipple with my tongue, only to describe a circle round 
about it, and as I took my mouth away she made a quiet noise in her throat 
and reached down to press her hand up under my belly. My tongue had left a 
damp glistening ring about her nipple so that I was now able to moisten my 
finger and move it circularly over the nipple itself, caressing it between 
my thumb and index finger, and at each twist of thumb and finger my other 
hand could feel a flight of tremors communicated to her lower back. With it
I began to explore the cleft between her buttocks, rocking now, and I let 
my hand stray down the whole length of her body. Her legs slowly splayed 
apart and in reply to this movement I covered the furry protuberant mound 
with my palm, drawing my fingers over the swollen lips of her sex, which 
the warm liquids made smooth. Arid at this contact I felt them run through 
with a kind of tremulous contraction.

I turned my head upward to look her full in the face.

She whispered, flushing, “Yes, now!”

But I still desisted, and reaching inside her legs I took her behind the 
knees and forced her thighs backward. And then I let the weight of my body 
fall onto her, and we were together, I was in her to the full. We were the 
beast with two' backs. She stared, drawing a long steady breath deep into 
her, then she gave. She smiled, and began to writhe her hips, and through 
the smile moaning softly.

I dug into her until I could feel the obscure formations of flesh up in 
her belly, a fleeting feeling, I could not feel them all the time, but when
I felt them I knew she felt them too, for she made a kind of squeezing 
noise in her throat as if all the muscles there too were contracted. My 
hands were playing over her body, and she was holding mine in her hands. 
And then our hands stopped moving, and we clutched each other, when for a 
second we were sprung together. She hissed, in a quick escaping breath, 
“Yes!” as I, with all my strength, held myself far forward, like a 
stanchion embedded in her body.

The orgasm came beautifully, like two skyrockets winding into the sky 
together in a low arc, and mingling their explosions together and slowly 
hovering and falling and falling down out of the sky again.

V

AND, INDEED THE AFTERNOON SUN NOW trickling frostily into this room in 
the Latin Quarter did faintly resemble that morning almost-Summer sun that 
caught my eyes, and shone from Karen's, as we lay recuperating our breaths 
and senses, shaken, still.

We had not immediately drawn apart. From time to time Karen contracted 
round me her inner muscles, and softly giggled. Once she turned her head, 
over a billow of yellow hair, and with her lips touched my face.

She seemed to retain, and even harbor for some while after, the effect of
making love. Men on the contrary seem no sooner to reach and pass the 
climax than they begin to stir and to move, once more growing restless. And
I think this is not because the effects in question are not there to be 
felt, for they are. But they are over-glossed, ignored, men are careless at
such times, blind to them, annihilating the object of their perceptions 
before having taken the pains to perceive it. Their feelings are perhaps 
more complex than they care to make out. But it is the fashion to be 
simple, rather than passive, inward, reflective.

Several men I have questioned on this kind of thing reply at first 
automatically, with a simple, nonchalant phrase. Questioned further, they 
look surprised. Further, they are confused, find they do not know, cannot 
remember, really do not know at all and admit they seldom take the trouble 
to watch themselves or see what it is, the effect going on inside them, in 
spite of themselves.

Some of course deny it altogether, say there is no doubt in their minds, 
none at all. Some, vehemently, add, neither about that or anything else, 
for they know their own minds. Others, informatively, that a fuck's a fuck,
and let's have done with it.

In any case, from the man without doubts, that darkest combination of 
fool and liar, there is little to be extracted, even in love, which is the 
best revealer. It revealed me as one of these, and in a moment of chagrin I
laid my head back on the pillow, and, after a struggle, developed a little 
patience, watching Karen's tranquil face.

I felt creep over my limbs that druggy glow. In Karen's veins it was 
creeping too, I saw, for her head sank laxly to one side and soon her eyes 
were closed and she was in a heavy sleep.

Only in sleep did we finally break apart, and when I awoke it was to the 
disquieting vision of Karen's pale blue eyes regarding what I suppose a 
moment or two before had been my eyelids. I moved a little forward, and 
kissed her mouth. The heavy opulence of her still naked breasts came up 
against my chest. I ran my hand over the top of her ribs, and smoothly it 
slid to her waist. Then all at once I remembered. I drew slowly back and 
said: “Do you have any clothes?”

She said: “Not here.”

I kissed her again, and asked: “Where are they?”

“They were downstairs,” she said, “but I don't know where they are now. 
They might still be there, but I don't think so.”

“Suppose I went and looked?” I said.

“No,” she said, “they probably have someone in the room, waiting for just
that. As an accomplice after the fact you would be quite helpless. In some 
ways it's more difficult to defend yourself in a foreign country than at 
home. For little things you can appeal to your foreign status, your 
ambassador, and all sorts of little excuses. But for serious matters they 
jail you without compunction. And your ambassador wouldn't be interested in
you.”

“You seem to know your way out,” I said.

“In the little things only,” she said. “I have to get friends to help me 
otherwise.”

“Is there anything there worth trying to salvage?” I asked.

“It would be worth it, but I think it's too dangerous.”

“Let's first get you out of here,” I suggested, “then we can talk about 
the other things.”

I slid off the bed, and went over to the door. There was a 
house-telephone beside it.

“We'll have some coffee first,” I said, picking up the telephone.

“Remember I'm not here,” Karen said, looking up, from among the 
bedclothes. I ordered a pot of coffee and a plate of croissants.

While we waited for it I put some clothes on. Then I rummaged about in 
the cupboards until I found a sheet of plain white paper. I dropped it on 
the ground beside the bed, Karen watching me curiously. I said to her, 
“O.K., step on that.” She swung her legs to the ground and placed one neat 
white foot on the piece of paper.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Taking your footprint.” I took a pencil and drew round her foot, then 
carefully tore the paper just on the outline.

Kneeling down, to draw the line round her foot, I found myself looking 
directly into the furred lips of her sex, and bending forward placed my 
mouth over them.

“Oh!” she said. But her hands came down to fondle my head and the nape of
my neck, pressing my mouth yet closer to her. And soon began the flow of 
juices from her core, which my tongue set itself to encourage.

I could feel the gathering toughness of my member thrusting outward 
against my clothes. And as I straightened up, and stood before her, Karen 
swiftly tore them away from it, and pulled me into her straight, as we 
were, she sitting on the edge of the bed and I standing beside it. And I 
quickly shed the clothes I had only a few moments earlier put on. And 
Karen, raising her thighs, and holding me to her, swung back, back, and 
then completely backward onto the bed, like a rocking-chair, carrying me 
with her. For me an added component of the excitement was its 
unexpectedness, the sudden accentuation of desire. And this must have been 
the same for Karen too, who seemed to be overtaken by an excess of what 
resembled astonishment more than anything else, in the midst of pleasure, 
so that she uttered a succession of little cries, as I bore into her, and 
let her arms fall away from me heavily, above her head, which she stretched
upward, so that the muscles lengthened and tightened below her throat.

She gave a. great sigh, gripping me with her thighs, and, our mouths 
meeting with such force they tingled, our bodies burst into the spasm and 
died away together.

Hardly had I begun to get my breath, than there was a knock at the door. 
From where I was I cried, “A moment!” and carefully and very slowly 
separated my body from Karen's. I stood, leaving her lying on the bed, legs
dangling lifelessly over the edge, took up my bathrobe and went to the 
door.

I opened it enough to reach through and take the tray proffered to me by 
a young and, I noticed, attractive little serving-girl, or chambermaid, I 
was not sure which, and to thank her, whereat she smiled and a pair of 
brown eyes twinkled before she turned and tripped away, and to shut the 
door again without more than an inch or two of the wall, and myself, being 
visible from beginning to end.

I brought the tray back and gave it to Karen.

“Now,” I said, “while you finish that, we'll try and straighten things 
out.”

“What about you?” she said.

“All in good time,” I replied. I leaned down and picked up the piece of 
paper on which I had made the outline of Karen's foot.

“What's that for?” she asked.

“A pair of shoes,” I said. “If you want to walk out of here without 
attracting attention you'll have to put some clothes on.”

She had recovered, by now, and was sitting up and taking an interest in 
what was going on. A fault flush of excitement rose high on her cheeks. 
“What are you going to do?” she asked. “Lock you in for half-an-hour while 
I do some shopping,” I said. “I'll take the key, and don't open to anyone. 
You can amuse yourself taking a shower, if you like.” And I gestured in the
direction of the shower-curtain past which a little tiled shower-room was 
visible. The policeman had half-drawn the curtain, I remembered, during his
search.

I got up and began to dress again. Taking my watch from the floor, where 
I usually put it at night, for some reason, I saw that we had slept longer 
than I had realized. It was nearly five o'clock.

Key in hand, I went to the door, unlocked it, and stepped out.

Karen said: “Good-bye,” waving a croissant at me. I shut the door, 
double-locked it, and pocketed the key.

On the way out of the hotel, the attendant said, “Your key, sir?” I 
pretended not to hear until I had gone a few paces on, then turned and 
said: “Eh? What was that?” He repeated his phrase. “Oh, that's all right,” 
I said, “I'm only going out for a packet of cigarettes,” and patted my 
pocket amiably as I pushed through the door, before he had time to protest.
It was not so much a question of keeping the key at all costs, but of 
keeping it without arousing suspicion. It would have been better to 
surrender it and hope for the best, rather than have them watch me 
curiously as I came and went, the rest of the evening.

I walked out onto the twilit streets, directing my steps toward the city,
and soon I was threading my way among the crowds returning from work.

And then, in a narrow street, I found my first objective, a little, 
gloomy cobbler's shop, with two pairs of women's slippers behind a dingy 
glass pane. I went inside, through a door that tinkled a warning bell when 
I opened it, and stood at the counter. As the door shut it tinkled again. 
There was an old man working over a last. He wore a skull-cap, pushed back 
on his head. He seemed to be bald. I began, “Have you—”

“What's that?” he said, “What's that?”

I pulled my pattern of Karen's foot from my pocket.

“I want a pair of women's slippers,” I said. I put the pattern on the 
counter. He stared at it, then looked up at me.

“That's the pattern,” I said.

He picked it up and examined it intently on each side, as if he expected 
to find Writing on it.

“Shoes?” he said, curiously.

“No,” I said, “not really. Light slippers.”

“Mm, mm,” he said. He stared at the pattern again.

“Young, I suppose,” he said, looking at me piercingly. He rubbed himself 
vigorously behind one ear, with his thumb.

“Young, yes,” I said, “but—”

He interrupted me again with a brief cackle.

Then he asked me, “What color?”

“The shoes?” I said.

He cackled again, and nodded. It hadn't occurred to me. I realized the 
shoes should rather have been bought after the clothes. I wasn't sure what 
color.

“I'm not sure, yet,” I said.

“If you're not sure, it'd better be black,” he said.

“Good,” I said. Suddenly he seemed to wake up.

“For the street?” he asked, “as well?”

“Yes.”

He gazed vacantly for a moment, then wheeled round to the rows of boxes 
behind him and made a kind of queer little dive toward one box. He pulled 
it out and opened it in front of me.

“There!” he said triumphantly.

I looked at them.

“Shoes?” I said.

He gestured toward them again, still triumphant, expectantly.

The shoes consisted, as they lay delicately in their box, of a thin sole 
and a five-inch heel, so far as I could judge, with one narrow black strap 
in a forward-pointing vee brought back over what would be the top of 
Karen's foot and, passing through a tiny loop at each side of the heel, 
wound once round the ankle, to buckle, with a small black buckle, in front 
of it. They were simple, at least. I wondered how long they would last.

“How long will they last?” I asked him. “Forever,” he said. He added, 
“Gems!” He picked one up and smoothed a finger over the narrow suede strap.
They did not look as if they would support the weight of Karen's body for 
long. However, if they supported it for long enough to walk down the stairs
and out of the hotel I supposed that would be enough. I asked him the 
price. He was fumbling with the paper pattern, fitting it inside, over the 
sole. It covered it, with perhaps a millimeter margin all the way round. He
pointed to it, and explained, “The foot curves out. That's right. They'll 
fit.” I asked him the price again. Fidgeting with a ticket he had detached 
from the shoes, squinting, he held it out to me, looking into my eyes 
inquiringly.

“Can you read that?” he said.

I read it. “Five thousand, one hundred francs.”

For what they were I supposed they were worth it.

He looked at me again, and said suddenly, “Give me five thousand.” I took
out my wallet and gave it to him.

He put the lid on the box.

“No,” I said, “just a paper bag.”

He looked disappointed. All at once he had an inspiration.

“She's going to wear them straight away!” He was very acute.

“That's right.”

He gave me his cackle again, bouncing jerkily up and down, like a 
chimpanzee, only not so lissome. He wrapped them in tissue paper and 
slipped them into a bag. It was getting late. The shop was dark. He had not
turned the light on. He gave me the packet. I could hardly see him.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Good, good,” he said.

“Good-bye,” I said. I went to the door.

“Good-bye,” he said. As I opened the door it tinkled again, and he 
repeated, “Good-bye,” and I heard his cackle through the gloom once more as
the door tinkled shut, and I stepped out onto the street.

The world seemed queerly to have changed, as I walked along the lamp-lit 
street, since I had first pushed open the cobbler's door. Of course, it was
merely that I had gone in, in the twilight, and come out, to darkness, and 
the lighted lamps. Nevertheless, it was eerie. I hastened on to the main 
shopping quarter.

I went into the first dressmaker's shop I came across. This time it was a
conventional-looking shop, with a wide, high window and, when I entered, a 
heavy carpet covering the floor. As I crossed the short space to the 
counter, I looked about me. There seemed to be no one in the place. Perhaps
they were behind the long stacks of dresses hanging in rows along the 
floor-stands. I walked round them, without success. Where two rows of 
dresses and coats abutted the wall, however, a narrow flight of steps rose 
upward, to a floor above. I called up it, “Is anyone there?”

After a pause a woman's voice made itself heard from above.

“A moment please.”

Then I heard the click of feet on the steps. They were stone, and echoed 
hollowly, although not loud. They quickly grew nearer and I soon saw her 
coming down. At first I could only see the ankles and the neatly shod feet,
and then, looking upward, glimpsed round stockinged thighs under the skirt,
Which two hands held raised to aid her coming down the steep winding steps.
Then she was standing in front of me and, unprepared to see me there, 
blushed and hastily lowered her skirt. I saw a woman of perhaps thirty-five
years, perhaps a little less, round-faced and with dark brown hair cut 
close round her head in a bowl and a fringe over the wide brow. Her waist 
was pinched in very tightly, with a narrow leather belt, so that her hips, 
evidently uncorseted, were free to blossom out widely below it until the 
tightly fitted skirt caught in her body below the thighs and, as it were, 
cradled them and emphasized the heavy rump. I have often noticed that the 
women who work in fashion shops seem to dress in a rather more 
swashbuckling way than others. And through the flimsy nylon blouse I could 
see the breasts welling out, sharply defined by a black brassiere. She 
smoothed her skirt over her hips, still faintly flushing.

“Don't blush,” I said, “you have everything to be proud of.”

