“I think,” Nigel stammered. “I think I am going to spend!”
“Feel free to do so,” Tarik encouraged him.
“I am about to expel my seed.”
“Expel it, then.”
“Ah!” Nigel cried. “Bloody hell!”
His ejaculation began deep inside his balls, a volatile surge of expanding fluids which rushed through the center of his burning penis until the tip of his cock seemed to be blown off by the force of the first spurt. He could feel his semen pouring out of him and into the woman. The discharge shook Nigel’s strong loins repeatedly, blast upon blast of hot seed coursing with blind velocity through the length of his throbbing erection, flooding the woman’s cunt with the proof of their furious passion.
Amirah screamed out wildly as the rush of his sperm coincided with the shattering peak of her own orgasm.
“How well you have fucked her,” Tarik said.
He leaned toward Nigel, smiling—and kissed him on the mouth. Caught off guard by the sudden, unexpected pressure of the other young man’s lips against his own, Nigel panted for breath. Tarik’s tongue slid inside his open mouth.
Nigel accepted the oral penetration for a moment, but then, flustered, he pulled his head back and broke the contact.
“So,” Tarik said, looking and sounding amused. “You are not accustomed to kissing another man?”
“My uncles and my cousins kiss me,” Nigel retorted. “But not like that!”
“I am not your uncle or your cousin. Give me your mouth again, my shy Englishman. Let me taste it—!”
“Oh, you are very wicked, Tarik,” Nigel said, before the other young man’s lips closed over his own lips once again and cut off his speech.
This time, though, he did not pull back, or resist. On the contrary, he abandoned himself to this unusual experience. There was an aggression in Tarik’s kiss which was subtly different from kissing a woman.
“Now,” Tarik suggested, briskly, after he had broken the kiss, “I propose further pleasures. This time, Mornay, you take Amirah. You and I, monsieur,” he added, addressing Nigel, “will amuse ourselves with Faridah. I will fuck her, while she sucks you, monsieur. And then we can change places, if you wish.”
“This is like an ancient Roman orgy,” Nigel protested—although he looked and sounded excited, rather than indignant.
Tarik smiled. “I assure you, monsieur—anything the ancient Romans could do, we Algerians can also do. And better!”
Chapter Seven: The Moorish Bathhouse
After leaving the sisters’ house, the three men returned to the Grand Hotel.
Tarik had reverted, without any apparent difficulty, to his customary polite, obsequious manner.
“I trust the evening’s entertainment was satisfactory, monsieur?” he asked Nigel.
“Extremely,” the Englishman assured him.
“I am glad to have been able to serve monsieur.”
“Come here tomorrow,” Nigel told Tarik. “Not too early. I may sleep late, and take my breakfast late.”
“Very good, monsieur.”
“Wait. Here is some more of what I owe you. “
“Thank you, monsieur.”
“You are an excellent guide, Tarik. I am very satisfied with the way you have—ah, taken care of me, so far.”
“I will continue to do my best to serve you, monsieur.”
“Please do. Well—goodnight, Tarik.”
“Goodnight, monsieur. Goodnight, mon ami,” Tarik added, addressing Mornay.
“Goodnight,” Mornay said.
Tarik took his leave of them with a bow, and Nigel and Mornay entered the hotel.
“That man—” Mornay began.
“Yes? What about him?” Nigel asked.
“Nothing, sir.”
“No, tell me. I am interested in your impressions of him. Please. Be frank.”
“He is not entirely respectable, I think.”
“He is far from respectable, Mornay, which is why he suits my purpose.”
“As you wish, sir.”
“I think I detect disapproval in you, Mornay.”
“I wouldn’t presume to disapprove of anything you choose to do, sir, or any company you care to keep.”
“Well, we will discuss our friend Tarik on some other occasion. Right now, I’m dead on my feet.”
“Yes, we must get you upstairs and into your bed, sir.”
