The Fata Morgana Books (14 page)

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Under the scalding water he rubbed against me, gripping my ass and pressing me against him, his still half erect member knocking against my own. I turned him around to soap his shoulders, his back, his hips, gliding my fingers between his buttocks and caressing the tufts of curly hairs around his anus. His matte skin was covered with numerous little scars, thick enough in places to form bumps, I counted three on his shoulder and could feel a few more beneath my fingers, on his chest and his groin, and also a long forked one at the angle of his jaw. I pressed my sex against his ass and bit the nape of his neck as he leaned against the tiled wall. Muffled knocks sounded on the bedroom door. He broke away, running his fingers along my balls and member, and slipped on a large terrycloth robe before going to the door. I relaxed in the stream of water, bending my neck under the scalding pressure. A powerful desire filled me, stretching my muscles with excitation while leaving me racked with an empty, sated feeling. Finally I turned off the water and dried off quickly, putting on the other bathrobe hanging there without taking the trouble of closing it. Sitting cross-legged on the green and gold bedspread, the young man was contemplating a large tray on which were lined up dishes in lacquered wood, filled with raw fish and pickled vegetables. Two golden beers frothed in tall, slightly tapered glasses. I joined him and began eating in silence. Aside from the clicking of the chopsticks there was no sound; behind the shutters, which, I supposed, looked out on a street or a courtyard, everything was quiet; a lone lamp, by the bedside, lit us with its pale halo, and I could clearly see our reflections in the windowpanes, two slightly blurred silhouettes, draped in white, which stood out from the verdant field of the bedspread. I finished the last little vegetables, pushed away the tray, and began undoing the knot of his bathrobe, sliding my hand between his thighs to stroke his member. He let out a long sigh and fell back on the bedspread. I spread his legs and leaned forward to run my tongue around his balls and then roll them between my lips, one after the other. With both hands, I pushed his knees back, almost to his shoulders, and continued licking him, sliding my tongue along the perineum and burrowing between the hairs, flicking the tip, to finally come and tickle his anus. It had a slightly spicy, sour taste, I buried my tongue in as he sighed and stroked my hair with one hand, pulling his calves even further back. It was very dry in that room, I quickly lacked saliva; I let his legs go and straightened up to drink a little beer, he took the glass from my hands and drank too, then in a swift motion he shed his bathrobe and turned over onto his belly, offering me his downy thighs and powerful, muscular buttocks; I stripped in turn and stretched on top of him, my stiff member pressed between his thighs, I took his chin in my hand and turned his head toward mine, his lips still had the bitter taste of the beer, I lifted his pelvis and with one hand guided my member toward the opening of his anus, but it was too dry, so I straightened up and brought some saliva up on my tongue as with both hands I spread his buttocks, the saliva streamed onto his hairs and his puckered, barely dilated anus, I massaged it with my thumb, which I dug in a little, and also coated my member with saliva. Then I pressed it again in the center of the hairs, he grunted, pushed as well, it opened all of a sudden and I found myself sucked in, glued against his ass, I slid my hands under his armpits and closed them over the back of his neck, gripping onto him and forcing into him with large thrusts, he moaned, his face pressed in the green leaves of the bedspread, I lifted his pelvis some more and turned around: in the panes of the window, I could clearly make out our two bodies on top of each other, the twin moon of my ass and my spread thighs, suspended above his with between them a darker, indistinct mass. Already pleasure was bursting open my back, stretching the skin of my neck; I slowed down; just at that moment, the phone rang, freezing us on top of each other. As I withdrew to pick it up, I squeezed the muscles of my pelvis with all my strength, but it was too late, pleasure had overcome me and my sperm, as I articulated a hoarse “Yes?” into the receiver, spurted out in long jerks, spattering my stomach, the boy’s ass, the embroidered leaves of the bedspread. “Yes?” In the receiver, no one replied. I pressed my ear to it, repeated several times “Hello? Hello?” but I could hear only the light buzzing of the empty line. Still lying on his stomach, the young man was quickly jerking off, I finally hung up and grasped his ass and balls with both hands, clenching my fingers as he came in turn.

