Chapter 5
Once through the Brenner, the weather had warmed. The lovely Dolomite country was at its most beautiful.
Althea sensed that the tourists would need no microphone tour-chatter from her. She retired, instead, into the rear-built little galley-cum-bar, and prepared tea for her passengers.
"Come and sit here with us," invited the baroness, after Althea had served the mid-morning refreshments. "Tell me-you are Greek, are you not?"
"Greek-born, madame. But I've been in and out of so many countries I honestly couldn't claim any particular nationality any more."
"An interesting job?" asked Heine, with suave charm.
" Absolutely the most wonderful," she enthused. "Never know who we'll take aboard next. Never know where we'll be going. Never know when-and that's the beauty of it!"
"The gypsy type?" asked big Berenice Kandi. "YesI think I'd love it, too. You certainly suit the life."
"That I don't know, madame. But the life suits mehue. I don't think I could do anything else, I love it so." Althea was warming to the graciousness of her companions.
"Tell me," said the baroness. "The events of last night-did they surprise you?"
"Lou of things surprise me, Baroness. But sex? Never! I think I could live for sex... for the infinite variety in it. I'm young, I know. But each new experience thrills me
-so very much."
"You were not-well-embarrassed, then?" asked Heine.
"I will confess that when I first came into the room last night, one thing simply flabbergasted me. Took my breath away." She turned, apologetically, to the baroness. "Your dress, madame. But it soon passed. You sec, I ended up admiring your supreme courage in wearing that gown. And even more-the wonderful grace with which you carried it off."
The baroness smiled. She was at the age when compliments pleased her.
"Had you ever been before to any party involving mass fucking, then?" she asked.
Althea smiled. Her thoughts went back to the bathroom orgy.
"Once, madame. Only once. But then there were only three of us-not six, as there were last night."
"Two men?" asked Berenice. "With you?"
"Two of us girls-with one man," corrected Althea..
"You enjoyed it?" asked Theophilus.
"I have enjoyed every act of intercourse I have ever taken part in," she replied. "Every one. Some, though, more than others. Much more."
"So that last night's party was little novelty to you?" asked Theophilus.
"Oh, no. Please don't get that impression. It's just that last night I seemed to have hit a new high in sex experience. I have never, but never, seen such magni ficent fornication as that between you and Berenice. It was splendid. It was the most splendid, the supreme experience of my whole life. I can't begin to describe the excitement of it-*
"You see?" said the baroness to Heine. "A born libertine! Althea's young, now. But the material is there. The open mind-the ability to be impressed-the ability, afterwards, to exult! Possess these qualities, add to them the determination to revere all experience-the determination not to be stupidly and conventionally 'shocked', as they say, by what is novel and out of the ordinary... and there you have the perfect material for the creation of a libertine. Once, however, you allow shock to creep in, or even the semblance of disgust, and pouf! what is left? Nothing!"
"But Lillian," asked Heine quickly, "is not the horizon a very limited one? After all, what opportunities-"
"Opportunities? To the peasant, to the dolt, to the uniniated-they must seem to be small! But, once over the barrier-a whole new world opens up to one."
"You mean-there is really no limit to opportunities? That people exist who would take one into their circle?"
Theophilus laughed uproariously.
"Ah, Lillian," he boomed, slapping his hefty thigh. "If we-if people-only knew!" Then he grew thoughtful. "But perhaps it is just as well. Imagine too many converts to our way of living!"
"That's precisely my point," said the baroness. "Oh, Heine, I've tried so hard to explain. You could live out your lifetime, right among people like us, and not know we exist. You could meet us in hotels, at house parties, along the boulevard cafe's-and to every outward appearance we are just as ordinary as you yourself.
"Cross once over the fence, however, just once-and, provided you come into our midst in the right open frame of mind-every ounce of heaven on earth is yours. Yours for the taking. That is why Althea, here, is so fascinating to me. For a woman, especially, the transition is a hard one. Women are so stupid-such creatures of fear. They cling, so fiercely, to tradition-to convention. What'll people think? What'll people say? What'll I think, myself, tomorrow? That's how their thoughts run. And, by the very existence of such thinking, they remain in their stolid emotional grooves all their lives. They can't climb out. It's not in them to take that vital first step!"
"You're so very right," laughed Berenice. "Oh, well -it's perhaps better that way. On the right side of the fence-out there," and she gestured to some peasants tilling the fields along the roadside, "there are too many women. Not enough men. On our side, God be praised, there are men for every woman-dozens of men!"
Istvan, listening with amusement to the conversational snatches that reached him, thought that the black woman had summed up the whole position pretty accurately. With so many women available, in the conventional existence, it was small wonder a man would seek for himself one only-to cleave to her in marriage for the rest of his life; to seek to keep her for his very own. But, with the available women reduced to a minimal few for every available dozen men-why, the women would just naturally have to be capable of sharing themselves around. Thereby there would be a constant stimulus for them to give every possible pleasure, just to stay in the race. So who would benefit? The men, of course! And who would be getting the benefit? Who-but the women? It was ideal.
Althea, mildly excited once more, turned the conversation back to the events of the previous evening.
