Chapter 2
It had been Uncle Harris' ambition to be an historian but for the first thirty-five years of his adult life he had been a lawyer. That was the family business. My grandfather had been a lawyer and my father, before he was drowned, was also a lawyer, although he practiced in England and not in the United States. Uncle Harris had been on the point of retiring for many years, but it was only after my arrival that he finally did so. At that point in his life, he moved from law into history like a tornado.
He spent each morning now in his library, making notes for the first section of his great work.
His progress was slow, but it was the first section, he explained on many occasions to his sisters, which would give the stamp of originality to the whole work. The first section (to be entitled "The Concept of History") was to be a kind of telescope with subtly arranged lenses which for the first time would make it possible for contemporary man to look at the past and see it in its true perspective. That was why he would feel justified in spending even ten years in its preparation. For the rest of the work, he would merely have to train his powerful telescope on the works of his predecessors, an undertaking which would not take more than three years, less likely, to rid civilization for once and for all of a turgid mass of ancestral delusions. When he spoke, he was very impressive, and my aunts and their friends were duly impressed.
"It's his trained mind," the goldfish said apocalyptically.
The only person in our circle of acquaintances who did not appear the least impressed by my uncle's historical acumen was his crippled friend, Elmer Lewis. This annoyed Uncle Harris because he was well aware that Lewis was no fool. It was all very well to impress the bluebell and the goldfish and the inconsequential ladies and gentlemen who came to take tea with them, but after all Uncle Harris was intelligent enough to realize that such praise meant very little. Lewis was different, for he had traveled widely in his youth before his accident and, since then, for over twenty years, he had devoted most of his time to reading. And Lewis made no secret that he considered Uncle Harris' theory of history a piece of evangelical nonsense. Periodically, therefore, Uncle Harris could not resist attempting to convert his friend to his own opinion.
One summer evening more than two years after Anna came to us, Uncle Harris and Elmer Lewis joined the rest of us in the sitting room. They had been playing chess, and from the condescending manner in which my uncle ushered his friend into the room I surmised that Uncle Harris had won. The goldfish and the bluebell greeted Lewis cordially. Whenever he came they went out of their way to mother him.
Anna, who had been sitting by the window with me, went out of the room after a moment to make some cocoa for us. The rest of the servants had already retired.
"She's such a sweet girl," the bluebell said.
Uncle Harris nodded. "Yes," he said. "It's a pity she's a Jew."
The goldfish and the bluebell looked at the carpet. I said nothing because at twelve years of age I was not expected to say anything, but I thought that if that was so then I wanted to be a Jew also so that nothing could ever come between us.
As for Lewis, he was looking angrily at my uncle.
"Why?" he said. "What possible difference can it make?"
"Read history," Uncle Harris said.
"I have been reading history for forty years," Lewis said drily.
Uncle Harris smiled and a faint flush of ex citement came to the cheeks of the bluebell and the goldfish. Lewis was only a boy, a dear sweet boy, to be sure, but so innocent and naive beside the man who was still the titular head of the family law business!
"My dear Elmer," Uncle Harris said, "in all honesty I think you must bow to my judgment in matters of history. Don't take offense if I suggest that there is only one scientific way of looking at history."
"Abracadabra," Lewis said.
Uncle Harris flushed.
"I have told you before," he said, controlling himself with some difficulty, "that the greatest impediment to the true understanding of history is ancestor-worship. It normally takes the form of awe at old things, a sentimental reverence for trinkets...."
"What exactly are you trying to prove, Harris?"
"I don't intend to say any more at the moment than that the Jews are the epitome of what I'm talking about," Uncle Harris said. "They are a decadent race whose whole orientation is unconscious and uncreative."
Lewis shook his head impatiently.
"Decadent, uncreative? What on earth do your words mean? Look at Anna, my God! Is she decadent or uncreative? You are the ancestor-worshipper, Harris. You've got direct contrary evidence in front of your eyes but you won't see it! You're not an historian, Harris. You're an evangelist!"
If the goldfish and the bluebell had been birds they would have twittered.
