'This is Alexandra.'
Therese is about twenty, with straight black hair drawn back from her oval face. She has light blue eyes. Her skin is pink and her hands are long. In her white undergarments, which are trimmed with peach-coloured lace, her figure is fuller than Alexandra's and tends to puppy-fat. She has a large nose, prominent red lips, and a self- contained way of holding herself. She has small pointed breasts. I stipulated the colouring of the girl and the size of her breasts in my note to Frau Schmetter-ling. In this familiar ambience I become relaxed and my mood seems to be transmitting itself to Alexandra, who remains, however, a trifle ill-at-ease and begins to move around the room looking at pictures and ornaments. Therese hides her amusement. All three shadows are thrown onto the large autumnal flowers of the wall-paper. Alexandra is a little taller than Therese. Old Papadakis is scowling at me. 'What is it?' I ask him. 'You should let me fetch the doctor,' he says. 'You are not in your right mind. You are weak. You should rest. You are overtaxing yourself.' Is he trying to persuade me to dependency upon him? He cannot be genuinely concerned. I do not employ him for that. 'Go to the village,' I tell him. 'Get me something with cocaine in it.' He mutters in Greek. 'The doctor will give me morphine,' I say. 'It will dull my brain. I need my wits. Can't you see I'm doing something worthwhile again?' I hold up the pages. 'These are my memoirs. You are mentioned in them. You should be pleased.' He comes forward as if to see what I have written. I close the cover. 'Not yet. They will be published when I am dead. Perhaps when you are dead, too.' Therese says to Alexandra: 'Is this the first time you have been here?'
'Yes,' says Alexandra. 'And you? How long have you worked here?'
'Two years this Christmas,' says Therese. 'I was an artists' model in Prague, for paintings as well as photographs. Will this be your first time?'
'With a lady?' says Alexandra. The rose silk hisses. 'No. In a brothel, yes.'
'And your first time with both a lady and a gentleman,' I remind her gently.
'Yes.'
An encouraging smile from Therese. 'You will like it. It is my favourite thing. You mustn't be afraid.'
'I'm not afraid,' said Alexandra removing her cape. She stares hard at Therese. 'I am looking forward to it. The surroundings are new to me, that's all.' She keeps her distance from Therese, who makes a kind-hearted effort to be pleasant to her. In the past it was Alexandra who took the initiative with her schoolfriends. 'What are you receiving for your services?' she asks suddenly. Therese is surprised, answering mildly. 'M'sieu has confirmed the usual arrangements with Frau Schmetterling, I think.'
'Therese is on a fixed weekly income,' I say. 'It is one of the benefits Frau Schmetterling offers to those who want to work here. It is a form of security. Part of the money is paid directly, art is kept in a savings account.'
'You're looked after well, then,' says Alexandra. 'Safer than Carriage, even.'
'Far safer,' says Therese. She continues to assume that Alexandra is shy. 'Your dress is lovely. Levantine silk, isn't it?'
'Thank you.' Suddenly Alexandra puts down her glass and crosses to Therese, embracing her and kissing her full on the mouth. Therese is a little taken aback. Alexandra grins. 'You're lovely, too. You're exactly my type, did you know? Did Ricky ask for you specially?' Therese begins to relax, as if she now has a notion of what is expected of her. She makes no further attempts to put Alexandra at her ease. 'I'm glad I appeal to you.' There is a touch of irony, a swift glance towards me, but I refuse a part. 'I've always longed to meet a real whore,' murmurs Alexandra, stroking Therese's hair. She puts an arm around the girl's shoulders and leads her to the sideboard. 'Pour us another drink, Ricky. I want you to make love to Therese first.' Her tone implores but her stance commands. 'I'll wait here.' She indicates a gilded chair padded with brown velvet. She has the manner of a determined little girl setting out the rules of a dolls' game. Not for the first time I find this aspect of her character faintly disconcerting. She seems almost prim. As I finish my drink Therese begins to remove her chemise, her pantaloons, her cherry-coloured stockings. I feel some trepidation, not for the action I am about to take but for the spirit in which I shall commit myself to the performance. Alexandra has discovered a closet. I remove my jacket and hand it to her. I remove my waistcoat, my tie and my shirt. All are neatly stowed by Alexandra. I lower my trousers and these she folds. I take off my socks, my underpants. Alexandra steps back from me and I turn towards the bed. Therese is also naked, with her hair loosened and her head propped against the pillows. She has become professional; her pink body waits for me. Her lips are slightly parted, her eyes hooded. There is no apparent difference between her artful desire and Alexandra's blind passion. If I was not aware that Therese was a whore I would believe that she yearned for me alone. Her youthful skin might never have