Johannes could almost hear the groan of relief in the barn-like room behind him, ‘Expecting a raid?’ Johannes queried the younger man softly.
‘Not really,’ he grinned. ‘But you never know. Last year, the Zurich police chose the day after Christmas to pay us a visit and take André away. So we’re a little wary of seasonal cheer,’ he laughed. ‘But we’ve been good children this last month. Only one little trip to Spain and back.’
‘Don’t tell me any more,’ Johannes stopped him. He preferred not to have too clear a sense of what the members of Mario’s group were up to, what bombing forays or heists they might or might not have been engaged in, for the good of the cause. That wasn’t what he came for. The last thing he needed was to find himself transported to Germany by the police and back into his father’s clutches.
‘Here, I brought you a small offering,’ he handed Mario a hip flask of brandy and looked round the large musty room. They were a motley lot with their bright tattered clothes and thin faces, their mixture of accents and tongues, these young dreamers who refused nation states and family ties. Like so much flotsam and jetsam washed up on the mellow Asconan shore by the plague-ridden sea of capitalist civilisation. And here they hoped their hopes of a purer morality, dreamt their dreams of a new form of community, of unhampered social relations, of an unconstrained sensual life in the arms of mother nature. Just like himself, Johannes thought laughing soundlessly.
Now that he had been recognized as a friend, they relaxed back onto blankets scattered on the floor around the blazing fire. They were smoking, drinking, talking desultorily. One couple were kissing. In a far corner of the room a pipe was being passed round a small group. Johannes greeted a few of those he knew by name, then sat down by Mario’s side near the fire. He took a slug from the proffered bottle of wine. Then after a moment, he asked, ‘Is Janine not here?’
‘Oh she’s here alright. But she’s in one of her states. She’s gone off to the little cabin. She’s been impossible this last week. Won’t have anything to do with anyone except Sophie.’ He picked up a guitar and started to strum randomly. ‘I’d stay right here if I were you. Want a smoke?’
Johannes nodded.
Mario gestured to the group in the corner. A lanky youth with vast dark eyes brought the ornate pipe to them. Johannes inhaled deeply, leaned back against the wall, listened to the words of Mario’s song, inhaled again and again.
There was that welcome lassitude creeping up his body now, loosening his limbs. He stretched luxuriantly, felt himself beginning to float. Oh, that longed for sense of disconnection. That was what he had come for. Nothing mattered now, not Anna, not that blasted painting he couldn’t get right, not the lack of money. Only the blazing fire, each flame arching separately, its forked tip a pure wispy blue, the wood crackling so that he could hear its dismemberment, his legs stretching, stretching, until his toes reached the other end of the room. And the strumming in his ear, the strings resonating with an almost painful clarity through his veins as Mario’s voice lamented, mourned, rose to an aching plea, soared, taking him with it, so that he was flying to its sound, carried by it over the hills of Castille, gently deposited on the plain, where the women with their sombre, melting eyes, brushed his cheek with the tips of their fans and drew him on.
Johannes rose unevenly to his feet, nodded to Mario.
‘Careful you don’t get burnt, friend,’ he heard his voice from a distance.
‘Burnt?’ Johannes pondered. He would like to burn. But the night air which lashed him as he opened the door was cold. So cold, he could feel his blood rushing away from it, hiding deep within him, frightened by that icy, sliver of a wintry moon. The tall straggly pines would protect him. They brushed the star-speckled sky with their feathery branches, fractured the moon’s cold light, spangled it in a hundred directions. He wouldn’t step in that light.
Johannes trod carefully. But the cabin was already there, a candle glowing from its single window. He peered in. A slight woman sat at the edge of a narrow bed. Reclining on it, her long angular body tensed like a bow about to snap, lay Janine, raven hair pouring over vulpine features, over bare creamy shoulders above the tightly draped blanket. Johannes tapped at the window, saw her snap, leap, shudder, saw the other woman’s contorted face.
‘Qui est-ce?’ she demanded in that low, broken voice.
‘Johannes,’ his own answered from a great distance.
‘Johannes,’ he heard her echo and the door creaked slowly open.
She pulled him in, threw her arms round his shoulders, so that the blanket fell from her. He could feel the taut nipples of her breasts piercing his jacket, that hungry mouth searching for his, the musty smell of her invading his nostrils.
