Visions of Isabelle

by William Bayer

  His moods were unpredictable–he could slip from joy and laughter into long morose silences and then back again in a few moments time. When he felt like spending money, he would take her to the finest shops, order her custom-made pantaloons and capes of Melton wool. He never bought her dresses–he said she was too unique for clothes like that, and since she'd never worn women's clothes in her life, nor anything that was not a hand-me-down from her brothers, she did not protest. Archivir had a special fondness for leather of all types, suede vests, alligator belts, calfskin wallets, boots made in Morocco whose softness, he assured her, was attributable to the leather having been chewed in its makers' mouths. Once when making love he had covered both their heads with a tent of leather things. Then they breathed in the warm smells which he promised would increase his potency and her desire. She was fascinated by such bizarre escapades, believed he was teaching her the refinements of life.

  There were times, too, when Archivir had no desire to leave his flat. Reluctantly he would go down the stairs to work, but when he felt so withdrawn, he would not go outside. Then she would wait for him in the nave, reading books about Turkey, Persia, Arabia and Egypt, all the countries of the Levant and the Maghreb. She longed, she told him, to visit these places, but he told her that in his opinion she was less interested in where she went than in leaving the place she lived.

  "You're going to tell me that the things I want to escape will follow me wherever I go?"

  "That may be true," he replied, "but then it's interesting you have no desire to go to Russia. Not like Nicolas–that's his dream. You're interested in the warm countries. You're a sensualist and the gray northern cities, the lands that are cold, repress your nature. Isabelle–you need warmth, a lush place where you can grow."

  He was both extravagant and parsimonious, funny and melancholy, sensual and intellectual, European and Asiatic. She had never met a person so complicated, so mercurial. And yet she recognized that his overriding trait, the arch that covered all his facets and moods, was his insatiable hunger for new experiences, his desire to perfect his spirit by becoming a sensual connoisseur. They tried everything together, every sexual position he knew, and, when he ran out of these, new ones he uncovered in ancient manuals of love. Each time they ate, they sampled different foods. A Chinese restaurant hidden away down an alley off the Quai du Mont Blanc provided them with strange and remarkable dishes, gelatinous soups, exotic sauces, fishes prepared in spices they had never tasted before. He had joined the diplomatic service, he told her, so that he could spend his life traveling the world. He wanted to taste women of every race. He spoke of sleeping with one-legged dwarfs, and a cross-eyed whore whose eyes uncrossed when she was satisfied.

  He believed in anal intercourse and practiced it upon her, urging her not to restrain her tears. Later, when she was still quivering from the pain, he assured her that by yielding to him that way she had given him proof of her submission. That night he bought some opium from an Indochinese in a café, and they smoked it together in ivory pipes, and again, the following night, through a Turkish hookah.

  Through March and into April their passion raged. She defied Trophimovsky's anger and spent whole nights away from home. Her brothers knew what she was doing, but when they pressed her for details she refused to talk.

  "Unless you tell me what you've been up to in town, I won't tell you a thing," she said to Augustin. He grinned at her shrewdness and bowed his head to show his esteem. Each morning she looked at herself in the mirror. She found it remarkable that she was so intensely desired, and searched her face for some clue as to why this was so.

  It seemed to her, though she thought it was probably an illusion, that her cheeks were more filled out, her flesh had acquired a mellower glow, and her lips had taken on a more sensual curve. Certainly her body felt good–she had always adored physical exercise and that winter, between skating and the making of such ardent love, every muscle had become limber and lithe.

  There came a time, however, not six weeks after the affair had begun, when she began to suspect Archivir of deceit. One day after one of their magnificent feasts (Corsican blackbird pâté; lake trout with walnut sauce followed by pudding diplomat), he told her he had been neglecting his work. This in itself was perfectly understandable–she had wondered for some time how he managed to get by with the Consul. So she spent the afternoon taking a long walk by herself with the understanding that he would spend the same time catching up on the papers piled on his desk.

  The bitter cold had lifted from Geneva, and it was a pleasure to walk about without fear of an icy wind swooping down and blowing her off her feet. She wandered far down the Quai Gustave Ador and then out the Jetée des Eaux Vives to the lighthouse that marked the limits of the channel of the left bank. Looking back toward the Pierres du Niton, she observed people in bright clothing strolling on the Promenade du Lac. The ice had begun to break up, and pieces of the skating rink, polished and deeply grooved chunks, were floating away from the quais. Feeling nostalgic for those afternoons when they had skated like dervishes among envious boys and girls who'd hoped to find a winter lover but had spent the season skating alone, she was seized with a yearning to revisit the café where Archivir had first announced to her his philosophy of life.

  Slowly, dreamily she made her way toward the place. Workmen were already dismantling the glass screens, preparing for spring. Suddenly she saw Archivir sitting with a young woman, a girl with thick black curls whom she knew she'd seen before.

  Her first thought was of pleasure–Archivir had finished work early, and now they could spend the rest of the afternoon in bliss. She was about to join his table, having dismissed the dark-haired girl as either a client or one of his business friends, when she observed a certain animation in the way they spoke, and an intensity on his part that she imagined he reserved for her. She stopped, and her heart began to pound. Thinking it better to keep an open mind, she decided it would be amusing as well as wise to watch this pair from a concealed place.

