by Brian Aldiss
I was disturbed. Somehow, that sight of Boris and the young girl, with the bike, walking along that road among the poplars, seemed oddly familiar and consequently disconcerting.
‘I’ll cook us some supper,’ I said.
I poured them some wine before going to cook. Lucia – little more than a kid – followed me into the kitchen. Boris tailed after her.
Lucia said, lifting up the jar containing the butterfly, ‘Boris must let this poor creature go free, don’t you think?’
When I agreed with her, she flashed me a smile. Just to keep in practice, she took to flashing me enticing looks. I told myself they meant nothing. I like women, am generally on good terms with them, but these young specimens of their sex, just come to puberty – heaven preserve me from them!
Boris was eager to please Lucia. He emanated, he seemed to be surrounded by, a blush of emotion. Until this time, I had not seen him exhibit any sexual desire. Certainly, Lucia seemed as pleasing a cause of desire as any girl could be, if you were young and rash enough, and had a lot to learn. Old though I was, I was shortly to find I too had much to learn.
The sun had just set behind the hills. We stood outside as he opened the specimen jar. Out flew the butterfly. As it fluttered to the corner of the house, a bird flew swiftly past, snatching the insect in its beak and making off without pause. It was a terrible moment of synchronicity.
Over the meal, I asked Lucia if she was staying the night.
‘I think I will. Soon I will become a film star.’
This curious conjunction of sentences needed some thinking about. I hardly listened to Boris’ explanation of Lucia’s fortunate meeting with a British film crew making a mystery-thriller set partly in Florence. Boris seemed to my eyes clumsy and unsophisticated when compared with this sparkling and confident young creature.
‘Will your parents mind?’ I asked.
She looked at me as if I had come from the Ark. In reply, she gave what novelists call ‘a tinkling laugh’.
After the meal, Lucia started to make up to Boris, becoming coquettish and teasing him, after the manner of her kind. He was embarrassed in front of his father, so I left the house and walked through a fine night, down to the river. There I listened to the swift flow of water over the pebbles on its bed. That ceaseless energy made music through the darkness. Admittedly, I felt some envy of my son, having such a pretty girl in tow.
My heart ached for my lovely Polly.
Stars came out overhead. I watched them through the trees and thought about my life, and its unsatisfactory quality, which I recognised as being mainly of my own making.
When I returned, the youngsters had gone up to Boris’ bedroom at the top of the house. I went to my room and slept. The room was stuffy. I slept naked.
A shriek awoke me, followed by a male cry. Grabbing a towel with which to cover myself, I rushed up the stairs to see what was happening. Perhaps our isolated position had invited criminals to invade us.
A light burned by the bedside. Boris lay in bed, his back turned to the light. Lucia, naked, stood on the bed, kicking him in the ribs.
She turned to me. ‘The bastard oaf! As soon as he is in me, he has his bloody orgasm and is done for! I kick him, of course!’
She gave him another kick. I ran and caught hold of her legs.
‘Lucia, please! He’s miserable enough! This is no way – ’
But she fell over, and I with her. She locked her arms round my neck and kissed me forcefully. ‘You are a real man! You must lick me, lick my poor pussy now! I need it so much. I am sex-crazed.’
She spread her legs to show me what was in store for me. The English sense of shame to which we seem born played no part in her make-up, then or when I encountered her later. What I saw was received on my senses as irresistibly beautiful.
Well, without requiring further invitation, I did as she bid, and more. It was as if I had gone blind to the rest of the world, including my son, who dragged the duvet around himself and crept from the room, sobbing as he went. What do you expect?
After her first orgasm, when I was out of my senses with lust, I brought my little soldier into action. In those days, he was punctual in coming to attention, and not – as happened later – inclined to beat a retreat without firing a shot. With my left hand, I held her head so that our mouths were together, while my right hand slid down between those luxurious buttocks. I positioned my middle finger as a sentry in her bumhole, so that no heat could escape. In this way, I had her nooks and crannies well covered.
