Destiny (16 page)

"Exactly so." She lifted her hand; the ruby struck the light.

"Pascal."

The black man materialized. He bowed.

"Suivez-moi."

Once it had been a cellar, Edouard thought, or perhaps a dark half-basement, the domain of servants. But there was no trace of that now, except that the room was only dimly lit by the flicker of candles, and there were no windows. The floor was thickly carpeted; the walls and ceiling were tented in dark red velvet, on which a series of pictures in severe black frames hung at intervals. Set in a U-shape around a square of bare polished wood were three couches also upholstered in red velvet. At their comers were low tables, on one of which stood two silver ice buckets containing the bottles of Krug, and on the other a silver tray with black coffee. The four men sat down. Pascal opened the champagne, poured it, poured the coffee, and left. The door closed softly behind him. Music began to play. In the distance Edouard heard the soft explosions of bombs. He drank the coffee.

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"We're in luck. Just us."

"We must be in that old bitch's good books for some reason. Maybe she Ukes you, Jean-Paul. Or perhaps Edouard struck a chord. . . ."

"Have you seen her before, this Carlotta?"

"No. But I've heard."

"Is it true that she . . . ?"

"And more. So I've heard."

"One after another?"

"She likes it hke that."

"And the others watch, while she . . . ?"

"But of course."

"Jesus. Who goes first?"

"Over the top, men! Who got us in here, I'd hke to know?"

"We'll all pull together ..."

"No, we bloody well won't. Me first. Then Jean. Then you."

"What about Edouard?"

"Edouard after Jean."

"Sod off. Why should I have to wait?"

"Patience, mes amis. We shall conduct ourselves hke gentlemen. . . ."

"Ballocks."

"Each in turn. And then ..."

"Then what, for God's sake?"

"Then the men among us give the lady a repeat performance. . . ."

"Roll me over . . ."

"In the clover ..."

"Roll me over ..."

"And do it again!"

They finished in unison. Hearty male laughter was followed by silence.

"God. This place is a bit creepy. Don't you think, chaps? Reminds me of chapel at school."

"Holy."

"As the actress said to the bishop."

"That wasn't what the actress said to the bishop."

"What say we open the other bottle of champers? Jean-Paul?"

A cork popped softly.

"Down the hatch!"

"Dutch courage . . ."

Edouard had fallen asleep. He opened his eyes and found his head was much clearer. For a moment he didn't know where he was, then he saw the candles and the red velvet, and the pictures. The pietures. His eyes focused on them in disbelief Hands and apertures; great breasts and thighs; open mouths; spread buttocks; women open and softly pink like ripe fruit; men

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proudly staggering under the weight of gigantic phalluses. For a moment the room seemed to him as red as hell. The candles flared; shadows flickered on the red walls, and words and images swooped through his mind like a dark tide: the confessional box; Father Clement; his beautiful Celestine.

Celestine. He stood up.

"Jean-Paul. I'm not staying."

One of them pushed him, so he fell back onto the couch. Jean-Paul's arm came around his shoulders Uke a vise.

"Not now. Look."

Carlotta—it had to be she—and two other women had come into the room.

She remained in front of the door; they moved to the wooden square between the couches. One girl was white, the other black; the white girl carried a silk cushion. She set it on the floor, then lowered herself gracefully and leaned back on it. The black girl knelt beside her. Both were wearing thin loose dresses of transparent gauze. They looked at each other. Carlotta looked at the four men.

She was tall, and exceptionally beautiful. Long jet black hair tumbled around her face and over the red silk shawl she wore draped across her breasts and shoulders. Her head was tilted back haughtily, the eyes were dark and arrogant, the painted carmine mouth wide and full. She wore a tightly waisted full-skirted dress of black silk that reached to the floor, and she stood as a flamenco dancer stands before the dance begins: poised, and still.

Jean-Paul sighed; she began to sing. The two girls on the floor lifted their arms and embraced each other.

Carlotta's low throaty contralto voice was without sweetness, but had a gutter edge to it that gave it power. She sang first in Spanish, a rasping hngering night-club song, and Edouard understood not one word of it. Then she switched to German, a song of wicked allure, shot through with Berlin melancholy. Cheap music, and Edouard was mesmerized; he felt as if his limbs had turned to stone.

