Lean cheeks hot, heart pounding, Avelino the singer heaved himself quietly up the last two centimetres of rock to look down on the naked unsuspecting woman below.
The noise of a dislodged stone as he settled himself in a niche was drowned by the washing of the surf close to the woman's prostrate body. He gazed at her with the frightened, formless anguish of his twenty-one sexless years, and it was as if cold sea-water had suddenly swamped his loins.
Avelino had come upon the woman quite by accident three days ago. He had been trying to catch a lizard on the craggy, solitary isthmus when, reaching the summit, he had looked down the sharper face and seen the slim, brown body stretched out on a ledge near the water's edge. Since then he had crept every day to the same spot during the sweating heat of afternoon when others were working or taking a siesta. Each day he had watched the woman for the few hours she lay in the sun, body brown and gleaming from her sun lotion. Each day he had masturbated desperately until his passion was spent-and even then he was unable to draw his fascinated eyes away until she made movements to leave. Then he would slither away like a rock snake and dash for the grove of olive trees which cut off the jagged isthmus from the dusty coast road.
At other times during the day he had seen the woman in the little town which had not long outgrown its village state. He had seen her, too, at the open air dance in the evening at which he sang with the nine-piece band which all the tourists liked so much because, they said, it was typically Spanish.
At first he had thought she was Swedish. The Swedish women had a reputation from some of the older members of the community for bathing in the nude. But later he had found she was English. She was always alone and she was beautiful. She sat alone, danced a lot, but always refused invitations to join another table. She appeared to be a rich woman who wanted soft music and to be left alone.
She always came to this spot alone-with a book, a bottle or two of wine, wearing a scanty bathing costume under a bright, striped beach jacket. She would swim expertly in the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean, climb gently back onto her ledge, careful to avoid the prickling sea urchins which clung to its underwater surface, and then strip off her two-piece before soaking herself in lotion to imbibe the sun.
Although she was much older than him, her body was the sort which would never grow fat, Avelino told himself. The bones were small, well formed, the skin tightly stretched on them.
She was lying on her front, now, reading. Her buttocks jutted from her brown slimness below him like twin balloons, small but well inflated. They were just slightly paler than the rest of her back view.
Today while he watched she stiffened, cramped a little with her position and her bottom tensed, hollowing provocatively as if she were pressing herself against a lover. And then she rolled over onto her back.
Avelino withdrew his head until he judged she had made herself comfortable in her new position and then peered over the ridge again.
Now he could see her breasts, bulbous and glistening in the fierce yellow light of afternoon. The slimness of her body below her breasts, the supple broadening into the hips with their central muff of blonde hair, the long smooth thighs-all were revealed to him.
His eyes roved hotly, half-fearfully over the first unclothed woman he had ever seen, but it was already becoming not enough to watch. He did not know what more he could do. He felt icy fingers run through his belly at the thought of discovery-but it was no longer enough just to watch. He longed desperately for the unbelievable happening of contact.
Sometimes his mind floated off on a fierce fantasy in which he imagined himself in this lonely spot suddenly falling on the woman, pressing her nude rotundities under his weight and raping her with abandon. The horror of the thought made him sick and it was always a relief when he forced himself back to reality. At other times he thought of calling out to her-who knew, after all, what her reaction would be. Perhaps she would call him down, invite him to make love to her.
He wondered what he would do if she did. And his mind would wander off again through the detailed action. She must be thirty. She would take the lead. He had to admit to himself that, although he knew how it was done, he wouldn't know how to set about it.
For a long time he lay flat on the hot brown stone, aware of the white-flecked sea beyond and the occasional white sail far out, but never consciously taking his eyes from the woman's body.
His hopeless desire was a sharp, hot pain against the rocks at his loins. His head ached from frustration. His body was sticky from the heat under his clothes and the rock had become almost too hot for his hands.
Below the woman read, eyeless with the large sunglasses she wore, short, blonde hair sparkling-and gazing into the very pores of her skin. Avelino felt the thrill of an idea tremor through his veins.
It was not a very good idea on the face of it, but it would take him nearer the woman and reveal him to her.
Trembling with excitement so that he almost urinated in his thin gaberdine trousers, he slithered gently down the slope of the jut of the isthmus towards the mainland. On the flat neck of land over which the sea sometimes swept at high tide, making an island of the higher crag behind him, he walked quickly towards the western point of the isthmus.
In a boulder-shaped cove close to the shore, he hurriedly slipped out of his clothes, experiencing the sharp thrill of the forbidden as he did so. He made a neat pile of his shirt, trousers and the light espadrilles which all the local folk wore to protect their feet, and then stood for a moment in the sun, breathing heavily.
The sun and the whisper of air on his body gave him a mixed feeling of freedom and evil. Particularly to the areas not usually exposed-his buttocks and his genitals-it seemed like softly caressing fingers.
He hesitated for a moment. His body was slim and hard, but it had been well tapered by the sea. He knew he would probably have had a woman by now if it had not been for the timidity which a strict upbringing had instilled in him. Perhaps, then, he would have got rid of this inturned, mind-wracking torture which filled his thoughts and prevented him any peace of mind.
By the time he dived cleanly into the sea, the sweat had already begun to glisten on his chest. He plunged deep and swam a few strokes towards the sea-bed before raising his hands towards the lighter region above.
His head broke the surface with his eyes stinging and all desire momentarily gone.
He had not been sure what he was going to do and now, for a moment, he considered swimming in the opposite direction, away from the woman, leaving the water after a few minutes and returning to the town. But he knew that with the evening, the long night of thought and solitude, she would flood back in him so that the next day he would be back with the same hopelessness, heightened by his failure to alter it.
So he began to swim with a strong crawl, out, through the light undulation of waves, to the open sea.
For the moment he was cut off from sight of the woman by a jutting promontory of rock, but in a few minutes when, he judged, he would be some hundred metres from the isthmus, he would be able to see the ledge on which she lay. He would then swim round the isthmus until he was parallel with the ledge. He had no thought except to see what reaction his presence would produce in the woman. He was not even sure he would allow her to see him.
For some time she did not see him as he swam in leisurely fashion opposite the ledge and then, from the corner of his eye, he was aware of her glancing in his direction. He continued to swim without looking at her, making no secret of his presence, as if he did not realize she was there. He saw her reach out for her beach jacket and slip it on.
It was in the hurried carelessness of the movement that she knocked her gaily coloured towel so that it fluttered down to the surf a few feet below, receded from the shore, was washed in again, receded once more and then, sodden with water, showed signs of sinking.
The woman tried vainly to reach it with her hands, lying flat along the ledge; then with the aid of the bottle of wine-to no avail. To plunge in after it meant she would have to strip off her beach jacket and don her swimming costume in his presence.
Avelino turned openly towards the isthmus now: to pretend he hadn't seen the flutter of movement would have been ridiculous. He made a quick, nervous decision and then went racing in towards the ledge.
The water here was deep and dark. She would be unable to see that he was naked unless he swam immediately under her.
The woman had seen him coming in towards her and had relaxed her vain efforts. She watched as he approached, with an expression of uncertainty. Her beach jacket reached only a few inches down her thighs.
By the time Avelino reached the spot some yards from the ledge at which the towel had disappeared, it was drifting down through the depths-a hazy shimmer of colour.
He dived without hesitation, realizing in the instant that his naked buttocks must have momentarily met the woman's gaze.
With the towel in his hands he came to the surface. He indicated he would throw it to the woman and she held out her hands with a smile. He threw and the heavy wet ball was caught deftly in her arms.
"Thank you very much," she called out in Spanish, above the wash of the surf.
"It was nothing," he called back, dark eyes lighting up in a nervous smile.
The woman spread the towel out on the rocks and he began to swim away, feeling the strangeness of the occurrence at that particular time.
Seeing that he was swimming off, out to sea, the woman cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted: "Would you like a glass of wine?"
Avelino could hardly believe that what he had heard was true. His immediate reaction was to pretend he had not heard, but that would have been too embarrassing as she was looking straight at him.
He hesitated, mind searching frantically for a reason for refusal. And then he called out the truth.
"I have no swimming trunks."
The woman laughed merrily and even from there he could see the evenness of her teeth. She didn't seem the slightest disturbed.
"It is much better swimming without them," she called back. "But I have another towel here that you can wrap round you. I won't look while you climb out."
Avelino was astonished, in the first place by the fluency of her Spanish, in the second by the ease of her manner which made the boldness of her words-unacceptable from a Spanish girl-seem perfectly natural.
The ardour-dampening wash of the sea had dispelled much of his nervousness, even his desire and he called back: "I don't want to disturb your reading."
"Not at all," the woman shouted. "I'm tired of reading."
"Very well. Where is the towel?"
The woman indicated the dry towel and placed it along the ledge at some distance from her.
With a spurt of energy, Avelino raced in to the ledge. Grasping it above his head, he glanced along at the woman. She was staring in the opposite direction, into the bay on the far side of which the white houses of the town shone in the sun. He hauled himself onto the ledge and wrapped the towel tightly around his waist. His nervousness suddenly returned.
"May I turn around?" the woman asked.
"Yes," he said. And his voice sounded thick.
When she turned towards him and he found himself so close to the object of his surreptitious desire, Avelino felt an acute embarrassment. He could think of nothing to say. But the woman was prepared to do all the immediate talking.
"I'm afraid I would have lost that towel if it hadn't been for you," she said as she poured the wine into a glass. "I was too slow and I hate swimming underwater."
Avelino smiled. He could think of no answer.
The woman seemed more beautiful at close quarters. She had a large, rounded forehead, a straight, thin nose and a firm, but not aggressive chin. Her possible age became more of a mystery to him. She was free from wrinkles and the whites of her eyes were almost luminously clear. Yet, somehow he had the feeling she was well over thirty.
"You swim almost as well as you sing," the woman said, smiling, as she handed him the glass.
Avelino stared at her in surprise.
"You recognize me?" he said. Never during the dances had the woman appeared to even glance in his direction.
"Of course," she replied. "How could I hear such a voice and not want to look at the owner."
"Oh, no!" Avelino gave a little laugh of self-disparagement.
"Oh, yes!" The woman laughed back at him. "You have a beautiful voice. In England I think you would be a hit!"
Avelino felt highly flattered although he did not believe the woman. Perhaps she did like his voice, but the rest could not be true.
However, he began to find the woman was easy to talk to and his self-confidence slowly returned. She had another bottle of wine and they both drank luxuriously while they talked-or, rather, while she questioned him and he answered.
They sat almost side by side on the ledge and with the return of self-confidence, Avelino was aware of the return of desire.
Occasionally as they talked the woman's eyes gazed out over the sea at a distant ship on its way to Barcelona and then he would drop his eyes from her face to the brown, bulging skin of her upper breasts in the deep V of the beach jacket. She seemed to be not the slightest perturbed at the flimsiness of her covering, at the fact that the length of the jacket barely covered the junction of hips and thighs.
After a while, Avelino had forgotten how much wine he'd drunk-the wine at home was neither so strong nor so plentiful-and his face was hot with a more urgent heat than that from the sun. Under the towel which draped his slim hips his penis had risen into a stiff cudgel of flesh which bulged obviously against the covering, try as he would to conceal it.
"Do you often swim here?" the woman asked, eventually, turning to him with a lift of her thin, finely-drawn eyebrows.
"I never have before," Avelino answered, trying to cross one leg over the other to hide the enormous mound at his loins.
"I'm glad you swam here today. How did you come to?"
Avelino looked into the hazel eyes, serious and holding him. Could it be that he imagined a flicker of invitation? She too had drunk a lot. He stared down at the lipstick on the opposite side of their one glass which he now held.
"Why did you swim here today?" the woman repeated softly, as if she knew the answer, wanted it confirmed.
"Because I knew you were here and I wanted to speak to you," he blurted.
"You knew I was here-but how?" Her thoughts were inturned, racing back over the meaning of what he had said.
Made honest with the wine and almost uncaring, Avelino replied with the truth.
"I have watched you from the top of the rocks behind us for the last three days," he admitted.
There was a moment's silence and then the woman's gentle little laugh cadenced softly amongst the rocks. She looked at him again and her eyes took in the bulge at his hips as if he had given her a signal.
"What a pity you watched from so far for so long," she said as the laugh faded.
Avelino gulped back the dregs of wine in the glass and looked at her. It seemed there was no mistaking her tone, but he had no idea what to do. Now, in fact, he felt a Little more frightened than he had before. It occurred to him suddenly that she was, perhaps, being sarcastic, but her next words dispelled the thought.
"Have you ever made love to a woman?"
"No," he admitted, taken aback at the bluntness of the question.
"A virgin," the woman whispered. "How delightful. I thought you were rather shy."
"Yes, I am shy," Avelino heard himself saying. "I wish I weren't."
Again the woman's eyes lowered to his hips. She had understood the implication of his words.
"We all must learn," she said softly.
It was as if in a dream that Avelino found himself kissing her. The motion must have come from him, but it was as if she had directed it He had kissed girls before-at parties-but this was different. The woman was breathing hard and she pulled him back onto the ledge. He felt, with momentary surprise followed by pleasure, the silky, foreign pressure of her tongue in his mouth. He had heard of this. Her arms were around him, fingers digging sharply into the flesh of his shoulders, of his neck.
For some time they kissed, lips moving over each other's faces until he, too, was breathing as heavily, it seemed, as his uncle's donkey. She pulled him against her on the rock so that his penis under the towel was crushed against her hips. Her mouth opened and she gasped with quick little intakes of breath at the feel of his against hers. Under the towel he felt his penis throbbing as if it were undergoing a self-masturbation.
Her hand slipped down between them and pressed against the mound. Softly she moved her fingers under the towel, slipping them up until with a sudden stroking caress they had contacted with the fleshy heat of his organ.
Avelino's hips recoiled automatically at the unbearable intimacy of the sensation. It took his breath away.
But the fingers followed, stroking, stroking until he could bear to let them stay. He recoiled again as they roamed over his testicles. He began to gasp and moan, unable to control himself any longer.
The fingers, so cool against his heat, were relentless. They drew themselves up and down his throbbing penis while the woman pressed her face at his, darting her tongue moistly into his mouth.
His hips writhed, his mouth opened wide, he was suddenly overcome by an unbearable sweet pain behind his genitals. The woman, as if she divined it, suddenly grasped his penis in her whole hand and squeezed it in a rhythmic motion which brought little cries from him. The pain grew so that he could no longer bear it, his head rolled, he had to escape-and then with a cry of sweet agony he had suddenly gained release and his sperm was shooting all over the towel, the woman's hand and his thighs.
She continued to squeeze and caress him until his passion had died and his organ deflated. She opened her beach jacket and nursed his head against her breasts while his breathing still choked in his throat.
Lying against her, feeling too embarrassed to move or look at her, Avelino realized he had never had such a quick orgasm. He felt the more embarrassed, now, from a sense of failure. The woman had obviously wanted him, intended him to make love to her.
She kissed his head, pulling his face closer to her so that his lips brushed the smooth, glassy skin of her breasts. He felt depressed, but, as if she understood, she said softly: "We have plenty of time."
They lay still for a long time until the sun sank behind the cliff face behind them, although it continued to light up the sea beyond in a warm sparkle of azure. Even in the narrow ribbon of shade it was warm on the ledge. With the disappearance of the sun it seemed a little more secluded.
Pressing his lips against her breasts, moving them over her abundant nipples, surprised at the situation every time he allowed himself to picture it from outside, Avelino felt a fresh stirring at his loins. A slow breeze of excitement began in his hips like the deep rumblings of a volcano long before it erupts. He was astonished at his ability to recover so easily.
Between his legs he felt his penis rising again, felt it moving, apart from him, with an electric tingling as it grew and thickened. He kissed the cushioning breast with great passion and the woman responded, clasping his head against her flesh as if she would hold it there for ever.
He kissed the nipple, sucking it, the way he thought a child would. She drew in her breath sharply and gave a little cry. She slithered down against him so that her breasts now pressed warmly against his chest and her lips sucked at his. He in turn forced his tongue through her lips and her mouth opened wide to receive him.
"Just a moment," she whispered as he slithered his lips down her neck.
He released her and she reached around them gathering towel, a cushion and her bathing costume. She arranged the articles under and around them before clasping him around the neck once more.
As his passion rose afresh so that his whole body seemed fluid with fire, her hand wormed in through his towel again to caress his genitals. His penis rose yet more sharply at the contact of her fingers and he strained his buttocks together, crushing the weight of his hips towards her body.
His hands now moved over the glossy-textured skin of her breasts, and, bolder, down over her ribs until he was gently massaging the soft flesh of her belly.
The woman's beach jacket had fallen wide open and she was naked and writhing her hips gently. With a deft movement, she untwisted the towel covering his loins so that it fell away and his pulsing, fiery-tipped penis shot into view.
Avelino was too overcome now with the chill of anticipation to feel embarrassed. He felt as if he were being led by the hand blindly down into an inferno.
With them both breathing as if they had swum for an hour, the woman caught one of his hands and moved it down over the triangle of blonde hair at the junction of her thighs. She moved it a little further still and then caught it between her thighs in a fleshy imprisonment. She clasped it with her thighs for a while, pressing, relaxing, rubbing, wriggling and then she let her thighs fall apart and kissed him fiercely.
Tentatively Avelino tickled the inside of her thighs with the tips of his fingers, exploring, creeping up a little. She pushed her hips down towards his hand, trying to precipitate his progress. But at the sudden sensation of moist, soft flesh Avelino stopped, a little afraid of his ignorance. He brushed the moistness for some time while the woman panted. It became more moist to his touch.
"Go on," the woman encouraged him between gasps. "That's right."
Avelino wormed his finger up against the softness and it opened so that his finger was suddenly gulped into her body. She dug her tongue into his mouth, whimpering slightly, and he moved his finger right into her.
He was trembling. His finger was right inside her. He could feel the soft contraction against his flesh. The moist channel in which he was pressing his finger and wriggling it around, opened out, seemed to grow larger and wetter as the minutes passed.
"Come on-now!" the woman whispered sharply.
She practically hauled him onto her so that he could feel the soft warmth of her flesh like a sensual mattress beneath him.
His penis was somewhere down between her open thighs. It seemed to be too low to enter but he could do nothing. He felt overcome by a paralysis. His whole body was trembling and his hands, grasping her shoulders, shook.
The woman drew up her thighs around his hips so that he could feel their soft, clasping pressure.
"Move up a little," she whispered.
As he slithered achingly up her body, her hand came down under her thighs and met his penis in the shock of unexpected contact. She held it a moment, fondling it and then directed it at her open vagina.
Avelino, eyes closed, his penis seeming to sing like telegraph wires, felt himself drawn against the central chasm of her body.
"Now-push in," she commanded softly.
He pushed and felt the soft warmth of vague substance around the tip of his organ. And then there was a pressure and then a hot breaking through as he entered fully. The entry was such agony that he felt he wanted to cry. His lips breathed the word "wonderful" and other wordless sounds.
The woman had gasped as he took possession of her and now, moaning, she pulled him higher still on her, pushing her sensual core down onto his stiff penetration.
She kissed him now, clasping his shoulders as in a vise, thrusting her tongue deep into his mouth as if she wanted him to swallow it completely. He felt her hips swiveling and undulating under him as his penis was squeezed in contraction, released slightly in expansion of her enclosing channel.
Avelino's head rolled on hers as he dug deeper and deeper into her. His penis was like a great fire burning with a fierce heat. It was agony and bliss, unbearable yet indispensable, a dark nightmare and yet beautifully unforgettable.
The woman pulled her thighs higher, level with his chest. She moved her hands down to his tensing buttocks and pushed them, exhorting him to move farther into her.
Avelino gave himself over to the wild ecstasy. Embarrassment could play no part in such a sensual abandonment and soon he was aware only of his penis, tight and brusting, in her body, of her hands squeezing his shoulders, his back, his buttocks, and her lips with the mad abandoned tongue in his mouth.