Delight? There’s no word for it!
For days afterwards I went about glowing in the ambiance of those timeless minutes. But the little sweetie took off. I barely had time to discover that she wore hold-up stockings with pretty bands of lace at the top (when she was dressing, I mean) before she was gone – leaving, or rather taking away, a large hole in my life.
I was never one to resist a pretty crutch. She was delectable in every part. Nor did I imagine that Sylvia Beltrau – as Lucia later became known – would mutate into a famous film actress. But that lay in the future. Right then, there were only her textures, her tastes, her squeaks of delight to remember.
In Paleohora, three years later, Boris still surrounded himself in gloom. The failure seemed permanently to have affected him. He came with me as one who had nothing better to do. My feeling was that he could not forgive me. He barely laughed at the idea of Christ being suckled by his grannie. I was ashamed of his suffering.
When I met Rosemary, I was suffering from a bout of diarrhoea.
But I had better get on with the story.
Chapter Three
Langstreet’s boat, the Southern Warrior, rocked at its moorings. The water had an uneasy swell on it and was dark. Cloud overhead was streaky and active, wind pulling long streamers of white and grey across the sky. Kathi cast a weather eye up-wards and pulled a face, saying nothing. Langstreet talked to the captain.
‘Is okay. Will blow over soon. No problem,’ said the captain. They had heard that before. It was generally true.
The water at the quayside was uneasy and splashed against the hull as they boarded the boat. Langstreet was dressed in vaguely nautical fashion, with a navy-blue parka over a T-shirt. Kathi wore a powder-blue trouser suit. He held her hand to assist her on board.
The captain started the engine with a jerk. Once out on the open sea, the waves became considerable; round the head, the wind blew with force. Kathi clung to the rail, enjoying the gusts which buffeted her face. The clouds grew thicker, darker.
After an hour, with the weather getting heavier, Langstreet urged the captain to stay further out from the coast, since there was a danger they might be driven onto the rocks. The captain replied that they were in no danger. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Is okay.’
As Langstreet retired, a sudden squall hit the Southern Warrior. He slipped, lost his footing, went down, and crashed into the forward hatch. The hatch struck him in the back. He cried out, but Kathi was already coming to help.
‘Confound these shoes,’ he said. ‘I’ve broken my back…’
She held him, wedged against the wheelhouse. She was afraid to move, kneeling protectively over his body.
The captain took this accident as a signal to steer the boat into a moderately sheltered creek. As he moored the boat, rain began to fall, slashing down in torrents, drowning the small world of the craft with its noise.
Kathi called to the captain. ‘Help me get my husband below deck.’
The captain stared at her and frowned. ‘I’m only paid to sail the boat, not act as a stretcher bearer.’
‘What are you saying?’ She could not believe she had heard right. ‘Help me get my husband below. He’s badly hurt.’
‘I’m not to blame for his carelessness, am I?’ the man replied. He came grudgingly forward. She had hardly made any close observation of him before. Now she saw how brutish he was, with the rain running down his face. His nose was broad and broken. Beneath his red
dish moustache his mouth was open as he panted with exertion, revealing broken teeth. But he took most of the weight of Langstreet as they manoeuvred him down the short companionway.
Once they were alone, and the flimsy doors closed against the storm, she made Langstreet comfortable on his bunk. Kathi strove to get him out of his sodden clothes, pulling off his T-shirt and trousers. By now, Langstreet was protesting he was fine. She then pulled off her own flimsy garments, and snatched a small towel to dry herself with.
‘That looks good. Come aboard,’ he said, eyeing her body, and the drops of water glittering in the fleece of her mons Veneris.
She was startled to be invited. Sexually, he was not a forthcoming man. She saw, however, that he was beginning to be excited; his penis moved against his leg. She climbed carefully over him, kneeling with one leg on either side of his body, her breasts stirring as she did so.
‘You’re sure you’re up to this, Archie?’ she asked.
‘Try me.’
