Teleny or the Reverse of the Medal (15 page)

'I cannot give you a banquet, although I expected you; still, there is enough to satisfy your hunger, I hope.'

There were some luscious Cancale oysters— few, but of an immense size; a dusty bottle of Sauterne, then a
pate de foie gras
highly scented with Perigord truffles; a partridge, with
paprika
or Hungarian curry, and a salad made out of a huge Piedmont truffle, as thinly sliced as shavings; and a bottle of exquisite dry sherry.

All these delicacies were served in dainty blue old Delft and Savona ware, for he had already heard of my hobby for old majolica.

Then came a dish of Seville oranges, bananas, and pineapples, flavored with Maraschino and covered with sifted sugar. It was a savory, tasty, tart and sweet medley, combining together the flavor and perfume of all these delicious fruits.

After having washed it down with a bottle of sparkling champagne, we then sipped some tiny cups of fragrant and scalding Mocha coffee; then he lighted a narghile, or Turkish water pipe, and we puffed at intervals the odorous Latakiah, inhaling it with our ever-hungry kisses from each other's mouths.

The fumes of the smoke and those of the wine rose up to our heads, and in our reawakened sensuality we soon had between our lips a far more fleshy mouthpiece than the amber one of the Turkish pipe.

Our heads were again soon lost between each other's thighs. We had once more but one body between us, juggling with one another, ever seeking new caresses, new sensations, a sharper and more inebriating kind of lewdness in our anxiety not only to enjoy ourselves but to make the other one feel. We were, therefore, very soon the prey of a blasting lust, and only some inarticulate sounds expressed the climax of our voluptuous state, until, more dead than alive, we fell upon each other—a mingled mass of shivering flesh.

After half an hour's rest and a bowl of arrak, curacoa and whisky punch, flavored with many hot, invigorating spices, our mouths were again pressed together.

His moist lips grazed mine so very slightly that I hardly felt their touch; they thus only awakened in me the eager desire to feel their contact more closely, while the tip of his tongue kept tantalizing mine, darting in my mouth for a second and rapidly slipping out again. His hands in the meanwhile passed over the most delicate parts of my body as lightly as a soft summer breeze passes over the smooth surface of the waters, and I felt my skin shiver with delight.

I happened to be lying on some cushions on the couch, which thus elevated me to Teleny's height; he swiftly put my legs on his shoulders, then, bending down his head, he began first to kiss, and then to dart his pointed tongue in my bum, thrilling me with an ineffable pleasure. Then rising when he had deftly prepared it well all around, he tried to press the tip of his phallus into it, but though he pressed hard, still he could not succeed in getting it in.

'Let me moisten it a little, and then it will slip in more easily.' I waited impatiently as he did so.

'Now,' said I, 'let us enjoy together that pleasure which the gods themselves did not disdain to teach us.'

He once more pressed the glans upon it; the tiny little lips protruded themselves within the gap; the tip worked its way inside, but the pulpy flesh bulged out all around, and the rod was thus arrested in its career.

'I am afraid I am hurting you?' he asked, 'had we not better leave it for some other time?'

'Oh, no! it is such a happiness to feel your body entering into mine.'

He thrust gently but firmly; the strong muscles of the anus relaxed; the glans was fairly lodged; the skin extended to such a degree that tiny, ruby beads of blood trickled from all around the splitting orifice; still, notwithstanding the way I was torn, the pleasure I felt was much greater than the pain.

He gave a sudden heave. The Rubicon was crossed; the column began to slide softly in; he could begin his pleasurable work.

I then saw his beautiful eyes gazing deep into mine. What unfathomable eyes they were! Like the sky or the main, they seemed to reflect the infinite. Never again shall I see eyes so full of burning love, of such smouldering languor. His glances had a mesmeric spell over me; they bereft me of my reason; they did even more— they changed sharp pain into delight.