The woman grunted and groaned as she writhed nudely under him and it seemed so natural for him to breathe furiously: "I love you, I love you, I love you," over and again as his face crushed hers.
Avelino ground his organ into the coaxing passage with greater and greater strength until the hair at his loins had met hers and there was no more length to go. Her hand came down again under her thighs and gently held his swaying testicles with a sensual shock which brought a fresh gasp from his open mouth.
With his knees spread, now, on either side of her buttocks, he wriggled his hips like a dancer, ramming into the receptive channel from shades of angle, experimenting in a blind way for greater penetration, greater pressure.
At one moment he became briefly aware of the sun on the sea, the shade on the rocks and the incredible fact her, of himself athwart this attractive woman whom he hardly knew, having intercourse with her.
Below him her head was moving from side to side, eyes were half closed, lips mouthing, shoulders swaying in her passion. Head, eyes, lips, shoulders all an incredible, beautiful dream-and he plunged his head down once more to her and lost himself in the abyss of carnality.
The woman's gasps began to grow more continuous and her hips began to jerk against him as if she had lost control of them. Her nails dug into the flesh of his shoulders so that it hurt him with a pain which added to the sweet agony of the union.
Her gasps became a long, soft whimper through which she implored him: "Come on, come on, come on."
Her further abandonment brought forth automatic echoes from Avelino. The feeling and sight of her lust-wracked body seemed to numb the whole of his body except for his loins. And there grew a great reservoir of sensation, gathering behind the sharp pain of his probing penis.
"Quickly, quickly," the woman breathed. "Together, together."
She thrust her tongue again into his mouth and flickered it in and out, moving it along his lips.
From the sweating numbness of his body, Avelino, panting uncontrollably, felt all sensation pulled down to his penis. It was the only part of him that had feeling. His gasps developed into wounded, agonised "Oh's" as he thrust and thrust. He felt he could not get far enough into the woman with his one thick finger of flesh which could reach into her and make them one. Inside his loins he felt the growing of pain, growing, growing to bursting point. He cried out and the woman panted "Now!" And then with a great shudder in his loins, the sperm was flowing with scalding warmth through his tube and spurting in needles of pain far up into the woman's belly.
As his flood swept raggedly into her, she strained her hips up at him, crying out at her fulfillment, while her lips tried to fasten on his, failed in her excitement, and her teeth dug into his neck.
His movements dwindled and dwindled while the woman's hips relaxed. Her thighs continued to clasp him and her hands to caress his neck until his final hip-jerk had passed and his body subsided exhaustedly onto hers.
They lay together for some time with her stroking his neck gently. He noticed that the sun had withdrawn farther out to sea and he felt a slight return of his previous embarrassment. He was not sure how to move off her, although he felt he must be heavy upon her. Inside him, apart from the embarrassment was a feeling of wonder and achievement at what had happened. But he could not bring himself to look at her.
"Look at me."
It was as if she had read his thoughts.
"How does it feel to be no longer a virgin."
Avelino stared at her searchingly for a moment. There was a warmth in her eyes which melted his embarrassment and in answer he kissed her gently on the cheek.
She laughed quietly, clasped him fiercely against her and then whispered: "We'd better have a quick swim before we go."
They swam naked out to the sun and afterwards he collected his clothes and they climbed the wall of hills which enclosed the town, to the little care with its open-air terrace overlooking the bay.
Later Avelino went home, having arranged to meet the woman, whose name, she told him, was Janice Harvey, at the isthmus on the following day.
Once out of her presence, Avelino was beset by all sorts of mixed emotions. He felt, now, much more of a man and yet still contained within himself a sense of shame. He was not sure how he felt about the woman, Janice. Fascinated by her, he was nonetheless annoyed at the ease with which she had been able to have intercourse with him. He was also very aware of her maturity in face of his own boyishness. He wondered how many men had enjoyed her and he felt, even now, a twinge of regret that there had been others.
All the Spanish girls he knew clung, by reputation, tenaciously to their virtue. It was only married women who, according to report, occasionally fell from grace. Of course, she might be married. The thought struck him like a wave but he cast it immediately out of his mind. She didn't seem married. He refused to think of it.
Avelino lived with his mother, father and two younger brothers in an old, white-washed house with blue shutters, whose front door opened straight onto one of the cobbled narrow streets of the town. The streets were not streets in the modern sense but narrow pavementless spaces ribboning between the houses, sandcovered, their uneven cobbles jutting at all angles.
It was to house that he went, feeling that his secret of new life was written on his face. He felt it would be difficult for them not to see that he had changed during the afternoon.
Avelino ate his evening meal separately from the rest of the family as he had to play and sing with the band early in the evenings. Tonight he was very thankful for the absence of his brothers and the interminable chatter of conversation that went with their presence. His father had not yet come in from the fishing and his mother was preoccupied with the neighbours' laundry which she did to supplement the family income.
The sun was still shining in a yellow half-circle above the hilltops when Avelino took his place on the orchestra dais at one side of the open-air dance floor.
The western hills were a dark, dusty green with the sun behind them and their summits were clothed in a fiery aura of red and yellow which cast a rose glow over the town. The white houses were tinted rose, and the white hulls of yachts swaying gently at anchor in the bay. The colour of faces was heightened and there was an atmosphere of the soft evening waiting for her lover, night, to come.
Avelino took his clarinet and the orchestra plunged into the well-known tunes of the sardanas. The brassy notes swept out in the still air, traveling up the narrow winding streets, pervading the houses and the little shops hidden amongst them. The tune soared out to sea, its warmth surrounding the little boats of the fishermen coming into the bay. And suddenly, it seemed, both inside and outside the dance enclosure, people were joining hands, forming circles to dance.
Letting his eyes stray from his music which he knew so well, anyway, Avelino wondered if the woman, Janice, knew how to dance the sardanas. There had been a time, which all seemed misty and lost to him when the sardanas had been forbidden in Catalonia. That had been just after the days of the civil war which had wracked this part of the country and left scars which still remained.
But gradually, the ban on the sardanas, which were typically and peculiarly Catalonian, had been lifted and now, wherever the music started, so, immediately, little circles of people sprang up to perform the gaily shuffling dance which reminded them always that Catalonia was Catalonia.
As the sunlight faded into a streak of lighter blue and rose on the hills and the lights of the town popped on merrily around the coastal path, the people were still dancing. By the time the sardanas had come to an end it was dark, the sea was calm and the sea-shore bars were ablaze with light and humming with the noise of tourists.
The concrete dance floor was thronged, now, with people of many nationalities. The light from the orchestra dais and the lamps on the tables which surrounded the floor, lit up the animated faces and movement as the rhythm of a rhumba danced on the air.
It seemed to Avelino, eagerly watching the entrance gate, that the whole of the town had taken on a new glow of interest. For months he had played the same tunes, sung the same tunes without inspiration. Since the afternoon the world seemed to have changed.
When, at last, she arrived at the gate, his heart beat a little faster, his playing almost wavered. Watching her cross the floor to the table which was always reserved for her, Avelino was suddenly overcome with a feeling of disbelief in the reality of the afternoon's events. Janice-and it almost seemed an over-familiarity to use her first name-seemed quite out of his world. In the touristic sophistication of the dance, in the glamour of the string of coloured lights which stretched like a vine around the enclosure, she appeared more beautiful and poised than ever.
As she passed the orchestra, she glanced up at Avelino with a quick smile and the exciting reality flooded back in him. At the same time however, he felt a twinge of embarrassment. He knew all about the sort of gossip that swept from door to door through the town. It was a gossip which would certainly not approve of his relationship with a woman so much older than himself-although there might be certain sections of the community who might be rather proud of it in their old age and others envious in their young. However, he had been sufficiently imbued with the spirit of the small town to feel some awe at its mass opinion.
Nonetheless she had smiled at him. It had happened. He glanced from the corner of his eye at the rest of the orchestra. Nobody seemed to have noticed. Why should they? Any beautiful tourist might smile at the band.
By the time Avelino rose to sing into the microphone, Janice was dancing with someone who looked like a Frenchman. Her eyes, over his shoulder sparked, sometimes, in Avelino's direction, and he felt a surge of excitement and power from the secret intimacy he had with this woman.
The song he was singing was a soulful one of his being all alone, and his dark brown eyes as he sang swept the jostling throng of dancers, resting finally in a glimpse of fierce recognition on Janice. Each time she responded to his look, half-closing her eyes at him, or smiling slightly.
At the end of the dance she followed her usual habit of refusing to join the Frenchman's table. Nor did she, throughout the evening, in spite of repeated requests, which Avelino, his neck hot from the sight, witnessed, accept any of a number of similar requests.
She was still being asked to dance, however, when the night came to a close with the final quick waltz, from which couples retired continuously to their table in a flood of laughter at the mad whirl.
Unable to keep his eyes from her, and uncertain yet of the power of their relationship, Avelino watched with a growing feeling of jealousy against her partner who was a handsome young Spanish tourist he had seen strolling around the town.
But, once again, at the end of the dance, there was a little clinging to the hand by the Spaniard, a polite and smiling shaking of the head from the woman, and once more she had brushed her way back to her table to finish the drink she had poured for herself from the miniature bottle of benedictine she had ordered.
Many people sat quietly chatting, recovering from the dance, after the orchestra had stopped for the last time that evening.
The coloured lights around the enclosing trellis lit up the animation of the faces. Far out over the sea, a crescent moon shone amongst the stars, lighting up, in turn, the calm sea. It shone in great puddles of light on the water, silver against the surrounding black.
From a nearby bar, packed with people in its turn, the music of a radio floated faintly to the dancefloor and one or two couples got up to dance to the ghost music while the orchestra packed away its instruments and the dismantling of the microphone wire to the amplifiers was begun.
Janice sat, cross-legged and lovely, watching the orchestra as it disbanded.
Avelino took his time about packing his clarinet into its case. He tried to appear casual, but eventually was unable to avoid raising his eyes towards the spot where Janice was sitting.
Immediately he looked in her direction, she made a little motion towards him with her hand and her eyes invited him to join her.
He waved back, almost surreptitiously, and hesitated, a hesitation due in part to his youthful embarrassment in being seen associating with this rich, sophisticated-looking woman and in part to his knowledge of the explosion of curiosity and speculation it would give rise to in the village. But against these arose a feeling of sheer pride that he should be the only man she had any desire to ask to her table-and that all those sitting in the enclosure would see it.
Pride triumphed and with a casual farewell to his colleagues, he strolled with studied unconcern towards her table.
He was aware of the eyes which turned and followed him as he reached her table, aware of the murmuring voices which accompanied them. He looked only at the table and at her.
Janice's eyes were laughing as she invited him to order himself a drink.
"You sang beautifully," she said. "I can't understand why everyone in Spain thinks Frank Sinatra's so wonderful."
"They're used to voices like mine, but everything about the faraway world of North America seems wonderful," he explained.
"Then you should go where you'd be more appreciated-back to Barcelona with me, for example," she retorted.
Avelino glanced at her, startled, and she laughed merrily and he laughed and the drinks arrived.
Around them seated parties were still speculating on the event of the past few minutes and the old fishermen and young yokels, who formed a permanent leaning border on the townside rail of the enclosure, stared openly and avidly. Soon the news would have spread throughout the town in spite of the late hour. And in the morning the many who knew would be delighted to pass on this tidbit of gossip to the few who didn't "Do you go straight home after the dances?" Janice asked, after they had been talking for some time.
"Generally I do, but it doesn't matter if I'm late," Avelino replied.
"Good. If you'd care to walk home with me, I'll make coffee and we can have another drink."
Avelino had agreed from the sheer unexpectedness of her blunt invitation, before, once again, doubts assailed him in a tempest. What would they think when they saw him leaving the dance with her? Where did she live? Did she live alone? What would they think if they saw him going to her house at this time of night? What excuse could he give to his parents when, as was inevitable, they heard about it?
He had answered none of these questions before he found himself, feeling completely unequal to what was taking place, strolling out of the enclosure with Janice, bidding casual goodnights to the townsfolk clustered around the entrance.
They wandered away from the still crowded enclosure and were soon beyond the streams of light flung out from its centre.
On the dusty coast road, cut off from the sea in places by a low wall against which the surf dashed, in others by sudden, expansive beaches specked with still, shadowy fishing boats, they walked.
Here and there a young couple were sitting on the sea-side parapet, or the quiet animation of old men's voices and the smell of strong tobacco would drift from a patch of shadow. The moon was a thin crescent.
As if Avelino's doubts had been spoken aloud, Janice made no motion to move in close to him or to hold his hand as he had thought she might. He was relieved, but, at the same time, the ;act that she made no move in that direction, filled him with an overwhelming longing to do so.
He could see her charming, clear-cut profile as they strolled and the black stole she wore gave a pale, moonlit beauty to her skin.
As the sound and the glitter of the bars in the main plaza began to dwindle and appear only occasionally- and each time more distant as the road curved out around promontories which jutted deeply into the sea -Janice dispelled one of his unspoken doubts.
"I've rented a house here," she explained. "It's about the last one we come to before the wilds."
He knew the house now. It had one Moorish turret at the eastern end, was set back from the coast road and surrounded by a small, sparse plantation of olive trees. It was doubtful whether anyone would see them go in. Already the road was deserted, although there was the cliff restaurant further on which sent a late-night wave of tourists along the road, singing and buffooning.
Beyond the house, the coast road began to cut through the hills as the coast itself became high, rocky cliffs. It wended a lonely way through scrub-covered hills to the next town some miles distant. During the day little bands of people wandered along it looking for a comfortable place to picnic. At night its only occupants were the carabinieros, patrolling in couples in the green uniforms which looked so like the scrub, in their interminable watch for smuggling.
"Here we are," Janice said quietly, as they reached the iron gate which opened from the road onto the dusty barren grounds of the house.
Away from the possibility of spectators, Avelino felt the dawning of nervous excitement. His worries concerning the outer world disappeared and he became doubly aware of the woman walking gracefully beside him, and their solitariness. When their hands brushed in walking, his heart pounded and suddenly they were hand in hand and she was close to him, her shoulder pressed against his chest, her hip brushing his, bodies in-turned as they walked.
He inclined his head and kissed her gently on the forehead. Her fingers squeezed his and he felt suddenly overcome with a gush of feeling for her. He drew her round to him and she raised her head, pressing her body tightly against him. Their lips brushed gently and then locked in a fierce devouring.
They drew apart and then together again and then she whispered: "Quickly, it is so comfortable inside."
They walked on, slowly and entwined towards the great, brooding shadow of the house. It was a still phantom, solitary and eerie as they moved into the stone patio with its shadowy entrance arches. Around them in the grounds were the thin shadows of the olive trees, above them the dark blankness of the hills, behind them the moon glittering on the sea.
"Aren't you afraid to live here alone?" Avelino whispered.
"No. I like it," she whispered back, gently mocking his awe. "I get so tired of the city with interminable people, cars, complications all around me. I love the quiet. I love the simplicity of all this-the sea, the hills, all the elemental things and sweet uncomplicated people."
Avelino was silent for a moment, considering what she had said, while she unlocked the heavy, wooden, blue-painted door.
"Have you had a very unhappy life?" he asked eventually.
He followed her into the dark vestibule, listened to her fumbling for the switch.
"It's been all my own doing," she replied, answering several questions ahead. "A question of reading, studying, idealizing, searching, reforming, trying to find a solution for the happiness of society and making oneself miserable into the bargain."
She shut up suddenly as if aware of the fact that he would not be understanding her. But Avelino had read a few books, mainly about fallen men and women and he felt some inkling of her problem.
"Are you happy now-at this moment?" he asked.
He felt her move away from the switch in the darkness. He felt her hands on his chest, her lips against his with the soft, warm touch of the sun.
"Yes, at the moment I am happy," she breathed.
She whisked away before he had time to hold her and the light went on, that soft, inadequate light of the low-wattage bulbs which were necessary when the influx of tourists made the demand on the power too great.
Avelino followed her from the vestibule into a long, blue room with modern furniture of varnished olive and a high ceiling with dark beams. She pulled back the heavy blue curtains which covered the French windows, opened the windows and then the heavy shutters which led out onto the verandah. Moonlight streamed into the room as she turned off the light.
She came close to him again and he felt stifled with emotion as she laid her blonde head gently on his shoulder in a gesture which seemed to demand his protection.
"It's quite romantic," she said softly in a tone which hinted that she was trying to laugh at herself, but couldn't.
"It's very beautiful," Avelino whispered, looking out over the glistening sea as if he were seeing it for the first time.
"How long can you stay?" she asked.
An hour or two."
"Let's go to bed."
Avelino's heart began to pummel in him at her words. He tried to hide a fresh fit of quivering.
As if, with some incredible thought, she were afraid he was going to refuse, she caught his hand and drew him gaily towards the door.
"The bedroom is pink," she laughed. "I'm very traditional really."
Avelino allowed himself to be pulled after her, passion and longing fighting with images of his mother looking at the clock in their strict austere home.
"I mustn't stay too long," he said.
She looked round at him with a happy smile of triumph.
"Go now if you're afraid," she mocked.
In answer he pulled her to him with a swift jerk and they seemed to sweep fluidly into each other in a fury of desperate passion. Avelino felt lost-completely lost. He was no longer master of himself. He was in a great deep pit whose bottom he could not see. All the longing of his adolescence had turned against him, weakening his mind so that in his first, sympathetic, beautiful contact he found a reason for living.
"I love you," he whispered as if he were in agony. "I love you."
She drew her head away from him so that he could see her hazel eyes vaguely glinting in the moonlight, the shadows hollowing her face, tracing the clear lines of the bones. Her eyes were searching him as if she, now, was afraid, and then her lips had closed with his in an engulfing pressure.
The bedroom led from a short white corridor and was furnished in similar style to the first room they had entered. Janice turned on shaded wall-lights on each side of the bed and the room was suffused with the pink of the walls, carpets and draperies. The bed was enormous and low. It might have passed for a divan but for its size. Avelino was still trembling with anticipation as he looked at it, shadowy and inviting in the dim light.
It seemed too wonderful, too incredible to be true that in a short time he would again be holding this woman, naked, in his arms, this time in the warmth and comfort of a bed.
"Do you like the room?" she asked him gaily. He had the impression that she, too, was trembling.
"It's delightful," he said, contrasting it mentally with his own adequate but bleak bedroom which he shared with his brothers at home.
He wandered across the room to look at a set of red, leather bound books in a varnished bookcase and when he turned back Janice had already removed her dress.
She stood looking at him, almost coyly, a vague and graceful sylph. Her breasts were hardly covered in their provocative bulging by the small black brassiere -and the flimsy black briefs with their frilly edge creased tightly in the triangle of her abdomen. He could see the brown tautness of the flesh of her ribs, taut enough to accentuate enormously the proud thrust of her breasts.
She moved towards him and the flesh of her thighs rippled in sinuous hollows.
Avelino stood rooted to the spot, gazing at her. He was unable to move, could only wait for her to come. Forming a great jut under his thin trousers, his penis was hot and pulsing. He felt helpless against its pulsing and its jutting. He was aware only of her, a movement of firm, beautiful flesh towards him and the enormous, scorching tingle at the lower tip of his loins.
She reached him and as she clasped him the tenderness and love he now felt for her made his longing even stronger.
Her hands clasped his neck and pulled his face down against hers so that their cheeks caressed. At the other intimate end of her she pressed and jiffled against him, rubbing up and down against the hard protuberance of his erection.
With a feeling of despair that they were two people rather than one, Avelino buried his lips in her neck and moved his hands quiveringly down the smooth, flawless skin of her back. As his exploring fingers reached the start of the outward bulge of her hips, he strained her against him. And then his hands moved on down her body until they were cupping her buttocks in a sensual ecstasy of their own. He forced her hips in at his, crashing her against his penis until it hurt him, torturing himself.
Her buttocks were smooth and hard as she strained into him and then she relaxed and her buttocks relaxed and expanded fully into his hands.
She kissed his throat and began, at the same time, to unbutton his shirt. His whole body was trembling slightly now as his shirt came open all the way down and she eased it gently out from his trousers and helped him to pull it off his arms.