On the floor in front of them, the two women were now naked. Their slender full-breasted bodies were oiled, and their pubic hair had been shaved, which Edouard thought ugly. He found their graceful pantomime unarousing.

Slowly, to the rhythms of the music, they began to move; three beats, four of the song. Their limbs entwined and relaxed; their hands moved and then were still. Dark skin and pale: Edouard looked up, Carlotta's eyes met his, he felt his penis leap and harden. Carlotta took off her shawl.

Under it, her breasts were bare, the nipples rouged, exposed above the

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black silk like those of a Cretan priestess. Very slowly she Ufted her hands as she sang, and caressed the dark aureole. Edouard saw her nipples stiffen; beside him Jean-Paul groaned. The song came to an end, but the hypnotic beat of the music continued.

Carlotta's feet were bare. Silently she came across the room to the four men. Edouard felt her silk skirt brush his trousers. She paused, looking from face to face. None of them spoke; they just stared at her. Then Chog made an attempt; he leaned forward, grasping for the black silk skirt. "Me first . . ."he said thickly.

Carlotta flicked the skirt away from his hand. She looked down at him contemptuously, then, as if making an elaborate curtsy, she knelt, the black skirt belling out in a circle, and parted his thighs. Behind her, the two women lay entwined, writhed, but no one was watching them.

Carlotta leaned forward. Her bare uphfted breasts rested against the thick wool of Chog's Guards' trousers. His mouth was parted slackly; he was sweating, his breath coming fast. He reached up a small pink hand to the luscious breasts, and Carlotta knocked it aside. He leaned back with a sigh, and her jeweled fingers stroked upward from knee to groin, touched the swollen bulge beneath the thick wool, once, twice, very Ughtly. Then, button by button, she undid his fly, and drew out a thick stubby penis. She held it a moment in her hands appraisingly, bent forward so her dark nipples brushed fleetingly over the taut stretched skin; Chog's body shuddered convulsively. She parted his thighs farther, and reached m to cup his balls in her hands.

Edouard tried to wrench his eyes away, but he couldn't. His penis was rock hard, pressing to be released, pulsing with the need to touch, to come. Beside him Jean-Paul shifted on the couch, muttered something thickly under his breath, reached down, and touched the bulge of his own erection.

Carlotta had eased Chog's trousers lower. He lay sprawled back, legs apart, the angry red shaft jutting up between Carlotta's heavy breasts. Slowly she took the knob into her red mouth, and began to suck.

Her prowess was legendary; it was clear she took pride in her skill. Her hands and her lips never stopped moving, and the rhythms she used constantly changed. Her magnificent breasts heaved; the expression of contempt in her eyes never lessened. She bent her throat, holding back her own hair so the other men should have a clearer view, and, using only her Ups, she took the whole of the swollen member into her mouth. On the red sofa Chog's hands jerked and clenched; he bent his head so he could see as well as feel what she was doing to him. Both Jean-Paul and Sandy were touching themselves now, holding their crotches as if terrified that merely watching would bring them to chmax.

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Chog began to grunt; he heaved his plump body up to thrust into her mouth. And he began to swear, his voice just audible over the beat of the music.

"Yes. Oh yes. You bitch. You fucking bitch. More. Yes." His voice was hoarse. His hands clenched. "Whore. Fucking whore. Cunt."

A spasm shook his body. Carlotta quickly drew back, lips parted. The other men saw the first spurts of semen travel from tip to mouth—it was one of the things they had paid to see. Then her mouth closed over the throbbing shaft once more, until the frantic pumping stopped. Then she lifted her head, and swallowed. Jean-Paul's hands were already fumbling with his fly as she turned to him. Carlotta smiled for the first time, widely, tauntingly, removed Jean-Paul's fingers from his fly, and parted his trousers quickly, expertly. Edouard looked down. His brother's penis was large, longer than Chog's and thicker, engorged with blood; Carlotta looked down at it for a second as if it were a particular prize. She darted out her tongue and touched the tiny hole at its tip. Jean-Paul shuddered. He reached his hands down frantically, trying to grasp her breasts.