"Stuff and nonsense!" Uncle Harris ex ploded. "Take my elms! Take my 'awe-inspiring' elms! Where's my ancestor-worship towards them, eh? No, Elmer. My attitude is scientific. To me, they are timber!"
"Not yet, I hope," Lewis said with a smile.
"As soon as I give the word!" Uncle Harris said.
"Now, now, Harris," the goldfish said. "The poor trees!"
"Yes, Jenny, timber! Timber that will go to create ships, bridges, the structures of civilization. That is progress, a conscious purpose, a movement towards an ideal! I must say I'm surprised and disappointed, Elmer, that you should accuse me of the very attitude I have struggled against all my life!"
"I'm sure Elmer doesn't mean that, Harris!" the goldfish said from her best of all possible worlds.
"The most dangerous attitudes are the unconscious ones," Lewis said quietly.
And there the conversation ended because Anna entered the room carrying a big yellow jug of hot cocoa and the company remembered that she was the person around whom the argument revolved.
We drank our cocoa in silence. I don't know whether Anna sensed she had interrupted something, but as soon as I had finished my cocoa she suggested it was time I went to bed.
"Yes, my lad," Uncle Harris said. "Run along with Anna now. It will be a fine day tomorrow."
I shook hands with Elmer Lewis. I did not need to remember to do it from politeness. It was as though he had fought for me. Then I kissed my aunts and followed Anna from the room.
Before Anna turned the light out, I said: "Anna, could I become a Jew?"
She flushed and looked at me questioningly.
"I suppose you could if you wanted to," she said slowly after a moment's hesitation. "Why?"
"Oh, I don't know," I said. "Can I brush your hair, Anna?"
"Not tonight," she said, and when I was silent, she said: "Go to sleep like a good boy. Good night."
"Good night...."
The door closed behind her. I was left alone with my thoughts. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like if Anna one day did not resist, if, as my fingers caressed the creamy inner surface of one thigh, slightly above the knee, she relaxed instead of stiffening, allowing her thighs to fall open like a book with smooth pages-what then? There came a softness at the tips of my fingers, a wet breaking softness under a mat of fragile hair. What was it she had deep there at her pit, between her legs, like a furry animal? Did it have a life of its own? Was it a strange beast lying in wait with its heaped softness simply bait for the unwary? I would have given anything to know. I fell asleep, a curtain of softness descending over my senses. My last image was of Anna, her head tilted back, her breasts erect, and, like a vast portal at which I longed to prostrate myself, the soft yet muscled forward thrust of her dusky white thighs....
Dawn broke early. Uncle Harris was down before me with the rods and the nets.
"Take your breakfast quickly," he said. "There's no time like early morning."
When I had finished eating, the horses were saddled and ready. We rode out along the front driveway as the sun rose over the elms. Uncle Harris did not speak until we had left the park.
"There'll be a dollar for every fish you catch," he said. "If you can land 'em as your father did you'll be independent!" He smiled at me. "But no minnows," he added.
I caught nothing though we remained there for three hours. My mind was not on it.
"Might as well get back early," he said.
We rode back in silence.
It was mid-morning when we arrived. The sun was very strong and my aunts were sitting under a large umbrella on the verandah. I went in search of Anna immediately. Uncle Harris himself seemed preoccupied and did not detain me. She was not at the house.
The bluebell said that she'd seen her go out an hour ago.
I ran all the way to the copse, and then, wanting to surprise her, I crawled silently through the bushes towards the clearing.
A strange sound made me hesitate. It sounded as though Anna had screamed, not in fear or pain, but catching her breath, almost quietly. I crawled forward on my stomach to the rim of the clearing.
And then I saw them together, Anna and the man whom I recognized as the half-caste who worked for Elmer Lewis, a man called Inez, and he was doing something strange and terrible to her and she was not resisting, for her smooth, olive-colored legs were stark naked from ankle to thigh, the knees crooked in the air nervously at either side of him and her bare buttocks twitching on a bed of dead leaves. It was as though under the naked front of the man she were dying a strange death to which she gave herself up completely.
