by Evie Blake
‘That’s fantastic. Your mother must be so proud of you.’
‘She doesn’t know about it,’ Valentina blurts out. ‘I haven’t told her.’
‘Oh?’ her father looks confused. ‘Why not?’
‘We don’t really get on that well.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he says, giving her a kind smile of the sort you might give an acquaintance, not your own flesh and blood.
She suddenly feels incensed. How dare her father sit in front of her, as cool as a cucumber, and act as if he has done nothing wrong? She wants to make him feel as uncomfortable as her, as awkward and as hurt. ‘Why did you walk out on us all?’ she spits out, aggressively.
There. She has said it. Finally, she is asking him why he rejected her.
Yet she can’t look him in the eye while she waits for him to reply. She stares down at the kitchen table, counts the whorls in the grain of the wood. She dare not look at his face.
He says nothing for a moment. ‘I am sorry about that, but things were getting very complicated. I was very fond of you, Valentina. You were such a lovely little thing.’
‘Excuse me . . .’ she hisses, glaring up at him with loathing. ‘How can you talk about your daughter as if she is a puppy or a doll that can be discarded?’
The colour drains from her father’s face and he looks genuinely shocked, speechless.
‘How could you just walk out on me and Mattia?’ she continues to rant. ‘How could you let her drive you away from your own children?’
She is building up to a huge indignant outburst, yet her father reaches out and puts a hand on her arm. His touch is cool; to her surprise, it calms her down.
‘Valentina,’ he says, his voice hoarse with concern, ‘I had no idea . . .’
‘What do you mean?’ she says, confused.
‘That you don’t know.’
‘What don’t I know?’ Her voice rises in panic as she looks into the gentle blue eyes of her father and begins to suspect something, even before he says it.
‘Valentina,’ Philip Rembrandt says to her. ‘I am not your father.’
She changes him. Before Maria, Felix’s films were surreal, fantastical fairy tales, much admired by the new young Parisian intellectuals. Now she is his muse. She has inspired him to take the dark matter out of these fairy tales and translate them into erotic adventures. This is their clandestine film-making. It is not decadent, not pornography, for this is the art of their love. It is just for them.
In this new, liberated world she inhabits, she can believe that what they are doing is not immoral. Everything challenges her preconceptions. She sees plays that seem to have no drama but are just pure ideas – anti-theatre, Felix calls it – where the most outrageous language can be expressed, she listens to jazz music that ignites her sexual essence, and she goes to art exhibitions of erotic drawings – one so explicit that it is shut down by the gendarme. Felix tells her that the erotic drawings, by the artist, André Masson, are a direct response to his traumatic experiences in the First World War.
‘I understand now that I am the same, my love,’ Felix tells her. ‘My films are a consequence of the war. They are a free expression of that love of life . . . That is what eroticism is.’
Maria examines Masson’s erotic drawings, looks at the swirling mass of naked bodies. All seem to be women – full breasted, heavy limbed – spiralling skyward, like an exploding volcano, in a combined ecstasy. She thinks of the films that she and Felix are making and she wants to ask him . . . It is on the tip of her tongue . . . What traumatic wartime experiences did you experience? Reveal to me the mystery of your disappeared wife. The woman Felix never mentions, yet who, since the day Maria knew about her, has never left their hotel room. She is always there, an imaginary observer behind the rolling camera. Yet she dare not ask him. She is too afraid that he will not want her anymore if she pushes him for answers. She thinks she would die if that were to happen.
Their days in Paris take on a natural rhythm. The mornings are for just the two of them. They stay in bed late, until the summer sun is high in the sky and the room stifling with heat. Yet it doesn’t bother Maria, for these, to her, are the best hours of the day. Felix is all hers. No camera is running, as has usually been the case the night before. It would make sense to film in daylight, yet it never feels right to do such a thing in the morning. They need the build-up of the evening, the play of wine and food upon their senses, the nocturnal flavour of Paris, stirring the blood in their veins, making them both brazen and abandoned once Felix turns on the camera. She trusts that he will never show these films to anyone else. She imagines them both old together, after the children are grown, the grandchildren . . . She imagines finding these ancient movies and watching them. They will have been together all those years and still be in love, filled with nostalgia at watching their love enacted in front of them in black and white.