In his suite, Nigel allowed Mornay to help him get undressed, and to slip on a pair of pajamas. In acknowledgement of the heat, Nigel didn’t bother with either his dressing gown or his slippers.
Barefoot, he seated himself at the hotel room’s little writing desk. He opened his notebook, and picked up his pencil.
“You must go to bed, sir,” Mornay admonished him.
“I must jot down a few things in my journal first, while the memory is still fresh. You may go to bed, though.”
“Very well, sir. But you should not sit up for too long.”
“Don’t fuss over me, Mornay.” Secretly, though, Nigel was pleased by the valet’s solicitude toward him. “Go to bed,” he repeated.
“Goodnight, sir.”
“Goodnight.”
“And—if I may say so, without giving offense, sir—thank you for paying for the fuck.”
Nigel laughed. “You’re entirely welcome. Off to bed with you, you scamp.”
Alone, Nigel began to update his notes. He applied himself to his exercise book with the utmost diligence.
At last he had something to write about! Many things, in fact. He described the Kasbah, and the dancing house, and the women who performed there. He explained the rather unconventional ways in which they amassed their dowries. He wrote about the street of women in the native quarter, and the transactions which took place there. He painted a vivid verbal picture of the sisters, Faridah and Amirah, and the interior of their house.
At this point, mindful of the fact that his mother would eventually read these notes, Nigel found it necessary to censor himself, omitting certain explicit details. He let the veil of discretion—if not necessarily the veil of hypocrisy—fall over his narrative.
Fighting off his drowsiness, he then backtracked a bit. He described his first meeting with Tarik, and how he had engaged his services. He attempted to capture in words Tarik’s personal appearance and mannerisms.
This young man, Tarik Seyd Al-Ibrahim, is a person of a most unusual character, he wrote.
But Nigel’s busy pencil failed him at this point. He was not at all sure how to sum up the character in question.
Tarik was a rogue. That much was indisputable. But he was a likeable rogue.
Lieutenant Daumier had mentioned to Nigel that there were North Africans who resented the presence of Europeans in their country. They concealed their dislike behind a mask of “cringing servility,” as the Frenchman had put it
Tarik had behaved toward Nigel in an appropriately deferential manner, for the most part. But there was nothing either cringing or servile about him. On the contrary, he had a boldness about him—a boldness which Nigel found attractive.
Nigel had thought of Lieutenant Daumier as the epitome of masculinity. Now he realized that Tarik, is his own way, was equally manly.
He is a fine fellow, he thought. And, a moment later, he picked up his pencil again and wrote that phrase in the notebook.
It’s odd, though, Nigel told himself, that after consorting with a couple of loose women, I am now thinking about two men.
What had taken place during the past few hours now seemed dreamlike, as though it had never really happened, but had only been imagined.
The more Nigel pondered the question, the more the two men, Lieutenant Daumier and Tarik, seemed to have in common.
They were both passionate men, but neither of them, Nigel suspected, would ever permit himself to be the slave of his passions. They were capable of seducing, purchasing, or otherwise making use of women. But the women would never rule them. Something abou
t the two men was incompatible with conventional notions of domesticity.
In both men, but in Tarik especially, Nigel recognized a potential for selfishness and cruelty. Far from repulsing him, it attracted him. It awakened something in his own nature which could understand and respect such selfishness and cruelty, and which secretly despised the opposite qualities of generosity and gentleness.
Nigel now had vivid memories of the habitual way in which Tarik had looked at him, and at Mornay, during the course of the debauch in the sisters’ house. It was a penetrating, searching look—almost as though Tarik was searching for some sign of weakness in the other two men.
Had he found it, in Nigel?
Nigel sighed. He was fatigued—a pleasant fatigue, the aftermath of prolonged excitement and violent, repeated sexual release. He could write no more tonight. He must go to bed, and sleep.
But he loitered, and delayed putting away his notebook and pencil.
He was not a young man who was customarily given to prolonged or deep introspection. But, oddly enough, his physical tiredness now provided him a moment of mental clarity.
