by Krissy Kneen
She opened her eyes to see the glowing spoils of her orgasm glistening like liquid diamonds on the floor of the phone booth. His lap was luminescent. His cock, now completely wrung out, was a tiny curl of blue flame. There were swirls of dark blood floating in the bright jelly of her spendings. His jeans would have to be thrown away, his underwear was nothing but a lurid bloody rag.
His eyes were too wide. His jaw was a hang of limp flesh. When she shifted to look down at her vulva she saw the hymen, ripped with a lightning-bolt tear.
The man flinched as if Holly had suddenly been transformed from a lover into an assailant. He scrambled away from her, cutting his hands on the broken glass. His blood mixed with her blood as he bumped up to a squat, cowered in a corner. She was spread-legged, her dress hitched up, her vulva gaping and burning, a bright blue O. The floor was awash with the glittering galaxy of her spilled desire. The man leaped suddenly over her legs and flung himself out onto the street. He looked back once and Holly saw his fly still unzipped, his tiny flaccid penis bouncing inside the condom as he ran, his wet footprints lighting the pavement, pointing out the direction of his flight. The glow of his wet crotch was beginning to finally abate. But the naked terror on his face was a small sad slap and she felt momentarily chastised.
Still, Holly pulled her labia aside and peered down into her unimpeded orifice. The glow of her own desire was bright enough for her to see the sharp bloody edge of the torn flesh. She slipped first one finger inside herself and then another. A little tender, but the rubbing of her fingers made the glow brighten with an impressive ferocity. She pressed three fingers in and out of her cunt and rubbed at her clitoris with her thumb and a minute later she was shot through with a jolt of electric pleasure that danced her body around the floor of the phone booth like a wind-up toy.
When this second orgasm finished she lay in the wet and picked shards of glass from her elbows. She would need to find a chemist and buy some Betadine. What was the French word for Betadine? The glass and the dirt and the ruined dress were all worth it.
She stood. She could feel the warm night air on her skin. Down the tiny alley there was a main street, people walking, restaurants pumping out the smell of roasted meat towards her on the breeze. She wanted a large glass of champagne. She wanted to celebrate, but first she would need to change. Holly straightened the ruins of her dress and strutted, strutted in the direction of her hotel.
The Eleven Thousand Rods
by GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE
The weather turned suddenly, and now it really was cold. Last night Holly had skipped down a balmy Parisian street, today she woke to the ache of frosty air in her lungs. It was early, too early. The window was barely touched by sun. Winter had plummeted to the ground like Icarus.
She stood in the tiny shower cubicle. The water was barely warm, no power behind it. Everything was less modern and functional than at home, and yet it was wonderful in its imperfection. She clothed herself in thermal underwear beneath a long woollen dress. It would be even colder outside, the footpaths icy. She looped a scarf her mother had knitted around her neck and pulled her new woollen hat down around her ears. Gloves.
She felt like a snowman, plump and jolly. She slipped her wallet and book into her bag, snugged her copy of The Eleven Thousand Rods by Guillaume Apollinaire in the pocket of her overcoat. Standing at the top of the stairs she was a spy in the house of love. She was a character in a story, a femme fatale. Her black coat, her red scarf. She grinned and began the descent down six flights of spiralling wooden stairs so old that the grooves of other feet had left a permanent impression. She was standing in the footprints of a long and varied history.
She felt worldly, no longer burdened by the straitjacket of her virginity. Under her gloves she could still see the little indentation on her finger where she had worn her abstinence ring for so many years. If any potential lover noticed it now they would think she was getting over a brief traumatic marriage, finding her feet in a new and wonderful world of sexual pleasure. Potential lovers both male and female. Holly felt a little flutter of joy in her chest. She pushed out through the heavy front door and into the world.
She had learnt to walk naturally on the cobbled streets, her ankles flexing with each step. She moved seamlessly from a spill of light through a well of darkness. Light like confetti. The pages of the books she had already read pressed into the patches of darkness. She entered a space between buildings, fountains wide-mouthed, vomiting diamonds, or perhaps just a trickle of light, pooling in the cupped hands of the friendly devils. Everything was more than you would expect; even the silence was amplified. She was bludgeoned, suddenly, by the sound of a motor and held on to her satchel tightly. A scooter roared by and turned up an alley. She was safely alone with the sleeping dark.
She had flicked through a few of the novels that Mandy had given her. Each one was tampered with, Mandy’s spidery writing crammed into the margins. Little maps drawn to indicate places where the action may have been set, or been written. One famous brothel after another immortalised in these classic books. Tricks turned, money exchanged. A common economy, it seemed, at least for this quarter of the city. Holly, who had only just discovered the pleasure of the heterosexual fuck, wondered how it must be to lead a client up those winding stairs, knowing that the top of the climb would lead to a climb of a different kind. The rooms listed in her books were all from an older Paris. A debauched place where the streets would not be peopled at this time in the morning. Holly slipped her hand into her right pocket, rested her frozen fingers on the words of Apollinaire; slid the book out of her pocket. She ran her finger over names, addresses, notated in the margins. Prince Vibescu: rue Duphot with Culculine and Alexine.
