The Sacred Beasts (39 page)

“Sometimes I imagine their idea of a perfect world,” Alex said.
“It’s all pleasure for the wealthy and no concern for anyone else at all; the
rest is an impediment. Yet, they’re always the first to cry morality and ‘God’s
plan.’”

“I can only agree,” Ruth said. “
That
is human evil. There
is no other. Genocide is only the final step: elimination of the impediment.”

This has nothing to do with Sylvie, Alex thought. It’s depressing
to me, too. “This has all been very helpful to me,” Alex said. “I can see now
that my political priorities have not been ordered quite right. This seemed
like one political problem of many, whereas they are clearly all related. If
you want to share any ideas from your book as you write it, I will be happy to
put it on the web site with links to many other sites.”

“I would welcome it, and I hope there are many more young people
like you. We’ve now drunk more coffee than anyone should in the early morning.
You’ve got a dissertation to write.”

And I’ve got that amazing woman to wake up beside, Alex thought.

When Ruth and Alex finished talking, Monserrat was in the
painter’s room, looking at all the new paintings that had been done since she
was last there. There was now a striking group of canvases so different from
anything she had seen there before that they had to be the ambitious work of
Sylvie. For nearly an hour, Monserrat had done nothing but look from one to
another. Hearing silence from the living room, she came in and sat beside Ruth,
pouring a cup of coffee for herself. “I’ve just had a fascinating encounter
with one of our young lovers.”

“So have I,” Ruth said. “Tell me about yours.”

“I’ve been looking at Sylvie’s paintings while you were talking to
Alex. She is one of the most brilliant artists I’ve ever seen here, possibly
even a genius, and developing at a very rapid rate, faster than I did.”

Ruth smiled and looked at Monserrat in deep appreciation. “I’m so
glad to hear that. I thought of her as a genius, too, at times, but I’m not
really an artist and can’t judge.”

“But you
are
an artist!”

“Whatever. I will not argue with the woman I love. It’s exciting
that her talent is bearing real fruit, given that she’s such
un enfant
terrible
.”

“What I want to know is, where on earth have the two of you been?
Alex says that Sylvie always says that she’s painting Spain. But, what Spain?
Where? Whose? There are several paintings of an old woman out of the Stone Age,
maybe ten thousand years ago, living in a hut; trees, flowers and vegetation so
contorted they look alien to this planet; paintings full of wild animals, even
huge snakes hanging from trees; street prostitutes with the stare of an eagle;
mountain villages full of gypsies; fantasy and erotic sequences that are beyond
my powers of description.
Where
is this all happening?”

Ruth laughed. “I assure you that it
is
Spain. We’ve been
nowhere else. It’s just not the Spain you’ve always known. That is the Spain
by, for and about men. I’ve seen the drawings that were preparatory to the
paintings, and Sylvie paints the Spain of women and animals.”

“She is painting your heart. I should have known. You are still
influencing her.”

“Not really. She tosses off influences like a bird in a birdbath.
She’s her own woman and artist. I might have inspired her at most.”

“There! That’s it. She is painting your heart from inspiration.
I’ve been thinking ahead about this. We have a feminist publishing house here,
very well respected, and sometimes I publish a book of paintings by a single
young artist. I would like to do this with Sylvie, probably everything she
paints in Spain. In fact, after talking to you, I would like to title it,
The
Other Spain
. Would she like that?”

Ruth laughed and clapped her hands. “She’s bursting with ambition,
and she would love it with the force of birth, orgasm and death. You’ll have a
wild animal in front of you. She might set the house on fire in joy.”

“Would you like to tell her?”

“Absolutely not! She might suspect I influenced you. Let her know
she alone has earned it. It will be a gorgeous book, and, print one of her
paintings of the old Stone Age woman on the cover of your book about Spanish
matriarchy. We met that woman in a ghost town close to the Costa del Sol. She
truly seemed to be the great matriarch of all Spain. I’m still not sure it
really happened.”

“That’s a wonderful idea. You see, you’re an artist, too.”

“I’m just excited for all of you. Alex will be pleased, won’t
she?”

“Oh yes! She thinks Sylvie is the best thing that’s ever happened
to her work habits. I’ll tell Sylvie tomorrow on Gay Pride Day, just before we
leave for the parade.”