On these Parisian mornings in their little sweaty hotel room, she lets Felix choose what they do. Sometimes he wishes just to pleasure her alone and sometimes he wants to make love to her. All of her sense of reason, her rational mind, has abandoned her. She imagines it is a little bluebird, flying out of their attic window and away across Paris. She cares not if it comes back to her.
By early afternoon, they are hungry. They dress quickly; usually, he insists she puts on another new dress he has bought for her. She wonders where his money is coming from, but then she decides not to think about it. They go for lunch in a local bistro. Usually, they will be joined by other thespian friends of Felix and, after the first bottle of wine is shared, the conversation will become more and more animated. A decision will be made then about what to do with the rest of the day. They will go to an exhibition, or shop for new clothes. Felix not only transforms her wardrobe, but his own, as well. Gone are the tweed suits from London; now he wears tailored suits and polished shoes. He gets his hair cut shorter, and it makes him look younger. Every day, he goes to the barber and never again does she feel the roughness of a day’s growth of stubble against her skin. Now his cheeks are baby soft.
In the early evening, they might see a play or a film – maybe a new American film noir or a French film. This Maria loves – to take sanctuary in the darkened cinema, lost in a parallel world. Felix takes her to see La Belle et la Bête, directed by his friend, Jean Cocteau. She falls in love with the fairy-tale movie. Is this a parallel for her and Felix, she wonders? Is he the beast she must learn to trust? Will her love save him and turn him back into a prince? To Maria, he is already a prince, yet she does notice that, to others, he is less tender.
She remembers Jacqueline’s comments on her countryman, and she has seen how strangers, even some of his friends, react to Felix’s brusque manner sometimes, and his rather caustic tone. It embarrasses her and she wonders if he is aware of how it makes him sound to outsiders: rude and difficult. Often she gets a sympathetic glance. The only person who seems not to mind Felix’s rudeness is Madame Paget at their hotel, and she suspects that is because she is rather in love with him. It would explain her hostility towards Maria.
After the theatre or the cinema, it is time to go to a bar for drinks with friends, then maybe they will eat again and the night truly has begun. They go to a club to listen to the new jazz stars of America: powerful black men that stir her passions when they play their music. Sometimes they stay out so late that they have coffee and croissants in Le Tabou to herald a new morning, and then it is time to sleep. Upon these mornings, they will not be filming. However, most nights they go back to their little den, set up the camera and create a new scene. Usually, they film themselves together – this is something Maria finds most erotic – but sometimes Felix says he wants to film her on her own. She sits on the bed, facing him, looking straight into the lens of the camera, as if they are the eyes of her lover, and she speaks to him.
‘I love you,’ she says, again and again, ‘I love you,’ as she touches herself, takes herself further and further into her ra
pture. She resists closing her eyes, and continues to stare into the camera, imagining Felix playing this film again, sometime he may be alone, and remembering how much she loved him. This footage of her climaxing in front of her lover’s camera, showing him that even the idea of his love is enough to bring her such pleasure, is evidence, she hopes, of how much she trusts him. She does not want to hide her feelings for him.
They become addicted to the rush of their passion. They are drawn to doing what is forbidden. One night, after they have been clubbing, Maria asks Felix to make love to her in the cage lift at their little hotel. This time they forget about the camera, for they need to be stealthy. Although Madame Paget appears to have retired for the evening, she is a rather nocturnal creature herself. Maria wonders how she would react if she saw them making love in the lift.
She presses the button to call the old cage lift and they can hear it clanking all the way down to the ground floor. Her heartbeat begins to quicken and she looks over at Felix. He smiles back at her, conspiratorially. The lift jolts to a stop. Felix pulls back the cage doors and ushers her inside. He takes the black silk scarf from his pocket.
