Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated) (248 page)

A belated cab — wearied with the day’s toil — was slowly trudging its way homeward. The driver was sleeping on his box; the poor, broken down jade, with its head drooping almost between its knees, was likewise slumbering — dreaming, perhaps, of unbroken rest, of new-mown hay, of the fresh and flowery pastures of its youth; even the slow rumbling of the wheels had a sleepy, purring, snoring sound in its irksome sameness.

‘Come home with me,’ said Teleny, in a low, nervous, and trembling voice; ‘come and sleep with me,’ added he, in the soft, hushed, and pleading tone of the lover who would fain be understood without words.

I pressed his hands for all answer.

‘Will you come?’

‘Yes,’ I whispered, almost inaudibly.

This low, hardly-articulate sound was the hot breath of vehement desire; this lisped monosyllable was the willing consent to his eager-est wish.

Then he hailed the passing cab, but it was some moments before the driver could be awakened and made to understand what we wanted of him.

As I stepped into the vehicle, my first thought was that in a few minutes Teleny would belong to me. This thought acted upon my nerves as an electric current, making me shiver from head to foot.

My lips had to articulate the words, Teleny will be mine,’ for me to believe it. He seemed to hear the noiseless movement of my lips, for he clasped my head between his hands, and kissed me again and again.

Then, as if feeling a pang of remorse— ‘You do not repent, do you?’ he asked.

‘How can I?’

‘And you will be mine — mine alone?’

‘I never was any other man’s nor ever shall be.’

‘You will love me forever?’

‘And ever.’

‘This will be our oath and our act of possession,’ he added.

Thereupon he put his arms around me and clasped me to his breast. I entwined my arms round him. By the glimmering, dim light of the cab-lamps I saw his eyes kindle with the fire of madness. His lips — parched with the thirst of his long-suppressed desire, with the pent-up craving of possession — pouted towards mine with a painful expression of dull suffering. We were again sucking up each other’s being in a kiss — a kiss more intense, if possible, than the former one. What a kiss that was!

The flesh, the blood, the brain, and that undefined subtler part of our being seemed all to melt together in an ineffable embrace.

A kiss is something more than the first sensual contact of two bodies; it is the breathing forth of two enamored souls.

But a criminal kiss long withstood and fought against, and therefore long yearned after, is beyond this; it is as luscious as forbidden fruit; it is a glowing coal set upon the lips; a fiery brand that burns deep, and changes the blood into molten lead or scalding quicksilver.

Teleny’s kiss was really galvanic, for I could taste its sapidity upon my palate. Was an oath needed, when we had given ourselves to one another with such a kiss? An oath is a lip- promise which can be, and is, often forgotten. Such a kiss follows you to the grave.

While our lips clung together, his hand slowlv, imperceptibly, unbuttoned my trousers, and stealthily slipped within the aperture, turning every obstacle in its way instinctively aside, then it lay hold of my hard, stiff, and aching phallus which was glowing like a burning coal.

This grasp was as soft as a child’s, as expert as a whore’s, as strong as a fencer’s. He had hardly touched me than I remembered the Countess’ words.

Some people, as we all know, are more magnetic than others. Moreover, while some attract, others repel us. Teleny had — for me, at least — a supple, mesmeric, pleasure-giving fluid in his fingers. Nay, the simple contact of his skin thrilled me with delight.

My own hand hesitatingly followed the lead his had given, and I must confess the pleasure I felt in paddling him was really delightful.

Our fingers hardly moved the skin of the penis; but our nerves were so strained, our excitement had reached such a pitch, and the seminal ducts were so full, that we felt them overflowing. There was, for a moment, an intense pain, somewhere about the root of the penis — or rather, within the very core and center of the veins, after which the sap of life began to move slowly, slowly, from within the seminal glands; it mounted up the bulb of the urethra, and up the narrow column, somewhat like mercury within the tube of a thermometer — or rather, like the scalding and scathing lava within the crater of a volcano.