Only a few hours ago he had been very aware of the fact that he was a foreign visitor—a stranger, out of his depth in this exotic place. Physically, he may have been in North Africa, but his thoughts could not have remained more stubbornly English.
He had experienced Algeria and all things Algerian only indirectly, almost as a train traveler might look through the window of his compartment and watch the landscape rushing past. What he saw were glimpses of a world he would never directly experience. Its inhabitants went about their lives, in which he had no part. They were ignorant of his very existence, as he was ignorance of their history and their customs. He had to be there in Algeria for a while, but his thoughts and ambitions remained back in London. That was where his destiny would be played out, in tranquil, predictable conformity.
But now his attention was focused upon his surroundings.
There were many different sorts of people in the world. Not all of them thought or behaved in the same way. If anything, diversity seemed to be the rule, rather than the exception.
Previous to this journey, Nigel had had a few memorable experiences, including some of which he was ashamed. But how many experiences he had never had! And he was ready, even eager to embrace them now. No longer did he like that complacent traveler rushing onward through a landscape about which he would never know, or care to know, anything. The train, so to speak, was slackening its speed. He could see what lay outside its windows more clearly, and in greater detail, which only aroused his curiosity the more.
The train could not roll on indefinitely. Inevitably, at some point, it must stop. And then he could step out of it, and he could explore his new surroundings, and immerse himself in them.
“We are coming into the station,” he murmured aloud. “We have arrived.”
But then he caught himself.
I’m talking nonsense, he told himself. My mind is wandering. I’m already half asleep. I do need my rest.
Nigel closed the book, put away his pencil, and turned out the light. Staggering over to the bed, he fell upon it, and he surrendered to sleep almost at once.
The following morning, when Mornay came to Nigel’s room in the hotel and shaved him, neither man made any reference to the events of the previous night.
“Thank you, Mornay,” Nigel told his valet, when the shaving was accomplished and Mornay helped him finish getting dressed. “Ah—tell me something, Mornay.”
“Sir?”
“Do you have a Christian name?”
Caught off guard by this question, the Swiss reacted at first with a slightly supercilious smile.
“Ah, but of course you must,” a flustered Nigel went on. “I am sure you have mentioned it to me before—but I have forgotten it.”
“My name is Bernard, sir.”
“Bernard. Like those large, shaggy dogs which you have in Switzerland?”
“Like Bernard, the saint after whom the dogs are named.”
“I see. Well, if I may do so without offense—perhaps from time to time, when the two of us are alone, I will address you as Bernard.”
“As you wish, sir.”
“To address you always by your surname now seems to me a bit formal, considering—”
“Considering what, sir?”
Nigel had been about to say, considering the intimacies we experienced together in that bordello last night. But instead he said, “Considering the very small difference in our ages, and the fact that I have come to enjoy your company. In addition to performing your duties extremely well, you have proven yourself to be a most entertaining companion on this trip.”
“Thank you, sir. I shall continue to do my best to try to provide you with satisfaction.”
Nigel went down to breakfast. He ate his boiled egg and buttered toast with real hunger.
“Monsieur will take milk and sugar in his tea?” the head waiter asked him.
“Both, thank you.”
“The same young Algerian gentleman is here. He wishes to know whether monsieur has any instructions for him.”
“I do. Tell him to wait. No—ask him to join me.”
The waiter bowed, and went about his errand.
Thoughtfully, Nigel spooned more egg into his mouth.
Tarik, he told himself, was no ordinary guide. There was nothing crude or servile about him. On the contrary, he was entirely presentable. There was no reason why he should not join Nigel at the breakfast table, here in the hotel.
“Sit down and have some breakfast,” Nigel invited Tarik, when the Algerian stood beside the table, with his hat in his hand.
“Thank you, sir. You do me a great honor.”
“Not at all. I wish to speak with you. Last night was—most educational.”
