The Fata Morgana Books (11 page)

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The return of the electricity woke me up. The girl had rolled onto her side, her legs intertwined with mine, the phallus still lodged inside me. Spreading apart my buttocks, I slowly pulled away, it was dry now and it stuck a little; finally the object came out and fell onto the bedspread with a small dull thud. My mouth was dry and pasty; I carefully disentangled myself from her legs, rose up and headed to the bathroom. The white light of the neon dazzled me, I turned it off right away; still blinking, I leaned over the sink to drink greedily from the faucet. When I came back out I contemplated the young woman: she was still sleeping, stretched out on her side, the phallus almost completely hidden in the shadow of her curved body; behind her, the yellow light of the bedside lamp illuminated her naked, brown back, the long green grasses of the bedspread crumpled beneath her body, the gilt vines of the wallpaper. I sat next to her and lightly ran the flat of my fingertips over the nape of her neck, her spine, her buttocks. She shivered but didn’t wake up. Her skin, almost rough, grated beneath my fingers; between her legs, the secretions had dried on the black phallus, reflecting light in places. I should turn down the heat, I thought confusedly. But I could see no thermostat, no temperature control. I got back up, filled two glasses of water, and placed them on the radiator; then I turned off the light and lay down again alongside the girl, on my belly, one hand on the small of her back. Sounds of water emanating from the bathroom woke me completely. The light was on again and I was alone on the bed. I got up, knocked on the door to the bathroom, and went in without waiting for a reply: the girl, sitting naked on the toilet, her elbows resting on her knees, the phallus still fixed to her belly, was peeing. I bent over to kiss her hair. She wiped herself and got up in a swift movement that made her artificial member bounce, before pressing the flush handle. “Aren’t you going to take that off ?” I asked her as she rinsed her face and ran wet fingers through her hair. “Why? I like having a cock. I think I’ll wear it all day.” She laughed and I went out to stretch out on the bed. It was still just as hot and dry and I was thirsty again. She came out behind me as the little musical tone of a cellphone rang out. “Oh! I have to go,” she said cheerfully as she examined the screen. Leaning on one elbow, I watched her get dressed. She struggled with her jeans, already almost too narrow for her hips, trying to fit the object lying next to her thigh into them. Finally she managed to zipper them and buckle her belt. Then she put on her bra and her blouse, before tapping the bulge in her jeans: “Nice package, don’t you think?” I reached out and stroked it without a word. She laughed, shook her head, and went out. I got up, showered quickly, and got dressed. The smooth, silky material of the tracksuit glided pleasantly on my skin. At the entrance to the bedroom, I hesitated: there were two doors, one opposite the other, something I hadn’t noticed before. Which one had the girl taken? It didn’t matter. I opened one at random and crossed the threshold with a confident step; already my feet, in sneakers light as feathers, found their short stride again; I brought my elbows in against my ribs and concentrated on my breathing, inhaling through my mouth to the rhythm of my steps. The air here was less dry than in the bedroom, sweat soon beaded on my face, soaked my armpits, the hollow of my back; I followed the curve of the grey hallway, advancing almost noiselessly. It was dark, but that didn’t bother me too much, I could still see well enough; I could not, however, make out any source of light, the walls seemed smooth, identical, indistinct, I wondered vaguely where the lighting could be coming from, while still aware that it was of no importance. Here and there, a darker area seemed to open onto a cubbyhole, or even a tunnel, I went on my way without slowing down, following the curve that continued on, and like a child I held out my hand and let my fingers trail along the wall until they came up against an object that I hadn’t seen. It was a doorknob, I pushed it and opened the door. Right away, I knew that this space suited me. It was a vast and very bright studio, its walls covered with books; in the back a long bay window overlooked piles of little buildings rising in levels in front of a grey, luminous strip of sea. I came over and rested my hands on the long table in front of the window as I examined the city, contemplating the changing colors of the façades as the light faded. Then I turned around. A disk case was lying on a stereo, old recordings of Mozart piano concertos; I put one on at random and strolled through the studio listening to the first notes, letting my gaze wander absent-mindedly over the bindings of the books and the many engravings and reproductions hanging between the bookcases. The cheerful, lucid notes of the music danced through the room, filling me with a profound feeling of serene lightness. I poured myself a glass of schnapps, lit a little cigar found in a box, and burrowed into a black leather sofa to leaf through an album lying there, on a coffee table. In oblong format, bound in white cloth, it showed a series of photographs of naked men and women, executing various movements broken down into stop motion sequences by a multiple camera setup. I paused at one plate: a man, with a powerful movement, was drawing another man around his body to throw him on the ground, face-down, before falling on top of him to pin him there, his head seemingly confused with that of his opponent as the twin white globes of the buttocks and the vigorous lines of the thighs overlapped each other, a sinuous heap of forms, forever fixed in place by the successive shutter releases.

