Chapter 4
At eleven-thirty that night, Candy had another bath-a bubble bath this time steeped with pine-fragrance crystals-and put on the black nightgown she had bought for the occasion. Finally, a fresh application of 'Tabu', and, by five minutes to midnight, she was in her bed, the rose lamp low and some soft music on the radio.
Mr. Christian's room was at the far end of the hall, so she was not overly anxious about his being disturbed-and the idea of giving herself to the Mexican gardener right under his nose was not without a certain excitement itself; in fact, in one sense, that was more or less the whole point.
Promptly, at midnight, Emmanuel arrived, entering across the roof and through Candy's window as they had planned. Candy lay stretched on the bed, the veritable picture of provocation, her blond hair spread out like golden flames across the silken rose-lit pillow, and the black shimmering nightgown clinging to her body, which lay with a slight reptilian curve, lush at the breast and thigh, lithe and willowly along the waist and limbs.
The gardener stared in amazement; it was too much like a movie or a folk-tale for him to fully believe, as the lovely girl stretched out her arms to him, half closed-eyed, whispering:
"Darling, I knew you would come."
He was dressed as he had been earlier in the day; and still wearing his sneakers, he made no noise as he crossed the carpeted floor to the bed and took the girl in his arms.
"Undress quickly, my darling," Candy breathed, "and don't make a sound." She put her finger to her lips and made her eyes wide to emphasize the necessity of this.
Emmanuel was in the bed in a trice and embracing her feverishly, snatching her gown at once up to her shoulders.
"Oh, you do need me so!" Candy was murmuring, as yet not feeling much of anything except the certainty of having to fit this abstraction to the case. But when the gardener's hand closed on her pelvis and into the damp, she stiffened slightly. She was quite prepared to undergo pain for him... but pleasure-she was not sure how that could be a part of the general picture. She seized his hand, contented herself for the moment with the giving of her left breast, to which his mouth was fastened in desperate sucking.
"Oh my baby, my baby," she whispered, stroking his head; but the hot insulting hardness of him between her legs was distracting and destroyed much of the magic of her breast sacrifice. She closed her eyes and called upon Professor Mephesto's words; 'The needs of man are so many... and so aching.' "Oh how you ache for me, my darling!" She flung both arms around his neck, as he found her tiny clitoris again and pummeled it with his calloused fingers, causing her to cry out and stiffen once more in his arms; but now she fought down the desire
to seize his hand, thinking how this was the price of loveliness and the key to the beautiful thrilling privilege of giving fully-and so the gardener would have entered her then, with a terrible thrust to the hilt, so to speak... had not a padded scurrying sounded at that moment in the hall.
"It's Daddy!" cried Candy, in a very odd voice, pushing her hands violently against the gardener's chest. "It's Daddy!"
And true enough, the door burst open at that instant and Mr. Christian appeared, looking like some kind of giant insane lobster-man. At the sight of them he reeled, his face going even purple, then hatefully black, as he crashed sideways against the wall, smashed back by the sheer impact of the spectacle itself. It was not as though he couldn't believe his eyes, for it was a scene that had formed a part of many many of his most lively and hideous dreams-dreams which began with Candy being ravished, first by Mephesto, then by foreigners, then by Negroes, then gorillas, then bulldogs, then donkeys, horses, mules, kangaroos, elephants, rhinos, and finally, in the grand finale, by all of them at once, grouped around different parts of her, though it was (in the finale) Candy who was the aggressor, she who was voraciously ravishing them, frantically forcing the bunched and spurting organs into every orifice, vagina, anus, mouth, ears, nose, etc. He had even dreamed once that she asked him if it were true that there was a small uncovered opening in the pupil of the eye, because if it were, she had said, she would have room there (during the finale) for a praying mantis-so that now, actually confronted by the scene, one would think he was not unprepared, yet as dreams of death do not prepare a young man for the firing squad, but perhaps only build to the terrible intensity of it, so Mr. Christian appeared now to be actually strangling with shock.
"... urg... ack... chchch," were the sounds he produced for the first moment as he clawed at the air in front of him, then he came toward them like a man on stilts, picking up a chair and raising it stiffly over his head.
"DADDY!" cried Candy, but it was too late, for he swung the chair down at Emmanuel, who was leaping from the bed; it missed him and shattered against the bed-post. But he still retained a leg of the chair, and this, as a club, was a more formidable weapon than the chair itself, as he came relentlessly forward after the gardener, managing at last to speak through his grating teeth:
"You... You... You..."
He swung repeatedly at the gardener's head, making little cries of repulsion, as might a woman in having to kill a snake with a stick, and hitting instead in his blind fury the bedroom wall, again and again; but there was no escape for the gardener. Yet he was not prepared to die, and whimpering like a trapped animal he dived for his pile of clothes, near the bed... for it was among them that he had left his trowel, which he managed to recover in a scuttling frenzy and to raise on high-as Mr. Christian lunged in for the kill-and then, before making his getaway, to plunge with a cry more of fear than of triumph, right down through the top of Mr. Christian's black, splitting headache.