Whereupon, quite naturally, she blushed even more, but, which was what I 
was waiting for, hoping she would not take offense, she smiled too. In this
way she opened with me a complicity of understanding. But first I had to 
choose a skirt and blouse, or a dress, for Karen.

“What was it you were looking for?” she asked me.

I thought for a moment, then decided on a skirt and blouse. There was 
less risk of their not fitting. A skirt can always be adjusted, to some 
extent, with the aid of a belt.

“A full skirt,” I said, “something that can be worn during the day, and 
in the evenings too.”

“Have you the size?”

“One larger than yourself, I think,” I replied, appraising once again the
pretty saleswoman. She led me to one of the long racks. Finally I chose a 
skirt which although not full was loose-fitting and went with a loose, 
waist-length coat of some thick material, I don't know what it was, all 
that mattered was for it to be wearable, if I had made a mistake in the 
size. This outfit appeared to be designed for such a purpose. Then I 
selected a blouse, or jersey, and that was that. At that moment an 
alarm-clock went off somewhere, shrilling discordantly, and the woman 
walked over to the counter and leaned under it, switching it off. “What's 
that for?” I asked.

“Closing time!” she said, beginning to make out my bill.

It occurred to me I had forgotten to buy a belt for Karen.

“A belt,” I said. She looked up. “What?”

“I've forgotten the belt,” I said. “Oh.” She paused. “Do you mind waiting
till I close the shutters?” she asked. “Or I'll have a crowd of people 
here.”

She finished the bill, left a space to fill in for the belt, and went to 
the door and began to wind a handle. In front of the shop, as in front of 
most shops in France, a sheet of iron strips began to unroll and descend 
and soon, as she wound, her legs braced slightly apart and her breasts 
swaying, it covered the front of the shop and hid the street from view. I 
could have offered to help her, but I preferred to watch he* body moving, 
as she did it herself.

“The belts are upstairs,” she said. “There isn't enough space to keep 
everything down here.”

She disappeared between the double line of coats and skirts, and I heard 
her footsteps clicking on the stone steps. I waited for a minute or two, 
wondering what to do.

And then, as if I were on the end of a length of elastic, my steps too 
directed themselves between the double line of clothing, and carried me 
onto the narrow stone staircase. The winding flight of steps had a low 
stone ceiling, and I had, on the way up, to duck my head. Soon I emerged 
into another little carpeted room, the walls covered with boxes, and all 
over the floor and on several chairs and tables different kinds of women's 
clothing, packaging material, tissue paper, and so forth, the whole place a
jungle of color. My pretty assistant, her back to me, was standing on a 
pair of low wooden steps, reaching up to one of the cardboard boxes stacked
all along the shelves. I walked over to her, across the carpet. The 
movement of reaching upward seemed to make her legs yet longer and, as the 
skirt rucked also slightly upward, it curled invitingly round her thighs.

When I got to her, I said, “Can't I help you?” She started, and gasped, 
“Oh!” The box fell out of her hands and sailed slowly down to the floor. 
She made a movement to catch it, swayed, and then I reached out my hands 
and, holding her round the thighs, lifted her gently to the ground.

“You scared me,” she said shakily. My hands, still about her thighs, slid
upward till one was round hen buttocks, round and mature and powerful, and 
the other about her waist. I felt my prick hardening into a strong 
erection. All now depended on her own more or less instinctive response. 
Should she take fright, grow cold, angry, the only way out of the hostility
which, inevitably, would result, would be to rape her, or at least to take 
her by force. I did not like the idea of rape, if only because it is far 
more agreeable with an acquiescent and helpful woman than with a hostile 
one. The juices do not flow so freely, the encouragement is lacking, the 
pleasure gained in giving pleasure is lacking too, all in all a raped 
woman, a woman truly raped, hardly behaves like a woman. However, to take 
her by force is a different matter entirely. Taking by force is a rape in 
appearance only. In reality, the aspect changes in a very brief space of 
time from that of rape, and becomes an act of violent lovemaking, sometimes
a marvelous thing, with the very first stroke, almost at the instant of 
penetration. And this woman was too mature, too interested, 'in fact too 
much a woman, for the possibility to exist with her of anything less than a
taking by force, if the choice arose between that and rape. For there are 
some women who cannot be raped. You think you are raping them, but no, you 
find in a very short time you are wrong, you are making love to them, and 
they to you. And it seemed to me it was a woman of this kind I held in my 
arms. Gradually I pressed my prick into that hard triangle where her belly 
ended, and as I did so I looked her full in the face. She did not draw 
back. And so I bent my head and moving forward I kissed the tender skin 
beside her throat. I raised my head again, and brought down my mouth to 
meet hers, full, broad and a deep natural red. It parted a little as our 
lips touched. Her arm came up and went round my neck. Swiftly I undid the 
buckle of the belt, searching for the hook which held the skirt closed at 
the waist. Then I realized the skirt was no longer closed, the belt buckle 
serving both purposes. Her skirt slid off, down to her ankles. She was 
standing close against me, in a wispy nylon blouse, her breasts in their 
black brassiere close to my chest, and with a round naked belly, naked 
however only down to the line where a tiny slip, apparently to match the 
black brassiere, was barely enough to cover the prominent, thrusting mound.
I ran my hands over the curve from haunch to knee. She trembled. I undid 
the three pearl buttons of the blouse. She shook her shoulders, and it fell
away. I stepped rapidly out of my own clothes, and while I did this she 
took off the brassiere and the brief black knickers. The belt she wore in 
the daytime could not constrict her waist unduly, it was in reality almost 
as tiny as it seemed, curving from a high, heavy chest, and widely out 
again to the large, ripe hips. She must have regarded many of her customers
with a smile of contempt, knowing her own distinguished silhouette. I moved
toward her, my prick hard and slightly curving, like a sword. Sometimes it 
seems to me straight as a die, and sometimes for obscure reasons it seems 
to curve. She looked at it, and drew back a pace. Now she was standing with
her buttocks against a table, which a length of red material covered. I put
my hands over her breasts, feeling the hardened nipples.

“You look wonderful!” I said, and brought my body once again close 
against her. She smiled, and I could feel against my thighs her legs 
beginning to move outward. I leaned more heavily against her, forcing her 
backward, backward. She swayed, toppled and fell back on to the table-top. 
And as she fell, I drove into her, with all my strength. It seemed to force
the breath to escape from her body, and as the warm engulfing flesh crept 
over me the breath went too from my own lungs, as if sucked away. And, for 
I was still standing, I took my hands from her breasts and pulled them 
tightly down her ribs, dragging her body onto me, and then held her beneath
the bones of her hips. And I saw that her own hands were dutched, so that 
the bones shone bluely through the skin, to the edge of the table. And I 
lifted the great body up entirely, and off the table, turning to one side, 
whereupon she let her arms hang down, lifelessly yet twisting herself from 
side to side, and knotted her legs behind my waist. I lowered her onto a 
crumbled mass of clothing, first her head, then her shoulders, and then 
simultaneously I let her back sink on to the clothing and myself bear down 
on her own hot sex, streaming with the liquid I could feel even on my 
thighs. So that her back was on the ground yet her belly was almost 
vertical. Moaning, she buried her head in my shoulders, and as my movements
quickened she opened her mouth, biting at my flesh. And all at once the 
most piercing pain in my shoulder became the most exquisite suffusion of 
pleasure as, at the same time, her teeth sank deep in me and we were both 
precipitated into a frenzy of orgasm, a kind of ecstatic toil, so that as 
she bit me, I beat her body with my fists. Yet I left off, with one hand, 
to grip the massive buttocks under me. And slowly with the other hand I 
left off too, to be carried away blindly and abandoned, as on a wave of 
delirium, I believe I cried out, and I think she did.

The next thing I knew was her half-sobbing, as I lay loosely over her, 
and half-kissing the injured place on my shoulder. There was blood on her 
lips. When she touched it, even with her mouth, I winced.

She saw me do so, and said, “Get up. You must bathe it.”

I said, automatically but with an effort, “It doesn't need it.”

“Yes. Get up!”

Instead, I rolled over, and she scrambled to her feet and slipped off to 
a door in the corner of the room. She came back with a towel, wetted at one
corner, and kneeling down dabbed with it at my shoulder. It stung.

“You've sharp teeth,” I said.

She giggled, and I ran my hand lightly over her buttocks. She trembled 
involuntarily where I touched her, then in a measured voice said, “I must 
dress. I have to go out, you know. It's why I closed the shop so promptly.”

She began to dress. I watched her hook on the brassiere, cupping it round
her breasts, and slip on the little black slip. I like to watch women 
dress. It calms the nerves, afterward. A tranquil, competent procedure, it 
is always agreeable to see even such a simple process as dressing carried 
off without a hitch. As she buckled her skirt she noticed the box let fall 
earlier on when I spoke to her.

She said, “You still need a belt!”

“Yes.” I too began dressing. It did not take me long.

She slid the box toward me with her foot.

“Here. Choose one.”

I fumbled through them, and found a wide, shaped belt of natural leather,
with a brass buckle. The belt was cut so that it narrowed at the waist and 
widened at the back. It looked interesting, I had never seen a belt like it
before. I held it up. She said, “Yes. You have a good eye!”

I said, “It saw you, didn't it?”

She shook her shoulders, straightening her clothes in an animal-like 
movement so that for a moment her sophisticated coverings seemed out of 
place. And then she was dressed, chic, competent, sensual.

“Come,” she said.

She began to go down the stairs. I followed her. Below in the little 
show-room she took the belt from me, wrapped everything I had chosen for 
Karen in a neat, professional parcel, and gave it to me with a detached and
friendly air.

She said, “Give them all to her with my compliments! I hope they fit!”

She let me out by the side door. I saw her ironically watching me go down
the dark unfamiliar street when I turned back once, her eyes glittering 
under the impeccable fringe, and then when I turned back a second time she 
was gone.

I hurried back to Karen. When I opened the door of the room, it was in 
darkness. I had a sudden apprehension that I had been paid back in kind for
my non-appearance, that she had flown. Then a sleepy murmur came from the 
bed. I switched on the light. She was lying among the bed-clothes, one 
plump breast pink with sleep exposed above the sheet, her hair in disarray 
on the pillow. I went over and sat on the bed, and leaning down kissed the 
warm-swelling point of her breast.

“I went to sleep,” she explained. “I had a shower, and then there was 
nothing else to do.”

“I have some clothes for you,” I told her.

“Yes. Good.” It occurred to her to ask me, “Where did you have to go? You
were a long time getting them.”

I told her where I had been, describing the woman of the dress-shop. She 
began to protest, sat up in order to do so, and then relapsed and instead 
remarked, with a gleeful chuckle, “That was quick, then, wasn't it?”

I said that I supposed it was.

“If you were to dress we could both get out of here,” I added.

“What have you got me to wear?”

I undid the packet, telling her about the cobbler too. She slipped the 
nightdress round her shoulders and let it drop to the floor, and stepped 
over it. The light on her skin gave it a creamy sheen, especially below the
armpits where the ribs were visible as a wave of ripples below the flesh. I
handed her the suit. She wriggled her head into it, and I saw the 
waist-band constricting her breasts for a moment as she dragged it 
downward, and then it was on, and her breasts seemed to burst suddenly 
upward into place beneath the opaque material.

“I didn't get you any underwear,” I said. “I don't like underwear.”

“I don't need any,” she said.

With which I agreed.

“Walk up and down,” I said. “Try it out.” She walked a few paces over the
carpet, toward the long mirror, in her bare feet. Her breasts swayed 
slightly as her legs lurched forward. It gave a kind of serpentine motion 
to her body that made my own body tingle to watch.

I said, “The jacket.” I threw it toward her. She caught it and said, 
“Clever!” She put it on. I remembered the belt and gave her that too. She 
cooed and buckled it round her waist. Finally I took the shoes over to her 
and, lifting up her feet, put them in each, one by one. She too the first 
time had looked doubtfully at the shoes, but they looked better on her feet
than in the box, better meaning something to be walked in rather than 
looked at.

“I'm dressed!” she cried, and in front of the mirror gave a dainty 
pirouette. She looked dressed, what is more. I said, “Good,” in relief. She
put her hands on her hips and moved a few paces back and forth in front of 
me, like a mannequin, twisting about, at the end of each excursion, with a 
flourish.

“Now let's get out of this place,” I said. “Yes,” she agreed. “And I'm 
hungry.” “Before we leave,” I said, “are we likely to be followed?”

“Yes,” she said, unabashed. “Suppose you told me?'' “Told you what?”

“Everything,” I said, “from the beginning. We haven't done very much 
talking, since we met. A little wouldn't do any harm, at this stage. I 
suppose it's worth talking about, in your opinion?”

I supposed also that it was unnecessary to be ironical. Her own 
matter-of-factness made it seem the natural thing. My sense of the 
ridiculous awoke to it, in reply. Policemen in the morning, refuge in 
liaison during the day, later on the escape, ... no, my wits protested.

“It's not the first time,” she said. “It happens often,” I said blankly. 
“No, it doesn't happen often,” she said, “still.” She had sat back and was 
talking to me in a quiet voice. “Why did it happen today?” I asked. “Oh, 
bad luck!”

“No. Come off it,” I said crudely. “Stop hedging and tell me what 
happened. I have to know what to do. We can't leave at two in the morning.”

What did I care, anyway? I only hoped Karen wouldn't turn out another 
girl-gangster who had tumbled into a racket by accident, as it were, and 
only stayed in it, helpless, out of inertia. She seemed not to be, however.

Karen said, “Yes, very well. It's this. A few weeks ago, I was in Sicily.
Someone there put me in touch with a diplomatic messenger.”

“Put you in touch?” I asked.

“Pointed him out to me. I did the rest myself. He and I came up together,
to Nice, via Rome. He was supposed to be going to Paris. Diplomatic 
messengers are almost foolproof, they're better than an armored car. Their 
luggage is never examined, customs officials give them free passage, their 
friends have special treatment.”

“Why did you need special treatment?”

“Who doesn't?”

“Apart from that?”

“My little suitcase downstairs,” Karen said in a foreboding voice, “it's 
lined with opium.”

I remembered stories I had heard of French jails. My skin prickled.

“Well,” I said, “what went wrong? Did they find it?

“Oh, no,” she said, “not at all, they found nothing, they didn't even 
look. But they must have checked on my friend the diplomat.”

“Checked?”

