“Upon your back, woman!”
He pretends a sternness. Meekly I lie and meekly blink, legs straight, apart, and hands behind my head. His stem is up again, protrudes its knob.
“Are we not irreverent after your speakings?”
“What is reverence or irreverence? Do you not know still where you are?”
“I have been at my wanderings, entrapped in corridors, enchanted by demons, chased by shades of dusk, bewildered in the light. Oh woh!”
My little quivered cry. I hold him tight. Smooth in my sleekness is his shaft embedded, peach-clinging of my lovelips round his prick. His balls swing, smack, dividing at my cleft. I hum my breath to his, extend my tongue. In liquid swirls we whirl and thresh our loins.
“ Omni mani padme hum! Oh, love me yet, oh, love me yet!”
“Can this be love that drinks another as a sponge drinks water? So your poet Blake wrote, said, delineated and made plain. Speak, Laura, speak!”
“No, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no yes! Oh, do it on and on and on and on!”
Far falling far we fall, the ceiling spins, the room divides from heaven and from earth, floats in the universe and is dissolved. The cries of curlews sound far and forlorn, the summer dying as must die the swan. Man comes and tills the earth and lies beneath. I, too, have read my verses well, yet would be ploughed by Hari on and on.
“Ha-haaar! Oh yes! Oh, do it to me, do!”
The room returns, the room returns again. The walls enclose. My aunt is furious, strides back and forth, awaiting the undoing of our loins.
“There…you are still now, still. Be still.”
“How beautiful that was! You came so much.”
“Be quiet, girl, quiet-receive your, benedictions. Holy the body as the spirit is. Is it not a privilege to be born, to seek and find again the fount of all your origins?”
“Yes, Hari, yes, but keep it in and spurt your little spurts before we part.”
“Woman you were and are and ever will remain. Succulent your quim, tight your rosette. You were born to it and yet have years to tread.”
“Shall I not learn more, learn more-not?”
“What is to learn?”
He dangles, rises, dresses now with speed.
“I have failed. In all have I failed. I feel sometimes the consciousness of it upon me. My mind is like a rag that would be washed, yet fears the water.”
“How you distinguish still! What is the water to the rag, the rag to water? Only empty your mind of all illusions.”
“Very well. I shall sit with my legs crossed and my hands together as my father taught. Oh, but my quim bubbles merrily with your spendings! I cannot help but wriggle. I shall wet the coverlet.”
“Such a cloak you put around yourself with your prattlings, ever avoiding a falling into mindfulness! I am ready to depart. We may not meet again.”
“Shall we not? I shall not wait upon it for you would laugh and put me back to mindfulness. Even so, you might kiss me.”
“Were we ever from the beginning parted?”
“I do not know. There are ever meetings and partings.” I bend my head back, laughing as we kiss. It hides my tearfulness. I would clutch at him, but no. My aunt would say no. I know she would say no. I am sinful. Am I so? “Am I sinful, Hari? Have I failed?” He pauses at the door. His smile is beatific. “How could you fail, O foolish one, when there was nothing in which to succeed?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
All that was said and done I have told my aunt. My limbs are bathed, my linen changed, my stockings tightened up, boots, shoes, removed for polishing, my trunks now put away.
I am not the same who made my journeys hence, and yet I am the same.
“All that was said, all that was done, is gone away. You may wear this henceforth, Laura, if you wish.”
A sari is laid out, green, threaded gold.
“If I wish.”
“Yes, if you wish. Clocks tick more gently when the day is done. Before the day is done disrobe to stockings, garters, shoes, and put it on.”
“Shall you, then, follow suit?”
“I may. Summer or autumn, winter-cold or spring, it becomes us to behave as we behave, move as we move.”
“Shall I be strapped again?”
“Is there a need for it?”
“No…At least…”
“Then there is no need for it unless you wish it so. There is no harm to wish it so, to feel the stimulation of the fire. Stir your hips gently when you feel its calling. The caressing of the leather at your cheeks betokens the arising of desire, not admonition. In your returning.”
“There are cockles to be had at Brighton. Bright the dresses on parade, a glittering of domes, the cryings of the gulls that sear the air as chalk on slate.”
“Then we will take the carriage in the morning if you wish, pack hampers with delights, make merry of the day.”
“Perhaps we may steal a girl. Say yes! There was one there that I liked. She lingers waiting on the promenade.”
“To steal indeed! What would you have me do? I doubt not your persuasions in such matters, crumpets at your mouth and butter at your lips.”
“I shall hide her in my wardrobe, bring her out at dusk and toy with her.”
“See to it that you become not wanton in your ways! You are ever at beginnings, I at ends. When in time you teach, I shall be the first to listen. Ere you are taken now, sit quietly without consciousness of self before disrobing. All is in the mind and all in Mind contained.”
“What would you have me do, in truth? Some lack of comprehension dulls me still.”
“Light your own lamp. I cannot do it for you. The door has opened but an inch or two to show a chink of light. Dancing in dust and motes of idle thought, you do not see it yet it hangs as clear as day before your eyes.”
“If it is there and I cannot see it, what a nonsense it seems to me! Do you speak in parables, or what?”
“Once I kicked a pebble and it rolled downhill. When I reached the bottom it had gone,” my aunt replies.
“If it is gone, why do you kick it still?”
Father enters, neither grave nor gay, the question- fallen from his lips-is scooped up, washed and ironed and put away.
“Had you not heard what I said, the answer would have been wasted. What an idleness we talk!”
She laughs in saying so, embraces him as I in my turn do. We are come upon ourselves anew, made whole again.
“What happens, father, when we die?”
I loll upon my bed, regard them solemnly, am indolent and stretch my legs, my ankles neatly crossed.
“No birth, no death. So long as you continue with your opposites your mind will be ever moving back and forth as one who sits beside a swing or watches tennis players at their game. All words are but the shadows of the things. All things are but the products of our thoughts. Had we but chance to see this, would we not be happier?”
“I am happy as I am.”
My answer pleases him. He smiles', departs. The arrows will soar forth again, the long shafts sing, The Times