“I am glad you enjoyed yourself, monsieur. You are not fatigued, this morning?”
“Not in the least. I slept well. I feel quite invigorated.”
“Monsieur has a strong constitution. He is the equal of any desert tribesman.”
“Are the tribesmen athletic? Are they fit?”
“They must be, to lead the kind of life they do.”
“No doubt. Now, what I wish to discuss with you. I must continue my explorations. If you are free today—?”
“I am completely at your disposal, monsieur.”
“Then we must not waste any time. I do not want to wait until nightfall, if that can be avoided. What researches can we conduct during the daylight hours?”
“Many. For example, I know of a place which men patronize at all hours of the day and the night—”
“Can we visit it now?”
“Of course, if you wish.”
“Then we will go there at once,” Nigel said, in the most decisive tone he could muster. “Finish your breakfast, Tarik. We will need a carriage, I assume?”
“Yes.”
Nigel signaled to the head waiter. “Then I will have this man order us one, immediately. There is not a moment to be lost.”
Tarik observed Nigel with unfeigned admiration. “Monsieur is indefatigable. Never have I served a traveler as energetic as monsieur!”
“You flatter me, Tarik. Will it be necessary for us to take Mornay along with us on this expedition?”
“He need not accompany us, monsieur. And perhaps it would be more convenient if it were just the two of us.”
“How long will we be gone?”
“A few hours.”
“Then I will tell Mornay he may have the rest of the morning, and the afternoon, off, and that I will not need him until this evening. He can explore the city on his own, if he wishes.”
A short drive through the city took Nigel and Tarik to a square, surrounded by shops. One building, though, unlike the others, did not have large arches opening onto the square, and no merchandise on display, spilling out onto the pavement. Instead, the wall facing the square was pierced by small windows, with closed s
hutters. It was to this structure that Tarik led Nigel.
“What is this place?” Nigel asked, as they approached the closed double doors of the entrance.
“It is a Moorish bathhouse, monsieur.”
Nigel was disappointed. “Well, a bath might be enjoyable. But we have Turkish baths in London. I have patronized them. There is no novelty for me here.”
“You think not? But this bathhouse is different.”
“In what way?”
“In several,” Tarik replied, enigmatically. “It offers more than one form of relaxation. One may smoke hashish here, for example.”
“Hashish! Now, that I have never tried.”
“This will be your opportunity, monsieur, if you wish.”
“We will go inside,” Nigel declared. “Once again, Tarik, I suspect that you have chosen well.”
“Thank you, monsieur. I do my best.” Tarik knocked on the doors. One of them was opened by a male attendant, who ushered the two men inside, bowing to them.
The interior of the bathhouse was cool, quiet, and dark. It was a refuge from the heat and dust of the outside world.
Another attendant, taking over from the doorman, greeted Nigel and Tarik, bowing to both men, but addressing Tarik in an undertone, and in Arabic. Nigel had the impression that Tarik and the attendant were old acquaintances. The Englishman glanced about him while the other two men conversed briefly, obviously making arrangements.
The customers, at this hour of the day, included not only Arabs, but Frenchmen, many of them obviously soldiers. They wandered about, in various stages of undress, smoking—tobacco, Nigel noted.
The attendant bowed once again and led Nigel and Tarik down a long, narrow hallway, pierced, at irregular intervals, with archways draped in fabrics of different colors and patterns. Near the end of the corridor, the attendant drew back a heavy cotton curtain, block printed with elaborate, boldly colored geometric designs, and he ushered Nigel and Tarik into the spacious but intimate cubicle that lay beyond the hanging.
The walls and floors were lined with dark blue tiles, with checkerboard accents in contrasting black and white. A sort of low platform in the center of the space, also tiled on its sides and on its broad, flat surface, contained a mattress, of blue and white striped cotton, stuffed with some firm substance that felt supportive when Nigel seated himself on it. There were two small tables in the room, one on either side of the platform. A stack of thick Turkish towels rested on one. The other table was empty.
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