by Alan Isler
‘Then my escort has abandoned me?’
‘I am your escort, Fräulein von Hoden.’
‘But I am an abandoned woman, nevertheless!’
‘I sincerely hope so.’ The spirit of chivalrous uncles lived on in Kraven. ‘You have been left entirely in my hands.’ He spread them, as if to accommodate a 38C. The spirit of cousin Marko smiled.
‘In this case, let’s go!’
* * *
THEY WALKED TOWARDS COLUMBUS AVENUE. A large but nervous member of the family Belostomatidae, Gregor Samsa perhaps, skittered shiny-backed across the pool of lamplight at their feet and leaped desperately into the gutter’s garbage. A foetid stench blew in gently from the river on a seasonal zephyr. An old checker cab rattled down the avenue towards them. What luck! Kraven hailed it and quickly bundled Diotima inside. The cab gave off the melancholy smell of long-forgotten urine.
‘Where to, man?’
‘Where are you staying, Fräulein von Hoden?’
‘The Hotel Koh-i-Noor.’
‘Hotel Koh-i-Noor, please, driver.’
‘Where’s that at, man?’
‘Er, where is the hotel exactly?’
‘Brooklyn.’
God save the mark!
But the Hotel Koh-i-Noor proved something of a pleasant surprise. The cab dropped them there after a wild lurching drive through and around the byways of Brooklyn. Once over the Bridge the cabbie had cheerfully admitted that he knew the Borough not at all. Moreover, he would ask directions only of his black brothers. Diotima, however, was delighted with the turn of events. ‘A quest! An adventure!’ Her enthusiasm succeeded in thawing some of Kraven’s irritability; each wrong turning, each misdirection, became a stimulus to hilarity. She was a spritely old girl. Another juddering stop. ‘Hey, brother, you know where the Cohen-Whore’s at? Shit, no, it’s a ho-tel.’ It appeared they were parked outside.
The hotel stood on a quiet tree-lined street. It had obviously been built in a more generous age, in the second half of the last century, probably before the then proud and wealthy city had thrown in its lot with crass New York. Architecturally it might have graced the Midi in its heyday, not one of the better known hotels perhaps, but one of the quietly opulent, the regally discreet, the very sort of place at which the Prince of Wales in mufti might have passed the tea-and-crumpets hour with the Divine Sarah.
Within the vast lobby all was gloomy elegance, marble, cool travertine, polished oak, mahogany, great velvet hangings, faded brocade. In the middle stood a circular tufted banquette. It was high backed, and from its centre huge ferns thrust upwards towards the vaulted ceiling, shrouded now in darkness. The reception desk, heavy and ornately carved, was the principal focus of light at the rear, but that focus, inadequate to the illumination of the whole, was augmented by scattered minor foci, old Tiffany lamps throwing soft warm pools of light, here on a decorative screen, there on a studded chesterfield, and over there on an ancient rug. Of India there was no sign, apart from two giant elephant feet, umbrella stands, one on each side of the revolving doors as one entered, and at the far end of the vast expanse the man at the reception desk himself. The night clerk was in the full dress uniform of a Sikh sergeant major in the days of the Empire, turban, campaign medals, puttees, waxed moustaches and all.
Diotima approached the Sikh, who snapped to attention, his back ramrod stiff.
‘My key, please, sergeant major. Suite 69.’
The Sikh swung around, removed the key from a hook, swung back, but seemed reluctant to hand it over. He looked with great suspicion at Kraven, twirling a waxed moustache the while. ‘You want I should call you a cab, mister,’ he said at last. ‘At twelve-thirty in the morning, they ain’t exactly cruising around.’
‘My brother accompanies me to my room,’ said Diotima blithely. ‘But he will certainly require a taxi later.’ She extended a hand for the key.
The Sikh shrugged. ‘Sure, sure.’ He grinned, revealing a gold tooth, the last nugget of an exhausted lode. But he retained the key. ‘Brother is one thing; hanky-panky is another.’
Kraven flushed. Did the fool really imagine that he and Diotima…? that he could possibly wish to…? ‘Look here, you’re insulting my sister. Moreover, we have family matters of the gravest importance to discuss.’
The Sikh whirled on him in triumph. ‘So how come you talk different?’