She was nervous in case the captain came in. When she inserted Archie’s penis into her vagina, she said, ‘Just a quickie for you, darling.’ She then commenced leisurely but firm movements on him.
She did not have to work too long.
And the captain did not intrude.
The storm lasted for some hours – hammering at the cliffs which loomed above the boat, raining ochre tears – before fading abruptly. It was getting towards sunset when they set sail again, on a sea shedding its grey looks for a more youthful blue-green. Kathi was relieved to find that her husband had suffered nothing more than badly bruised ribs. She bound him tightly with bandages from the First Aid cabinet. Langstreet made no complaint about his injuries. He merely offered thanks that no bones had been broken. Possibly his anger at the captain served as a distraction.
He gave the man a good cursing, which the captain took with scowling brow, muttering that he was being paid only for sailing the ship, and poorly paid at that.
As dusk was setting, they came into the mouth of the Mesovrahi Gorge, where they moored at a small jetty. The cook prepared a modest meal, which they ate on deck as the sun sank in a splendour suggesting that all previous sunsets had been merely dress rehearsals for this particular one. They split a bottle of retsina between them.
During the night, both Langstreet and his wife had terrible dreams. Archie Langstreet dreamed he was a crablike creature of metal, living in the core of the Moon like a grub in an apple. It seemed he had bought the Moon. When he crawled from his den into the open, it was to find that the Moon was lying on its side, abandoned on a stony beach to which there was no visible end. The land was barren. A sea of purple sent in against the stones, waves carved of lead, slow, heavy, despairing.
Kathi Langstreet dreamed she was walking down a strange street. The shops on either side were locked. People stared through windows at her. At last she came to a place which was open. It was a café. Above the doors was a sign saying, ‘Futures Café’. She entered. A man said to her, ‘Sorry, the chairs are on fire. Don’t put your something’ – when she woke she could not recall what he had said – ‘on one.’ She did not notice any flames. Only when she ordered a glass of water did she realise that the whole place was burning down about her. She woke in a fright, to lie there listening to the creak of the boat.
The dawn was newly hatched, making the sea gold, as if yolk had been spilled from a gigantic egg. Suiting the simile, the smell of bacon frying tickled Langstreet’s nose as he rose, showered and shaved. His ribs ached, but his temper was good.
After the meal, he and his wife prepared to make their way up the gorge, the mouth of which was as yet in misty shadow, giving it the insubstantial air of a Turner watercolour.
Langstreet instructed the surly captain to wait until they returned, whereupon he and Kathi set forth to find the Monaché Kostas, the old ikon painter.
A stream coursing from the mouth of the gorge spread over the pebble beach. Both husband and wife were wearing trainers on their feet. They paddled into the ravine mouth, between tall cliffs topped with ragged edges, the wide open jaws of the gorge. A weatherworn kiosk, a tooth in the jaw, stood to one side, closed and shuttered in decay.
For some hundred metres the way ran almost horizontally, although studded with boulders, which needed to be circum-navigated. Then the gradient started. The gorge was wide here. Nevertheless, they walked one in front of the other, with Kathi bringing up the rear.
Langstreet muttered something.
She asked him what he had said.
Without turning round, he repeated, ‘The Nentelstam Corporation.’
She knew how his mind ran on the protracted legal case against the corporation, so made no response. The sun climbed over the shoulders of the gorge and shone down on them as they made the slow climb. At one point, the gorge widened where the cliffs had crumbled. The remains of an old building stood here. Langstreet leant against the walls of the ruin and panted.
‘Let’s have a break.’
A small spring burst from the cliff behind the ruin. Kathi went over, cupped her hand beneath the flow and drank. She splashed water over her face.
‘It’s good, Archie. Try some. Are your ribs hurting you?’
‘Slightly.’
When he had drunk, she thought he said, ‘Long train sat here at a fat-arse seat.’ The cliffs distorted his voice.
‘What train?’