“He wasn't a diplomat. His papers were false. I didn't find this out 
until our first night in the railway carriage. We hadn't come very close to
each other, until then. I had kept him off, with promises. I wanted to make
sure I got to France. I had to allow for his ditching me, when he'd got 
what he wanted from me. When we prepared for bed, he was wearing a curious 
chamois leather vest, under his shirt. When he took it off, I frisked the 
surface. It was uneven, bumpy. After a little scene, he confessed it was 
full of diamonds. They came from South Africa, up the East Coast, through 
Suez, changed vessels and crossed the Mediterranean to Sicily. My friend 
made many trips from Sicily to the Northern European capitals. Paris, 
Berlin, London, he knew them well. That night, crossing the Italian-French 
border was a nightmare. A fine couple, can you imagine us, diamonds and 
opium. I thought we'd made it successfully. He was the last person to have 
chosen for a traveling companion. It was a great stroke of luck I had this 
morning. I got out of bed for the toilet, and when I looked out of the 
window thanked my lucky stars I had had too much wine the night before. On 
the other side of the road were three men, the face of one the familiar 
face of the frontier official on the French side of the border. After a 
second look, I was certain. As I watched, they crossed the road and made 
for the door of our hotel. I sped over to Paul and shook him hard and told 
him, 'Quick, police!' He jumped out of bed like an acrobat and began 
putting on his clothes. He told me to get out. I looked startled, I 
suppose, and he said, 'Yes, like that,' telling me to go and hide in 
someone else's room, and to make sure it was a man. When I began to dress 
he told me not to, but to get out, quickly. 'I can't leave without my 
pants,' he said, 'but you can. Go on. So I got out and came up to you.”

“What about Paul,” I asked her. “He seems a good guy. Do you think he got
away?”

“I shouldn't think so,” she said. “I heard their steps starting up the 
stairs while I waited for you to open the door. Maybe. But I shouldn't 
think so.”

“And the diamonds?” I asked.

“Who knows?” she replied. “No, I don't think the diamonds got away 
either.”

“And the opium?”

“Nor the opium,” Karen said laconically. “The police probably took 
everything.”

“And they know your name?”

“Ah,” she said, “that, no, I don't think so. I think we got them, there. 
My passport should still be in the lining of the curtains, downstairs. I do
that automatically. It's there, unless Paul made a big blunder. We put them
there, so that if we don't have time to take anything with us, we can go 
back for them in peace. Perhaps!”

“Which means we have to go back for it tonight,” I said.

“I suppose so,” she said, looking gloomy.

“And we means me,” I said, enjoying a moment of self-pity.

“That's up to you,” Karen replied, her face brightening.

“I do not say you were wrong,” I said gently, “but what a shame not to 
have verified your diplomats before you took them. Or let them take you! 
Anyway, wait while I pack, and we'll get something done.”

“A million francs worth of opium,” Karen murmured wistfully.

“Or ten years,” I added. “You weren't so unlucky.” I got up and crossed 
to the wardrobe, which I opened and began to relieve of my clothes, 
stacking them into a valise. Fortunately, I travel light. One medium-sized 
valise, and a fairly capacious brief-case, nothing more. I had soon 
finished.

I went out into the corridor. It was carpeted and well-lit. I took out a 
cigarette and stationed myself at the door, smoking leisurely. When the 
cigarette went out, I put another one in my mouth, but did not light it. I 
figured I should probably have to wait about five or ten minutes before the
chambermaid appeared, and while smoking it had occurred to me that if a 
barman or a waiter happened by, I had better have a reason for being there.
So the Second cigarette I left unlighted.

The little chambermaid who that afternoon had brought us coffee and 
croissants appeared round the corner at the end of the corridor, bearing a 
small wicker basket. I beckoned to her, waving my cigarette. She made a 
sign, disappeared again through one of the doors, came out again, without 
the basket, and made toward me.

She pulled a box of matches from her pocket, and struck one. As I lit it,
I offered her the pack.

“Later, thank you,” she said, and stuck a cigarette in her pinafore. I 
began talking with her, in itself an agreeable pastime, regretfully aware 
of the way life involves you in some things, happily, yet always at the 
expense of others. I looked at her longingly, but confined myself to 
details of the hotel administration. It appeared that she was also 
responsible for the floor immediately below this one, but that for the room
where Karen and Paul had lodged, it appeared, one night only, two floors 
down, she was not. Too bad. I asked her if she wanted to earn five thousand
francs. Her eyes widened. She began to blush. I hastened to explain that 
the service I required of her was a simple one and didn't concern her 
person directly. Although I could not flatter myself that she seemed 
crestfallen on learning this, I assured her, the simple truth, that she was
exceedingly pretty, and was beginning to wonder if, if we met again, in 
happier, less pressing circumstances ...? But, she interrupted me, what did
I want her to do, for the five thousand francs? I wanted to get a look at a
certain curtain, I told her, after which I wanted the use of the service 
lift, and the service entrance, for a friend of mine. Apart from that, if 
she had to ask her friend downstairs for help, did she think it was safe? 
She did.

“Are there many people about?” I asked her.

“Those that aren't sleeping are downstairs, eating,” she told me, in a 
refreshingly contemptuous voice.

I followed her downstairs. Karen's passport was in the heavy hem of the 
curtain. I found it, after a few seconds' running my hand along it, and 
brought it back. There had been not a single suitcase in the room. The 
police had evidently taken everything. So much for opium smuggling. And the
diamond traffic.

“Where's the service lift?” I asked the chambermaid. A pair of bright 
eyes, round, flushed cheeks, lively body in a thin print dress, she seemed 
to think it was all one big joke. I suppose it was, in a way. At any rate I
could see her point of view.

She pointed down the other end of the corridor.

“Is it O.K. now?” I asked her.

She said it was. I stuck my head in through the door and called Karen, 
who came out, slowly and unworried, and stood there while I explained what 
had been going on.

“You know the cafe down the street called Le Bateau Ivre?” I asked our 
new accomplice. She wasn't sure.

“It's all right,” Karen said, “I know it.” It didn't surprise me, after 
all.

“I'll see you there,” I said.

I had been daydreaming so long, so profoundly that to hear Johnny next 
door moving about was as sudden a shock as if I had in reality left Karen 
but a moment ago, and the daydream seemed more real than the fact. The 
fact, that I was waking now, after the curious night in the Montmartre 
cellar, seemed far more strange than my queer recollection of Karen, and 
the South.

The Southern countries stood in my mind for my life of vagabondage. It is
curious that in French, the word vague means wave, and that the word 
vagabondage, in French the same, means in translation bound to wander, like
a wave. The symbolism of the Northern hemisphere, where the South 
invariably evokes the free, the unrestrained, the libertine, as against the
chained and organized compulsions of the North, this symbolism had staked a
claim on me I was now too deeply involved in to refuse. So that, like 
Gauguin, the attraction of the South was capable of uprooting me, when I 
seemed to be part of the routines and organizations of the North, and then 
later on again the North would pull me back, when the South had killed my 
will, and I had made love, when I could, with its women, or the women, like
Karen, under its influence, and the knives of its men, I admit it freely, 
had scared me out of my wits, and I needed to recuperate.

So at times gaily but at times miserably, driven like a rat by fear and 
desire, I would swing between North and South, or struggle between them, 
depending at the time on the way it went with me.

And now, in the North, for Paris is as far North as I care to go, at the 
moment, I had met something which seemed worth describing, so far as this 
conception of things was concerned. And I shall go on describing it, all 
the more so as it is in danger of ceasing to exist. And although one day it
may cease entirely, with the laws in the state they are, I think men will 
always keep their interest in it, even if it comes only to be found in 
forbidden literature, or forbidden and censored history.

At any rate, the sounds of Johnny moving about in the room next door 
jerked me back to the so-called real world. I got out of bed, and began 
dressing.

That afternoon was the precursor, and almost the prototype, of many 
others.

VI

I WOULD HEAR A KNOCK ON MY DOOR, Johnny's voice saying, “I'll be in the 
car,” and in a few moments I too would be down in the street outside, in 
the cool afternoon.

Then came the short drive, turning into the tree-lined boulevard, with 
the green light coming aslant through the trees, as if we were driving 
under water.

I learned that Karen, in her independent fashion, had been working in 
conjunction with Johnny. I soon guessed at it myself, as Johnny and I drove
carefully through the city, Johnny cautioning me to keep an eye open for 
police cars, or others that might be following us. And I learned that I had
unwittingly been a witness to the thwarting of what was apparently Johnny's
plan, when Karen's suitcase was taken over by the police, on the morning 
she burst by some happy accident into my room.

Turning off the boulevard again, and in that street turning again, found 
us in a quiet street where Johnny stopped the car and told me to drive 
round the block slowly and pick him up round the corner. He got out and I 
moved over to the wheel, pulling the door shut. Johnny walked off in the 
opposite direction. I let in the clutch and slid away. As I rounded the 
comer I saw facing me another car, on the other side of the road. A man was
getting out of it. I drove on, and as I turned, to the right, for the 
second time, the same car came round and disappeared behind me, also going 
at little more than idling speed. I turned again and there was Johnny 
walking toward me on the pavement. As I slowed to pick him up he signaled 
me to stop. He got in, slamming the door, and said, “O.K. Get going.” I 
stepped on the accelerator and we swooped away. He added, “If you pick 
someone up without stopping, a child would notice it. Turn left.”

It was the opposite direction to the one we came from. We went toward the
Opera, losing ourselves in the traffic. After a few weeks I grew accustomed
to it and could have shaken off anyone in a few minutes. We went through 
the routine every time anyway. Johnny seemed to think it was good practice.
And if we missed seeing a car tracking us, it would soon have lost the 
trail. Then we made for the garage. Every time we went out, we had a 
different set of number-plates on the car, fitted over the real ones. In 
the garage we took them off again, and drove straight out, to lead our 
legal lives once more. We didn't waste any time.

“Protection,” Johnny said. “If you do it wrong, do it quick.”

We were in the street, outside the hotel. He looked at his watch.

“Ten minutes,” he said. “Pretty good. Feel like breakfast?”

We went up to his room. He took his jacket off, and donned the white 
bathrobe with the red collar.

“Makes me feel comfortable,” he explained. “I don't like homes much, but 
I like comfort. Comfort's a matter of habit. Most habits are dangerous, 
like identification marks, or traps. When you don't want to do them, you 
have to. I have to keep to habits like these. They don't matter.” He 
grinned.

While he made coffee, he told me what I'd already guessed.

The little packet he pulled out of his jacket and stuck in the drawer was
pure opium.

Even though I'd guessed it, it was a shock, in a way. I always think of 
these things in terms of what happens if they get you. That packet meant 
five years. A long time, for a freedom-loving guy like me. /

In the course of the weeks that followed, I learned a lot. For one thing,
it had occurred to me to wonder how Johnny could work with Karen, and never
see, or speak to her, and almost never write to her. Johnny's little 
organization worked very smoothly. He too had his messengers, although they
weren't bogus diplomats. For another thing, I learned that the dapper 
little man who got out of the car and walked halfway round the block and 
got back into the car again had at an earlier period of his life been a 
very distinguished official, namely the chief of the vice-squad. When 
Johnny told me this I was a little incredulous apparently, for after 
watching my face, to see what I said, although in fact I said nothing, he 
showed me a newspaper clipping. It was there, in cold print, two columns a 
foot long telling the story. This being the venerable inspector's first 
conviction, he had been let off with a heavy fine. His confederate was at 
the time undergoing a cure, it seemed, in the city hospital for drug 
addicts.

“A pity, that,” said Johnny. “He was a good contact-man.”

He added that he was also a marquis, the last of a grand old line, 
renowned for its daring hospitality and contempt for convention. His wife 
however was not in the hospital, contenting herself with occasional visits 
to her eagerly disreputable husband and confining herself for the most part
to their country seat, a fine and adequately isolated mansion on the 
outskirts of Fontainebleu. A woman worth getting to know, Johnny said.

There were not infrequently interesting incidents in the course of 
delivering the stuff. Sometimes Johnny went alone, sometimes we went 
together, sometimes I went alone myself, we had no system in particular, 
except never to do it the same way twice running. We always made our 
deliveries after dark, that was the only rule. Sometimes “delivering” the 
stuff would last all night. And then at dawn we would go off to the cave, 
in Montmartre.

“O.K.” said Johnny, '“Deliveries!”

And off we went to deliver. We drove a little way out of Paris and pulled
up at a house near the Bois (a large wood on the edge of town with a couple
of lakes in it) you could have called the house Privacy, like a New England
colonial, Mister God-be-wi'-you Hawkins, Miss Privacy Brown.

Johnny always delivered after a telephone call to make sure the place was
empty. He didn't like veiled language, and there was none of, “I've got a 
little present for you,” and so on. He'd ring, ask are you by yourself, 
say, I'll probably be out this evening, and then sometimes not go, to make 
sure.

We went that evening, however. The woman who opened the door to us was 
tall, thin, with a lovely face and no make-up on it and a bony chest and 
small hard breasts. We stepped in out of the twilight to an almost Oriental
interior. Very little furniture, a number of brightly colored rugs and, 
instead of curtains, colored hangings, sometimes tapestries, over each 
window. She turned and led us into the main room, more of the same thing 
but ameliorated by several long and evidently comfortable sofas.

The woman herself wore a long blue dress, closely tailored with a Chinese
collar. Her legs gave the strange impression of being younger than her 
face, an impression fostered by her light, resilient walk .

“We were getting worried,” she said, “a few more pipes and we'd have been
in a scream.”

“Nearly done?” Johnny inquired. He took a small bundle from his pocket 
and said, “This should last even you a little while.”

The woman picked it leisurely from his hands. She called in a high voice,
“Marcelle!”

In a neighboring room a shift of chairs announced Marcelle, whoever she 
was, rising. The curtain, for in this house bead curtains seemed to serve 
as doors to several rooms, rustled.

Through it appeared a face bearing a weird resemblance to that of the 
woman who had opened the door to us and now sat, adjusting a cigarette 
holder, long, of ivory, between her fingers.

But the new face, though in the image of the other woman, differed in 
that though thin, it was smooth and appeared to be little more than 
eighteen years of age, if that. The girl came in.

“My daughter,” the woman explained to us perfunctorily.

“Bring the tray, cherie,” she said to Marcelle. Marcelle turned, splaying
her hair over her shoulders. She wore a thin cotton dress with a kind of 
silken tasselled cord girdling her waist. Her body was nearly a replica of 
her mother's, although replacing for her mother's studied grace and sinuous
tread a kind of inconsequential rather clumsy ease. Also was she lacking in
her thin economy of feature that in-drawn tightness to the skin which, in 
the mother, I recognized as the mark of a deep-lying opium habit.

So that I was surprised when the girl returned first with a tea-tray on 
which were four cups and then with a smaller tray on which stood a little 
conical flame-holder and four diminutive, delicate opium-pipes.

With long, meticulous fingers she prepared us each a pipe, cooking the 
little capsule over the flame and then, as the bubble appeared in it and 
swelled, slipping it with a deft twist of finger and thumb on to the tiny 
orifice beside the pipe, at the stem. For the bowl of an opium pipe is 
nothing but a smoke-filled reservoir. And from each pipe two or three 
lungfuls of smoke are obtainable, and the capsule is exhausted.

Johnny, watching her prepare them with languid eyes, drew off his jacket.
The room was hot. I did the same.

I took the pipe from her hand, holding it near the flame. The first 
lungful began a beating in my head as if my skull were thin as a drum. Then
it slowed, and slid through my body. The effect was all the stronger for 
the acrid stench of the stuff itself. The room about me seemed possessed of
another dimension, seemed deeper, as if under the sea. A wall loomed up, 
and then as I turned my eyes, another, and then people, the two women, each
on their couch gazing dreamily before them. And I saw Johnny rise, moving 
trance-like over the floor, to stand before the older woman who, directly, 
smiled and lifting up her hand began to stroke, in motions reminiscent of 
the petals of a sea-flower, the visible out-thrusting of Johnny's prick 
below the cloth.

