Three Rivers (46 page)

Gamal stepped forward, wished Isabel well, and they all left the bow of the felucca and went astern, where a lovely table had been set with champagne, caviar and oysters. In the center of the table was a very small three-tiered wedding cake, all iced in white, and on the top was a crystal vase filled with yellow orchids. A breeze had come up and the felucca was sailing with considerable speed. It was Alexander who served the champagne. Alexis plucked a flower from the vase on top of the cake and slipped the stem of the little yellow orchid through the pin under her diamond bumblebee, saying, “Darling, you have no flower on for your wedding.” He looked deeply into her eyes and asked if she was all right.

“Yes, I am fine.” She smiled up at him.

“You know, you frightened me for a minute during the ceremony. I was afraid that you might pass out or change your mind. It was a good thing I set sail.”

“I do not know what happened to me, Alexis. I was fine and then suddenly I felt some life just drain out of me. I have no idea what it was, but then I felt my life flow back into me again. So strange, I cannot imagine what came over me, darling, but I am fine now.”

He looked at her finger and the very slim gold ring on it. “When they are all gone, we will take our rings off and read what I have had written inside them, but not now.”

Just then Alexander caught them looking at the wedding bands and went over to return the diamond wedding ring to Isabel by slipping it on her finger. At that moment Alexis was distracted by the High Priest. As he slipped the ring onto Isabel’s finger, Alexander whispered, “Now I have married you as well,” and kissed her on the cheek.

Alexis overheard and teased Alexander, saying, “Yes, my friend, you have. I do not mind sharing her with you, Alexander. After all, you did bring her to me.” He then went back to his conversation with the priest, who spoke no English.

Isabel chatted on with Alexander and the chief justice,
who was a charming man, and very amusing about the fact that he was concerned that he would now have to go home and explain to his wife that he had just married Alexis to a beautiful American woman, and why he had kept the secret, even from her. He finally said, “How does a man tell his wife he could not confide in her because she is the most outrageous of all the Cairo gossips? How long must I keep silent about it?”

Isabel told him he had to ask Alexis. They sailed up river for about forty-five minutes, and then the felucca moved into a new, makeshift mooring. Close by, two cars were parked: One was the plum-colored Rolls and the other a black Mercedes 600. The chauffeurs stood next to the cars, waiting for the guests to disembark so that they could drive them back to Cairo.

Once the felucca came to a stop next to the dock, the guests all said good-bye very quickly. Within minutes, the felucca set sail for Upper Egypt.

Alexis, in all the excitement, had forgotten to cut the wedding cake. He laughed at the idea that he was nervous enough that all should go well that he forgot something. “Never mind, darling,” he said. “The wedding cake is for us. We will cut it together tonight.”

They walked to the center of the felucca where, on a raised section of the deck, there were soft silk Oriental carpets and heavy cushions. There were small ivory-inlaid tables and a magnificent old brass brazier with a conical top.

Alexis went first up the steps and then pulled Isabel up to him. He touched her nipple through her dress as they fell upon the cushions.

Gamal arrived with an ice bucket and a bottle of chilled champagne. A hookah was already lit. The smell of the Indonesian grass reached Isabel even before she drew on the pipe.

They rested with arms around each other on the cushions. From the raised deck they had a wonderful view of the river.

They smoked and kissed, and Alexis told her how much he loved her and how happy he was to have her as his wife. He fondled her breast and pulled on her nipples through the silk Fortuny dress. He slipped his hand under her dress and was surprised and pleased when he found her so tight he could not get in. He pushed one finger high
into her and felt her divine tightness. He was able to move his finger in and out easily because she was so wet.

“Oh, my dear, tonight you will be loved like you have never been before. The old woman has done well by us for our wedding night. We will have a delicious time opening you back to your normal size. How did it feel when I was touching you?”

“Alexis,” Isabel asked. “What has she done to me? Every part of me is ten times more sensitive to your touch. When you were simply playing with my labia, I had to bite the inside of my cheek not to scream from passion.”