‘Would you like me to blindfold you?’ His voice is cooler now, as if he has taken on another persona.
‘Yes,’ she breathes.
She turns to face the back of the lift. She examines the iron bars, the network of metal netting. She is literally in a cage. She is, of course, free to stop their game at any stage, but the sense of entrapment excites her. It is a surprise, since she has never liked confined spaces. Maybe it is because she feels so safe with Felix. He is with her in their cage. She is not a prisoner on her own. Felix places the scarf over her eyes, and now all is black. He ties it tightly at the back of her head, kissing the back of her neck and causing a thrill to shoot down her spine.
He spins her around, pushes his cheek against hers, putting his hand between her legs and touching her gently with his fingertip. ‘Do you trust me?’
‘Yes,’ she says, fiercely, with all her heart.
He catches her affirmation in his mouth, kisses her deeply with his lips. He pauses and she senses him step away. She hears the door beginning to slide over, the latch shut, and the lift clanks into action, slowly travelling upwards.
Felix comes back to her and kisses her again, placing one hand on her waist and, slowly, steadily raising the hem of her dress with his other hand. He now places both hands underneath the dress, on either side of her waist. She is wearing no underwear tonight, something she often does to excite him when they dance and he can sense her nakedness beneath her dress. He presses his fingers into her, peeling back the lips of her labia, massaging her. Maria’s knees begin to weaken, and again she feels she is stepping into her other self – the dark, desirous part of her, where all reason, all logic, is completely defied. Society would say they are depraved to have sex in public, and yet it no longer feels wrong to be in a lift with Felix pleasuring her. He is the giver and Maria is the receiver, and both roles can be sacred.
The lift has come to a halt. She senses Felix leaning over and pressing one of the buttons, and then it starts moving again, on its journey back down to the ground floor. What if there is someone in the hotel reception, waiting for the lift? What if they are discovered? The thought turns her on even more. Felix pushes her against the side of the lift, so that the hard bars are pressed into her back. She raises her arms, gripping on to the bars on either side of her as he lifts her legs and she wraps them around his waist. Still pulsing from Felix’s fingertips, she feels her nipples harden, while down below she is soft and pliant. Felix is inside her, slamming her against the side of the lift. They are riding down still, and he is pushing up into her. She knows she can stop it. She can pull off her blindfold and make the lift stop whenever she wants. Yet she doesn’t want this journey in their lift of seduction ever to stop. They shudder to a halt, and Felix pauses. She holds her breath, waiting to hear voices . . . yet all is silent. The next thing she hears is the lift starting up again and they begin to rise. Felix pushes up deep inside her again, and they are rocking back and forth now, urgent to fulfill their desire before the lift lands on their floor.
Up and down she rides in the lift with Felix. The most primal part of her is exposed. She is a wild maenad, a woman beyond all sense of herself. She is a receptacle and yet spinning within her own sensations. She pulls off the blindfold so that she can see her love. The expression in his eyes blazes into her. She feels the heat of his love as, together, they climax, tumbling on to the floor of the lift as it shudders to stop, their bodies vibrating around each other.
They fall into bed and sleep the exhausted slumber of those fully sated. The morning brings fresh hope into her heart. She wakes before him and looks at his untroubled face on the pillow. She prays that their love can sustain them forever, yet, deep down, Maria knows all of this is, in essence, transient. She knows, one day, the rhythm of their little world will flounder and she prays that they can keep on going, even if it must change, even if reality finally does intrude. She has not forgotten the fact of Felix’s wife and she has not forgotten the white-haired man. She is just making them wait their turn. For now, Felix is all hers.
This morning, she wakes him with her lips. She hears the little gasps of her lover as she thrills him with her tongue, bends down further to lick his balls and trails her tongue around their circumference and up to the base of his cock. All the way she licks, up to its helmet and the slit at its tip. She opens her mouth wide and sucks him right down to the back of her throat, for she adores him so much, she wants to abandon all self.
