bedroom began to sway before my eyes. I ceased to crane my neck and I leaned back against the corridor wall. But I could still hear them quite clearly. One may well wonder as to what compelled me to withdraw my eyes from my conceivers. The answer is that I found quite intolerable the idea that, just as my mother and father were about to proceed as they were, I was thus begat. The idea was too monstrous for me to entertain with any equanimity. I wanted to run far away for my very life, to rebel against the picture of my life whose origin was that of lust acting mechanically. Perhaps all my subsequent bouts with men were mimicries I did of such mechanical origins to deny their very mimicry-as though I must discover elements in the act of begetting of a nonlustful nature. I do not know. I merely offer the idea-to the speculative reader. In any case, while I could not watch-the picture itself being overwhelming-I could nevertheless listen. True, I wished to quit the corridor entirely, but for the moment I seemed rooted, immobile, concupiscently fascinated by what my parents were saying… “Mathew-” “Yes, Louisa?” “Why do you hesitate?” “My Lady Marchioness-to tantalize you, of course.”
“My Lord Marquis, if you persist, I may snap at you with my strong white teeth.” He laughed richly. “You will have then incapacitated the major source of your ecstasies.” “I beseech you, then, do not torment me. There is a paradisiacal haven between my thighs, Mathew.” “Indeed? It seems somewhat prickly on the exterior, Louisa.” “Oh, sir, you dissemble. They are such soft spirals and so fine in texture that they could never deprive a victim of his sword. I may add to that, My Lord, that he who comes brandishing such an instrument as yours is never a victim. Well, perhaps half a victim, transitorily, for if you have transported me a dozen instances by interring your instrument in my substance, the likelihood is that you will finally be feeble, and your member hangdog-thus a victim. But let a number of hours pass, no later than the following day will you be in readiness to tap my sap once more-no longer a victim.” “Then you are ready with your own juices, madame.” “Quite. They bubble.” “Merrily?” “I think so.
But they also betray a kind of kitchen quality- they will make a solidly satisfying sauce for you. Come, sir, let me stand him at my table.” “Stand him?” “Well, My Lord, I will crook him if I sit him. And, though no bones be present, he'll be fractured.
Definitely, sir, we will not sit him. Besides, he is no animal on fours or twos-he is a sublimity. Lift me up with him, Mathew.”
“Petition me, Louisa.” “I beg you.” “Most inadequate.”
“How must I phrase it, sir-or what must I do to have you relent?”
“Ah…” “What does that signify, My Lord?” “You will shortly see, Louisa. You inquired as to what you must do to have me relent.” “Aye.” “Well, you will do this that has been described to me in London this past spring.” “Fie- are we to take London as our love standard?” “My Lady Marchioness, are we not in London eight months of the year?” “I must concede.” “Well, madame, what you must do at the start is to remember the creatures of the field-and emulate them in the manner of how they maintain their very balance in this world.” “Can I not emulate them as they have their balance in the next world?” “That would involve philosophical speculation and rigid religion, and I wish neither at this moment. Unless my libidinous-ness deceives me, I wish the balances of this world. Will you get upon your hands and knees, madame?” “Mathew-I will not.” “Are you adamant?” “Yes.”
“Do you not love me, Louisa?” “Where is love in this instance? It is all unbridled licentiousness.” “I cannot agree, Louisa. On your guard, then!” Here followed a grunt from the Marquis and a sigh from the Marchioness. There were further sounds of flesh slapping against flesh. My head was bowed as I leaned against the corridor wall. My breathing was shallow. I was manipulating my own tiny protuberance. I was shocked at what I thought my father was now doing to my mother. I daresay the reason for my shock may now presently be accounted for by the theories of a Dr. Sigmund Freud, that strange Viennese who has yet to be accorded his due.
Theoretically, I suppose I was shocked because I wanted to take my mother's place with my father-I couldn't stand the idea of my mother being the recipient from my father of what I was coming to think was a basic joy. The picture of my mother and father having intercourse was therefore overwhelmingly repellant. But now, the sound of flesh against flesh had stopped abruptly. My mother groaned. “Mathew,” she said. “Eh?” he grunted. “Why are you hovering again?
Please let me have him back.” “No, I will wave him before you.”
“You, sir, are a villain.” “A very model of villainy-see how I stroke my mustaches. At least I've not turned gray down there.
