fresh batches of meat for the slaughter-house. Little scraps of conversation, like the twittering of titmice. Who would think that the chubby little youngster beside you will in ten of fifteen years be shitting his brains out with fright on a foreign field? All day long you make innocent little gadgets; at night you sit in a dark hall and watch phantoms move across a silver screen. Maybe the realest moments you know are when you sit alone in the toilet and make caca. That doesn't cost anything or commit you in any way. Not like eating or fucking, or making works of art. You leave the toilet and you step into the big shit-house. Whatever you touch is shitty. Even when it's wrapped in cellophane the smell is there.
Mamma and Papa are now as peaceful as blut-wurst. Not an ounce of fight left in them. How glorious to spend a day in the open, with the worms and other creatures of God. What a delightful entr'acte! Life glides by like a dream. If you were to cut the bodies open while still warm you would find nothing resembling this idyll. If you were to scrape the bodies out and fill them with stones they would sink to the bottom of the sea, like dead ducks.
It begins to rain. It pours. Hail-stones big as bob-o'-links bounce from the pavement. The city looks like an ant pile smeared with salvarsan. The sewers rise and disgorge their vomit. The sky is as sullen and lurid as the bottom of a test tube.
I feel murderously gay all of a sudden. I hope to Christ it will rain like this for forty days and nights. I'd like to see the city swimming in its own shit; I'd like to see mannikins floating into the river and cash registers ground under the wheels of trucks; I'd like to see the insane pouring out of the asylums with cleavers and hacking right and left. The water cure! Like they gave it to the Filipinos in '98! But where is our Aguinaldo? Where is the rat who can breast the flood with a machete between his lips?
I bring them home in a cab, deposit them safely just as a bolt of lightning strikes the steeple of the bloody Catholic church on the corner. The broken bells make a hell of a din as they hit the pavement. Inside the church a plaster Virgin is smashed to smithereens. The priest is so taken by surprise that he hasn't time to button up his pants. His balls swell up like rocks.
Melanie flutters about like a demented albatross. «Dry your things!» she wails. A grand undressing, with gasps and shrieks and objurgations. I get into Maude's dressing sack, the one with the maribou feathers. Look like a fairy about to give an impersonation of Loulou Hurluburlu. All flub and foozle now. I'm getting a hard-on, «a personal hard-on», if you know what I mean.
Maude is upstairs putting the child to bed. I walk around in my bare feet, the dressing sack wide open. A lovely feeling. Melanie peeks in, just to see if I'm all right. She's walking around in her drawers with the parrot perched on her wrist. Afraid of the lightning she is. I'm talking to her with my hands folded over my prick. Could be a scene out of the «Wizard of Oz» by Memling. Time:
I'm standing in front of the big mirror admiring my quivering cock when Maude trips in. She's as frisky as a hare and all decked out in tulle and mousseline. She seems not at all frightened by what she sees in the mirror. She comes over and stands beside me. «Open it up!» I urge. «Are you hungry?» she says, undoing herself leisurely. I turn her around and press her to me. She raises a leg to let me get it in. We look at each other in the mirror. She's fascinated. I pull the wrap up over her ass so that she can have a better look. I lift her up and she twines her legs around me. «Yes, do it,» she begs. «Fuck me! Fuck me!» Suddenly she untwines her legs, unhitches. She grabs the big arm chair and turns it around, resting her hands on the back of it. Her ass is stuck out invitingly. She doesn't wait for me to put it in—she grabs it and places it herself, watching all the time through the mirror. I push it back and forth slowly, holding my skirts up like a bedraggled hussy. She likes to see it coming out— how far will it come before it falls out. She reaches under with one hand and plays with my balls. She's completely unleashed now, as brazen as a pot. I withdraw as far as I can without letting it slip out and she rolls her ass around, sinking down on it now and then and clutching it with a feathery beak. Finally