Semmant (15 page)

Chapter 17

It had been years since I had availed myself of the services of “working girls.” The last time it had happened in Paris, soon after breaking up with Natalie. That experience was wretched – I ended up with an impudent, lazy Romanian. I wasn’t expecting anything good now either, but the burning desire was too strong. With trepidation, I heaved a deep sigh and pressed the doorbell.

This turned out to be a beautiful house, with soft, modern furniture in the hall and a hospitable madam. Even the pictures on the walls looked rather expensive, albeit more modest than those of the Countess de Vega. I was introduced to the inhabitants; they came up to me one by one. Their touch, the smell of their perfume mingled kaleidoscopically. Each one carried within herself a whole world into which I could so easily enter – even if it was brief and not quite for real. They were all lovely, marvelous, charming. I was confounded, not knowing whom to pick, and told the madam the name of the last one – Rocío – simply because it still echoed in my ear.

Rain beat against the glass, the wind howled outside. Thick curtains protected us from cares and troubles. In a large, semi-darkened bedroom we shared a life together for two short hours.

I was tender with her, and she was surprised by the tenderness and kept demanding more and more of it. As for me, I was struck by her temperament and… her sincerity, a complete lack of posturing. I suddenly felt: it wasn’t so important – Lidia, not Lidia, Rocío, Andrea… I drove this thought away, suspecting it wasn’t quite right. And I wondered, who was this Andrea? Wasn’t that the name of another girl I had met in the hall?

The thought left me, but it hovered close by. I melted into Rocío’s flesh, as if to save myself from all the thinking in the world. Her face, her smile reminded me of someone. I understood: before me was something elusive. I was looking the specter of love in the eye!

She told me about the town she was from, about the college she dropped out of, and her short marriage. After I showered, she toweled me off and firmly, sensually kissed me on the lips. That way a woman kisses her man when they are parting ways for a long time. I knew we wouldn’t see each other soon. Probably never – I tried to guess whether I might come to her again. Our shared life had been spent already – can there be any other? And I admit: I was on the brink of telling her about Semmant.

Starting that day, and for the next eight weeks, I became a permanent fixture in Madrid’s
casas
. In some they remembered my name and were sincerely glad when I arrived. I visited dozens of places of vice – choosing them randomly, by chance. This was my personal chaos – the sweetest chaos, a chaos of seduction. It obeyed me, and therein I reigned. I was its sovereign, its lord.

I no longer needed consolation; neither suffering nor lust drew me to those murky bedrooms permeated with the smell of depravity. I looked for that same elusive ghost – again, and again, and again. Osiris, the dying sun, put on a new face. The feeling, lost so suddenly, transformed into a phantom that teased me relentlessly.

I chased after it, throwing myself at the defenseless bodies, greedily drinking in their juices. Often the boundaries of my illusory captivity receded, even if by an imperceptible magnitude. At times an orgasm brought a tiny bit of freedom. It reminded me of fulfillment, creation – in the purest form. I felt like I was reconstructing the original harmony of the world. I was groping for hidden strings – slipping away into an ecstasy, into a kingdom of joy. Then, coming back to the surface, I would remember. From what was left in the sub-cortex I would extract features of the specter sought by all.

Of course, my search was fraught with hardship; fortune did not befall me that often. I had to go through all circles, to know all sides of paid sex. More than once, I encountered wheedling for money and poor hygiene, unconcealed coarseness and repugnance. Some of the
putanas
turned out to be so vile, so primitively, that I could not compel myself to use their bodies. At times there was just no spark between us, and I was impotent despite my partner’s efforts. Often it seemed the girl was a revelation, a genuine find. Her laughter, her voice could not, would not lie. But the first touch would give away the forgery; from the very beginning it would turn boring, and all I wanted was for it to end as soon as possible. And then I would shudder, as if in pain, without experiencing any pleasure. Even swearing sometimes: no, no more!