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An electrical outage plunged us into darkness as I tried to wipe the traces of sperm from the bedspread with the help of a roll of toilet paper. I lay down next to the boy, who turned his back to me with a sigh that was hard to interpret. I pressed against him, my now-soft member nestled in the hollow of his buttocks. We must have fallen asleep that way. The return of electricity woke me suddenly. My mouth was dry, pasty; blinking, I dragged myself out of bed to go drink greedily from the bathroom faucet, briefly blinded by the neon light that I turned off right away. Emerging from the bathroom I contemplated the boy: he was still sleeping, sprawled out on his belly, his downy legs intertwined with the embroidered cloth. I slowly ran the pads of my fingers along his back and buttocks, tripping over the scars; his skin grated, almost rough; between his legs, my sperm had dried in long whitish trails. I should turn down the heat, I thought confusedly. But I could see no thermostat, no temperature control. Finally I filled two glasses with water and put them on the radiator before turning off the light and lying back down alongside the young man, one hand on his side. Sounds of water emanating from the bathroom woke me completely. The light was on again and I was alone on the bed. I knocked on the bathroom door and went in without waiting for a reply: the young man, standing in front of the toilet, was peeing. I kissed his shoulder and quickly rinsed off in the shower. When I emerged, a towel knotted around my waist, he had just finished putting on his jeans and buckling his belt. With a smile I tapped the bulge formed by his limb: “Nice package,” I said. He chuckled dryly, slipped his t-shirt over his head, pulled a cellphone from his pocket and consulted it: “I have to go. Will you give me the money?” I looked at him with surprise: “The money?”—“Yes, the money. Like always.” He was sitting on the edge of the bed now and was pulling on his socks and leather ankle boots. A dull anxiety was seeping into my muscles; I hesitated, then went to search through the pockets of my tracksuit before returning with a helpless gesture. The boy had gotten up and was standing in front of me, his shoulders hunched a little and his face calm and cold; a threatening feeling emanated from him, not from his face but from his rounded shoulders, the tension of his thighs, the deceptive calmness of his dangling arms. “Well?”—“I don’t have any money, actually.”—“Are you fucking with me, or what?” His arm straightened and before I could make a move of defense he slapped me across the face, sending me into the wall; another blow, with his closed fist to my belly, doubled me over and sent me to my knees in front of him, stunned, my breath cut off. He took me by the hair, straightened me up, and struck me again several times in the face, sending me flying onto the bed where my mouth splattered the heavy cloth of the bedspread with blood. “Are you fucking with me?” He chased me through the room, the towel had fallen and I crawled naked as he rained my ribs and limbs with kicks, which exploded in my body like bursts of fire. Finally he left me sprawled on the carpet, my mouth and nose full of blood, wheezing and struggling to breathe in a little air. The backs of his legs were in front of me, I saw my clothes fall to the floor one after the other. “Fuck, you really don’t have anything, you son of a bitch,” his voice said far above my head as his legs turned toward me. I saw the tip of one of his boots draw back, then nothing. When I came to I was still lying thus, naked on the carpet soaked in blood; fortunately, the color was the same, it wasn’t too visible. I stayed there for a while panting, letting the pain shoot through my body, then I dragged myself to the bathroom where I managed to haul myself up to the sink. I rinsed off my face, my mouth; the water, turned red, splattered the sink and mirror, I delicately felt my nose and my teeth, one or two moved a little but they were all there, my nose didn’t seem broken, I kept drinking and rinsing off until the water ran almost clear. Then I returned to the bedroom where I gathered my clothes with difficulty and sat down like a block on the edge of the bed to put them on, painfully. Finally dressed, I leaned back for a few minutes to catch my breath, then headed for the door. There were in fact two, I hadn’t noticed, and I had no idea which one had been taken by the young man, whom I had no wish to cross paths with again. I opened one at random and went out. Immediately the cool air of the hallway invigorated me, the pain racking my limbs faded away and I began running in short strides, setting one foot regularly in front of the other and breathing with ease. It wasn’t so dry anymore and quickly a fine layer of sweat covered my face and my bruised body; swallowing saliva, I could still taste the sharp, slightly ferruginous hint of blood; I pressed my tongue against my teeth, it hurt but they held firm. Everything was very grey here, my sight remained blurry and I could make out almost nothing, barely, perhaps, a few slightly darker rectangles which could just as easily have been nooks or alcoves as junctions, I tried to remain in the center of the hallway, which wasn’t easy since it kept