Episode 43 | Return to the 20th century

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There was a decision I had been procrastinating. One quiet afternoon, after Catherine had again vomited and was lying in bed, deep asleep from the exhaustion those bursts brought her, I made up my mind. 

I hadn't been meditating any longer, and though my mind was no longer bright and clear, I just had to open my eyes and senses to Nature on the Île du Blanchomme to feel calm. With that new season, storms often swept the horizon -- yet, as the legends proved right, keeping their distance from our Portal Island. On those occasions, a light rain that was barely enough to replenish our water stocks and wet the garden, was all we got on the Île. More frequent than not, sunsets were now hidden behind thick, dark clouds, and days seemed shorter -- it probably was winter in the tropics. The wondrous golden light of past days had been replaced by a more melancholic bronze tone, that rapidly grew into a soothing lavender blue, before becoming silvery when the moon rose. That beauty was enough to pacify my heart and help me think.

How many weeks had gone by in our love idyll? Six, perhaps seven, maybe eight? The boat's irregular schedule didn't help calculating the passing of time, and neither Catherine nor I were concerned with it. But we were running out of provisions on the Île du Blanchomme. I had once gone down to the beach to greet the natives and ask them to bring food the next time they came around -- but maybe because I was not specific, or they did not quite understand me, what they brought was not exactly pleasing nor appealing to Catherine (nor to me, I have to admit), and it was so little that it couldn't have sufficed for a picnic on the beach. 

Though not even in the Apennines had I been a good angler, I tried fishing. At the ocean I was worse, as it was total improvisation for me. And even if I had often encountered plenty schooling of fishes while swimming around the Île, I never caught a single one.

Thus I had finally decided to again face the world outside. In part, for reasons similar to those that, in Paris, had led me to abandon my voluntary exile in the old abandoned factory -- food, health. We needed to buy more groceries or we would soon starve, and secondly, because I was truly concerned with Catherine's vomiting bursts, which seemed to cease at intervals of two, maybe three days, just to start over again. Like her, I had suffered from food poisoning myself, but she had had a heatstroke to complicate the matter. Her complexion was so frail, and I feared she would become weaker and grow seriously ill if that went on much longer.

I had even changed the side of the house I was painting to be far from the office where she spent her days writing and reading. But the smell of fresh paint would also banish her from the kitchen, and almost prevented her from using the bathroom... Finally, I decided to postpone the painting of the house until she was cured -- but to achieve that, we needed to go to a hospital. The booklet that had helped us through her heatstroke listed a series of tropical diseases and some first aids, but I was not the person to try to diagnose her. I could have tried the radio, that I had unplugged and hidden to shelter from the storm -- and it still lied at the bottom of a trunk. Would a doctor be able to diagnose her over the radio, hearing her symptoms and without physical examination? Would that have been possible, or ethical? And if she needed medications, would they be sent with a boat? It was imperative to go to a hospital, I had concluded.  

At first, and maybe because the decision had been mine, Catherine refused it. But when she began to feel weak and malnourished, affecting even her sexual desire and the capacity to concentrate on her readings, she agreed we should go.

Having changed her mind, Catherine soon grew delighted and excited with the  imminent journey to the Elder Sisters Islands -- "to see people, cars, go shopping for books and clothes, listen to the city noises and breath in some smoke, to remind myself that there is a world that is civilized, and return to the twentieth century!" --, while I again feared she would want to leave the Île, for good. After she was cured from the heatstroke, I had never understood her reasons to prolong her stay on the island. At that stage, though completely taken, I still doubted our relationship and even my skills as a lover.

On the morning when the boat arrived, I had been expectantly watching the horizon. When I saw the seagulls, I warned Catherine to get ready -- and my expectancy peaked. Only when I saw her descend the stairs without her backpack, I relaxed, so happy to learn she had no intentions to leave. My heart swell, and I started already dreaming of our return together to the Île du Blanchomme, as a couple, to continue with our love...or sex idyll. 

But that young, innocent, impassioned couple who left the Île would actually never return.

For happiness was fleeting, and lasted only a few minutes. Because I had immediately to occupy myself with Catherine, who began to feel ill from the first moment she stepped onto the boat.