  She bought a newspaper, then slipped into a seat at a table behind a pillar. Here, with the paper held high enough to hide her face, she observed Archivir and the dark lady with a cunning she did not know she possessed. She could not hear their voices above the babble of the café, except for an occasional squeal of laughter from the girl. But as she scrutinized them she felt a mounting horror. Archivir was fondling the girl's hand, running his fingers up and down hers in a way that brought back the memory of that first afternoon when their fingers had played together upon the borders of the Koran. Yes, he was stroking her fingers the same expert way he stroked with his tongue. At first she could not believe what was perfectly clear. Rapidly she began to fabricate excuses. The girl was an ex-lover; Archivir was merely being kind. Then she remembered where she had seen the girl before–the first time she'd come to his office, the girl who had walked out while she was waiting in a chair. She wanted to tear herself away, to walk away someplace and cry, but she was fascinated and could not leave the café, could not stop watching their flirtations despite how cruelly she felt hurt.

  When they left she followed them, keeping the newspaper near her breast so that she could raise it if they turned around. They marched toward the Place Bourg-de-Four with Turkish cigarettes dangling from their lips. Her heart beat faster as she tracked them through narrow streets, watched them turn corners following an inevitable route to the mansion where Archivir lived. From across the street she saw them enter the house. Peering through the front door she saw them pass the consulate office and mount the stairs. She could not believe it. After they disappeared she paced about outside, arguing with herself. I've been with him every moment, she thought. He's had no chance to meet someone else. But as the minutes went by she was struck by the truth. Of course, she thought, he has an unquenchable thirst for new adventures. How stupid of me to doubt it. It's part of his nature that one woman cannot be enough.

  She suffered a difficult night at Villa Neuve, trying to work out
some way to deal with his deceit. Should she share him? Had she bored him? If she avoided him could she rekindle his ardor? She was tormented by a thousand questions, but when dawn came she could think of nothing better than to confront him with what she'd seen.

  At first he was amazed. "Why didn't you just come up and say hello," he demanded, "instead of sneaking around behind us like a third-rate spy?"

  "Who the hell was she?" she shrieked.

  "None of your goddamn business," he screamed.

  They fought for an hour, then he grabbed her, kissed her.

  "You're a maddening female creature," he said, but she would not let it go at that.

  "The thing that disturbs me most is that you'd carry on with somebody else before you were finished with me. I understand your philosophy, but to start one thing before finishing another–that I don't understand at all."

  She was the first, she told him (and he was amused since he could not forget she had just turned seventeen), not to care a whit about the stupid values of the bourgeois class. He wouldn't find her trying to trick him into a marriage, or speaking about the verities of eternal love. But there was such a thing as personal honor. One did not sneak around behind another person's back.

  "I have always believed," she said, "that a person has a right to sleep with anyone he wants. But to deceive a lover–that's a crime."

  Their argument went on until suddenly, over a most sumptuous lunch (braised herbed hare in champagne sauce; omelets filled with fish confiture), they both began to laugh. Yes, he admitted, he had committed an infidelity. But it was a momentary lapse and had no meaning. She was ridiculous to think she could ever be replaced.

  After lunch they embraced in his bed, but later she decided that things between them had subtly changed. He began to make excuses for his absences, excuses so elaborate she knew they were contrived. Then she began to suspect that this was what he wanted her to think. He was operating on some level of irony that she could sense though not fully understand. He was deliberately erecting suspicions in her mind, and this was part of some esoteric game he was playing–to give her torment in a thousand small ways. She could not resist his little thrusts which reminded her of moves in a game of chess. Suddenly everything he did became suspect. Every woman she saw was a potential rival. The secretary for instance–she thought over the way they spoke and how their eyes met, and these things added up in her mind, became irrefutable proof that they were having an affair. Within a week her life became a misery. As spring came upon the city, trees turned green, buds opened, flowers bloomed, her mood, which should have been buoyant, turned dark, and she was paralyzed by fear.

  What she feared was not some drastic scene so much as her own disillusionment with the sweetness of love. She was introspective enough to realize that she'd been experiencing emotions which, when they were over, she'd not be able to feel again. This, after all, was one of the great lessons she'd learned from Russian literature–the irretrievability of first love. I deserve more, she thought. It's seeping away too fast. It should last a year at least. But the longer she thought this, the more slender her happiness seemed, until, by the third week of April, she looked back upon that first exhilaration on the ice with the nostalgia she might have felt for an event ten years in her past.

  It was then that for three or four days Archivir courted her with overwhelming charm. He was gallant, courteous, attentive, gentle with his embraces, generous with his time. He made love to her as if she were a duchess, was tender with her body, caressed her to ecstatic heights she had not known before. She began to forget her doubts, and decided it was true that a man who can give a woman satisfaction can have that woman forever in his debt. He satisfied her so splendidly that she wondered why none of the great authors had ever been able to describe such things in words. It even occurred to her to write a novel: "The Sexual Enslavement of a Russian Girl by a Violent Turk."