‘My brother and I were separated during the war,’ said Diotima. She took a ten-dollar bill from her purse and placed it on the counter. ‘He escaped to England, I was hidden on the Continent.’
‘Them Nazi bastards, you should pardon the expression!’ exclaimed the Sikh, his face reddening, his lower lip trembling. Faster than Kraven’s eyes could follow it, the ten-dollar bill disappeared from the counter and into the folds of the turban. Diotima received her key. ‘No offence,’ he said to Kraven. ‘You should understand, this is a respectable establishment, a nice class people we got here. Drunks and bums and hooliganim we don’t need. Deep throat neither. You wouldn’t want your sister should have it any other way.’
And the Sikh, once more at attention, saluted after the British fashion, his right hand oscillating into place before his temple. ‘Room service will get you a cab. All you do, you just ring down when you’re ready.’
Diotima’s suite had a sitting room that might have added lustre to an intimate corner of Versailles and beyond this a bedroom, approached through carved double doors, one of which stood partly open. All the woodwork in the sitting room was painted white and trimmed in gold leaf. Huge paintings after Gainsborough and Watteau hung in ornate frames upon the walls. A bust of Marie Antoinette, in the manner if not necessarily by the hand of Houdon, graced a marble pedestal in a far corner. Here was a fine escritoire, there a japanned cabinet.
‘Please to sit down,’ said Diotima, indicating a love seat. ‘You would like a drink? I have a bottle of vodka, genuine Russian, very good, duty free.’
‘I think not, Fräulein von Hoden. I must be going.’
‘So formal! Diotima! We are friends, true?’
‘Diotima.’
‘So much better. And I must call you Robert. I have your permission?’
‘Of course. And now…’
‘Sit down in any case. I want to give you my book, a reward for being a good boy. It will take me only a minute to dig it up.’ She pointed again at the love seat and winked knowingly. Kraven sat down while Diotima went to the bedroom. For an ancient tub of a woman she walked with a remarkably girlish spring to her step.
He looked around him. A fantastic hotel, a fossil, perfectly preserved. (‘I stay at the Koh-i-Noor whenever occasion takes me to New York. An extraordinary relic. Bit of luck finding it, actually, but that’s another story. Yes, in Brooklyn of all places!’) Such things were good to know.
Diotima returned, book in hand. She sat down beside him.
‘You have a pen, please? I must inscribe it.’ She scribbled on the flyleaf. ‘Here you are, my dear friend. It is my fondest hope you will enjoy it and even – who knows? – perhaps learn from it.’ Diotima flung her hand expressively on Kraven’s upper thigh and kept it there.
The woman must be pushing seventy. The gesture meant nothing, no more than academic camaraderie, totally sexless. He turned to the title page. Die Leiter, von Diotima v. Hoden. ‘What’s it about, Diotima?’
Diotima moved her hand an inch higher. ‘Didi, please. And you are Nobby.’
How to stop her without drawing attention to what she was doing and thereby embarrassing them both?
‘You ask a good question, what is it about? How shall I answer you? Well, it is about love, of course. But, no, it is not a philosophy, not a theory. A handbook? No, not that. A discipline, then? Yes, yes, a discipline of love.’ The hand moved higher. ‘Here is what I write about. Love is a Leiter, a ladder, a series of graduated steps. The steps make an ascent from the remote to the near, from the simple intellectual formulation rising ever upward to the complex physiological resp
onse.’
‘Fascinating.’ She was flicking his genitals, for pity’s sake!
‘We begin at the beginning. The pupil steps on to the first rung of the ladder by the simple conceptualization of the abstract Truth, who, as we all know, is also Beauty and Love. The abstraction, naturally, is vague, is nebulous; it lacks definition, as is its nature; it lacks light.’
Kraven was interested in spite of himself. ‘Well, I’ve often thought of Truth as standing at the top of a “huge hill, cragged and steep”.’
‘Excellent! Begin by visualizing the hill, but focus on its peak. There stands Truth. You see her?’
‘I see her.’ Not actually, of course, but Kraven was for the time being willing to go along.
‘She is also Beauty. Is she not beautiful?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very good! We climb to the next rung, still somewhat clouded, still very much of the intellect. Favourite abstract paintings, perhaps; music, Wagner, for example. Here is Truth! Here is Beauty!’