She vomited with such violence like I had not yet seen her throw up on the island. She started moaning and begging to disembark, but there was no way back once the boat was offshore. And the nine-hour crossing to the Elder Sisters Islands was just beginning.

She could not stand on her own, and I carried and snuggled her in my lap. One of the passengers, a lovely, exuberant young woman dressed in really bright colors, approached to offer help -- at least that's what I understood, since I had not learned a word from the local language.

"Who is the whore?" Catherine asked loudly, her voice hoarser than usual, and  although the young lady was so close to us, certain of not being understood by the natives.

"She is just trying to help us, Catherine..." I answered quietly, like an antidote to her discourtesy, almost whispering it in her years, holding her tenderly.

"Are you really so innocent?" She looked at me intensely, though she couldn't get her eyes more than half open only. "Or do you think I am the naive one, here?" I had to turn my face away from the strong whiff of Catherine's vomit, and thinking I was avoiding her stare, she lost her temper. "For a slut like her, a foreigner like you is a treasure... You are her way out of this hole and her passport to Europe..." Catherine clarified, angrily. Somehow, I was content imagining that perhaps she was jealous of me.

But it was that 'slut' herself who helped me carry Catherine to a shaded spot on the other side of the boat, where she finally fell asleep on a bench, after having vomited a little more, right on my lap.

I had to agree on Catherine's judgement, however, when the woman started cleaning the vomit stain off my shirt -- a new shirt I had borrowed from Armand -- without my having asked for her help. And in doing it, she  kept deliberately yet discreetly rubbing her breast against my arm. I had never felt another woman's nipple in my life other than Catherine's, who lied right there on the bench next to me. I was embarrassed. The native woman would not let go off me before she finished with the stain, and even then her hand continued running up and down along the trail of hair from my chest to my stomach. Despite my discomfort, and against my will, I felt that familiar tingle in my groin which announced my erections. I gasped, but remained motionless, surrendering to the pleasurable sensations.

What where her intentions? She had clearly seen I was with Catherine. And despite being the same age, we did not look like sister and brother, did we? But why was I blaming the native woman, who had ventured the trail of hair bellow my bellybutton, as if the decision to what could happen -- and was happening -- was only hers? And when I finally and gently pushed her away with a firm gesture I was still enslaved by the fine sensations her fingers stimulated -- but looking into the woman's eyes, I saw malice and evil. I had read Armand's translations of Herr Weissmann's reports about terrible witchcraft and charms made ​​from a single hair -- and why not from the hair on my chest? If I were to be a treasure, blonde Catherine was a true rarity on those islands, I suddenly realized.

And I never again left Catherine's side during the nine-hour journey to the Elder Sisters Islands -- where, I hoped, we would find a cure for her mysterious disease.

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Author's note: having been imported from a former version of the story, some of the comments below are dated previous to this post. Once the plot has not been altered, just the pagination, I am keeping them since they are very dear and precious to me.

Episode 39 | Everything harmed her

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I tried preparing a rather simple, fresh lunch, again thinking on my grandfather's sensible recipes, and trying to add a touch of elegance and daring with Armand's spices.

It mustn't have been that bad, for Catherine ate as much as she could. She had an amazing appetite for a such a petite girl -- and I wondered if she had caught a worm that she was also feeding in her stomach, haha. At least some kind of food poisoning she must have had, because despite having thanked me and discreetly praised my lunch, she was again to vomit in the afternoon.

I thought we were having another remarkable conversation, for like Armand and me she had also been an habitué at the Cinématèque Française. We shared impressions about many movies, but after a while she stopped listening to me. She seemed to be shivering, and I started getting really worried, remembering my own illness, that had interrupted my self-imposed exile in the old factory and made ​​me face the world again... And hadn't I just then found a letter from Armand in the mail... And because I had to go to the hospital was I now living on the Île du Blanchomme... Maybe I should thank the rats and rusty cans for my present good fortune? Had they led me to the lovely young woman before me? A sickness was a blessing in disguise?, I wondered.

I had had a good intuition the other night when I thought Catherine had been suffering from sunstroke. But my intuitions were to no avail when she began to actually feel ill.

During lunch I noticed how she had turned red from all those hours under the sun, and I realized that she was getting sick, though trying to keep her pretentious -- or true? -- friendly smile, listening with polite interest while I was discoursing passionately about... Art, of course.

