Her Lover (87 page)

'Especially,' said Mattathias, 'since all these adulterous fillies involve a considerable outlay on flowers.'

'But it is a providence that the uncle knows nought of the sinfulness of the nephew,' said Solomon. 'God, in His great goodness, has visited him with a bout of jaundice which detains him far from this place.'

'Let a barricade be built around all this idle talk!' ordered Michael. 'Whatever the lord does is well done, and virtue is a dish fit only for the small of nose! Oh what would I not give to be in his shoes, for the woman is the veritable fragrance of jasmine and as sound as a cockerel's eye!'

'And more majestic than an English man-of-war!' said Naileater, partly for the ring of the expression and partly because he was bored.

'And having the coolness of cherries,' added Solomon illogically.

'And with a cheek I could nibble even though I did not hunger,' said Naileater, 'though it would go down better with a brace of cucumbers.'

'For my part,' said Mattathias, 'I find in her neither cockerel's eye nor coolness of cherries, and I'd rather make do with the cucumbers without the cheek. I tell you, all this is a hanging matter.'

'It is true that the husband might well put in an appearance brandishing pistols,' said Naileater for the benefit of Solomon, who immediately stood up, brushed his tennis trousers, and put on his tiny coat lined with goat-fur.

'I'm feeling the cold rather, and moreover I have a headache, which is why I shall now say farewell and return to our hotel.'

'O chicken-heart!' cried Michael.

'Chicken-heart is correct, and I'm proud of it!' answered Solomon, his two little hands bunched bravely into fists. 'And I'm quite right, since it is fear which tells me when there's danger and keeps me alive! And what is better than being alive? I have already told you, my dear friends, I wouldn't say no to being locked up in prison for good, provided I could go on living for ever! And I'd have you know, Michael, that the timid are invariably meek and kindly folk and pleasing in the eye of the Almighty, while you, with your revolvers and built like the ox who is chief of the herd, are muscleman and Muslim-man, so there! Furthermore, I am just as brave as you, though only when there is no alternative! And now, having returned my answer to this blackguard here, I take my leave of you both, dear cousins, and shall return to town, where a man is much better off than in the country!'

But, tenderly restrained and embraced by Michael, he gave up the struggle, only too well aware that flight was impossible and in any case how would he find his way now, after midnight, along roads which were strewn with stones and alive with ghosts? Best hide, for the husband might at any moment realize what was afoot and set off in pursuit of his young wife, armed with a blunderbuss to prevent her visiting the place of dancing and sorbet! Yes, devil take it, he'd better hide, for a stray bullet soon finds a billet! Let the thought be father to the deed! Having crawled on all fours into a pile of lopped branches close by the hayrick against which his cousins were sitting, he begged Michael to cover him with leaves. Thus disguised as a forest, he calmed down. He remained silent for a while, but then a small voice emerged from the shrubbery.

'O mighty scion of Jacob,' said the little voice, 'why does not lord Solal love the daughters of our people? Are they not queens in their homes, and do they not anoint their hair with perfumed oils upon the holy sabbath day? What have Gentile girls got that'they haven't?'

'They recite poems to him,' sniggered Naileater.

'How odd, but I always imagined that must be the case,' said the little voice after a moment's reflection.

'But when he is unwell', went on Naileater, 'they stop reciting poems to him, because when he is unwell he sickens them! So they put two fingers in their mouths and whistle and they say to the hotel menial who comes ninning: "Take this carcass away, remove it from my sight!" That is what they do. That is how they conduct themselves!'

'But if you aren't ill, what delights await you!' retorted Solomon, creeping out of his leafy refuge. 'A young lady who recites poems to you all day long, why, it is a wondrous thought!' he announced, and he stood with eyes turned heavenward, clenching his little fists. 'You get out of bed in the morning and without further ado your ears are filled with a poem which is as peach-juice descending into the stomach of your soul!'

'Naileater,' said Michael, 'is this tale of the carcass and the whistling an established fact or an invention of your brain? It goes without saying that our lord is not the least unwell, thanks be to God, but were he at some point to experience an ache in his lumbar region, would she not instead apply a poultice?'

