Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated) (255 page)

for I think I could get accustomed to a plain- featured wife, but not to one whose voice is shrill, harsh, and piercing.

 
— They say that you looked very much like her.

 
— Do they? Anyhow, I hope that you do not wish me to praise my mother like Lamartine did, and then to add modestly, ‘I am after her own image.’

But how is it that having become a widow so young, she did not marry again? Rich and handsome as she was, she must have had as many suitors as Penelope herself.

 
— Some day or other I will tell you her life, and then you will understand why she preferred her liberty to the ties of matrimony.

 
— She was fond of you, was she not?

— “Vfes, very; and so was I of her. Moreover — had I not been given to those propensities which I dared not avow to her, and which only tribades can understand; had I, like other men of my age, been living a merry life of fornication with whores, mistresses, and lively grisettes — I should often have made her the confidante of my erotic exploits, for in the moment of bliss our prodigal feelings are often blunted by the too great excess, while the remembrance doled out at our will is a real twofold pleasure of the senses and of the mind.

Teleny, however, had of late become a kind of bar between us, and I think she had got to be rather jealous of him, for his name seemed to have become as objectionable to her as it formerly had been to me.

 
— Did she begin to suspect your liaison?

 
— I did not know whether she suspected it, or if she was beginning to be jealous of the affection I bore him.

Matters, however, were coming to a crisis, and were shaping towards the dreadful way in which they ended.

One day a grand concert was to be given at B — , and L — , who was to play, having been taken ill, Teleny was asked to take his place. It was an honor he could not refuse.

‘I am loath to leave you,’ said he, ‘even for a day or two, for I know that just now you are so busy that you cannot possibly get away, especially as your manager is ill.’

‘Yes,’ said I, ‘it is rather awkward, still I might ‘No, no, it would be foolish; I’ll not allow you.’

‘But you know it is so long since you played at a concert where I was not present,’ I said.

‘You’ll be present in mind if not in body. I shall see you sitting in your usual place, and I shall play for you and you alone. Besides, we have never been parted for any length of time — no, not for a single day since Briancourt’s letter. Let us try and see if we can live apart for two days. Who knows? Perhaps, sometime or other— ‘

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing, only you might get tired of this life. \bu might, like other men, marry just to have a family.’

‘A family!’ I burst out laughing. ‘Is that encumbrance so very necessary to a man’s happiness?’

‘My love might surfeit you.’

‘Rene, don’t speak in that way! Could I live without you?’

He smiled incredulously.

‘What! do you doubt my love?’

‘Can I doubt that the stars are fire? but,’ he continued slowly, and looking at me, ‘do you doubt mine?’

It seemed to me as if he had grown pale when he put that question to me.

‘No. Have you ever given me the slightest cause to doubt it?’

‘And if I were unfaithful?’

‘Teleny,’ said I, feeling faint, ‘you have another lover.’ And I saw him in the arms of someone else, tasting that bliss which was mine and mine alone.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I have not; but if I had?’

‘You would love him — or her, and then my life would be blasted forever.’

‘No, not forever; only for a time, perhaps. But could you not forgive me?’

‘Yes, if you still loved me.’

The idea of losing him sent a sharp pang through my heart, which seemed to act like a sound flagellation, my eyes were filled with tears, and my blood was on fire. I therefore clasped him in my arms and hugged him, straining all my muscles in my embrace; my lips eagerly sought his, my tongue was in his mouth. The more I kissed him the sadder I grew, and the more eager was my desire. I stopped a moment to look at him. How handsome he was that day! His beauty was almost ethereal.

I can see him now with that aureole of hair so soft and silky, the color of a golden ray of sunshine playing through a crystal goblet of topaz-colored wine, with his moist half-opened mouth, oriental in its voluptuousness, with his blood-red lips which no illness had withered like those of the painted, mush-scented courtesans who sell a few moments of carrion bliss for gold, nor discolored like those of pale, wasp-waisted, anemic virgins, whose monthly menses have left in their veins nothing but a colorless fluid instead of ruby blood.