"Are you feeling ill?" I finally asked, when I thought she might fall from the chair at any moment, from shivering so much. How could she have been cold under that tropical sun?

That question was the sign for her to get up and run to the bathroom... that she did not reach in time, puking on the veranda in front of Armand's room. She then moved on to the toilet, where again I heard her vomit.

I did not wish to interrupt Carlo's narrative, but I had been guessing something for some time now, and it was making ​​me suffer.

"Was my mother bulimic, Carlo?" This was a night of revelations for me, old lies were falling down defeated, and perhaps Catherine's diet, that had kept her with a flawless body at fifty eight years old, had a different, more sinister nature.

"Oh no!" Carlo gave the shortest of laughs, since laughing was not very appropriate at that stage in the story. "That's a disturb no one talked about, back then... Your mother has always had a very delicate constitution. She was thoroughly urban, and life in that tropical part of the world... the food, the water, the sun, the temperature, the insects, the boats, the tides, the moon... and even I..." Carlo smiled sadly. "Everything harmed her health."

"I was monitoring her from outside the room, listening to her crying after she had stopped vomiting..." my worries dismissed, we drifted back to the Île du Blanchomme, "And since after some time she hadn't come out of the bathroom, and everything was so quiet, I decided to check how she was..."

I found her lying unconscious on the bathroom floor, next to the toilet. She was soaked in her vomit, and when I tried to clean it from her, I noticed how she shivered at the touch of a cloth dipped in cold water -- and if I had been still thinking of food poisoning, from that moment on I was convinced of a heatstroke.

But I had never taken care of anyone sick before. My grandfather had never been sick, apart from an occasional flu -- he used to say himself that he would die healthy. As for Armand, I had accompanied him once to a private clinic of a friend of his father, some famous doctor, where he was treated for an inflammation in the lungs.

I was nearly desperate as I tried to recall what cares I had received at the hospital in Paris, and that was when I remembered a first aids book and a box of medicines that Armand had shown me in his office. It was the one room in the house that I rarely entered, since the only thing in there for me was the radio, that I had been unable to use. I tried to turn it on again, randomly pressing this and that button, but I don't know if it had to warm up or what, and again I gave up. I resented being so inapt at technological stuff. But even if it had worked, what then? I would be screaming for help, hoping someone would send an helicopter to the Île? Grow up, Carlo, -- I remember telling to myself -- this is the time. Someone depends on you.

And only then, glancing around the room in dismay, did I realize that Catherine had been in the office already, leaving her notebooks, pens and two novels on my friend's desk. It seemed like another outrageous invasion to me -- but who cared, when there was an emergency going on? At that moment, I was more mad at myself than I could ever be at the sick girl.

There was a manual on tropical diseases provided by the Colonial government, dating from Herr Weissmann's time, but I figured that orientations on how to treat heatstroke should not have changed with the decades....

Removing Catherine from the bathroom was my first problem -- when I tried to lift her, she cried in pain. I felt like I was violating her when I nevertheless lifted her in my arms and carried her to bed, despite her painful groans. I felt genuine tenderness with her in my arms, like I had never felt before. Despite her smelling to vomit and the sweat on her skin, I wanted to keep on holding her in my arms. But it was the wrong moment for romantic impulses, I knew -- I had to read the manual, my only adviser in that situation.

Her skin was almost purple and she was sweating profusely -- which was a good sign according to the manual, because it meant her sweating had not been affected -- but what worried me were the chills that made her squirm, and her state of consciousness, semi-consciousness or unconsciousness, that I could not quite determine. According to the manual, if the person presented an altered state of consciousness, she should be taken urgently to the hospital... that lied nine hours away at least, had the boat been there.

I tried not to panic.

One of the recommendations was placing the affected person in a cold bath -- but I had just brought her from the bathroom, and I thought it would be cruel to move her again. I then adopted the second best recommended method, which was to put cool, wet rags on her skin, at the back of her neck, on her groin, and her armpits. And I was supposed to mist and fan her to promote evaporative cooling.