I watched in silence, digging my nails into a broken branch which lay in front of me.
Their breath came hurriedly, in pants and grunts, the man boring down into her with his strong yellow-white shaft and her belly quivering like a jelly between his thrusts. I watched and listened bitterly to the muffled dunt of her heels on the leaves, and the shifting twitch of her cleanly curved lower torso as it swayed ecstatically beneath him.
I knew that Anna was being unfaithful to me. This was what I should have been able to do to her. It was towards this I had been unconsciously moving in my daring caresses. And here, insolently, for the man seemed almost detached as he spoiled my beautiful Anna, was this other male, his hairy front hovering like a falcon about to strike, and Anna, ecstatic, like a dying heron beneath him. It came as a revelation.
This was the thing which I knew existed but had not been able to imagine, the practical maturity towards which my own longing was directed, the thing to which grownups referred only by innuendo. Anna was doing it! I watched the man, his ragged trousers thrust down about his ankles, embedded in her. At that moment I swore that I would kill Inez....
But I was unable to tear myself away. I watched, my emotions a mixture of fascination and horror.
Every so often, the hot wet mesh of their pubic parts separated a matter of inches and I had the impression of two hairy maws breaking wetly, the hard cruel tongue of one thrust to the hilt in the soft gullet of the other, and extracted, dripping with the other's dying. Anna's smooth legs were delirious, and each time he drew away from her, her soft buttocks rose from the bed of leaves against which they had been clamped during his downward pressure and seemed to follow, stuck over by a brown leaf or two, his upward movement, as though reluctant to allow him to escape. Her brassiere and blouse lay crushed at her throat and her beautiful breasts, the nipples pointing skywards, were free one moment and trembling and crushed under his hairy chest the next.
How I hated him!
And then, no doubt feeling her climax draw near, her hands ran electrically down his back towards the purposive tight bunch of his buttocks, encouraging him to complete his violation of her. I was sick with the knowledge of her willing surrender.
Slowly, I turned away from the pale gleam of their wrestling flesh and crept back towards the footpath. How could Anna do that thing which everyone was ashamed to speak of? Was it because she was a Jew? I don't know why I didn't cry or why, when I came to the house, I walked round about it and up the front driveway toward the elms. I looked up out of my own confusion at the sound of rending wood.
One of the elms was tottering. It creaked, lurched and fell in a slow swishing of leaves, raising dust, directly across the driveway. And then I heard the voices of Uncle Harris and two of the stablemen. I ran forward towards the tree and as I came close Uncle Harris and the two men appeared from behind the foliage and climbed across the felled trunk. The two men were carrying axes and a two-handed saw.
It was our tree, the highest of them, into which Anna had cut our initials two years before.
My uncle laughed at my bewilderment. He put his arm around my shoulders and steered me back towards the house.
"How are the mighty fallen!" he said with a laugh. "You see, my lad," he continued when I did not answer, "that was the highest elm for miles around. No one but didn't tell me that. Harris, they said, that tree must be as old as Moses! Well, so it might at that. But what did that prove? To me it proved only that those who said it were a pack of sentimental nincompoops! Because you see, my lad, the old must give place to the new just as the fit must survive. History proves that. That is progress. All in all, that is America, a country of which you'll learn to be proud! I want you to remember. The old is destroyed to create the new. Treat with contempt those jackasses who want you to grovel before what's old an' remember what's old's likely to be decadent an' the decadent's no farther from death than a fly's spit!"
"But the tree, Uncle Harris! It was a beautiful tree!"
"It was an old tree, boy. People opinioned it beautiful. That's as may be. I know now that it's a useful tree." He gripped my shoulder. "Don't let them fool you, lad!"
I did not answer and we walked on in silence.
Suddenly he said: "But where's your pretty Anna? I thought you were going to look for her?"
Impulsively, I twisted away from under his arm.
"Look for her yourself!" I cried. "She's in the copse with a man!"
As I ran from him towards the house, the tears were streaming down my face.
