The grounds attendant skimming the pool dutifully made a full report to Antoine, and Nathan’s man phoned the hotel. Antoine informed his employer about the man of questionable motives, described him and his sons, and asked if he should depart for Belarus. Nathan felt it was unnecessary. He’d keep alert for anyone meeting Antoine’s “unsavory characters” description. Still, Antoine insisted he should leave for Belarus. The men clearly were treasure hunters. They not only were unsavory, they were “desperados” and “hard men” capable of inflicting harm and being concerned about it. “I must insist, sir, that I come there.”
“I think we’ll be okay. I’d rather you remain at the villa and watch over things and Constance.”
“The dogs are here and my assistant can take care of the rest.”
“Do you mean you’re unnecessary?”
“Sir? . . .”
“Just a joke, Antoine. A bad joke. We don’t even know if they’re coming. Let me talk to you in a few days. If I see them and don’t like the cut of their jib—”
“Sir?”
“If I don’t like their looks, I’ll call you to come.”
“They have bad teeth, sir, especially the older one. Look for the teeth.”
“Okay. Thank you, Antoine.”
As Nathan and Antoine spoke, Reverend Early mustered his boys from their modest lodgings to find a cab to take them wherever they could catch a plane to wherever that place Belarus was. They all felt ornery and ready to collect what they’d traveled so far and waited so long. The gold prize each expected to extract had better be good.
XXI
Gus spent each night at Hotel Yaroslav with Tellilla. She was capricious, egotistic, shameless, audacious, and wholly unromantic, and because he never evaluated his lovers by their character or morals found her delightful.
He’d know every kind of person in bed, and his task was not to judge them, but allow them their pleasure with him to the fullest. In that way, their human selfishness came out uninhibited and their selfishness was what ultimately pleased and satisfied them above everything. For some it took time to overcome their inhibitions, or rather, travel beyond the layers of prohibitions they’d learned and acquired. Others like Tellilla endured no such restrictions. They made no pretense of decorum and shielded nothing; whatever their imaginations thought, they sought, and yulen accepted it. In this way with him as it was with all yulen, their lovers experienced the fullest and highest satisfaction they’d ever known. In that way with yulen, women and men fell in love with them. Actually what men and women saw, was their own self-love reflected back to them. They became captive to that love that they identified as coming from their suddenly irreplaceable lover. They became liberated and free, and it turned into license, and in time madness.
Gus figured Tellilla was already somewhat mad, but close as he was to end season, the short time they’d be together would not drive her over the cliff. Obsession such as hers benefited him in late season. Normally at that point, his already compromised appearance often failed to attract someone as devoted her. Another thing in his favor, one tremendous and beautiful that would change all yulen lives, was Hain’s sharing The Book’s secret that removed their putrid late season odor.
Upon arriving in Minsk, Nathan suggested they travel the city searching for the ingredients Hain had read from The Book of Yulen. Redcurrants they found easily, turmeric tubers, not. Because Leeda remembered that the spice came from India, they visited the city’s several Indian restaurants and markets. These had the spice but not the spice plant’s tubers they needed to chew. Nathan mentioned that gypsies originally come to Europe from India hundreds of years ago, and surmised that since gypsies still lived close to the land and maintained old traditions, they likely utilized actual tubers and roots as spice. He suggested they visit the gypsy camps surrounding the city.
At one of the camps that a hired guide drove them to, they found an old medicine woman in possession of a bag of roots, tubers, leaves and berries of many kinds, and among them, clusters of what they wanted. The hag would only bargain if they took the full bag of medicines, or there’d be no deal. They gladly bought the bag, and that night Gus chewed as Hain had read. The next day, he tested his scent by skipping the generous amounts of cologne he’d started applying to his garments, and instead, “would go out nude.”
No one he passed or chatted up made the usual something smells bad motions. The experiment a success, they grew thrilled over Hain’s gift. No doubt, he’d shared it with them to lift their spirits and encourage them. Strengthen their resolve it did. Gus’ validation filled them with hope of discovering other solutions in The Book to dilemmas that kept them at a disadvantage with men.
“Gustav, let’s do it again,” the unquenchable Tellilla beckoned Gus again, as after every long merging.
He derived no particular pleasure from the carnal acts she craved. For yulen, it was about pleasing their partner, and that was fine with him, and the reason for his attractiveness. However, he also knew that every coupling, just as every step of their long trial, had a price. That toll would be paid with greater suffering at end season when his body demanded calories to bring him to the end. With all he walked the past weeks, he knew that failure to apportion calories the remaining time before his end days, meant he would run out of resources to bring him to his taking. Like many yulen before, if he failed to take, he’d fail to see the following day’s rising Sun.
Rebirth, or whatever fanciful name that yulen wanted to give to making it through taking, entering a new cycle, and the magnificence of early season, was theirs as often as they made it through the tortures of late season and taking. Nature unfortunately, allowed failure only once, and it was final.
As Tellilla moaned rocking delight over him on their soft bed, he reflected that by now with his many years, he was an expert in apportioning calories to get him through the test of all tests. “Oh Gustav,” she sang, her long but still intact teeth visible behind curling lips.