She rose to her feet and began to pace before him. Sunk in thought, she held her hands stiffly before her. Her movements were mesmerizing.
‘We climb higher. We enter the world. The surf, the wooded land, the desert plains, vineyards, valleys. See the panther crouch! See the dolphins leap! There an eagle falls to his crag like a thunderbolt! You see them? There is enough light? Once more you see Beauty and Truth, but now as they exist in all creation.’
Diotima paused in her pacing and approached him, wild eyed. Startled, he drew back, but she seemed not to notice. ‘We approach the summit,’ she said, and resumed her pacing. ‘From the beauty and truth in all living things to beauty and truth of creation’s noblest creatures we move. Man and woman. Picture them as Praxitiles must have seen them, or Leonardo, or Bouguereau. See their sinuous grace. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Hero and Leander, Antony and Cleopatra, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Slowly they approach one another. They sink down upon a flowery bank. They embrace. What are they doing? No need to ask. Truth! Beauty!’
She sat down once more beside him; once more she touched his thigh, this time gently, featherlight. Kraven made an effort to stand, but she caught him by the arm and pulled him down again.
‘Only two rungs remain. Concentrate. To the particular we now ascend. Up, up, we go. From the truth and beauty of all mankind to the truth and beauty of one. I am Eve, you are Adam. From multiplicity to oneness we have come, one and one. I look at your beauty, Nobby, and see it is true.’
‘And the last rung?’ In seconds the ordeal would be over. In minutes the Sikh would find him a cab. In an hour, at most, he would be home.
‘Ah, the last rung? Impatient sweetheart.’ She laughed her girlish laugh and bit his ear lobe. ‘On the last rung we find the total concentration of all the senses in one member, yes, the member, Nobby, the catalyst of the intellect fully engaged, the ecstatic expression of the act itself, the ultimate insight.’
Kraven sighed. Diotima raked him with her eyes, held him with them. It had been a long time since he had felt himself to be more Nicko than Marko. He was out of his depth, and he knew it. Longing to be gone, he felt powerless to move, as if hypnotized. Like a schoolboy in the headmaster’s study, he waited for permission to leave.
‘Tell me, Nobby, what do you know about aphrodisiacs?’
She was making strange fluttering motions with her fingers, which she held at the level of her bosom. Her eyes flashed. She took him by the arm, lifted him to his feet, and began to walk him slowly around the room. Her grip was firm. He could not resist.
‘Aphrodisiacs, love potions, they have an interesting history, most interesting. Do you know they are common to every human culture? All over the world and in every age? Do you know that recipes appear on the earliest Egyptian papyri? Jah! I have seen them, Cairo, Berlin, the British Museum. Of course, there is a lot of nonsense too, a lot of ignorant superstition. But it’s not all nonsense, my Nobby, not all superstition.’
She paused in their wanderings, but kept hold of his arm.
‘In recent years I have limited my researches to fungi, particularly to the Basidiomycetes. You know about fungi?’
‘Hardly anything. Well, I have heard of Aminita muscaria, of course.’
‘Tsk-tsk-tsk.’ She shook an admonitory finger at him. ‘Stay away from it. Too unstable, too unpredictable. No, sweetheart, Aminita is not for you.’
‘Good lord, I don’t mean I’ve actually taken any!’
‘But I have, you see.’ She began once more to escort him around the room. ‘I have lived among so-called primitive peoples, among ancient cultures where fungi are still in use, today as always in the past. I have made my experiments. I have travelled the world, Nobby. I’ve lived in ways our sophisticated colleagues would call savage. What I have seen! What I have done!’
She struck her forehead with the palm of her free hand and enjoyed a moment’s reverie. Kraven watched her carefully. In spite of himself, he recognized a gesture and an expression he could use.
‘Basiomycetes are the answer, and of these, only three. But soil and climate are important. Of the essence. They must be sought out in situ. From the Matto Grosso, Mutinus giganticus; from the southwestern slopes of Kilimanjaro, Ithyphallus torosus; from Tampasak, Dictyphora incrassata.’
She began to run her hand up and down his arm, feverishly clutching, as if seeking something she had lost.