A cavity dragged at the pit of my stomach. For the woman turned from 
Johnny and, seizing Marcelle's arm, pulled the girl to her and kissed her 
long and fully on the mouth. The girl, sylphlike and supple, bent till the 
bellies of mother and daughter were firmly clamped together, and daughter 
moaned her mother's name, “Tany!” in a hard voice.

I, like Johnny, divested myself of my clothes, and I went toward 
Marcelle. Prising her from her mother's clasp I undid the girdle about her 
waist and drew the frock from her body.

Naked she lay against the chaise-longue, acquiescent and with her own 
hands pressed to her hips as if herself luxuriating in the expanse of flesh
widening sharply from the waist and narrowing to her ankles, crossed and 
locked together.

Bending over them, my member solid and weapon-like directed at her mound 
of knotted hair, I tried to draw them apart. They would not slacken, but 
stayed twisted stubbornly, the muscles of their thighs rising with the 
strain of resisting my hands, and their equally stubborn but unavailing 
effort, Johnny had pulled the long blue dress from Tany's swaying body and,
Tany's mouth searching at the soft center of her daughter's belly, was on 
the point of sinking himself into the round lean buttocks confronting him 
when Tany rose and sauntered away to the opposite wall, intent and slowly 
as if mesmerised.

Her lean hard form bent beside a low wall-cupboard. Her arm explored 
within it for a moment. When she withdrew it, she was holding a dark, 
sinuous object which, as she straightened, I identified, gleaming darkly in
the light.

It was a plaited, leather whip. Coming from the cupboard back to us 
again, she leaned an instant nonchalantly against the wall and pressed a 
switch. It left the room in almost total darkness, but for a dim green pool
from a shaded lamp falling upon the couch and upon the center of the floor.

The green light swam over Marcelle's still locked and writhing body; 
beside her, Johnny on the couch, his hardened member in her hand, his mouth
pressed to hers. And Marcelle, for all the freedom she allowed her own 
caresses, kept her legs insistently coiled, the one across the other.

Tany bent over Marcelle and said viciously, “Are you going to surrender 
now? Will you do what you're told?” And her hand clutched cruelly at the 
furry triangle of knotted hair where her daughter's thighs crossed over. 
Marcelle hissed, “No,” and began to sob, nonetheless retaining her grasp on
Johnny.

I had the impression it was all a play, carefully rehearsed, in which 
acting and simulation mingled grotesquely yet inextricably with their real 
feelings and the reality of their acts.

Suddenly Tany seized the whip, and the shrill swish of the plaited thongs
tore through the air, followed by the dull crack! of the whip as it smacked
down on Marcelle's belly, and cut into the skin. And again Tany's hand went
up, and the whip hung poised in the air, and again streaked down, and again
came crack! twice in swift succession. And Marcelle's body convulsed and 
reared upward, seemingly toward the whip, which now in Tany's supple arm 
began a veritable storm of blows across the belly, until the gleaming skin 
was crossed with tiny weals.

And the blows kept coming until, with a long, stricken wail, Marcelle 
uncoiled her ankles.

“Wider,” cried Tany, elated, “back, back!” And yet another stroke came 
down and seared the injured body. But the legs opened, and the calves drew 
up, and the thighs went back, revealing the lips of her sex, so streaming 
now with liquid that the hair was sodden with the flow, and glistening.

Tany cast aside the whip. Marcelle's body was covered with flaming weals,
one had even traversed her breasts, below the nipples. And on her belly, 
here and there, was a tiny risen fleck of blood.

I saw Johnny, as if afloat, move round and stand between the thighs of 
Marcelle, raised now almost vertical. For a moment he stood there, his 
member straight as a spear, and then, leaning heavily forward, he plunged 
his swollen flesh between her thighs.

Marcelle cried, “Aie, Aie!” and began to wriggle furiously in an effort 
to escape him. Her mother, pressing her hands to her daughter's breasts, 
held her solidly down, and at the same time affixed her mouth to Marcelle's
mouth. And then her mouth traveled slowly the length of her body, kissing 
her breasts with a strange tenderness after such cruelty, until it came to 
the mound, and then to the tips of her sex, now harboring Johnny's member. 
There, alternately she kissed the female, and the male sex with which her 
mouth was confronted. Then, as Marcelle writhed, she dug her teeth into the
soft flesh.

Marcelle screamed. I saw the whip on the couch. I picked it up and, 
slowly at first, then faster and faster, began to unleash a hail of lashes 
down on Tany's back and buttocks, and on her thighs below them.

To my hallucinated eyes the three naked bodies in the dim green light 
seemed a single long connected coil of green limbs, and upon them the 
whiplashes, I realized vaguely in the back of my mind, now were raining 
indifferently. And as the thongs cut first into Tany, and then Johnny, and 
flicked from time to time at Marcelle, the agitation of their bodies grew, 
as they writhed in growing pain and growing passion.

Soon I-could not bear it any longer, and flung the whip away and moved 
in, among their twisted bodies, my member hard and beating, and my head 
beating too. And as I came down, driving between Tany's little glistening 
round buttocks, I felt the passage obstructed by two hands. I tore them 
away. One of the hands, soft yet—vicious, was Marcelle's, and the other was
Johnny's heavy, insistent hand.

My way was freed, hot and liquid. I felt the lips of her sex close round 
me, and drove fully down, into her belly.

But the face I looked directly into, as I sheathed myself in Tany's body,
was the face of Marcelle. And on it, instead of the twisted pain I had seen
there only a few moments before, a gentle smile played, slowly, exposing 
her small teeth. Her eyes turned, looked into mine, and stared at me 
intently, fixed.

They were dark brown, nearly black, and seemed to be staring at something
beyond me, two indifferent points of light reflected in their pupils. I saw
the soft hair round her forehead moist with perspiration. And below it the 
little throbbing vein of the temple stood out, beating.

Her thin throat stretched and sudden, rapid animal moans came from it. I 
pressed my lips to hers. They were wet, refreshing. Below me, Tany stirred 
as her mouth more and more eagerly pushed Johnny and Marcelle to the brink 
of orgasm. And as I kissed her, Marcelle again extended her hand, caressing
me, and caressing the sex of Tany, turn and turn about.

I saw Johnny's sombre profile gazing down, vacant, steady, as his mouth 
went over Marcelle's breast, and his lips closed over the nipple.

After that, I saw nothing, heard nothing, only felt the growing coma and 
the desperate yearning for surcease, and oblivion. Which as our bodies 
quickened into frenzy, and I was beyond telling whom I held, and who held 
me, soon came, as we toppled into the final rigors, and the toiling 
ecstasy.

Our bodies seemed to disperse and lose the forms they had assumed. They 
became a meaningless array of limbs, shapelessly scattered in the dim green
light.

Still half-hallucinated, I turned and looked about me. Marcelle was lying
on the couch, hands clutching gently at her wounded belly, breathing in 
slow moans and tossing like a sleeper, half-awakened, half unable to sleep.
Strands of black hair strayed round her face.

Tany lay motionless, her thin limbs curled, like a serpent. It was hard 
now to believe they were mother and daughter. Johnny on the heavy rug lay 
and contemplated them an instant, then closed his eyes. Three naked bodies 
sighed, as if caught on the same swell.

Together, exhausted, lying in the green light, with the stench of opium 
still hanging in the air and in our nostrils, we slept.

VII

THE LUNAR WASTES WERE VISIBLE ON THE surface of the moon as we drove away
that evening. It was midnight and the sky was clear. It resembled the blue 
of daylight.

Johnny swung the car along the banks of the Seine. The air was fresh. I 
felt good. After three or four hours, we had woken from a dead sleep. Tany 
had gone straight to the shower. We heard the noise of water hissing down, 
striking the marble floor, and followed her. Even Marcelle moved easily, 
crossing the room springily. The sleep seemed to have calmed her belly and 
she walked indifferent to the fading weals that covered it.

Sitting in the car, head at the open window, I felt refreshed and 
restored, ready to begin again. We drove across the river, in the direction
of Montmartre.

Near the Opera, the crowds were still out. The sidewalks were lively with
people strolling idly along, and in the lamps and the shop lights the 
clothes of the women flashed like peacocks. That struck me as strange, for 
an instant, for the most colorful bird is male, and the most colorful 
humans are usually women. I thought of Africa. It was not always so.

The car, throbbing, began the upward climb to Montmartre.

Somehow I felt as if the world had hold of me, a brief feeling the 
heavens floating translucently above us and the cascades of stars perhaps 
encouraged. Whatever I might want seemed an irrelevancy in the chain of 
events, to which for the moment I seemed bound, will or no. Will power 
implies a struggle to do something you might otherwise pass by. But in the 
car humming now through the emptying streets, part of the band of men and 
women Johnny moved among, I seemed no more than a thing that felt as if by 
accident. There were other things, and these were what I knew. Akin to 
these was the present with its sensations in being, it appeared to me, 
thanks only to Johnny and his organization. Johnny hardly ever questioned 
me. I think it was a matter of course to him that his friends did what they
did, were as they were. As to anything else, he seemed indifferent to them.

I had been taking a bigger and bigger part in the life and dealings of 
the organization, in recent weeks, until I did nothing that didn't concern 
it, or its exploits, or its women. And now I was aware of a vague 
restlessness, and a vague prompting to move on, anywhere, it little 
mattered where. The impulse, risen to the surface, sank again and the 
ripples flattened out. But I remembered it nonetheless, wondering what I 
would do, whether I would go off, wandering once more, the way I had lived 
before and hoped to live again. Or whether it was merely another expiring 
intention. I sometimes seemed two people, one the thing, and one a kind of 
commentator. At best they were joined. At worst, the commentator died. The 
thing never died. It went on, rocked by the swell, like an amoeba. That was
its destiny, I suppose, until all else consumed it.

There was a lurch. I bumped against the door. The car wheeled round into 
the street where the cellar was, and stopped. Johnny switched off the 
engine, and sat there for a moment, his hand on the key, the ruby on his 
finger glowing like luminous blood, until he put it in his pocket.

“Come on,” he said, “You good-for-nothing junky. We've got some clients 
to entertain.”

“Interesting ones?” I asked.

“I don't know if you'd call them interesting. They've got strange tastes,
for respectable people.”

“Respectable people—”

“That's right,” Johnny said, “Respectable people, good jobs, 
well-dressed, reliable. You know. Rich. Rich people never break the law,” 
he went on, “only commit indiscretions. We must help them, a little money, 
don't you want to take a trip?”

He slid out of the car, and I followed him, through the wall and down the
narrow steps. The ancient hag collecting entrance dues was still there and 
still slept on, a withered reptile disabused who little cared what passed 
before her eyes or beyond, among the sophisticated, liberal of care and 
passion, in the dim further rooms. Yet, tolerant of everything, she still 
remained one of the cave's most striking characters, in her brief instants 
of lucidity. Young girls entering early in the evening, before her eyes had
closed for the night, to open only when shaken, would stiffen with 
apprehension when the bony fingers explored their tender flesh, and tried 
the firm parabolas of waist and thigh. Arriving once before the usual hour 
I had come upon such a scene, and been astonished at the glimmering light 
of appreciation shining out of the wasted face and the creased and sunken 
sockets. If the everyday passage of the hours was incapable of stirring 
her, such moments saw her again renewed, rejuvenated. Admiration worked a 
miracle on her, and I wondered what must have been her youth, that had 
delivered her up as she was. Afterward, she would totter back to her seat, 
and sink into a heavy sleep. The mere effort of looking had been too much 
for her, it had worn her out.

Johnny woke her up and bought two tickets. Everyone who came in bought 
tickets. In this way no one knew who ran the place, or could guess, on the 
evidence of their getting in free of charge. The aged woman slept, an 
indifferent guard.

The first room was packed. The music was slow. The couples hardly moved. 
We made our way through them into the second room. The front one was merely
a cover. The back room was sound-proof. This was a convenient accident. The
walls had been there for two hundred years. They were three feet thick. The
concealed doors were modern additions, and while the front room, relatively
innocent though its activities were, had been raided several times as a 
matter of course, the police had yet to discover the scene of more 
interesting activities behind its inscrutable walls.

No sooner had we got into the second room than my head began to spin. I 
had never seen so many people there, it seemed. All the tables were 
occupied, and bits of the floor as well. It was as dim as ever, and every 
now and then I caught the tell-tale whiff of sweet almonds. Trying to 
penetrate the gloom and separate the forms it held dizzied my eyes. Johnny 
had disappeared. The people I saw were in all the stages of disarray, from 
nakedness to full evening dress. The band was playing softly. A striking 
thing about it was the singular lack of noise. True, there was a certain 
undercurrent of low voices, and whispers, occasionally a burst of laughter 
which, however, more often gave way to a prolonged series of chuckles. But 
I never heard the hysterical pandemonium you can hear in any packed 
restaurant or cafe, with the number of people this room held.

Beyond, from time to time, through the marble doorway, I heard the 
muffled splash of someone diving into the pool. And this too was rather a 
soothing sound.

I crossed the floor and sat down on a rug, my back against the wooden 
column of an alcove. From this position I let my eyes wander over the 
people about me.

“An encouraging example,” Maria had said in her throaty voice, when 
Johnny told her I'd be with them, 'working,' “that's what we want.”

Well, they wanted one no longer. No one there had need of very much 
encouragement. A few yards away from me, a couple who appeared to have 
recently emerged from the swimming pool, their naked bodies twinkling with 
little droplets of water, were embracing each other with an ardor that, as 
I watched, rapidly grew. At first, in spite of their nudity, they had gazed
about with a certain degree of apprehension. What they saw evidently 
reassured them, for the man, a dark-haired rangy fellow with long, slender 
limbs, placed one hand softly over his partner's breast and, slowly kissing
her, let his hand slide down to her belly. His mouth soon detached itself 
from hers and went to cover the nipple his hand had abandoned, while the 
hand moved lower still, gradually down until it covered the fur and, like a
little animal, made its way between her thighs. Which, on the contact, 
slowly opened. He began gently to rub his hand up and down, over the loins 
thus bared. And her hips, at the rhythmic pressure, gradually began to rock
from side to side, in motions as if half to escape from the insistent hand 
and half to encourage it, and invite it on. And it was not long before her 
breathing quickened, and his too, and clambering, with a movement his 
eagerness made slightly clumsy, over and between her thighs, he knelt in 
front of the opened sex, his member erect and curving toward her. She 
grasped it. She seemed, as she stroked it, to be pulling it toward her. But
he drew back a little, watching her, and sent his hands to her waist, 
playing there with the tips of his fingers. And now her breathing became 
interspersed with short, sporadic sighs, and her belly curved upward, 
raising her buttocks an inch or two from the heavy rug. I could hardly see 
her face, in the gloom, as more than a vague profile. Until she turned her 
head, drawing her hair away from the temples. And then I found myself, 
startlingly, looking straight into her eyes, from a few yards distant. I 
felt my own member stiffening. But I did not budge, from where I lay, and 
was careful not to change my expression. For some reason, I didn't want to 
disturb that rhythm of their lovemaking. In any case, although looking her 
in the eyes I was by no means certain she saw me. For her eyes, though 
wide-open, were staring, almost glassy. The man began to lower himself 
toward her. She turned her head again, away, bending her neck, looking now 
neither at me nor at him, but directly upward. He came closer. He seemed 
for a moment to hesitate, until, his buttocks hard in a posture that pushed
his member as far forward as it would go, while he knelt, he leaned over 
and almost fell on top of her body. One of her arms went round his neck, 
the other encircled his waist. He was in her, and her thighs in response 
came up, the bent knees dragging her calves after them to rest on the 
underpart of her thighs. For some time, it seemed even several minutes, 
they lay in this attitude without stirring. He was the first to recover, 
slowly beginning to move his hips first from side to side, then out and in.
His thrusts grew quicker. She began to assist them, and moved her hand from
round his waist to clench at his buttocks, dragging them on to her sex. 
Gripping her underneath he held and raised her slightly, from the rug, as 
if speared. The frenzy began to invade them both. They began to sigh, and 
shudder, tearing at each other with their hands. He lunged at her, till 
once again they froze, as earlier, yet this time she kept up a curious kind
of writhing, as if reaching to him, with her whole body.