Alexis teased her, saying that all the city of Memphis would be thinking about the beautiful bride in her sparkling jewels tonight. That the men would be thinking of ways that they would take her, the women would have endless discussions among themselves about her cunt and then about the size of his cock.

“About my cunt? Alexis, you are exaggerating. Why ever would they think about my cunt?”

“Oh, my dear, among Egyptian women of the village class the curiosity would be high. They would be very interested in your cunt and what it looked like and what had been done to it. You know, all of the women you have seen have been circumcised. Their clitorises have been removed.”

“Alexis, I know that it is done occasionally, but surely not to all women?”

“No, not all women, but ninety percent of them. And in the villages you can be sure it is one hundred percent. Here in Egypt we have three forms of circumcision for women. The mildest is known as sunna, the tip is removed and the labia minora. The next stage involves taking a bigger piece of the clitoris. But the most dramatic of all is what they call the Pharaonic method — total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora. The vagina is then stitched up. Some of the Sudanese tribes do this with thorns, leaving only a small opening for menstruation and urination. On the wedding night the bridegroom rips the thorns out and then fucks his lady, if she can take it.

“Don’t look so appalled, darling, most of the women in Egypt have suffered the milder method of sunna and it is done when they are between the ages of six and ten. Now you understand why they will all be wondering what your cunt is like.”

Alexis bent over and kissed her tenderly, and said, “Actually, I would love them to see it because it is so divine — the color, the size. Your clitoris, so sensitive and lovely, and how you are always wet. Yes, if I were to show you to them, to go down on you and they were to see the pleasure that you get, that would do more to reform the practice of circumcision in Egypt than all the campaigns at work!”

He laughed at her and pinched her nipple and said, “Let them wonder and have a good time thinking about us. Tonight is, after all, our night, and I hope the whole world is as happy as we are.”

She unzipped his fly, bent her head down and took Alexis in her mouth and sucked on him for a few seconds, tenderly. When she stopped, he said, “More, more,” and she laughed and said, “No, darling, no more. I do not want to get lipstick on your banana-colored trousers.”

With much difficulty, she managed to put his tumescent cock back into his trousers and zip him up. She snuggled up next to him, and he said, “I will get you tonight and make you pay for teasing me like that.”

They lay there quietly in each other’s arms listening to the sounds of the river, the distant sounds of birds and cicadas coming from the bank, the occasional order being given from below somewhere on the felucca.

Suddenly Alexis sat bolt upright and struck his forehead. “A wedding picture! We do not have a wedding picture. Shall we have one of us lying here among the cushions in all our wedding clothes?”

“Oh, that is a good idea.”

He clapped his hands and called for Gamal to bring a camera. He pulled her up and arranged some cushions the way he thought they would look best. He used Gamal as a stand-in while he set up the camera. When he had everything just as he wanted it, then Gamal and he switched places and Gamal punched the button.

“There we are, darling, our first picture together.” Alexis smiled. He slapped Isabel on the ass. “Now let’s go down below and get out of our wedding clothes.”

There was one huge room below the main deck, and it was quite amazing. It stretched from the center of the felucca to the stern. It was a bedroom-cum-sitting-room with a huge bed that could have slept four. The bed was covered with a mustard-yellow kilim. It was very old,
worn almost thin in places, and the pattern was a big and bold geometric, very beautiful and very rare. The cushions thrown on it were oversize and covered with other kilims in shades of yellow and white, with a strong accent of terracotta color.

The walls of the room were of white linen, and the carpet on the floor was a huge, red, antique Bokhara. One of the walls was a cupboard made of antique mushrabiya in its naturally dark wood color. There was also a white marble desk, quite large, with a walnut-and-cane chair for it, and a pair of easy chairs, covered in the same white linen as the walls. Above the bed hung the Modigliani nude, given to Alexis by his mother.

Isabel told Alexis that she thought the room was superb. He smiled and began to undress her, saying that there was something else about the room: It was air-conditioned and sound-proofed. “So, my darling, you will be able to scream to your heart’s content when I beat you, and no one will ever hear. Come! I think I will make love to you.”