And those luminous eyes, in which an innate, sullen fire seemed to temper the lust of the carnal mouth, just as his cheeks, almost childlike in their innocent, peachy roundness, contrasted with the massive throat so full of manly vigor —

and a form indeed.

Where every god did seem to set his seal To give the world assurance of a man.

Let the listless, orris-scented aesthete in love with a shadow, scourge me after this for the burning, maddening passion which his virile beauty excited in my breast. Well — yes, I am like the men of fervent blood born on the volcanic soil of Naples, or under the glowing sun of the East; and, after all, I would rather be like Brunette Latun — a man who loved his fellow-men — than like Dante, who sent them all to hell, while he himself went to that effete place called heaven, with a languid vision of his own creation.

Teleny returned my kisses with the passionate eagerness of despair. His lips were on fire, his love seemed to have changed into a raging fever. I don’t know what had come over me, but I felt that pleasure could kill, but not calm me. My head was all aglow!

There are two kinds of lascivious feelings, both equally strong and overpowering: the one is the fervent, carnal lust of the senses, enkindled in the genital organs and mounting to the brain, making human beings Swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel Divinity within them breeding wings Wherewith to scorn the earth.

The other is the cold libidinousness of fancy, the keen and gall-like irradiation of the brain which parches the healthy blood as vJth newwne intoxicated, The first, the strong concupiscence of lusty youth — natural to the flesh, is satisfied as soon as men take largely their fill of love and love’s disport, and the heavily-laden anther has sturdily shaken forth the seed that clogged it; and then they feel as our first parents did, when dewy sleep Oppressed them, wearied wth their amorous play.

The body then so delightfully light seems to rest on ‘earth’s freshest, softest lap,’ and the slothful yet half-awakened mind broods over its slumbering shell.

The second, kindled in the head, bred of unkindly fumes, is the lechery of senility — a morbid craving, like the hunger of surfeited gluttony. The senses, like Messalina, lassata sed non satiata, ever tingling, keep hankering after the impossible. The spermatic ejaculations, far from calming the body, only irritate it, for the exciting influence of a salacious fancy continues after the anther has yielded all its seed. Even if acrid blood comes instead of the balmy, creamlike fluid, it brings with it nothing but a painful irritation. If, unlike as in satyriasis, an erection does not take place, and the phallus remains limp and lifeless, still the nervous system is no less convulsed by impotent desire and lechery — a mirage of the over-heated brain, no less shattering because it is effete.

These two feelings combined together are something akin to what I underwent as, holding Teleny clasped against my throbbing, heaving breast, I felt within me the contagion of his eager longing, and of his overpowering sadness.

I had taken off my friend’s shirt collar and cravat to see and to feel his beautiful bare neck, then little by little I stripped him of all his clothes, till at last he remained naked in my embrace.

What a model of voluptuous comeliness he was, with his strong and muscular shoulders, his broad and swelling chest, his skin of a pearly whiteness, as soft and as fresh as the petals of a waterlily, his limbs rounded like those of Leotard, with whom every woman was in love. His thighs, his legs and feet in their exquisite grace, were perfect models.

The more I looked upon him the more enamored I was of him But the sight was not enough. I had to heighten the visual delight by the sense of touch, I had to feel the tough and yet elastic muscles of the arm in the palm of my hand, to fondle his massive and sinewy breast, to paddle his back. From there my hands descended down to the round lobes of the rump, and I clasped him against me by the buttocks. Thereupon, tearing off my clothes, I pressed all his body on mine, and rubbed against him, wriggling like a worm. Lying over him as I was, my tongue was in his mouth, searching for his, that receded, and was darted out when mine retired, for they seemed to play a wanton, bickering game of hide-and- seek together — a game which made all the body quiver with delight.