 For hours, I moved between the bathroom sink and Armand's bed, drenching the floor along the way and also the mattress, while trying to cool Catherine's body. She struggled, and no matter how gently I placed a wet cloth on her skin, it seemed to cause her an unbearable pain and shock. I also gave her water to sip slowly, to counteract dehydration. And I started watching for the girl in her delirious state.

One of the recommended procedures, however, troubled me -- it was removing the clothes of the person with heatstroke, to help in the cooling process. I decided I would not do that, because no matter how much panic I felt in that situation, another bestial part of me still watched Catherine's exposed breasts. My criminal gaze kept falling repeatedly over the bikini tan lines on her burnt skin... Although there was nothing sensual about the situation, yet one continuous tingle seemed to live in my groin.

But night was falling, and Catherine still struggled in her delirious state, not showing much improvement in her condition. It seemed to me she was somehow trying to get rid of the clothes herself... So I decided to help her. Promising myself to behave like a monk, I undressed her. She had taken her bikini off before having lunch, and I found her completely naked under her fancy and now stained dress...

How utterly beautiful she were, I thought. Yet, it crossed my mind how helplessly weakened a sick person is, totally dependent and not able to defend oneself, and how in this situation someone with bad intentions might take advantage and abuse... Suddenly, I felt that, at that exact moment, the sick and helpless people around the world were being abused, so many of them at that very moment... at this very moment, for it is happening now, do you realize it, Laurent? All around the world indeed... as I watched Catherine's lovely naked body, bare before my eyes for the first time. At the same time that I was filled with compassion for the sick, I felt those demanding sensations in my groin...

"What is it Laurent? Why are you crying?" Carlo interrupted the story.

Those were tears I could not restrain nor explain, and I had been glad that my father was so engrossed in his story, imagining that he would not notice.

"It's nothing... It's just that... thinking about my mom so sick and in pain, and seeing you so lost and unprepared..." And while that actually sensitized me, there was something worse... a thought had entered my mind crawling from my darkest fears... it invaded me... the awful truth that my parents had hidden from me... "You were both so young..." I could see Carlo... taking advantage of Catherine, and I had been born... from an abuse! That would explain so many things in my life... my karma.

"That was just a training..." Carlo smiled tenderly, and in an instant his sincere sweetness liberated me from my fears, "...for the times when you got sick, my son. Caring for an adult is demanding and complicated, but caring for a sick baby, a baby crying in pain..." Carlo was sad again. "... it's heartbreaking!" He reached across the table and gently squeezed my hand. "Please do not cry, Laurent, or I'll cry too!"

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Episode 36 | Partners

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I brought the gallons of paint upstairs, and the effort eased both my sexual arousal and the anger. The girl downstairs retreated to a time before her tempestuous arrival, and it again felt as if I was alone on the Île. I concentrated on painting the walls -- having chosen the one most visible upon arrival on the island to start, as I wanted Armand to see it right away --, and delighted simply in getting the job done. 

After some time, though, I heard the girl noisily climbing the stairs, a little too hasty. I confess that I had expected her to leave the breakfast tray behind by the pool. Despite my request for collaboration -- and I had intended to politely remind her about that. When she glanced in my direction, realizing my presence there on the porch, it seemed like she had something to tell me, too... but instead, she ran into the bathroom.

Herr Weissmann's house construction was full of strange details -- that the first passage, the one right at the top of the stairs, lead into the bathroom (built disproportionately large to contain the rain water collecting and treating equipment), which in turn gave way to the master bedroom.

It was her luck, and the girl made ​​it to the toilet just in time to throw up again... There goes breakfast, I could not help thinking, for it seemed like a waste of precious food to me. I continued painting the wall while the girl vomited, crying and flushing the toilet over and over again, despite my kindest requests... Should I scream at her?

Hearing her using the sink to clean up, I thought I would have to take fewer baths if I did not want us to run out of water... Then there was silence, and I guessed the girl had gone to rest, maybe lie down or sit on the veranda by her room, which at that time of the day would still be cool.

I noticed how my mind whirled like a radar, trying to figure out where in the house the girl was -- and that left me feeling distracted and somewhat astounded at my improbable interest on the well being of that disturbing creature.

Next, I was recalling my own episodes of food poisoning in the old factory in Paris. Feeling compassionate towards the suffering girl, I decided to drop my work and check whether she needed anything.