  One evening, lying in Archivir's arms in the great four-poster with candles burning all over the room, listening to him sigh and whisper snatches of Arabic verse, she heard him mutter something about a book. She said that of course she'd be willing to look at any book he cared to show, and so he left the bed and walked to his library in the nave. Watching him walk away and then return, his body open to her without shame, she thought how remarkably her life had changed, how on that dreadful Christmas morning when she'd faced Vava's horrible prank, she could never have imagined that in a few short months she'd be watching a Turk with silky locks and delicate lashes approaching her naked in his bed.

  Archivir nestled beside her, and by candlelight together they inspected the book. It was a portfolio of small engravings, beautifully made, of persons making love in esoteric ways. But the last few pages offered something new: these depicted combinations of persons numbering more than two, in the most imaginative positions.

  "Have you ever tried this?" she asked.

  He nodded. "Yes, and it's–incredible!" He glanced at her with a lascivious grin.

  Very soon he revealed a plan. Since neither of them believed in middle-class morals, and since they were lovers for whom no sensation held any danger or emotional threat, why shouldn't they experiment, too, with some of these sexual situations that were titillating their desire? She was tantalized by his proposal, but a moment later a problem arose in her mind.

  "How shall we find partners?"

  "A very difficult thing," he agreed.

  "Yes," she said, "since first off we demand enormous physical charm."

  "And then," he added, "there's the question of discretion. She, whoever she may be, must have as much to lose as ourselves."

  "I hadn't thought about another girl."

  "Well, I certainly wasn't thinking we'd do it with a man."

  "But in the pictures..."

  "Damn the pictures. You just want to be fucked from both ends."

  "And you," she said, "you want to turn this place into a seraglio, with concubines all over you doing everything at once."

  They both laughed, then Archivir turned serious. He did know some people, he said, who were experienced in this kind of thing. They were attractive and discreet and would know how to manage with grace and ease. He wanted to try it, slowly, perhaps the first time with only one person more. If she were willing, he would arrange it for the next night. But if she were too shy–then, of course, he'd understand.

  She knew at once she couldn't refuse. He'd be disappointed, and that would surely be the beginning of the end of their affair. But even as she agreed and noted how joyfully he smiled, she felt a premonition of something bad, of some unhappy trap most cleverly laid.

  Walking to the mansion the following night, she felt upset. The rendezvous was set for ten o'clock, and it was late for her to be hurrying through the streets. Her stomach quavered with fear, but she was excited, too–the anticipation of pleasure had been building the whole day. She was curious as to who their partner would be, and embarrassed already over the introductions, the small talk, the preliminary flirting, the first stripping off of clothes. She expected pleasure–she had never been disappointed by Archivir in that. But there was something unsavory in their arrangement that gave her pause. She decided, finally, that she feared the experience only because she'd never read of it in a book. A man loving a woman–that was a common literary theme. But three together in one bed–she assumed it happened but was something no author dared describe.

  The concierge gave her a knowledgeable look, tinged, she thought, with a supercilious smile. The embers of the lobby fireplace provided the only light on the glittering stairs. She mounted them slowly, dreamily, feeling that she was ascending to her doom. At the chapel's double doors she paused a moment to regain her breath. Then with her face as serene as she could contrive, she gave the wood a forceful knock.

  She waited a long while before Archivir opened the door. He grinned, then showed her a scene that had nothing in common with what she'd harbored in her mind. The girl of the café, the one with the thick bl
ack curls, was seated on the large divan wearing one of Archivir's gowns. He was in a loose Arabian robe, open from neck to waist.

  It took her a moment to understand what was wrong. Everything in her mind had been the other way around. She and Archivir were to be together first; later a stranger was to come. The black-haired girl smiled, looked her up and down, and suddenly Isabelle was furious–she felt she was being inspected like a piece of meat. In her fury she grasped the significance of their clothes: the girl had been there for hours; Archivir had already had her in his bed. She was pondering this, wondering what to do, when she was surprised again by a shrill and piercing laugh. The girl, to whom she'd not yet been introduced, was doubled over, choking on her mirth.

  "What's wrong?" Archivir demanded. "What the hell's so funny?"

  "But she–she's–" The words were cut by another convulsion. The girl was wiping tears from her eyes. Her mouth was edged by a rim of foam. The laughter went on, out of control.

  "This is preposterous!" Isabelle turned on Archivir.

  "Please, both of you, stay calm..."

  "Yes Yes! Preposterous! So it is! Indeed it is!" The girl finally stopped laughing, wriggled in her seat.

  "Well, what's so funny?" asked Archivir.

  "But, my dear, she's so young. So incredibly young. How could you think...? She's nothing but a child." A look of amused pity swept her 'face. "But don't you see what I mean? My God, Rehid, you must be insane. We can't do a thing like that with her. If she isn't still a virgin, then she was when you skewered her last week. Look at her! She's absurd! She looks like a boy! I may be a hard old dyke, but this little piece is not for me."