by Evie Blake
Valentina forgets about Stephano Linardi and his gallery. She refuses to be disappointed and decides that in fact this gallery is way too conservative for her libertine sensibilities. She thinks of going home, but she doesn’t want to have to sit in on her own, so she hangs around the gallery, waiting until Antonella and a gang of her friends decide to continue the night out dancing.
Valentina has been friends with Antonella since art college. The two of them naturally gravitated towards each other through their mutual disregard for following the crowd. Both of them focused, passionate and ambitious. Antonella specialised in fine art, whereas Valentina of course had gone for photography. Antonella was different when they were at college. Quieter, most certainly, and more serious. She is still obviously very ambitious, but the last year or so she has come out of her shell. She is a tiny woman with a zesty smile, brilliant brown eyes and the most disproportionately large chest for such a small frame. Men cannot help but be drawn towards her, so that she is never without some new beau on her arm. Yet despite all her many affairs, she claims she is searching for true love, a Mr Right to come into her life. A mythical figure Valentina has great fun teasing her over. Still, Antonella always has the effect of making Valentina feel lighter of load, as if there is hope for a Hollywood ending one day.
Tonight Antonella is elated from her exhibition success, almost unbearable company. Yet still Valentina trails along, unsure whether she has actually met any of the other people with her friend. They go to a promotional night at a new club. It is packed with the young and beautiful, the air thick with cigarette smoke despite the ban. Within ten minutes Antonella is being chatted up by a muscle-bound Spaniard, and not long afterwards she disappears with her prize, blowing Valentina a drunken kiss as she departs. Now that her friend is gone Valentina really should go home. She hardly knows the other people in the club, yet every time she thinks about leaving, she remembers that Theo isn’t back at the flat. Tonight she doesn’t want to get into her empty bed all alone.
She should find someone in the club and take him home. Despite the fact that she and Theo are not officially in a relationship, as she keeps telling him, somehow she has found that she hasn’t been tempted to sleep with anyone else since she met him. She is not so sure about Theo. I mean, where does he go? she asks herself again. So what has happened to her? She was such a different creature when she met Theo. She was a free spirit. That was what he called her. He loved her contradictions. He said that on the surface she was the picture of demure, but behind that front was another Valentina, open, brimming with abandon. He didn’t think she was a slut for sleeping with him the first time they met. He called her a goddess. Yet now it seems he wants her to change. Girlfriend.
That’s it. She’s going to pick some guy up tonight and take him home with her. There is no shortage of choice. The table she is sitting at, with the dregs of Antonella’s friends, is surrounded by young men. She orders another glass of red wine and eyes up the talent. She likes the look of one particular guy. He seems a little older than the others, and has floppy blond hair. She gives him a little half-smile and hooks him, before turning away to sip her wine. Within a few seconds he is standing beside her. The music is pounding through her body, making her heart race, as she looks into his eyes, her message clear.
‘Hi,’ he shouts down at her. ‘I love your hair.’
She cradles the back of her bob with her hand.
‘Thanks. I’ve always had it like this.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, since I was a little girl.’ She opens her eyes wide and childlike, and he grins at her.
An hour later, Valentina and Alexandro, the floppy blond, are stumbling out of the club into the tart autumn night. Valentina flags down a taxi, and the two of them scramble inside. As soon as the taxi takes off, they fall into each other’s arms.
Alexandro is on top of her in the corner of the taxi, pushing his tongue into her mouth, and suddenly it really isn’t as pleasant as Valentina thought it would be. She pushes him away from her.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asks, sweeping his floppy fringe away from his face with a sweaty palm. She can see a few pimples on his forehead. Just how young is this guy?
‘I need some air,’ she says, winding down the window on her side of the car.
He lunges in again, and she tries to reciprocate. She really does. Yet Theo is inside her head, and this guy smells all wrong. He feels wrong. She slides out from under him, shifts to the other side of the cab.