In the evening I became oppressed by a sense of guilt. Anna's faithlessness, coupled in my mind with what I considered her great daring, was a very grand thing as compared with my mean betrayal of her secret ... I felt an overpowering need to confess to her, but when, at last, bedtime came and I was alone with her, I was afraid.
She kissed me good night as usual and I listened to her footsteps as they died away along the corridor.
I could not sleep. I felt that my betrayal of her was only a beginning and that my inability to confess to her so that she would know her secret was discovered and guard against it was like diving in water and not knowing except for the knowledge of the descent itself and the sight of your own hands pallid in water and over-reaching, like broken rudders.
Uncle Harris had not appeared since I ran away from him. He was absent at lunch and at dinner. My aunts said that he had decided suddenly to go into town. They did not know why. From Anna's face I learned nothing. She was as calm and lovely as ever, and yet a few hours before I had seen her naked and writhing in her sweat below the man. Occasionally during those two meals she turned suddenly and saw that I was looking at her. I flushed and turned away.
An hour passed very slowly and I began to know that I would not sleep until I had told Anna what I had done. Perhaps she would forgive me. I would cry and plead with her until she did. All I had to do was to wait until she came upstairs again to go to bed and then I would go to her room.
At eleven o'clock it began to rain heavily.
Some time afterwards, I heard her footsteps pass along the corridor and then the noise of her door opening and closing behind her.
I lay still and waited. The rain beating heavily on the windowpanes filled me with a vague dread of the dark corridor.
When finally I was about to reach forward with my hand and open the door I became aware that someone was on the other side with only the thickness of the door between us. I could hear his breathing. I should have screamed if whoever it was had not moved away at that moment. The footsteps went along the corridor and once again Anna's door opened and closed.
Who was it? Anna's lover? Inez? A flush of utter hatred passed through me.
Without thinking, I went over to the wardrobe and put on my dressing gown. Then I left my own room quietly and crossed the corridor to the little bathroom beside Anna's room. I moved as quietly as an animal. Inside, I snibbed the door and, without putting on the light, dropped on my knees in front of the keyhole of the communicating door between the bathroom and the room where Anna was.
The sight shocked me. Anna, her flimsy nightdress ripped, exposing her full lovely breasts, was cowering away from Uncle Harris who was standing, still wearing his riding breeches, his feet apart, at about two yards distance from her. He threw a bundle towards her which fell to the floor at her feet, and then he stood watching her, his hands, hanging down in front of him, flexing a riding crop. On Anna's face was an expression of horror.
He said something and she looked down at the bundle.
He was speaking to her quietly and she seemed to be protesting. The word "harlot" came to me. He listened to her, a small smile playing on his lips, and his right hand moved round to his side with the riding crop and he flicked it from time to time against his leather riding boot.
As I could scarcely hear what they were saying, it was like a mime show, the man cool and relentless, the woman desperate. The riding crop moved outwards and pointed at the bundle.
Anna seemed to catch her breath and she shook her head frantically. Uncle Harris spoke. The riding crop pointed again and moved up and down in a small arc.
And then, lowering her terrified eyes and staring at the bundle, Anna divested herself of her nightdress and stood bare naked in front of him. She was trembling.
It was the first time I had seen her naked.
Her slim olive shoulders, smooth as satin, were slightly hunched, as though she expected to be attacked, and in that posture her wonderful young tawny breasts with nipples darker, more brick-red, than a rose, were partly obscured from my line of vision. I gazed fascinated at the superbly rounded turn of her sleek belly muscles, of the buttocks tight but full, at the thighs, the dull white inner surfaces of her soft thighs and the strong black-haired mound which I had seen open like red spitting jaws during the morning. So beautiful was she with her black hair falling to her shoulders and her long, slightly yellowish legs apart and run through by the nervosity of a timid animal, that for the moment I forgot all about Uncle Harris. I was utterly weak and doting at the sight of her.
It was only when he moved again, pointing again towards the bundle with the riding crop, that the reality of the situation reimpressed itself upon me.