‘Cooked in the traditional native way, any of these is a powerful aphrodisiac. But I have found my own way, I have combined all three. Yes, Didi’s Love Potion. What have I found, Nobby? You ask what I have found? An aphrodisiac without equal. What have I done? I have brought together what cruel Mother Nature keeps apart, separates by vast oceans, continents. But you will see. Wait there, sweetheart, wait, my treasure, only wait.’
She released him and ran to the bedroom, stopping for a moment at the door and turning her wild eyes on him. ‘Don’t move.’ And she disappeared.
Kraven remained where she had left him, rooted by her command.
‘Here it is, Nobby, as I promised!’
Diotima. She stood at the door to her bedroom waving triumphantly aloft a cork-stoppered test-tube, a large phial filled with a khaki-coloured liquid. Kraven stood transfixed, horrified. Diotima wore not a shred of clothing. Her iron-grey hair, frizzled, hung wild and loose to her shoulders. Her large round stomach protruded and hung low, mercifully screening her pudendum. He noticed that her thighs were mottled and comically thin. She wore a feral grin.
‘Here I come!’
She ran towards him, leaping, her huge half-empty breasts flapping against her stomach. Head down, she charged him, knocking him off his feet and on to the floor. He fought for breath. With her knees she pinned down his upper arms and held him immobile. Her pudendum radiated heat on to his chest. She unstoppered the test-tube. She pinched his nose. ‘Bottoms up!’ she giggled, pouring the liquid into his gasping mouth. Choking, gagging, he was forced to swallow.
Warmth immediately suffused his body. He ceased his struggling, no longer knew why he struggled. Sensing the change in him, Diotima shifted, swinging around nimbly until, maintaining the same position, she was facing the other way. He was looking at her raised buttocks. He saw the stretch marks, the drooping deadwhite skin, the bluish discolorations, the wiry hair; he saw her parted vagina, glinting and foam flecked, saw the dingy beard. And yet he was filled with a pleasurable excitement, a steadying delight. Diotima was panting. She was struggling with his belt, unzipping his fly. He felt himself grow magnificently stiff.
And then the world faded and disappeared, along with his consciousness.
FOUR
KRAVEN STOOD WITHIN the chthonic fastnesses of the Brooklyn Bridge subway station. The muttered directions, reluctantly divulged, of the sergeant major’s morning relief, a swarthy corporal, had led him from the Koh-i-Noor not to the promised Clark Street IRT subway but eventually, after nervous meanderings, to Borough Hall. His stomach rumbl
ed, and well it might. Since lunchtime yesterday he had not eaten. Oh yes, a few peanuts last night at the Papadakises, an olive or two, but no real food. Certainly he had drunk too much. An excess of alcohol was far more likely to have caused him to pass out in Diotima’s room than the foul potion the old witch had poured down his throat. The conscious Kraven mind shied nervously away from the tale the Kraven memory insisted on relating. Had it happened? Surely not. He was reluctant to recast that grotesque figure in the role of naked nymphomaniacal Valkyrie. As for what followed her attack upon him, over that, fortunately, the Kraven memory drew a kindly veil. Yet an image persisted, ineradicable, of vaginal dewlaps. No, far better to attribute what he thought he had seen to sottish nightmare.
He had awoken that morning alone in the tousled bed, alone in Diotima’s magnificent suite, alone (thank God!), vigorous, and unusually alert – alone and sporting an erection of colossal proportions. Nor had it been the familiar matutinal index of a full bladder. He knew the difference well enough. No, this had been an erection of rampant lust, and yet one curiously divorced from sexual desire. He had sat up in the bed and admired it. With his forefinger he had depressed it to the level of the sheets, but it had slipped sideways from beneath the pressure and sprung up again, buoyant and free. He had got up and stood before the mirror, turning sideways, first this way then that. Why, it exceeded the full straining span between the tip of his little finger and the tip of his thumb! There it had stood, swaying gently, curving grandly upward, majestic. Excelsior!
The astonishing erection had lasted through the shower, had responded eagerly to a brisk towelling. Kraven had returned to the bedroom, the independent baton, the magical stick, enthusiastically pointing the way. It leaped and jounced, it dipped and perkily swayed.
He saw that Diotima had folded his clothing neatly over a chair. A note had been pinned to his shirt: ‘Always an old violin plays the most beautiful melody, is not this true? Until next time, your Didi.’ Could there be some truth to the shocking images now teasing the outer edges of his consciousness?