Chapter 1

The village nestled amid the rocky coastline. Truly a wooden sign-post, tilting its frame at the beginning of the one and only street, informed you that you were entering Capobianco, but the name of the hamlet could never have been found in a guide-book or on any map, since it was so Temoie as to be practically cut off from the world. T had been exploring Southern Corsica and I discovered the village by sheer luck, one day when, tired of climbing over rugged cliffs and plunging down still more rugged ravines, I had followed my nose up to the near-by seaside. Though quite reserved at first, the inhabitants seemed to take a liking to me, since I looked an easy enough fellow and, they trusted me as far as subleting me a house. I owe it to the truth that the so-called house pertained more to the cave, with its single room, long and low-ceilinged, the walls of which appeared to have been cleaved out of the rocky bluff while the flat-stoned roof could hardly be distinguished from the whiteness of the steep cliff. There, a bed and a table were the only whitnesses of my solitary life, but the water of the fountain was cool, the sun and the sea every day more beautiful.

The fishers -all the men were fishers -used, from time to time, to take me along for their nocturnal fishing outings, and, on the other side, they appreciated very much the wild game I was bringing back from the mountains. Of course it might have been that I parted willingly from my money, and would usually stand them to many more than several drinks, or it might have been...

It might have been that in a very strange occurence, I had revealed my strength and my willpower. It happened during a particular night, a few days after my coming. I had been ensnared by the rhythms of a music akin to no other and, walking up the street then up the path across the steep bluff, I reached a kind of clearing encircled by cork-oaks. The clearing was as white as the surroundings rocks, in the middle of it a fire was blazing and all the villagers were gathered around it, the women on one side and the men on the opposite, ranking, though I had not noticied it at first, as follow: at each end of the semi-circle: the maidenj, in the center the older women, and the arrangement was symmetrically reproduced in the semi-circle of the men.

The music sprang out from the old men's group, and among the women a flute was answering it. A slight wavering heralded my appearing in the clearing, half expectation and half interrogation. For a few seconds I felt that I was imperiled but it was no more than a physical apprehension. Then an old man pointed to the ring and I took place in it at once, squatting between the young men who moved slightly to make room for me.

How shall I find the words to describe what was taking place? An ancestral ritual ruled the whole process to which, undoubtedly carried by the rhythm of all those people, I submitted naturally.

In the beginning there was only that music: pervasive, materialized, reaching to my very bones. The music of a drum plus two bow-shaped instruments, each with three strings; they were answered by the ear-splitting cries of the flute, utterly unexpected, which sent the whole audience shivering. At first, I tried to understand, but quickly I contended myself with "being part .jf", with being. And, by degrees, my body was a prey to slow ripplings which began to take possession of me from inside, to direct me body and soul.

I do not know how much time elapsed until I noticed that my arms were risen upwards, and that my hands were beginning to shake and to flutter above my head, amid the darkness, tinted red by the blazing fire. All the men were raising their hands up too but the women were standing motionless, like cold, inanimate statues. The shrieks of the flute were becoming quicker and more piercing. The impulses which agitated my raised hands increasted their rhythm.

Then someone threw an armful of fir-tree twigs in the fire and while the blazing flames crackled, a kind of hissing burst out of my throat, a panting palpitated in my chest with an urgency that no race could ever have matched. I restricted myself to those gestures, to this breath, wich inhabitated me and my companions with a similar rhythm.

Then, on the two ends of the women's semicircle, two girls stood up. For once they were no more than mere shapes stretching in the midst of the scarlet flames, then the two shapes began to writhe, amid the crackling of the pine needles, the gusts of sparks, the screeches of the flute and the muffled sounds of the drum. The panting in our throats quickened, our hands increased their fluttering motions, and we began to rock our torsos from left to right, from right to left.

Now the girls were flapping their heels on the ground, their hips began to wheel while their shoulders were not moving yet and their chin was rigidly tilted. Te fire -at least so it seemed to me -increased with the speeding cadence of their heels when, abruptly, a scream petrified the whole scene. Our hands were still risen up, quivering.

A very old mans tood up and with his face towards the east started recitating words that I could not understand. The general panting subsided. Now the words were dripping over me like a gentle rain and now hitting me like hail-stones. When the voice stopped, the silence was at once surrounding us like a tangible presence which was ripped open painfully by a common scream spurting out of the throats of all the women. Then another armful of fir-tree was thrown into the fire.

