The Casanova Embrace (10 page)

"Delicious," he said.

"What is?" Eduardo asked.

"The scent of cunt."

"You're unbelievable, Raoul. Your whole life is
wrapped up in your crotch."

"Is there anything else?"

His lectures were an exercise in futility, since, largely,
they were given in his own head. You are looking at the dry rot of the
twentieth century, he had wanted to say. It is hopeless, he decided. Besides,
he adored Raoul. Even his blatant envy, in which Eduardo reveled, could not dim
his adoration, and he loved to bask in Raoul's aura, knowing that proximity to
Raoul enhanced his own importance.

"How does it feel to be in the home of a
butcher?" Raoul said suddenly. He would do this on occasion, reveal a tiny
morsel of morality when one least expected it.

"And here again is the butcher's daughter."

Anna came toward them, radiant in white chiffon, her blonde
hair bouncing, as she carried her smile forward, reaching out to touch Raoul's
hand, acknowledging Eduardo's presence with a brief nod. She glided into
Raoul's arms and he moved onto the dance floor, merging with her, a mass of
white with four pairs of extremities. She rested her head against his cheek,
her eyes closed, as Raoul undulated slowly to the music's rhythm, exhibiting
his superior magnetism to the group.

Eduardo pressed into the shadows, his shyness transformed
to observation as he contemplated his peers. Within himself, he could not quite
subdue his emotions with his intellect. It had been his principal exercise of
late, but it was giving him increasing difficulty. The disparate affluence of
his family had begun to enrage him. We have so much. They have so little.
"They" were the vast underpriviledged, a nation within a nation. He
had begun reading Marx, listening to the growing sounds of unrest that slipped
into his consciousness through the press and his occasional contacts with
servants and radicals on the campus. Observing the display of arrogant
superiority fed his disgust and allowed him to play the role of poseur and snob
in this gathering, where he had actually begun to feel alienated.

The alienation was more than political. It was social. His
relationship with girls was a trial and an agony. Near them, except for his
mother and sisters, he felt awkward, clumsy, self-conscious. Could it be that
he could not resolve his romantic view of love with the physical reality of
sex? He could react, sometimes with embarrassing effects. Once he had actually
had an orgasm while dancing with a girl and he had been reluctant to dance ever
since. The moments before he fell asleep were an agony of physical hunger for
him as his body craved sexual surfeit. Sometimes the image of Isabella and his
father intruded. Even the sense of revulsion had reshaped itself and emerged as
erotica and this, too, had filled him with guilt. But he had never confided that
to anyone, certainly not Raoul, who would have ridiculed it. He had also not
told Raoul that he was a virgin. Raoul would have been dumbfounded.

"Eduardo," Raoul whispered as he swung Anna into
the shadows. "Come pick yourself a cherry." Eduardo watched as he
buried his tongue into her ear. She shivered lightly and giggled. "We will
have to leave unless Eduardo finds himself a friend," Raoul warned. Anna,
obviously frightened, crossed the patio and returned with a tall flat-chested
girl who, like Eduardo, seemed either shy or intimidated by some inner
alienation.

"This is Estacita," Anna said with mocking
sweetness. The tall girl reluctantly held out her hand, and Eduardo took it,
feeling the nervous moisture of both of them.

Raoul beckoned and drifted further into the shadows in the
direction of the sea wall. In the distance, the surf pounded the beaches.

Raoul removed a silver flask from his back pocket and took
a long sip, passed it around to the group. Anna hesitantly followed, sipping
freely. Eduardo lifted the flask but plugged the opening with the tip of his
tongue, and Estacita refused. Anna melted into Raoul's arms again and they
danced to the musical sounds, although only their pelvises moved in languorous
circular motions. Estacita, giggling nervously, turned her eyes away,
concentrating on the barely distinguishable surf in the distance. Eduardo
continued to observe his friend and soon they were oblivious to him. Estacita
moved back to the crowd, filling him with a vague sense of loneliness. He walked
to the table, helped himself to some punch and faded again into the shadows,
watching the couples, paired off in some mysterious mating game from which he
felt brutally excluded. Contempt was no substitute for loneliness.