She was stooping now, undoing the bundle. I fixed my eyes on the pale white thighs below the buttocks, catching a glimpse between her legs of the soft-haired cleft.
The first item that came to her hand was a black suspender belt. She looked at Uncle Harris hesitantly. He nodded grimly.
Slowly she slung it about her golden belly and hooked it at the soft left side of her waist. Four black elastic straps, each bearing a silver buckle, flapped at her thighs.
Uncle Harris said something, I think to tell her to be quick.
Sheer black silk stockings next. She sat on the edge of the bed to put them on.
Uncle Harris leaned over the bundle and extracted a pair of very high-heeled, patent black leather shoes with complicated ankle straps. He threw them in front of her and she put them on.
He must have ordered her to stand up.
The high heels had the effect of giving a forward thrust to the mound and thighs, like a hungry, seductive gesture, and the two tightened straps at the front framed the sex, black as seal-skin with a thin, coral-red slit.
The next thing he threw to her was a mask, a simple mask of black velvet, as jet black as her pubic hairs.
He flicked the cloth which had contained these things aside with his riding crop.
He spoke again.
Hesitantly, she went to her dressing table, the supple movement of her gleaming flesh accentuated by the black accouterments. She returned with a lipstick.
He pointed with his riding crop at her breasts.
Slowly, with obvious reluctance, I watched her slender hand, like a butterfly, hover the warm mould of her breasts, and then, slowly, with a care that surprised me, I watched her redden her nipples to a bright carmine. They stood out like a shock against the muddy whiteness of her flesh.
He pointed to a chair.
She stood up on it, displaying her entire wonderful body. And as I felt the dull throb of excitement within myself, I began to understand my uncle's insistence on these elaborate preparations. For Anna had been transformed into a naked sexual object, a woman, a gleaming torso subtly exhibited to the eyes of her despoiler.
But it was not over yet.
Taking the lipstick himself, he walked across to her, and, opening her sex with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, he applied the carmine to the wet crescents of her labia. Shock red through shock black-he stood back to examine his handiwork.
He moved over to the fireplace, thrust his hand up the chimney, and examined the soot on his palm and fingers. Returning to her then, he touched it lightly on the insides of her thighs close to the sex. The application of the soot heightened the grotto-like impression that the smooth thighs lent to the mound, shadowing, accentuating, the carmine-red clitoris which, a few moments before, before the application of the greasy lipstick, had been the color of a sea-urchin's flesh.
It was over. She was naked, or nearly naked, a torso ready for the sacrifice.
His first act was to move close to her, grip her firmly by her swelling buttocks, and thrust his face, the mouth open and lascivious, at her groin.
She tottered on the chair. But his mouth was glued firmly amongst her pubic hairs and his red cheeks were contained by the white thighs.
Anna had closed her eyes and thrust her hands up to cover her face. She needn't have, for it was already masked with the velvet mask.
He sucked at her for some minutes and when his face came away the bottom part was smudged over by lipstick. He removed this with a white handkerchief.
Then he must have ordered her to pose for him, for, without warning, she went into innumerable alluring poses. I marveled at her beauty.
Another gesture with the riding crop.
Slowly, she climbed off the chair, turned, and stooping slightly, gripped the bottom board of the bed, so that her creamy round buttocks, stark white above the black stockings and scored by the black straps of the garterbelt, were presented to him. He said something. She nodded miserably, her long black hair cascading down between her beautiful white arms to the level of her soft pulsing belly. I would have liked to put my own head there, deep in its softness.
More quickly than I would have imagined possible, Uncle Harris stripped himself naked. His member was half hard and his sinuous white right arm swung in a half circle through the air, testing the resiliency of the riding crop.
My eyes returned to Anna. Her buttocks were quivering with fright and her superb carmine-tipped breasts rose and fell with her breathing. "Ready?"
It was the first distinct word which came to me through the door.
Without looking around, Anna nodded miserably.