There were places in these books that, like the Parisians, would not raise themselves from sleep till mid-morning. Holly was intrigued by the mention of the Bibliothèque Nationale and Mandy’s scribbled references to Apollinaire’s research in a section called L’Enfer. Hell. A cabinet in the Bibliothèque Nationale where banned books were stored. Imagine—Mandy had written beneath the address at rue Richelieu—a cabinet that is a larger version of your own suitcase, and Holly smiled at this, suddenly proud to be bearing such a cargo of inflammatory material.
The sky was beginning to fill with light. An early morning café welcomed her. Her mouth chewed uselessly at some barely formed French words, enough to order coffee and a sweet pastry she didn’t really want. She would have preferred something savoury but had no words to say so. She opened the book and smoothed the pages. She had just finished reading The Delta of Venus, a welcome continuation from Little Birds. She wished the little pornographic stories had never ended. She missed their gentle flirtation even now as she changed pace, astonished at the bawdiness, the sheer debauchery of Apollinaire.
Rue Duphot. She looked up, trying to orient herself. Finished her breakfast and stood, reaching into her left pocket, pulling out the copy of Venus she had just finished. She opened the book. There was an address written on the last page, Anaïs Nin’s house. Mandy had given her clear directions. She really should visit before she moved on to the lessons of The Eleven Thousand Rods. She slipped the book back into her coat pocket and walked on, feeling the uneven weight of two books, one in each pocket, thumping against her thighs as she walked.
Holly came to the end of the street, the soft light dripping onto the cobbled
surface, the spill of it down the stairs to the Métro station. Take the Métro to Pont de Neuilly: even the idea of the Métro, the Paris Métro, made her heart race.
She descended, stepping down beneath the art nouveau Métro sign into the fluoro-lit tunnel below. She would travel to Anaïs Nin’s house. She felt like a pilgrim, slowly, reverently, finding her way.
At 5 rue du Général Henrion Bertier there was someone standing by the great iron fence. Holly wrapped her scarf more tightly around her neck. The figure was clothed in a heavy coat, a knitted cap pulled low over his ears. He was standing beside the stone fence, peering in past the barbed wire and spike-topped metal of the gate. He reached up to touch the plaque fixed to the stone. Could this be a fellow pilgrim? He took something from his coat pocket, held it to the plaque, the gate, peered at it as if it held the meaning of life—although it looked exactly like an old-fashioned Walkman—then slipped it back into his pocket.
Beyond the gate Holly could see the peaked roof of a great but crumbling house, everything leaning towards entropy. Just a run-down house after all, but a place nonetheless where great books had been created. She filed the image—unpainted walls, cracked stone paths, weedy garden—in her mind. There was something overripe about the place, like a prostitute past her prime, languishing on an unmade bed.
Holly watched as the man in the beanie turned away from the house. It seemed he was disappointed. He was walking towards the street corner where she was standing, looking slump-shouldered, morose. She looked again. What was it about him that unsettled her? He was thin-faced with the wan good looks of a musician, hollow cheeks over good bones, long, slender fingers. His skin was so pale it seemed possible that he had never seen the sun. Hair just a little too long under the black woollen hat.
He was walking towards her and it was too late to cross the road or pretend she had not noticed him. She stood her ground until it seemed that he wouldn’t look up to see her at all, but then she heard a sound. A ticking, growing louder, faster. The man put his hand into his pocket and pulled out the odd little machine. He held it up towards her, peering at a dial on the front, tapping it, his brow furrowed. When he looked up at her his eyes were wide, the pupils so large that it seemed there was no iris at all. He seemed startled. He sniffed at the air as if the place was on fire and he had just got a whiff of the smoke.
‘You.’ He held up the strange little machine, which had begun to beep like an alarm in a building warning of some imminent disaster. He frightened Holly—something about the force of desperation in his face reminded her of the junkies she stepped politely around in the Valley mall.
Her pilgrimage would have to wait. Holly turned and walked quickly back towards the Métro. She heard the click of her shoes frantic on the concrete stairs. She glanced behind and caught sight of him, his coat flapping, his little box beeping with a frantic insistency. She fled through a crowd of commuters who had just stepped off a train, and ducked out of sight, pressing herself against a wall, hoping that he would somehow miss her in the gathering crowd.
The train began to pull out of the station and she saw him then, his hands pressed against the window, one of them clutching a black leather-bound notebook, the other holding the strange machine. He was staring straight at her, tapping the glass with the edge of the book. She couldn’t hear his words but his lips made clear sentences as he mouthed the words: I’ve found you. Then as the train began to gain speed, I need to talk to you. I’ll meet you at…and then the word Rosy? Rolsey? Roysey? Holly shook her head. She had no idea what he was saying. Too late now anyway because with a great rush of chilled air the train was gone. She waited for the next train and stepped aboard.
