The Girl Behind the Mask (15 page)

I grasped up a piece of sheet to cover my nakedness.

‘Stop,’ he said, tugging the fabric away from me. ‘I want to see you in your full glory.’

He pulled down the trousers I had stolen from my brother. Underneath, I wore my girlish undergarments. He removed those too. I should have resisted him. I know I should. But I did not. I could not. I found I wanted to be naked in his presence. I wanted to see him naked too.

He obliged me. He stepped out of his breeches. He wore nothing beneath them. And thus I saw my first human penis. I had studied statues and frescoes, of course. I thought I knew what I would find. But oh! Either the sculptors were too modest or my dear teacher was absolutely monstrous! His penis stood straight out from his body. It was as long as my forearm. I could not help but cry out.

‘You see what you have done to me,’ he said.

He laughed when I asked if it was painful.

‘It feels quite wonderful,’ he assured me, lying down beside me at last.

We were as naked as Adam and Eve before the fall. He drew me to him. His smell was so enticing. As he pulled me hard against him, I buried my face in his neck and breathed him in. His hands roamed all over my body. He kissed me on my neck and my breastbone. He kissed my nipples. It was the most tremendous sensation. I could not have imagined how wonderful it would feel. My body vibrated with delight.

‘Are you . . . ?’ he started to ask. ‘Oh, of course you are, my darling girl. I must stop. I must not do this to you. You have not asked for it.’

‘Don’t stop,’ I told him. ‘Don’t stop. This is exactly what I want.’

His fingers caressed the hidden part of me. He pressed at the opening where secretly I had touched myself before. I braced myself for the pressure of his finger on my hymen. I expected to be torn in two, but his finger slipped in easily.

‘You are aroused,’ he said with a hint of amusement. ‘But we must arouse you further to ensure you do not feel any pain.’

He touched the most private piece of me gently. I found myself pressing hard against his hand. My body was vibrant with desire for him. I knew that whatever he asked of me, I would give it. He could have my richest treasure. He moved so he was between my legs. I felt something else press against me. Against me and suddenly into me. I gasped with surprise. Without a moment’s notice, I had given him my all.

There was pain, but not as much pain as I had expected. It was brief and it was quickly overwhelmed by a sort of animal desire to have him in me. I wanted him to melt into my body. He held my face and studied me intently as he began to move.

‘You must tell me if I am to stop,’ he said.

Nodding, I returned his gaze, hoping that my eyes communicated my trust in him. I was surprised to find I had no fear of what would come. I wanted it. I embraced my fate. I felt every moment he was in me more vividly than I had ever felt anything before. Slowly, slowly he moved inside me, watching me for the slightest signal that all was not well. His concern gave me great confidence that what we were doing was right.

‘You can move too,’ he told me. ‘Push upwards.’

I did so and suddenly he was in me to the hilt. I gasped.

‘I am hurting you,’ my teacher exclaimed.

‘I am not hurt,’ I assured him.

He kissed me on the tip of my nose.

Not quite knowing what to do with them, I let my hands wander down towards his bottom. I found myself using them to pull him further into me still. I closed my eyes. I even wrapped my legs round him. I tried to match his rhythm until . . .

‘Ah!’ he cried out.

Suddenly he was struggling to be away from me. I tried to hold him tighter.

‘Don’t. Don’t!’ He pulled out. His penis, still hard, was jerking upwards towards his belly, white liquid spewing from its tip.

When the spasms subsided, he fell onto his stomach beside me, burying his face in a pillow. I sat up.

‘Is that it?’ I asked. ‘Have I lost my maidenhead?’

He rolled over onto his back. He was laughing.

‘Yes. That’s it,’ he said. ‘Now I imagine you’re wondering what all the fuss is about? Don’t worry. It will get very much better.’

It already seemed something quite wonderful to me. As I considered what had just passed between us, he pulled me closer to him and looked into my eyes.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You have given me a gift I will always remember. I hope you will let me show my gratitude in a hundred different ways from now on.’

As I dressed, he explained to me why he had pulled himself from me so abruptly and, at last, I properly understood the story of Onan. I agreed, of course, that it would not help my cause at all if I found myself with child. But when he asked me if I would be back, I promised him I would. I knew I could not stay away. I had given him the most precious part of me and I wanted to be his for ever. I told him so.

He nodded and pulled my chin like I was a child to him. ‘For now, you do,’ he said.

I bristled. ‘Do you doubt my capacity for love?’

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I feel sure you will always find space in your heart for more love, my dear.’

But it was getting late.

‘We must return you to your own bed before anyone notices you are gone.’

He walked with me back to the place where I had left the priest’s boat. The prostitutes called out to him. They seemed to know him well.

‘Hey! How about your little brother? How about we show him something new?’ they asked him, referring to me.

‘I think he has learned enough for one night,’ was my teacher’s response.

He lifted me down into the boat and clambered in beside me. He rowed me back along the Grand Canal, right to the watergate of my father’s house. As he tied the priest’s boat to a mooring pole, I looked up at my bedroom window in despair. It looked far further up than down. I would never be able to get back in.

‘Come on.’ My teacher braced himself and lifted me up to the window as though I were a bale of hay. I tumbled over the sill and looked down at him.

‘How will you get back?’ I whispered. ‘You can’t take the priest’s boat again.’

‘I will find my way,’ he said. ‘And tomorrow I will leave you a rope in the confessional.’ He tipped his hat at me and off he went, jumping from boat to boat like a thief until he reached an alleyway and disappeared.

