My life and loves Vol. 4 Read online

  Some time later I told Stanley the story and wondered whether by a new sort of paper-chase, he had tracked Livingstone by parti-colored offspring across Africa. But Stanley had no sense of humor and seemed to resent the imputation. Still, I must record one fact in regard to this girl: she was extraordinarily proud of her white blood and begged Karl to find her some white man to whom she might give herself and so have done with colored men forever. Curiously enough, though of sufficient age, she had refused to submit to the ministry of the old colored women and therefore still preserved her maidenhead. She wanted white children, she declared, and would never yield herself to a Negro.

  It was the Doctor who undertook to content her desire and was gratefully accepted, though I always thought there was more than a little Negro blood in his veins; still, he was at least half-white. In the course of the next month or so we came upon three similar instances, and in every case the same insensate pride in the mulatto. It grew to be a joke with us that we were following in the missionary's footsteps!

  When we were nearing the Zambesi, we spent a whole day trekking through a dense forest, and there towards midday discovered a troop of baboons. The Doctor happened to be a little ahead of us, and almost at once a huge female baboon picked bun out and began, with unmistakable gestures, to show him that he had taken her fancy and that she was more than willing to be his love.

  Naturally the incident amused me highly and I induced the brothers to let the game go on. To cut a long story short, that female kept close to the Doctor to the edge of the forest and beyond it. The grotesque obscenity of the exhibition, the unmistakable passion of the animal, gave me a new understanding of the intimate ties that bind us men to our simian ancestors.

  However we brazen it out

  We men are a little breed.

  I never took any part in the nightly orgies that went on between the members of our caravan and the girls of the various tribes that visited us to beg and to barter. I was content with my Kodak to take snapshots of the prettiest girls and the finest young men, and here I made some remarkable discoveries.

  None of the girls objected to stand for me, and not one hesitated to take off the little apron of hide they usually wore; but underneath the apron there was a small covering, perhaps two fingers broad, which they all objected to removing. They regarded their sex as ugly and would not willingly expose it.

  Another curious fact: I soon found that these girls did not recognize themselves in their photos. One of our leaders was a Negro with perfectly white hair. When we showed the girls this Negro and his photoed likeness, they all exclaimed with delight: they could recognize him, but not themselves. I have often noticed that a dog does not recognize his likeness in a glass; perhaps it needs a certain amount of intelligence to know even what we look like.

  Some of these young colored girls had very beautiful figures: it is usually thought that their calves are too thin and their breasts too flaccid. Naturally, taking into consideration their early maturity, they soon show these signs of age, but from ten to fifteen they are often perfectly made.

  Why didn't they tempt me? I can't say; the half-white girls appealed to me much more; but the pure Negro type left me completely unmoved.

  I loved to take their photographs in the most lascivious attitudes, enjoyed draping them in a pretty piece of stuff and thus bringing out their everpresent coquetry; but when they sought to excite me, I would slap their bottoms and turn away. I never could understand the attraction they possessed for most white men. I had known the fact from my varsity days in Lawrence, Kansas, where all my comrades used to hunt regularly in the Negro quarter; but even then I never went with them, not out of any moral scruple, but simply because the black girl, however well made, did not excite in me what Dr. Johnson called his "amorous propensities."

  Yet I was told by Karl and the Doctor that the Negro girls were far more passionate than the white ones. "There is no comparison," Karl used to declare; "Negro girls, and boys, too, feel the sex thrill far more intensely than any whites."

  It may be true. I have seen Parisian cocottes making heroes of Negro lovers; they have told me time and again just what Karl asserted; but it is not only the vigor of the Negro, but also the size of his sex which causes him to be so esteemed by the French prostitutes. On the other hand, the Negro girl, too, is far larger than the white and that certainly detracts from the man's pleasure.

  Besides, the mousey smell is always present, and that was enough to choke my desire. But the want of intelligence is the chief deterrent; for Hindu girls are often very dark and have the mousey odor, yet their brains or higher spiritual understanding make them eminently desirable.