I did not find her resting on Armand's large bed, however, nor occupying any of the comfortable armchairs on the veranda next to his room. I then followed along the corridor until I found her... in my room, kneeling before the bookcase, amid a maze of books lying around her.

"What are you doing?!?" I yelled, losing control. "Are you looking for something?"

Armand used to be generous with many things, most things. But he was jealous of his books, and was keen to keep them in an strict order -- I had been very careful about that in Paris, since we shared a library where all books were his --, and in that only bookshelf on the island, he had been keeping his books separate from Herr Weissmann's.

"I'm feeling fine, thank you..." She answered the question I meant to ask her, but which I had forgotten upon seeing the bookshelf turned upside down.

"Good, I'm glad." I found it amazing that she talked to me without even glancing at me. So typical of Catherine, as we know well, Laurent. Something I've never grown accustomed to, and at that time it seemed really unbearable to me. "This is my room..." Though it seemed inappropriate to say that anything in that house belonged to me.

"I figured that out." she said, with a gesture full of indifference towards the little bed where I slept. "Please don't think I'm here for anything in your room..." she was inspecting a book, still not facing me. "I'm here as if I were attending mass..."

I gasped. "What?" I was curious and stared at the girl intently. However, she did not look back at me.

"Don't think I'm in your room. Pretend I'm... in the church." I saw her smiling, not at me but upon recognizing the title of a book. "Since I do not believe in God, this is where I come to pray." The girl pointed the bookcase. And at once I realized she was using the same expression Armand and I had employed to designate our small library in Paris, 'The Church'. I was perplexed.

As I remained silent, suddenly confronted with old, cherished memories, and to Catherine it seemed that I had not understood her, she went on.

"What for you is simply a bookshelf, to me... it's an altar. And I'm a believer!" She smirked, picking up one more book, just to tease me. "Don't worry. You can rest assured that I know how take care of them, better than you do."

"Excuse me, but you do not have the right to mess with that shelf. These books belong to Armand." I replied, and as I recall it, very softly.

I don't think I said anything to enrage her. I certainly did not intend it, but whatever it was, she exploded again.

"You have made ​​it clear that I am not welcome here! Could you at least pretend otherwise!?!" she screamed.

"I have never said that..." I mumbled.

"No. Until now you just said Bienvenue..." She mocked my Italian accent. "Please make yourself at home... a thousand times! Haven't you?"

I realized that, in fact, I had never properly welcomed her. "Excuse me. I'm sorry." I really meant it, once I understood how she felt. "You are welcome to the island. I only want to ask you... to request me... before handling things that are not yours." Since I was being defensive, I think it sounded insincere and even a bit harsh.

"Merci, monsieur!" she replied, calming herself. "S'il vous plait... Can I borrow a book?" She exaggerated the courtesy in her request, as if asking me for a huge favor.

I noticed her irony, and tried not to react to it. It was so unpleasant and tiring to be at odds with that girl at all times, and I could not stop thinking about the hell it would be to spend a week with her, until the return of the boat.

"Of course." I answered. "That is not the problem... but taking the books out of the order set by Armand. May I ask you to refrain from..."

She interrupted me. "The books are in no order at all!" she retorted, categorically. "They were a mess!" In fact she was right, as I would later find it out from Armand himself. He had never had the time to properly place the books in an order. But I did not know it then, that I was being unfair to her. "I'm actually doing your boss a favor!"

"Armand is not my boss." I replied immediately.

 Even though I had put myself in a subaltern position before him several times, and in my usual humility submitting to Armand would not have bothered me at all... The disdain and indifference with which that girl treated me, however, seemed so inconsiderate. I was hurt.

"He isn't?" That was the first time she glanced at me, still haughtily. And by her next question I then realized she really had not deigned to even look in my direction. "You're not a native, are you?" She was still doubtful, observing my tanned skin and my ragged clothes in opposition to my facial features that did not bear any resemblance to the local people. "You are..." She seemed to hesitate, oscillating between my peasant ways I could not disguise, especially when I felt embarrassed, and my almost fluent French and its accent, made so particularly better when I tried mimicking Armand. "...his partner, perhaps?"