‘I’m really sorry, Alexandro, I can’t do this.’
The poor fellow looks crushed.
‘Why? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. I just feel sick. Sorry.’
The rest of the journey is spent in hostile silence. When they pull up outside her apartment building, she can’t get out of the taxi quick enough. She throws twenty euros through the open door, and Alexandro accepts the money without even looking at her. What on earth was she thinking of? He must be a student. She is probably nearly ten years older than him. She rushes up the steps to the front door of the building, suddenly sober despite all the wine she has drunk. She feels foolish, and something else, a kind of yearning. She wishes that Theo were here so they could laugh about how silly she has been.
She is just unlocking the door to her flat when her phone begins to ring. Who on earth could be calling her at four in the morning? Theo? She rummages in her bag and pulls out her phone, but when she looks at the screen it is a number she doesn’t recognise. She didn’t give Alexandro her number, she is sure. She thinks briefly of the stranger in her garden. Could he have got hold of it somehow?
‘Yes?’
‘Signorina Rosselli?’
‘Yes, who is this?’
‘Excuse me for calling at such an unsocial hour . . .’
‘And who am I talking to?’ Curiosity overwhelms her instinct to cut off the call.
‘My name is Leonardo Sorrentino. I was hoping that you might be interested in doing some photographic work for me.’
‘You’ll have to go through my agency,’ she answers abruptly.
‘No, I don’t mean fashion photography. I am talking about your other kind of work.’
Valentina is silent for a moment. Very few people know about her erotic photography. She hasn’t even got it up on her website. How did this man get her number?
‘Who told you about my other work?’
‘I am afraid I can’t say, as the party wishes to remain anonymous. They are sponsoring a visual project I have initiated, and seem to think that you would be the ideal person to document it, especially since you are a woman.’
‘I am not a documentary-style photographer,’ Valentina protests.
‘I know that.’ He pauses. ‘That’s precisely why we want you. We’d like you to approach the project from an artistic angle. We need you to show another viewpoint, break down stereotypes . . .’
‘I really don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘Let me explain, Signorina Rosselli. I run a club. It is a special place, for those of us who desire a particular way of expressing our sexuality.’
‘What kind of way?’ asks Valentina, dark visions of terrible things in her head.
‘I guess you would know it by the name of sadomaschoism, but I do feel that is a rather unfortunate name for what we do. It is more sex games . . . or sex with stories, I call it.’
S&M. Valentina’s interest is piqued. She has always been fascinated by this, although she has never indulged in it and never thought she would want to. Isn’t it demeaning for women to be tied up and have things done to them? Yet she has to admit that sometimes when she and Theo make love, she has an urge to ask him to tie her up. She doesn’t know why. Does that show that there is a part of her that is weak and submissive?
‘So,’ Leonardo continues, ‘are you curious enough to call by tomorrow evening and have a discussion with me?’
‘Okay,’ she says slowly, not sure how she will feel
in the morning. Well, she can always cancel. ‘Can I ask why you’ve called me at such an hour?’
‘I saw you earlier tonight at the exhibition but I didn’t manage to catch you before you left. And then I had to work . . . so I have only just knocked off now. I assumed you would still be up; Stephano told me you went off clubbing with your friends.’
So it was Stephano Linardi who recommended her to this man. He must have showed him her memory stick of images. That was quick work. She should be grateful to the gallery owner, but she still can’t help resenting his rejection of her photographs.
Valentina can’t sleep. She opens up her iMac and logs on. Types in S&M. Several disturbing images come up immediately. A woman trussed up with a thick, coarse rope, her wrists and ankles tied together. A girl hanging from some kind of hammock made of lengths of rope that twist around her body so that her breasts poke out and her private parts are exposed and vulnerable. Do these women actually enjoy this? She shuts down her computer and snaps the lid closed. She wishes she had someone to talk to. But there’s no one close enough apart from Theo, and he is unavailable of course. What would Theo think of this ‘project’? Somehow she knows that he would be all for it. He often calls her his intrepid Valentina. He used to like her adventurousness. Has she become boring lately? Is that why he keeps going away? She thinks again of that pimply student, Alexandro, and winces.