  Yet my virtue was destined to suffer one defeat. One evening, a girl we had met, who was almost completely white, was encouraged by Karl to come nude to my bed. I was tossing about asleep in the night when she came and laid down beside me, or rather on me. The heat of her body had excited me before I even awoke, and before I was fully conscious I was enjoying her. I felt no disappointment when I saw her: I have seen Italian girls with darker skins and coarser features; but I cannot say that she gave me any extraordinary thrill. Yet, she did her best and the game of love to her was the best game in the world. She delighted in teaching me all the Swahili terms for the sex and for sensual pleasures. And when I used them she would scream with enjoyment.

  This girl was rather intelligent, and so I asked her about sexual perversions.

  She seemed to think there was nothing in them, that naturally all human beings took what pleasure they could get whenever they could get it. There was no shadow of moral law in the matter. She even told me that most of the colored girls didn't know how to kiss until they were taught and were quite astonished at any extension of kissing.

  I would have forgotten all about this girl, had she not begged me to take her with me on my expedition. I could not do this, but some bright cloths and beads soon consoled her for my defection, and one day I saw her making up to the big Doctor, which at once chased away any lingering scruples I may have had.

  I have been asked to write on sexual perversions; but I have no personal experiences of them, being wholly taken up with the normal desires of the man for the woman; but once in New York I received a letter from a girl in Toronto which bears every mark of truth in its frank lesbianism. I found out afterwards that the explanation of this girl's perversion was to be found in the constant physical pursuit of her, when still a mere child, by her father. I give the letter here textually.

  Mother opens the door when I ring the home bell. It is sad and pleasant to greet her. We stand talking for a minute in the hall.

  "Is he there?" Mother knows to whom I refer.

  "Yes." She hesitates; then wife-like, pleadingly: "Be nice to him."

  I promise.

  The children greet me hilariously and I wonder what to say to them. Children always embarrass me.

  The father obtrudes himself with weighty tenderness:

  "Why doesn't my elf come and kiss me?"

  He is fatter, greyer, more dissolute. Only eyes and forehead still partly survive the wreck. I grit my teeth and appear to kiss him willingly, angry with myself that I cannot prevent my flesh from suffering at the contact. His breath is unpleasant with the odor of whiskey and cheese. It revives a vivid childhood scene:

  Fresh from the woods, fragrance of earth and leaves clinging to her, a mist of poetry in her brain from something she had been writing or reading, I see the child that was me, darting into the house at tea-time.

  "Streak-of-lightning! Come and give your dad a kiss!"

  The child goes obediently to be kissed, resentful only at having her thoughts disturbed. Cheese and whiskey! She is horribly disgusted. How could anyone with such a breath want to kiss her? Then I see her breaking away, racing into the garden and burying her head in the flowers.

  My first distaste for my father was certainly an aesthetic distaste, which soon became disgust.

  "Cold as ever!" he complains b
ecause I get away from him as soon as I can.

  "All brain; no heart whatever." Mother smiles; she knows me better.

  He reaches for his whiskey: "Have a drink: it'll warm your chilly blood,"

  "No, thank you. Not so early in the morning; I haven't eaten yet."

  Mother rescues me with breakfast.

  "He's drinking too much," she remarks unhappily.

  I had never blamed him for drinking, like mother continually did. But I could not help despising him for not being strong enough to make it serve him.

  There is little but the unhappy in the handful of news mother unfolds to me during breakfast. Most of it hangs about the man of the family.

  "He has been more ill than well lately. I can't help thinking he will not live long… and all these children… five of them under fifteen!" Helplessly: "I don't know what it will mean."

  I do.

  I see a scale balancing-mother, children-writing, the poetry, my own life- and my heart is breaking with resentment.

  I try to put the black thoughts in chains, since they are far too evilly vigorous to banish. After all, I came here to link hands with love.