Still, I neither despaired nor complained, as I knew I was chasing after the unattainable, after what should not exist. It should not exist, but it did. And, knowing this, I was not angry at the insincere, the inept – hearing their unnatural groans, sensing the aversion of their bodies. There was no insurance from anything, and I considered that to be fair. Neither price, nor age, nor nationality could guarantee success. And then the more stunning the success was – sometimes when I least expected it.

Indeed, it was not infrequent that I met those who seemed to be looking for the same thing as I. It was even funny – after all, I was paying them pennies relative to what I was trying to get. And yet, no one griped about the injustice of it. I found many, many with something to share. They gave me much more than agreed upon in the silent pact of buying and selling. I had sincerely thought before that the world was completely different. Anyone who has dealt with the market would understand me well. Who could have suspected some treasures that had apparently been squandered long ago turned out to be hidden in a secluded place? There, where it would never occur to look for them.

Lidia did not call me or answer my calls, but I wasn’t so heartbreakingly anxious anymore. My Indigo brain, having received new data, worked to assess it, like a powerful classifier. I got intimately close to many women in a short time, and now they filled my consciousness – colorful butterflies, vivid, eccentric flowers. The generosity of their responsiveness did not astonish me anymore. I concluded: everyone who has anything at all in their soul wants to share, and they share with those who are truly able to grasp it. All of us from the School knew firsthand how much needs to be hidden from the incompetent, the incapable, from consumers who need only crumbs. And all of us, intentionally or not, looked around – as if to see where to put the rest.

I told Semmant about this – about Brighton and myself, but also about them, the good Samaritans with the artificial, plastic-doll armor. The armor that would fall off at the first magic word and turn to dust. Over and over they rushed to entice, even knowing they would most probably be deceived. This was an abstraction worth being admired, the eternal female pursuit, squeezed into the shortest time. Its essence was just an idea; in this instance it was extreme. The only thing comparable to it was another extremity – to love a single man your entire life, to be faithful to him always, in everything. The Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene – mythmakers have always tended to place extremes side by side!

I met no examples of the Virgin Mary, alas. But girls from brothels I knew in abundance, and I wrote to the robot about the best of them, without fearing exaggeration. Maybe this was the beginning of what happened later, but I could have predicted nothing at that time. I merely shared with him as a sympathetic friend, telling him about Rocío and about Andrea…

And about the dark-eyed Spaniard, Estela, an inveterate cyclist whose legs and butt were as hard as rock. She never turned her gaze away, but looked me straight in the eyes, attentively and firmly. She had thick hair, a confident stride, steadfast habits. A man who was to her liking could have no doubt: all of her was with him now, all her thoughts, her being.

When we went into the room, she pulled off my shirt herself, along with my boots and jeans, looking right into my pupils. It was hard to peel away to go into the bathroom – and then, when I came out, she was right there again, with a big double sheet, and her gaze was right there; and I stopped being shy about it. I remember she smelled like a fresh breeze, like mountain grass. Later I told her, “You look younger than your age.” She laughed, “Now I love you even more,” and kissed my nipple.

I wrote about the shapely Paola with a tattoo under her right breast. There they sat, embracing: a girl and her monkey. The girl was laughing, while the monkey was sad. They were a pair in perfect harmony.

Paola had grown up in the family of a confectioner, and she smelled of cakes, almond, and cinnamon. She was meek and tactful, but she was also talkative – including in bed.

She apologized, “I talk too much. It probably bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t do this in silence,” and she would throw herself at me, talking and talking the whole time.

She had a regular admirer: a banker who gave her expensive presents. Paola felt sorry for him, “He’s fallen in love, you see? What a misfortune. What’s he going to do now?” She felt no pity for me though. She was convinced I had been born under a lucky star – maybe a whole constellation of them – so that my life came up roses.

I wrote also about Bertha, a tall Swede, careful and detailed in everything. On her breath I sensed northern pine and the sea. She didn’t like Spanish; we were similar in that. She really despised the language. “I only need two words:
señor
and
dinero
,” she said with a serious face. “And
cabrón
too, just in case.”