It finally reached the apex; then the slit gaped, the tiny lips parted, and the pearly, creamy, viscous fluid oozed out — not all at once in a gushing jet, but at intervals, and in huge, burning tears.

At every drop that escaped out of the body, a creepy almost unbearable feeling started from the tips of the fingers, from the ends of the toes, especially from the innermost cells of the brain; the marrow in the spine and within all the bones seemed to melt; and when the different currents — either coursing with the blood or running rapidly up the nervous fibers — met within the phallus (that small instrument made out of muscles and blood-vessels) a tremendous shock took place; a convulsion which annihilated both mind and matter, a quivering delight which everyone has felt, to a greater or lesser degree — often a thrill almost too intense to be pleasurable.

Pressed against each other, all we could do was to try and smother our groans as the fiery drops slowly followed one another.

The prostration which followed the excessive strain of the nerves had set in, when the carriage stopped before the door of Teleny’s house — that door at which I had madly struck with myfists a short time before.

We dragged ourselves wearily out of Ahe carriage, but hardly had the portal shut itself upon us than we were again kissing and fondling each other with renewed energy.

After some moments, feeling that our desire was too powerful to be withstood any longer:

‘Come,’ said he, ‘why should we linger any longer, and waste precious time here in the darkness and in the cold?’

‘Is it dark and is it cold?’ was my reply.

He kissed me fondly.

‘In the gloom you are my light; in the cold you are my fire; the frozen wastes of the Pole would be a Garden of Eden for me, if you were there,’ I continued.

We then groped our way upstairs in the dark, for I would not allow him to light a wax match. I therefore went along, stumbling against him; not that I could not see, but because I was intoxicated with male desire as a drunken man is with wine.

Soon we were in his apartment. When we found ourselves in the small, dimly-lighted antechamber, he opened his arms and stretched them out towards me.

‘Welcome!’ said he. ‘May this home be ever thine.’ Then he added, in a low tone, in that unknown, musical tongue, ‘My body hungereth for thee, soul of my soul, life of my life!’

He had barely finished these words before we were lovingly caressing each other.

After thus fondling each other for a few moments— ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that I have been expecting you today?’

‘Expectinq me?’

‘Yes, I knew that sooner or later you would be mine. Moreover, I felt that you would be coming today.’

‘How so?’

‘I had a presentiment,’ he said quite seriously.

‘And had I not come?’

‘I should have done what you were going to do when I met you, for life without you would have been unbearable.’

‘What! drowned yourself?’

‘No, not exactly: the river is too cold and bleak, I am too much of a Sybarite for that. No, I should simply have put myself to sleep — the eternal slumber of death, dreaming of you, in this room prepared to receive you, and where no man has ever set his foot.’

Saying these words he opened the door of a small chamber, and ushered me into it. A strong, overpowering smell of white heliotrope first greeted my nostrils.

It was a most peculiar room, the walls of which were covered over with some warm, white, soft, quilted stuff, studded all over with frosted silver buttons; the floor was covered with the curly white fleece of young lambs; in the middle of the apartment stood a capacious couch, on which was thrown the skin of a huge polar bear. Over this single piece of furniture, an old silver lamp — evidently from some Byzantine church or some Eastern synagogue — shed a pale glimmering light, sufficient, however, to light up the dazzling whiteness of this temple of Priapus whose votaries we were.

‘I know,’ said he, as he dragged me in, ‘I know that white is your favorite color, that it suits your dark complexion, so it has been fitted up for you and you alone. No other mortal shall ever set foot in it.’

Uttering these words, he stripped me deftly of all my clothes — for I was in his hands like a slumbering child, or a man in a trance.

In an instant I was not only stark naked, but stretched on the bearskin, while he, standing in front of me, was gloating upon me with famished eyes.