“That’s perfect timing! Sylvie joins the feminist pantheon on Gay
Pride Day; only in a house like this!” Ruth laughed again.

SYLVIE AND ALEX were driving through the Basque country, soon to
arrive at the shepherd’s hut and the lake beside it. “I actually had a chance
to talk to Ruth early this morning,” Alex said. “They were up making coffee.
Monserrat spent a long time looking at your paintings. Anyway, Ruth’s grief has
nothing to do with you . . .”

“Katia . . .”

“No! Some people are really
not
obsessed
with a woman! She gave me plenty of detail about her book, and it’s quite
enough to make anyone despair. I was glad I talked to her for my own reasons,
ultimately. I should be giving more of my energy to liberal political causes.
You should, too.”

“She said
that?”

“No, it wasn’t necessary. I knew what she meant, and as for her
grief, I think Monserrat is probably better for her, really. Ruth needs to be
with her, write her books, and pass her ideas on to the next generation. She
hardly needs to be with a young hottie.”

“Oh, she loves those young hotties, too!” Sylvie said angrily.

Alex laughed. “Well, of course; how could she not? But, we will
both help Ruth most by working on her political causes, with which I completely
agree. That’s what she needs. Other than that, just be her friend. You’re free
of this, really
free
!”

“I wonder . . .” Sylvie said and smiled.

She can’t resist planning something outrageous, Alex thought. What
will go on in that hypothetical hotel a year from now? Alex laughed softly.

When they arrived at the shepherd’s hut, Sylvie was impressed to
find a two-story structure. Primitive externally, it was well furnished inside,
with a large kitchen, bathroom and shower. They immediately went down to the
lake to spend several hours swimming naked, which caused a unique mixture of
excitement and tranquility. They stayed long enough to see, reflected in the
water, the tangled pink clouds of sunset and a brightly clashing orange moon.
“I must see these colors, reflected,” Sylvie said. “They are beyond what I can
imagine alone. I’m in love with these dying embers, floating through black
vines of aquatic plants and insects. It is another reality. I will paint a
woman’s face reflected in the water, as though she could only live in that
element, one of clashing intensities. Perhaps it should be a self-portrait.”
She touched the reflections and made them multiply.

“I’m no dying ember,” Alex said. “I’m hungry, cold, hot for your
body, in need of libations, and ready for whatever madness you’re going to
inflict on me tonight.”

“My
perfect
lover!” Sylvie said, “The only one I’ve ever
apologized to, the only one I’ve been ready to fall on my knees for. You’re
going to get some very hot sex tonight; don’t worry.”

“That is the last and least of my worries about you.”

They prepared their dinner with groceries they had brought along
and opened a bottle of wine. “This is heaven,” Sylvie said. “You’re right that
it’s necessary to get away from there. This is a secret place of our own. We’ve
been living in Monserrat’s haunted castle for days now. It’s marvelous and
anything can happen there. But, I can’t be completely alone with you and I want
to be.” Sylvie touched Alex’s cheek.

Alex had brought a CD player along, and they listened to De
Falla’s “Love, the Sorcerer” while eating and drinking wine. The movement,
“Dance of the Game of Love,” came on and Alex, with a smile of childish
delight, asked Sylvie to dance. They danced together, both facing one another
and also with their backs and heads touching. “This is the most exquisitely
tender and erotic music I know,” Alex said. “I heard it first as a child and
learned Spanish at a lightning pace, all so that I could dance with the woman I
loved to this music, some twenty years in the future. I imagined her then and
craved her, and in a way it was you I saw.”

“What long-term erotic planning,” Sylvie said with a smile. “Oh
yes, the music is child-like, too, isn’t it? It’s one of your very long-delayed
orgasms. I still don’t know how you can do that, but this music somehow tickles
me and makes me tingle, pleasurably delaying the inevitable.”

When the movement was over, they silently took off their clothes
and climbed up to the open-air loft on the hut’s roof. “And such a moon!”
Sylvie said. They lay down and Alex began by covering Sylvie with her body and
then massaging her thighs with her strong hands. Sylvie was very excited and
would have liked her to continue, but she stopped Alex instead and rolled over
on top of her.