And here and there beneath the skin little muscles tightened and 
softened, briefly interrupting the smooth surface. And then she sank back, 
and her legs slid down, her arms outstretched like a murdered victim, 
graceful in the last throes. To whom however he administered a final, 
thrust. He paused, and lay awhile where he was, then he too fell away, 
beside her.

I got to my feet and wandered away, my prick stiff as a broomstick, 
looking to see what else the evening had to offer.

I soon sighted something. But first I took off my clothes. If anything 
gets on my nerves it's fiddling with clothes when you're trying to make 
love. I flung them on to the shelves, above the tables. It was quite a 
convenient idea. Instead of reaching for your hat and coat, before leaving,
you reached for your pants. Anyway, most of the people who came here didn't
leave, of their own accord. They were taken. There was a driver laid on, 
for the purpose. Often Johnny and I would push them into their pants, or 
into their skirts, as the case might be, or maybe someone else's pants or 
skirts, and maybe their overcoats, and drag them upstairs in ones and twos.

We usually waited a day or two. before we touched them.

When it was overcrowded we even closed for a few days. Then we let no one
in, till the crowd had thinned. But this happened seldom, for the place was
hard to get into. That was putting it lightly.

The something I had sighted was a woman in a strapless green evening 
frock, lolling back-in her seat, in one of the alcoves. Her head was back 
and slightly to one side. But although I could see her eyes, I could not 
see the expression in them. For she wore a little black mask. The mask 
covered her eyes only, which glimmered out from between the two slits. But 
she seemed to be looking up at the ceiling, for they were open. Her hair 
fell loosely, heavily on to her shoulders.

People were offered masks like these, when they first came. Usually, 
after the first time, their confidence growing, they didn't bother wearing 
them. Except for some of the women. I suppose they considered the look of 
mystery it lent them also added something of adventure. In a way, I agreed.

Her frock was apparently half-unbuttoned at the back, for in front it 
fell forward, away from her breasts, which were thus half exposed. I stood 
there for a moment, looking down at them. They thrust out, against the 
material that lined the frock, concealing only the nipples, flattened 
against the lining. Her arms lay on the table, in one of her hands half an 
extinguished cigarette, and on that wrist the other hand. If she saw me she
gave no sign of it.

Then, lying on the other seat and camouflaged almost completely by the 
gloom, his dark clothes and the dark cloth with which the seats were 
covered, I noticed a man who, sleeping, had a face that seemed, more in the
way of a suggestion than of anything definite, familiar. Rather than 
someone whom I knew, it seemed a face like that of someone else I knew. I 
supposed I must have seen it reproduced in the newspapers. It happened from
time to time.

I sat down next to the woman, who made no sign, as before. I took the 
cigarette from her fingers and stuck it between her lips. It hung there, 
loosely. But it didn't fall out, and I struck a match from the box on the 
table and held it to the cigarette. I said, “Draw.” She didn't draw. The 
match went out. I took the cigarette and lit it myself. It was marijuana. 
The sweet smell went into my lungs. After a few draws I felt the delicious 
warmth seep out to the surface of my skin.

I put my hands round her neck and, with my thumbs across her jaws, turned
her head round toward me. She gave a slow, unresisting grunt, a strange 
sound that rasped out of her throat, and expired, like an inadvertent 
escape of breath.

Pushing her forward, I leaned over behind her and undid the buttons 
descending the length of her back and over her rump. I slid the dress off. 
There wasn't anything underneath. She seemed vaguely to sense that 
something was happening and, bending her head over her now naked breasts, 
drew her arms off the table. Her breasts were heavy, prominent, and the 
nipples soft. I ran my hands over her waist, along her thighs, and finally 
buried them in the soft flesh under the fur. Unresponsive until now, she 
began to rock from side to side. I withdrew my hand again, drawing it 
across the hard protuberant belly.

Somewhere in her was a faint wakeful gleam of consciousness. But it was 
very, very faint. I picked her up and laid her on the table, her legs 
sagging over the edge. She seemed quite tall. But it was hard to tell, in 
the state she was in. She must have had more than marijuana, that night. Or
she had smoked a shopful of it.

I ran my hands over her body, delighting in the skin, smooth as peaches. 
I reached down and separated the lips of her sex, warm and damp. But they 
could have been damper. Maybe they would wake up, if her mind refused to. 
My prick hard as a drill, I worked it into her. Her body stirred, but only 
slightly. I began to drive at her, hard. Slowly I could feel the liquids 
oozing warmly within her. Holding her thighs, I pulled her toward me. One 
of her arms fell off the table and flopped on to the man lying asleep on 
the seat. I thrust at her once more, in a kind of fury, then pulled it out 
and moved round beside her. I picked her up in my arms.

I said, “Come on. We're going for a walk.”

She turned her head slowly like a pendulum, and then let it sway back. I 
walked out with her over the rugs. I had to step over one couple lying 
asleep, and one man, bald, lying on his back, his belly sticking up in the 
air. I carried her through the Turkish archway and across the marble floor.
There was no one in the swimming pool. The sounds of the room were deadened
in here, and seemed to come from a distance. The band was still playing, 
very slowly.

I took her to the edge of the pool and threw her in. She wasn't too heavy
and sailed easily toward the water, her limbs tangled. When she landed it 
was with a big splash. Then she sank. For a second or two I watched her 
sink. Her body writhed slowly on the way down. The hair looked like 
seaweed. I jumped in after her. The water was cool and refreshing. I swam 
down to where her body lay, convulsing, on the floor of the pool. A few 
bubbles were beginning to float up from her nostrils. I seized her and we 
jerked to the surface. I pulled her to the edge and dragged her up the 
tiled steps. She was spluttering and coughing. The water dripped off her as
if out of a sponge, in a steady stream.

I carried her over to the wide marble benches surrounding the pool and 
laid her down on her back. She was still sputtering. But she was awake. She
shook her head, dazedly.

“What happened?” she said. She still had her mask on.

“I've been waking you up,” I told her. She had opened her eyes. I could 
see them moving, through the slits in the mask. They looked more lively 
now. The mask, made of some velvety material, was sodden. It clung to her 
skin.

“What for?” she asked. She sat up, and looked at her body. Her breasts 
assumed their shape again. Lying on her back they had been flattened 
against her chest. She put one hand under each as if weighing them.

“To make love with you,” I said.

“And who are you?” she asked.

“Does that matter?” I asked her in return.

“No, I suppose not.” She put one hand over her mound, wriggling 
spasmodically.

She said, “Oh.”

“What's the matter,” I asked her, “Itchy?”

“How do you know?”

“That's why I threw you in,” I explained. “Making love to you seemed to 
lack something. I wanted to make love with you. If you see what I mean.”

I still had a fairly strong erection. It bad faded away a little during 
all the swimming, but now it was recuperating.

“Did I swim?” she said. She still seemed to be struggling out of the 
coma.

“You didn't even float,” I said, “Why, can you?”

She turned and looked at me. With the mask on, I couldn't quite tell what
expression she had. But I saw her frown, and her brow, round and clear, 
form a crease and then go clear again.

“You're strange.” she said. “You just threw me in.” She seemed to 
meditate on it.

“Yes,” I said. “I let you sink a bit, then I pulled you out, and laid you
down, where you are.”

“I don't even remember how the water felt.” She sighed, and seemed to 
relax. Then she added, “I might have drowned.” She shuddered.

“Yes,” I said again, “It all depended on how soon I came in after you. 
But I shouldn't worry, if I were you. Go in and have a swim on your own. 
It's very refreshing.”

“No,” she said.

“Go on.” I said, “Get up and go in.”

I leaned forward and kissed her breast, on the nipple.

She touched my head with her hand, I am not sure whether to stroke it or 
to push it away, for I drew away of my own accord and she swung her feet 
off the marble and walked slowly over to the steps. For the first time I 
saw her standing. She was quite tall and the curve of her waist and hips 
was the emphatic curve of maturity, not the slow curve of a woman who is 
naturally plump, when still young. She walked down into the swimming pool 
as if she were walking into the sea. I sat where I was and watched her. She
let her arms float on the surface of the water and began to swim. I wanted 
to go in after her. But I left her there on her own. She must have needed 
to recollect her senses. She moved round in the pool, then rolled over on 
her back, letting her body drift. Her legs went down, and she found herself
looking at me. She smiled. She seemed to like it. It was the first smile I 
had seen on her face. She made for the steps again. I watched her body move
up out of the water. It was like light, falling off her. On her skin and 
the flattened brush of pubic hair, it sparkled.

“You look alive,” I said.

“I feel strange,” she said.

I didn't say anything. She walked toward me. As she walked, her thighs 
went tight, loose, as the muscles moved. She stood in front of me, a 
second, then turned and sat down.

I stayed sitting, where I was. After a minute or two, her breathing 
calmed. Her chest slowed its heaving.

I looked downward. I surprised myself. It seemed to be strained to 
capacity. If it scared her, so much the better.

But she sat there, gleaming. Then she turned her head, and kept it 
turned. I didn't move either. There was a moment's pause. Slowly, she got 
to her feet, and began to move off.

She seemed more naked walking than she had seemed sitting. It was my turn
to be surprised. I was so surprised, I sat there and watched her walk off, 
round the corner of the swimming pool, over the marble.

Suddenly I came to my senses. I leapt up and ran after her. I took her by
the arm, and asked her where she thought she was going.

Usually in that place you didn't bother to ask, it wasn't necessary. 
Besides, you seldom knew anyone well enough for there to be any reason to 
ask it. Our having noticed each other, become aware of the other person as 
something in some way to be reckoned with, even in that brief exchange, 
made such questions once again possible. Part of the interest of life in 
the cave was that on the whole it avoided it.

“In there,” she said.

“Coming back?” I asked her.

“I don't know.”

“Then don't go.”

“Ah, ah,” she said, “Don't tell me you want to talk!”

“Not now,” I said, “Not exactly. But later, per-

“Later,” she said, “Really?” She tilted back her head, and extended her 
hands at her waist, allowing them to slide over her hips.

It was an effort for me to answer, “Yes, perhaps later, perhaps.”

She still held her head tilted back, and smiled. It wasn't a 
full-blooded, open smile, but half a smile and half a look, knowing and 
mistrustful.

Then she said, “But I'm going home!”

She let a hand stray out in front of her and lightly touch my prick. I 
nearly left the floor.

She said, “Do you want to come with me?”

I didn't want to. But I said, “Maybe. Not now.”

She said, “Yes, now.”

I put my arms round her and sought her mouth. She tried to evade me. I 
felt her breasts come pointing out at me and half-flatten against my chest.
She tried to push me away. It had gone on long enough. I picked her up. She
struggled. She was still struggling when I laid her on the wide marble 
bench. As I laid her down she fought. One hand across her chest, and 
covering one breast, I pressed my other hand down hard on her mound, 
forcing her flat on her back. I felt my fingers finding their way between 
the double folds of flesh and into her open cunt. She was writhing and 
convulsing so furiously the tears were starting in her eyes.

She had begun to pant, as if in a combination of anger, fatigue and 
excitement.

“Don't bother to shout,” I said. “It's not worth it. No one will come. 
And if they come they won't help you.”

And, wrestling with her arms that flailed out at me, and trying to avoid 
her kicking legs, I moved over her belly.

She tried to kick out at me as I moved over. But this left her legs open,
and her sex exposed. I jerked forward and into it. I was lucky. There was 
no fumbling. It went straight in and I felt the smooth heat envelope me, 
plunging it in as far as it would go. It went right into her and with that 
first long marvelous drive she stopped her fighting, as if paralysed, and a
short cry escaped her. Immediately after, as I began to move, she tried to 
start fighting again, squirming and wriggling and beating at me with her 
fists. It was too late. By this time I held her under the buttocks and my 
head was buried in her neck. All her squirming went only to excite her the 
more. Soon she was overcome, and lay back with her arms out and her legs 
up, asplay. I even think her eyes rolled upward. She certainly wasn't 
looking at me, at that moment. She looked as if she didn't care who it was.
I don't expect she did. The necessary conditions fulfilled, it could have 
been anyone. Although I myself, having got her, knew it was her I had.

I relaxed a little, delighting in her, running my fingers over her body, 
from breast to waist. And, fascinated, I watched the conjunction of belly 
to belly, sex to sex.

Then for the first time she moved her eyes down and looked at me. And we 
began, as I had tried earlier on, to make love with each other.

But that is only a way of putting it. For only when it is near the end, 
and when you are both nearing the brink of orgasm, do you begin to act and 
make love together. At that moment, it is nearly simultaneous. And so I 
caressed her, and she as it were replied. After a while, things grew 
together, happening together. Then it was, as we both grew swift and 
desperate in our movements, that for a few seconds we were with each other.
And I began to lunge at her, equally to provoke her body and to satisfy my 
own. And she too, likewise. And our hands, and our fingers, explored the 
other, quickening, quickening until we seemed possessed, in a fit, wildly, 
and I heard her calling, though whether they were words she called or names
or mere cries I do not know.

And the orgasm flinging us as it were out of ourselves came in an 
inseparable confusion of noise and jolting and shouting and our own 
movements—all, happily, at the final moment, unconscious. I was unaware of 
them, only of that lifting and the delicious escape of the stream into her,
and of her body, enticing it out. Though it left me still hard, to plunge 
at her a moment or two longer, as with each spasm, she gave a kind of 
grunt. Not till then I recognized her voice, saying, “Oh! Ah!” only. And no
more.

I stood up. She had fallen asleep. She was lying on her back, on the 
slab, glistening like a fish. Her chest u was heaving. I stayed there a 
while, admiring her body and wondering whether or not to do anything with 
her. I decided not to, in the end, and to leave her where she lay. It was 
very peaceful, in there. You could hear the band, very faintly, just enough
to reassure you, if you needed reassuring. And occasionally the buzz of 
voices was loud enough to hear, but not often. I wondered more people 
didn't come in, and enjoy the solitude. Perhaps they did. Perhaps too many 
had, and there hadn't been any solitude, for them. Maybe I was lucky, 
finding it in a period of transition so to speak, between two groups, one 
having abandoned it, the other not yet having found it. When they found it 
they would find a fine prize lying on the slab, anyway.