"What so utterly captivated my imagination was the quite inhuman way you two kept on and and on at each other. How do you manage that?" Berenice shook with laughter.
"You whites," she said. "Always asking us that. Why, in Senegal, we all fuck that way. Because-what other way can give so much enjoyment, so indefinitely prolonged ?"
"In Europe," said Theophilus, "you people amuse me. You set such store on this madness of mutual, simultaneous orgasm. You break your backs to achieve it. You're so busy, each of you, thinking about pleasur ing the other one, that to me the miracle is how you ever achieve the wonder of orgasm for yourselves."
"Whereas we," continued Berenice, "regard sex as the most selfish thing there is. That's just exactly what it is, too. A cunt, a raging penis, both exist solely to be pleasured-to be given the utmost satisfaction. Not to give it. To be given it. To get it. Don't you see?"
Istvan, hearing this, thought it an odd philosophy. How completely at variance, how completely the opposite, of all his thinking on sex up to now! What successes he had had, and they had been numerous, had come, it seemed, solely because of bis rare quality of being able to assure satisfaction to whatever woman it was whom he happened to be straddling. Now here was the bounteous Berenice, stating exactly the opposite!
"Then why," he asked, "do you still continue to fuck, once one of you has come? To come-to have come, that is-surely that is to have received the maximum of pleasure? To have got from the fuck all you wanted?"
"Because, Istvan, there is nobody who cannot come twice. Once you have come, you go on-not to bring pleasure to the one who hasn't arrived yet, but to reach your second climax. And after that, if it's possible, your third-or even your fourth. If, in the meantime, your partner arrives at a climax-why should he cease then? He'll come again, won't he? Why not let him strive then, for as many orgasms as he can manage?
"The point I'm making is that you fuck for what you can get out of it-not for what you can give to it."
"But that supreme endurance?" persisted Althea. "Where in the name of God do you get that from?"
"Africa," murmured the baroness, "is an ancient country. An ancient country-with a distinct civilisation. Vast. Mysterious. In Africa there are insects and animals that are unknown to us in Europe. What herbs, what plants, in its vegetation-"
"All of which we know, very well, in my country," said Theophilus. "There arc aphrodisiacs that you, in Europe, have never dreamed of. We gather these things. We dry them. We make them into infusions. We eat them and drink them. We put them, all of them, to our use-when it becomes necessary."
Agog with excitement, Althea asked: "And these things, Mr. Kandi-where can we get them? Here in Europe, I mean?"
"It is not good, girl, to use things like these when you do not physically need them," said Theophilus gently. "You, for examples. I doubt that you would ever need them."
"Ah, but no-you could be so wrong. Oh, I'd give my two tits to be able to fuck like you and Berenice did last night-on and on and on-and never to tire. But with me, it's different. Once I come-I'm done for. I'm dead, almost. It takes so long for me to get randy again-all I want to do is to sleep-sometimes for ever!"
"Shall we help her, Berenice?" Theophilus asked.
"In good time, Theo-in good time," said the baroness, quickly. "Not yet, I think?"
"Quite right," said Theophilus. There are other methods, without resorting to herbs and insects..."
"You'll tell me of them?" Althea asked. "For Istvan and me-you'll teach us? Once we leave you, we're on our own again. We've so much to learn, and there's so little time."
"But you need so little teaching, you two," said Theophilus kindly. "Don't worry, though. We'll teach you -what we can."
"And the aphrodisiacs? Where can one get these? I mean-for later... for years later, when one wants them," she faltered. "I won't be young for ever, you know."
Istvan grinned, feeling himself included in the girl's request.
"We're never without our supplies," Berenice confessed. "We write home, to this and to that village in the jungles-and they send us the things we want."
"But perhaps-if you gave me just the right things, I could overcome this collapse that exhausts me so, after I've come for the first time."
"Just have patience, Althea. Well see. We'll see. But is there anything wrong, then, with Istvan?"
Istvan chuckled out loud.
"If there is, I'm not being bothered by any complaints up to now," he said. Even as he listened to their chatter, he could feel the surge of desire repossessing his scrotum and exciting the root of his rod.
"Have you known Istvan long?" asked the baroness.
"No, madame. Not long at all. We met, for the first time, in Lucerne-just two days ago," she confessed.
"So keen on him? So soon?"
"Madame, with men you know in a flash."
"You know, then?"
"Past all shadow of doubt. But you see, this tour must end. In two weeks-three weeks, then-we part from all of you-all you wonderful people. People 1 could scarcely have dreamed could exist. We must go on. Other tours. Other countries. Istvan, perhaps, with some other guide; me, with some other driver. I don't want it so. But that's the way the ball's going to 000005."
"And you would remain-a libertine?" asked Heine.
"If Istvan would allow it-and if he were to be one with me," she said.
"So? Istvan, what do you say to that?" asked Theophilus.
"About becoming a libertine? Fine! I'm all for it, With one proviso, though-that I pick my company. And that's not going to be easy-you see, I'm afraid I started in too close to the top."
The baroness smiled at the implied compliment both to herself and to her guests.
Only she knew what was still to come...