curving, from time to time I almost collided with a wall and I would stumble as I recovered, but never did I stop running, I set one foot in front of the other while holding out a hand, fingers open, to assure myself of where the walls were, and that’s how I noticed somewhat by chance a metallic object, a doorknob apparently, my fingers closed on it and pushed and the door opened all of a sudden. I followed it and without letting go crossed the threshold. The space that opened up before me, a vast studio, welcomed me like a refuge and I crossed it, staggering, leaning on the walls and the bookcases that covered them, to reach the large bay window in the back, in front of which I collapsed into a black leather armchair. I felt disoriented, empty of thought but terribly ill at ease with myself, it wasn’t the physical pain which had already almost disappeared, no, it was something else, a numb anxiety that bored into my mind and kept me from enjoying the peaceful view in front of me, piles of colorful little buildings, rising in levels in front of the double wall formed by the long blue strip of the sea and the paler strip, veering to grey at the edge of the horizon, of the sky. I stayed there for a long time, breathing through my lips, before hauling myself painfully out of the armchair to stroll through the studio. A disk case was lying on the stereo, old recordings of Mozart piano concertos, but I had no desire for music and I left it there. Everything seemed futile to me, emptied of meaning and interest, the books lined up on the shelves, the reproductions and engravings hanging on the walls. I poured myself a glass of schnapps, drank it down, and poured another before burrowing into the sofa, black leather like the armchair, rolling between my fingers a little cigar, which I didn’t light. An album was lying there on the coffee table, I leafed through it absentmindedly: in oblong format, bound in white cloth, it showed naked women and men, executing various movements broken down into stop motion sequences by a multiple camera setup. I didn’t pause at any plate in particular, they passed in front of my eyes, a frozen series of backs, thighs, and white asses, seized for eternity by the successive triggering of the shutter in poses that no longer formed a single movement but served rather to emphasize these white bodies and what they were reduced to, backs, asses, and thighs.

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It was cool in this apartment, almost cold. I searched through the cupboards for something to eat and threw together a scant meal of sardines in oil, raw onion, black bread, and rosé. I finished the bottle, my body already trembling with cold under my thin tracksuit; I had barely finished clearing away when I felt my abdomen contract, the meal came back up suddenly, the still cold wine mixed with the remnants of onions and sardines in a thick mush that splattered the sink; it eased up a little and I ran with my hand in front of my mouth to the bathroom, everything came up again and I finished emptying myself out in the white porcelain toilet bowl, tears in my eyes, my throat burned by the acid mixture, my stomach twisted by spasms. When it was over I rinsed my mouth out thoroughly, then sat on the floor to catch my breath. Finally I got up. In the kitchenette, I poured myself a large glassful of schnapps and drained it in one swallow, it added to the burning sensation but slightly masked the foul taste that still filled my mouth. I washed the sink as well as I could and returned to the bathroom to run a shower, waiting for the water to get hot before undressing and plunging in. The water struck my exhausted body without reinvigorating it, I found it hard to get my bearings, I ran my hands along my sides, my hips, my ass, and my thighs without managing to find the sense of this body that was crumbling and escaping me. In the bedroom, I dried myself off in front of a large round mirror leaning at the foot of the bed, a simple mattress placed on the floor and covered with an embroidered bedspread, quite thick, of long green grass on a golden background. My body in the mirror seemed inscrutable to me, I abstractly contemplated the limbs and torso marbled with blue and black spots veering to green, only the veined member, forgotten and useless between the thighs, seemed to distinguish it from a woman’s body, it was in any case a vague, indistinct body, and when I turned around it became even more so, reduced to a few illuminated lines, curves and sections of skin that could have belonged to anyone. I knelt down on the bedspread, back to the mirror; turning my head I could see the white globes of the buttocks and nestled between them the brown recess of the anus, I squeezed my thighs to hide the balls, thus leaving in my field of vision only the behind, the anus and the green grass of the bedspread, I pulled on the buttocks and the anus dilated a little, opening up like an iris onto its unfathomable depth, a black hole that seemed the only part still whole of this body slowly breaking up, struggling in the mirror to reorganize itself around it. I wet a finger with saliva and ran it over the edge of the cavity, pressing in little circles, then closed my eyes and inserted one fingertip, the contact reassured me and I pushed some more, it spread a sensation