‘Janine!’ The second voice was stern, scandalized. He felt a form brushing past him in the small space.
‘Non, reste.’ Janine whipped away from him. Her hand fastened round the other woman’s wrist. Then she pressed her naked body firmly against the closed door. ‘Stay.’ It was a command. ‘Johannes is my friend. Like you.’
She turned to him, ‘Aren’t you, Johannes?’ Slim fingers stroked his cheek. A red tongue licked curling lips. ‘Let me take your coat. It’s warm here.’ As if unaware of her nakedness, she reached nimbly for his jacket, folded it neatly over the back of a chair, patted it, patted the small pot-bellied stove. ‘Very warm.’
Johannes watched the long taut legs flick towards him, the dark crisp triangle at their arch. Quick fingers were unbuttoning his shirt, pulling it from his shoulders. Yes, it was warm. And the fingers were cool, dry, like the rustle of leaves, like that crisp triangle. He wanted to touch it. Touched it, his eyes seeing only the slow movement of his own hand on that parched grass.
‘Stop it, Janine. Stop him,’ a voice hissed.
For an instant, Johannes met troubled brown eyes in a pointed girlish face. Then they turned away and a laugh rumbled from deep within Janine’s throat, ‘No. No, come. Men are gods, Sophie. They can rise of their own will.’
Johannes felt two hands on his bare shoulder, one hesitant, moist; the other firm, dry, guiding it, moving it across his chest, down, down. How vast his body had grown, each nerve alert, but the voices were distant. He must touch her again, that dry grass on the little hillock, the smooth plain of her belly.
‘It’s just like my dream, Sophie. You see, like my dream. I dream the past and the future.’ She kissed the other woman on the lips, but the hands were still on him.
‘Shall I tell you my dream, Johannes? Lie down.’ She propelled him towards the narrow bed. ‘Lie down and I’ll tell you my dream.’ The laugh rumbled inside her again. He could feel it rise and subside as she guided his fingers to her small pointed breasts. She leaned over him, dark like a vast bird, passed her beaked lips over his bare chest, her hair bathing him like feathers, lashing against him as she swung her head away to arch across him on the bed. He could see her toes rubbing against the other woman’s legs.
‘It was a long time ago. In another, a buried life. In England I think. I lived in a tiny cottage, at the edge of the village, just where the line of the forest began to grow dense.’ Her voice dropped, secretive now. ‘I was a witch,’ she cackled, ‘a witch.’ She ran a pointed nail sharply across Johannes’s breast, so that he arched abruptly, caught her hand. She looked at her finger. A tiny drop of blood. She smiled, put it in his mouth.
‘The people would steal out to see me, so that I could brew potions for them. Potions for making babies, potions for getting rid of them.’ She ran her hand over his groin, rubbed, rubbed. ‘And the men would come, so many of them,’ she laughed again, high like a bird’s shriek, ‘so that I could perform rites on them, strange erotic rites.’
Her eyes with their glittering purple lights flickered on his. And then she was kneeling astride him, his legs encased beneath hers. Slowly, she began to unbuckle his belt, flick open buttons, her pointed nails careful yet cruel, caressing, pricking. He could feel his penis, his, yet not his, gr
owing vast, too big for him, other, heavy, wanting, wanting. The clutch of her hand. He heard the other woman gasp, or perhaps it was his own breath. He wound his fingers in Janine’s long hair, pulled her closer, so that her lips brushed his, but she arched back, drawing him with her. He was facing her, his heavy penis between them, too heavy in her hand, like a mace, beginning to throb.
She pressed her taut breasts toward him, whispered secretively in his ear. ‘I would have them ride me like a stallion.’ Suddenly her long legs were coiled round him and she was edging herself over his penis, encircling it, slowly, the muscles so tight round him, clenching, clenching. He moved against her and she fell back on the bed, pulling him down with her. ‘Yes, ride me like a stallion,’ she crooned, ‘sail me like a wave, fly me like a billowing cloud.’
Johannes rode, sailed, flew, her body tensed beneath him, and then supple, moist so moist, wave upon wave of it and then insubstantial so that she seemed to slip from his grasp and reappear in another shape, a doubling of her, a small oval face with a spicy scent, above him now, next to the raven-haired witch’s. And then he was holding air, his penis still too heavy, exposed to the elements.