She kissed his chest tenderly and her own hands seemed to indulge in a tremoring delirium as she stroked his back, his sides and then moved down to his fly buttons.
Avelino was panting. He found it impossible to keep still as she jerked the top button open. His stomach hollowed and expanded, his hips writhed gently as if a great outside force were making them do it.
Her hands had nearly completed their work. He waited tensely for the first touch of her deftly moving fingers on the thin tissue of his pants. As he felt it he jerked his hips away and she ripped undone the last few buttons.
His trousers fell to the floor, a ridiculous pile around his ankles and he stepped out of them, reveling in the sensual freedom of the cool air on his limbs.
Janice slipped away from him and went towards the bed, stripping off her brassiere and her briefs. He watched her buttocks swaying as she walked.
At the bed she turned towards him and there once again, but more charged with sex than during the afternoon, were the heavy breasts and the naked slim-ness with the broad roundness of the hips. She was lovely. She looked fragile, but a fragility which he longed to take and massage in his hands all but break.
"Take your pants off," she said softly.
Avelino reached down and untied his espadrilles. Where the tapes had been around his bare ankles they had left shallow red weals and he massaged the flesh for a moment, feeling slightly embarrassed, hoping she might get into the bed. But she stayed where she was, looking at his strong, graceful body appraisingly.
After a moment's hesitation he slipped his pants from his hips, his strong penis flipping into view as he bent, pushing the garment down his legs. His penis felt hot and clammy. He had a blind, helpless feeling like a bat brought suddenly into light.
When he had kicked his pants away and looked up, Janice's eyes were fastened on his organ and her mouth was slightly open. She moved her gaze up his body until their eyes met. Her breasts were heaving and there was a shade of anguish in her eyes.
For a moment they gazed at each other. Avelino gulped. He had no control over the tremoring of his body. Janice moved her hands up to her breasts as if she would try to still their rise and fall and she breathed, almost as if to herself the one word: "Come."
Avelino stepped swiftly towards her, crushing the rug under his bare feet. He felt his testicles sway and brush against his thighs as he moved.
She waited for him to reach her hand as the impact came, her mouth opened wide and her arms swept around him...Their naked flesh seemed to fuse, their bodies to suck at each other, flesh against flesh in gentle pressure and oozing.
She bit at his lips as he kissed her and then her tongue was worming silkily into his mouth and she was drawing him back to the bed. The covers were drawn back and she allowed herself to fall backwards onto the soft sheets, pulling Avelino down with her.
His organ was pressing hotly against the soft, cool flesh of her thighs and the weight of a great animal instinct raged in his loins.
Janice moved one arm away from his shoulders and whipped the covers over them so that he felt the soft caress of a sheet on his back. The feeling of the covers gave him a sensation of comfort and exclusiveness as if they were in a little home of their own from which they need never go out.
For a while they lay together, he warm on top of the soft, flesh cushion of her breasts and hips. There seemed no hurry. Avelino suddenly didn't care. The whole night was ahead of them.
They kissed over and over again and from the pink warmth of the bed, he heard her voice whisper: "Why don't you come back to Barcelona with me?"
"To Barcelona!"
"Yes. It would be wonderful."
Her fingers caressed his hair and his ears.
"Oh, it would be impossible. I am too poor and my mother would think I was mad."
Her lips brushed against his cheek and came to rest close to his ear.
"You would live with me and I would give you money. I have far too much."
"I could not take money from you in that way." Avelino's pride was piqued. The thought of living on a woman was too much for him.
"Why not?"
"It would not be fair to you. It is the man's job to earn the money."
She laughed softly and kissed him passionately on the lips.
"It would be more than fair to me," she said. "My money has done nothing but make me miserable up to now. If I choose to give you some to make myself happy, you should be pleased at the way it shows I love you."
The words came as a shock to Avelino. Greater than the shock he had experienced when he had been chosen to sing with the local orchestra. I love you. They filled him with a warm, wonderful feeling which brought tears to his eyes. They made everything surer and the world evolved from a half phantom to reality. "You love me?" he whispered.
Her arms moved around his neck in reply and the pressure was so great that when she kissed him his lips were crushed back on his teeth and he could hardly breathe.
"I love you," she answered softly.
Under him her thighs wriggled apart and caught his penis between them, squeezing it gently between the walls of now warm flesh. His genitals seemed to break out in a sweat.
Gently Janice levered him off her and he allowed himself to fall away to her side, willing to be instructed, obedient to her greater knowledge. He subsided on his back with her warmth pressing along his side as she rolled over towards him.
With a quick movement she threw back the covers and his rampant penis, thick and veined, its broad, sensitive tip almost purple from the sensual friction with her thighs, shot into view.
He lay quiet, stroking her breasts with one hand while her eyes wandered down the length of his organ. She reached over and brushed the thick mop of hair away from its protruding rigidity and at her touch his penis gave an involuntary jolt, moving sharply towards his belly and then receding again to the perpendicular. Her eyes moved away over his testicles and her fingers moved away too to stroke them.
Avelino tensed his buttocks, giving himself over to the incredible continuation of the unbelievable set of events which had brought him to this particular place at this time. He closed his eyes and, as he tensed, the penis seemed to elongate a little more and offer itself to Janice like a rigidly rearing snake.
As if the slight movement of tension had been an offering to her lips, she suddenly flopped her head down to his loins and sucked the knob of his organ into her mouth.
At the soft, painful, startling pressure, Avelino opened his eyes. With his entrails contorted in the pain of a new sensation, he saw her, blonde head bent, eyes narrowed in passion, concentration on the gentle sucking. He watched her cheeks hollowing, her lips moving as she sucked and the urgency of his passion seemed to become unbearable.
His hips began to writhe, his sweating buttocks clamping together with each upthrust. He felt her tongue licking at his point of passion as she sucked voraciously. As he began to grunt and his lips breathed her name, she suddenly pulled her head away from his loins, drew her lips from their labour of love.
Sharply she turned on her side, extending her smooth, rounded buttocks towards him. She reached behind her, caught his hips and pulled him over so that he was lying along her back. She pulled one of his hands across the soft flesh of her hip, round to the front of her, across the softly protruding flesh of her abdomen, through the silky hair of her muff and left ' at the portals of her moist vagina.
As Avelino began the gentle insertion of his finger, she gasped and undulated her buttocks against his loins so that the firm smoothness of them imprinted itself against him.
Exploring, Avelino found the hard little clitoris which he had read about in sex books and he massaged it gently while Janice groaned and writhed her buttocks furiously at his loins.
"That's wonderful" she breathed, almost indistinctly, and she pressed his hand hard against her orifice.
With her writhings, Avelino's penis had ridden up so that it lay along the lips of her vagina, its base lying in the groove of her buttocks. Her thighs were extended in front of her and she drew them up even higher as her hand reached behind her, searching for his penis. She found it, grasped, it, squeezing it for a moment and then guided it at her welcoming aperture.
Still caressing her clitoris with his hand, Avelino drove into her vagina from behind. He entered her forcefully with a sensation of hot relief mingled with a passion which drew his lips apart in a gasp.
As he thrust he felt the tautness of her buttocks against his loins. He pushed his other hand under her body and caressed the globes of her breasts.
Already excited from the caress of her lips, Avelino felt his loins to be a tangle of tortured nerve ends. Janice, too, was already gasping and moaning with a great gush of feeling.
Brokenly, between her gasps, she whispered words to him and Avelino, moved his face against hers to hear as his penis slipped in and out with a soft slippery facility.
"I'll kneel," she was trying to say. "That way you go deeper. It is better for both of us." "All right."
She knelt up, moving on her hands and her knees and he got to his knees with her, leaving his penis vibrating inside her as they moved.
She lay her head on the pillow and her back sloped up towards him, broadening into the buttocks between which his penis seemed to disappear. She spread his legs, moving her knees wide apart, and, ranged in a kneeling position behind her, Avelino shuffled his knees towards her between her opened thighs.
Now he could see his penis and the pink folds of flesh into which it was searing. He could also see the little ruffle of flesh, pink and hairless which was the slit between her stretched buttocks. It was the first time he had had this view of a woman and it filled him with a lust which was quite apart from his feeling of tender passion for Janice.
Moving his hands over her buttocks, he rammed into her with growing ferocity. He could see the thick stub of his flesh withdrawing in wet rapidity and then plunging into her intimate passage again until his hips cannoned into the soft buffer of her rump.
Clasping her hips tightly so that his fingers dug red marks into her brown flesh, he surged into her, swiveling his hips for greater pressure. Her passage contracted around him, sucking him in a tight embrace. She moved her hands helplessly on the sheets and then lifted her arms behind her, reaching back to clasp his hips and pull him at her with greater force.
Feeling her fingers on his hips, virtually asking for even more, Avelino pushed her knees wider apart with his own and leaned heavily with his hands on her back, forcing her bottom up towards him. He thrust in and then left his penis in her to its full extent while he moved his abdomen against the soft flesh of her behind, from side to side so that he felt fresh stabs of exquisite agony from their flesh brushing lightly together-and then he began the punishing piston movement again, slowly, powerfully.
Gasping, groaning in a complement to her gasping, groaning, he felt her hands release his hips and brush down under her own thighs to gently grasp and caress his testicles. She fondled each separately, writhing her bottom on the end of his raging penis and he felt a fresh injection of passion from the cool touch of her fingers on the heat of his hairy lobes.
Janice began to cough out sounds from her throat until he was not sure whether he was hurting her or whether it was some choking passion. With a great effort he slowed his stabs of penetration, but immediately she forced her widespread crotch against him. "No, no! Don't stop!" she pleaded. And her hands moved back to his hips, trying to reach right round to his buttocks to pull him more forcefully at her offered opening.
With that encouragement, Avelino barrated into her again with such strong strokes that his abdomen felt bruised against her buttocks. Each thrust flattened the light brown globes of flesh as he gave a last upward flick of his organ.
"Now, now! It's coming, it's coming,'' she breathed in broken, staccato tones.
With the sweat glistening lightly on his upper lip and his forehead. Avelino slowed his strokes to thickening, grinding penetrations behind which his whole body flexed and surged. His lips curled away from his teeth in the sheer barbarous sight of the woman prostrate at the mercy of his loins. He swooped his head swiftly and kissed her back and inside him there was the hot, burning sensation of hot liquid simmering.
It grew and grew into a great crushing at his penis, a sucking as if his inside was being siphoned through the tube toward the open channel. He felt powerless. Nothing could have interfered with the movement now. Had it meant he was to die if he shot into her, he couldn't have stopped himself.
She was pleading with him to hurry, seeming to hold herself back, waiting for him to reach his climax.
He felt the overwhelming weight of an indefinable sensation gathering from the root of his being, seeking for an outlet. He was panting furiously, his belly heaving. He began to breathe her name with every thrust and as he felt the weight too much to bear, sensed with gritted teeth the inevitable breaking, he in turn shouted: "Now, now!"
Another thrust and another and Janice uttered a sudden long, low whine and her channel seemed to open to three times its size and at the same moment, the hot liquid rushed, seeming to whirl inside him and then burst, in an agony of contorting buffets and cries, from him. Each release, like a spurt from a machine gun, gave him a gorgeous relief. Through out his emptying into her he uttered one long, low moan and her flushed face, swung in agony from side to side on the pillow.
With the last weakening thrust, he flopped forward around her, kissing her neck and after a moment she collapsed on her face so that he lay along her back, his penis deflating and slipping out of her to nestle in its shriveled state against the join of her buttocks.
They lay there for some seconds, breathing heavily, and then he rolled from her and buried his face in her breasts, overcome with emotion.
"I love you. I love you," he almost sobbed into the tight, brown flesh of her soothing mounds. Gently she stroked his head. There was a glint of happiness in her eyes.
Later they fell asleep. It was six in the morning when Avelino awoke. He came to with a feeling of horror. He looked at Janice sleeping next to him, her lips slightly apart, her brown face which needed so little make-up, looking as lovely as in the evening. But the feeling of horror persisted. It sprang from his years of living at home, his strict upbringing, his consequent feelings of guilt.
The bright whiteness of the sun told him the time although he could see no clock. He knew that at home everybody would be already up. His father would be out collecting the nets and baskets with the night's haul, his brothers preparing for work, his mother clearing away the breakfast dishes. There would be no hiding his absence.
With possible excuses racing through his mind, each seeming as unlikely as the other, he scrambled from the bed and began to pull on his clothes.
Janice awoke and stared at him for a few moments before she seemed to become aware of the sun.
"My God, what time is it?" she breathed.
"It must be after six," Avelino replied almost breathlessly as he buttoned his trousers. "I don't know what I'm going to say."
Janice got up, donning a dressing gown. She came towards him and laid her palms gently on his shoulders.
"Don't worry whatever happens," she said softly. "I want you to come to Barcelona. We could go immediately. We'd have a wonderful time-food, wine, bull-fights, travel. We could do anything."
Avelino's face wrinkled as he gazed away from her through a window which looked out onto the dry olive trees and the yellow, parched ground. He felt indecisive, lost, afraid.
"Oh, I don't know. I must go," he said, a confusion of emotions roughening his tone.
"All right," she said quietly. "I shall be on the isthmus this afternoon."
He kissed her once, passionately, and left the house. He tried not to act furtively as he passed through the front gate. He stepped out onto the narrow dusty road after a moment's hesitation-straight into the path of Juan and Pedro, two of his acquaintances on their way up to the building of a new restaurant on the cliffs.
He went hot and cold, for a moment considered dodging back into the grounds of the house, but then, realizing they'd seen him, walked boldly towards them.
They were grinning at him as they approached and as they passed, bidding each other "Good-day" Juan called to him with a grin of knowing: "You're making an early call, Avelino."
"Yes-yes. It's a nice morning," Avelino muttered lamely as he walked on.
He heard their quiet laughter behind him.
They know. They know. His thoughts were confused and full of guilt as he hurried on towards the village. If they knew, the whole town would know. It was just impossible to do anything without the whole population knowing exactly what was going on. It was as if some African drums such as those he'd seen in the American films which sometimes came to the town, passed a quiet message from house to house.
As he walked, Avelino met women on their way to buy the freshest early-morning fish at the market; he passed men repairing their boats; children scampering early from their homes. They all seemed to grin at him with knowing looks, or to shake their heads grimly at his outrageous behaviour. He felt guilty and afraid with every meeting, every acknowledgement. He felt sinful.
By the time he reached his home his heart was pounding and his face was flushed.
When he went in through the arched door there was an ominous silence. His brothers were eating and they stared at him blankly. In the little stone washing room his mother was scrubbing with her back towards him.
He began to walk through to his bedroom and for one fleeting instant he thought that perhaps everyone was going to ignore his whole night's absence, that nothing would be said in the face of such an enormous and unreal breach of propriety. But as he passed the washing room, his mother, her forearms dripping with a film of soap-suds, turned and looked at him. Her eyes held him steadily with an expression which mixed anger with disbelief. Slowly she wiped her arms on a cloth, still looking at him. And much as he would have liked to say something and walk on casually into his room, he found himself rooted to the spot, gulping.
"Why didn't you stay with her?" his mother snapped, tossing the cloth aside.
"What do you mean?" Avelino stammered, taken aback at the directness of the attack.
"You know well what I mean. You've disgraced us, we who have a reputation for clean, honest living."
Avelino felt that behind her bright, furious eyes, his mother was almost ready to burst into tears and the lie came automatically to his lips.
"I've been at party which went on all night-a tourist party."
Immediately he realized that the he coming without specific accusation had sealed his guilt. The blush spread with a sudden relentless sweep over his face.
His mother's face twisted in hurt anger; his brothers sat watching, eyes wide.
"How can you he?" she said bitterly. "How can you lie as well? Everybody knows that you went off with that...with that woman."
Avelino stood mutely before her and she came towards him, her eyes harder than he had seen them before.
"You're nothing but a good-for-nothing," she hurled at him. "You won't get a job to occupy your day and then this is what happens-this disgusting, sordid business."
"It's not,"-Avelino started to say, but his mother cut him short.
"Your father is as furious as I am. He'll have something to say to you when he gets back."
At this threat, this implication of punishment to follow as if he were still a little child, Avelino felt a twinge of defiance. He suddenly could not reconcile the beautiful experience of his union with Janice with his family's assumption of sordidness. A reflection of his mother's disgust stirred within him-but against her.
He turned away and walked to his room.
"Yes, be silent and ashamed," his mother snapped after him.
Avelino sat quietly in his room, thinking of what he should do and say. He sensed that the row with his father would be a hard one. It would mean that he would never be able to risk being seen with Janice again. Fists clenched, he cursed the town and the maliciously wagging tongues. It was malice. He was sure. True it was that he had been raised a Catholic like everyone else. But there were other people, other countries where the same views were not held. He had talked to tourists. He knew. The strictures of the catholics faith seemed too frequently at variance with human nature to be anything but inhuman. He had seen their effect on others in the town, who had transgressed the laws in some way.
Sitting there on his bed, Avelino felt all the doubts of his past years blossom out due to his affair with Janice. His indignation and defiance was growing as the door opened suddenly and his father was there.
For a minute or two they stared at each other. His father's eyes were stern and uncompromising. His words when they came carried the weight of controlled anger behind them.
"It's the talk of the whole town. You've disgraced us."
"It's the talk that's the disgrace," Avelino retorted softly. He no longer felt afraid. He felt remarkably wild and powerful. It was his father's long reign of authority that kept the quiet tone in his voice.
For some seconds his father stared at him angrily, uncomprehending.
"It's the dirty, malicious talk," Avelino said. He was aware of the swift rise and fall of his chest.
His father's eyes glinted and he advanced into the room.
"You must be weak in the head," he snapped. "It's your dirty actions that's the disgrace."
Avelino looked at his levelly. There seemed no point in replying.
"In all the years I've lived here, and in all the years my father lived here we've never had our name so soiled," his father continued, eyes blazing. "And now you dare to creep off in the night with some whore of a woman who's come here to see what she can corrupt."
Avelino stood up, fists clenched in fury.
"You stupid fool! What do you know of her! She's a better woman than any other in the town!"
The words cascaded from his lips of their own accord. He had never before dreamed of speaking, to his father in this way.
His father's mouth opened at the unexpected fury of the tirade-and then snapped shut again in a hard line.
"You think you're big," he flared. "You think it's a big clever thing you've done to besmirch our name. Far from wanting to beg your father's and the Lord's forgiveness, you think you're big enough to insult me."
He moved towards Avelino, eyes bright with rage.
"Well, I'll knock some sense and respect into you!"
It was a long time since Avelino's father had so much as threatened to beat him. He was a man of approaching fifty-a hard man of the seas it was true, but a man who's physique was paling beside his eldest son's.
As the hand descended and caught him a stinging blow on the side of the head, Avelino hesitated just a second. Then the fury of injustice choked him and he stood up, catching his father's arms.
"Don't try and hit me again," he snapped furiously. "I've done nothing I'm ashamed of."
His father thrust him back onto the bed. His face was creased with rage.
"You've done everything to be ashamed of," he cried, "and I'm going to make you wish you hadn't."
A second heavy blow caught Avelino on the side of the face and then in fury he had closed with his father.
For some seconds they rocked against a table-and then the table toppled over and Avelino's father crumpled over with it. He lay there for a moment, nursing a strained shoulder. Avelino stood above him, white-faced, eyes bright, unmoving. His father climbed slowly to his feet. It was in his eyes that he had accepted physical defeat, that he was not going to fight. His voice trembled with emotion and when he spoke it seemed as if someone else was directing him.
"Get out! Get out! You're not wanted here any more!"
"If I had some dynamite I'd blow up this whole town," Avelino rasped; and then he turned his back on his father and walked quickly out of the house. He hardly noticed that his mother and brothers had gone out.
Avelino strode straight along the coast road towards Janice's house. He ignored anyone who spoke to him and it was some minutes before he realized his teeth were clamped together in anger.