Bertha was special in many ways. She played chess like an evil prodigy. “It’s hereditary,” she explained. “My father used to win tournaments in Malmö. And my uncle is a doctor of philosophy. He studied at Cambridge, and now teaches in Vienna. I’m from a very intellectual family.” She gave a fake sigh. “I just got distracted with oral sex too often.” That was her Swedish sense of humor.

I wrote about pudgy Lilia, a fervent lover of chocolate. She smelled of chocolate all the time – her whole body. “Women can be clever,” Lilia affirmed, “but they don’t wise up, even when they learn what they should about men. And I won’t wise up either – despite the sweets. That’s why I’m so careless!” – and she would laugh, whirl around the room, and let loose with passion.

Later, cuddled up and fawning like a kitten,she would call me Alex, or Jeremy, Brad, Steve. She completely lacked a memory for names. Catching herself, she would ask whether I was offended. Maybe I didn’t like it, and I was mad at her?

“No, of course not. Let your boyfriend be the one to get upset,” I would tease her with a chuckle.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she would giggle, then roll me over on my stomach and slide her large breasts over me…

I wrote about the future stewardess Melanie, a young Argentine with beautiful hips. She wore short skirts, high heels, bitter-sweet perfume. In contrast to Paola, Melanie was quiet – even, perhaps, quieter than I. She expended the minimum essential words when answering questions.

She cost more than the rest, more than Bertha or the sporty Estela. Unspoiled innocence lived in her smile. Perversion, limitless as an ocean, was in her narrow ankles, in her toes. Her taste was not vanilla sugariness, but musk, absinthe, saline. The engrossing eternity of the sea, a salt lake that would never dry up. Her every groan was sincere, not faked. No actress could have played a part so well. I caressed her shoulders and imaged how obliging she would be with an airline captain.

And I told him of many, many more, and then about Cristina… But no, in fact I did not write Semmant about Cristina María Flores. I had just started – and cut it short. I erased the file and got lost in thought. Because it was with her in particular that the aforementioned phantom nearly materialized into flesh. The specter of love began to cast its shadow. Then, after Cristina, I forgot about brothels. And I started thinking of Lidia again, but now in a different way.

The best
torero
from the province of Aragon had sired Cristina under the Andalusian sun after seducing a simple girl from Seville, with whom he then lived for twenty years. I found this out when she asked how I felt about Spanish bullfighting.

“In the bullfight I always root for the bull” – as soon as I said this, Cristina batted my lips.

I believed her, concerning the
torero
– her facial features were too delicate. They suggested breeding, a famous name. A tendency to look at the world without holding back. And her destiny, of course, should have turned out differently.

Everything went downhill following her father’s demise. He died the death of a toreador, but they were ashamed to speak of it to their friends. The Aragonese hero was gored to death, but not on the horns of a bull in the ring. A young cow killed him as he was using her to warm up in the backyard of his estate. Right in the morning, in his boxers and house slippers. Without a gold-embroidered jacket, without a cloak, without a sword. He was armed only with the red apron belonging to their cook Juana. He was still yawning sleepily, without breakfast or a shave…

Cristina’s father wanted to test out how bold, intelligent, and agile the
vaca
was that he had bought at a fair the previous Thursday. Was she worthy of the brief passion of the breeding bull, Alonso? Of the high-priced seed of Alonso, which cost a pretty penny? Was there a chance that from her posterity would issue forth a male that was good for something more than cutlets and filet? A male endowed with killer instinct – that is prepared for a ritual death at the hand of a much better-equipped killer? The questions were many, but the toreador from Aragon would never receive his answers. The
vaca
made an unexpected maneuver and was not halted by his red apron, or his threatening yell, or his majestic visage. She was probably too smart for a cow.

I told Cristina, “You’re too smart for a whore.”

“Yes,” she answered. “I know. So what?”

She was never ashamed to speak the truth, and only lied to wearisome devotees. With all the rest she was brutally honest. Her body, lithe and slender, did not know how to live halfway – it was young, demanding, insatiable. Being an expensive
puta
did not bother her in the least. The only thing that could trouble Cristina was an infringement upon her freedom.