He’d been lucky with this one, he knew. It would be an easy taking if she were necessary. She was mad about him, so whatever ugliness he’d turn into come late season, she wouldn’t see it. And now with the gift from Hain, neither would she smell it. Life is good, he thought, chuckling at the expression. “Enjoying it, my baron, are you?” she gasped in pleasure.
“Yes, princess. Yes.”
XXII
A trip that should have taken a day from where the swampers left Germany for Minsk, took them five after losing Joseph and having to return to Germany to look for him. Joseph returned to the boarding house they’d stayed at, and there remained reading his Bible and praying for his father and brothers to return for him.
The Reverend Early prayed for his son’s deliverance and a sign from The Lord of what to do. Upon receiving that sign and The Word, he led his other sons back to Germany from Minsk. They returned to their previous lodgings to find the wastrel alone and fearful, as much for being lost as what his father would do to him when he found him. As it turned out, the father called his son to him on finding him, and on Joseph going to his father, his father embraced him and raised not his hand or his voice in anger. Together they left again for the hotel in the city of Minsk, where they finally arrived on another wet afternoon.
On checking in, Macon asked the clerk about “his friend” Nathan Nols and his whereabouts. The clerk could not confirm or deny any person’s registration or status at the hotel. He was sorry, “regulations.” But really it was the inquirer’s teeth that kept him quiet. Actually, he reconsidered that it wasn’t the teeth. He’d seen many sets of bad teeth in their not exactly first-world town. When the man smiled those teeth, the grin turned as crooked as a winding snake, and it led him to doubt the man’s honesty. Additionally, the way the Reverend said, “boy” as if he might pounce on him if he wasn’t careful, frightened him even more than had the orthodox priests he’d know as a youth.
Macon and his sons entered their assigned room on a high floor right below
the hotel’s noisy ventilation system. “Be careful you don’t touch or break anything,” Macon said to his sons, handling the gaudy porcelains and examining the faux antique furniture. “I don’t wanna pay for nothin’ more than I have to.”
“Can we get some room service, Pa?”
“And are you just ignorant, Josiah, after hearing what I just said? We’ll look for a McDonald’s.”
“Yippyyyy!” Joseph said.
“McDonald’s is fine with me,” said Joseph Henry, stepping back from French glass doors opening onto a narrow balcony with a waist high wrought iron railing.
“Okay then,” Macon said. “But first everybody takes a bath. We wanna look and smell clean for these foreigners. And for the people we came to meet.”
“Are we gonna take their gold?”
“Josiah, you are pushin’ me.”
“I didn’t mean nothin’ Pa.”
“Pushin’ me. Pushin’ me,” Macon said, moving with clenched fists toward his boy.
“Sorry Pa. Sorry.”
“Pushin’ pushin’ pushin’. How much can I take!”
“Sorry Pa. I’m sorry.”
“He’s sorry, Pa,” Joseph Henry pleaded.
“I have been the instrument of The Everlastin’ Lord. I have been the obedient servant of The Ever Resurrected Savior.”
“Yes sir Pa,” said Josiah.
“I have known all affliction and disgrace.”
“Yes sir.”
“I am damned, damned, damned, by an ungrateful child—the worst of retributions.”
“Retributions.”
“Am I such a sinner that I deserve such punishment?”
“No, Pa.”
“I ask, am I such a sinner.”
“No, Pa you ain’t.”
“You ain’t, Pa.”
“But I am so castigated.”
“No, Pa, I’m good. I’m good. An’ I love ya, Pa.”
“Ye loveth me?”
“Yeah Pa. I do.”
“Ye loveth thy father?”
“I do Pa I do.”
“Then come then to me and sin no more.”
“No Pa, no more.”
Macon and Josiah Early embraced, father and son, and the son would sin no more.
“You ain’t gonna sin no more, Josiah,” Joseph said.
“No more. No more.”
“Then I love you too.” Joseph said, embracing his brother’s back.
“Me too,” said Joseph Henry, adding his shoulders to the group.
“We ain’t-a gonna sin no more,” Macon Early pronounced. “Whatever we do we do for The Lord, and that means that we cannot sin. And that means that whatever we do with to and for or by those folks we followed here, we cannot but do but for right, and that means whatever we taketh we taketh for Him, and for Him we cannot sin.”
“Amen, Pa.”
“Amen.”
“Amen and halleluiah, Pa.”
XXIII
Days passed for the yulen waiting at Hotel Yaroslav for Hain’s missing instruction on what they must do next. To conserve energy, they remained in their upstairs rooms. Unknown to them, their confinement also made it impossible for their hunters to chance upon them.
The younger Earlys suggested that their targets had left, but the elder claimed he could smell them at the hotel, and they remain.
Gus continued cultivating his potential taking despite the calories it cost. Already, nightly pain flared through his body, his hair was falling out, and his loose fingernails would soon follow. Mercifully, having chewed as Hain revealed, his normally fulsome smell at that point, stayed away. That, he thought, with what they’d achieved through science to allow them to congregate together, and other wonders awaiting them in The Book, would place them on a footing with men like they’d never known. Whatever the final test, they must pass it, but first he had to make it through to his taking if his calling arrived first.