Later, he roamed to the sea wall, looking for Raoul. He and
Anna had disappeared. A muted curse hissed from somewhere on the beach below
and he peered over the shallow wall following the sound. He could make out
vague thrashings in the darkness, the sounds of struggle.

"Raoul," he called, his voice lost in the shudder
of the surf's sound. The thrashings persisted. "Damn you," he heard.
Then the sharp sound of slapped flesh. He lifted himself over the sea wall and
struggled forward, his shoes filling in the soft dunes. Again he heard the slap
and could see movement in white, like sheets flapping in the wind. Hurrying
closer, he reached the figures. Raoul had Anna pinioned against the wall and
she was resisting energetically as Raoul struggled to keep her still. He could
see his friend's bare buttocks glowing like odd globes in the faint light.

"Raoul," Eduardo hissed. The sound froze them and
Raoul's face turned toward him, twisted with anger.

"Mind your own business," he mumbled. His voice
was heavy, his speech slurred.

"He is hurting me," Anna pleaded. "Help me,
Eduardo."

"Goddamned tease," Raoul hissed, groping beneath
her dress.

The girl struggled furiously, whimpering finally as her
energy failed. Eduardo gripped Raoul by the shoulders and pulled him away. They
both fell into the sand. Anna slumped against the wall, rearranging her
clothes. Eduardo was no match for Raoul, who quickly subdued him, straddling
his body and pinioning his arms. He could smell the alcohol on his breath.

"You must stop this," Anna called, rushing to
them now, an edge of panic in her voice. Eduardo looked upward into Raoul's
face, watching the contortion settle, the familiar look return.

"You should have minded your own business," he
said, smiling suddenly and shaking his head. He released Eduardo, who stood up
and smoothed his clothes while Raoul, unruffled, calmly hitched up his trousers
and redid his belt.

"You'd think I was about to murder you, you
bitch," Raoul said.

"You know why?" Anna pouted. Eduardo was
confused, as his eyes wandered from Anna's face to that of his friend. Raoul
turned to Eduardo, seeking judgment.

"I am a bareback rider," he said.

"And I don't like playing Russian roulette." Anna
whispered.

"Screw yourself," Raoul said with disgust,
grabbing Eduardo under the arm and hurrying forward.

"Where are you going?" Anna cried.

"The hell away from here."

"But the party...."

"Fuck the party."

They did not look back, moving as swiftly as possible
through the small dunes, parallel to the sea wall beyond which the music
blared. They reached a path of wooden slats and walked swiftly toward the
crescent road which fronted the beach, stopping only to empty their shoes of
sand. In the distance, the lights of the hotels flickered. Eduardo followed
silently behind Raoul.

Had he mistaken the incident, Eduardo wondered, humiliated
that he might have really intruded on some odd game. They went into the bar of
the Mirador Hotel. Raoul squinted into the darkness and, nodding at the
bartender, squeezed into the crowd at a spot to which the bartender had
beckoned them.

"Ricardo," Raoul said, acknowledging, as always,
his proprietary interest. The bartender smiled and put a double Scotch in front
of Raoul.

"Give him ginger ale," his friend mocked, as if
Eduardo's lack of interest in alcohol somehow denigrated his manhood. Eduardo
caught the message of bemusement in his friend's tone.

"I thought you were raping her," he said, the
words, he knew, a confession of his ignorance. Raoul lifted his glass, drained
it, replaced it on the bar, and laughed.

"Raping her." He pounded his chest.
"Me?"

"It actually sounded like you were murdering
her."

"She loved it." He paused. "We were merely
having a little dispute on some of the more technical aspects."

"Technical aspects?"

Raoul signaled the alert bartender for another drink.

"Eduardo. You are truly the stupidest man I have ever
met when it comes to women."

"I'll grant you that," Eduardo said morosely.

The bartender came over and leaned on the bar, pointing
with his eyes to a dark corner of the lounge where a woman sat by herself. She
wore sunglasses and an odd snarl on her lips, but was attractive, in her early
twenties. Raoul slid toward the bartender.

"She must raise the fare back to Santiago. And her
lover has also stuck her for the price of the hotel," the bartender
whispered. Raoul patted the bartender's arms and looked at Eduardo.