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It was cool in this studio, almost cold. I changed the disk for another and searched through the cupboards for something to eat. There wasn’t much, but I was able to throw together a refreshing meal of sardines in oil, raw onions, black bread, and rosé. As I was finishing it my body shivered with cold; I quickly cleared the dishes and went to run the shower, waiting for the water to get hot before undressing and plunging myself underneath it. In the water I stretched my muscles, enjoying the sensations provoked by this long, wiry body. In the bedroom, I dried myself in front of a large round mirror placed at the foot of the bed, a simple mattress resting on the ground covered with a thick embroidered bedspread, long green grass on a golden background. The mirror showed only the lower part of my body, which, despite the little member shrunken against the balls, seemed almost like a womanish body to me, an image that caused me no anxiety but rather a diffuse, caressing feeling of pleasure. I turned around to contemplate from the side the curve of the thigh, the arch of the hips, the delicate oval of the buttock. I knelt down on the bed, my back to the mirror, and turned my head. The ass, hiding the top of the body, was now facing the circle of the mirror, and I spread it slightly with one hand, revealing the yellowish flower of the anus that blinked quietly, as if it were gazing at itself, a tiny opening but bottomless, dazzling. I found that very beautiful and I contemplated it for a long time before finally relaxing and stretching out full-length on the bedspread. I was no longer cold and I fell asleep that way, as if I were lying on a field of grass, rocked by the lighthearted, mocking, playful cadences of a last concerto. When I woke up it was dark, everything was quiet, goosebumps covered my skin and I slipped beneath the bedspread and sheets, pulling them around me to get warm. But I couldn’t fall back asleep and finally I got up, the bedspread still draped around my shoulders, to go drink a glass of water in the kitchenette. Through the bay window, down below, I could see in the darkness a lozenge of light, the window of a neighboring apartment forming a section crossed lengthwise by a long sofa upholstered in white upon which had sunk a young woman in delicate underclothes. A small round mirror was hanging above the sofa and she was putting on makeup, kneeling before it, her back arched a little to keep her balance. From time to time, she raised her arm to adjust the angle of the mirror, which was attached to a mobile support, or else to bring it closer to her face, and this gesture stretched her breast nestled in an underwire bra and made the edge of her pectoral muscle bulge, like a milky white cable attached to her shoulder. She carried out these gestures with swift precision, absorbed in the unconscious happiness of this routine so familiar to her body. I watched her for a while and then went back to bed. Sleep quickly brought me to the entrance of a house, a house that must have been my own, locked after a long absence. A series of doors led to the kitchen, out of which rushed a black cat as soon as I opened the door. The room stank of shit and trash, the cat must have been locked up in it during my entire absence and had soiled everything: No matter, I said to myself, shrugging my shoulders, my wife will clean it. I opened the door that led to the small back garden to air it out, then went down to the cellar; there I crossed a long hallway that led to a kind of grotto, opening onto the large front garden. My workers were waiting there. “So, Emilio,” I said, “how’s the work going?” The man I had spoken to came forward, hat in hand, and gestured for me to follow him outside. The view that greeted me filled me with horror: the garden, which had previously formed beautiful undulating curves protected from the neighbors’ sight, was now completely filled in, forming a flat surface at the same level as the next house. Distraught, I looked around me: the old ruined barn adjoining the house had disappeared; Emilio, in an excess of zeal, must have had it torn down to fill in the garden. Beside myself, I yelled at him violently: “But Emilio! This is not at all what I asked you to do!” Emilio timidly tried to defend himself as I ran back and forth, noting the extent of the damage. The garden thus renovated ended up at the windows of the neighboring house, barely hidden by a few shrubs, and now extended a small byroad that used to end at the outskirts of my property. In fact, a car was coming down and crossing my garden, cheerfully honking as it passed. “Come on, Emilio!” I shouted. “Just look at this! And what about my barn? Who gave you the order to demolish it?” In vain, I thought about how all this could be repaired, but the damages were too great, it seemed an impossible task. The car emerged from the garden by an open gate next to the neighbors’ house, and I followed it, still foaming. “Well now, first of all, close all this up!” I barked, pointing at the road. “This is a private property here, good God, not a highway!” I went out and contemplated the street. Another car was now coming slowly toward me, driven by a blond woman. Emilio had come out as well and was standing next to me, a little behind me. The car slowed down, as if to park, but didn’t stop and slowly crashed with a great crunch of sheet metal against the stone pillar that supported the gate. I rushed forward but the driver, who was still holding onto the driving wheel with both hands, wasn’t hurt. I thought I recognized my neighbor, who, what’s more curious, resembled my wife as well as my mother—two women who also didn’t know how to drive—and I went over to talk with her about our new problem of proximity; but she didn’t even let me open my mouth before pouring out a litany of complaints through the lowered window: “Oh, you! Do you know that