After that he didn't hesitate. The crop swung through the air and struck the soft flesh of her beautiful buttocks viciously. She shuddered, her whole warm torso involved in the radiating pain of the blow. And again, this time pausing after the stroke to examine the thin red weal which the crop had made on her shuddering flesh. And then he set to work seriously. Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. He hesitated. Anna had slipped down to her knees, all huddled up, obviously in great pain.
Brutally, he grabbed her by the hair of her head and threw her backwards over the bed. As it happened, her slender legs pointed towards me, and, as they had fallen apart, I was confronted by the warm, lipstick-soiled clot of hairs at her crotch. Only momentarily, however, for my uncle after one cruel stroke of the crop right at the crux of her thighs could contain himself no longer. With a guttural croak of lust he threw himself huge and rampant on top of her, forcing her thighs wide apart with the bony blades of his own, at the same time bringing down his slack, twisted mouth on one bright red teat which disappeared in his gullet. I watched her struggle helplessly, her legs flapping under him like broken fins, and then, all of a sudden, he bellowed like a bull and spurted his old man's passion deep in her womb. He was on his feet in a trice, and a few minutes later, while Anna who had turned over, her white buttocks bleeding onto the black harness, was still weeping on the bed, was fully dressed and addressing words to her again. I suppose she was listening, but she made no move to turn around and face him.
He spoke for at least five minutes, eying her balefully from where he stood, fully dressed, flicking the riding crop once again against his boot, and then he turned on his heel and left the room. I heard his footsteps in the corridor again. I waited awhile at the keyhole, watching Anna cry. How slack and white her whole torso looked with its provocative black trappings. Even now the high-heeled shoes, strapped to her slim ankles, were on her. One of the stockings was laddered, but otherwise the whole undignified harness was in place. That scene, relived a hundred times in memory, has been an object lesson for me.
Silently I went out into the corridor.
Terror in footsteps receding, in the opaque glimmer of the corridor-end window, in the wet sound of the night, in my own heartbeats as I pressed my ear against the panel of Anna's door, and then the small sound of her sobbing through the wood-quietly, unable to suppress altogether the strange elation I felt, I opened the door. She lay there still where he had left her, her soft body bereft of all purpose, quivering with shame and outrage.
"Anna!"
I ran over to the bed and pulled her face round to me. It came as a shock to look direct ly at the black velvet mask with its diagonal almond-shaped slits, the eyes like dark wet pools glimmering below.
"Oh, Anna, I'm sorry!"
It was a long time before she spoke and then her voice was subdued and toneless. We were lying in the soft warm darkness of her bed, my naked body pressed close to hers, except where I felt the stockings and the garterbelt she hadn't bothered to remove, and my head was on her shoulder and my hands clutched at the soft odorous flesh of her armpits.
As she had emerged from the copse in the morning, she had noticed Uncle Harris standing under a tree not far away. He was smoking and he was watching her. She passed quite close to him but he made no move to restrain her. As she walked away from him towards the house she felt his eyes following her and she was frightened.
Then he did not appear all day and she was sure something was going to happen.
She had just got into bed and turned off the light when Uncle Harris entered the room. He did not knock. Without warning he switched on the light. He carried a riding crop and the bundle and he was breathing heavily. She knew at once what it was he wanted to do. She told him to get out but he laughed and said she need not pretend to be virtuous to him. He knew. He might have known before. She was a slut, a common little whore whom he had fed and protected. And before the night was out he was going to show her what a whore she was. He dragged her from the bed, tearing the flimsy nightdress away from her trembling breasts.
"But if you had screamed, Anna!"
"He said he would have me deported."
"Send you away?"
"To Russia. I'm not an American citizen," she said bitterly.
"But you could tell!"
"He is a judge. Who would believe me?"
I said nothing for a moment. With one small hand I was massaging her warm belly. A strange, exciting odor arose from it to my nostrils. She made no move to stop me.
"But you're all right now, Anna," I said at last. "Don't cry any more! I thought he was going to kill you!"
She seemed even to like my soft caress.
There was a strange harshness in Anna's laugh.