I went in, through the archway, to look for Johnny. He wasn't there. I 
was tired. I lay down on the rug. It occurred to me to put some clothes on.
I got up and took them from the rack and put them on, and lay down again, 
watching the people.

In the middle of the floor, a man and a woman were making love. The 
woman, a ripe heavy creature protuberant of buttock and round of thigh, was
lying crouched over the man, who was on his back in the position usually 
associated with the so-called gentler sex. A rank superstition, by the way,
sometimes true, sometimes false, like other conventional superstitions. She
was bucking vigorously over him, her rump undulating in the air. As she 
moved, another heavy-bodied man watched them eagerly, spasmodically 
fingering his prick. He bent down and passed his hands admiringly over her 
buttocks, back and forth, as if testing the curve of a statue. His eyes 
shone. With agitated movements, which lent him for a moment the aspect of a
puppy wagging its tail, he stepped over them and placed himself behind the 
woman's widespread buttocks. Kneeling, he guided his prick on to that 
opening of hers which yet remained to be penetrated. He was so excited it 
was with considerable difficulty he held himself in position. He managed it
however, and forcing her apart with his hands pressed his body steadily 
forward on to her. The woman uttered a cry of pain, violently swiveling her
hips from side to side. This only increased his determination. He seized 
her hips, holding her firm, while she for her part grasped the man beneath 
her all the more tenaciously. Soon, become more accustomed to the new 
sensation, her body doubly explored, doubly caressed, she seemed to lose 
her ability to caress, and be the active one, and abandoned herself to 
whatever the ingenuity of two male engines and four male hands could 
devise. She lay between them as if stunned, uttering mingled cries of pain 
and pleasure. Before very long the cries of pain began to diminish, and 
were replaced by protracted sighs of pleasure and, it seemed, surprise. It 
was the moment for all three to be stirred to accelerate their movements, 
although however stirred she was could do little in that direction, 
sandwiched between the two now straining men, but making little desperate 
attempts to roll from side to side. They held her pinioned fast between 
them. And the only indication I had that they had brought her to a pitch, 
as they so successfully wrought their own desires upon her, was a sudden 
little shout, which she gave a brief moment before the man bent over her 
emitted a long contented expiration of breath, and withdrew, letting 
himself sink down to the rug again. And she in turn rolled away from her 
companion, whose member now I saw was steadily wilting, and lay between 
them, tossing her head a little. As if by accident, at exactly that moment 
the band executed a roll of drums and a flourish on the saxophone. Two 
curtains were drawn aside and a kind of bed with straps and buckles at the 
four corners was slid through. It was quite a large bed, and luxuriously 
yet very simply furnished. The straps for example were jewelled, and the 
mattress, resembling more an enormous cushion than a mattress, for there 
were of course neither sheets nor blankets on it, was set into the wooden 
frame of the bed, made of some dark wood and very strong.

Shortly after, Maria appeared, wearing a long dress of some evidently 
heavy material of which the most striking thing was not the cut, or rather 
the slit, an inch or so wide, running from between her breasts all the way 
to the floor, but the color and texture of silver, glimmering dully in 
strange and striking contrast to the dark brown limbs that its metallic 
quality made seem yet more fleshly and alive, as they emerged from the 
dress, with every pace, and fell back into it, when she stood still. Maria 
walked slowly round the room, drawing the eyes of everyone she passed. But 
she did not merely draw their glances, for as she passed them she turned 
and met them with her own, and they looked back at her, sometimes unabashed
and admiring, sometimes admiring and fearful. She scrutinized each one she 
passed, as the drums kept up a low tattoo. At one table she looked down at 
length into the face of a young girl, who could have been little more than 
sixteen years of age and yet, with all the signs of early maturity, seemed 
to meet with her approval, for she stretched out an arm and pulled the girl
to her feet. The drums rose to a crescendo and crashed down. Then they 
resumed the gentle tattoo. Maria motioned the girl on, and together they 
walked round the room, Maria as before, the girl at her side, and, slightly
behind her. This march continued, the drums going softly all the time, 
until once again Maria paused longer than usual opposite a young and 
smooth-featured man who met her glance at first with what seemed to be 
apprehension and then, as she signaled him to get to his feet, with a hint 
of complacency. The drums crashed.

He too joined the progress round the room. But Maria had apparently found
what she wanted and hardly bothered to look at any of the others, as she 
walked, with a slight jerk of the shoulders, on round the room. Her two 
acquisitions followed her, fully clad, as she conducted them past the 
people, past the band, the bed and into the alcove revealed by the double 
curtains, which, as they went by them, closed. There was a pause of several
minutes and they drew open again, and again Maria appeared, her new 
companions standing beside her but this time completely naked. Maria was a 
good judge, and the objects of her choice did her credit. I turned on my 
side, to watch.

She conducted them over to the bed. Then she clapped her hands. Two men 
and two girls together came through the open curtains, and stationed 
themselves at the four comers of the bed, the girls along one side, the men
along the other.

I got up and wandered past the tables toward the doorway. One or two 
people glanced at me inquiringly as I passed them, but for the most part I 
went unnoticed. Before going out I turned round for a final look at the 
scene in progress. The young girl was being strapped to the bed by the two 
men, and the two girls were securing the limbs of the man whom Maria had I 
chosen to complete the couple. This I suppose was Maria's star turn, and I 
had sometimes seen her directing events to such effect that the whole room 
seemed to be reduced to one organism, breathing together, panting together,
exclaiming and even, as occasionally happened, reaching the point of orgasm
if not together, then very nearly together. The lovemaking of the two on 
the bed, properly introduced, the two attendant girls devoting all their 
skill to the body of the bound man, and the two men to the bound girl, 
sometimes had the effect of enlisting all the other people there in one 
great dance of desire.

I went out to the car. I could feel the moment approaching when I would 
want, in spite of the interesting opportunities offered by the strange 
collection of frumps, jerks and beauties that populated the cave, to wander
away on my own, and wait for what accidents life might conjure up.

I got in the car, and sat there smoking and watching the street. A couple
of young men wandered by, arm in arm, then, a few paces behind them, two 
women also arm in arm. As they passed, one of the women called out 
something to the pair in front. They were apparently together.

Johnny appeared.

“You weren't inside,” I said questioningly to him, through the window.

“I've been telephoning,” he said. He got into the car.

“Let's go.”

I started up, and we moved off.

“Fontainebleau,” he said.

“Not the Marquis,” I said.

“The dear old gentleman,” Johnny said with a grin, “the very one, the 
wily serpent. Inspired by a craving for the poppy and in his wisdom 
offering ready money right and left, he's persuaded them to sell him back 
his freedom. They settled the deal yesterday. It must have cost him a 
pretty penny.”

“You soon found out,” I said, “the vine still works.”

“Found out,” Johnny said, “they had barely unlocked the doors for him 
when he was on the telephone making plans.”

“What plans?”

“For a little band of virgins,” Johnny said, “above the age of consent.”

VIII

“WHAT'S THAT?” SAID THE MARQUIS, “NO opium?” Johnny and I were on the 
telephone to him, in a little village on the way to Fontainebleau. We had. 
turned off and gone back to the Latin Quarter on the way, and picked up 
Lenny and Etchika. They were in the car, leaning drowsily against each 
other, amusing themselves with cigarettes and a bottle. Johnny and I were 
in a little bar, making the phone call. It had occurred to him that the 
Marquis might not have had tune to see to everything, but it had occurred a
little too late and now we had gone fifteen miles and there was the Marquis
confirming our doubts. The Marquis spluttered and gave us an address, and 
we said we would see him for breakfast.

“O.K.,” Johnny said, “that's that. Let's get back.”

We finished our drinks and made our way out to the car.

“O.K.,” Johnny said. “Let's have some fun.”

We went back with the car making a noise like a load of firecrackers and 
the radio blaring and Lenny and Etchika playing with each other and making 
jokes until the inside of the car seemed like Coney Island.

I put the bottle under the seat and slowed down to fifty and lit an 
ordinary cigarette and we rode sedately round the town for a while looking 
for this address the Marquis had given us, riding along the Avenue de la 
Grande Armee into Neuilly, until we came to an unobtrusive little bungalow 
on the comer of a side street and a back alley. It seemed a bit of an 
anti-climax, somehow, but Johnny didn't seem to notice anything out of the 
ordinary and got out of the car and slouched up to the front door.

After a while it opened and he went in, it closed again, and I turned 
round in my seat and got to my knees and scrambled into the back with Lenny
and Etchika, I was going to say for the sake of anything better to do, but 
I didn't want anything better to do anyway, and I landed squarely on the 
lips of Etchika. And I felt Lenny's hands slip round my hips and sent my 
own hands attempting to bounce the billow of Etchika's heavy bosom.

It was difficult to satisfy the two of them, particularly two such women,
but I think I had managed it by the time I heard the door-handle grate and 
turn, and Johnny slid into the front seat again.

He said, “I'll drive this time, if you like,” and started the motor.

Etchika began to pull her skirt on again. Lenny said, “Did you get it?”

Johnny said, “Yes. But I think we'll have to pull in our horns for a 
while. The guy said he had a job to get it, they're getting a little 
warmer.”

That quietened us all for a time, and we drove round the outskirts of the
town and got on to the Fontainebleau road without saying anything.

In the back of the car, the three of us dozed, to the throb of the motor.

Johnny's voice woke us. We were driving through what appeared to be open 
brush. I could not see the road. I turned round and then I saw an 
unsurfaced track winding over a kind of wooded plain. I realized it was 
dawn. The light was slowly strengthening, for already after five minutes I 
could see more clearly. In the gray air I picked out, a mile or so away, a 
bleak stone manse rising from the ground. As the car wound, like a compass,
following the contours of the land but always getting nearer to the gray 
building ahead of us, I saw there were perhaps a dozen windows in its 
weatherworn facade, and I began to be aware of the size of the edifice I 
had often heard of but now was seeing for the first time.

I could not see any light in the windows. When we came up to it, I saw 
the curtains were drawn. There were two smaller buildings next to it, of 
which one was a large garage into which Johnny drove the car. There were 
several other cars in the garage, including the Marquis' aristocratic black
Citroen, such as the Deputies of Paris are to be seen in, escorted between 
Versailles and Paris by armed speedcops at ninety miles an hour.

But if there is one thing I am not interested in it is guns, and if there
is a second it is the deputies of Paris, and so I quickly abandoned the 
associations of the Marquis' Citroen as we made our way out of his garage 
and crossed the lawn to where the Marquis himself stood by the open door, 
watching us with a smile engraved on his rubbery countenance. Some people 
have faces, others have countenances. The Marquis was one of those people 
in whom the tradition of the countenance—prepared, deliberate, hard to 
catch off balance—still lived. He watched us now, crossing the lawn, his 
left hand neatly in the pocket of his tuxedo, the right hanging loosely 
beside him, as if with a kind of sceptical amusement.

“Hi,” said Johnny.

“Hi,” said the Marquis, ironically, without moving.

“This is a friend of mine,” said Johnny, with a glance at me.

“Good morning,” said the Marquis. “Please come in.”

As we came up he stepped aside to let us precede him into the hall, about
which apart from the size there was nothing particularly remarkable, and 
closed the door behind us.

“What about some breakfast?” he said.

“What about some bed?” said Johnny.

“I am afraid,” the Marquis told us, “that is just about all you have come
in time for. Bed and breakfast. All my other guests have been in a profound
sleep for an hour or more.”

“Suits me,” said Lenny.

Etchika said, “It's been a long time since we've had a good day's sleep.”

“And Madame la Marquise?” asked Johnny.

“Exhausted,” said the Marquis. He chuckled. “Unconscious,” he said.

He led us over the hall and into the breakfast-room. The table, a long 
oaken refectory board, was already laid and looked like a jeweler's shop, 
covered with silver and cut-glass.

We sat down and he disappeared, to reappear several minutes later with a 
trolley of food.

“I shall leave you now,” he said. “When you've finished, go upstairs and 
you'll find several empty rooms. In this house, the empty ones are those 
with the doors closed. As you will see, if a door is open, it means there 
is someone there. Much simpler than the conventional system. Pick whichever
room pleases you. I'll see you this evening. Bon appetit!”

With which surprising little announcement, he left us to stuff ourselves 
with a sumptuous breakfast. Ladling cream into a second cup of coffee, I 
felt glad to have got in on the decline of his noble family.

Afterward, I went for a brief stroll round the second floor. Opposite one
door in particular I paused for several moments. I paused at most of them, 
out of curiosity, but I paused longest at this one. Over on the pillow 
almost covered by a mass of yellow hair, the delicately featured face of a 
girl who could have been little more than sixteen years old lay in a heavy 
sleep. I went nearer to the bed. Her cheeks were faintly flushed and there 
was a dewy sheen to her skin. I silently congratulated the Marquis, and 
went on my way.

I slept for ten hours. I too had been exhausted. When I awoke the sun had
set again and night was falling. Downstairs, I could hear voices. I lay and
listened to them a few moments, but I could not make out the words and 
after a while turned round and dozed a little longer. When I woke again it 
was quite dark and I felt easier. I don't like waking during the day, for 
some reason. This time I got up and, heavy with sleep, searched about the 
corridor until I found the bathroom. I opened the door, and a cloud of 
steam billowed out. I stepped inside and shut the door again. At first, I 
could see nothing. Then I perceived, vaguely through the steam, two pink 
breasts and the dark thicket of saturated hair showing above the water. It 
was an enormous sunken bath in which she lay, and there seemed more than 
room enough for two.

I said: “Do you mind if I join you?”

There was a little shriek, the water churned, and I saw that she had 
rolled over, and was now lying on her belly. The view now offered to me was
of two round pink hillocks above the water, and a small head of damp black 
hair.

I was wearing no more than a towel. I unwound it and dropped it on the 
floor. Then I made my way, tentatively, over to the great tiled basin. I 
stepped into it, with a sigh at the soothing contact of the warm water 
which, it seemed to me, was lightly but agreeably scented.

Slowly, I turned on my side, moving in for a closer look at my companion.
She seemed very young, twenty at the most. Her head was turned away from 
me. I tried to think of something to say. I could not. Besides, it did not 
seem the moment for conversation. I was interested in the faculties of 
vision rather than speech, in any case. I lay and watched the long tapering
back, the round shoulders and the swelling waist, and the gentle incline of
the buttocks. Her legs she held tight together. As I watched, the head 
slowly lifted and swung slowly round, until I was looking into a pair of 
anxious wide brown eyes, and a round face. Over the forehead a few black 
curls, wetted, had stuck to the skin. As the water dripped off her face, 
the mouth pursed up and she said, “What do you want?” in a quavering voice.

“Don't be afraid,” I said. “Calm yourself.” Then I added, “Principally, a
bath.”