Alexis had removed the Saladin necklaces and dropped them on the bed and now he undid the bumblebee and dropped that on the bed, too. He took the diamonds from her ears and lifted the Fortuny dress over her head. He looked at his wife and folded her in his arms, tight against him, telling her how lovely he found her.

It was true, Isabel knew. The girls had elongated her nipples a quarter to a half inch. She could see from the way that Alexis looked at them that he liked that very much. He took one in his mouth and sucked on it, telling her how much he liked her nipples that way, and that she must work to keep them like that. Would she do that for him?

Yes, she would do that for him. Isabel smiled. She stood on the bed as he requested. He opened the lips of her vagina and put his tongue on her clitoris, moving it round and round. He sat on the bed and she lowered herself above his face. With his tongue he went into her, then he pulled her down on his lap.

“Tonight, darling, I will take you like an Arab man takes his virgin,” he murmured. “We will wait for now, but tonight, after I have broken you in, then I will do wonderful things to you. You will have a little pain, I think, because you are so tight, but you can pretend you are a virgin. We will make love all night and before you sleep, you will
know that you are not. I will never let you sleep until you feel like a spent, satiated whore. Will you like that?”

Isabel was completely spellbound. When they kissed, she knew that Alexis was, as well.

They both changed their clothes. He put on a simple white cotton galabia, and Isabel put on her tobacco raw-silk one, and the great silver and amber necklace that he had given her. In her ears she put the Phoenician gold loops. Alexis rang for Gamal, who was instructed to gather up the jewels on the bed and put them in the safe. He sent Isabel with Gamal so she could learn to open it and be able to take what she wanted from it, when she pleased. After, Gamal remained behind and put their things away while they went to explore.

The felucca was a large one, very traditional in style, and about seventy years old. It was brilliantly fitted out. It did not look like a luxury boat, but rather like a simple, large, working craft of the Nile. The crew of four wore no uniform of any kind, but simple cotton galabias and white turbans. As extra hands, Alexis had brought Gamal and Doreya to serve them. The crew’s quarters were in the lower level, up in the bow of the felucca and completely away from Alexis and Isabel.

The deck was sectioned off into a dining area and the raised section. The dining area was out in the open, and since it hardly ever rained, there was little problem about that. When it did rain, there was a canopy that could be pulled across on cables. Today there was an extra addition on the deck, the flowered
huppah
.

When they looked at the
huppah
and its flowers, they both decided to have a large double bed made up under it for their first night as man and wife. Alexis called Gamal and told him. Just as the servant was leaving, he was called back and given more instructions. Gamal disappeared down in the bow of the boat.

A few minutes later, up out of nowhere rushed Winston and Rita. They had been hidden away in Gamal’s cabin. They barked and howled and jumped and leaped all over the couple. Isabel was overjoyed.

“Now, darling, with all that noise, you are sure to think you are at home,” Alexis kidded.

She kissed him and said he was wonderful. He replied by saying that he knew that, and if he needed any proof,
keeping those two dogs was it. “By God, they are spoiled, Isabel. Will you spoil me as much?”

She said, “Yes, but only in bed.”

They lay among the cushions and talked. The sun went down and suddenly it was dark. Gamal and Doreya had lit the candles in the old pierced-copper and glass lanterns so that the felucca was lit up in soft yellow candlelight.

Alexis suggested to Isabel that she go downstairs and put on her chocolate-brown lace nightdress and peignoir. “They are going to set all the food out in a buffet for us, and we will serve ourselves. They are going to drop anchor a bit further up near a village where they know the boat will be safe. The crew, all the crew, including Doreya and Gamal, will take the dinghy and row ashore to celebrate our wedding. They will not come back until the early morning so that we can have our wedding night alone on the felucca.”

“Just the two of us is perfect!” Isabel exclaimed. “I would love that.”

“And the dogs, of course?” Alexis teased.

“Yes, and the dogs, of course,” she agreed, laughing, and went below to change.

The bathroom aboard the felucca was large and included a bathtub for two, a dressing room and a pair of washbasins. The fittings were white, while the entire bathroom was in beige travertine marble. All the towels were mustard-yellow and there were kilims on the marble floor.