And while the new-born flames were fringing the darkness, a woman appeared out of the oaktrees forest. She was naked.

Was it the mood of that particular night? I thought I had never contemplated a more beautiful creature. Over her slender ankles, smooth, peerlessly tanned legs towered, widening to her round and full hips. Her slim waist palpitated as she walked while her thighs alternatively were hiding or revealing a pubic mane of red hairs. I wondered at the marble-like tautness of her firm breasts which nestled among the mass of .he hair which fell in waves over her perfect shoulders. As for her face, it could have been the haunting figure of a dream of beauty when the sleeper wakes up crying out his admiration and his ecstasy.

She walked around the blazing fire, and I was dazzled by the slenderness of her loins and by the fullness of her buttocks under which a few red curls heralded her sexual parts. Her skin was tinted red by the glaring flames which, though it seemed hardly possible, seemed to animate it still more. Then, she walked up to the opposite side from which she had entered the ring, and sat down a little way up in front of the place where the men's semi-circle met the women's. The two girls which had danced previously went to her and sat down te her right and to *ier left.

The music started again in an abrupt anguished crescendo. All the deepness of the night invaded my eyes though the darkness was no thicker. Gestures, again, were boiling in my body, but, this time, they were quite different: it seemed to me that torrents of representations streamed inside my belly and quickly an unconceivable pressure began to pound on it as if all these pictures, gestures, screams, all these faces which filled it up wanted to flood it. My penis sprang up hurt fully.

And suddenly, amid a whirling of fire, of gasps, of sounds and gestures, the hand of the "beauty" pointed to me. .1 was on my feet before realizing it. The old man who had recitated a little time before turned his eyes toward me:

þ-You wanted to be one of us, did not you?

T nodded yes.

-You wanted to be one of us and she has chosen you.

His eyes were sparkling.

-She has chosen you... Do you understand it?

I stood motionless, petrified by amazement, or fear, or expectation -I cannot really name the state I was in adequately. And the old man screamed once more:

-She has chosen you.

Then, the two semi-circleg broke their chain and, one by one, all the members came and scrutinized me, but there was nothing familiar to me in those eyes which did not display any interest but only a deepness akin to the deepness of the night which, some time earlier, had invaded my own eyes.

The "beauty'' and her waiting maids, alone lid not move.

When the parade came to an end, the attendants resumed their former segregation: the women an one side, the men on the other; the old man, looking at me fixedly, spoke:

-The new night will soon succeed the old night, the new month will succeed the old month... You have got to try to wed the new moon.

Two men went into the night and came back carrying an armful of rods which they deposited on the ground, by the fire. The musicians walked as far as the edge of the wood where they laid down their instruments. The old man motioned to the women. Then, three old cranes came to me and began to take my clothes off without my trying to oppose them in any respect. It seemed to me that my brain was paralyzed.

They eased my stiffened penis out of my shorts which encased it with loving care. And when my swollen prick came out in the glaring fire, the flute shrilled in the air with, short and quick piercing cries.

Then the waiting maids stood up, skirted the blazing fire and came to me. Their long hair fell upon me, lashed me, thus increasing the tautness in my prick. Now, one of the girls was licking my body all over, wetting my penis with nimble strokes of the tongue, stirring up in my loins such intense a desire as I had never felt before, and, suddenly, fled away into the forest. I wanted to chase her but the old man's eyes stopped me dead on my track.

-What is over, said the old man, is over.

One by one all of the attendants walked to the piles of rods which the two men had brought, and took one out of them: the women picking theirs out of one bunch, the men out of the other. Then, they lined in two facing rows, while two old men were undressing the waiting-maid who had remained by my side.

As it was progressively bared her slender and white body was revealing to my eyes the beauty which is the very attribute of youth but still hidden under the skin, concealed by its whiteness.

When she appeared (nark naked, she fled, trying to keep her thighs pressed over the black hairs of her pube as if she wanted to hide it away from me. She ran to the end of the two facing rows of men and women which were standing rod in hand; the old man took me to the opposite end, and told me:

-You have to go toward the new moon. You must be very careful, the hour is long to come yet. The hour does not comply with our order. You have got to walk toward ber patiently. Should you run that you would never reach it.

Now I had understood. At least it seemed to me that T did. The waiting-maid's white shape was standing out on the black mass of the forest, at the end of the double row of men and women, fifty yards away from me. But my fate was no problem to me: I would go.