"Do you think he won't come again? He'll come every night now! He said I would have to get used to it. Every night now I'll have to lie awake and wait for him to come until I can't stand it any longer and then when I'm desperate enough I'll kill myself!"
"No, Anna!"
Even in the darkness I felt she was looking at me almost hatefully. My hand froze just above the matted hairs of her lower belly.
"No, Anna!" she repeated derisively. "What then? Shall I kill him?"
"Would you?" I said nervously.
All this talk of killing frightened me and fascinated me at the same time. It was part of a new strangeness which surrounded Anna. I remembered what I had seen in the copse. Was Anna different from other women? Were all women like that?
"Why not?" she answered coldly. "Why shouldn't I kill him? Do you think I like him doing that to me? I hate him!"
"Let me kill him, Anna!"
The words seemed to have spoken themselves. But remembering my thoughts on Inez during the day, I was only half terrified at what I had said.
She laughed and ruffled my hair. It was a tired laugh. My hands twitched again near her hot, hairy chevron.
"My little Apache!" she said. "If only you were a man and not a little boy!"
"I'm not so little! I could do it!"
Part of myself remained detached, listening, like a witness.
"Silly boy! Why should you kill your own uncle? He's kind to you...."
"Because I hate him too and it was my fault!"
"Your fault! How?"
I was trembling as I told her what I had done.
For long minutes she said nothing and I was conscious again of the rain on the window. I closed my eyes to shut everything out of myself and I became gradually more intensely aware of the soft shock of naked flesh against my own. On the tender undersurface of my right wrist, where the veins pulse, I was aware of the hot bowl of her young, sweat-lathered, outraged belly-my fingers were now amongst her pubic hairs-as it rose and fell with her breathing. Her strange female odor entering at my tense nostrils seemed to enter my very veins like a paralyzing drug and I was over come-a dull, witless sensation at my groin by a terrible lassitude. I felt a terrible need to be absorbed by her.
"You!" she whispered softly.
"It was the tree, Anna," I said tonelessly. "He was cutting down our tree...."
She did not seem to hear me. My slack lips opened near her armpit and, breathing inwards deeply, I sought to annihilate myself with her odor. Seconds passed, the rain shattering against the window in gusts.
"And you could do it...."
Her hand pressed mine against the wettened hairs of her sex.
"Nothing would happen to you...."
I didn't answer. The sudden utter knowledge of her warm protective nakedness had driven all resistance from me. She was looking straight up into the darkness.
Her voice came to me.
"You want to be mine, don't you, Saul?"
I rubbed my face against the warm plasticity of her breasts.
"And you will do it, won't you?"
When I didn't answer she went on in firmer tones: "You must do it for me because then I'll be able to forgive you for what you did and everything will be all right again, everything. You must...."
I had closed my eyes again and I said "yes" over and over again until it became easy to say it and I was an outlaw in her world with her.
"You love me, don't you, Saul?"
In the silence, in spite of my terrible promise, I felt warm and sure, as though in a physical way through contact with her warm, wounded body I were drawing on her courage and her purpose. She was turning towards me, her soft thighs coming against my knees. I saw her face smile in the dark. I felt the pressure of her hand on mine.
"Touch me harder...." she whispered.
She guided my fingers between the slime-hung rims of her bristling sex.
"Feel," she said. "Explore it gently...."
The sticky mucous stuff felt like wet, warm cellophane between my fingers. I felt her hand at my genitals, tickling, caressing. She kissed me wetly on the ear.
"Ah! you're too young for that...."
I hardly heard her.
"Show me you love me...." she whispered, and, very gently and persuasively, she took my head between her hands and forced me down until her hot, urgent odor mingled with her wet short hairs at my lips and nostrils. She raised one warm, infinitely heavy thigh, and forcing my mouth against her dripping slit, lowered it again, cutting off sight and sound. I was now lying upside down, far beneath the bedclothes, my own little member between her firm young breasts and my head gripped between the sleek white jaws of her thighs. Vaguely I heard her say that I belonged to her, and then: "Suck ... suck ... suck...." The repeated word measured the rhythm of her desire. All was lost. The nightmare was over, my will first paralyzed and then, as it were, taken over. I loved her frantically. I existed only for her. My mouth devoured her greedily. At that moment I became her creature....