Come, Louisa, let me demonstrate how superior we are even in the beast's stance to the creatures of the field. Or shall I continue to wave him before you until he spits!” “That would be most wasteful, My Lord Marquis.” “Are you then game for all fours?”
“Gamey might be the better. Somehow, beneath my misgivings that the practice will be agony, there is a low, vulgar hissing of cilia, as if in anticipation of a cockfight of another order.” “Ha!” quoth my father. “I take that to mean, Mathew, you will not spare me this last indignity.” “I will spare your hams no quarter, and that will be no indignity. Come, madame, show me your fours.” “I fear I will blush to my roots.” “Blush where you like, Louisa, but do not stand in my way. You may kneel in my way, of course, providing that your haunches face me.” “In all the years of our marriage you have never asked this of me, Mathew.” “I have been naive, Louisa.” He laughed raucously. “We will now rectify the matter.
What a battle cry that would make. Let us now rectify those knaves who would disembowel all England. Let us rectify them in their very gut, at their very bottoms, aye -rectify!” “We are not at war, My Lord. Nor are you Prince Hal. But we are at the very slit of things.”
“Agreed, Louisa. Ah, what a curtsy of sumptuous lips you do. From black to pink and white. Rectify!” he shouted, and then it was that my mother let out a blood-curdling screech. “You need not move heaven and earth together,” she bawled. “As Archimedes might have said,” quoth my father, “give me a fulcrum and I'll screw the world.”
My mother sounded very hoarse. “I had never supposed that this stance could have made of the body one long quiver-” I fled down the corridor. I wanted to hear no more. My parents were indeed beasts of the field. I wanted no more of them. When I precipitately opened the corridor that debauched on the library, I turned and ran full tilt into one of the hollow armor men. It toppled over with a great crash and clatter. I stood there, transfixed. Why did not my brother James come and rescue me? I soon discovered why. In a matter of seconds my father, now draped in a handsome dressing gown, led James by the ear from the other door to the library. The Marquis of Portferrans was most distinguished in his silver-blond hair and high dudgeon. He betrayed no surprise whatever on catching sight of me. “Clarissa,” said he. “Yes, Father,” I said, and did a terribly brief curtsy. I would have galled it out with my sire on another occasion. I would have had a tome in my hand, my glasses perched on the tip of my nose, and muttering in Egyptian slant (we British have a panache for the exotic; one of our most well-known brigathers has confessed he goes into battle with a pocket Odyssey, in the original Greek, no less, which he sometimes relaxes with in the field during a lull). But the vision of my father and mother in copulo extremis and the debacle of the toppled suit of armor had been sufficient to demoralize me. All I could do now was to stand there guiltily and stupidly. James was in no less a pretty kettle, with the added disadvantage of having his earlobe, in the fingers of my irate father, twisted-any moment I expected it to become detached.
“Clarissa, I suspect you are a co-conspirator, although James has said nothing to incriminate you.” “That is very generous of my brother but I insist that his punishment will be mine as well. I will make a clean breast of it.” “I am not particularly interested in clean breasts, Clarissa,” said the Marquis a trifle dryly. “I find their owners more hygienic than humanistic. I think it my duty to speak freely when I say to you, Clarissa, young as you are, that a filthy little nipple never hurt a soul-with the exception, possibly, of the poor child suckling it; he, or she, in any case, if not shortly defunct, would become immune to many diseases.” The Marquis sighed and released James's ear. “The more I talk,” said my noble parent, “the less inclined I am to punishing you, but I must insist that the pair of you answer a direct question.” “Yes, My Lord,”
James said contritely. “At your pleasure, My Lord,” I said.
“Have either of you learned aught by watching your mother and myself?” “An essential,” said James promptly, “and that is that patience is the provocateur of passion at its most intense.”
“Well put, my son. I think I must pride myself on not having turned out to be the patriarchal stereotype so admired in this day and age.” My father turned to me. “And you, Clarissa?” “I think you tease too much, Father,” I blurted out. “And I promise myself I will gain revenge on every man I consort with.” “You will regret such a vow,” he admonished me softly, “each time you practice it. In time, however, you may forget it -I think your body, Clarissa, will be built for forgiveness, for it will have to bend toward most men. You will be a tall one, Clarissa.” “Yes, My Lord.” “Yes,” Quist-Hagen murmured the echo. He was, as was his fashion, already bored by the