It was the first time he had fought his father and he felt sorry that it should have happened. There was something terrible about the old man's authority crumpling away like that at the hands of his own son. But, at the same time, he felt more furious than ever at the attitude everybody automatically took, because he and a beautiful woman were in love and bad fulfilled their love.
Striding purposefully, he knew that he dared not think too hard at the moment about what he was doing. He needed all his resolution to be directed at the future because he could no longer stay in the town and he might never see his family again. The thought was frightening if he allowed his mind to dwell on it.
A wry grin touched his face as he walked through the gate and into the grounds of Janice's house. It seemed only a few minutes since he'd left it. This time he entered boldly, hardly noticing the curious eyes of passers-by.
Janice came to the door in a dressing gown in answer to his knock. She stared at him in astonishment, gave a little laugh of pleasure and surprise and then became serious again at the expression on his face.
She caught him by the hand, pulled him inside and shut the door, quickly.
"What's happened?" she asked. "Why are you back so soon?"
Avelino was immediately aware that he had been breathing hard since leaving his house. For a moment he was unable to speak.
"We had a row," he said at last, unsteadily. "I've left home."
Janice's face became a picture of concern-and interest. She led him through the house into the bedroom.
They sat down on the bed and she faced him squarely and attentively.
"Tell me what happened," she said.
In a voice which at times was halting, at others charged with indignation, Avelino described the course of events since he'd left her.
Janice listened carefully without interrupting and when he'd finished she took his head gently in her hands kissed him lightly on the lips.
"It is sad in a way that you should part from your family like this," she said softly. "But it also seems that fate has done this for us. Now you must come to Barcelona with me."
Avelino pulled her close against him, unsure whether he was giving or needing protection. She was suddenly all he had.
Two days later they left in Janice's car on the journey south to Barcelona. Avelino had not stirred from the house during that time. He had seen nothing of his family or friends.
Driving along the mountain road he looked back at the house-tops and the church spire of the fishing town where he had passed the first twenty-one years of his life and in some strange way he was filled with a sense of exhilaration rather than sadness. His life of narrow semi-contentment seemed, at this moment, a slow asphyxiation. The whole world was before him.
Up to this time he had never traveled farther than the nearest large town in the slow old bus which made the journey once in the early morning and once in the evening. Now he found himself whirling along at seventy kilometres an hour in a sleek car piloted by a beautiful woman.
"I will teach you to drive," Janice told him. "I will teach you English. Perhaps we can even find an orchestra with which you can sing. I know everyone in Barcelona."
They drove in silence for a large part of the journey until the road, which for some distance had followed the Paris-Barcelona railway, cut out to the coast again and the car skidded round the long string of bends above the Mediterranean.
Looking out over the limitless stretch of blue sea with the misty shapes of boats on the horizon, the lazy groups of bathers on the long ribbon of sand, Avelino suddenly said: "I know almost nothing about you."
Janice looked at him, smiling.
"My past isn't important. I'm happy now-and you're happy I think. What's the point of the past."
"But the past has made you the way you are," Avelino persisted. "You know all about me. I have little to tell. But you must have a lot to tell."
"All right," Janice said briskly, eyes twinkling. "I come from a rich family, went to university in England and then in Paris. I married an alcoholic intellectual who made life hell for both of us. We divorced and I came to Spain to stay with some friends in Barcelona. I've been here ever since with occasional trips to France and Italy. I've found life with the society in which I move a neurotic, unhappy business. Now I find a sweet, physically exciting, contented person like you and I see a new vision of happiness for two people. Whoa!" She hesitated to take a breath and then added: "Well, there you are in a nutshell. I'm used to being honest so I need only add that I'm happier than I've been for years and I love you."
She turned from her driving a second and looked at Avelino with soft, honest eyes and his heart turned to water.
"I don't care about your past either," he said softly, "as long as you are happy now."
In a few hours of driving they were on the long straight stretch of road leading into Spain's most cosmopolitan city. The traffic became thicker, restaurants and houses appeared on the inland side of the road, beach huts on the other. And in the misty, bluish distance the grey silhouette of Barcelona quivered in the heat.
Avelino felt a surge of excitement leap inside him. Friends had told him of the city's theatres, cinemas, grand hotels and restaurants, trams, buses and great avenues. It was meeting place of the world such as he imagined Paris or London. He could not envisage the size of it.
Passing through the suburbs he felt disappointed. The houses were poor and bare; ugly factories and slag heaps towered everywhere; the golden beaches became cold, grey docks.
"Is this really Barcelona?" he kept asking.
"Horrible isn't it," Janice would say with a grin. "But this is the worst part. You have to get right into the heart of the city before its becomes bearable."
"I'll make a detour so that you can see the city," she added a few minutes later.
They drove smoothly through a park such as Avelino had never before seen, filled with well-kept lawns, flower-beds which seemed like a firework display and borders of palms. Then they turned into a broad avenue with a concrete aisle down its centre and red, double-carriage trams swarming along it.
Some distance along it, as they weaved speedily through the traffic, they came upon the tall column from which the statue of Columbus gazed with a visionary zeal out over the great grey tankers in the docks.
Here they turned up the Ramblas, the double-laned avenue into the heart of the city.
"This is the old port area which all the tourists love to visit," Janice explained.
Peering eagerly from the car window, Avelino lost his concentration in a whirl of black and yellow taxis, enormous hotels, little shops blazing with light in the first shadows of dusk and dozens of narrow little streets leading off in all directions. The broad aisle of pavement in the centre of the avenue was filled with hundreds of people promenading between the gaudy newspaper kiosks and the flower stalls. "It's magnificent," Avelino breathed. From the bustle and colour of the Ramblas they had swerved into the neon-lit, bank-surrounded, fountain-filled Plaza de Cataluna.
Avelino's breath was stifled in his throat at the majestic grandeur of the square with its white-uniformed, white-helmeted policemen.
"We'll soon be at my apartment," Janice said, smiling with pleasure at Avelino's wonder and awe.
Up through broad avenues with fountains, splaying silver in the street lights, they purred, to the biggest avenue of all- the Avenida del Generalissimo Franco.
"It's enormous," Avelino gasped.
"I'm glad you're impressed-this is where I live," Janice replied.
Everything on this avenue had an air of taste and wealth. The restaurants were discreetly spaced, dignified but luxurious; the hotels were only for the rich; and to live here was beyond Avelino's comprehension. So awed and out of his depth did he feel, that a sudden chill seized him and he felt an indescribable desire to go back to his simple house in his simple little town which he knew.
"You'll soon get used to Barcelona," Janice said, as if she understood his thoughts. "You'll know it like the palm of your hand in a week or two."
They halted eventually outside a large block of apartment with revolving glass doors leading into the vestibule.
"Here we are," Janice announced.
Inside, where a hall porter tipped his cap respectfully to her, she led the way up a short flight of broad marble steps to the lift.
As they droned up and up, Avelino felt dazed by the luxurious strangeness of everything.
The lift glided to a smooth halt at the top floor and Avelino got out onto a large marble landing from which a huge wooden door with a stained glass panel led off.
Janice sent the lift purring downwards and then let them into her apartment with a key.
For some half an hour afterwards, Avelino wandered from room to room like a man in a dream. There was everything that he could imagine from a refrigerator to a maid. The rooms were large, luxuriously furnished and carpeted, each with a different pastel shade as motif. A long balcony ran along the front of the apartment and from it one could look down on the distant animation of the great avenue below.
"I'll show you an even better view," Janice said, taking Avelino by the hand and leading him to a narrow stairway in the kitchen. They climbed up and emerged onto the roof iatb.fi darkening air of night.
"The roof is yours, too?" Avelino asked, incredulously.
"Even the roof," Janice laughed.
From the high parapet of the roof they could overlook the lower half of Barcelona, sloping gently away to the port. The air glowed with the light and colour of the city and for Avelino it was like a fairy tale.
"There is so much here to see," he said, with awe in his voice.
"You'll see everything," Janice assured him. "I'll take you everywhere."
For the next few days they toured the city during the day, eating wonderful dishes that Avelino was unaccustomed to-at huge and wonderful restaurants, visiting cabarets, theatres, cinemas-a whirl of life and gaiety. And at night they returned to the luxury of the apartment and danced to the soft music of a radio before retiring for the glory of long hours of love.
It was nearly a week before Avelino met any of Janice's friends. They came to a small cocktail party which she gave one evening. Avelino was very nervous.
They addressed him politely and, he felt, in many cases with some veiled amusement. He felt rather uncomfortable in the presence of so many well-dressed, distinguished-looking men and attractive, elegant women. .
Among the visitors were some French and Spanish as well as English and with his countrymen Avelino was able to have some conversation. But it was conversation of a limited range. They asked him a few questions, seemed to make a summing up of his ignorance and then relapsed into a silence, contemplating their drinks, or drifted away to more fruitful company.
Avelino deeply regretted his own ignorance of the world, of the books nearly all of which they spoke. There was nothing of interest he could tell them about his home town, about his family, about fishing in the bay. It was a narrow, parochial world which didn't interest them. He was at least very thankful for the smart clothes in which Janice had dressed him-uncomfortable though he felt in them after the light shirt and gaberdine trousers which had comprised his wardrobe at home.
Frequently he would look up from his drink-in which he pretended a great and meditating interest- to catch a pair of eyes upon him, curiously regarding him as if he were some caged animal which had been allowed, as a treat, to dine with its keepers.
There was one man particularly who fixed him with sharp, glittering eyes and barked a few questions at him before seeming to dismiss him as something contemptible and not worth the effort of speaking to. This was a Count Alvarez, who seemed to know Janice well. He spoke English perfectly it seemed, and he and Janice moved from one language to another in their conversation with ease.
After a while Avelino, overcome with the weight of the conversation, excused himself to go to the toilet. Outside the room he leaned for a moment in relief against the wall. And through the draperies which covered the door, voices came to him, speaking Spanish.
"Well you really must be bored to go to the peasants for your excitement." It was the voice of Count Alvarez.
"Sh. Not so loud; he's very sensitive." That was Janice.
Avelino felt himself trembling as he stood, his ears straining against the wall.
"It was not a good idea to bring him away from his mother's care just because I was away in Paris."
"You flatter yourself Carlos. He's like a sweet sea breeze after you, and I'm in love with him."
"In love with him." The words were a sneer. "Can one fall in love with a goat."
Another voice joined the others: a woman's voice.
"I think he's very attractive. There's something young, upright and nostalgic about him. We're all too blase."
Avelino would have liked to peep through the draperies to see who owned the voice, but he was afraid he might be seen. His heart quivered with fury at the suave slander of the Count. His stomach was chilled with the realization that this man must have been Janice's lover before him. But he was also reassured in Janice's feeling for him-and the fact that at least one other female member of the company found him attractive.
He crept off, his mind a whirl of emotions, to the toilet, and reappeared in the room after a few minutes. The Count and Janice were still talking.
Later somebody suggested they should all go to one of the large restaurants which Avelino had already visited, for dinner, and the suggestion was accepted with enthusiasm-by all except Janice and the Count.
The Count excused himself gracefully, but he had an appointment. Janice said she had a headache and proceeded to take a couple of aspirins.
"Then I will stay with you," Avelino said.
"No, you go along. I would prefer not to spoil your evening. Besides," she said quietly, taking him aside, "It would be an excellent opportunity of getting to know these people better."
Avelino was overcome with panic for a moment. The very last thing he relished was being left alone with this sophisticated set; but he saw no way of escaping.
"You can bring me back another tube of aspirins when you've eaten; I seem to have run out," Janice said.
They left the building and piled into the sleek cars outside. Avelino was offered a place in the sports car of a dark-haired Spanish girl, who might have been in her late twenties. As soon as she spoke he recognized the voice which had said it thought him attractive back in the apartment.
"It's not much fun for you not knowing anybody," she said sympathetically, as she put the car in gear. "But maybe we can sit together and I'll whisper to you about everyone."
"A lot of whispering seems to go on," Avelino said, unsmilingly.
The girl looked at him a moment, and then as if she realized that he'd heard conversations he was not supposed to hear, she gave a dry little laugh and gave a friendly pat to his hand.
"Nobody has anything else to do," she said wryly.
Around the first corner, Avelino saw a pharmacy and the thought of Janice's aspirins came to him. If he waited until after dinner, he might forget. Besides she might need more before he got back. He explained quickly to the girl that he would go back to the apartment now.
"I know the way to the restaurant," he said. "I can join you a little later-it's no distance."
"Well if you really must." She seemed reluctant to stop the car, but added, slowing down: "I'll save you a place, anyway."
Avelino bought the aspirins and strolled back towards the apartment thinking that the dark-haired girl was rather charming. She seemed like Janice, to be mocking these people slightly, to be unwilling completely to identify herself with them.
He was still musing about her when the lift purred to a stop and he let himself quietly into the flat his key.
His feet made no noise on the thick rugs and he walked silently through the apartment. Janice was not in the cocktail room so he crept on tip-toe to the bedroom, not wishing to awaken her if she were asleep.
From the room he heard muffled noises, the sound of hard breathing and he paused for a moment in astonishment. He walked quickly then to the half-open door, thinking Janice might be really ill and what he saw through the broad crack between door and frame as he approached, pulled him up with a chill of horror.
On the pink bed, the Count was lying flat on his back, completely nude and straddling him, Janice, also nude, was sliding up and down on his trunk-like erection.
Avelino could not believe his eyes, his hair seemed to stand on end with the crawling of his scalp. He wanted to run away, but he was rooted there, eyes riveted to the single crack in the door which showed him everything.
His heart filled with a crushing despair that this woman, so dear to him, and, he had thought, so near to him, could hurl herself into bed with another man during the first few hours he spent out of her company.
Their panting and gasping filled the room and wafted into the corridor outside, surrounding Avelino with an obscene sensation of their wild intimacy.
As he watched, with wide and horrified eyes, he saw the Count writhe his hips, arch his body up towards Janice, cross his ankles in his up-straining; he saw Janice, head swaying wildly on her neck, buttocks contracting as she rose from the great penis and then relaxing and spreading onto the count's thighs as she flopped down again, accepting his whole, hot epee between her legs. With each movement, she rocked forward as if she would collapse onto the passion-wracked face and body of her ravisher, and then she rocked back again as if to indulge in her own delirium of sensation.
The Count's hands, adulterous, vile hands they seemed to Avelino, swung up in front of him and ravaged the firm jutting breasts, swaying above him. They moved down the firm, brown sides of flesh to the fleshy bulge of hips and caught them forcing them down onto his rigid protuberance.
Witnessing the rifling of Janice's channel, seeing the soft liquids ooze from between her legs and trickle down her thighs as she groaned, Avelino groaned inwardly like an echo of her. Part of him would have rushed into the room and torn them apart. He felt more fury with Janice than with the Count, but there was little to choose in his feeling for either. The other part of him, however, kept him transfixed, forced to watch this nightmare act, held back by despair, a lack of understanding of the people he found himself amongst, a respect for the commanding presence of the Count which made him feel a small boy in comparison.
Eyes filled with tears, Avelino found himself swaying backwards and forwards in time with Janice's mad plunges. Up she rose and back, up and back in a clinging, wet, sticky junction of penis and vagina.
With his breath choking out like a series of coughs, the Count, suddenly pushed her back and, as if they were some circus team, swung over onto her so that their positions were reversed and Avelino could now see Janice's face, flushed and passionate as she submitted and coaxed, urged and led in turn.
The Count's face was creased in hard, cruel, sensual lines as he forced Janice's thighs open and back so that they almost touched her shoulders and left him a great exposed gulf to grind into with a penis which looked like a battering ram.
Cords of muscle stood out in his thighs as he jerked in and in, muscles in his arms, bulged and tensed as he pinned Janice's shoulders to the coverlet as if she were trying to escape and his hairy chest rose and fell with his passion.
In Janice's arms, too, as she clasped him, like some prehensile animal, slim lines of muscle shadowed.
Slithering off the bed, the Count pulled her with him, lifting her in his arms, while she wrapped her legs around his waist. Gasping and groaning, while Avelino stared in a horror which amounted almost to disbelief, they began a swaying motion around the room, still joined like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, at the intimate point of their genitals.
As they cannoned against a piece of furniture, so the Count would rest the fleshy receptacle of his passion on it for a moment while he gouged into her with a new ferocity-and she would pull her legs back from around him, up to her shoulders again so that Avelino could see the pink lips clasping the fiercely intruding member, could see the member withdraw, wet and veined and then plunge in again to the wide open hole with its pink, raw, walls of flesh.
"Oh Carlos, Carlos, Carlos."
The words were drawn from the depths of Janice's throat like a deep, rumbling chant, which grew into a whimpering fury of squeals.
The Count dropped her at last on the bed, and groaning like an animal in pain, levered his torso up from her, pushing her thighs back on her breasts and spreading them at the same time as if he were trying to turn her crotch inside out.
Around the soft, clasping opening of the orifice, the mass of blonde hair was wet and beginning to string in sticky locks. Looking down at his own penis as if he wanted to watch the act with the eyes of an outsider while experiencing the sensation himself, the Count slowed to belly-hollowing pushes, which brought forth little moans and catching of breath from Janice.
The panting seemed to grow louder, more urgent with each of them, as if they were climbing a hill together, waiting for the joint ecstasy of reaching the summit.
They gasped and spluttered in growing volume. Janice's eyes were closed; she belonged to the Count; she was his, filled with him, all his. And then with a bursting of breath, as if neither had enough oxygen to breathe, they choked and cried and then gasped out a fulfillment together, in which Janice clasped his hips with her thighs in a movement of possession and containment.
The Count furiously jerked the last dregs of his sperm into her as if he were loathe to come out of her body and then they collapsed and lay still as if dead.
Avelino felt sick, physically sick. He felt like dropping to the floor, helplessly and weeping. He wished he'd never left his home with its humdrum security and lack of extreme passions.
But instead of dropping to the floor, he turned silently, eyes hot with tears, and left the apartment.
In the street he felt homeless, friendless, all love gone from his life. He felt that living was unimportant. He wanted somewhere to go, someone to talk to. He wanted love and comfort.
Almost in a daze, his mind filled with the scene he had just witnessed, considering each detail, trying to decide motives, wondering, bemused, he walked blindly through the streets. Later he found the tube of aspirins in his hand and hurled it in disgust into the gutter.
In the Ramblas, he found nothing but depression in the glitter of lights which he'd found so warm and gay on previous nights.
He sat miserably at the counter of a bar which looked out onto the bustle of passing trams and crowds, and mechanically sipped a beer. A prostitute at the far end of the bar kept looking at him and once even smiled. He did not smile back. She irritated him. And then after a while he considered going with her just for company and an outlet to his misery. Later still he got up in disgust, flung a bill onto the counter and left. The prostitute stared after him curiously and then went back to studying her English phrasebook.
For another hour or two Avelino wandered through narrow, winding streets, lined with dingy hotels and dark, crumbling houses, past dirty little bars from which people stared out at his well-cut clothes and then he found himself back at the foot of the Ramblas. He wandered past the towering column of Columbus to lean on the rails of the dock in which the lights of boats of all sizes gleamed in an oily shimmer on the dark, still water.
People walked past, there were movements of rowing boats on the water, lights twinkling on the ships; other people leaned beside him for a while on the rail, taking their fill of the port by night; behind him, heard but unseen, newsvendors shouted, trams trundled. Everything seemed only to add to his loneliness.
It seemed like hours that he stood, staring dully and eventually seeing nothing, being hardly aware of the coming and going of people to the rail. Until eventually a voice beside him said in casual, conversational tone.
"You look unhappy. What happened?"
He turned his head, abruptly, pulled together for a moment and felt a warm of relief surge to see the girl with whom he'd started out to dinner.
"Well you might answer after I saved a place for you in vain for so long," she said, simulating a pout, with a smile in her eyes.
"I-I'm sorry. I forgot," Avelino said limply.
"You forgot!" The girl's thick, black eyebrows shot up to the dark sweep of her hair. And then Avelino told her the whole story.