"Exactly!" I replied, after thinking that maybe that word could well indicate the nature of the close relationship I had had with Armand for all those years. And that had became even more intimate in our final week. I was always thinking of it as 'brotherhood', but I could not introduce myself as Armand's brother. "Yes, we are partners" I smiled. That word seemed good enough, though I could not have know then that Catherine, who had been preparing her Master in Literature, on her way to teach at the Université Paris-Sorbonne, took words so literally. And she had meant commercial partners, of course -- in the guesthouse, or owning the island. Perhaps that misunderstanding could have been cleared had I given her time to ask more questions, but I was eager to introduce myself. "My name is Carlo D'Allegro."

"Enchanté!" She finally looked at me for the first time, right into my eyes. And with an interest which greatly differed from the disdain with which hitherto she had treated me, she introduced herself. "Catherine Mortinné."

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Author's note: having been imported from a former version of the story, some of the comments below are dated previous to this post. Once the plot has not been altered, just the pagination, I am keeping them since they are very dear and precious to me.

Episode 34 | Not yet your mother

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nudity and sex

"In the broad silence, I could hear the girl vomiting in the bathroom. And also crying, angrily, and I think even cursing... She kept flushing the toilet, repeatedly, and I thought I should have warned her about how it was crucial to save water on the island..." And I realized that Carlo had, without warning, returned to the Île du Blanchomme, to the evening of Catherine's arrival. "I waited for everything to become again quiet, and as she did not return to the beach, I went upstairs to look for her in the house."

I found her sitting at one of the tables that Armand had placed on the veranda, around a small lounge which he called the Music Room, where he kept his guitar and the stereo. It was the only room in the house that actually resembled a hostel, with the four tables creating a small eating environment, a bit like a charming Parisian bistro -- and it was there that the girl had sat. She should have found the matches, because she had lit a candle, and under that gentle light, for the first time I thought she looked beautiful in her fancy dress, which bared her back.

I brought her some juice I had prepared that afternoon, thinking she might like to drink something to get rid of the vomit's taste in her mouth -- I didn't mention that to her, of course -- and as an apology for my previous rudeness.

"Merci." she said, when I handed her the glass with juice. Inadvertently I glanced at her generous décolleté dress, and I caught a glimpse of her breasts under the loose fabric. But luckily, she seemed oblivious at my indiscretion. "I hate boats!" And then she was telling me how sick she had been since coming to the islands, having to use boats to get around, and I realized that she too was trying to apologize for her bad temper. "I have once been on a cruise ship, and I also felt sick, but these tiny little boats here... They are dreadful! And worst of all was travelling to this island!"

I tried to tell her the probable reason for the sea being rougher around the Île du Blanchomme were the dangerous currents encircling it, but she did not seem to want to listen to it, and just cut me off.

"Juice?" she grinned, having drunk half a glass until finally realizing what she was drinking. "Don't you have anything stronger?" And she clarified it as I looked at her blankly. "Are you sure that you understand French? Have you ever been to France?" But she did not want to hear my reply. "Don't you have wine? Or anything alcoholic? I need to recharge my energies..."

I laughed. Not at the request properly, and of course not at the fact that she was feeling weak, but at the absurdity of thinking that there could be wine on a tiny island lost in the Indian Ocean.

"Sure!" I told her wryly. "I'll bring you our wine list..." I added.

But she didn't listen to the irony in my remark -- it seemed my Italian accent was affecting her understanding of my French --, and I saw she took me seriously, for she was happy with the offer. She only understood it was a joke when I did not leave her side. I laughed again.

She was immediately offended, and again I saw her mood worsen.

She was furious at me as she jumped from the chair, her anger exploding. 

The girl had a delicate constitution and looked fragile, her figure so slim and petite -- her arms were so thin that it looked like they could break with that emotional burst. In contrast to her round breasts, that I found myself watching, and which were not too full but so well made, ​​like those from a Greek classical statue. In her outbursts, her frailty transformed into recklessness. 

It is her way of imposing herself, I thought.

"How rude you are!" she cried, full of scorn. "If you intend to host civilized beings, how can you not have wine? What kind of hole is this hostel? Mon Dieu, how long will I have to wait to get out of here?" She snorted.

"Maybe a week..." I replied calmly, without stepping into her ​​anger. "...at least!" I confess I felt a certain pleasure in torturing her with that disheartening information. "I'm not sure how often the boat comes around the island, but I think it never takes more than ten days to return..."