  I go to the telephone and call Louise's number. No answer. She must be out, although nine-thirty is early for her. There is nothing to do but fill an hour with futile occupations. Later I make another attempt, but still she is not there.

  At noon I telephone Louise's number again. This time her husband answers:

  "She is spending the holidays at St. Agathe… won't be back till Monday."

  I do not know what I feel, but something terribly more than disappointment.

  Streets drabber than ever, and rain drizzling down.

  I want to put Montreal behind me at once, but a berth for Sunday night is already reserved and I haven't money to get another. All I can do is to stay.

  Defiance begins to possess me. Since I must remain, I'll enjoy it. I go immediately to a telephone and call Marguerite. Before I left Montreal for New York she displayed a great deal of love for me. I had tried to meet it with sympathy; certainly always did respond with pleasure and passion, for she is beautiful, very much the artist (musically), and fascinating.

  I recognize her voice at the other end of the wire.

  "Marguerite! C'est Sapho qui parle."

  "Oh, ma chere! What happiness. Where are you? I must see you at once! Will you come here?"

  The French enthusiasm, the voice vibrating with unmistakable delight, are wine to me. In spite of her insistence that we must meet at once- "immediatement! immediatement!" she repeats-we finally agree to see each other that evening at a friend's studio.

  I go again into the street with a little of the greyness lifted. How mysteriously heartening is pleasure, and the thought of pleasure.

  Night, and the indestructible magic of passion in the veins and the mist of a spring evening dimming the lights that are softer than most city lights. The ancient buildings have become more characterful. They are not splendid and blatant like New York's concrete monsters.

  I run up the old staircase to the studio. It is early and the hostess is not yet there, but I enter. In Montreal we leave our studios unlocked, or the key in some accessible corner. The familiar studio, full of the pictures I had watched being painted, is another pleasure. Someone had freed incense or sandalwood perfume in the room.

  I am stretched on a sofa with a cigarette, trying not to think of Louise, whom I had loved more than once in this place, when someone knocks at the door. I open it and find the woman from the adjoining studio standing there, like a Baccante, with a decanter of red wine in her left hand. She wears a transparent kimono and rather disarranged hair. I am glad enough to see her.

  We had been friends once upon a time.

  "I saw you come in," she explained, putting the decanter down on a table. I motion towards it:

  "What's that for?"

  "Oh! You've forgotten since you lived in that desert across the border!"

  It was plain to me that she had not "forgotten." She seemed to have been practicing well that very day. She poured wine for both of us, then reclining so that her kimono became very vague about the shoulder, began immediately to tell me, French fashion, about her lover-the latest.

  In my last few years in Montreal, everyone seemed to come to me with confessions. I became a sort of repository for the troubles of the artistic tribe, and at one time had locked in my memory the intimate secrets and misdeeds of about one-half of Montreal's quartier-latin. They came to me with everything from confessions of rape-even murder, once-to the tiniest sins of the spirit. Why they trusted me, I do not know. I felt quite at home when Davila, nicknamed "Devil," called "Dev" for handiness, immediately unfolded an intrigue for me.

  She departed when Regina, mistress of the studio, arrived at eight o'clock.

  Regina greeted me with a maidenly kiss on the cheek. Regina is an artist, two or three years my senior, although she appears to be younger. She has not the brains nor the curiosity about life ever to be a great painter. Her claims to the title of artist lie chiefly in a vivid, almost virile color sense, and a careful technique. Her claims to my admiration are far more numerous. Her type is oriental; coloring richly dark; magnificent, slow-burning eyes; features that would be heavy but for the life that shines through, as though they were transparent; figure a little too full, but redeemed by the firmness of unused youth; hard, not too large breasts; and beautiful hands.

  I draw her to my side on the couch and begin talking about her pictures.

  There is a lot to criticize in the latest.

  "It is difficult to realize, looking at you," I tell her, "but love, even passion, is lacking in your work. How do you keep it out?"