After he had finished, he was astonished at the relief he felt. That he should have told somebody else, particularly a woman--something that wouldn't have entered his wildest dreams a few weeks earlier- seemed to make the whole thing a little less important.
For some time they both stared out at the glimmering lights and the darker shadow of the causeway which cut across the dock.
"You know, Janice has led the sort of life which doesn't rate sex-the act, I mean-as of any great importance. She got fed up with it, but now, I suppose, she finds she can't change so easily."
"We're finished," Avelino said.
"Nonsense. She'll want you back, immediately. It was just indiscreet of you to go back once you'd left the apartment."
"No. I mean that I can't go back, knowing that," Avelino replied.
"All you need is to give her tit for tat and then you'll feel much better about it," the girl said with a smile. "Let's go for a drive."
Avelino followed her to the car. She was an attractive, looselimbed girl-as attractive as Janice in a different sort of way. He climbed in beside her, brooding over her words.
"It's no secret that the Count was living with Janice until a month or so ago," the girl continued, as the wind swept back their hair and the car weaved amongst the traffic. "They got on very badly and she left him just before he went to Paris recently, swearing that she'd have nothing more to do with men unless she found someone who was not corrupted by the values she herself had lived by."
She turned to look at him, her pale, aristocratic face very white in contrast to the jet of her hair.
"And then she met you," she concluded with a smile.
"Yes, then she met the poor fool who thought she was wonderful," Avelino said, bitterly.
"But she thought you were wonderful-and probably still does. Don't be like that. Anyway, you're very attractive. You'll have a lot of success with women."
Avelino had never seriously considered himself an the sort of person who could have "a lot of success with women" and he stared at the girl. She turned slowly and looked at him, her eyes alight with mischief, and then she dropped her eyes and looked back at the road.
They drove fast and with increasing speed as they emerged from the southern outskirts of Barcelona onto the coast road. Avelino was surprised to find himself becoming more and more aware of the girl and to find himself thinking less and less about Janice.
The car sped south while they chatted, until the silver-sheened black expanse of sea had appeared on their right and the moonlit ribbon of beach shone below them.
Juanita-that, Avelino discovered, was his companion's name-drove with great competence at high speed. All these rich women, Avelino mused, seemed extremely competent.
"Let's stop and have a look at the beach," Juanita suggested after they had driven some forty kilometres south of Barcelona.
It was well into night when they pulled up onto the tree-lined verge of the road. She locked the car and they strolled down onto the sands in the warm night air.
They walked from some distance until a cluster of rocks hid them from the road. There the girl stopped and Avelino stopped beside her, gazing out over the dim distances of the dark sea.
"It's very beautiful," the girl said, "and very hot. Shall we go for a swim?" "A swim?" Avelino echoed.
"A swim," she said. "You can swim?"
"Why yes. I was champion of my town. But we have no costumes, no towels."
Juanita laughed, gently, and, to his astonishment, kissed him impishly on the cheek.
"So prim," she smiled. "It's wonderful swimming in the nude-and the air and a handkerchief dry you in no time."
Avelino felt a stirring of excitement in his chest. He became aware, suddenly, of his heartbeats. This could lead to only one thing.
"All right," he said. But half-embarrassed, made no effort to get into action.
Recognizing his hesitation, the girl laughed again and began to loosen the kerchief at her throat. Avelino sat on the sand and unlaced his shoes.
Flinging the kerchief from her with a gesture which contained all freedom in it, the girl unzipped her dress and pulled it over her head. Avelino stood up to take off his coat and have a better view of her. He felt his penis rising automatically at the sight of her svelte body, clothed now only in a silky, pink brassiere and pink panties.
As he pulled off his shirt and began to unbutton his trousers, Juanita ripped off her brassiere and slithered, with a little shake of her hips, out of the panties.
Avelino hesitated in the middle of derobing to gaze with flushed cheeks at her body. The breasts were large and high-the full bosom of a true Spanish woman. The waist was slim and the hips and thighs rounded and strong.
Juanita turned to look at him.
"Hurry up," she said smiling.
Avelino lowered his trousers and pulled off his pants, exposing a taut erection. Juanita's eyes moved over his body admiringly and rested on his penis. He felt embarrassed at his obvious display of sexuality.
"A man of quick reactions," she said-and with a little laugh had skipped away towards the water.
Avelino watched her go, eyes devouring the long, rounded buttocks which hardened and softened, tensed and relaxed as she ran-and then he sped after her.
They reached the water together and plunged in without hesitation. Together they swam out towards a patch of moonlight, pausing for breath when they reached it.
Juanita turned on her back, floating gently and her breasts with their big, brownish nipples, protruded from the water like voluptuous icebergs. Just below the surface, the rest of her body gleamed, mistily silver and as she raised a leg from time to time, the water fell back from her thigh like a raised garment.
Avelino's erection had subsided with the cooling influence of the water and the energy-spending swim, but he felt a fresh tingle in his loins at the sight of her body, caressed and fondled by the water.
Playfully, she twisted in the water and splashed water at him.
"Isn't it delightful?" she asked.
Avelino laughingly returned the splash and Juanita swam at him.
"I'm going to duck you," she said.
Avelino laughed and as her hands reached out for his shoulders, he swept her arms aside, turned her in the water and pulled her to him. She gave a little, playful shriek and then her body was against his, back towards him.
Avelino's breath caught in his throat as he felt the oily texture of her skin against him under the water. His arms encircled her and his hands held her breasts. Against his loins he felt the smooth rotundities of her buttocks.
She wriggled against him in attempt at escape from the imminent ducking and his penis was brushed from side to side across the rounded orbs of smooth flesh.
Her hands moved to his hands in an effort to disengage them-but seemed only to press them tighter against her flesh.
Avelino didn't duck her. He bent and kissed her head over his shoulder.
The water was all around them, a vast expanse at eye level and they began to sink in spite of their feet which were treading water gently.
"Let's go back to the shore," Juanita whispered, and her voice seemed like the noise of a small lost wave in the middle of the sea.
Avelino released her and they swam slowly back to the shore.
As they flung themselves down, wet but warm on the sand, Juanita's eyes were gleaming with a fire which contained an unscrupulous singleness of purpose. She gave Avelino ho time to hesitate or doubt, but pulled him down with her, opening her lips and devouring his mouth in hers. Her hands ran continuously over his body like darting lizards, knowing every inch of him- arms, chest, neck, belly, buttocks, penis, testicles-as if she were in a fever.
"Here is your tit for tat," she whispered as Avelino's lips descended on her breasts. Trembling with emotion he slithered between her abandoned, widespread legs. The dry, warm sand, clung to the backs of her arms as he grasped them. She smelt of the salt and the sand and a pure, healthy scent of clean flesh. Up on the road, out of sight, the occasional roar of a car swept by. The moon shone down on their silver, grappling bodies. Avelino felt a humming in his head and as he drove hard into her, Juanita gave a little shriek of sensual joy.
Later, lying on the sand next to her, nude still and gazing up at the clear, high sky, tracing the great, brilliant path of the milky way with a sweep of his eyes, Avelino felt contented-and powerful. He felt powerful because although the thought of Janice in the ravaging embrace of the Count could still bring a little chill of sensual horror to his stomach, it was a horror purely sensual; a horror be felt equal to. The edge, the exclusiveness of his feeling for Janice had been blunted, or rather, the feeling bad been divided into a channel which Juanita provided. It helped him to realize the dispensability of individuals of the opposite sex; to realize his ability to find new women who were just as attractive to him. As with most men it was simply opportunity he had lacked up to this point.
"How do you feel now?" Juanita asked, rolling over and looking down into his face.
"Feel? I feel fine."
"About Janice, I mean."
"I'd forgotten all about her for the moment."
"It's very easy, isn't it."
Her hand had caressed his chest while she spoke, tracing the lines of muscle. She brushed back his hair and kissed him long and gently and then her hand moved down his body until it rested-a heavy warmth -on his thick, limp penis.
His penis stirred immediately under the touch and he returned the kiss with passion. Her fingers twined gently around the flabby hunk of tautening flesh; they tickled it, caressed it, pinched it until it had rekindled into a complete and massive rigidity once more. Her fingers left it, coursing softly, with the touch of a feather, down over the flopping expanse of testicles, brushing under them, exploring every sensitive part of his crotch.
Avelino wriggled, his thighs tensing, hips pushing up towards the light sky. Her dark hair was around his face, shading it from the night, her lips on his; soft, warm, nibbling, demanding lips. And her tongue was breaking through, caressing his lips and entering his mouth in intimate union.
"Make love to me again," she whispered, "but..."
"But what?" Avelino asked, surrounded, inundated by the warmness of her, the silkiness of her long hair.
"But there is something else I like-a perversion of mine."
"A perversion?"
Avelino was startled, but the gentleness of her words killed his first, automatic reaction and he felt a sharp thrill of anticipation.
"I like also to be made love to at my anus-I suppose I'm like a queer." She laughed-a little laugh of. amusement at her own eccentricity.
This was something Avelino had not before considered, but the thought of entering between the beautifully shaped mounds of buttocks and penetrating tightly into the woman's behind filled him with a sensual chill of the forbidden.
"All right," he said softly. "But what pleasure do you have from that?"
"I don't know exactly," Juanita replied. "I like to be filled there. It gives me a greater sense of being really possessed, maybe because it's sometimes painful. I frequently reach a climax in that way."
"Don't you mind being hurt?"
"You'll have to be gentle at first with your size. But afterwards you can go all the way I enjoy the pain."
"All right," Avelino said again. "It will be something new for me."
Juanita rolled over onto her stomach, her big breasts pushing imprints in the soft sand. Avelino brushed his hand down her back, his eyes feasting on the long convex sweep of her buttocks. His hand felt them, cupped them so that a joy of contact swept through the nerves of his hand and translated itself into an involuntary jerking of his penis and a whirling shiver in his loins."
"Move onto me," Juanita said, quietly, "and I'll put it there for you."
Avelino rolled against her and slithered onto her back. Her long slim buttocks were broad enough to make a complete cushion for his narrow hips and he felt the pressure of the skin of her buttocks in a gentle rubbing friction with his pulsing organ. That was her squirming, her tightening and relaxing of her bottom in a momentary, uncontrollable fit of expectation. She was an extremely sensual girl.
Feeling him there, lying waiting for her directions as he pressed against her, Juanita spread her thighs wide. He felt her hand slither down between them and grasp his rod. Her fingers were cool now in comparison with the blazing heat of his penis.
He felt her move it slightly; she wriggled a little, adjusting and then raised her buttocks slightly, pushing them against his down-pressing hips.
"There," she said, The word was hardly audible from her emotion.
Avelino pressed, gently. At first his penis was rebuffed by the weight of solid flesh. It hurt his penis.
He pressed again, his lips screwed up, teeth clenched. He seemed to be making no progress. "There, Juanita breathed. "You're there." He gave a gentle thrust, raising his loins off her buttocks a centimetre and then shoving down.
In that moment of pressure, she opened her thighs even wider so that they stretched out on either side of him and he felt a sudden sharp, tight containment of the thickened end of his organ. The clasping of the tip in the close but soft-textured grasp filled him with a great desire to rape her behind savagely. His penis seemed to cry out like a living being to be thrust in to its limit. It needed to be enclosed along its whole length, to feel an antagonistic pressure trying to hold it back as it crushed its way in a forward direction "Oh, oh!" Juanita gasped. "You're up me. Be gentle."
With difficulty Avelino curbed his sudden, sadistic desire and pushed into her anus with gentle strokes. His teeth clenched, eyes closed in ecstasy as he felt the firm pressure against his protrusion. He felt as if he were really demolishing something. The passage was so tight and yet giving at the same time.
He entered Juanita, his penis disappearing between her buttocks and into the little dark slit, centimetre by centimetre. Under him, prostrate she gasped and her hands dug into the sand, clutching it in handfuls so that it slipped through her fingers and her nails dug into her palms.
"Oh, more, more," she breathed when Avelino had relaxed, thinking he might be hurting her.
Below him, joined to his loins, her buttocks were writhing like live things, now relaxing in a soft, flattened cushion under him, now tightening together in a hard clasp of his excited member.
"I'll make it easier for you," Juanita breathed between her broken croons of ecstasy. So saying she pushed herself up onto her knees until Avelino was kneeling between her far-flung thighs in the position in which he had had Janice from behind.
Juanita was bent away from him, her buttocks stretched, her shoulders brushing the sand, quivering. Her face too was sideways against the sand, but she didn't seem to care, nor even to notice any discomfort.
"Now fill me, fill me," she begged in a urgent whisper. "I want to feel it coming right up to my breasts."
Avelino, his head swimming with passion, looked down at the bridge which his penis made between their bodies. He was surprised to see that only half had entered her. He could see the brown little rim of the incredibly small-seeming aperture he'd entered. He watched it clasping his penis as he moved in and out of her.
"Go on, oh please go on," Juanita seemed almost overcome with her desire.
"It will hurt you?" Avelino heard himself saying.
"I don't care. Violate me. Violate me there-but quickly." Her tones were imperative and desperate, the tones of a masochist.
Able to see the target, roving his eyes over the long, marble buttocks, Avelino threw all restraint to the winds. With a furious ramming, he burst fully into her rump, up to the very base of his penis.
"OOOOOOH."
Juanita uttered a long cry which mixed pain with ecstasy and then began to thresh her buttocks backwards and forwards, from side to side as he stabbed into her back passage.
Avelino was overcome with a fit of furious sensation. His penis had never been so tightly so sweetly, painfully clamped before. His body seemed not to belong to him. His mind became just a great, blank white heat of passion. He couldn't think. His eyes could see; his whole body could feel and that was all.
In and in he thrust and pushed while the girl shrieked and groaned and crooned, at his mercy. His lips parted and he panted. Sweat gathered on his brow. He writhed his hips, convulsing them as he hurtled his hips against her buttocks so that they joined and his whole penis disappeared inside her.
The pressure was painful, so sweetly painful as he grasped the sides of her waist with his hands and pulled her ravished buttocks back onto his instrument of torture.
Juanita pushed her thighs even wider apart, pulling them in under her slightly so that he seemed to enter even farther into the tight, fleshy orifice.
"It's coming, it's coming," she began to breathe, until the words came faster and faster and became just an unintelligible, ecstatic drone of sound issuing from her wide open mouth.
Punishing her, forcing his sexual tube heavily into her, punishing himself in the process, Avelino spurred on by her words, her moans, her ecstasy, felt his thickness grown, become heavier, atingle with fire and throbbing.
Somewhere in his bowels the orgasm seemed to start, growing in size and strength with every long, groaning thrust.
"Now, now, now," Juanita screamed, pushing her behind back on his spear with such fury and strength that he felt he must be splitting her apart, felt that she would suddenly rip upwards from her buttocks and there would be two of her. "Yes, yes," he gasped.
The orgasm was sweeping through his body like some relentless forest fire. Everything was falling before it. Every thought he had ever had, every action he had ever done, every ambition might as well not exist. This furious, gasping moment of the orgasm was everything.
"I'm coming. Oh, oh, oh!" Juanita convulsed and strained as if she were in a epileptic fit.
And Avelino, whose penis seemed to have elongated and ballooned so that his whole body was screwed to an unbearable pitch of tension, suddenly gasped out a flood which shattered from his penis, lost inside her, into the very depths of her rectum.
He came out of her after some moments and fell onto his back exhausted and emotional, a little emotionally upset now that it was over at the strange method of intercourse.
Juanita remained for a while in the same kneeling position. Her stretched and opened anus was offered to the moon, her hands clasped the sand, her face was turned from him, her body still wracked-but subsiding-with her furious breathing.
As he watched, she gradually slithered down so that her buttocks closed over the wound, hiding the raped aperture. She pressed her belly against the warm sand and her hands relaxed.
"Did I hurt you?" he asked, at last.
"Of course you did-but it was wonderful."
She turned her face towards him. And she was smiling.
They swam again that night, washing away the sweat and heat of passion and then she drove him to her 'bachelor' flat on Tibidabo overlooking the city.
Avelino stayed with her for what remained of the night and they slept peacefully together until midday.
The sun was high and the heat of Barcelona oppressive as they sat on the balcony eating lunch.
"I'm not sure what I should do," Avelino said, breaking the long silence.
"You are welcome to stay with me if you wish," Juanita told him, "but it might be better if you went back to Janice for a while.
"Would you like me to stay?" Avelino asked.
"For a while it would be nice," Juanita replied. "But I like freedom and I think for your own good you should go back to Janice."
She spoke with conviction and an impression of honesty. She was the sort of girl who knew well how to play the game-how to get what she wanted even if it meant a wait. . "When may I see you, anyway?" Avelino asked.
"When you get back to Janice you probably won't even want to."
"If you say that I shall insist on staying now."
"All right. I'll pick you up down by the port on Monday afternoon about four."
The rest of the meal was eaten in silence. Both brooded on events just gone, events to come. After the meal they rested awhile and then Juanita whispered: "Would you like to make love to me once more before you go."
They moved to the bedroom and removed their clothes. Juanita flung herself face downward on the bed.
This time Avelino was not startled and he needed no guidance.
Later in the day she drove him down to Franco's avenue and after a quick drink they parted.
Leaving the lift to let himself into Janice's flat, Avelino wondered what sort of reception he'd get. It occurred to him suddenly that the Count might have moved in.
He walked through the vestibule and Janice came running from the cocktail room. She stopped when she saw him. Her eyes shone with a mixture of pleasure and anxiety.
"Darling, where have you been. What happened?" she cried.
Suddenly confronted with Janice in the flesh again, Avelino felt a resurgence of some of his old feeling for her. But this time it was a tempered feeling-pleasurable, happy, but not self-forgetting. He still had the feel of Juanita's hair on his face-to say nothing of her anus on his penis.
"Nothing," he said.
"What do you mean-nothing?" Janice laughed. "You went out to dinner leaving me ill, here-remember?"
"How long did you stay ill?" Avelino asked.
She started to reply and then something in the way he had phrased the question made her stop short.
"Not long, I believe. You found a good doctor in Count Alvarez."
Avelino was quietly surprised at his own cynical eloquence-Janice was shocked.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I brought back your aspirins before dinner-but when I came here I saw you didn't need them."
For some moments Janice stared at him, mouth ajar. It was obvious she was nonplussed, wondering what attitude to take. Avelino settled that for her.
"You don't have to worry," he said. "I spent a pleasant night with Juanita."
Janice's eyes sparked, and then the spark died and she came towards him and laid her head on his shoulder. Avelino remained motionless.
"I'm sorry, darling," she said quietly. "Please try to understand that Carlos really means nothing to me now. We used to live together you know."
"Then why did you make love with him?" Avelino demanded.
"I don't know. It was ridiculous. It was a purely physical feeling. I wish it hadn't happened."
Avelino had cut the image of them out of his mind. It was now just a question of colourless words and he felt somehow sorry for and tender towards Janice.
"Can you forget it?" she asked, softly, "or just not attach any importance to it; there wasn't any."
"All right," he said. "I forgive you."
Janice raised her lips to him to be kissed and the kiss became a hard pressure along the length of their bodies.
"Really I'm all yours," Janice whispered earnestly.
As if the sexual act would prove her words, they moved of one accord to the bedroom.
Afterwards, as they lay exhausted, Janice stared at the fluted edge of the ceiling and her hand closed over Avelino's.
"Juanita-the bitch," she whispered to herself.
Life for Janice and Avelino settled back into a normal relationship. There were more dinners, cocktails, suppers, drives in the country, night clubs. Avelino met more of her friends and began to gain some ease and polish in their company. He read avidly and began to learn English-and between whiles he saw Juanita about twice a week.
He was astonished at the confidence he was acquiring. He was now well aware that women found him attractive. That much was obvious. Many had made hinting verbal advances to him, but between Janice and Juanita he managed to keep his own mental and emotional equilibrium, needing neither too desperately.
Sometimes he questioned Janice about her source of wealth and she talked vaguely of limitless supplies from her family. He felt she was prevaricating, but as long as the money continued to flow he gave little further thought to it.