'Damn the poultice!' cried Solomon. 'Devil take the poultice, provided that when I rise in the morning . . .' (But remembering that he was Solomon, a simple seller of apricot-water, he fell silent.)

'Since you fancy the idea so much, O human-headed ant,' said Naileater, 'what is there to prevent you from snatching this whistling spouter of poems out of the arms of lord Solal?'

'I'm too little,' explained Solomon. 'She wouldn't give me a second glance, don't you see? The Almighty, whose name is blessed, fashions his creatures according to his good pleasure.'

'Why is everyone so interested by all this talk of love?' yawned Mattathias. 'I'd much rather hear about an end-of-year financial statement which showed a healthy profit.'

'Why are we so interested?' said Michael aggressively. 'Can you not conceive, O unfledged egg, you son of a lily-spermed father, have you no conception of what delights await them on this hot and sultry night? Do you not comprehend, O mule-brain, that inflamed by the dance they will repair to the hotel wherein dwells Wealth, there to spend pleasuresome hours together, she as naked as the day she was born, stretched out upon a couch of silk, her eyes lozenged with blue mascara and her bosom as white as the snow that sits on a branch, spiced and aromatic and mettlesomely displaying her quadruple globu-larities on which a man may founder, ripely primed upon her gold-fringed sheet, and then the lord . ..'

'Don't go on!' pleaded Solomon.

'And then, having matched moist kiss with moist kiss and gambol with gambol, the lord will also lie down upon the bed, with no fig-leaf other than his hands, and then she, amply and illustriously proportioned, reaching the limits of her jubilance and burning with an itch, will laughingly reach out and remove the fig-hands of the favoured of her soul to inspect and savour the opulence of the male, savour his treasure with a smile of wonder all over her fair face! (Outraged, Solomon dropped into a fighting crouch, flailed with his little fists to limber up, then began pummelling at the ribs of the janissary, who, without losing his good humour and serenely unaware of the blows raining on his sides, let him get on with it and calmly continued.) And she will approve and will think well of him for being more abundantly equipped in a certain department than the husband she deceives, and she will unfurl her soul! (Giving up the unequal struggle, Solomon stopped punching and stuck his head into the hayrick.) For never forget, that certain department is a woman's life entire, her goal both by day and by night! And doubtless it is a department in which her husband does not please her, and therein lies the secret of her melancholy moods, her ill-temper, marital discord, contempt and ultimately divorce, for God made some as I am, but others made He puny and woebegone and like unto wax which grows more flaccid the more it is handled! (Appalled and not knowing where to put himself, Solomon half buried himself in the hay.) Yes, she will unfurl when she sees such mettle and such power, she will clap her hands, and she will know the lunging, plunging, puncturing force of his mettle, its ingress and its egress and its instantly rejoined congress, and then shall they enter the lists where man and woman do hard and lengthy battle, and she will be tender and acquiescent, with a rhythm in her loins, reaching out with her man-questing loins, and he shall find delight in his bucking, perspiring mount, and both shall call a truce to partake of good food and better wine and then will resume their lovely war and their indefatigable toings and their untiring froings, and the despairing retreats and ecstatic advances will continue until the time of dawn and the time of blood which is the sign, as the
cognoscenti
will know, that even the strongest man can go on no longer!'

'Say on, Michael!' cried Naileater, 'for your subject gives wings to your tongue and verily it confers upon you a way with words of which I did not believe you capable. I shall listen to you with the ears of respect.'

'No! Make the black-faced blackguard hold his tongue!' cried Solomon.

'What more shall I say, Naileater old friend,' said Michael, 'except that the lord will do right to make her earth move and roughly use her during their night of love divine? For in this mortal life there is no other truth but bareback riding. All else is tinsel and taradiddle. For a man's life lasts no longer than the blink of an eye and is followed by everlasting putrefaction, and with each day that passes you take one more step towards the hole in the ground in which you will moulder numb and mute with no company save that of the same fat white worms as dwell in flour and cheese, and they will slowly, surely creep into all your orifices, there to feed. And so, my friends," I ride boldly each night of my life insofar as it is given to me so to do, that I may die at peace having discharged my duty as a man, for, mark my words, it is what women expect of us, it is the sole object of their brief lives and the only thought in their heads. Above all, it is the will of God that we should serve and satisfy them, and it was for this purpose that He made and created us. And if He put in us the hunger for meat, the thirst for wine and the need for sleep, it was so that this meat, this wine and this sleep should be distilled into dense seed which we must needs bestow on the poor females who await its coming! For my own part, dear lords and cousins, having no plans for rogering this night and consequently failing in my duty and my obligation, I feel presently oppressed by a great sadness, this I tell you candidly, for who knows how many beautiful women desire the approach of the male on this hot and sultry night? But where are they to be found?'

