The execution was carried out on Friday of the next week. Don Juan was walked up to the gibbet still protesting his innocence mightily.
The black cap was drawn over his head. The hangman's noose was settled over his head and adjusted so that the heavy long knot came directly over his right ear. Then the trap was sprung. The body fell through the trapdoor, jerking suddenly to a stop as it came to the end of the tethered rope on the gibbet. A faint snap was heard as the neck broke. And jutting from his trousers, the onlookers could see that his penis had suddenly grown to an enormous size so that it burst the restraining buttons of the fly flap and sprang out into the open like awhite flagpole.
'That usually happens,' the hangman commented dryly to a newspaperman who the next day wrote his account of the hanging and was the first one to label the young gypsy girl La Tarantula.
And so, with her second and third victims, La Tarantula was born.
CHAPTER THREE
From that day on, the notoriety of La Tarantula was spread over the breadth of Spain. All knew of her talents as a gypsy dancer. Wherever a dancer was required it was she who was called in to supply that part of the entertainment. At the Fairs, at benefits, at special performances where the services of Gypsy Nina de los Peines, the Girl with the High Combs, who was the best singer in all Spain, were required, La Tarantula was called in.
And as her fame grew, La Tarantula became all the more reserved, insofar as men were concerned. Somehow or other, she seemed to sense that the gypsy in her, the wild carefree blood in her made her the superior of the bu'ne, the ordinary gentiles of Spain. And the more she spurned them, the greater grew their desire for her. When she would dance for them, their eyes would follow her every movement, her every nuance of rhythm, and if she smiled at them, they would boast of the fact to their cronies for weeks afterwards.
But she soon discovered that, though the blood in her was gypsy blood, nevertheless, it was human blood. The memory of that wild tumultuous night with the guitarist, Don Juan, remained with her for some time.
But she turned all thoughts of fucking away and concentrated on her dancing. From cafetin to cafetin she danced her way up the pathway of success. And in each place, she attracted another string of admirers who sought her favours. Like the swath of a comet they lay behind her as she shot her way upwards to the zenith. But to none of them did she give her cool body. It seemed as though the glorious fuckfest she had experienced that last night with Don Juan had served to tide her over a drought of men.
But this could not go on for any length of time. Hers was hot, southern blood, Spanish blood, Spanish gypsy blood that burned in her veins.
That was why, one night, after she had spent a severe evening at the Cafe Soledad in Seville on Calle de la Serpiente, the Street of the Serpents, she did as she did.
Lying back on her chaise lounge, her limbs shaking from fatigue, she ruminated on the life she was leading. She looked out of the window that looked down onto the street. Streams of men were winding their way through the street. Men, men, men of all statures and forms and shapes. Men, men, all different yet all the same because all had that with which she had enjoyed herself so immensely.
Suddenly, she called out to her personal maid, 'Cazuela! Cazuela!'
That person came jogging in. She was an evil looking thing. Only one eye gleamed out of her face. The other was only a dead black socket.
You could not tell from looking at her that, at one time, like her mistress, she had been the leading Spanish gypsy in Spain that her roughened toad like skin had once been as velvet-smooth as La Tarantula's, that her shapeless limbs and arms had once been as straight and fine as her mistress's.
Years ago, when she had danced, a lover had beat her up and, in doing so, had kicked her eye out with the heel of his boot. She became unwanted from that day on, as a dancer. But she never slept with another man. Them she hated worse than she hated anything else in the world. She became as complete a man-hater as there was, carrying her hatred to the point of lesbianism. She had learned early in life of the pleasures of woman love and had practiced it incessantly. La Tarantula had picked her up one night, during the early part of her career. And, from her, she learned of the subtle arts of the dancer. For Cazuela taught her everything that she, herself, had known about the art of dancing. Everything she taught her except one thing. About the love of woman for woman, she said nothing. She only bided her time until she could feel that her mistress would be most receptive to its practice. Meanwhile she acted as the personal maid of La Tarantula and taught her all the intricacies of the baile flamenco and the Sevilliana and the baile Malaga, the soleadina and the fandango and the paso doble until La Tarantula became even more adept at them than had been her teacher. Then it was that she had started on the meteoric rise which landed her finally as the star attraction at Cafe de las Flores, the most beautiful cafe on the Street of Serpents in Seville, co-starred with the greatest romantic tenor of Spain, none other than Senor Don Jose Caloro'a himself, from Lima, Peru.
And that was where we found her at the start of this chapter, in her dressing room upstairs from the cafe, resting from her labours after an extremely difficult hour of dancing the paso doble for the customers who had clapped again and again for encores. Next door, in the other dressing-room, she heard Senor Don Jose going through his vocal exercises. Then all was quiet. Then it was that she summoned her maid Cazuela.
'Yes, mistress?' she enquired on entering. She saw that the dancer was lying outstretched in the attitude of complete exhaustion.
'I am tired! so tired!' La Tarantula complained.
'Does my mistress desire a massage?' the woman asked, continuing further with, 'such as I was taught many years ago by my old dancing teacher Don Ortega?'
'Anything! anything!' La Tarantula cried. 'Anything to take away the terror of the pain in my poor tired muscles! oh! why must I dance? why must I continuously dance for men, filthy men!' And saying this she turned her face to the pillow and buried it in her arms and wept.
She lay in this fashion for a few minutes, taking pleasure in knowing that she was suffering, as women are apt to do. Then she felt a pair of cool hands settle on her thighs. And the hands began to knead the flesh and muscles to and fro, working the tiredness out of them, flexing the rawness out of them that made them feel as though they had been weighted with lead. All over her body she felt the expert fingers of Cazuela roam, until she felt the tiredness slip away, fall away like a heavy velvet cloak from her shoulders. It seemed as though she were floating on gossamer clouds now, as though her body had left her entirely and that she was all mind, and that her mind was hovering up above her body like a disembodied spirit and pitying the hulk of a body that lay on the chaise lounge. Lightness, softness, cushiony nothingness was all about her.
Suddenly she felt a throb shoot into her.
She opened her eyes wide. There, between her legs, she saw Cazuela, her face pushed in between the joint of the legs as closely as she could get it. But, what was more, she was working her tongue into her mistress's cunt, like forked lightning, touching the button of the clitoris so that it jerked up in sudden surprise. The jerk of the clitoris caused La Tarantula to open her eyes. For the moment, she thought of ordering the woman away from her. Disgust was the first reaction to what she saw. But, pleasure was the immediate reaction to what she felt.
Pleasure, the like of which she had never before experienced. Pleasure such as she had felt when she had been fucked by Don Juan, and that she had sedulously kept herself from these last long years. Pleasure, pleasure filling her with an inordinate amount of desire.
In and out she felt the smooth tongue of Cazuela dart, touching, it seemed, the very vital spot in her system, drawing the blood from her throbbing heart to her throbbing clitoris so that it stood up now like a living thing.
Before she could realize it, La Tarantula felt the ominous approach of the orgasm. Just as she had felt it coming on before, with the man, so she felt it rapidly drawing nearer, but with a woman.
'What should I do?' she wailed, 'I am coming!'
'Hold it as long as you can!' the maid managed to gasp out between licks as she sank her tongue deeper into La Tarantula's cunny. 'Help me by tickling my button!' and, in order to aid her, she drew herself up closer to her mistress and lifted her dress high above her hips. La Tarantula got the idea immediately. And, as she sucked in her guts and withheld the load that was piling up within her, she reached over and inserted her index finger into the throbbing but enlarged cunt of her maid. The first thought that came to her was a comparative one.