Each day they tried new refinements to their love-making. What he learnt with Juanita, Avelino would try with Janice and vice versa until there was nothing more to try and he felt a real urge for fresh bodies, new, unknown women lying beneath his weight, new moans and reactions.
At this point he might have continued solely with his dual relationship unwilling to make the necessary effort to put himself in new situations, unwilling to break the order of the life into which he had settled.
Once again, it was Janice who gave him the impetus.
They had long been awaiting the arrival in Barcelona of a young and celebrated bull-fighter, Miguel Provenza. He had fought magnificently in Madrid in his opening fights and the word had spread through Spain with that enthusiasm reserved for soccers in England.
Avelino was looking forward to seeing him as the fights he'd seen in small towns to the north were poor, trials for the novices.
He drove to the arena in the Plaza Monumental with Janice and one of her friends. The friend was an attractive, well-preserved woman in her late thirties. She was the wife of a rich banker, but, Janice confided to Avelino, she was tired of her husband and looking for excitement.
"They say Miguel Provenza is extremely good-looking," she chuckled.
Avelino was rather attracted to her. She had a squarish, strong face, with bright blue eyes which held his deeply when they spoke so that it was always be who eventually looked away. Her body under her light dress and swathing mantilla seemed to move with the sinuous strength and confidence of firmness of purpose and experience. She looked an unscrupulous woman- which only added to her attraction.
The bull-ring with its two blue and white chequered Moorish turrets was surrounded by a dark, sweating mass of people fighting to get in. Everywhere the black and yellow taxis were swarming and tram-loads of people were adding reinforcements to the throng.
With some difficulty they pushed through the crowds and moved through the stone arches to the inner slopes of the stadium.
Avelino was impressed. It was the biggest bull-ring he'd seen. When they finally took their seats near the president's box, he was able to take stock of his surroundings.
The slopes of the arena were a vast flutter of white fans-a single, cooling animation. Even in the shade it was stiflingly hot and he felt a twinge of sympathy for the crushed crowds in the blazing sun on the opposite side of the ring.
On one side of him, Avelino became aware of the pressure of the thigh of the banker's wife. It was firm through her cotton dress and it stretched against his with a pressure not completely compelled by the lack of space Janice bought beer and Coca-Cola from one of the barefoot vendors, who capered from one tier of concrete seats to the next, giving succour to the multitude.
He passed a bottle of Coca-Cola to the woman, Theresa, and her cool, blue eyes held him again as their fingers touched.
Avelino turned away to gaze down to the arena, burning emptily and the thinly-covered thigh settled back against his like an offering.
After the fanfare of trumpets and the parade, Miguel Provenza was to start with the first fight and there was a hum of expectancy in the air.
The ring cleared, the peones slipped unobtrusively into the arena and a hush fell over the stadium so that the swishing of the fans became a single audible wave of sound.
And with a snort, the bull had cantered into the ring.
The size of it sent a chill of apprehension through Avelino. They had always been quite small in the little local fights he'd seen.
From their hiding places-wooden partitions close against the brown barrera-the peones emerged and the ferociously roving black eyes of the bull fastened eventually on a cape-flap of invitation.
A broad gauge of horns lowered towards the dust, a wary trot and them came the full-blooded momentum of a charge.
The peon held the cape wide. He was allowing for no margin of error. The bull was fresh and strong.
Swiftly the intervening distance dwindled; but as the psychological crash occurred, the cape slipped over the bull's horns, caressed his back as he lunged on and seemed to rest impudently for a moment on his tail. The animal wheeled for the next attack and the peon began to withdraw backwards with a failing dignity which culminated in a helter-skelter rush for one of the ringside screens.
The bull was drawn away by another magenta flutter of cape, diverted again by another-and another- until the bewildered animal was being deflected aimlessly from cape to cape like a thrown ball.
Eventually the bull halted, and as the peones withdrew, the picadores entered. Tall, black-costumed men with broad-brimmed hats and vicious lances, they rode in to a sudden theatrical clash of martial music. Their Horses, protected by thickly woven draperies, radiated a mediaeval pomp.
The bull was motionless, watching, warily.
It took the peones a few seconds to coax him back into activity and from them he turned on the horses.
Avelino caught his breath as the buffeting charges almost threw the frightened, blindfolded animal from its feet and then, as the picador's lance thrust down unerringly at its spinal target and ground in with venom, he felt Janice's hand catch his.
It was not a pretty sight. The bull recoiled, attacked again and recoiled again, shaking its head, slavering. Blood, with the smooth flow of lava, oozed sinisterly from the wound.
While the bull stood for a moment, flanks hollowing in great breaths, the picadores rode out and the banderilleros entered to continue the work of torment.
Holding his two gaily-striped darts high above his head like spell-casting fingers, the first of the team of three sprinted across the bull's path. The bull charged, but the angle had been judged to perfection and the banderillero was past and the banderillas were flapping like souvenirs of Brighton Rock from the animal's neck.
Furiously the bull contorted, trying to brush away this new, steel-tipped, strength-sapping irritation. A double repetition and he looked like a head-dressed Indian chief.
Triumphantly the band blared again and to a thunderous cheering the matador at last strolled into the ring.
"Isn't he handsome?" Janice said, her eyes roaming down the man's slim length of tight yellow costume with its golden braid.
"Yes. He is," Theresa agreed, from the other side- and her eyes held Avelino's once again with a flicker of a smile.
Avelino felt the embarrassment of the little game that Theresa was trying to play with him under Janice's eyes. He liked things to be discreet, an attitude which he put down to his peasant background. He looked down to where Miguel Provenza, his dark hair glinting in the sun, was sauntering across the ring, back to the bull, trailing his cape like a pet dog. The bull, his neck a sheet of crimson, watched him go.
At a good tilting distance the matador turned and faced his enemy. Graceful as a mannequin, his black, three-cornered hat sombre as the head of a vulture, he stood awaiting the onslaught. Sharply he called to the bull. He stamped his foot.
The bleeding neck tensed at the call, heavy head rose, ferocity rekindled. And then the bull was hurtling across the ring in a growing momentum.
Proud, almost disdainful, the matador held the cape -violent scarlet in graduation from the pastel of the peones'-close to his body. As he and the animal met he swayed and yielded drawing cape and bull around him as in a dance. A full-throated roar exploded in the ring. Ole! Ole!
The bull swerved, swept in again-and again-as the matador weaved and swayed like a boxer on the ropes, a whirling mass of red, gold and black. Until the bull, stumbling with weariness, suddenly stopped.
The matador moved in with incredible audacity. He danced a scale of staccato steps, fanning the cape out behind his legs-playing with the bull in a dangerous game.
The massive neck seemed a stretch of raw meat, the flanks hollowed and filled, the bloodshot eyes stared stupidly at the matador's feet. The bull refused the bait.
A controlled passion wrinkled the matador's long, aristocratic face. He stamped past the bull's nose. He barked at it--and then he turned his back, watching the motionless animal over his shoulder, and sank to his knees before it. Slowly he turned his head away and stared into the suddenly breathless ranks of the spectators.
Beside him, Avelino felt the quick intake of breath from both of the women. He felt Theresa's hand suddenly on his bicep, close in against his body, shielded by him from Janice.
One moment the bull was still, uninterested, the next he was a fury of movement. The cape seemed to flutter just in time. The bull grazed the kneeling man and whirled savagely as if he had tasted blood. The matador scrambled and twisted on his knees fencing with the cape. Pass after pass he made with a wild, inspired skill. He refused to get to his feet. He was transcendent.
Beside Avelino, Theresa's thigh was pressing hotly against him, her fingers digging into the firm muscle of his upper arm.
As Provenza's artistry soared, the bull's strength waned, until he slipped, slid on his face in the dust, righted himself with an effort and sagged stock-still.
Slowly the matador rose, tall, beautiful, almost fragile, and looked at the crowd. He was the master.
A tumult of acclamation shook the still air, evolving in a single word: mate! mate! mate! The crowd wanted blood.
With the doomed animal's head bowing at his feet in subjection, the matador sighted his sword like a pistol, swayed stiffly onto the balls of his feet like a swimmer preparing to dive-and plunged.
The bull stumbled away, sword embedded in his neck. The matador followed slowly. If the one thrust sufficed, his triumph was complete.
As the crowd stood, now, straining to see the final moment, blood gushed suddenly from the bull's mouth and with a quiver he smacked suddenly onto his side.
In a barrage of cheering the matador walked slowly to the president's box, while three gold-harnessed horses, bells tinkling, swept into the arena and dragged off the carcase.
Close below them now, Avelino could see Miguel Provenza at quite close quarters. He was a very young man, but his face was old with strength and his bold eyes proclaimed a man who would fight to the last ounce of his power.
Janice, standing next to Avelino, relaxed his hand, to lean for a better view. Her eyes were shining with admiration.
"It was the best fight I've ever seen," she said in a voice charged with emotion.
And then Provenza was skipping lightly round the ring, holding aloft the tail and two ears, rewards of his prowess.
Pandemonium broke out as he circled the ring. First a hat whirled down from the terraces, then another and another. Scarves, bouquets, handbags, all followed, until the matador was dodging a rain of missiles. Small boys leapt into the ring to fling the objects back into the frenzied crowd.
Then the matador was replying in kind. Into the midst of the crowd he hurled one ear and then the other. The tail he gave with smiling courtesy to a little girl who gravely presented him with a bouquet.
"How wonderful," Janice murmured.
On Avelino's left, Theresa's fingers relaxed their grip on his biceps and caressed their way slowly down his arm, touched his fingers lightly and then fell away.
"Didn't you think he was wonderful," Janice had turned to them as if she were unable to contain her thoughts. "Such a face and such a wonderful body."
"You seem more impressed with him than I am," Theresa said. "Although he's certainly a wonderful fighter."
Janice sat down slowly on the terrace. She seemed, to Avelino, to be consumed with some powerful inner excitement-cut off from him. It didn't worry him unduly. He glanced at Theresa and smiled and her eyes smiled back as if to say "Ah. You're coming to me at last."
Miguel Provenza fought again during the afternoon, another splendid fight and Janice went into raptures about him. She seemed not to realize that her reaction showed plainly the sexual excitement he'd awakened in her. Avelino felt a twinge of jealousy, but when he thought of Juanita-and when he looked at Theresa, inviting him with her eyes-he was able to cut the twinge of jealousy right out.
At the end of the afternoon, as they fought their way out into the thronged stone corridor leading to the street, Janice said: "Couldn't we go and see him-just to tell him how wonderful we thought he was? He deserves to have people tell him how wonderful he is."
"Oh. I can't be bothered to push all the way back through the crowds," Theresa replied. "You two go and tell him for me."
"Wouldn't it be better to invite him for cocktails some time," Avelino suggested.
But Janice scoffed at the idea.
"Oh no. I want to tell him now while I feel the full enthusiasm," she said, eyes bright. "You two go on. I'll go and congratulate him."
So saying she disappeared quickly amongst the people mobbing to get out in the opposite direction.- Avelino, hesitating, was left behind.
"Let her go." Theresa caught his hand and pressed against him in the flurry of the crowd.
"All right."
Avelino returned the pressure of her finger and, hips joined as if with glue, they pushed their way to one of the great arched exits.
They sat in the car waiting for Janice to come back.
"You know I think you're every bit as good-looking as Provenza," Theresa said. "And much more human."
Something in the use of the word 'human' struck Avelino as strange. He wondered if he were not becoming de-humanized in his attitude towards women. Certainly if 'human' meant the ability to be made jealous and possessive he was becoming inhuman.
"You're very charming," he said.
"You don't look as if you mean it," she said, with a playful frown. "Are you worrying about Janice?"
"No," he replied. "Why should I?"
"She's probably gone off with Provenza."
A sharp, emotional chill quivered in Avelino's chest, but disappeared almost immediately. Why should he care with this attractive woman here for the taking? If it were true, he'd make love to her and with each stroke of penetration he'd feel he was inflicting some savage punishment on Janice.
"But we're waiting for her. Surely she wouldn't just go off like that?"
"Janice does things like that. She suffers from overwhelming impulses which make her will quite helpless."
They sat in the car, staring out of the window, waiting. The crowds had gone now, dwindled away to the normal pedestrian traffic of the avenue. A number of cars were parked along the kerb and the flourish of the rush to escape from the arena was so dead that it suddenly seemed to Avelino to be certain that Janice and the bull-fighter had left.
"Maybe I should go and look just to make sure," he said, uncertainly. "It would be too bad to leave a second or two before she came."
"If you like," Theresa said with a shrug. "But I'm sure you'll be wasting your time. There are a dozen exits. And didn't you see the way she looked at him. That sort of thing can't wait."
Avelino sat where he was, running his tongue around his teeth. He felt some annoyance. It was his vanity that was piqued. He knew Janice loved him. He knew she would prefer to be able to leave other men alone. It was a simple physical compulsion that drove her off in this way. A mere question of flesh against strange flesh, vagina gutted by a strange penis that no principle of hers had ever forbade her to give way to. Pictures started forming in his mind of Provenza's slim, stripped body; he saw the tight little buttocks moving up and down between Janice's thighs. And with an effort he cut the picture from his mind and said to Theresa: "I think you're right. Don't let's wait."
Her blue eyes seemed to contract deeply at him a moment and then she slipped out of the car and came quickly round to the driver's seat.
She didn't say anything, didn't ask where they should go. She put the car quickly into gear and accelerated from the arena.
She drove with the boldness one would have expected from the look of her and Avelino, watching her long, well-groomed hands swing the wheel cast Janice from his mind and began to imagine those long, immaculate fingers stroking the limb of taut flesh between his legs. The limb began to solidify, become a positive part of him at the thought.
"We can have dinner at my place," she said, seeming to relax once they were clear of the broad avenues around the arena.
"You don't mind a little tete-a-tete?" she asked playfully.
"The closer the better," Avelino said with a smile.
They drove away from the port direction towards the height of Tibidabo, towering over the whole city, its lower slopes covered with blocks of flats and its summit crowned by a great children's and tourists amusement park.
Where the flats came to an end and trippers took the little funicular which climbed its laborious way between steep, wooded slopes to the top, Theresa branched off on the road which also ran to the top in an interminable series of winds.
On either side of the road great houses reclined. Every phase of architecture reflected the individuality and wealth of the owners. It was here that Theresa lived.
High above the flat expanse of the city, she spun the car from the quiet road into a gravel drive which ran straight into a large garage flanking a huge, terraced house. There was another car in the garage-and plenty of room for others.
"Your husband's car?" Avelino asked.
"No. That one's mine, too. He's taken his to Madrid with him."
She gave him a sly grin.
"He won't be back for a week."
"How about the maid?"
Avelino felt quite safe in making these assumptions now.
"Oh, all the staff are in league with me. I treat them very well."
Inside, the house was luxurious. Avelino was no longer impressed with luxury.
There was bronze, French pottery, oak furniture- the usual interior ingredients for a rich, wealthy, Spanish home.
They went through the house to a richly carpeted and ornamented lounge with a large terrace overlooking terraced grounds and the city. A large sweep of the coast was clearly visible and the whole port with its formations of visiting ships. It seemed to Avelino that every spot he visited in Barcelona was better than the last.
Theresa poured drinks from a sideboard and went out to give orders to her staff.
Avelino wandered around the room, studying the leather-bound books which filled the walnut shelves on one side of the room, the ancestral portraits spaced on the walls. He wondered what his mother would say of such luxury and knew in the moment of wondering that she would blame the loose lives of their owners on the luxury they enjoyed.
Theresa re-appeared after a while and poured fresh drinks, inviting Avelino to help himself when he felt inclined. He had got into the habit of drinking Scotch, which, prohibitive in price, was a favorite drink among the wealthy classes in Spain, and after two long shots he felt his stomach warmed and his mind filled with eager anticipation and confidence. . Theresa had changed into a long black evening dress which clasped her body tightly, particularly her full hips and made the blue of her eyes seem to glint with a wicked vividness.
The dress was low cut, exposing the upper part of her bosom and when she sat opposite him and leaned occasionally forward, Avelino could see deep down the front to the flat portion of her body between the outward curving of her breasts.
Aware of the avid dropping of his eyes from time to time, she smiled at him as they chatted. She was surrounded by a great aura of invitation.
Outside, the dusk began to fall like a shadow and Theresa turned on a couple of wall-lights.
"Have another drink," she said and Avelino suddenly felt that she was a great, contented female cat who had the mouse where she wanted him and was looking forward to the feast. And then he wondered which of them could really be called the prey.
The ice tinkled in the glass as she added: "Would you like to pour me one as well?"
He took the drink over to her and she leaned forward beneath him, not looking at him, but knowing his eyes were on her breasts. Her skin was peach colour in the light and looked lusciously smooth. Nearly the whole of each breast was exposed in a voluminous jut of flesh and Avelino had an overpowering desire to reach down and draw his fingers over them.
She reached up to take the glass, but instead of taking it she caught his fingers, pressing them in hers against the glass. She looked up at him and her face was a mask of desire and her lips parted slowly. Her lower lip jutted fully, impudently, so that he felt he wanted to crush it. He felt he wanted to crush the smooth perfection of her breasts. He wanted to crush her whole smooth, hidden beauty.
He bent quickly and kissed her, and her mouth devoured him as her tongue shot into his mouth. His fingers had relaxed on the glass and she knocked it from his hand and caught his head in her long, slim fingers. The glass, with its contents, thudded onto the carpet and was ignored.
Avelino kissed her neck and she flung her head back breathing with passion. Her fingers dug sharply into his hair.
He moved his hands up from her satin-covered waist to the cliff of her satin-covered breasts-and then above to the exposed flesh. His fingers tingled and his penis throbbed as he felt the mounds under his hands, warm and firm. He slipped his hand down the front of her dress, straightening slightly so that he would watch its progress between the fleshy hills. Her breasts were warm on either side of his hand. As his fingers moved out over the intimate under-slopes of her bosom and brushed her erect nipples, she turned her face towards his loins and her mouth moved against the mound of his penis, bulging like a hidden revolver through his trousers.
Avelino's hand trembled with the warm contact of his fingers with her body, and through his trousers she bit his pulsing organ gently.
She was sliding about a little on the armchair, rubbing her thighs together, then opening them as if to admit an invisible rod of fleshly penetration. Avelino, too, began to breathe heavily through his nostrils.
But suddenly she seemed to pull herself together. She took her head away from its objective and, with lips still apart to expel the breath of her checked passion, gently pulled his hand from her dress.
"Dinner will be nearly ready," she said unsteadily. "It will be better afterwards."
Avelino kissed her ear.
"I'm afraid I shall wolf my food," he said.
She kissed his cheek and shortly afterwards a servant announced that dinner was served.'
They ate the meal in an oak-paneled room illuminated only with candles. Servants entered noiselessly from time to time with fresh courses for one of the finest meals Avelino had ever had. Vintage wine gave off sparkling rays of yellow and later rich red light and opposite Avelino, Theresa's hair glinted darkly and her eyes like the sun reflecting in the Mediterranean.
Wine white, wine red, her hair glinting darkly, her eyes like the sun on the blue water and soon these things were the only thing Avelino was aware of as if they were part of a whole which surrounded him.
Coffee and liqueurs came and the coffee pulled him round a little but not all that much.
When, finally, they stood up, Avelino swayed and had to put his hands on the table to steady himself.
The servants were dismissed to retire for the night somewhere in the far depths of the enormous house and then Theresa came towards him. Her face came at him with the blue eyes gleaming wickedly. They grew bigger and seemed to engulf him and then they were mingling with his and he was lost in them and could no longer see them, only feel the soft, hot pressure of full lips bruising his.
"You look a little tight," she whispered.
Avelino started to answer, decided it was easier not to and grinned at her instead.
Holding her head back from him, she stared into his eyes. What she saw seemed to satisfy her and her own blue fires with their jet pupils looked almost maniacal as she seized his arm and began to pull him from the room.
Avelino walked unsteadily with her as she led him through a short corridor at the end of which was a big double door. She opened the doors and switched on a light. The light was dim, heavily shaded and Avelino stepped unseeingly into the gloom.