In Leeda’s private room, Nathan had finally consented to be with her. He too knew of the short time remaining, not only for Gus, but also for Leeda and him. They were close to entering late season, he several days ahead her. If Hain’s plan for them continued as it had, he expected that one of the three would not survive the final test in Minsk. He’d always intended to keep his promise to Leeda to lie together, so did.
Because of his deformity—as some people pleasurably and gratefully called the male yulen’s intimate anatomy—his partners always had to remain on top, or risk harm from his instrument of delight’s proportion. This held true for Leeda despite being yulen and possessing an equally elaborate organ.
Rocking and pitching slowly on Nathan, not at all astounded at the enjoyment of being with him as man and woman would, she moaned tender release. She imagined that her pleasure could not match the rapture women achieved, and she knew her partner scarcely experienced more than pleasing palpitation. But sentient creature that she was, and her imagination captured by at last sharing each other’s private touch, she sensed pleasure, and was grateful.
She knew that the heaving pleasure she brought to men at the coupling moment, the pulsing waves crashing on their dry shore, undulating and rhythmic to a beat, thrilling them into oblivion, it was not Nathan’s to enjoy. Neither was her dance she experienced on him the elation that he brought to a woman in that mounting. For yulen, their purpose in the act that men and women moved mountains and changed the course of history for, was to bring ultimate satisfaction to a mate fortunate enough to experience them as she and he moved together then.
If she were a woman, she would be repeating his name over and over like a mantra, a religious one, an encountered blessed sacrament. She said nothing. She only looked at him and hoped the moment was not all just for her, and that he considered it at least worth the energy expended. She promised herself she would not ask him, but she did after she rolled off him, and stretched beside him in the bed.
“I consider myself fortunate to know you, Leeda,” he answered her question. “I had wanted love once, as you know, that is, to know love as they. And I often wondered who my first love would be if I achieved that migration from yulen to man; there were several women at the time. All were fine women, and I wished them only good. Events failed to develop as I hoped, and obviously, I did not become man or alter enough to know love. My friend T thought I was mad to want to give up who and what I was to be part of something as perverse and low as the human race. In the end, I remained with my yulenhood and made peace with it. But I tell you, that if today I had to choose someone, a woman to love, and you were woman, she would be you.”
Leeda’s eyes welled. Her hand passed along his face’s side. She gently kissed his still full lips. “I’ve never thought much about love. Some yes, but never enough to seek it. I’m happy being yulen. We suffer yes, and greatly. They suffer as well though, and greatly in ways we can’t comprehend. We each kind are granted our gifts by nature to hold and enjoy. We each serve Her, and in our separate places contribute to the whole. Nevertheless, to be with you has been enough to make this journey worthwhile. I care about you as much as about myself. I know that’s not love because we cannot know love, but I believe it must be something like it, and as such, it’s enough for me.”
They looked at one another, and thought they laughed silly like when they did.
“It’ll be fantastic what we may learn from The Book of Yulen,” he said. “Maybe there’ll be ways around what we haven’t been allowed by nature to know.”
“Maybe, but Gus won’t like or stand for it.”
“You think he would stand in the way of love?”
“Do you still want it though? Love?”
“No. It’s no longer, what I seek. No.”
“And you seek, equality?”
“Neither love nor equality is the highest value.”
“What is?”
“The virtue that makes those and every other possible.”
“And that is? . . .”
“Courage.”
&nb
sp; “Courage, but you have it, as I think all yulen.”
“Enough to take what’s beyond what we shouldn’t?”
“But you only want equality with men, I thought. To be able to defend ourselves as they defend themselves. Be able to fight back.”
“Yes but . . . maybe more than that now. Now . . . maybe more.”
Someone knocked on the door. “Hello in there,” came Gus’ voice. “I’m growing overly domesticated remaining indoors all the time. Shall we go downstairs and watch the parade go by?”
They nodded to one another. “Sure, Gus,” Leeda called. “We’ll see you in the lounge.”
Gus wore the best clothes he’d found in surrounding stores to meet and relax with Leeda and Nathan. Ascot, silk hankie in jacket pocket, he looked dashing. He also wore layers of makeup like Nathan and Leeda to hide increasingly palled wrinkling skin. Seated in a lounge pretending to sip cocktails, they watched the bustling lobby.
A group of four men entering the lobby caught their attention when its leader paused on spotting Nathan. The tall older man, lanky and with a walk of someone accustomed to open air ambling like the younger ones, fit the description Antoine gave of the men on their trail.
“Did you see them?” Macon whispered to his sons when they reached the elevators.
“The gold folk?”
“One in the middle, no question he’s the one in the painting.”
“I’ll confirm,” Josiah said, walking back, trying to be casual, but Nathan easily spotting what he was doing.
“It’s him, alright,” Josiah said, returning to the others. “What we gonna do?”
“We’re goin’ to introduce ourselves. Follow me,” Macon said, leading his boys to the cocktail table where the three sat.
“Evenin’,” Macon smiled his long bad teeth. “You’re Americans.”
Yulen: Return of the Beast – Mystery Suspense Thriller (Yulen - Book 2) Page 22