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"For your very life you performed," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said, "as a terrified slave,"
"Perform," I commanded.
Almost instantaneously she seemed transformed. I was startled. I found myself, for the first time, partner to a woman's dream. How vividly she was re-enacting the experience. Nay, how intensely was she reliving it. I could sense almost the high, oblong stone, that rude, barbaric eminence, on which, cross-legged, sat her master. I could almost sense the torches, the pool of reptiles to one side, the rude altar, with its rings, in the background. I could almost feel and see the savages, those red men and women, in their ornate robes and feathers, in the. midst of whom a white beauty, freshly enslaved, piteously strove to save her life by pleasing her stern red master.
I watched her perform. I marveled. I think that no one will ever again be able to lie to me about women. How incredibly exciting and marvelous they are! What a fool a man is who does not seek, and release, the deepest slave in them!
Then she was on her belly, whimpering, scratching at the turf, her face pressed against it. Delicately she extended her tongue and licked a stone. Then, moaning, she rolled onto her back and twisted, moving her head from side to aide, in the dirt before me. The firelight was beautiful on her body. I think there was no aspect or attitude of her beauty which she had not, pleadingly, presented before me for my inspection and appraisal. Then she lay on her back, her knees drawn up, before me. She arched her back. Her breasts were lifted beautifully. I observed their lovely rise and fall, correlated with the respiratory cycle of her small lungs. Then she lay back, her shoulders in the dirt, and pressing against the earth with her small feet, piteously lifted before me, for my examination, and seizure, if I pleased, the deep belly of her, the sweet cradle of her slave's heat How vulnerable are female slaves! I rose to my feet. my fists clenched. She lay back, before me, at my feet "It was thus," she said, "that I tried to please him." I scrutinized, from head to toe, the naked slave who lay at my feet I could feel my fingernails in the palms of my hand. I gritted my teeth. I must not now take her. She was not yet fully ready. One must sometimes be patient with slaves. The next time I took her, I resolved, she would be a well-prepared feast. On the occasion of that feast it was my intention to teach the girl who she was, truly, to free at long last the hidden slave which was her secret self, her true self, that girl which, hitherto, had been permitted to emerge only in the disguise of clandestine dreams, that piteous girl, denied and suppressed, who had been for so long so cruelly imprisoned in the dungeon of her mind. I would free the secret slave from her dungeon; then I would make her mine. I would call her 'Janice'.
The girl sat up. I sat down, cross-legged. The fire was now low.
"What then occurred in your dream?" I asked.
"My master descended then from the height of the great stone," she said, "and, with his hand, indicated a direction in which I must precede him. He followed me, with a torch. I walked through the city and then, coming to a great temple, or building, with stone steps, stopped. He indicated I must climb upwards. The edifice was constructed of mighty blocks of stone. Its construction paid tribute to the engineering skills of his people. There were mighty carvings on many of the stones. I found the building, somehow, familiar. He then directed me to walk to my left, and I walked upon one of the broad terraces, many feet from the ground, which, like tiers, were integral to the structure of the edifice. I had the feeling I had been here before. In the light of his torch I could see that many of the carvings were colored, the natural hues and pigments not worn away by wind or rain. In the daylight the building, or temple, must be incredibly barbaric and colorful. 'Stop, he told me. I stopped. 'Turn and. kneel, he said. I turned about, facing him, and knelt down, on the hard, broad stone of the terrace. He then lifted the torch to the wall of stone which was at my left. I gasped. Kneeling beside me, carved in relief on the great stone, was a naked girl. 'It is a likeness of myself, I whispered. 'Yes, he said. I could see, from the carving, and the pigments, that the girl was figured like myself, and was light-ski