by Blake, Evie
Yet at the same time as her doubt, another emotion emerged: a sense of power she hadn’t felt since before she got married. Louise was in control again.
‘Over there,’ she said, her voice low and husky, indicating a tiny alcove on the other side of the bridge, barely visible from the street.
He expected her to do it. This was the thrill. After thirteen years of her husband deciding when they would have sex, and being in charge – she was never allowed to actually touch his penis; just had to lie back and let him do his business – this young man wanted her to touch him. She reached out, her hands shaking with anticipation. It felt different from how she had expected. Softer, yet stronger. She squeezed hard and then relaxed her grip. She felt his penis nuzzled into her palm as if it was a being in its own right. Her back was against the old Venetian wall as he pulled aside her skirt, as simply as if he were opening a curtain. He fingered her for a few moments, and it was a delicious sensation. Her husband had never touched her here before. She pulled her silk underwear down and opened her legs wide. With his penis between her hands, she pushed him into her.
She was in Ancient Egypt now, in a dark tomb of desire. She was Anubis’s love slave. The young man growled into her neck, and together they rocked backwards. He lifted one of her legs so that it hooked around his back. Oh, this young one has done this before, she thought. It excited her to imagine that he believed she was experienced too. All he wanted from her was sex. He licked her neck hungrily, pushing up into her. She pulled her silk top back from her chest, and yanked down the brassiere. She put her hand behind his neck, forcing his head down to her breast. Oh yes, she could feel him sucking, and that broken tooth dragging on her nipple. He pushed in and out of her, faster and faster, and she was moving with him, not lying like a dead woman as she did for her husband. She was making love with her Egyptian jackal god. She desired him, and yet she feared him. He was burying her under layers of his touch. The deep earth of her longing was reaching into her and extracting her passion. Ah, she thought, sex is not death like it is with my husband. It is the life in death.
And now Louise was so deep inside her jackal god that she was no longer flesh and blood, no longer a woman, but gold dust dancing in the night air, a tiny part of Ancient Egypt brought alive in Venice. It had been so long, so, so long since she had felt these sensations. She was full of this young man’s penis. She sensed her vibrations exciting him, and he sped up, biting her nipple as he came, and jolting her up towards him so that he was deep inside her, deeper than her husband had ever been.
A moment’s breath and the young man pulled out. He was grinning with delight but she refused to smile, although she was proud of the effect she had had on him. It had made her happier than she had been in a long time.
‘Good night, madam,’ he said, lifting her hand to his lips and kissing it delicately like a true gallant before disappearing across the bridge.
Louise was left shaking. She was shocked. Not at what she had done, no, she did not feel ashamed or disgusted with herself. Her shock was at the discovery of who she was. A vessel for lovemaking. She knew it in her heart, just as anyone who has a calling does. She had never felt so alive, so whole, so elated. What was love without sex? It couldn’t be real love. Yet what her husband classed as sex she would call procreation. The only reason he touched her was because he wanted a child. What had happened just now was sexual liberty in all its glory. Louise and this boy sharing their desires in a dark alcove in the backwaters of Venice. This was her freedom.
She rearranged her clothing. Took out another cigarette and smoked it, looking at the moon reflected in the canal. Her discarded shawl lay upon its surface like a gaping wound within its silver orb. An omen of pain to come, she feared, and yet she wondered if she would ever be brave enough to do again what she had just done. She tossed her half-smoked cigarette into the canal and set off towards the party.
As she walked briskly through the Venetian night, Saint-Saëns’ ‘Danse Macabre’ played inside her head as if it were the musical accompaniment to her night walk, enticing the dissolute ghosts of Venice to join her in a dance of liberty. If she could have passion and love, would that make her happy? she wondered. Or would it destroy her? She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that it would never be a possibility with her husband. If she were to have any hope of finding this kind of love, she would have to separate herself into two: Louise, the wife of the respectable Polish businessman in Venice; and Belle, her hidden self, the whore. She made a promise as she walked. She would find this kind of love despite the consequences. If Anubis himself came to take her away, she would follow him gladly. For Louise, life without love was death.