she's had enough of that. She wants to lie down on the floor and put her legs around my neck. «Get it in all the way,» she begs. «Don't be afraid of hurting me... I want it. I want you to do everything.» I got it in so deep it felt as though I were buried in a bed of mussels. She was quivering and slithering in every ream. I bent over and sucked her breasts; the nipples were taut as nails. Suddenly she pulled my head down and began to bite me wildly—lips, ears, cheeks, neck. «You want it, don't you?» she hissed. «You want it, you want it....» Her lips twisted obscenely. «You want it... you want it!» And she fairly lifted herself off the floor in her abandon. Then a groan, a spasm, a wild, tortured look as if her face were under a mirror pounded by a hammer. «Don't take it out yet,» she grunted. She lay there, her legs still slung around my neck, and the little flag inside her began twitching and fluttering. «God,» she said, «I can't stop it!» My prick was still firm. It hung obedient on her wet lips, as though receiving the sacrament from a lascivious angel. She came again, like an accordion collapsing in a bag of milk. I got hornier and hornier. I pulled her legs down and lay them flat alongside my own. «Now don't move, damn you,» I said. «I'm going to give it to you straight.» Slowly and furiously I moved in and out. «Ah, ah... Oh!» she hissed, sucking her breath in. I kept it up like a Juggernaut. Moloch fucking a piece of bombazine. Organza Friganza. The bolero in straight jabs. Her eyes were going wild; she looked like an elephant walking the ball. All she needed was a trunk to trumpet with. It was a fuck to a standstill. I fell on top of her and chewed her lips to a frazzle.
Then suddenly I thought of the douche. «Get up! Get up!» I said, nudging her roughly.
«I don't need to,» she said weakly, giving me a knowing smile.
«You mean...?» I looked at her in astonishment.
«Yes, there's no need to worry.... Are you all right? Don't you want to wash?»
In the bathroom she confessed that she had been to the doctor—another doctor. There would be nothing to fear any more.
«So that's it?» I whistled.
She powdered my cock for me, stretched it like a glove-fitter, and then bent over and kissed it. «Oh God,» she said, flinging her arms around me, «if only....»
«If only what?»
«You know what I mean...»
I unglued myself and turning my head away, I said: «Yes, I guess I do. Anyway, you don't hate me any more, do you?»
«I don't hate any one,» she answered. «I'm sorry it's turned out the way it has. Now I'll have to share you... with her.»
«You must be hungry,» she added quickly. «Let me fix you something before you go.» She powdered her face carefully first, rouged her lips, and did her hair up negligently but attractively. Her wraps was open from the waist up. She looked a thousand times better than I had ever seen her look. She was like a bright voracious animal.
I walked around in the kitchen with my prick hanging out and helped her fix a cold snack. To my surprise she unearthed a bottle of home made wine—elderberry wine that a neighbor had given her. We closed the doors and kept the gas burning to keep warm. Jesus, it was quite wonderful. It was like getting to know one another all over again. Now and then I got up and put my arms around her, kissed her passionately while my hand slid into her crack. She wasn't at all shy or balky. On the contrary. When I pulled away, she held my hand, and then with a quick dive she fastened her mouth over my prick and sucked it in.
«You don't have to go immediately, do you?» she asked, as I sat down and resumed eating.
«Not if you don't want me to,» I said, in the most amiable state of acquiescence.
«Was it my fault,» she said, «that this never happened before? Was I such a squeamish creature?» She looked at me with such frankness and sincerity I hardly recognized the woman I had lived with all these years.
«I guess we were both to blame,» I said, downing another glass of elderberry wine.
She went to the ice-box to ferret out some delicacy.
«You know what I feel like doing?» she said, coming back to the table with arms laden. «I'd like to bring the gramophone down and dance. I have some very soft needles... Would you like that?»
«Sure,» I said, «it sounds fine.»
«And let's get a bit drunk... would you mind? I feel so wonderful. I want to celebrate.»
«What about the wine?» I said. «Is that all you have?»