He heard her laugh ringing in his ears in the distance, and then her voice, shrill now, ‘And when their members stood raw, throbbing, for all my little black cats to see, only then would I take their love juice, distill it from their loins.’
He could see her now, too tall, kissing the other woman, rubbing against her. And then coming closer to him, closer, her hair lashing his groin, her nostrils arched. Her hands were on his penis, her tongue, her mouth, warm, soft, licking, sucking, drawing the juice from him, so that he arched, arched into that mouth, those hands, moaned, flowing into her, all of him, gone, spent.
With a triumphant smile on her face, she massaged herself with his sperm. ‘Love juice,’ she murmured, ‘doubly strong. For my potions. Their power in my hands.’ Her eyes flickered, darkly malevolent as she looked down on him.
He didn’t know if he had slept for a moment, but suddenly she was cowering, huddled in a corner of the room. ‘They’re coming,’ she whimpered, ‘They’re coming. Help me, help me, Sophie, Johannes, they’re coming to burn me.’ She shivered, leapt up, pointed through the small window. ‘Look, it’s there, the fire. Put it out, Sophie, run. With your tears. Run, quickly,’ she propelled the woman through the door, bolted it behind her. ‘Help me, Johannes, help me, cleanse me, please, please, wipe her out, the witch, rid me of her, I’ll be good.’
She was kneeling by the bed now, her head bent, her hands raised in prayer, like a small girl.
He stroked her hair gently, ‘It’s alright Janine. No one will burn you. It’s alright.’
‘You have to help me, Johannes,’ she lifted frightened eyes to him. ‘She’s there,’ she brought his hand down to her groin, ‘there, inside me. The witch. Chase her out. Now, now. No wait.’ She splattered some water over herself, over him, began to lap at him, her tongue moving rough, then smooth, over his body, his feet, his legs, rousing him, urging him into her, pleading as she lay beneath him, ‘Now, Johannes, quickly, wipe her out.’ Her voice rose with her hips to meet him, ‘There, there, chase her, faster, faster, Johannes, cleanse me of her, take her, yes, yes, there, you’ve found her, wipe her out, rid me of her.’ She was crying against him, and as her legs pressed into the small of his back and he came into her with a great shudder, she began to shout over and over, ‘Clean, clean, clean. Janine is clean.’
Then, her eyes luminous, she lay quietly beside him. She gave him a shy smile, ‘Thank you, Johannes. You can leave me now.’ She curled away to face the wall. ‘I’m safe.’
A grey dawn had begun to glimmer as Johannes made his way unsteadily down the hill. He would have liked to have spent more time in that perilous country Janine and the opium took him to. The flickering hallucinatory drowsiness paradoxically allowed him to see. See more, see clearly, unhampered by the shadows cast by work, by Anna.
Anna. He suddenly felt soiled, broke into a run, headed down towards the lake, gazed at the mirror of the waters.
Men are like gods, Janine had said. Johannes laughed, averted his face from a passerby. Once he too had believed that unleashed instinct, sex, marked men out as godlike. But now he was prone to think the opposite just as likely. Men were mere regular soldiers attached to a prick who was their sergeant. When the sergeant barked, they jumped to it! Wherever the prick pointed they ran. Tails wagging the dog. And if there was any time left over they might paint a picture or write a poem.
He grimaced into the wind. Whatever had happened to his ideas of sexual salvation? They had served him far better. They had brought him Anna. But he had botched that. He hurried on, taking the high path along the lake.
Yes, the famous masculine principle, the rising sun of Apollonian light and order, what was it really but, as Bettina might say, a usurper of power and privilege, cloaking its murderous lusts with the smile of reason. Even now, though he had lost his sense of holiness, he still felt it was the women who might save them. The tortured Janine with her frenzies amongst them. If saving was possible.
He was suddenly in a hurry, his hand twitching, wanting to grasp his brush. He had an idea for a series of paintings, a grand idea.
As Johannes rushed into the hushed house, he only paused for a moment to remark on its emptiness. Then, with a sense of urgency, he doused himself in cold water, donned fresh clothes and climbed the stairs to his studio. No one saw him over the next days.
On New Year’s Day, the day that welcomed in the second decade of the century, Anna arrived back in Ascona. Berlin had been deep in snow, a dark, windy city. But here, despite the winter rain, there was a softness in the air. The curve of the hills, the clustered houses of the tiny village, the bright clumps of vegetation, all spoke to her in a welcoming voice.