That very night, they start to play a new game. In fact, it is she who begins it. It is hard to believe that, just one month ago, she was an innocent, untouched by any man. Now Felix has opened her up. She believes that she is a better lover than she ever was a dancer.
They are in one of their favourite clubs, surrounded by a new crowd, many of whom are young Americans – ex-GIs, studying in Paris, or those brought over as part of the Marshall Aid Plan, working for the new Economic Cooperation Administration.
These young American men have been well fed most of their lives. They are bigger and broader than the French. Of course, she is devoted Felix – he is the man of her heart – and yet she cannot help letting her eyes trail over the bodies of these energetic young men. What might it be like to feel one of them inside her? She is immediately shocked at the thought, yet somehow Felix manages to read her mind.
‘I see you watching them,’ he says. ‘Would you like me to invite one of our new companions home with us, my dear?’ He smirks at her.
‘No, not at all,’ she says, blushing and lowering her eyes.
Felix puts his hand on her waist and leans towards her ear. ‘I like the idea of it,’ he whispers. ‘You and me and someone else . . . Do you?’
‘Not a woman,’ she says, immediately. She could not share her love with any other woman, but maybe a man . . . No; what is she thinking! She has had too much to drink. Yet now it seems that the thought has entered Felix’s head; he has turned to chat to a tall James Stewart lookalike to their right. She starts to panic. She didn’t mean it – not really. She only wants to make love to Felix. She manages to drag him away from the American and on to the dance floor.
‘You look worried,’ he says, smiling mischievously.
‘What were you saying to that man?’ she asks.
‘He is called Richard, and he is a very interesting young man. He works at the embassy. I have invited him back to our hotel for drinks.’
‘Felix!’
‘My dear, it was your idea that we play this game . . .’
‘But I don’t want to, now,’ she says, almost tearful.
He kisses her on the lips – no more teasing, all tender concern. ‘OK, my darling,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry. I shall cancel my invitation. To be honest, I am not sure I could have stood it . . .’
Later, back at the hotel, he films her again.
‘Think of me,’ Felix coaxes her. ‘And think of Richard.’
Her fingertips soften, moisten, and she can almost imagine they are Felix’s tongue and that it is morning now and he is in the bed with her, caressing her. She begins to put pressure on herself, circle her finger around and around. Instinctively, her legs fall out to the side, so that she is on view. She hears the camera starting up. She continues to rub herself, bringing her out of her rational thoughts and to a place of instinct. She opens her eyes now and she does not only see Felix and the camera; to her surprise, she imagines that the American, Richard, is here, sitting on the chair and staring at her, wide-eyed. She licks her lips to show him what she would do to his cock if she could, and continues to stroke herself. Her eyes travel down the length of his face. She imagines the stubble on the American’s chin brushing against her soft pussy, those lips kissing her. Her eyes trail down his chest, the shirt tight against his lean frame, and down to his lap. She can see he is hard, his cock straining to be released from the cloth of his trousers. She sighs, pushes her head back against the bedstead and closes her eyes again. She is getting closer and closer, yet she doesn’t want to climax, not on her own.
‘Oh,’ she moans, widening her legs further.
Felix cannot hold back any longer. The mattress springs as he climbs on to the bed, and instantly he is above her. She opens her eyes to look into his. Her love has returned. In her deepest fantasy, she is here with Felix and Richard. Maria and two men, adoring her. She wonders if one day they will ever actually act upon this fantasy. Felix unbuttons his trousers. She stops touching herself and reaches down for his cock. She trails her finger up and down it, feels a bud of his seed at the tip and brings her finger up to her mouth to lick it off. The taste of him, so salty sweet, makes her stomach contract with desire. She grips him again. She is throbbing at the thought of it deep inside her. He is holding her down by the shoulders and, still with his cock in both hands, she pushes him up inside her.