“The particular madness that I am going to inflict on you,” she
said with a smile, “is that I am going to ravish you; yes,
ravish
you
for hours as you do me! You’re really going to get it tonight! You talked with
Ruth, so you must know that she has evidence that says, pruriently enough even
for me, that everyone, but
everyone
except gay men wants to be ravished
by a lovely woman! It’s the world’s best-kept secret, the foundation perhaps of
all other secrets. Ruth has said this; I read nothing into it, and now I will
ravish you—thoroughly and madly. Let’s see if you are really so different from
me, or if you scream non-stop.”

Sylvie made love to Alex for about two hours—orally, caressingly,
tenderly, harshly, teasingly, completely, and with different parts of her
body—discovering that Alex would not scream during her many orgasms. Rather,
she loudly ground her teeth and muttered, yelled, bellowed, yelped, coughed,
hacked and made other indescribable sounds of agony, apparently to avoid
screaming. Finally Sylvie stopped and said, “Good job, soldier! Not a single
scream out of you. You’ll get a promotion for that, though you sounded like a
gravel-voiced beast boiling in oil most of the time. What do you have against
screaming?”

Alex sighed deeply. “I don’t want to deny you anything, but I just
can’t scream. It may be the essence of a woman in love, but it’s just too
feminine and I can’t. This is beyond my control. I had plenty of orgasms,
though.”

“Oh yes, I could feel your hot little peanut going up and down,
all the while you sounded like a great warrior dying on the battlefield with
baritone or bass shouts, which I’ve never heard in your speaking voice. I
didn’t know that you could sound like the dying Gaul at the supreme moment.”

“Forgive me. I can’t ever scream.”

Sylvie only smiled and tenderly kissed Alex. “It’s kind of fun
that I’m not the only problematic lover around.”

“I loved it! I
loved
being ravished by you,” Alex said in a
soft voice.

“Now you’re forgiven!” Sylvie said and kissed
her passionately, then stared at her. “You’re going to be my woman, too, even
if you bellow like an ox. I sort of like oxen. I just never thought I’d end up
in bed with one.”

Alex smiled and changed positions with Sylvie. “I
must
do
what I wanted to do to that woman when I was a child, listening to De Falla’s
‘Dance of the Game of Love.’”

“Another compulsion? Fascinating,” Sylvie said. “And very
welcome,” she whispered. “I love fulfilling sexual fantasies, especially such
an old one and so long unfulfilled. Give me your secret!” Sylvie found this
very exciting and after a time, she screamed so loud that an owl swept past and
screeched in response.

“Now we’re turning on the animals,” Alex said.

“I’m only showing a good example. That one was a bird of prey who
wanted to make war and not love.” Sylvie then looked up at the stars and moon
while loving Alex’s hands and mouth. At some point, they fell asleep in one
another’s arms.

In the morning light, they washed up and then looked at one another
silently. What will Alex come up with now? Sylvie thought. What on earth will
Sylvie do next? Alex thought. They smiled and lay down again, looking like
co-conspirators.

“What was it like for you to be ravished?” Sylvie asked.

“Loving and craving and drinking and thirsting and spilling all
the water in the world and craving and loving and laughing and sleeping, then
dreaming. Life, in other words. How will you ever paint it?”

“There were no images in my mind at all, though it’s implicit in
all my paintings. Maybe it will just be a black circular line on a blindingly
white background.”

“I’m crazy about you,” Alex said.

“I love you madly.”

“Marry me in Spain.”

“I will, but not this trip. Come live with me in Paris first.”

“I will, ecstatically, and get more work done than ever before.”

“Funny about that. Great sex is a turn-on for
creative work, too.” Sylvie softly touched Alex’s genitals. “It’s getting
dangerous. We’re declaring our love and making commitments again.
Dangerous!
Are you afraid?”

“Oh, yes! I already know you’ll want to make love at night in the
Louvre or somewhere on the Eiffel Tower or in that famous cemetery.”

“The Arc de Triomphe, definitely. I want to have orgasms at night
at every French patriotic monument. I am a patriot, you know.”

“That’s one the military didn’t think of.” Alex began to make love
to Sylvie orally, and then hummed the entirety of “La Marseillise,” the French
national anthem, pressed to her clitoris, creating a vibration. Her voice,
pressing and humming, sounded like a kazoo.

Sylvie screamed, and then burst into laughter that did not end.
When she could finally speak, she said, “That was a lovely sensation that I
could
never
have imagined. You terrible brute! You’ve beaten me at my
own game!”