"How come you don't know? Don't you live here?" She moaned. "Ten days? You must be kidding! I need to wait that long for that damn boat? At this hole... with you?" She emphasized the 'you', making it clear that my company was worse than the uncivilized island and the dreadful boat. "Where are the other guests? Is there anyone more educated here that I can talk to?"

"No guests! I've said it before... this is not a hostel..." I said it gently, but it was as if I had punched the girl, who leaned over her own body, moaning, and walked towards the couch at the Music Room, where she collapsed.

"Can I help you? Do you want more juice?" I did not know what to do, I did not know what to say, I did not know how to behave in such a situation, but I guessed I should try. "Haven't you been overexposed to the sun on the beach, this afternoon?" I had noticed her skin was so pale and delicate, and it seemed to me to be overly pinkish, as if she had been assaulted by an army of sun rays. "It could be a heatstroke, and drinking water probably helps..."

"No!" She groaned, and gestured me to back away from her. "I want to be alone!" She fidgeted on the couch, restlessly. "Is the ground of the island moving?"

"No, of course not..." Her ideas were so ridiculous, but I tried not to laugh, and instead empathize with her suffering. "You could still be feeling the rocking of the boat..."

"Damned boats..." she whispered, and it seemed to me that in a couple more minutes she fell deeply asleep. 

I went to the kitchen to wash the dishes of the day, and I had to smile as I saw the lipstick mark on the girl's glass. Did I place my own lips on it, before washing the glass? I don't remember if I did it that first night already, but I certainly did it afterwards...

When I returned to the Music Room, she was sound asleep. Against my will, against my education, I again glanced at her breasts... and more intently this time, since I knew I wasn't being observed. From the way her body was twisted, I could see the edge of one of her nipples appearing under the fabric -- and I almost felt vertigo from the overwhelming wave of desire that invaded and dominated me. I had to run away from the room, confused, not to act brutally against the asleep, helpless girl.

I went down to the beach, as far as I could from that girl. What was that?!? Lust burst in me more violently than anything else I had ever felt, an urge like nothing I had experienced before... If I had stayed a moment longer beside that couch, watching the sleeping girl, I could not have stopped my hand from touching her... and not only grabbing her breasts, feeling her nipples... Next, I could have thrown myself on top of her, and maybe...

Maybe... I would had been conceived! I could not help but think.

I was a little embarrassed from the way Carlo was telling me his story, including such intimate confessions. But at the same time I was fascinated with the possibility to acknowledge my own conception... I guess many children have that curiosity about the occasion of their conception, and as a teenager I had once asked Catherine about it. Shamelessly, she had told me a story I now discovered had been thoroughly made up, about their romantic encounter in a fancy resort in Punaouilo -- and I was about to discover the truth.

"There haven't been many women in my life..." Carlo pondered. "From my mother, I remember very little. And when I moved in with my grandfather, he was already a widower. I think I took from him a certain asceticism, and my celibacy never bothered me. In my teenage years in the Apennines there was nothing sexually exciting -- the animals having intercourse and procreating, yes, but that did not arouse any desire in me, to try it myself. Moreover, sometimes we had some guys helping on the farm, but until Armand's heartfelt confession I had never thought of having sex with another man."

Parisian women astounded me, and I simply dismissed, them thinking they were meant for guys like Armand. To my eyes, they were voluptuous, sophisticated, intellectual, all full of attitudes and style -- even the waitresses and shop assistants seemed like untouchable queens to me. I could blush when I recalled them, especially at the Cinematéque, engaging in long, passionate kisses with their boyfriends. And I never considered having one for me -- I had to struggle to survive in Paris, make good use of my time to get the best training possible, and try to somehow establish myself in the city. Most of the times, despite Armand's generosity and hospitality, I felt like a transplanted tree striving to grow roots, against all odds, in foreign soil.  