Behind him, Theresa closed the doors gently and arranged a screen across them, screwing it into place.
Avelino turned and watched her dumbly. The strangeness of her activity seemed, at last, to clear his head very slightly.
"What're you doing?" he asked.
"These, my dear, are soundproof screens. The whole room is soundproof."
She turned towards him with a devilish smile. "They mean that no noise in here can be heard outside."
Avelino stared at her stupidly as she came close to him again, her eyes seeming to hypnotize him.
"You see sometimes I make a lot of noise. I like to be whipped. I like to be raped."
Avelino felt as if he were in a fantasy, as if, perhaps, he really had drunk so much wine that he'd fallen into a stupor and was dreaming.
And then he began to forget that he might be dreaming only, because whether it was dream or reality, her face was pressed against his, her arms holding him and her tongue was working over his skin as if it were covered with honey.
As her tongue caressed his lips, his cheeks, his ears, and her face moved round him like a merry-go-round, her body swept into his and rubbed against him, her hips making little jerks against him as if they were already in the throes of intercourse.
Avelino's whole body was flushed. No part of him was hotter, more alive than his erection which seemed to have sprung upon him almost unaware.
He clasped Theresa's buttocks, rotund and silky through the satin, and began to press and stroke them, straining them in at his hips. She was breathing as if with fear and her eyes seemed to have narrowed to blind pinpoints. With jerky movements as if each pressure of his hand upon her destroyed the cohesion of her limbs, she began to undress him. , Avelino helped her drunkenly, a great snowball of excitement in his chest that grew and grew and turned to ice. And then his last vestige of clothing was being dragged from him and his genitals were in her hands, throbbing there as she looked at them with a vicious intensity.
Her voice came through his blindness of lust like a lascivious poem learned by heart and recited regularly but each time with a white-hot conviction.
"Now you're going to throw me on that bed and tear off my clothes. I shall fight you, but it doesn't matter if they get torn." She paused, breathing unsteadily as if she was fighting for breath.
"And then you'll strap me down to the bed with the wrist and ankle straps that are attached to it-and then you'll beat me. You'll beat me a dozen times with the implement you'll find on the dresser over there, no matter how much I scream and beg you to stop."
She paused again and her fingers dug continuously into the muscular flesh of his shoulders.
"After that you'll let me free and rape me. You'll rape me because by that time you'll want it badly- and I shall fight you again."
Avelino heard the words and a sadistic fire fought in his veins with a disgust and horror.
But before his thoughts had cleared, before he had time even to signify consent or non-consent, Theresa crushed herself against him as if the plan were prescribed and inevitable and he would follow it to the detail.
The satin of her dress, outlining her hips and thighs, brushed against Avelino's penis with a rough urgency and he caught her shoulders and pushed her towards the bed in one corner of the room.
With a quick movement, she twisted out of his grasp and, with the flat of her hand slapped him hard across the back and buttocks.
The stinging weight of the blows filled Avelino with a sexual fury. It hardened the soft, tenderness of feeling he usually had at the start of an intercourse. It also lifted some of the vagueness from his head. If this was what she wanted he'd give it to her without pulling his punches.
With a swift movement he grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards him. Her hand descended in a smarting slap across his face and he winced. That blow removed his last inhibition and he jerked her round so that her back was against him. She tried to claw at his thighs, but he pinioned her arms against her sides, lifted her bodily and staggered with her to the bed.
She uttered a scream and swore at him and then the breath was knocked from her body as he flung her face down onto the coverlet.
Such was her opposition that Avelino forgot that he was obeying instructions. He did what had been suggested blindly as if it stemmed from his own passion, which, in a short time, it did. The same was true for Theresa. After the first consciously given slap to Avelino's buttocks and his rough answer, she, too, felt as if she were battling for life and honour: an artificial situation contrived by will until it became no longer will but sheer brute passion.
Avelino flung himself onto her on the bed and whipped her dress up her thighs. She tried to jerk him off her, but he sat on her back pressing her into the bed and he was able after some difficulty to edge the tight dress up over her hips. Underneath she wore white, transparent panties which enclosed the rounded mount of her rump in a lovingly tight embrace. He gave it several furious slaps for good measure and it squirmed under his hand and Theresa cried out a choked cry, from under him.
Avelino shifted his position, rolling off her and then straddling her bottom. She writhed her hips and he fell onto them, his thighs knocked from under him. She tried to turn face upwards, but he pinioned her shoulders to the bed and regained his position, quickly ripping her dress straight up from the waist so that it swathed her struggling arms and muffled her cries.
She struggled out of it to free her arms and, while she struggled, he had unhooked her brassiere at the back and pulled it away...
Her arms free, she twisted again, with a furious strength and Avelino fell off her and crashed onto the thickly carpeted floor.
She leapt onto him in a slapping, clawing whirlwind of naked limbs and he knocked her aside with the flat of his hand across the side of her head. She climbed to her feet and he caught her around the knees as she tried to trick him and pulled her down again.
Slapping her, his face contorted with fury from the blows which still stung all over his body and the bruise which ached on his arm, he forced her onto her face again, wrenching her arms behind her back.
She screamed with the spasm of pain and kicked her heels up at him as he snatched at the elastic top of her panties. She tried to wriggle her hips away from the warm pressure of his hand and, as he tried to take them off, they ripped.
Suddenly revealed, her buttocks twitched and tensed. Relaxed they were like to huge, smooth eggs.
Avelino's long baton of stiff flesh ached with .a great craving, he felt like having her now. It didn't matter where his penis went. Into her vagina, into her behind. It would all be the same if his need was filled.
But in the depths of his still bemused mind her words were imprinted like an absolute law and he heaved her to her feet and forced her down onto the bed again.
She continued to scream at him, mouthing oaths. He found the straps at the side of the bed: little loops of leather which could be pulled taut and clipped. He got one wrist in, fettering it so that the thong cut into the wrist as her other fist flailed into his back. He turned to the other arm, slapping her across the buttocks as he did so, feeling the soft flesh yield beneath his palm, slapping her again for the sheer sensuous pleasure of it.
And then her wrists were manacled, her arms stretched out to the head of the bed.
The attachment of her ankles took only a few seconds and then he lurched up from the bed and stared down at her. She was breathing like the bulls he'd watched during the afternoon and she vainly wriggled her limbs as if she were quivering with excitement rather than trying to break free.
Her back was stretched and the fine, white skin pulled in to a slim, tight waist. It was the hips that were magnificent-and the buttocks. The hips were broad and sculpted in smooth, well-covered lines; the buttocks rounded and large like two trembling blancmanges.
Her ankles were tied to the bottom corners of the bed and between her open thighs, Avelino could see the pink folds of flesh into which his lustful truncheon would penetrate. It was wet, now, from the wild excitement of the struggle.
He groped on the dresser beside the bed and found the implement. It was a stiff leather rod with a great, flat front of whippy leather in the shape of a palm leaf attached to it.
Avelino picked it up and lashed it through the air. Theresa uttered a little shriek at the sound and her buttocks tensed. All the muscles of her body seemed to tense.
"This is what you like," Avelino said softly.
There was a juicy slap of flesh meeting leather as he brought the whip down across her buttocks. She screamed and jerked the top part of her body a few centimetres off the bed, crushing her hips further into the coverlet.
As the frond licked a second time across the quivering, jellyfish sweep of her buttocks she screamed again, but with agony and greater urgency.
"Oh, no, no! Stop. I've changed my mind!" she yelled. "I don't want it."
Avelino ignored her words. He supposed this happened every time- and he was sure there must be many times.
As he slashed the whip down again and again across rump, and thighs, Avelino himself, felt a pang of sexual thrill grip his loins. She was squirming there, screaming, her naked flesh writhing, completely at his mercy.
He could do as he liked with her and she couldn't get away, couldn't defend herself or stop him in any way.
She kept screaming, begging him to stop. She offered him money, offered him her paintings, her body, anything if he would only stop the torture.
Panting, Avelino raised the whip again and again, until her behind and thighs were a stinging red waste of flesh. No weals appeared; the frond of leather was too broad. The whole area of the hips became instead a furious deep blush of colour.
He forgot how many strokes he'd given her until gradually her screams began to get through in words to his brain.
"That's too many, too many!"
She was weeping and screaming together. Her face was wet with tears.
Avelino gave her two more lashes so that he could watch her body jerk and push into the bed for a last time and then he let the whip fall from his hand.
Theresa lay on the bed, crushed and weeping, her fingers clenching and unclenching. In her masochistic excitement she had discharged and the sluice of her loins was running slowly down her thighs.
"You brute, you brute," she murmured between her heaving breath and moans.
Avelino stood watching her for a moment, his eyes running avidly over the inflamed flesh of her loins and the white, nippled-peaked hummocks of her breasts, visible now that she had relaxed.
Something dripped on his foot and when he looked down he saw that seminal juices had already oozed from the tip of his penis.
He sat on the bed beside the sprawled figure. He ran his hands over her buttocks, shocked at the heat of them. He felt between the wet thighs, grasping the thick flesh in a handful. And then he lay along the soft back and passed his hands under the body to fondle the cool breasts.
His organ, jutting against the cleavage of the buttocks, was as hot as their induced heat. He crushed himself against the sore, protesting backside. He considered pulling the buttocks apart with his hands and thrusting his rod into the tight little slit between them. But, like a commandment, the word rape pulsed in his head.
Theresa had stopped weeping now and her breath was more normal.
"I'm going to untie you and rape you," Avelino whispered in her ear.
"I'll kill you first," she snapped back at him.
He chuckled and undid the thongs at her ankles. She stretched her ankles about as he unlaced her wrists.
She rolled over to face him, but the strength had gone out of her hands as she tried to push him away.
Her breasts jutted grandly, like two pyramids and he clasped her wrists and lowered his head to suck the nipples voraciously.
She lay still for a few moments, moving her wrists gently in his hands and then, with the circulation restored, she began to struggle violently. She didn't seem to mind the pain of her back and bottom and she actually threw Avelino from her and came over on top of him wrestling.
Avelino was so excited by the nude, sexual fight that he almost urinated. He wasn't sure that he hadn't a little.
He grasped her biceps and heaved. She clutched his neck, trying not to fall back and then her grip was broken and she collapsed on her back and Avelino scrambled onto her.
Her mouth was working and her eyes actually contained fear as he forced her shoulders down on the bed and worked his hips in between her thighs. She flung her loins up at him, trying to unhorse him, but Avelino slumped heavily on her and soon all she could do was wriggle her thighs and try vainly to kick him.
The pulsing in his penis found an echo in his temples as he writhed his hips up into position. His great jack of rigidity slipped wetly against her thighs as she squirmed in a furious fit of desperation.
She reacted like a young virgin. As if the end of the world would come if he penetrated her. Little embryo screams choked in her throat as he smothered them with his mouth. She tried to bite his lips and he smothered her more.
He felt the wet warmth of the opening which led up into the intimate channel of her body and, moving his knees a little nearer to her crotch, he jabbed thickly into her.
"Oh no! No!"
Then he was filling her with his bludgeon, forcing it in to the hilt without pity.
Such were her reactions that he actually felt as if he were initiating an innocent virgin and he redoubled the fury of his long thrusts at the thought.
Theresa continued to struggle, pushing his chest, writhing her hips, but the weight of him on her was too much and she only opened herself wider.
Her passage, inside, was dry at first from her previous climax, and Avelino found the fleshy opposition excruciating, painfully wonderful as he had found the penetration of Juanita's anus.
He drove in and in with slow, brutal strokes, powerful and grinding, and soon the passage became slippery, more amenable.
Theresa's mouth opened, as if in horror as he sucked his lips from her and his lips oscillated in their drubbing of her inlet. She was lost, lost, her eyes seemed to say, although she battered against him yet in weakening efforts to break from the coupling.
Her passage, as she struggled-putting herself, inevitably, in masochistic positions-became wider and wetter. She began to gasp with her fighting and Avelino, spurred on by the opposition felt his boring of her hole ringing in his ears.
He increased the pressure of his hands on her shoulders until she squealed. He slammed his mouth down on hers once more. He felt his great spike expanding, inflaming, all the pent up emotions of the beating and fighting swirling down to his loins. Theresa's struggles became stronger; he had to hold her more forcibly. Swirling, swirling, a maelstrom of sensation burning through the inner tubes. Theresa was crying out, now, as if she were on the brink of hell. Her cries tumbled one after the other from lips that he's been unable to stay with in his passion. And then as his flood of sperm trembled on that moment of sensation before it shot from his hot, palpitating organ, Theresa gave a long choked scream and her struggle became a sudden effervescence of convulsion.
Her thighs were flying back and between them there seemed nothing but a great, gaping space leading up into her body.
She choked on her scream as if she would be sick and with a last needle point of sharp pain, his sperm gushed from him to flood the great mouth between her legs.
He pushed and pushed until every last drop of liquid had been dragged from his penis and then he relaxed onto her and lay, with her breasts pointing into his chest, in an agitated subsidence.
Theresa pulled away from him and lay with her legs pressed together, arm over her eyes as if she were in a trance.
Avelino lay there. He lay still, recovering and now, now that passion had gone, he felt the full impact of the incredible procedure they'd been through. He had virtually raped her! It had been a put-up job, but in both their minds it had been rape during its duration.
He felt slightly sick. He felt as if they would never say another word to each other. What could a woman say to someone who had raped her except to call him "Beast"?
Avelino felt he should get up, get dressed and go. He wondered how Theresa felt, but he couldn't bring himself to speak to her.
They lay still for so long that Avelino had almost fallen asleep and then she rolled over to him, taking the arm from her face.
"That was wonderful," she said, and her eyes were shining with pleasure and gratitude. "The best rape I ever underwent."
Avelino stifled a desire to laugh at the expression and tried to prevent his astonishment at her change of attitude from showing in his face.
"You really enjoyed it?" he asked. "I was afraid I hurt you."
"Of course I enjoyed it. Didn't you?" she asked.
"Well-yes," Avelino admitted.
"You see," she explained. "It satisfies man's fundamental brutality and his desire to possess something that's eluding him. It satisfies woman's desire to be ruthlessly pursued, ruthlessly desired and her need to be humiliated."
"How long have you been being raped?" Avelino asked.
"Ever since I got bored with normal intercourse," she replied The next day Avelino left Theresa's palatial house after promises to return in a day or so and headed back to Janice's apartment.
It was with a slight sense of guilt that they met each other. Neither of them discussed what had taken place at the bull-ring, neither mentioned the other's disappearance. Avelino felt no jealousy at all. It didn't matter to him if Janice had been penetrated by fifteen men during the night. It left him cold. Sex had become something lacking in mystery and exclusiveness. He was a complete master of his emotions regarding his relationships.
Janice, although she displayed no signs of jealousy, reacted by being quite possessive and very loving for a period of several days. She was so solicitous that Avelino felt bound, from sheer kindness, to make ingenious excuses to get away from the apartment to see, in turn, Theresa and Juanita.
For some time before this, Avelino had felt strong and powerful. There had been no need to hide anything. Women had expected nothing from him but a night or several of lovemaking. But in the days which followed his night with Theresa he began to find himself caught up in a web of lies and uncertainty.
He told Janice he was going off on trips with men friends he had made, or, perhaps that he'd been unexpectedly invited to a party during a lone evening's drinking. The fact that she obviously didn't believe him-or at most only half believed him-began to give him feelings of guilt.
Theresa, after the first few rapes he committed on her, began to pester him to go off with her to Tangier. She was fed up with her husband, she said, and she was fed up with a dissolute life. She wanted to be raped only by him.
And even Juanita, after her initial cleverness, began to argue with him at first about his stupidity in staying with Janice and then to plead with him to live with her until she burst into tears and clutched him as if she would keep him by force. She, too, said she needed a single, satisfying relationship. She had found it with him and, since knowing him, had offered her anus to no other.
Avelino was flabbergasted by the sudden switch in the attitudes of these women. He tried not to be unkind to any of them and consequently lied again or made half-promises which only added to the confusion.
He could not make a decision to leave Janice as he really felt very fond of her still and he was only too aware that once either of the others had "obtained" him they would go seeking their sex elsewhere, bored as they were by any sort of status quo. He began to feel sorry for them-and then sorry for himself that they were making his life so difficult after it had promised to be so simple and wonderful.
It was Juanita who told him the secret of Janice's financial source. She told him in a fit of fury after he had said, once again, that he couldn't leave Janice. She told him with her dark eyes blazing and the thin streaks of tears smudging the pale, sculptured beauty of her face.
"At least if you lived with me," she cried, "your money would be clean. There'd be no poor wretches being tortured or starved to enable you to live a life of luxury."
"What do you mean?" Avelino said in astonishment.
"So she hasn't told you what price in human misery is paid so that she can keep an apartment fit for royalty?"
"What are you talking about?"
Juanita flung her long, black hair back from her face and her eyes were haughty with disgust.
"Janice is one of the gang Of brothel-owners v/ho pay their girls starvation wages and take all the rest of the earnings so that they can eat chicken and duck on alternate evenings."
Avelino stared at her, too taken aback to be disgusted or horrified.
"And that's not all," Juanita continued, her lips drawn into a thin, determined line. "She's also one of the same gang which abducts young girls and puts them at the mercy of sadistic men-that brings a fortune into her purse."
Avelino walked over to her and caught her arms. He gave her a little shake.
"You're telling me some fantastic story because you're jealous of Janice," he said fiercely. "There's not a word of truth in it."
"Yes, I'm jealous all right," Juanita declared, defiantly. "I'm really jealous for once and so I don't care what I tell you about her. But it's true, believe me it's true-and if you don't believe me I can show you it's true."
She sat down heavily in a chair and Avelino stared at her, speechless, wondering where this was going to lead, feeling he didn't want to get involved.
"So what?" he said at last. "Everybody knows there are brothels in Barcelona. So what?"
He was a little shocked if it were true that Janice took a cut from a organized vice, but he'd become sufficiently sophisticated now for it not to fill him with a prudish fear and horror.
"Yes, everyone knows there are brothels in Barcelona," Juanita retorted. "But not everyone knows they get only about a fifteen per cent cut of their takings. And not everyone knows there's a chateau up on the inland plateau where the twenty or so girls who disappear every year are held prisoner to be raped, buggered, burnt, whipped, have everything inflicted on them by rich men who pay Janice and her crew a fortune for the privilege."
Avelino's veneer of sophistication began to peel at the description. He had been proud and excited to join the international set with their indulgence of senses and orgiastic tete-a-tete. Everyone was willing and enjoying the exhilaration of the senses. But at the thought of such crude violence on unwilling girls and of the starvation of poor women who made almost nothing from their work, his peasant blood came to the fore. All his old feelings for the poor, the down-and-out, the underdogs, flowed back into his head.
"How do you know this?" he asked.
"Because the brothels are an open secret and because I belong to the set which is permitted to visit the chateau," she replied.
"You've been to this chateau?"
"Yes."
"Why should it interest you?"
"Because they smoke hashish there, too, and I wanted to see what it was like. I never went a second time-although my membership card is still valid. I was too disgusted by what I saw."
"But how do they get hold of these girls-and why do the prostitutes allow themselves to be robbed of their earnings?"
Juanita gave a little laugh in which scorn was like a slap.
"Of course I forgot you were from the country," she mocked. "Otherwise you might know something of the thuggery, the killings even, which take place when some poor, lost girl tries to hold back some of her earnings. As for the girls in the chateau, they come from the country where nobody can make a complaint that anyone in authority takes seriously, or else they're orphans, or girls living away from home whose landladies couldn't care less about their sudden departures as long as they get their rent."
"But this is criminal. People can't get away with that sort of thing!"
Avelino was flabbergasted.
"See who the criminals are and you'll realize how they can get away with it. They're the people with money, title, power."
"But you're one of them. How can you say these things. I don't believe you."
"I can say these things because I don't approve of the violent, unjust methods, because people like Janice and Count Alvarez disgust me, because I want you to be disgusted too."