He still had not told me his name. Why was he being so secretive when he’d had every part of me? For a moment, his capacity for plots and intrigue and his fellowship with the prostitutes of the
Carampane
unnerved me. Perhaps he was a notorious thief? Even a murderer! But my worries soon abated. I knew he would reveal his name to me eventually. I knew I already trusted him. I loved him.

Chapter 22

Having read about Luciana’s deflowering, I was all but convinced. I was delighted to be able to tell Marco in my next email that I was now ninety per cent certain I had found
The Lover’s Lessons’
anonymous author. The circumstances in which Luciana had lost her virginity were so similar to those described in the novel. It was too big a coincidence to mean anything else. She had to be the writer.

Marco replied that he was very pleased my research had brought me to the right conclusion. Later, he sent me a direct message.

‘Does this mean you don’t need to visit the library any more?’ he asked.

‘Oh no,’ I assured him. ‘I need to get all the proof I possibly can. I have to know everything.’

‘So do I,’ was Marco’s response. ‘And not just about Luciana.’

I didn’t take too much notice of his last sentence. I was so excited to be able to tell him that I even thought I might be staying in the very house where Luciana lost her virginity. The door-knocker and the enormous carved bed both suggested as much. That had been an odd thing to discover and only added to the growing sense I had that my visit to Venice was somehow fated. It was as though Luciana herself was willing me to reveal the truth, guiding me from wherever it is we go after death.

‘It seems too great a coincidence,’ I wrote. ‘Can you imagine? You have to come and see it.’

‘Is she haunting your dreams?’ Marco asked me.

I didn’t tell Marco the half of it – about the strange dreams and the times I’d felt far from alone when I woke up in the night. Neither did I tell him about the sensation I often had in the Palazzo Donato, that some benign spirit was with me there too and that was why so many of my erotic dreams began with a meeting in his garden. He’d have thought I’d gone nuts. He decided to up the ante anyhow.

‘What about you? Tell me how you lost your virginity, Sarah Thomson.’

This was certainly a change of direction.

I leaned back in my chair. I blinked my eyes tightly shut as though imagining that when I opened them again, Marco’s message would say something different. But there it was. He really was asking me how I had lost my virginity. I snorted as I wrote my off-the-cuff reply, ‘I think this would have to be a case of I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.’

Two minutes passed before he replied.

‘All right. Let’s both set down our stories and exchange them in an hour.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Deadly serious. Why not?’

‘How can I tell you something so personal? We’ve never met. We hardly know each other.’

‘I don’t think never having met in the flesh means we don’t know each other, do you? We’ve shared quite a few things already. I know the names of all your childhood pets. Your favourite fairytale. About your dislike of Marmite. I know the name of the first boy you kissed. I feel, after these few weeks of correspondence, that we are beginning to know each other rather well.’

‘I suppose we are.’

‘Good. And I’ve told you I think you would make a good confidante. In that case, it’s time we shared some real secrets. Here is my suggestion. We will write candid accounts of the day we lost our virginities. You may be assured that your story will be seen by no one but me and I hope I can expect the same discretion in response. But spare me no details. I want to know everything. Are you prepared to accept my challenge?’

I thought about it for far less time than I had expected to.

‘You’ll have to settle for everything I can remember.’

‘Done. Start writing, Sarah Thomson.’

But I didn’t start writing. I sat and stared at my screen. This was the most ridiculous thing I had ever agreed to do. I started to type an email saying I had changed my mind. I wasn’t going to tell anyone I hadn’t met face to face such a personal tale. I’d barely discussed the moment with my best friends at the time. It seemed, however, that Marco had pre-empted my cowardice. After ten minutes, a direct message appeared.

‘I suspect you have not started to write. You are still worried you can’t trust me.’

‘What reason do I have to think otherwise?’

‘I have shown my absolute trust in you. You know, I hope, that no one apart from my staff has been allowed access to the Donato library since 1999.’

‘Then why did you decide to let me in?’

This was the question that had been on my mind for a long time. As I waited for his answer, I realised I had more invested in Marco’s reasons than I dared admit. Please, I begged him silently, don’t say it’s because you wanted a free translation.

His answer came at last.

‘I could tell you are kind.’

‘From my letter?’

‘From your photograph. The one on the university website.’

I cringed at the thought of it, but I replied.

‘That was recommendation enough?’

Of course. Don’t you think we all end up with the faces we deserve? Your face reveals that you smile a great deal. It’s open and honest. In fact, I have opened your department’s website and I am looking at your photograph right now. Of course, you know the very first time you wrote to me, I went straight to my computer to find out more. What man wouldn’t? You had written to me so beautifully, I was certain your face would match your turn of phrase, if not your handwriting. Were my suspicions confirmed? Not at first.

I admit upon first inspection you were not what I might call ‘my type’. Your hair. Why did you wear it at such an unflattering length? What was that sweater you were wearing? And why hadn’t you taken a moment to put on some make-up? I wondered if you were too much of an intellectual for such things. Were you the kind of firebrand feminist who thinks that making the best of oneself is in some way demeaning? Is it chauvinistic of me to suggest such a thing? But you see, these thoughts possessed me for only a couple of seconds, because I could tell that behind the bad hair, and the sweater even a recently shorn sheep would be reluctant to wear, you had a transcendent beauty. Your best efforts with that knife-cut fringe could not hide your beautiful cheekbones. Michelangelo might have carved your generous mouth and your perfectly straight nose. Your chin is feminine yet determined. You have the face of a mythical heroine. A goddess. No amount of bad lighting and ill-chosen costume could conceal your beautiful bones.