‘Thinking aloud.’ He turned to face her, panting. ‘I’m talking about long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids. In the breast milk Jesus drank. You know… They help to nourish intelligence. You don’t get LCPUFAs in Nentelstam’s infant formula… So the infants are less intelligent than they might have been if raised on the female teat. Heavens, it’s hot…’
She scrutinised him, seeing how unwell he looked. The skin of his face was blotched. He spoke with increasing incoherence. Gazing up at the long quim of sky overhead, he muttered, ‘Boring Mediterranean sky. No clouds for interest. Got to get home.’
‘Archie, you’re ill. Go back to the Warrior, or you’re going to collapse. I shan’t be able to carry you.’
He looked at her despairingly. ‘Maybe I’d better. You come too.’
But she had decided to go on. It could not be much farther to the church of Agios Ioannis, where the Monaché Kostas lived. She would pay him to paint an ikon of Christ being suckled by the Virgin Mary’s mother.
‘Can you do it?’ Langstreet asked.
‘Sometimes I could kill you,’ she replied.
He gave her a weak smile and, without a word, turned back the way they had come.
Once she was alone, Kathi struck up a better pace. The heat intensified. She walked on the shaded side. The gorge narrowed until she could touch either wall with her arms outstretched. She waded through a coursing stream. The sweat trickled off her, through her clothes, between her thighs. The cliffs on either side trapped the day’s heat and, more oppressively, her thoughts. Who it could be at her side she did not know, yet she addressed it.
This companion seemed to wear a hat and have no eyes.
Archie has such problems. This lawsuit preys on his mind. And then he will have to retire. He doesn’t know what he’ll do with his time. I don’t know… There’s a sort of, what? A settled sullenness about him. No lightness. He makes enemies. I see it in their eyes, not liking him.
I can’t make out what he thinks of me. Perhaps I don’t figure very large in his scheme of things. Whatever his scheme of things is. Well, I know really. I think I do. He wants to be a great man. He wants to be acknowledged as someone great. Someone who’s made their impact on the world. What a terrible weakness. It ruins his life. He was born too rich. The money spoilt him. Maybe that’s my trouble too. Spoilt. Selfish. Somehow he’s got to justify himself. A great man! It’s awful…
And the thing walking with her said, in a gobbling kind of way, through its dirty sandy mouth, ‘It’s halfway to madness. It makes you more unhappy than you know.’
N
o, but I care about him.
‘Oh no, you don’t,’ it said in a dark, chuckling voice. ‘You never really cared.’
That’s so unfair. I do care about him. I like his body, for instance.
‘Thoughts suppressed breed cancer, heh heh heh. You’d better watch out!’
‘Piss off, you wretch!’ She aimed a blow at the figure and struck her hand against the wall of rock. Nobody was there.
Nursing her bleeding hand, Kathi slogged on.
The gorge had run like the slash of a giant sabre into the land. Now it became wider, shallower, less taxing. Kathi had walked for an hour. She leaned against the rock, alternately clutching her bleeding hand and wiping the sweat from her face. When she had recovered somewhat, she surveyed the scene. The walls of the gorge were lower here. The impression was that she was in a valley. Clustered on one side were houses, little more than huts, which appeared deserted. Nearby stood a modest building, built of stone. From its elevated façade a bell hung. It was the church of Agios Ioannis.
A goat was tethered in the shade of a small tree. A bench and a table stood near the church. On the table were a bottle and a tumbler. In the tumbler some wine remained. Kathi went and sat down on the bench. She rested her head on her folded arms. Her world went into a spasm of crimsons and greens, dotted with pinpoints of light.
‘You are fatigued, lady,’ said a compassionate voice. ‘Vous est fatiguée. Sie haben Ermordung.’
She replied without looking up. ‘No, Ermordung means murder. You mean Ermuedung. That’s fatigue.’
In an altered tone, the voice said, ‘So you are German lady, yes?’
She sat up wearily. ‘I’m English. I speak German. Who are you, exactly?’