Anna asked the driver to drop her assortment of cases and parcels at the door of the house. Then, she took a deep breath before lifting the latch and letting herself in. She felt at once anxious, excited and shy, uncertain about which emotion predominated.
‘Hello,’ she announced to the empty hall. ‘I’m back,’ she called up the empty staircase. There was a stillness about the house which suddenly made her shiver.
What if Johannes weren’t here? What if he had gone? She hadn’t written to announce her arrival. She raced up the stairs. ‘Johannes, Johannes,’ her voice took on a note of desperation. She heard the studio door open and she stopped on the landing. He was coming towards her across the rain-spattered loggia, his face rugged, his eyes bluer than she remembered them, staring at her in disbelief.
‘Anna,’ his voice was hoarse, ‘Anna, my Anna,’ he lifted her off her feet into his arms, kissed her, kissed her so deeply that she was breathless with it.
‘Let me look at you,’ he murmured. He held her at arms length, his head cocked, surveying her.
She felt herself flushing at what she read in his eyes. ‘Oh Johannes, I’ve missed you so much. So much.’ She pressed close to him, running her fingers through his tousled hair, feeling herself beginning to melt into him in that way she seemed to have forgotten but her body remembered all too vividly, no longer knowing why she had ever left him.
‘And Leo?’ he suddenly asked softly.
‘He’s staying with Bettina, for now.’ She averted her gaze.
His eyes danced. ‘So we can…?’ He lifted her in his arms, not waiting for her answer, and carried her down the stairs to their bedroom. It looked untouched, as if no one had passed over its threshold since she had left. Even the pillows, the silk feather comforter, were plumped up as she remembered them.
‘I love you, Johannes,’ she murmured, tears tugging at her eyes.
‘Do you, Anna?’ He set her down on the bed. ‘Despite everything?’ His face suddenly looked dark.
‘With everything,’ she pulled him down beside her, hungry for him, the lean tautness of his limbs, the slight scent of linseed oil that emanated from his white hands,
the bristle of his roughened face, the smooth silkiness of his haunches, all of him, so much that needed to be learned again, like a vast garden which in her memory had grown overhung with stifling creepers and branches, blotting out those miraculous secret bursts of colour beneath, violets and primulas, limpid pools of water lily, hidden corners and crevices teaming with life.
Loving her, being loved so ardently, Johannes felt again like a young man for whom the world of women had as yet unveiled few of its secrets. He had the sense too, that he had been granted a reprieve. He clutched at it.
In the bed that had once again become their world, they drank in the new decade, watched a wintry sun rise in the pale sky, ate hungrily of the scraps of food Johannes had in the house and more ravenously of each other.
Then they walked, exploring new trails along the lake, stopping at various peasant houses, buying eggs in one, a string of onions in another, a slab of ham at the next, a bottle of rough wine, bringing home their purchases, only to let them lie on the scrubbed kitchen table while they gazed into each other’s eyes, their hands beginning to touch, to stroke, the passion overtaking them before they reached the airy bedroom, so that they made love on the stairs, on the landing, filling the house with their ardour.
And so it continued for one week, then another and another, until Anna lost track of time altogether. When Johannes retreated to his studio, she retired to hers, and dreamily took up the brushes, which had lain largely unused for far too long; or sat at the piano filling the airy house with the vibrancy of chords and quick-fingered melody.
But as mild winter merged almost imperceptibly into early spring, her eyes were drawn increasingly towards the windows.
One day she rose with an eager mischievous light in her tawny eyes. Brushing Johannes’s cheek briefly with her lips, she raced downstairs to brew some coffee before pushing open the heavy back door and gazing out reflectively.
There had been too little time in the autumn to work out here. Except where they had dug close to the house, the land was still largely covered in a thick tangle of undergrowth broken only by the traces of flower beds, the cracked remains of paths, a few trees. Anna fetched boots, a pair of gloves, walked out, lifted tufts of branches to see what lay beneath, found some piled stones in the distance, a half-hearted attempt at a wall, an abandoned nest filled with mouldy leaves. She prodded the earth with her boots, felt its textured moistness, looked round her dreamily.
Dreams of Innocence Page 33