Everywhere soft white curtains waved in the wind. The courtyard exploded with giant red African flowers, lovely purple vines, and the most lacy and soft trees, dancing in the captured breeze. The place was full of the scent of the flowers.
Rachel slammed the front door on those outside, including her driver angel, and she slid the lock and put up a little chain, and then she looked at me.
"You believe me now?" I asked.
She leaned towards me.
"Let me hold you."
She tumbled softly against me. "Take me to my bed," she said. "There, through the garden and over there, to the left, my bed."
She put her arms around my neck and I did as she said. She was light, perfumed, tender.
It was the most marvelous room, open to the sea on all three sides, it was windows and windows; a rush of remembered warmth overcame me again. But where in the world had I ever seen such clouds, and tossed among them in the glowing light the stars, so friendly and small, and kindly.
I set her down on a huge bed of silk, covered with silk blankets and pillows; a soft golden color seemed to be in every fabric or tapestry or design in some way, and the room was filled with soft molded chairs, Turkish luxury.
I smelled the salt, and her perfumed sweetness, and I looked down on her, her wax-pure face. Tenderly as I could, I kissed her forehead.
"Don't be afraid, darling one," I said. "Everything I told you was true. You must believe me. You must tell me what you know about Esther and Nathan."
She began to sob, and then turned, faint, and shivering, and nestled into the pillows. I sat there. I pulled up a silken cover over her, something full of the French flowers. But she didn't need it.
"No, the air itself," she said. "The air. Kiss me again. Hold me again. Be with me."
"I have you in my arms. My lips touch your forehead, your cheek, your chin, your shoulder, your hand ..." I said. Truth was, I could hardly resist her. I wanted to loosen her fancy clothes, release her in my power.
I softly locked my hand around her fragile wrist. She really was dying.
"Don't fear me, beloved," I said, "unless it eases the pain. Sometimes it does, to fear one thing instead of others."
In answer, she turned and kissed me again, tugging my head down close to her, so that she could push her tongue into my mouth. It was a luscious kiss, full of passion and utter yielding. I kissed her longingly. I felt her hips lift against me. I felt my own body hard for her.
I had to have her, I had to make her happy. And the world would let me know my power in this as it had let me know in everything else. If I lost all power in her arms, so be it.
There was too much human heat here for anything but love-making now. The sky itself, the dreamy stars, the high white clouds- these things as well-decreed it.
22
She pulled weakly at the buttons of her blouse. "Undress me, please, help me," she said. I quickly removed all her clothes as she wished. She guided me and assisted me. She sank deep in the pillows, pale, but with a body as firm to touch as a young woman's body.
I kissed the calves of her legs, her thighs. The garden rustled and sighed behind me. For the first time I heard a waterfall, its gentle trickle, and then I listened to the sound of water touching leaves, but my body was an engine of desire, and what drove me was her naked br**sts, rather small, with the pink ni**les of a girl, and the smell of death, rising sweet like a crushing lily. It was not that the death attracted me; it was that it made her all the more precious, something to be lost in a moment.
She lay back, heaving a deep sigh. The angles of her face were tight and delicate and precise in the dimness.
"Let me see you without your clothes," she said. She reached for buttons, but I gestured there was no need. I stood up and back from her.
Not an electric light burned in the place. It was the dreamiest darkness.
I stretched out my arms and looked up at the sky. Though suddenly aware of a fatigue from all the night's tricks, I nevertheless told my clothes to assemble themselves nearby and await my command. I would be naked.
It worked even more swiftly and completely than last time.
I looked down for the first time on my own chest, pubic hair, erect organ. I was too happy for humility, and to feel the sinews in my arms tighten was to be among living things, and surely some of those things must be good things.
She sat up on the bed, her br**sts amazingly firm, and the pink ni**les turned up. Her silver-and-black hair made a rumpled mass down her back and displayed a long neck.
"Splendid," she whispered.
A rain of doubts descended on me.
But I had to do it. What was the point of warning her that I might dissolve in the process? I was going to do it.
I sat down beside her, embracing her. I felt the moist thin silkiness of her skin, not healthy in a woman too thin, yet delicious. Even the bones of her wrists were beautiful.
She tugged at my hair, and kissed me with her eyes closed, all over my face, and quite suddenly I realized with a shock that my beard and mustache were on my face.
She drew back, staring at it. I told this hair to go away.
"No," she said. "Bring it back! It makes your mouth sweeter and damper." I felt the hair return as if it wanted to! I couldn't quite figure this out, why the hair had come of its own, but that was the whole story so far, my body came on its own, and in its own form. One lapse in my will, one drifting into pride in my physical self, and the hair had come.
Well, she loved it. I took a long breath, feeling the toll of all this changing and magic, but I was as hard as a statue for her. I wanted to pounce on her. Instead I let her bury her face in the hair of my chest, and kiss my ni**les, and the pleasure went right to my loins.
I took her br**sts in my hands, enchanted by their smallness, their delicacy. So pink, girlish pink.
"It's all drugs, my love," she said, as though feeling my wonder. She kissed my beard, kissing it along the bone of my jaw. "It's hormones and modern science; I have a woman's chemicals inside me, that's all. They can make me look young, but they can't save my life."
I kissed her and held her, my hands free and rough over her thighs and stealing into the secret crevice, to feel there the firmness of a young woman's secret body. Chemicals, was it? Modern science?
"Those things preserve," I said, "but you make the beauty."
"Sweet God," she whispered, kissing me all over my face. I had my hands beneath her small backside, and cuddled it.
"Yes," I said, "God, capricious as He is; he lavished his blessings on you and on your daughter, Esther."