She looked incredulous. I said: “Of course, I should like you too, I 
should love it But don't worry, I shan't attack you, do just as you please.
Enjoy your bath. Suppose you pass me the soap.”

She gasped, then reached up with her left hand to the side of the bath 
and, without turning round, passed it to me over the top of her own head. 
It was transparent, and smelt vaguely of lavender.

“Thank you,” I said, in what I hoped was an imperturbable voice, and 
sitting up I began to soap my arms and back.

“Who do you think you are?” she said, “coming in here like that, while 
I'm having a bath. I want to wash myself.”

“I don't know who you are,” I said, “but if you want to wash yourself, 
then sit up and wash yourself and don't make so much fuss about it.”

“If I sit up,” she said, “will you look?”

I kept a straight face.

“Of course I'll look,” I said, “but you'll see. You'll be surprised how 
quickly you get used to it.”

She said: “Oh!” and sat up and began, churning the water again as she 
moved, to soap her breasts furiously.

“Here,” I said, “let me help you. Give me the soap.”

I took it out of her hands before she could protest and began soaping her
back. The skin, particularly under the soap, felt slippery and delicate. 
Her back she held rigid and stiff.

“Come,” I said, “You're very pretty. Loosen up, relax, you're not going 
to your execution.”

I passed my hands in long slow strokes up and down her back, and round 
her waist, and gradually as I felt her body soften and her back, 
slackening, bend steadily forward, I let my hands stray from time to time 
as if by accident about her ribs to where the soft swellings of her breasts
began. I left off and swilled water over her back.

“There,” I said, “your back's clean. I expect it was clean enough before.
Anyway, if s cleaner still now.' Turn round.”

She turned round and I kissed her on the mouth, quickly, so that she had 
no time to begin to struggle, had she been inclined to. For the first time 
she smiled, and taking advantage of the opportunity I kissed her again, 
more deliberately, feeling as I did so her first resistance slacken and die
into acquiescence. And then, under, the kiss and the careful encircling of 
her waist with my arm, my hand resting lightly on the solid jut of her hip,
I felt the acquiescence grow to ardor.

I released her. I picked up the soap and began afresh to lather her body,
and standing up I pulled her gently to her feet. I covered the whole of her
body with a thick white foam. I could feel, under my hands, her limbs 
gently flutter. I tried to make each caress tell, and soon her quickened 
breath, that became a sigh each time I stroked her body, told me I was 
succeeding. I explored the tender skin between her thighs, and the crevices
below her mound, that soon began to add their own liquids to the soapy 
foam.

But finally, picking her up in my arms, I lowered her into the water, and
let her sink till all but her head was immersed, and rinsed it all away. 
She lay in the water, . catching her breath.

I picked her gently out of it again. She stood there, half-stupefied, her
head lolling back, while I dried her. Then once again I picked her up and 
carried her down the corridor to the room in which I had spent the day 
sleeping. As we came to the door she whispered, “No, no. The next one.” So 
she had been no more than a few feet away from me all day. I went on and 
turned into the next room. I kicked the door shut with the thought that 
here was one thing I wasn't going to share, not for the moment at all 
events. I carried her over to the bed. There was a dress lying on it. I 
laid her down, picked up the dress and left it on the chair, and pulled the
rumpled bedclothes off the bed so that only a white spread of sheet covered
it.

The light was very strong. It came from a chandelier in the middle of the
ceiling. Normally I have no objection to light. Rather the contrary. I like
to see what is happening, and to whom, as well as feel it. But this light 
was dazzling. I turned it off in favor of a small bulb with a heavy silken 
shade, on the dressing table. It cast a series of disjointed shadows over 
the walls, from being placed opposite the mirror.

I went back to the bed. She was lying there, her body flushed and warm 
and smelling of lavender. I lay down beside her, and began to stroke her 
face, admiring the even contour to which the texture of the skin lent a 
kind of sculptured glaze. But as I stroked the skin I seemed as it were to 
have stroked a smile on to her face, or I had the impression of having done
so for a smile appeared there.

Her early nervousness I saw had gone, and she was calm. She lay on her 
back, and for a moment I sat up and looked at her, without kissing her or 
stroking her any more or even touching her, while she gazed passively back 
at me.

For a while I didn't budge. I wanted to make sure I remembered her. I was
convinced she was a virgin. I hadn't had a virgin for months. That is to 
say I knew damn well she was a virgin when first she came to this place, 
but now that she had been here a day or two apparently, I couldn't be sure 
any longer.

But I didn't ask her about it. Somehow it isn't the kind of question you 
ask at the time. You can ask it, but it must be difficult to have to 
answer, or it could be difficult, and I didn't want to embarrass her, now 
she was lying there, contentedly embedded in the mattress. If I wanted to 
know I should have found out earlier.

It didn't make any difference.

Some things which make no difference to you still seem worth saying. 
Perhaps because you cannot tell, until you have said them.

Anyway I caressed her a little more and she still didn't move or make 
much sign, except for the little smile and her quickening breath, and I was
beginning to wonder whether there wasn't perhaps something wrong with her 
when finally she did move. She didn't speak, or put her arms round me, or 
even offer her mouth to me to be kissed, she just steadily, without saying 
a word, opened her long white legs and drew up her thighs an inch or two.

It was more of a shock to me, from this until now passive and immobile 
body, than if some complete stranger had come up to me in the street, and 
plunged her hands into my fly. I found myself all at once with a raging 
erection. Until now it had been a little tentative, a little on the soft 
side. Now it was hard as a rock. Here we go, I said to myself, here we go! 
and without any more ado or admiration I moved over on top of her and, 
separating the lips of her sex with my hand, testing as I did so the 
clitoris, finding it tough as a nut, I plunged it in.

Her juices were flowing like the Nile. It went in almost all the way at 
the first thrust. I had been wrong. She wasn't a virgin. Never mind. In a 
way, she was better than a virgin. Very tight, quite as tight as a virgin, 
but much smoother.

She was lovely and smooth and I almost swooned with the pleasure of it, 
running my hands at the same time over her round pneumatic body. It really 
was pneumatic. Instead of that soft ripe quality you find with mature 
women, her flesh seemed tight and elastic, not her sex merely, but her 
whole body.

I could feel her limbs beginning to flutter again. Her limbs didn't 
contract, relax, in slow heavy surges, but they made a series of little 
flutters, like an animal trembling. Very strange.

Then she moved her mouth round to mine. Her mouth at least was very well 
aware of what it was about. Her tongue, pushing its way between her teeth, 
suddenly darted out and, hard and pointed, began to mime the motions of our
sex, in a tantalizing and exhilarating rhythm. And it was from her tongue 
that I became aware she was nearing the final spasms, for it relaxed, 
softened and sank back into her mouth, and her body sank back, and her arms
fell, to lie beside her, and only her hips continued to move, compulsively,
urging themselves upward at me.

Then the grip of her sex round my member increased, relented, went into 
that curious sequence of flutters, and with this agitation my strokes 
quickened, grew stronger and became violent, wresting the last seizures 
from me, as the fluttering slowed and faded away.

Luckily I seemed to be as hard as ever, and I left it in, and waited. 
Sure enough, after a few minutes, as she moved her head round, and her 
hands came round to my head, I felt her hips once again moving, that 
unmistakable provocative stirring that sends a swift relay of shocks out to
the end of your limbs.

And after the first paralytic tingling travelling along under the skin, I
too once more began to move.

This time it was more violent. I picked her up still joined to me, and on
the great white bed we went into the gyrations of a dance that must have 
seemed to an onlooker more like an erotic ritual, a ritual sacrifice, than 
the act itself.

But it was the act itself. As we both soon knew as we strove to wrest 
from the other the final necessary twinge. Which, the versatility of her 
supple limbs exceeding itself, steadily drew closer, overtook us in a kind 
of mutual annihilation, and left us lying separate and sobbing for breath, 
and with aching lungs, on the spread of sheet. I felt the perspiration 
draining off my forehead. Her body too, I could see, was overspread with a 
film of perspiration, shining vaguely in the dim light. We slept.

IX

SHE HAD GONE. THE ROOM WAS EMPTY. I rubbed my eyes. I had not felt her 
move, or heard her go. And yet the frock was still there, lying where I had
left it, so far as I could remember, over the chair. The voices were as I 
had heard them, waking I supposed several hours ago. Another bath? I did 
nothing but bathe. A shower perhaps. I stretched my limbs. Out in the 
corridor the lights were out. A dim illumination came from somewhere. I 
could not tell where. From below, possibly. I padded along to the end of 
the corridor, and pushed open the door of the bathroom. I had a feeling I 
should be greeted by clouds of steam and two pink breasts exposed above the
lavender-scented water. I was not, however. But it was eerie. The bathroom 
was empty, clear of steam. There was no water in the huge tiled basin. I 
stepped into it and turned the shower on. Showers are the quickest way to 
wake. I was more interested in getting woken than getting cleaned. I was 
tired of getting cleaned. I stayed under it only until I felt my head 
clearing and my limbs beginning to unstiffen. I looked round. It would be a
long time before I forgot the scent of lavender water. The room was huge. I
almost wished I could have afforded to be a Marquis. But not quite. I 
preferred being less distinguished. You can move more easily. Possessions 
are chains, very often. I preferred to wander.

I went back to the room and slipped on my clothes. I was beginning to 
have enough of dressing and undressing. Soon I should not bother to dress 
at all, perhaps. I should live naked in all seasons. But not in these 
Northern climates. A pity. I went downstairs.

In the dining-hall, thickly carpeted, darkly panelled, heavily furnished,
a fantastic scene confronted me. Judge for yourself.

The dining-table, in the center, a version much enlarged of the morning's
breakfast-table, was loaded down with food in a banqueting style that must 
have resembled the hey-days and splendor of the classical Republique.

The partial disarray of the dishes, plates and glasses gave it an 
appearance of great vitality. The chairs, of which there were a score or 
so, were only half of them occupied. And they were occupied exclusively by 
men, except for one throne-like chair at the end of the table, where sat 
Madame la Marquise, engaged at that moment in energetic conversation with 
her neighbor. At the opposite end of the table in a still more magnificent 
chair, its back higher than his head, sat the Marquis, looking on, suave 
and apparently satisfied.

The Marquis had done something to the light. Its source was in four small
rotating lamps in the four corners of the room. The masked beams which came
from these lamps constantly changed color, so that the general impression 
was of a weird and confused rocking, as if, under the influence of the 
swaying beams, the whole room rocked. They were enough to keep a sombre 
light in the room, but there remained a continual uncertainty before the 
eyes, as if in a dream where diversely colored objects revolve erratically 
about you, without your being able to pin any one of them down for long. 
For no sooner had you fixed something than it seemed to change color and 
position.

This was all, except for a feeble light somewhere up in the ceiling that 
cast a slightly stronger pool over the dining-table itself, bringing out 
the glitter of glass and silver and the outlines of the seated people.

Between each man was a vacant chair. And slowly, leisurely, around the 
table, girls to whom I presumed the chairs belonged swayed, lurched as if 
somnambulant.

Each girl was clad only in a long veil reaching to the floor, of an 
indecisive color shifting and shimmering as the revolving beams fell slowly
upon it, picking it out, and vaguely picking out the naked form beneath, 
and sliding away again.

But the striking thing was the way the veiled women moved. They did not 
walk, properly speaking. And although undeniably moving they did not seem 
to be moving of their own accord, but rather propelled by some agency that 
controlled them as if without their knowledge.

They swayed onward unceasingly, like a slow tide drifting in the 
phantasmal light round the animated men at the table.

Who, for their part, hardly seemed distracted by the unearthly parade, 
but devoted their attentions mostly to their food, their wine, and their 
conversation.

I stood and stared at it all from the doorway. I stayed there for a good 
five minutes looking. And even then when I moved it wasn't under my own 
impetus. But the Marquis, catching sight of me, beckoned me in. I started, 
then collected myself and walked over to him, between the imperturbable 
gliding women.

He said: “Ah. At last. I hope you've rested well?” An ironic smile curved
at the corners of his mouth. I said: “This looks like your masterpiece.” 
“We live as we can,” he said, “in an unkind world. A little joy to while 
away the sorrow. There is a seat for you. You must be hungry.”

I was hungry. I looked to where he gestured. I had evidently been allowed
for. One third the way along one side of the table, there were three empty 
chairs side by side.

“The middle one,” said the Marquis. I went over to it and sat down. I 
noticed the light strengthen a shade, the effect of moving into the sphere 
of the feeble bulb in the ceiling. I looked over toward the Marquis. A 
little joy to while away the sorrow. The skin was drawn tightly over his 
face and in this light, the lines of age obscured, he looked about ten 
years less than the age I knew him to be. I poured myself a glass of white 
wine, and glanced at my right-hand neighbor. A heavy man, with a balding 
head and the stalwart features of someone who has wanted for little in his 
life. On my left hand was a thin-jawed man I put in his early thirties, in 
spite of hollow sockets to the eyes that were almost black from incessant 
fatigue presumably, and of temples gouged with overstrain. But his hair, 
cropped short, was thick and seemed still soft. It had not yet taken on 
that grizzled appearance that comes with the middle years. And yet his eyes
flashed vivaciously, as he spoke in a strong voice to the man opposite him.

The man on the other side of the table from me I could not properly see, 
his head, except for the top of it, being obscured by a turkey, on a large 
silver platter, in front of us both. I helped myself to some food, 
including a leg of the bird.

From the shadows a man appeared beside me and spooned various vegetables 
on to my plate, from a deep tureen. The butler. Apparently the Marquis had 
confidence in at least one of his servants. The presence of a butler to 
this strange gathering seemed somehow unexpected. There are some things 
your habits don't prepare you for. He withdrew again into the shadows.

After a while I too grew accustomed, relatively speaking, to the veiled 
procession round the table that kept on moving, moving like a macabre file 
of marionettes, one following the other, endlessly, expressionlessly.

The man on my left was exchanging anecdotes with his partner. It turned 
out that until recently he had spent most of his time at home, fighting 
with his wife.

“The more I fought with her, the more she fought back. It was like living
in the jungle,” he said. “Now we don't bother. One day in a moment of 
insight we realized more or less what was happening. Since then, we make 
love more often, nowadays. Now, if we seem about to fight, we try to 
surrender to each other straightaway. Or else, if one of us is 
discontented, he goes out. The other doesn't attempt to stop him. We behave
as if we're no more than acquaintances, live alone for a while. A day, a 
night, a week, two weeks, as long as we feel like it. It doesn't matter. We
always go back to each other. We can't help it. We've done too much 
together. We've tied a knot round each other's existence. Sooner or later, 
we have to go back.”

“And if you both refuse to give way?” his partner took the trouble to 
ask.

“Oh, then we both leave.”

He seemed quite an interesting guy. I wondered if his theory really 
worked. It sounded plausible, I suppose.

“The trouble with many people,” he went on, “is they don't want to lead 
their own lives. They want their lives led for them. You have to be on your
guard against them. Otherwise they'll get you.”

As the meal drew to an end and the men settled back, the butler came 
forward and, over a tiny flame, prepared the potent little pipes for 
whoever wanted them, from that supply the Marquis never seemed to run out 
of. He hadn't really needed the packet we had brought with us that morning.
I expect that was why he never seemed to run out of it.