Returning to the house, I thought I'd take a cold shower to calm myself. But that was not what happened at the bathroom, and for the first time since coming to the island, I jerked off. Not even the smell of her vomit still lingering in the bathroom turned me off. I stroked myself feeling a guilty pleasure all the time -- for I was finally wasting the sexual energy I had been diligently accumulating and transforming into vital and spiritual energy, like I had studied in that book about Indian philosophies. And I felt even more guilty for being so aware of the girl's presence in the house... and in my mind... and the fact that she was the reason why I was wildly touching myself like that... and when I came, I was thinking of her bared nipple and how it would have tasted in my mouth...

I had not known how to deal with women, and less did I know how to deal with my own lust.

I had learned from the masters of India that lust was the chief enslaver of human beings -- and since I had never really felt it before, I had considered myself naturally free of it. I took myself for the one remarkable exception to all beings. 

Until that evening on the Île du Blanchomme.

It was a tremendous explosion, or as if the walls of a huge dam had collapsed  -- and I could no longer contain the force of the waters of my desire. Neither wanted I.

"I went to sleep, and after having fidgeted in my bed for a few minutes, again I masturbated..." Carlo suddenly looked at me, as if returning from the Île du Blanchomme. "Am I embarrassing you, son? You know, I was in my early twenties, and a virgin... Now that I am older this seems so far away... almost a curiosity... and so unlikely to have happened. That strong lust... I was guiltily masturbating in my room, aware of being separated only by a tiny wall from the girl sleeping on the couch, whom I evoked in my wild fantasies... Was she real, or was she just an image? Her presence was real, but what she performed in my mind..." Carlo shrugged, dismissing those recollections. "That girl, Laurent, was not yet your mother... And as I furiously jerked off I was thinking of Armand, too, and equally feeling guilty, and confused..." 

Carlo gulped, and the continued. "I was as tormented as I had been the previous night, but it was a different kind of suffering -- instead of nightmares, I was fully awake and aroused by an imperative lust, which I did not seem to want to get rid of... In my mind, I could understand how enslaving it was, but those bodily sensations were so addictive good, so intensely pleasurable... And I gave in, again I gave in to it and masturbated until I exploded and was left drained..."

I eventually fell asleep, exhausted.

I woke up a few hours later, before dawn, again with a hard-on -- and needing to go to the bathroom to pee.

Since Armand had been gone, instead of using the corridor, I had taken to crossing his room, which was next to mine, to get to the bathroom, adjoining his.

I stopped halfway.

The girl must have woken up in the middle of the night, and having left the Music Room, wandered through the house without my noticing it -- but had she seen me, lying naked and hard on my bed?  She had found Armand's bedroom and taken hold of his big, comfortable bed.

For a moment I was just confused and baffled. But next I was furious with her, for she had occupied my friend's bed with such ease, something that I had been unable to do even in his absence. I almost kicked her out of that room, such was my indignation at her disrespecting the bed where I had experienced so many emotions and special feelings and sensations with Armand. Of course, to her it had been just an available bed in the hostel, not a love nest...

 But I did not wake her up in my rage, only because my demanding hard-on humiliated me... and I cautiously turned back, returning to my room.

Once back there, though separated by a single wall, my fury and indignation quickly vanished to give in to lust -- and while servicing my raging hard-on and watching dawn breaking, I fantasized about both Armand and Catherine, and I was now inside him, then I was in her, and in my thoughts I could not distinguish whom I was with, riding that bed that now united and mingled their bodies into one gender-less body, confusing them in my mind.

I saluted dawn with another big spurt in several ropes that I aimed at my body, so that I didn't have to clean the room afterwards. And all covered with sperm I went down to the beach to bathe in the sea, so as to cleanse myself and to calm down.

For another day in a row I did not meditate in the morning. I did try to sit, but the problem was no longer just calming my mind... since my thoughts kept going back to the girl, my body was no longer like a safe and stable mountain to which I'd bring back my wandering mind. The solid mountain had turned into a blazing volcano.

 So I just sat there, feeling the breeze on my naked body, watching the sun rise, and then I swam as long as I could, against the currents, trying to tire myself and pacify my desire. 

I felt I was losing it... but what was it? My freedom, probably. My privacy, surely. My peace of mind, of course. I was finally, essentially losing myself, as painful and pleasurable and definite as it could be!

next episode

Author's note: having been imported from a former version of the story, some of the comments below are dated previous to this post. Once the plot has not been altered, just the pagination, I am keeping them since they are very dear and precious to me.