  "I don't know. I have not ever really loved."

  I had guessed that much, but I merely say:

  "Why don't you?"

  "I have not yet found anyone I want to fall in love with."

  That is an attitude I am not in sympathy with.

  I rarely await Fate's sweet pleasure. So I tell her:

  "Love is worth the loving regardless of that. The perfection is in the artist and the art itself, not in the instrument, is it not so?"

  She seemed troubled about it. "Men do not inspire me," hesitatingly, "My lips are loath to meet theirs as my brush is to paint them. No. They do not inspire me in the least."

  Woman always waits to be inspired! Well-Marguerite is not due for an hour and this little creature is very seductive. I take both her hands and kiss them. I love beautiful hands.

  "Perhaps I can inspire you."

  She smiles uncertainly, but I draw her towards me and kiss her mouth; her eyes, and throat; then the mouth again. It grows warm, and the little nipples of her breasts harden under my fingers. I have never caressed such a sensitive skin. It burns and trembles wherever it is touched, and I am surprised that so responsive a body should be innocent of love. She does not seem to wish that it should remain innocent, tempting me with the most beautiful abandon, that I would willingly meet with all my passion; but Fate, unusually malicious, intervenes with footsteps on the stairs. It is quite certain they belong to Marguerite, whom I had forgotten. Regina hears them, too, and hot, restraining hands creep and cling round me. I cannot help feeling sorry for her. A final kiss that neither of us wants to end, and she lets me go.

  Pulling a screen around the couch to give Regina time to arrange her things-for something besides, Marguerite's eyes harbor a dash of green! — I reach the door just as the knock comes. Nothing can restrain the exuberance of Marguerite's greeting. For Regina's sake, I am glad of the screen.

  Marguerite is pale, more lithe, more tiger-like, than when I last saw her, and even then I would run my hands over her body and ask how she managed to hide the stripes! The yellow-green eyes are pure tiger. Her clothes are chosen with the absolute art that only the French seem to possess.

  Regina, looking self-possessed enough, even to my eye, comes from behind the screen and takes Marguerite's wraps. B
efore we are seated others arrive.

  Conversation and wine carry the evening swiftly to midnight. Marguerite, passion apparently making her impatient, whispers to me several times to leave and go home with her. I am eager enough to go, but the moods of her impatience interest me to watch. It is not kind, perhaps, but a dash of pain is good seasoning for pleasure-makes it more vital, aggressive.

  A little later I get Regina into a corner, tell her I am about to leave, and ask if I may see her tomorrow, before I depart for New York. She consents, of course, her large eyes kissing me; then says impulsively:

  "I wish you could stay longer. I would love to do a head of you with just the expression you had when-we were together on the couch."

  "So! I did inspire you?" I kiss the beautiful hand, hoping Marguerite does not see, and leave her.

  Marguerite and I go decorously enough downstairs, but outside the air, the everlasting moon, the desertedness of the streets, are too much for us. We embrace the minute the policeman at the corner turns his back.

  Marguerite and I are perfectly in accord about one important detail of love- we believe that the surroundings should harmonize with the passion; so she, quite naturally, immediately dims the lights when we enter her home, puts glowing charcoal in the incense burner, and pours liqueur- appropriately perverse little glasses; then, forgetting everything, apparently, but her need of love, sinks down beside me, where I recline on the rug and receives my kisses on her flung-back throat and face.

  The foolish clothes that interrupt my lips! I unfasten them and slip them off; my own as well. The couch is more comfortable than the rug. I raise her and we stand against each other, embrace, kiss-the perfect kiss of completely meeting bodies. It creates desire too keen to be borne. Perspiration dampens her skin and mine. The perfume she has put on her body, not sweet but something insidiously acrid of eastern origin, fills my head with a hot mist.

  We sway to the couch and lie for a minute, bound by our burning arms, breasts crushed together.