I felt his glances greedily fall everywhere; they sank into my brain, and my head began to swim; they pierced through my heart, whipping my blood up, making it flow quicker and hotter through all the arteries; they darted within my veins, and Priapus unhooded itself and lifted up its head violently so that all the tangled web of veins in its body seemed ready to burst.

Then he felt me with his hands everywhere, after which he began to press his lips on every part of my body, showering kisses on my breast, my arms, my legs, my thighs, and then, when he had reached my middle parts, he pressed his face rapturously on the thick and curly hair that grows there so plentifully.

He shivered with delight as he felt the crisp locks upon his cheek and neck; then, taking hold of my phallus, he pressed his lips upon it. That seemed to electrify him; and then the tip and afterwards the whole glans disappeared within his mouth.

As it did so, I could hardly keep quiet. I clasped within my hands his curly and scented head; a shiver ran through my whole body; all my nerves were on edge; the sensation was so keen that it almost maddened me.

Then the whole column was in his mouth, the tip was touching his palate; his tongue, flattened or thickened, tickled me everywhere. Now I was sucked greedily, then nibbled or bitten. I screamed, I called on him to stop. I could not bear such intensity any longer; it was killing me. If it had lasted but a second longer I should have lost my senses. He was deaf and ruthless to my entreaties. Flashes of lightning seemed to be passing before my eyes; a torrent of fire was coursing through my body.

‘Enough — stop, enough!’ I groaned.

My nerves were extended; a thrill came over me; the soles of my feet seemed to have been drilled through. I writhed; I was convulsed.

One of his hands which had been caressing my testicles slipped under my bum — a finger was slipped in the hole. I seemed to be a man in front, a woman behind, for the pleasure I felt either way.

My trepidation had reached its climax. My brain reeled; mv bodv melted; the burninq milk of life was again mounting up, like a sap of fire; my bubbling blood mounted up to my brain, maddening me. I was exhausted; I fainted with pleasure: I fell upon him — a lifeless mass!

In a few minutes I was myself again — eager to take his place, and to return the caresses I had just received.

I tore the clothes from his body, so that he was speedily as naked as I was. What a pleasure it was to feel his skin against mine from head to foot! Moreover, the delight I had just felt had only increased my eagerness, so that, after clasping each other and wrestling together for a few moments, we both rolled on the floor, twisting, and rubbing, and crawling, and writhing, like two heated cats exciting each other into a paroxysm of rage.

But my lips were eager to taste his phallus — an organ which might have served as a model for the huge idol in the temple of Priapus, or over the doors of the Pompeian brothels, only that at the sight of this wingless god most men would have — as many did —

discarded women for the love of their fellow men. It was big without having the proportion of an ass’; it was thick and rounded, though slightly tapering; the glans — a fruit of flesh and blood, like a small apricot — looked pulpy, round and appetizing.

I feasted my hungry eyes upon it; I handled it; I kissed it; I felt its soft glossy skin upon my lips; it moved with an inward motion of its own, as I did so. My tongue then deftly tickled the tip, trying to dart itself between those tiny rosy lips that, bulged out with love, opened and spattered a tiny drop of sparkling dew. I felt it quivering with a life of its own; I moved quicker, quicker, quicker. He clasped my head furiously; all his nerves were throbbing.

‘Your mouth is burning — you are sucking out my very brain! Stop, stop! my whole body is aglow! I can’t — any more! I can’t — it is too much!’

He grasped my head tightly to make me stop, but I pressed his phallus tightly with my lips, my cheeks, my tongue; my movements were more and more rapid, so that after a few strokes I felt him shudder from head to foot, as if seized by a fit of giddiness. He sighed, he groaned, he screamed. His head reeled; the pleasure he felt was so sharp that it verged upon pain.

‘Stop, stop!’ he moaned faintly, shutting his eyes and panting.

I, however, was maddened by the idea that he was now truly mine; that I was drinking down the fiery foaming sap of his body, the real elixir of life.