I said to the one who had been doing the talking, “What about them?” and 
nodded my head in the direction of the veiled bodies disturbing the gloom 
beyond us. “Don't they eat?”

“They have something better than food,” he replied. He took a pipe from 
the butler and, leaning back in his hair, drew the fumes into his chest, 
holding them here until the effect was exhausted.

By and by, a man rose from his seat and made his way back toward the 
women. He waited, standing there for a moment, as one by one they passed 
him and then, putting out an arm he stopped her apparently of his taste 
and, guiding her away, laid her down on the carpet, lifting off the veil, 
and took her there and then.

I could just make out the two bodies, crouched on the floor, and vaguely 
heard the faster breath and a slight shuffle of limbs against each other. 
And raising her once again to her feet, he conducted her home to the 
circling file, silent in its ghostly progress, into which he introduced her
as before.

He walked with her a few paces until her movements became attuned afresh 
to those of her companions, and coming over to the table resumed his place 
among us. He made a brief comment to someone near him, and signaled to the 
butler for another pipe.

He was followed by another, and in turn another, until one by one nearly 
all the men at table had left it, made their choice from the eerie band, 
led her aside, taken their pleasure of her, and returned. And throughout, 
the host and hostess remained in their places, suavely talking, in low 
agreeable tones, sometimes only to their immediate neighbors, sometimes in 
a slightly fuller voice to the company at large.

And I too, unable to resist the example so matter-of-factly set to me, 
rose from my seat and made my way to the indefatigably circling women. In 
the sickening swell of the light I stood, reeling with the uneven beams as 
if aboard ship, and gazed at each woman as she passed, at the gliding 
limbs, and the hips rocking under the veil.

Suddenly I recognized the girl whom I had come upon in the bathroom, 
bathed with, carried to her room and seduced only a few brief hours ago.

I did not know her name, so that I could not repeat it. But as she passed
I looked her full in the eyes. She did not seem to see me. Her stare was 
glassy. Her face was unmoving. There was an unnatural pallor to her skin. 
Her face had as nearly as possible no expression on it at all. That is to 
say there was an expression on it, an expression of the lifeless. I seemed 
to be looking into the eyes of death, that were cold and unseeing. I drew 
back, and before I could recover she had gone.

And the blood drained back into my limbs slowly, as I grew accustomed to 
this expression too, for now as the women passed I looked intently at each 
one and saw, through the drifting veil, that all were striking and all, 
each in her different way, were young, and on all their faces was the same 
nerveless look.

This time as my companion once again approached I took her by the arm and
led her aside, to a patch of shadow concealed from the table, and from the 
others. Their talking dwindled to an indistinguishable buzz of voices. For 
some reason, I wanted to be out of the range of the table, and its 
occupants.

She came with me placidly, without a sign, and without a hint of 
resistance or any show of feeling at all. When we came to the spot I had 
picked out, I stopped. She went on and I had to hold her back. But on the 
pressure of my hand she stopped, docilely, and stayed where she stood 
until, by pressing on her shoulders, I was able to induce her first to sit,
and then to lie down.

When she was lying on her back, her arms at her sides, I lay down beside 
her.

I drew off the veil, and looked closely at her.

“Don't you recognized me?” I asked her.

She made no sign even of having heard me. Her eyes stared straight in 
front of her, up to the gloom above.

I shook her shoulders tentatively, with no better result.

I passed one hand over her face, and even drew a finger along the edge of
her eyelids. They did not so much as flicker.

I began to kiss her body, in the hope of rousing her perhaps to some 
semblance of wakefulness. I explored the full length of her body, without 
the least response registering itself on her features. In vain. Nothing. 
She was cold, her body felt cold, colder than normal.

As a last expedient I parted her legs and plunged my mouth between them. 
There was no change on her face. Yet I imagined I detected a slight 
stirring among the tender folds of her sex. I increased my efforts. The 
juices, it seemed, were beginning to flow. Perhaps within her too a glow of
consciousness was lighting.

Until then I had had no erection at all, my member had been soft and 
uneager. But now it was swelling and rising and soon it was rigid. As I 
knelt above her, I separated the lips of her sex and once again reassured 
myself that, if her mind was dead, her body was not, and in its strange 
half-conscious way was aware of what was happening to it. If no more.

I kicked off my clothes. She had not stirred.

Carefully I eased my prick into her. It slipped in quite as if she 
herself were quick and aiding it. I let my body balance forward until I was
lying on top of her, belly to belly.

Her body felt excessively cold, so cold it chilled me. I began to move, 
watching her face for any expression or sign of animation. But there was 
none.

Instead of the anticipated warmth about my member, the chill seemed 
somehow to pervade her body and even to have reached this secret area, 
usually its warmest sector of all. I think it was confusion as well as 
dismay that led me in the end to withdraw from her body unsatisfied and 
wondering what obscure drug this could be to which the Marquis had 
subjected them. I for one had never seen anything like it before.

I put on my clothes. And then in a sudden access of mystification and 
anger I made yet another attempt to bring her back to life and her usual 
vigor, shaking her violently by the shoulders and slapping her face, with 
the palm of my hand. It was no use. She did not seem to feel it. And yet I 
think I caught a hint of pain on her features, as I pulled her to her feet,
and walked her back to the procession, still gliding round as before, and 
set her moving in it again, why I do not know.

I went back to my place at the table. The effect of the incident was to 
possess me with a kind of nervous hunger and I tore a wing and a part of 
the breast from the turkey with my fingers and began gnawing at it 
voraciously. The butler came forward out of nowhere and began offering me 
vegetables. But I had no taste for vegetables at that moment and when I 
refused it was abruptly. Nonetheless he came up a second or two later with 
a bottle of Pouilly and I drank a glass of it without pause, in the same 
nervous fashion, in spite of the fact that I usually prefer to savor a good
wine.

This calmed me, up to a point, and I sat back and started to meditate on 
this strangest of all the outlandish evenings I had spent in the last few 
months.

But I had hardly taken breath when a voice recalled me to the table.

“How did you find her?” the Marquis said to me politely.

“Dead,” I said, in a flat voice.

He said, “Oh.” Then, “I think I understand; But don't despair, mon ami. 
She will soon wend her way back to life. Until then, drink to the present!”

That incredible man was smiling and holding up his glass. And the power 
of his jeweled eyes was such that I could not find any reply, although a 
moment ago I had been seething with indignant reply, and I held up my glass
and I drank with him, to the present. And to our companions, to the bilious
light, the wine and the turkey and the ghastly reel of women around us.

And the Marquis and I drained our glasses together and smiled.

X

THE TWELVE RESOUNDING CHIMES FOR midnight echoed from the great clock in 
the hall. The Marquis cried to his wife, “Lead them away, my dear. They 
need rest. Let them lie down.”

But his wife, tall, thin, younger than he and at least a match for her 
husband, got up and made her way among the veiled and now unsteady women, 
and one by one she took them from their places and led them each to the 
empty chairs between us.

They were beginning to wake. Next to me I had the young yellow-haired 
girl I had seen asleep that morning when we arrived, and on the other side 
another with dark brown hair and a heavy peasant body. I searched for the 
girl whom I had futilely tried to revive. She was near the end of the 
table, next to Johnny. He and I had hardly exchanged a word all evening. 
Now I caught his eye and asked him, “What happened to Lenny?''

“They took the car home for us,” he said, giving his grin.

As their minds awoke and their eyes lost their glassy sightlessness, and 
began to look about, and take in what they saw, their bodily fatigue began 
to assert itself, and almost all of them for a while went into a kind of 
half-sleep, half-stupor.

The Marquis had cups of hot coffee set before them, and soon they 
bestirred themselves, began to shift in their seats, became aware of the 
coffee, drank it, finally began to pick at the food with which the table 
was still overloaded, and gradually found their voices again, murmured, 
spoke, giggled, laughed, as the table assumed the aspect of a party now 
little out of the ordinary but for the light and the nudity of the women.

I signed to Johnny, and changed seats with him. I sat down next to her. 
Recovered, she was helping herself to coffee and cream.

I asked her, “Did you recognize me?”

“Yes, I recognize you, of course I do,” she said cheerfully.

“I mean, did you, earlier?”

“Earlier when?”

“Since you came down here this evening,” I explained.

“Funny,” she said, “I don't even remember coming down. All I remember is 
going to sleep upstairs,”

I didn't explain any further. I couldn't hope to explain.

“How do you feel?” I asked her.

“Tired,” she said.

“Is that all?” I asked.

“No. I feel—I don't know.” She looked worried. Her eyebrows drew 
together. “I don't know. I don't feel like talking.”

“Never mind,” I said. “Have some sugar.”

“Yes,” she said. “That's how I feel. All I want is coffee and sugar.

Johnny was at my shoulder. He said, “Get up.'

“What is it?” I said. “I'm talking.”

“I know,” he said. “I'm sorry. We've got to go.”

“What do you mean, go?” I said. “This is about the first time I've felt 
like staying and you tell me we've got to go.”

“Yes,” he said, “I'm sorry. But we've got to go. Maria's outside with the
car.”

“Maria! Why Maria?”

“Tell you in the car. Come on.”

“O.K.,” I said. I got up, running my hands regretfully over her body. 
“Sorry. I've got to go.” “Yes,” she said, “why?”

“I don't know. How is your memory now?” I asked her.

“All right, I suppose.” I told her my address.

“This is one time I'm sorry,” I said. “Come and find me if you can.”

We went out to the car. Maria was still in it, at the wheel.

“Move over,” Johnny said, “I'm driving,”

We got in and wailed off like a road rally.

“What's all the fuss?” I said.

“They've busted up the cave,” Johnny said, “and they're heading out 
here.”

Between us, Maria said, “Goddamn fats.”

“What did the Marquis say?” I asked.

“Nothing, as usual,” Johnny said. “He's all right. He's got enough 
tunnels under that place to start a subway. But you can't drive automobiles
in them,” he added. “And there were six automobiles in his garage.”

When we got back to Paris, Johnny drove Maria to her apartment and then 
went back to our little hotel in the Latin Quarter.

As we opened the door into his room he said, “Pity. I had gotten to like 
this place. It's small and dirty, but till now it was peaceful. O.K. Let's 
pack.”

I went into my room and packed. It took me ten minutes. It took Johnny a 
bit longer and I went into his room with my grip and sat on his bed and 
watched him. What with the red and white bathrobe and the red and black 
lampshade and the coffee cups he had two big valises full. Plus a 
water-pipe and an Egyptian dagger.

We carried the stuff down to the car, and put it in, and got in after it.

Johnny started the engine and we drove over to his garage. He took out my
grip and gave it to me and took out a small grip of his own.

“That's all we carry, for now,” he said. “Let's go have breakfast.” He 
locked the garage, pocketed the key and we walked out.

We got in a cab and went to the Madeleine. The sun had come out and it 
was a sparkling June morning. The Seine looked about ten degrees warmer 
than it was and Paris had begun to open up for the summer.

After breakfast we checked in at the Charles Cinq, like any two tourists.
It was nothing but plate glass and service. I couldn't stand the place, 
neither could Johnny. It was full of serious travelers and young women with
tinny voices and no cunts. But it was the best place of all to keep out of 
the way in. Being a criminal and living there you might be in the wrong, in
the eyes of the law, but at least you were rich or seemed to be and that 
already excused you for most crimes but murder.

Johnny and I spent the next few days, I don't know how many, wandering 
about the town, having a rest. And getting to know each other, in a way.

For Johnny on his own with nothing to arrange or organize or control 
somehow changed. I suppose he was the same person outwardly, to himself. 
But for me even his appearance seemed to change, under the changed 
circumstances he actually looked different, or he did to me. Who knows, it 
might have been myself changing that was responsible for the difference. It
doesn't matter. What matters is the change.

The change made it possible for Johnny and I not only to go out together,
and do something, but also to do nothing, or sit and talk, and say and 
admit what we'd never said or admitted before, when everything had seemed a
big ball and all ours.

Now it wasn't.

Mostly we left the chic quarters and went down town, to Bastille, 
Republique, Clichy, Pere Lachaise. Except for some we had to pay. I don't 
mind paying for it sometimes. I'm thinking of one in particular. This one 
had a friend and we took them both, or rather they took us, to a little 
cafe near the rue St-Denis. It was where they lived. In comparison to the 
cave up at Montmartre, four was lonely. We took them one by one, that is to
say we, meaning Johnny and I, took the first one together, while her friend
looked on and helped, and then we took her friend, varying it a little, 
while the first one helped, as it were.

About the second or third night we got drunk. After that, we stayed 
drunk. I've never been so drunk. I hope I never get so drunk again.

It was a nightmare. Things passed by, vaguely, without my being properly 
aware of them. I seemed to go to bed with one woman and wake up with 
another completely different woman in a completely different place.

I don't know where half of it happened. I don't know how I got from one 
part of Paris to another, or how Johnny kept with me. Yet he did keep with 
me, somehow. I'd see him every so often coming down the street, with his 
shambling kind of walk, and some blowsy bit of ass on his arm, and he'd 
give her a stroke and a poke and hold her out to me and say, “Let's go try 
this one.” And we'd take her somewhere and try her.

Sometimes they were good, sometimes indifferent, some wanted money and 
some not. But even the indifferent ones are worth the trouble if you're out
enough.

And all the time we had a bottle going. There was a kind of ultimate 
dazzle about this last riot with Johnny, as if at the end of it we'd 
planned to take our sore soft pricks in our hands and say, well, that's 
that, they're empty, not a drop left and your time's run out, it's the main
line, now we can do it. And jump over a cliff or I suppose I ought to say 
Eiffel Tower, or steal out in a rush of fire and smoke.

We did have an indifferent one once in particular, she really was 
indifferent, terribly indifferent, she lay on the bed on her back with her 
legs open worrying about whether her cigarette was burning the tablecloth 
and dry as the desert.

Until finally I went down into the street and waited a bit and after a 
while a fat creature wedged into her satin skirt like a balloon comes 
along, and I ask her, “Do you like it? Because if you don't, don't bother.”
And she said she did so I took her upstairs and when she saw Johnny and the
deadpan sitting there smoking cigarettes she grinned and took her clothes 
off and went over holding her breasts up with her hands and leaned down to 
the deadpan with her tongue out. And pretty soon the deadpan was moaning 
away and sighing like a ship. In the end it was quite successful and the 
deadpan actually thought up a few tricks of her own.

One day Johnny and I woke up alone and found ourselves sober.

I said, “I'm going South today, Johnny.” And he said, “O.K.” and peeled 
off twenty ten-thousand-franc notes. And after a while I found myself on 
the train. With my grip. That was all. Headed for Karen, I suppose. And to 
wander again. It had begun with Karen. I suppose it was ending with Karen, 
if only for the moment. Anyway, I wanted to be alone, and think about all 
this. I could do that, in the South. But you can't think in a crowd. So I 
was ending with the South. I? Who am I? A lone, anonymous individual. You 
wouldn't know my name. Anyway I like wandering. You might see me as you 
might see anyone, in a crowd, before they disappear.


THE END