'Though pleasant in form, your utterance calls forth my profound-est strictures in the matter of content,' said Naileater, 'except for the passage concerning everlasting putrefaction, which was apposite, true, legitimate, based on sound argument and most agreeable.'

'Yes, my liegemen,' said Michael, 'all women desire night-riding, hard, clean and protracted! Even royal princesses desire it!'

'That's a lie,' cried Solomon from the middle of his hayrick. 'They are pure!'

'They've all got behinds!' retorted Michael.

'And the appurtenances thereto pertaining!' sniggered Naileater.

'That's a foul slander!' cried Solomon. 'Shame on you both, you blackguards! May your eyes lose their sight!'

'Hear me, O little one,' said Michael, 'and Hsten well, for I shall now tell you what a king does to his queen as he turns her this way and that!'

'Get thee behind me, Satan!' cried Solomon, emerging from the hayrick and stamping his foot. 'Behold, the worm turns! For I am tired of being the universal butt of all! This morning it was the flying-machine! This afternoon, in the hotel, Naileater took great pleasure in telling me about all the diseases which may some day visit my body, top, bottom and middle, plus all the operations that surgeons may perhaps perform on me and how in the end I shall die and how my face will be twisted by agony just before I do! It's not fair, for I am always nice to everybody! And now it's even worse, for this blackguard Michael speaks ignobly of unclean things, from which God preserve! What did I ever do that you should use me so cruelly? Listen to me Michael, O blackguard, O black of face, O man unworthy to belong to our saintly nation, O dishonour of Israel, hear me! If you persist in your unseemliness, I shall flee into the night and the heart of darkness where brigands hide behind trees and no matter if I am murdered, for I refuse to stay and Hsten to your vileness! I say long live virtue and morality and the chasteness of wives! So just put that in your pipe and smoke it! Moreover, I shall tell Uncle Saltiel everything, and he will make you know your shame and wfll even lay his curse upon your head! And quite right too! And make no mistake, his curse is efficacious, for he is a man of great saintliness, a true Jew, while you are a Muslim, and that's a fact! And if you should ever dare to set foot inside our synagogue I shall drive you out with whips!'

'O little man,' said Michael, and plucking a stem of grass he began to chew it while he smiled at old memories. 'O man of virtue,' he went on, 'since you protest so warmly, pray tell me how it is that you have children and by what miracle they came to be in the belly of your wife!'

'We used always to put the lights out,' said Solomon, blushing, eyes downcast. 'Besides, did not the Almighty, whose name be praised, enjoin us to go forth and multiply? So we have no choice. And anyway, it's perfectly respectable. That is what marriage is for.'

After a long silence punctuated by yawns, for the hour was late, Naileater declared that, since they had nothing further of interest to discuss or eat, he would take a nap for the sake of his lungs until such time as the heatheness should put in an appearance.

Stretched out in the grass, with his top-hat on his large feet to protect them against vipers, he fell into a sleep in which he was garlanded with roses by the Queen of England, who whispered in his ear and suggested that he should succeed her husband, who was just then strolling in the garden and whose head was suddenly crowned by a flowerpot which had fallen from the central balcony of Buckingham Palace.

CHAPTER 76

'That's all very well,' said Mattathias, 'but it's now ten past midnight and the shameless jade and daughter of Belial, chiefest of all the demons, has not come, and still the conveyance of ruination stands yonder, horrendously waiting. The last time I looked, the pocket-emptying counter had already clocked up forty-two Helvetic francs. The woman ought to be stoned. In sooth, a heartless creature. Forty-two gold francs of eighteen carats apiece! That's more than eight dialers!'