She wanders into her bedroom, unzips her dress and lets it slide off her tired body. She unclips her stockings and they slither off her. She is so exhausted she leaves them discarded on the floor. She lies on her bed in her bra and G-string and reaches over to the bedside table for the last print she developed. She stares at it for a long time, until her eyes begin to droop. The picture is a close-up of an ankle. A tiny ankle with something tied around it, like one of her stockings maybe? She shivers at the thought of what might have been done to the owner of this ankle. Tied up and helpless. Yet at the same time she feels unexpectedly turned on. She wonders if the stranger in the garden is still outside, watching the apartment. Does he want to break in and tie her up? Do unspeakable things to her? It is a nasty, dirty thought, but it is also a private one. Valentina closes her eyes, pushing her fingers under the string of her panties. She imagines her ankles being tied to the bedstead, and her arms as well. The hands touching her are not her own, but someone else’s. Now she is blindfolded and in the dark, and all her terror and desire combine as one. What will happen next? These erotic images Theo has given her are pushing her towards some kind of cliff edge. She is not certain whether he wants her to step over it or not. Does he want her to have a double life?
Belle
THE DOCTOR IS VISITING AGAIN. TODAY BELLE IS KNEELING on her bed, facing the window, as he stands behind her. He ties the blindfold around her head and the familiar racing of her heart starts up. What is he going to do to her today? She licks her lips in anticipation. She really does enjoy her sessions with the Doctor.
He lays her down on the bed and ties her ankles to the bedstead.
‘I believe you are feeling poorly, Belle,’ he says.
‘Yes, Doctor. Please can you make me better?’
‘Let’s see what I can do for you today,’ he replies.
She hears the bag unclip and the jangle of metal as the Doctor rummages through it. He is playing with his instruments again. Teasing her. In her head she sees all the things he showed her last time. Maybe today he will use one of them on her? Her breathing becomes short and shallow in her chest.
‘Now don’t be frightened, Belle,’ says the Doctor, as if reading her mind. ‘I have something here that is going to make you feel so much better.’
To her surprise, the first sensation on her skin is not that of his soft lips, but something liquid. He is trailing some kind of oil down the centre of her stomach. He rubs it in, kneading her belly in slow, rhythmic circles. She can smell its fresh, sweet herbal scent as it sinks into her skin. The Doctor pours more oil on to her, over her breasts, down her stomach again and along her thighs. His strong, kind hands work away, his fingers pushing into her flesh, and she is lost in the divine sensation of the scent of the oil merging with his slow, measured touch.
The Doctor takes his time, massaging every part of her, from the tip of her chin to her arms, hands and fingers, to her breasts and stomach, the tops of her legs, her calves, feet and toes. He unties her ankles from the bedstead and flips her over. He pours oil down her back and works it in, gradually moving from the back of her neck down her spine, lower and lower to the top of her bottom.
‘Are you feeling better, Belle?’
She moans into her pillow, unable to speak. She is as liquid as the aromatic oil that is seeping into her skin. She feels like silk, and she wants to wrap herself around this man and take him into her. She feels the Doctor moving over her, and the next minute he is lying on her back, pressing the front of his naked body into her oily skin. It feels wonderful to be so close. It is as if the oil is binding them together, its aroma weaving a spell so that Belle is no longer in the Venice of today, but in a Venice from long ago, a city of dark Moors and mystic Christians.
The Doctor pushes inside her, and gently they rock together. They are spinning in their sensual abandon, and to Belle it is as if they are creating something beautiful together for all to see. A painting of such detail; an imprint of their passion.