If Uncle Harris had had a sense of smell he would have known that there was more than black currant wine in the glass. And if he had not made a practice of gulping things he would not have swallowed enough rat poison to die.
I think he had a moment of clarity just as he screamed and clutched his throat and staggered back into the armchair. And even then he was not dead and the horrified blue eyes were staring at me out of the helpless body which took such a long time to die. And we looked at each other, both of us horrified at what I had done.
My aunts heard the scream and came downstairs and into the library for the first time I remember without knocking.
"Harris!"
The bluebell was there first slapping the paralyzed hand and calling his name at him, Harris! Harris! Harris! and the goldfish ran to the telephone and called Dr. Meadows to come at once because Harris had had a stroke and then they were both there kneeling and slapping like two old peasant women washing laundry.
The dead man still breathed through a fallen mouth which had lost the power of speech and after a moment the eyes left off staring at me and stared fixedly upwards. Uncle Harris was looking at his eyebrows.
Uncle Harris was dead when Dr. Meadows arrived and the doctor, after examining the body, turned with a serious expression on his face towards my aunts. They were seated stiffly at the edge of the settee and never for a moment had they taken their eyes off their dead brother.
"Jenny," Dr. Meadows said, "I wonder if you and Lutetia would mind making a cup of tea or something? There's nothing more to be done and I would like a word in private with the boy."
They got up obediently, like puppets, and left the room.
"Well, Saul?" he said when they had closed the door behind them.
I felt myself blushing and looked away from him. I didn't speak.
He lit his pipe with great deliberation.
"I wonder if you can tell me anything about it, Saul?"
"How should I know?" I cried. "He was old! How should I know anything about it!"
He did not speak for many minutes. He seemed to be arguing with himself. He walked across to the window, looked out, and teased his long nose between thumb and forefinger. When finally he turned round again, he said quietly: "You will hide this from the others Saul, but you cannot hide it from me. I know. Do you understand? Now will you tell me why?
I was silent.
"I must know why, Saul."
I gritted my teeth and remained silent. We were staring at each other, much like Uncle Harris and I had stared at each other while he slowly died.
"Will you speak?"
I shook my head.
"All right," he said resignedly at last. "Now, run along to bed and as you go tell your aunts that I will make arrangements for an undertaker."
As I opened the door to go out, some childish impulse made me say: "How did he die, Dr. Meadows?"
"Very painfully, I should think," he answered drily.
During the days before the funeral Anna avoided me. I felt like a leper. When I reproached her, she said that it wasn't safe for us to speak. She made me swear over and over again that I would never mention her name in connection with my uncle's death. She explained that they would do nothing to me but that if she were implicated they would take her away and put her in prison. I promised. That night she took me to bed with her and allowed me the same freedom with her body. With each new experience of her I became more entirely her creature.
And then, on the day of the funeral, Anna disappeared.
Driving back from the old town in the company of my aunts, the bluebell told me that Anna was gone. She had eloped, she said, with a servant of Mr. Lewis'.
Inez!
"So soon after his death!" the goldfish said. "It shows you, Lutetia, how you can be mistaken in people!"
"Harris always said...." the bluebell began.
"Where is dear Elmer?" the goldfish said diplomatically, with a glance towards me.
I had seen Elmer Lewis at the graveside, a lonely figure on his crutches. He was the last to leave.
In the house, I ran upstairs to Anna's room. It was utterly empty. I stood there until I saw myself in a mirror.
In my own room I found an envelope with my name written on the outside in her big childish script. I opened it eagerly, but there was nothing inside it but a lock of her soft black hair. I burst into tears.
Two days later the hair sizzled in the match flame and I had to draw my fingers away quickly to avoid burning them, and then I was down on my hands and knees searching frantically to save a few strands but there was nothing left except the pain at my fingers and a few flakes of ash on the lavatory floor....