*'Vite, cherie, vite. ..."

Edouard looked away. The spell had been unbroken up until the moment Chog began to swear. Then, abruptly, it had shattered. His erection was gone; he felt violently sick. Carlotta's seeking mouth, the slumped form of Chog, his uniform still in obscene disarray, the clingings and twinings of the girls on the floor, the panting of his brother next to him, his glazed eyes—all this was suddenly so obscene to him, so repellent, he knew he could not stay in that room one second longer.

As Carlotta took the full length of Jean-Paul's penis into her mouth, Edouard stood up and pushed past her blindly. No one tried to stop him, they were all too far gone for that. They hardly even looked up. He pushed out through the door, stopped on the stairs, heard, less muffled this time, the crash and thunder of another explosion, thought of Celestine, ran up the last flight into the marbled hall.

The doors to the drawing room were shut now. The hall was empty, except for Pauline Simonescu. She was standing by the entrance door, head tilted, listening. She showed no surprise when Edouard burst from the stairwell; it was as if she had been expecting him.

He walked quickly to the door, and she stopped him, resting one hand on his arm.

"Wait. The all clear hasn't sounded yet. It will go in a minute."

Edouard almost brushed her aside, then he hesitated. A peculiar energy, like an electric current, seemed to flow from her thin hand, from the clawlike fingers. He looked down at her uncertainly; then he heard the

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wail of the siren start up. "There. It is over. You see?" She unfastened the door and held it back just enough for Edouard to shp through.

"Au revoir. Monsieur le Baron. ..." Her voice was soft and its intonation mocking.

Edouard looked at her in confusion, paused, then ran down the steps and into the dark.

On the night of December 5, Xavier de Chavigny was sitting in a basement room beneath a small cafe in the working-class suburb of La Villette. Five men and one woman sat with him. In the center of the room was a small billiard table, though no one was playing billiards; if necessary, however, the game could apparently be resumed at any instant.

The cafe bore the name Unic, which amused the Baron, for there was nothing unique about it; it resembled exactly the other small restaurants in this area which had somehow managed to stay open during the Occupation. It served cheap meals to French workers employed by the Germans on the nearby railroad, and it smelled of boiled cabbage.

Like the other men in the room, the Baron wore the anonymous blue overalls, boots, and beret of the ouvrier; like them, he smoked hand-rolled cigarettes made of pungent cheap tobacco, making each one last as long as possible, smoking it right down to the tip of the butt. He had come here this evening, as he always did, on a bicycle, and he would return the same way, changing his clothes where he left his vehicle, in a small shed in the warren of streets and alleyways of Les Halles. He was certain that the care he had taken had been repaid. He had not been followed. He had never been followed.

And yet—there was something wrong.

He looked carefully around the faces in the room. Three of the men were his age, two younger; they were all workers, originally of peasant stock; their faces were coarse, their accents and language coarser, and the Baron regarded them as his brothers. He was grateful to them for accepting him; he admired their innate restraint, their dour refusal at first to do more than simply work with him. He had had to prove himself to earn their friendship, and now that he knew it was won, he valued it more highly than any other friendship he had ever had. All the men in the room, and the one woman, were under sentence of death. Each put his hfe in the hands of the others; if any turned informer, they were all dead. That knowledge bound them, the Baron knew—but not because of fear, because of trust.

It was due to these men and their work together over the past one and a

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half years that the Baron knew he had changed forever. He was harder, more ruthless—they had taught him to kill. He was also more angry, and angry with himself

When he looked back now on his past life, on the ease and luxury he had never questioned, he saw a stranger. How had it been possible for him to live like that, to think like that, to have been so blind? To have worried about his wife's neurotic whims, to have placated her with gifts, one of which cost more than men like this earned in a lifetime of labor? To have fretted over the design of pieces of rock, to have enjoyed the intricacies of the stock market, to have worried whether a horse won a race. If he survived this war, the Baron sometimes thought he would abandon all that. He had no clear idea of what his new life would be; he just knew that it would be, had to be, different.