of well-being all around that diffused itself throughout my frozen body, outlining a shape for it, still approximate, but quite real. The intercom buzzed and I withdrew the finger, opening my eyes. I waited. It buzzed again, in long repeated rings, grating. I got up and with the same finger I had just withdrawn from my body angrily pressed on the button: “Yes?” I barked. A woman’s voice replied, a gentle and firm voice, the voice of a blond woman I thought without understanding how I could know that. “Sir,” she said, “I also live in this building, and your electric circuit is having strong surges that are causing outages for all your neighbors. This has to stop.” Anger swelled my face and I shouted into the intercom with a broken, trembling voice: “Madam, I’ve had that circuit completely overhauled by a professional electrician, twice in a row. That’s enough, now!” I yanked my finger from the button, then switched off the intercom so it couldn’t ring again. Still furious, at a loss, I lay down on the bedspread, on my belly with my arms spread out, and abruptly fell asleep. When I woke up I was trembling with cold. I got up and wrapped the bedspread around my shoulders, then crossed the studio in the darkness to go stand in front of the bay window. 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 naked young woman, quickly followed by a man with an erection. He lifted her legs to enter her, moving in and out with a regular, jerky, almost mechanical rhythm, then turned her over on her knees and resumed his motion, still to the same rhythm. After a few minutes they changed positions once again, this time he was seated on the sofa and she was crouching over him, but the rhythm remained the same, almost comical, the rhythm of an old Buster Keaton film shot at sixteen frames per second, they tried out one after another in this way as if they were systematically attempting all the positions recommended by some German sex manual for couples, I watched a while more the doubled moons of their asses, facing the luminous lozenge of the window, then wearied of that and returned to lie down on the mattress, still rolled in the bedspread that protected me a little from the coolness of the night. I dreamed of endless, poorly executed construction work, and also of a blond woman, my mother or my wife, I couldn’t be sure, who didn’t know how to drive and didn’t want to learn. When I woke up again a cold light fell in the room, making the golden fabric of the cloth sparkle but warming nothing. I got up and dressed quickly, swallowed a glass of juice, and headed for the door. As I opened it I hesitated, hand on the knob, something was vaguely holding me back, the voice of the woman in the intercom perhaps, but this fleeting feeling faded as quickly as it had appeared, I pulled the door open and went out. Immediately a soft warmness invaded my limbs, and, suddenly relaxed, I began running with a regular, none-too-rapid pace, elbows in at my body, breathing with ease and focusing on the floor in front of my feet, as grey and hard to place with precision as the walls or the ceiling, quasi-invisible in the darkness, if there even was one, who knows, perhaps this long hallway was open to the outside, one couldn’t be sure of anything. From time to time, one of my sleeves grazed a wall; then I would instinctively correct my course, trying to follow the imperceptible curve without deviating, paying no attention to the darker zones that could just as easily have turned out to be recesses as security shelters or else other hallways, leading God knows where. I felt no difficulty in this running, I breathed with ease, filling my lungs and supplying my body with oxygen as it went forward in a supple, regular, even stride. A brilliant little spot, on one of the walls, drew my attention, it was a door handle and I opened it, passing the threshold without slowing down. Two steps further I had to pull up short to avoid bumping into a naked man who favored me with a reptilian look, at once puzzled and empty, before stepping back and then moving away. Another man, his arms and thighs covered with abstract motifs tattooed in black ink, had just finished undressing; still another was pulling on his member and his balls to slip a sort of metal ring over them. The air was damp, gorged with humidity, but it was cooler here than in the hallway, I was still sweating and began to undress in turn, opening one of the many white lockers that covered the walls to throw my clothes in. A young man handed me a bath towel, some flip-flops, and a padlock; I sealed the locker and tied the towel around my waist, then followed the other men who had disappeared in the darkness in back of the little room. The floor, tiled and wet, was a little slippery, an indefinable, irritating smell filled the air; I emerged at a little bar around which stood a few men, in towels or completely naked aside from their flip-flops. A smiling, well-built young man, his muscles thin but defined, both nipples pierced with little rings, came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder: “What will you have?”—“Whatever you like.” While the bartender was mixing the cocktails the young man stared at me mistrustfully; as I tasted my gin and tonic, clear, cool, sparkling, almost bitter, he leaned over and breathed a few words in my ear: “Do you come here often?”