Then our fingers twisted the crisp and curly hair that grew all around the middle parts, or handled the testicles, so softly and so gently that they were hardly sentient of the touch, and still they shivered in a way that almost made the fluid in them flow out before its time.

The most skilled of prostitutes could never give such thrilling sensations as those which I felt with my lover, for the tweake is, after all, only acquainted with the pleasures she herself has felt; while the keener emotions, not being those of her sex, are unknown to her and cannot be imagined by her.

Likewise, no man is ever able to madden a woman with such overpowering lust as another tribade can, for she alone knows how to tickle her on the right spot just in the nick of time. The quintessence of bliss can, therefore, only be enjoyed by beings of the same sex.

Our two bodies were now in as close a contact as the glove is to the hand it sheathes, our feet were tickling each other wantonly, our knees were pressed together, the skin of our thighs seemed to cleave and to form one flesh.

Though I was loath to rise, still, feeling his stiff and swollen phallus throbbinq aqainst mv body, I was just going to tear myself off from him, and to take his fluttering implement of pleasure in my mouth and drain it, when he — feeling that mine was not only turgid, but moist and brimful to overflowing — clasped me with his arms and kept me down.

Opening his thighs, he thereupon took my legs between his own, and entwined them in such a way that his heels pressed against the side of my calves. For a moment I was gripped as in a vise, and I could hardly move.

Then, loosening his arms, he uplifted himself, placed a pillow under his buttocks, which were thus well apart — his legs being all the time widely open.

Having done this, he took hold of my rod and pressed it against his gaping anus. The tip of the frisky phallus soon found its entrance in the hospitable hole that endeavored to give it admission. I pressed a little; the whole of the glans was engulfed. The sphincter soon gripped it in such a way that it could not come out without an effort. I thrust it slowly to prolong as much as possible the ineffable sensation that ran through every limb, to calm the quivering nerves, and to allay the heat of the blood. Another push, and half the phallus was in his body. I pulled it out half an inch, though it seemed to me a yard by the prolonged pleasure I felt. I pressed forward again, and the whole of it, down to its very root, was all swallowed up. Thus wedged, I vainly endeavored to drive it higher up — an impossible feat, and, clasped as I was, I felt it wriggling in its sheath like a baby in its mother’s womb, giving myself and him an unutterable and delightful titiNation.

So keen was the bliss that overcame me, that I asked myself if some ethereal, life-giving fluid were not being poured on my head, and trickling down slowly over my quivering flesh?

Surely the rain-awakened flowers must be conscious of such a sensation during a shower, after they have been parched by the scorching rays of an festival sun.

Teleny again put his arm round me and held me tight. I gazed at myself within his eyes, he saw himself in mine. During this voluptuous, lambent feeling, we patted each other’s bodies softly, our lips cleaved together and my tongue was again in his mouth. We remained in this copulation almost without stirring, for I felt that the slightest movement would provoke a copious ejaculation, and this feeling was too exquisite to be allowed to pass away so quickly. Still we could not help writhing, and we almost swooned away with delight. We were both shivering with lust, from the roots of our hair to the tips of our toes; all the flesh of our bodies kept bickering luxuriously, just as placid waters of the mere do at noontide when kissed by the sweet-scented, wanton breeze that has just deflowered the virgin rose.

Such intensity of delight could not, however, last very long; a few almost unwilling contractions of the sphincter brandled the phallus, and then the first brunt was over; I thrust in with might and main, I wallowed in him; my breath came thickly; I panted, I sighed, I groaned. The thick burning fluid was spouted out slowly and at long intervals.

As I rubbed myself against him, he underwent all the sensations I was feeling; for I was hardly drained of the last drop before I was likewise bathed with his own seething sperm. We did not kiss each other any further; our languid, half-open, lifeless lips only aspired each other’s breath. Our sightless eyes saw each other no more, for we fell into that divine prostration which follows shattering ecstasy.