your electric circuit is completely out of whack? There are surges all the time, they’re causing outages in the neighborhood.” These words filled me with fury and I began shouting as well: “Madam, you’re exaggerating! I’ve had that circuit completely overhauled by a professional electrician, twice in a row. That’s enough, now!” When I woke up a cold light was falling in the room, making the golden field of the bedspread sparkle, but warming nothing. I got up and quickly got dressed, swallowed a glass of juice, and went out. In the hallway I resumed my running without hesitation; the effort warmed me up and helped me shed the last scraps of sleep. In my distraction, however, I bumped several times against the walls, the indistinct light blurred all details and I couldn’t always place them with precision; sometimes darker zones appeared, junctions perhaps or else some nook, I avoided them and tried to stay in the center of the hallway, moving with short regular strides, my sneakers falling with a muted sound on a ground as smooth as the walls. I breathed evenly, in short quick puffs; I didn’t get tired, I knew I could run a long time this way. At one moment, I noticed that my shoelace had come untied, and I interrupted my running to kneel down and re-tie it; when I raised my head, I noticed that I was in front of a door handle, I leaned on it without hesitating and a door opened, which I went through as I straightened up. A few steps further in, there waited a proud, beautiful, rather curvaceous woman. She was standing with one hand on her hip; the other was bringing a long cigarette holder to her lips, painted blood-red: “You’re late, darling,” she murmured, exhaling a puff of smoke and taking me by the hand. “Good Lord, you’re sweating. And you’re not even dressed.” Golden bracelets jingled on her wrist; I leaned over and brushed my lips against her bare shoulder, my nose buried in her long reddish curls, inhaling their rich, almost musky smell of amber.“Forgive me. I had to run.”—“That’s all right. Come.” I followed her through a large room, at the back of which a sliding glass door, open, led outside. A brilliant green lawn, over which two yapping Dalmatians were chasing each other, stretched out to copses of palm trees, ficus, and bougainvillea; a group of girls in tight-fitting shorts and tank tops or bras were playing volleyball. “Almost everyone is here already,” my friend said in a slight tone of reproach as she climbed a stone staircase that ran alongside the façade of the house. Her stiletto heels clicked on the stone and her hips swayed in front of me. The staircase led to a vast, tiled terrace the color of terra cotta, in the center of which shone the emerald-green water of a long rectangular pool. A tall girl with black hair cut short, topless, was doing laps; near the edge, another young woman with an artfully disheveled Venetian blond bun, stretched out on her belly and leaning on her elbows, was following my movements with a mocking gaze; her pretty little feet, with bright red nails, swayed above her well-rounded buttocks, enclosed in a white swimsuit with blue stripes that left her slim back bare. I contemplated this magnificent body with a pang of envy; but already my friend was leading me through another sliding glass door into a vast living room, its carpet and walls a pale grey, with burnt orange and lemon yellow drapes, arranged on several different levels and furnished with elegance and restraint in green tones that went with the lawn. In the center rose a sort of bed or sofa without a back, of imposing dimensions, covered with a thick golden cloth embroidered with long green grass. We skirted around the piece of furniture and followed a long hallway that led to a bedroom. The adjoining bathroom, tiled in white with a polished slate floor, seemed immense. “Shower there,” my friend ordered. “I’ll find something for you to wear. Something classic, no?” She ran her painted nails over my chin: “And shave. You’re stubbly.” I quickly undressed and did what she had ordered. I had just finished shaving when she returned with a pile of clothes that she placed on a chair. It took some time to try them on, the sizes weren’t always right; she handed me a grey lace bra whose underwire rounded my form a little, a skintight pair of panties in embroidered tulle, and some silk stockings surmounted with a wide band of lace, also grey but of a darker shade, almost metallic. Perched on high pumps into which I had slipped my feet, I admired in the mirror the curve of my buttocks and thighs set off by the lace, delaying putting on the dress. It was sublime, a long body-skimming sheath made of pearl grey linen and rayon knit to form a fine silky jersey, without the slightest seam, and lined inside with a pale pink silk that flowed delicately on my skin as I slipped it over my head. The shoulder straps left my angular shoulders bare; in front, the cloth, molded by the bra, gave me a tiny but charming chest. My friend smoothed the cloth over my hips, without taking her eyes off our reflection in the mirror. Then she made me up, blue-grey for my eyelids, a pinkish shade for my lips, and a darker pink tint for my nails; she also put some jewelry on me, pearl earrings, a woven choker, a few tastefully wrought silver rings and bracelets. For my hair, it was simple: she smoothed it with gel, then separated it into a long side part, with a lock lying flat across my forehead and the sides held back with hairpins. I balanced on my heels and made a few movements. “You are superb,” my friend whispered hoarsely at the tall woman with a regal bearing whose gaze was devouring me from the mirror, her eyes enlarged by eyeliner and mascara, blazing with excitation. “I might not be the greatest beauty of the evening,” I murmured, pivoting on my heels and gazing over my shoulder at the back and hips of the figure in the mirror, “but my ass will make more than a few of the girls hard.”