‘Darling,’ he calls gently, picking up speed and pushing his arms beneath her so that he can cup her breasts. He pounds into her, and she rides with him on an Arabian stallion across the dunes of the Sahara. She is dancing for him under the desert sky, shooting stars mirroring the elation flaring through her, tiny bells shimmying around her belly. They are kissing each other, mouths filled with honey, feeding each other sweet sticky dates and lying on cushions in their tent as it billows in the hot wind. And she is lost in a sandstorm of her sexual abandon, climaxing as the Doctor, her Arabian prince, buries himself deep inside her.
Today the Doctor doesn’t rise immediately. She can feel the aromatic oil and his seed running down her thighs, and instinctively she reaches down with her finger and touches it. She wishes she could take this feeling of freedom she has here in her apartment back with her to her house, and her marriage. She has tried to arouse her husband, but to no avail. Her motive is not pleasure, but peace. If he were satisfied, then maybe he might be less angry with her all the time.
When Belle was first married, she believed it her duty to try to please him in bed, for if it hadn’t been for Signor Brzezinski, she and her mother would surely have been left destitute. Stranded in war-torn Warsaw, with no one to protect them, she had made her father a promise on his deathbed that she would accept Signor Brzezinski’s marriage proposal so that they would be safe. He had been a means for their escape, and Belle had never stopped feeling as if she owed him.
She did not love her husband, and it seemed clear to her that neither did he love her. She had never understood why he chose to marry her of his own free will. She had had no choice. And yet Signor Brzezinski had been gallant once. She remembered his kindness to her and her mother in the early years of her marriage, when they first lived in Venice. It was only after her mother had become sick that his attitude had changed towards her. And once her mother was no longer living with them, Signor Brzezinski became a different man, as if a dark soul had been hiding behind his polite exterior all the while. He became rough in the bedroom. He raped her several times in her sleep. During the day he was constantly berating her. Nothing she did was good enough. Her marriage had become a nightmare. Every breath she took annoyed her husband.
The Doctor leaves, as stealthily as he came. Belle pulls off her blindfold and gets off the oily bed. Her sheets are ruined, but she doesn’t care. She walks over to her full-length mirror and gives herself a hard stare. She likes what she sees. A woman in her prime, flushed with her recent satisfaction. Her eyes wide and dark from her Arabian adventure with the Doctor. She smoothes down her dark bob, a few loose
strands bothering her. Her hair seems even shinier tonight, as if there are desert stars hidden beneath its black sheen, as if she is glowing from the inside out. How different she is here to the woman she is in Signor Brzezinski’s house.
She draws a bath, carefully washing away all the oil so that she is lying in a spicy, steaming pool. She dresses hastily, knowing that her husband is due home today and expecting her at the dinner table. She needs to be back at the house before him so she can change out of her Belle clothes and become Louise again.
She hurries home, across Ponte di Rialto, past the market, and across Campo Rialto Novo, her boots clicking on the cobbles. A pigeon takes flight, causing her to look up, and at that exact moment she catches the eye of a man passing by. Rather than looking away, she holds his gaze. There is something about him she recognises. He has a face like a wolf’s, with burnt almond eyes, and a gold ring in his ear. He looks like a pirate, an adventurer from the past. The man smiles at her, and she knows she could have him if she wanted. But she is on her way home and she doesn’t have time. She walks on, trying to ignore the pulsing sensation inside her breast. She can feel his eyes upon her back. She knows he is looking at her, but she doesn’t turn around. After all, he is just another sailor.
Valentina
THE STORY OF HOW SHE AND THEO MET STILL ASTONISHES Valentina. She has never believed in love at first sight. Of course not. So it was desire at first sight, or something like that. She still can’t understand her behaviour that night. She wasn’t drunk, and although she knows she can be spontaneous, it is hard for her to understand how she could have brought a complete stranger home with her. Yet Theo has never been a stranger. Enigmatic, a mystery, yes, but she has always felt she knows him, right from the moment they looked at each other on the metro.