I took my first step and, from each side, rods lashed me while te music was heard again. I wanted to run but I checked myself in time. I took another step and the blows hit me again harder. I went on walking: the supple wands flashed around my loins, searing them with a burning pain. Now the whole atmosphere was filled with the hissing of the rods which fell on me from everywhere in a maddening cadence, and every one of the attendants whipped me not with one stroke at a time but with as many as possible. I felt deep burrows tracing their way across my ribs, a cold sweat dripped down my back, followed by a scalding sweat. I walked like in automaton, with my hands held out, on the verge of covering my prick with them. The rods were hitting me with a greater accuracy, biting my buttocks like the teeth of unyielding jaws, were beginning to devour them, to pierce them; it hurt as if I was skinned alive and my bones were on the verge of piercing out my flesh, while on the outside they would go on slashing it. Snakes were writhing on my arms, a very precisely aimed blow set my penis on fire. I was conscious that it was still uprightly stiff, rooted forward and inside me like an unflinching limb. I tried to concentrate on counting my steps, but it was of no use. In a flash, during the fraction of time between two whizzes, I fancied that the girl in front of me had got nearer and that she bad opened her legs. The craving of my skin for rain, the craving of my throat for screaming, but I was checking them. Not only did the blows trailed me but they were waiting ahead for me too; they would enfold me and catch my shoulders, my ribs, my belly, my buttocks, and my prick too, which because of its length could not be shielded; my prick which preceded me now as if it wanted to meet the blows or to force me to meet them. My body was flaming all over, but it sort of forced me to concentrate and again I felt as if my belly was overfilled and was going to burst forth, that it had to burst forth. Then, the feeling of the blows became different, no longer did I wait for them fearfully, I let them crash on my skin, I raced their swishes, I buckled in order that they surround me entirely, that they warm up my too much unimpaired skin, that they fill me up with this hotness which suddenly was truly as essential as life itself. I wished I could look at myself from the outside, be a spectator to my torturing and bear it in the same time. That is why, instead of widening my pace, I yielded myself to the inpetus of the blowns which -and now I knew it -would tire out naturally, after having compelled me to give the best out of myself, after having ground me under their unrelenting harsh grating. A fire was rolling from my shoulders down to my heels, delving between my buttock cheeks to penetrate them, burning between my legs or close to my anus or around my balls too. And this fire could not fail to transform me and to turn me into a new man out of this new night.

And, suddenly, everything went to a stop. The sound of the flute tore the darkness, I opened my eyes and the fire, instead of writhing over my body, was blazing inside my limbs, in the cavities of my chest and of my belly, in every innermost part of my body. Sublime fire.

Two yards away from me, the "waiting-maid" was waiting for me, with her legs wide open, her very center being signaled by a brown hairy bush: that was my target.

With one leap I was over her. I brought my hands to her breasts which they roughly grasped, and my penis was already inserted between her great moist lips. And a cry tore the night apart, the virgin's blood gushed fort, tinging scarlet my burning balls as well as the ground, the earth craving for a new mating, for new bodies and new loves. My penis groped inside palpitating walls, rubbing its erectness against the soft partition it had just torn open. The sea was shouting over the rocks, a surging life rushed into our bellies, immersed us, carried us away, bursting forth the last ultimate limits.

I gripped the breasts harder, my tongue cleaved open her mouth -my blood-stained penis was throbbing madly. The rows of men and women had closed around us in a circle, I could hear their breathing, and I sensed that their bellies were moving in time with my own's exertions. I clasped the new moon tighter, melting my skin with hers, and I took my penis out so that all could see it sally out between our legs, then rush forth, slip out and rush forth again, as if it was endowed with an inexhaustible will, of its own. The womb of the night was pulsating under my belly, the sinking darkness abandoned dark veils wbich clung to our bones where they melted away. Now the tender walls were more vividly tight around the fleshy pillar oFmy prick, they squezzed in convulsively, swallowed it, sucked it and the young body now open to all the nights as to all the embrace to come was finding again the ancestral tidal surge which upholds love.

The legs came naturally to lock themselves around my waist, I heaved my body slightly so as to be kneeling, and my loins bucked up to thrust with all their power the hard-fleshed stake into the soft welcoming valley. Quicker! Quicker! Still quicker up to the suddend scream and our falling down pantingly on the moss, legs still interlocked, with drenched bellies, two lovereeking bodies under the new moon.