"He is the cleverest bird dog in Punta del Este,"
Raoul said, watching the bartender bask in his sense of achievement. He stood
up and, beckoning Eduardo to follow, moved through the crowded lounge to the
woman. She did not look up as Raoul slid into the seat beside her.

"Ricardo says you might welcome company." The
woman looked to the bartender, who nodded a protective assent. She looked
toward them and, with difficulty, let the snarl fade from her lips, managing a
thin smile. But she did not remove her sunglasses and was, therefore, difficult
to observe. Eduardo surveyed her. The sunglasses also created the illusion that
she could not see him. Her skin seemed milk-white in the sparsely lighted room,
her hair soft, but jet black, done in a pompadour. Because she was sitting it
was difficult to see whether she was short or tall. The rise above the table
showed large full breasts, features not lost on Raoul, who eyed them with
unabashed interest.

"I am Raoul and this is Eduardo. We are also
Chilean."

The woman nodded. She had acknowledged their presence with
little interest. Raoul looked at Eduardo, winked and prodded him with his
elbow.

"Ricardo says you have a bit of a problem."

The woman nodded, displaying nothing of her internal self.
She was, despite her predicament, quite lovely, Eduardo decided.

"It is purely financial," she said.

"I understand," Raoul said, winking again to
Eduardo. "And I am prepared to be your benefactor."

"I will need bastante pleata," the woman said.
"Cash."

Raoul confidentially dipped into his pocket and pulled out
a wad of bills. It was another familiar characteristic, the display of cash,
always folded neatly and pinched with a heavy silver money clip. With a
flourish he counted out the bills on the table, almost depleting his roll.

Eduardo could not tell whether the woman had watched the
process. Beyond the dark glasses he could see nothing.

"And I am also the benefactor of my friend."

"That will require an extra sum," the woman said.
Obviously she had watched the counting process with eagerness. Raoul's head
fell back as he laughed, signaling the waiter to bring more drinks. They came
quickly.

After Raoul had polished his off, he said, "The price
is outrageous to begin with." His speech had become slurred. He called for
another double Scotch.

Eduardo, admitting his lust for this woman, was suddenly
fearful that Raoul was merely toying with her. He felt the charge of his own
excitement.

"I can offer some.... "he hesitated ...
"benefactions." He nearly swallowed the words.

"You are my guest," snapped Raoul. "Besides,
I am the negotiator." Another drink came. Raoul drank and ordered another.
Raoul was being irritable and ornery again, Eduardo observed. The woman
shrugged, took the bills from the table, and stood up. She was quite tall. They
followed her through the crowd, into the lobby of the hotel, pressing into the
small elevator. A bored operator brought them to her floor.

Eduardo felt his heart beat heavily. The woman was thin-hipped,
with firm buttocks that swung in a tight arc, suggesting promise and power. He
felt the fear rise in him. Raoul staggered beside him. The woman stopped to
open the door of her room. Her lover had apparently been initially lavish. The
room seemed one of the best in the hotel, with a wide view of the ocean through
a large bay window that opened onto a small balcony.

Inside, the woman for the first time removed her glasses.
Her eyes were puffy. She had obviously been crying. But her age was more readable.
Eduardo imagined she was just a year or two older than they. Raoul poured
himself a drink from an opened bottle on the cocktail table. Eduardo's eyes met
the woman's. Let him, she seemed to say. Without her glasses she was less
self-assured. He imagined he noted an element of disgust in her demeanor. She
was also less arrogant. She sat on the large double bed, hesitating. Eduardo
felt awkward, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"Well," the woman said, reaching behind her to
unfasten the clasp of her dress. Material fell off her shoulder, revealing a
pink brassiere strap. She unpinned her pompadour and her hair collapsed to her
shoulders.

"Why don't you look at the stars?" she said
gently to Eduardo.

"Yesh, the shtars," Raoul said, staggering toward
the bottle again, his face clenched with drunken concentration. The woman
shrugged, darting him a look of bemused resignation. For the first time she
smiled broadly, genuinely, he imagined. He went out on the balcony, stretching
on a divan and looking up at the canopy of stars. The night was warm, the sound
of the surf gentle now as the tide had moved further out to sea. In the
distance he could hear faint music, probably from Anna's outdoor party.