I was in a state of ecstatic joy; all my nerves contracted and twitched. As he felt himself thus clasped and gripped, he shivered, he ground his teeth; he was unable to bear such a strong shock; his outstretched arms held fast my shoulders; he dug his nails into my flesh; he tried to move, but he was so tightly wedged and grasped that it was impossible to push himself any further in. Moreover, his strength was beginning to fail him, and he could then hardly stand upon his feet.

As he tried to give another jerk, I myself, that very moment, squeezed the whole rod with all the strength of my muscles, and a most violent jet, like a hot geyser, escaped from him, and coursed within me like some scorching, corroding poison; it seemed to set my blood on fire, and transmuted it into some kind of hot, intoxicating alcohol. His breath was thick and convulsive; his sobs choked him; he was utterly done in.

'I am dying!' he gasped out, his chest heaving with emotion; 'it is too much.' And he fell senseless in my arms.

After half an hour's rest he woke up, and began at once to kiss me with rapture, while his loving eyes beamed with thankfulness.

'You have made me feel what I never felt before.'

'Nor I either,' said I, smiling.

'I really did not know whether I was in heaven or in hell. I had quite lost my senses.'

He stopped for a moment to look at me, and then, 'How I love you, my Camille!' he went on, showering kisses on me; 'I have loved you to distraction from the very first moment I saw you.'

Then I began to tell him how I had suffered in trying to overcome my love for him; how I was haunted by his presence day and night; how happy I was at last.

'And now you must take my place. You must make me feel what you felt. You will be active and I passive; but we must try another position, for it is really tiresome to stand after all the fatigue we have undergone.'

'And what am I to do, for you know I am quite a novice?'

'Sit down there,' he replied, pointing to a stool constructed for the purpose, 'I'll ride on you while you impale me as if I were a woman. It is a mode of locomotion of which the ladies are so fond that they put it into practice whenever they get the slightest chance. My mother actually rode a gentleman under my very eyes. I was in the parlor when a friend happened to call, and had I been sent out suspicion might have been aroused, so I was made to believe that I was a very naughty little boy, and I was put in a corner with my face to the wall. Moreover, she told me that if I cried or turned round she'd put me to bed; but if I were good she'd give me a cake. I obeyed for one or two minutes, but after that, hearing an unusual rustle, and a loud breathing and panting, I saw what I could not understand at the time, but what was made clear to me many years afterwards.'

He sighed, shrugged his shoulders, then smiled and added—'Well, sit down there.'

I did as I was bidden. He first knelt down to say his prayers to Priapus, and having bathed and tickled the little god, he got astraddle over me. As he had already lost his maidenhood long ago, my rod entered far more easily in him than his had done in me, nor did I give him the pain that I had felt, although my tool is of no mean size.

He stretched himself open, the tip entered, he moved a little, half the phallus was plunged in; he pressed down, lifted himself up, then came down again; after one or two strokes the whole turgid column was lodged within his body. When he was well impaled he put his arms round my neck, and hugged and kissed me.

'Do you regret having given yourself to me?' he asked, pressing me convulsively as if afraid to lose me.

My penis, which seemed to wish to give its own answer, wriggled within his body. I looked deep into his eyes.

'Do you think it would have been more pleasant to be now lying in the slush of the river?'

He shuddered and kissed me, then eagerly,— 'How can you think of such horrible things just now; it is real blasphemy to the Mysian god.'

Thereupon he began to ride a Priapean race with masterly skill; from an amble he went on to a trot, then to a gallop, lifting himself on the tips of his toes, and coming down again quicker and ever quicker.

A rigid tension of the nerves took place. My heart was beating in such a way that I could hardly breathe. All the arteries seemed ready to burst. My skin was parched with a glowing heat; a subtle fire coursed through my veins instead of blood.

On the morrow the events of the night before seemed like a rapturous dream.