Holly settled back into her seat, a little rattled, and opened The Eleven Thousand Rods.
Just like other Romanians, the handsome Prince Vibescu dreamed of Paris, City of Light, where the women, all beautiful, are loose too. While he was still at college in Bucharest, he needed only to think of a Parisian woman, about the Parisienne, to get an erection and be obliged to toss off slowly, beatifically. Later he had shot his come into numerous cunts and bumholes of charming Romanian women. Yet he felt a powerful urge to have a Parisienne.
She lost herself momentarily to spankings and bitings and scandals at once humorous and shocking. When she looked up she had missed her stop.
Remembering 1956: Listen Little Man
This is my father’s story but I will tell it to you. It is a story about smoke, not just any smoke but the smoke that is made when we are touching the most powerful substance in the universe. It is a smoke that smells acidic, like the smoke from an electrical fire, and the fire itself is blue and bright as starlight. Not starlight from a distance, but starlight seen close up, dangerous as a thousand suns if not treated with caution. If I had been there instead of my father I would have gulped the smoke down, hoping to ingest some of the knowledge that was going up in flames.
My father told me that the thick plume was angry and shaped like a tornado. It opened up at the top into a storm cloud and when he squinted, my father could see a flash of lightning deep in the heart of it.
There were so many books in the pyre. The notebook my father stole from Dr Reich was just the tip of a mighty inflammatory mountain. He looked down from his perch in the tree on the hill and there was the rest of it, a craggy continent of books, some of them carefully bound by a proper publisher, some of them hand-bound in leather like the one my father stole, and ripe with the scribblings of the great scientist himself.
Dr Wilhelm Reich stood proudly, flanked by men in heavy overcoats. His hair was as wild as the smoke cloud, shooting out at all angles and catching the glow from the fire so it looked like his own skull was the source of the orgone energy. He looked in that moment like Orgone Man himself, a superhero of catastrophic proportions. But Orgone Man, surely, would have taken three running steps and leaped up and away from the government officials who had come to burn his books and his accumulators. Orgone Man would have flown into the flames and plucked the hidden lightning right out of the cloud of smoke and used it as an electric spear to kill the men from the FDA.
My father breathed in another full lungful of smoke and tried to hold it in without coughing, as if it were a rare drug. They were burning Dr Reich’s books all around the country. Warehouses full of them. There was a rising cloud of information, a black fug of his ideas sitting in the stratosphere above America. His books were blacklisted and if anyone else tried to read them, government spies would swoop in and arrest them. My father was glad he had stolen that notebook. It would be the last holy relic of Reich’s work. He had hidden it inside his mattress and he would guard it carefully till the day, on my thirteenth birthday, when he would pass it on to me.
My father exhaled, spluttering a little, his lungs stung with the heat of the smoke. The bonfire raged up, reaching for the darkening sky. Sparks flew. There was a sound like thunder, distant but approaching steadily. It was terrible but it was also awesome. He stared, unblinking, till his eyes watered.
I am the keeper of the flame. I am the bearer of the last book of Reich. I will never waver, never let the book fall into the hands of those who still wish to destroy it. I am a vessel for truth. I am a disciple and I will keep that flame alive in my heart forever.
And now here, a lifetime later, I have found this girl. The sight of
her, the scent of her, like an electrical fire smouldering, about to ignite. My instrument is tipped over and off the scale. I feel my heart racing along with it, the steady beeping increasing, my own heart bounding.
Even trapped here on this train while she is outside on the platform, even here I can still smell her, like a cloud of orgone smoke, like the acid sting of the burning books. I see her. I must talk to her. I must.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
by PIERRE CHODERLOS DE LACLOS
My lover’s an explorer, he’s busy whiling away his time stringing beads with negresses on the Ivory Coast. You can come to my place, 214, rue de Prony—Culculine d’Ancône.
The Eleven Thousand Rods, Guillaume Apollinaire
In Paris, shops close for a long and languid lunch. In Brisbane people eat on the run, at their desks, in the street, the faster the better. In Paris lunch breaks are for afternoon siestas. Leisurely dining on the footpath with a glass of crisp white wine. Or, as both Nin and Apollinaire propose, a quick dash to the house of a lover, there to climb the narrow stairs and tangle with them on their marital bed.
214 rue de Prony is no longer a residence. It is a corner building in a charming street, now converted into a shop. Holly looked around at the gorgeous parquetry. This alone reminded her of the building’s sordid past. Once it had been the site for cavorting. One randy gentleman and two willing female libertines lost in an orgy of spanking and fucking, finding themselves lying spent on the floor in a mess of shit and piss and come. She sniffed. Not even a whiff of past debaucheries.