known a man's touch. Do all women slide so indiscriminately into lust? How are they taught such things? I kiss Therese's cheeks, her neck. She moans. I kiss her soft shoulders, her breasts, her stomach. She shudders. Her calf presses against my penis. I kiss her face again. Her tongue is hot on my neck, her hand finds my penis and testicles and fondles them. I hear silk behind me, but I do not turn. I press my fingers into Therese's cunt. It is already wet. I push her legs apart and she draws me into her. Her body is more generous than Alexandra's, but Therese cannot reproduce that thrilling urgency, that desperation of movement which removes us entirely from the world of ordinary perception. Several years ago, at the Villa D'Este, or rather in the little ravine which runs below it and where there is an older garden, some ancient Emperor's villa, I came upon a very respectable young couple walking there under the trees amongst the toppled columns and broken marble and was certain that I recognised the modestly dressed wife as a whore I had once visited regularly. Then she had been an unreal creature. Now she was a perfectly ordinary bourgeoise. The transformation was considerable. I lifted my hat and introduced myself, saying that I thought we were acquainted. I was in no doubt that it was she. The couple had given some ordinary Roman name and she had politely denied knowing me. But I had confirmed her identity for myself. She was the same nameless child I had fucked at least a score of times at the brothel in Rosenstrasse. I had paid, moreover, a great deal of money for the privilege. Then she had never spoken and it was said by some that she was dumb. Frau Schmetterling had prized her above her other girls at that time; she had referred to this wonderful beauty as her 'niece' and had offered her only to customers for whom she had a special affection. Whenever one went to her room it would always be the same. The draperies would be of darker than usual material and the only light would come from a large candle in a glass funnel, creating all kinds of peculiar, agitated shadows. The nymph would lie upon grey velvet, immobile and passive. About her waist, on a chain as a necklace might be worn, would be hung a massive insect, at least four inches long, about two inches thick, with a wing-span of five inches. The insect's body was carved out of morbid green obsidian, and its wings gave the impression of transparency, being made of crystal and silver. Imbedded as markings on its head and carapace were various murky gems: agates, carnelians and discoloured pearls. This splendid, sickly fly would rest upon her swarthy flesh as if about to dine. From her throat would be suspended a chain of heavy gold, a series of linked scarabs, Egyptianate and massive, reaching to a point just short of centre between her small, rouged breasts. One of her soft arms would be bare, but the other would have on it a gold and amethyst bracelet forming two intertwined serpents, and on her left ankle would be a solid bangle of gold, set with a single large ruby, matched by a similar ring on her fourth toe. She had a variety of small rings on her thumbs and fingers, and the hardness of the gold accentuated the delicacy and fragility of her youth.
As an old friend of Frau Schmetterling I had been allowed to enjoy that child on a number of occasions but I believe my chief delight in her came not from her body, which was delicious, but from a particular quality of mind she possessed: she seemed half-mad. Just as with Alexandra, for whom I have of course far more responsibility, the child had been consumed by a subtle urgency, an almost inhuman sexuality, which had in it a peculiar and perhaps unwholesome intelligence. It was as if she had come into the world with her intellect and her appetites fully-formed, with a pagan greed for a conscious and specific form of sensual experience which never waned and was yet never completely satisfied; a mind which was unsleepingly aware of itself, its surroundings, of those souls who came into its sphere. She had feasted upon me during the course of a season and I had been powerless for every second I had spent in her company; as drained and as miserable when I departed from her as I was enriched and inspired when with her. She had possessed virtually no reality for me. I had never attempted to converse with her. I had come and gone in silence, almost in secret. The business had taken on the atmosphere of a shameful liaison. By the end of that season I had become exhausted and my morale was in ruins. Yet that same insect-child who had so sapped my vitality was now an ordinary young woman walking with her husband at Tivoli on a Sunday afternoon. Had she been in any way responsible, then, for my condition? Or had I been entirely a victim of my own dreams? So I wonder as I move my body in and out of Therese, forcing myself not to become afraid of the girl who sits a few feet away from me drinking her absinthe and watching me with eyes which neither reflect nor absorb the light: blank eyes, lost entirely in a universe of private fantasy. Yet will she always be like