—Still, you must have felt rather seedy, after the many—

—Seedy? No, not at all. Nay, I felt the 'clear keen joyance' of the lark that loves, but 'ne'er knew love's sad satiety.' Hitherto, the pleasure that women had given me had always jarred upon my nerves. It was, in fact, 'a thing wherein we feel there is a hidden want.' Lust was now the overflowing of the heart and of the mind —the pleasurable harmony of all the senses.

The world that had hitherto seemed to me so bleak, so cold, so desolate, was now a perfect paradise; the air, although the barometer had fallen considerably, was crisp, light, and balmy; the sun—a round, furbished, copper disc, and more like a red Indian's backside than fair Apollo's effulgent face—was shining gloriously for me; the murky fog itself, that brought on dark night at three o'clock in the afternoon, was only a hazy mist that veiled all that was ungainly, and rendered Nature fantastic, and home so snug and cozy. Such is the power of the imagination.

You laugh! Alas! Don Quixote was not the only man who took windmills for giants, or barmaids for princesses. If your sluggish-brained, thick-pated costermonger never falls into such a trance as to mistake apples for potatoes; if your grocer never turns hell into heaven, or heaven into hell—well, they are sane people who weigh everything in the well-poised scale of reason. Try and shut them up in nutshells, and you will see if they would deem themselves monarchs of the world. They, unlike Hamlet, always see things as they really are. I never did. But then, you know, my father died mad.

Anyhow, that overpowering weariness, that loathsomeness of life, had now quite passed away. I was blithe, merry, happy. Teleny was my lover; I was his.

Far from being ashamed of my crime, I felt that I should like to proclaim it to the world. For the first time in my life I understood that lovers could be so foolish as to entwine their initials together. I felt like carving his name on the bark of trees, that the birds seeing it might twitter it from morn till eventide; that the breeze might lisp it to the rustling leaves of the forest. I wished to write it on the shingle of the beach, that the ocean itself might know of my love for him, and murmur it everlastingly.

—Still I had thought that on the morrow— the intoxication passed—you would have shuddered at the thought of having a man for a lover?

—Why? Had I committed a crime against nature when my own nature found peace and happiness thereby? If I was thus, surely it was the fault of my blood, not myself. Who had planted nettles in my garden? Not I. They had grown there unawares, from my very childhood. I began to feel their carnal stings long before I could understand what conclusion they imported. When I had tried to bridle my lust, was it my fault if the scale of reason was far too light to balance that of sensuality? Was I to blame if I could not argue down my raging motion? Fate, Iago-like, had clearly showed me that if I would damn myself, I could do so in a more delicate way than drowning. I yielded to my destiny, and encompassed my joy.

Withal, I never said with Iago,—'Virtue, a fig!' No, virtue is the sweet flavor of the peach; vice, the tiny droplet of prussic acid—its delicious savor. Life, without either, would be vapid.

—Still, not having, like most of us, been inured to sodomy from your schooldays, I should have thought that you would have been loath to have yielded your body to another man's pleasure.

—Loath? Ask the virgin if she regrets having given up her maidenhood to the lover she dotes on, and who fully returns her love? She has lost a treasure that all the wealth of Golconda cannot buy again; she is no longer what the world calls a pure, spotless, immaculate lily, and not having had the serpent's guile in her, society—the lilies—will brand her with an infamous name; profligates will leer at her, the pure will turn away in scorn. Still, does the girl regret having yielded her body for love— the only thing worth living for? No. Well, no more did I. Let 'clay-cold heads and lukewarm hearts' scourge me with their wrath if they will.

On the morrow, when we met again, all traces of fatigue had passed away. We rushed into each other's arms and smothered ourselves with kisses, for nothing is more an incentive to love than a short separation. What is it that renders married ties unbearable? The too-great intimacy, the sordid cares, the triviality of everyday life. The young bride must love indeed if she feels no disappointment when she sees her mate just awakened from a fit of tough snoring, seedy, unshaven, with braces and slippers, and hears him clear his throat and spit— for men actually spit, even if they do not indulge in other rumbling noises.