—“I don’t know. It depends.”—“I don’t remember seeing you. But it’s true that you don’t come to look.” He moved away to join his companions, leaving me to drink alone. I quickly finished the glass and headed for the staircase, which led to the lower floor. The smell intensified as I descended, growing more precise, it stank of rancid male sweat and dirty socks, mixed with strong animal effluvia, hints of sperm and of shit. Below, a dark labyrinth of hallways, cubicles and recesses opened up on several sides, guarded by a large black man, naked and motionless. I briefly contemplated his impassive face, his muscular chest, his thick, long member, then headed for the showers where I rinsed off my body before going to sit down in a very hot cubicle, full of steam. Other men were sharing it with me, no one spoke, I didn’t stay long and went out to shower again before returning, flip-flops slapping on the flagstones, toward the black Cerberus who didn’t seem to have moved an inch. Having come up even with him, I hesitated, then brushed my fingers over his hip bone; he pulled away, his gaze still distant, I didn’t insist and entered the labyrinth, moving slowly in the half-darkness. Men stood here and there, most of them in towels, barely discernible silhouettes in the darkness, some standing in the hallway, others sitting in a cubicle, hands on their members or behind their necks. As I passed them I could hear an almost imperceptible murmur, words perhaps but impossible to understand, or maybe also just inarticulate sounds, groans interspersed with stammering cries. In one room, very vaguely lit, several naked men, gleaming with sweat, were busying themselves around another man, suspended with his legs in the air in a sort of leather hammock; further on, in a little, almost completely dark cubicle, a man with hairy shoulders and a powerful back, crouching over another man’s thighs, was moving his hips in and out, without a sound. At random, I tried to approach one of the men stationed in the hallway, placing my hand on his chest, but he pushed it away without a word and I went on my way, repeating the operation with every man I passed, with as little success. Vexed, I ventured into a cubicle where a naked man, completely hairless, rather plump, was lying on a banquette, his towel over his face; I approached, he didn’t react, I placed my hand on his limp member: this contact provoked no movement, not even a start. I took his parts in my fingers and stroked them slowly, the man still didn’t budge, so I leaned over and slipped the member between my lips, it remained limp, I rolled it in my mouth while squeezing the balls a little, then I began sucking it, suckling as if it were an udder, but there was nothing to be done, it didn’t harden, finally I straightened up and left the man sprawled there to resume my movements through the hallway. In the back, I discovered a little round room with a basin full of bubbling water: the young man who had offered me a drink was immersed in it up to his chest in the company of two other men, inhaling, with a glass straw, some white powder arranged in rows on a little tray. When he saw me he handed me the tray and the straw, without a word I grasped it delicately and imitated him, inhaling first one line, then another; a shiver ran through my body, I passed the tray to his neighbor and straightened up, balanced tensely on my thighs, smoothing the towel with one hand over my hip and buttocks. I would have liked to slip into the water with them but there was no more room; so I turned around and once again penetrated the labyrinth. Here and there men were sucking a member, licking an ass, or penetrating each other, there weren’t many single men and these, inexplicably, scorned my advances, they seemed to prefer to remain solitary, standing stiff in the dark, their eyes empty, slowly stroking themselves. In the room with the hammock, the suspended young man was alone now, sprawled with his head back, his legs dangling, his body stained with sperm and marbled with traces of blows or cigarette burns, emptied, inert, lost in another space. I could have lifted his legs and screwed him myself, but I preferred to remain there and watch him softly moan, withdrawn into himself and very far away, I envied him and would have certainly liked to be in his place, but it appeared I hadn’t mastered the obscure rules of this place, for no one wanted me. I lay down for a long while in a cubicle, my ass facing the entrance, the cocaine buzzing through my body, but no one came to caress me or take what I was so willingly offering; from time to time, I sensed a vague presence in the opening but when I turned around it had already disappeared; exasperated, I finally got up, elsewhere it was the same thing, the black giant, at the entrance, when I squatted down in front of him to take his heavy, veined member in my mouth, gave me a clout that sent me flying onto my ass, in the room in the back they gave me more cocaine without batting an eyelid but no one made room for me in the basin, the excitement spread through my body gave me no respite and sent me for yet another expedition into the labyrinth, just as vain, finally I returned to the sauna, letting the moist heat relax somewhat my enervated body, tensed to the breaking point.