Avelino released her arms and walked out onto the balcony.
For the first time he felt in his bones his own corruption. He was now a part of this vice. He got his money from a woman who helped to run it, who laughed and drank and ate and lived a rich life from the misery she created.
He looked out over the roofs and spires of Barcelona -the only big city he'd known-and it suddenly seemed small and unprotected and miserable and dirty. He thought of his own little town where nobody had time for the luxuries of eating wonderful food or drinking other than home-made anis, or reading books or learning another language or making huge sums of money; where life went simply and tranquilly by with often the small storm of a family row or a bad haul of fish or not enough meat to eat; but where there was peaceful order and lack of ambition beyond the confines of the town and the capacity to go on living with the essentials. In that moment he hated the big city with its beggars with sores on their heads and crutches forming a pillow when they slept on the pavements, with its prostitutes who found themselves caught in a web of misery, gaoled for life in their mistake, with its rich men in sleek cars who went on and on becoming richer and richer no matter how and creating the circumstances which led to other people's misery. In that moment he felt philosophical for the first time in his life and he was filled with self-disgust.
"I want to see this chateau," he said, walking back into the room. "I want to see what's going on with my own eyes."
"All right. If you don't believe me I'll take you there. I'll get you accepted and I'll pay your fee-with pleasure."
"And as soon as possible."
"All right."
When Avelino left her, Juanita sat back in an armchair and put her feet on a padded stool. The shortest term membership to the club would cost her 100,000 pesetas-enough to last a peasant for his lifetime. But she would pay for Avelino without a thought of the expense. It was the only way she could hope to get him for herself.
Avelino said nothing of his discovery to Janice. For the next few days he watched her, hoping for some clue as to the truth of the story he'd been told. But none was forthcoming.
It was the thought of the chateau which most filled him with horror, but, while awaiting the opportunity to visit it he was drawn to the observation of prostitutes on the Ramblas.
They seemed gay enough. Many spent the night in clubs or bars frequented by American sailors. He noticed they drank nothing but a cheap Coca-Cola until they were picked up.
It was at two or three in the morning that they began to look faded and afraid. Then their eyes would rise almost desperately to every newcomer and they would sink into tired, hopeless conversations with the barman who might, if the patron were not about, slip them a free cognac to brighten them up.
Sometimes, bored with sitting in one place and frightened of losing a client in the street, they would drag themselves to their feet, put on a bright mask of welcome and trip coquettishly into the Ramblas. He wondered what they could be like in bed after such hopeless, endless waiting with starvation tomorrow if nobody took them. Surely they must be mechanical, spiritless. But maybe sheer gratitude or hopes of making a regular client filled them with a wild abandon.
Many of them looked hard, and their eyes, while smiling at men, mocked them and hated them at the same time. But others had a softer look as if, even to the world that used them, they were prepared to turn the other cheek.
It was with one of the latter that Avelino decided to discover the truth of their existence.
She had been sitting at one end of the bar sucking Coca-Cola through a straw and watching him from time to time through a long mirror behind the counter.
Her face was kind and not unattractive and she looked a motherly type.
Catching her eye in the mirror, Avelino wondered how old she was. She could be about twenty-four, but the occasional lines in her face suggested perhaps thirty-five.
She had made no approach to him-very few made approaches; they just watched and waited-but when he eventually looked along the almost empty bar and asked her if she'd like a drink, she smiled and came immediately and sat on the stool beside him like some pet dog who'd been summoned.
Avelino felt a little nervous. He had had nothing to do with prostitutes before. But his growing experience with women had begun to give him more confidence and savoir faire than he would ever have expected to possess and the woman was so gently kind that he felt a friendly conspiracy with her almost at once.
She drank only another Coca-Cola and he wondered if she felt terribly tired. There was no point in asking her.
"Do you live in Barcelona?" she asked, her eyes flitting over his well-cut suit.
"I came here just a little while ago from the north." "You got a better job?"
"Yes-a bit better. The suit is a borrowed one. I went to a friend's wedding today." "It fits you very well."
The tone was gentle and knowing as if she'd said that he wasn't to lie to her about his wealth, she'd settle for the price of a meal. He felt ashamed that he'd lied, but he was determined to find out, if possible, how little she'd accept.
She perched on the stool beside him, smiling at him as if they were lovers, and there was nothing cheap about her manner. Her clothes, too, were not cheap looking, not vulgar like the breasty sweaters and buttock-gripping skirts so often flaunted. Just a simple white blouse with lace frills and a loose black, silk skirt with a little black high-heeled shoes. Avelino suddenly wanted to go to bed with her.
"You feel a little lonely that your friend got married?" she said. "He was a very close friend?"
"Yes. And his wife was very attractive-like you."
She smiled at the compliment as if he might have meant it. She placed a small hand on his on the counter and he began to wonder what she was like under the blouse and skirt.
"You want to come home with me?"
"Perhaps."
"How much will you give me?" Her dark eyes were sweet and it was as if she were asking her husband for a bunch of flowers.
"I haven't much money. How much do you want?"
"Three hundred pesetas-is it possible?"
Perhaps, Avelino thought, she had got this sum from Americans-or maybe, even, rich tourists from the country-but from the uncertainty of her voice it was obvious she didn't really expect it from him. It was enough to buy him and Janice a meal in a first class restaurant-a fairly lavish meal.
He pulled a face.
"I'm not a rich tourist. I told you I even had to borrow this suit." "Two hundred."
"I can't give you more than fifty. That's more than I can afford."
She hesitated. She was battle-scarred deer hemmed in by the hounds once more. But her eyes contained no malice at all.
"No. I can't do it for that."
Her face was almost Madonna-like, white and serene and Avelino felt prepared to pay five-hundred pesetas to see it break down into wild sexual passion. Nonetheless he got to his feet and paid for the drinks.
"That's the most I can do. I'm almost broke," he said.
She watched him pay without speaking.
"Can't you give me any more than that?" she asked as he picked up the change.
"No. I really can't. So I'd better say goodnight."
The woman glanced around at the bar clock. It said three a.m.
"All right," she said, collecting her bag and taking his arm. "Let's go."
Avelino felt sick that she'd had to accept such a small sum. If she only got a small percentage it wouldn't even be enough to eat on in the city next day. She didn't know he was going to give her more, but her reaction was one of simple charm and friendliness. She must have accepted the fact that he'd really borrowed the suit and really wasn't rich.
"Do you have anywhere to go?" he asked her.
"I know several places. The room will cost about thirty-five pesetas."
"All right. We'll have to walk. That won't leave me with the money for a taxi."
"That's all right. They're not far."
They walked away from the lights and noise of the Ramblas through narrow streets crowded with hotels asleep.
She came up to his shoulder and as they walked she slipped her hand into his as if she felt that he was young and wanted him to know she would take care of him. Maybe it was all part of a charm technique, Avelino decided.
This portion of Barcelona was quiet, dead until the morning, outwardly at least. They turned north to the better part of the city and Avelino felt quite drawn to the little waif of humanity, so tranquil and pleasant with her high heels clip-clapping through the dark silence.
"It's not far," she said, as if to calm an impatience he might have to get his return from her.
After a few minutes, they turned off a large, quiet square into a narrow street flanked by seven-story buildings. She rang a bell outside an impressive stone building and they waited.
There was a pause and then a grill opened in the door which was immediately unlatched. A light flashed on in the vestibule and the woman followed the man who'd let them in to what looked like a hotel reservation desk.
The man was middle-aged. He looked like the caretaker and he hardly glanced at Avelino. The woman spoke to him for a few seconds and them came back to Avelino.
"They have a room and it's thirty-five pesetas. You have to pay for that now."
Avelino gave her the money as if she were some sort of intermediary and she passed it to the caretaker. He didn't look at them as she took Avelino's hand and drew him past to a lift.
They went up to the fourth floor and emerged on a red-carpeted landing with red curtain-draped doors leading off. The woman pushed the curtain aside and unlocked the door.
Avelino followed her into the room and was astonished at the luxury.
The dim lighting came from two permanent lamps set into the frosted glass tops of two bedside tables. From their soft beams, he could see the thick red carpet which completely covered the floor and the long mirrors which flanked the big bed. The lower part of the room was of darkly varnished wood above which buff-colored walls were dotted with green cactus patterns. The furnishing was tasteful and abundant and the woman pulled aside a curtain in one wall to indicate a wash basin and bidet and beyond that again a shower room. He tested the water and found it was hot. Everything seemed to confirm the story of unlimited wealth behind the organization.
Avelino took off his coat and shoes, wasting time about folding his coat, nervously waiting for the woman to get undressed.
She stripped except for her panties and brassiere and Avelino was glad he'd decided to leave the careful questioning until later. Her Madonna face smiled at him as she lay back on the bed, waiting for him to undress. The rest of her skin was as white as her face.
Avelino took off everything but his brief pants and went towards the bed. The woman looked at him admiringly.
"You have a very beautiful body," she said. "Are you an athlete?"
Avelino felt this must be quite a compliment coming from a woman who saw so many bodies and he lowered himself onto her.
"I swim quite a lot."
Her hands moved around his torso as he covered her, feeling the body of an athlete and her legs went around his hips and pressed them. His penis was hot, bulging under the tight pressure of his pants and he wanted to strip and plunge into her Madonna's body to relieve the heat.
"How old are you?" she asked and he knew that for some reason she was really interested. "Twenty-one."
"Just a chico," she said and she said it as if she were a big sister who was about to initiate her young brother incestuously into the ways of the world.
She pushed him gently away from her and went into the shower room. He heard her on the bidet and slipped his pants off. His penis cleaved the air as if gasping for cool air after an underwater heat of pressure.
When she walked back into the room, feet rustling daintily on the thick carpet, she was naked.
She was slim, very slim. There was certainly no possibility that she overate. Her breasts were small, but firm enough hardly to jump as she walked. Her hips were long and sinewy and the hair at the junction of her legs was curly and dark as the neatly rolled hair of her head.
"Oh-it's big," she said with a chuckle as she saw Avelino half sitting, half lying on the bed. Another compliment, he thought, as her eyes smilingly devoured his organ.
She threw herself down on the bed, almost joyfully, he thought. It seemed that she was happy, and he told her that she looked happy.
"There are some men I don't like," she said. "They're coarse and hard. They treat me as if I'm some stone statue with so much rubber in certain places. There are others I like because they're not so hard. I think you're probably quite nice."
It was just as if they were innocent boy and girl, Avelino thought. She was probably a much nicer person herself than many of the women he'd met in the last month or so.
He leaned over and kissed her and there seemed nothing commercial about their relationship-at least it was easy to forget it was commercial.
She kissed him back, opening her mouth, and her hand went straight down to his penis. In his arms she was soft and exciting and her attitude was tender and passionate. She was so unexpectedly sweet that Avelino was slow to enter her. He held her to him, feeling completely protective.
"Are you ready?" she asked.
He held her head in his hands and looked at her dark eyes so soft and generous and he was forced to choke back questions which sprang readily to his tongue.
She drew gently away from him so that he could see the whole of her. Facing him, she drew back her legs. Her hands went down between her thighs and her fingers pulled apart the pink lips of her vagina.
"Come on," she said. "Don't you want to go in there?"
Avelino stared at the down-covered junction of her thighs with, between them, the long slit of flesh which her fingers held open for him to penetrate and the first seminal liquids oozed from the mushroom head of his organ. He slithered towards her and she caught his arm of flesh as she lay back on the coverlet. One of her hands still held open the entrance to her tunnel of soft reception, the other guided his stiff snake to the spot.
As he slithered onto her, moving up her body so that her breasts were pushed back before his advance and then flattened under his body, she flung her legs wide.
As he entered her with crushing force on the first stroke she gave a long, low groan.
Lying beside her, later, Avelino reflected that sex with her had been very normal. She had simply wrapped her feet around his thighs and kept her mouth open. There had been none of the technique he had expected. Although it was true he didn't really know what he had expected. But it had been surprisingly good-because he had felt some sort of communion with her. A poor, rather nice woman trying to make a living in this way, not being in the least bitter. He felt he could understand how some men were able to live with prostitutes and feel close to them.
Now she lay with her head against his shoulder, eyes closed. Her profile was good, quite strong and almost beautiful.
She opened her eyes and smiled, seeing him watching her.
"Not tired?" she asked.
"Not at all!" he said. "Are you?"
"No."
"What time must we leave?"
"Oh, we can stay until midday. There is no hurry."
"Won't anyone want the room?"
"No. It's not a hotel, you know." She looked at him quizzically.
"Whose place is it then?" he asked.
"Ask me another. It belongs to the people to whom I belong, to whom we all belong in this business."
"What do you mean?" He decided to play innocent.
"Oh, I don't know. I don't understand it either."
"You have some sort of big boss?"
"I suppose so. But we only see the men who protect us and they're small fry. They don't know who owns these places and who gets the big rakeoff."
"Big rake-off? From what?"
"My dear, from us of course." She looked at him seriously. "It's really very complicated and all we know is that we get almost nothing of the money we're given."
Avelino's eyes opened wide in simulated surprise.
"That's disgusting," he said. "Why do you hand over your money?"
"Did you read about the Caleras killing two years ago?"
"I heard something about it."
"Well she got fed up with trying to make ends meet. She started withholding parts of her money, but the boys found out and beat her up. She was so mad that she set up by herself. Had her own place to work in. But they found out about that too. They wrecked the place and they killed her. They know everything that goes on. They know just how much we make-don't ask me how."
Avelino was startled. This was the sort of thing that Janice and the Count initiated. They were the people who got the rake-offs. An odd killing, an odd beating-up-what did it matter to them? They were safe, no doubt, far above it. There were probably a dozen intermediaries.
He looked back at the woman, sad, but resigned, accepting her fate.
"How much will you get from my fifty pesetas?" he asked gently.
"Oh, about five. They probably won't believe I made so little, but I have to buy potatoes and bread."
"Wouldn't it be better to take a job-in a shop, in a factory?"
"It's impossible now. They'd never let me. My life wouldn't be worth living if I tried to do that."
"God!" Avelino breathed. And he offered silent thoughts to the God in whom he thought he had no belief.
"One gets used to it," she said, smiling at his concern. "Things could be worse."
They slept for a while and the sun was out beyond the curtained windows when he woke up. He got dressed, leaving the woman dozing in the bed.
"You going?" she asked sleepily as he laced his shoes. "You know your way, or do you want me to show you."
"No, I'll find it. How much would you get from a thousand pesetas?"
"What a hope. I'd be rich. I'd get a hundred."
Avelino peeled a thousand peseta notes from his wallet and put it on the table beside the bed.
"You're rich," he said quietly.
He bent and kissed her on the forehead and left her staring after him, speechless with astonishment.
This time he went down the stairway. On one landing an old woman was cleaning and she made way for him. There were enough rooms in the place to make a small fortune for whoever it was who received the money for which the women worked.
He walked out into the clean sunlight and looked up at the grand, stone building. It looked eminently respectable-not that it mattered. He seemed to remember that in some countries prostitution was illegal.
Instead of heading back for Janice's apartment, Avelino caught a tram to Juanita's place on Tibidabo. He knew that if he saw Janice he'd have a row with her and he didn't want to have a row until he'd seen the rest of what was going on.
Juanita was out, so he let himself in with the key she'd given him and went to sleep on her bed.
She awakened him some time before lunch, when the heat was really beginning to wither the potted flowers on the balcony.
"Well. This is a delightful surprise," she said with a laugh of pleasure. "I'll go and get some things for lunch-if you'd like to eat here."
Avelino climbed sleepily from the bed.
"O.K. I'll take a bath while you're getting something."
At the door, Juanita turned, remembering something.
"By the way, you're now a member of the club at the chateau. They took my word for your good faith and we can go there any time you want to."
"Good. Maybe we could go there today."
"Fine. I'm not doing anything."
Soaking peacefully in Juanita's bath, Avelino tried to straighten things out in his mind. He lay back with his head just above the hot water and gazed at the whitewashed ceiling. He felt he had to do something to help the poor, bullied women from whom Janice and her accomplices made so much money, but he couldn't think of any way in which he could help. He thought until the water in the bath had turned lukewarm and he heard Juanita letting herself into the apartment, but he couldn't think of any way.
After lunch they left Barcelona in her car and drove north-west into the interior of the country. In an hour or two the car was weaving warily up into the mountains along a narrow gravel road on one side of which the olive terraces rose several hundred feet and on the other the ground crumbled away to a rocky valley.
Giant cacti stood like skeletons on the inside flank and often on the outer edge of the road red and white poles indicated dangerous bends.
"It's quite a secluded spot for a chateau," Juanita remarked.
They drove for perhaps another half hour, climbing like some determined insect up into the heights until the country began to flatten out far above sea level.
It was on a slight rise from the road that the chateau appeared in the distance. Square, buff-coloured, flying the Spanish flag prominently from a turret, it threw a short, sharp shadow onto the hillside behind.
Juanita turned the car off the road along a dusty, clay track which led directly to the main portal.
"It looks so harmless, doesn't it?"
"How many people will be there now?"
"Impossible to say. Quite a number I expect. The people who belong don't need to work."
As they approached and the chateau's huge proportions began to tower above them, Avelino saw that there was a dried-up moat all the way round.
Juanita stopped the car near the brink and hooted the horn.
After a few minutes an old drawbridge was let down and the heavy, iron doors of the castle swung open. "How do they know who we are?" Avelino asked. Juanita chuckled.
"Oh, they know. They've had a telescope on us since we left the main road."
Juanita parked the car inside the courtyard and an impassive Spaniard in the dress of a better-off peasant came over and, after a discreet examination, bowed them into the chateau.
"Don't forget-we're here because we enjoy it," Juanita whispered.
She led the way through the main hall, lined with tottering suits of armour and enormous murals of nude men and women which were obviously a recent addition.
At one end of the hall a small stairway gave onto the upper rooms of the chateau. Two men rose from stools at its foot and looked questioningly at Avelino.
"He's a new member," Juanita explained.
She gave particulars of Avelino and one of the men consulted a little leatherbound book which he drew from an inside pocket. After a few minutes he bowed, the other man followed suit and Juanita and Avelino passed on up the stairs.
The stairs ran into a corridor which appeared to encircle the upper floor. Many doors opened onto the corridor and it was on one of these that Juanita knocked.
A voice bade them enter and Avelino followed her into a small, airy room made light solely by a huge skylight which formed its ceiling.
A dapper little man, who Avelino had never seen before, was sitting behind a polished mahogany desk smiling at them. He got up and came around the desk, black suit with its razor creases fitting snugly to his body, black, patent leather shoes sparkling in the sunlight.
Juanita made the introductions and Senor Francesco Pommes shook Avelino's hand.
"Welcome and I hope you find satisfaction," he said, dark beady eyes grinning malignantly as they scrutinized the new member.
"You don't come very often, now," he said, turning to Juanita.
"I've been leading a quiet life."
Senor Pommes grin was a permanent mask. He turned back to Avelino.
"We have a number of fresh young girls," he said, "including one virgin who is to be initiated today. She is a poor girl from the south." He turned to Juanita. "The Count saw her on a trip."
"If you like to deal with the initiation ..." he continued, spreading his hands blandly towards Avelino.
"We decided we'd just like to watch for today," Juanita cut in. The grin deepened.
"Yes, it takes time to get rid of one's self-consciousness," he murmured. "Perhaps you will feel like taking an active part next time you come." His eyes flickered over Juanita as he spoke. They seemed pinpoints of evil.
"The initiation is to be in the main room," he went on. "I have some work to do if you will excuse me. I think you know the way." He shook hands again and grinned after them as they left.
As they passed down the corridor, Juanita explained that behind most of the doors young girls were kept prisoner for the use of the men who came. There were also some young boys for the pederasts and for older women who like to corrupt the virgin male. Any visitor could also couple with another visitor if both were agreed-as most of them were-Juanita explained.
"All the rooms are padded," she said. "That's probably why we can't hear any screams at the moment."
At one end of the corridor they turned off through a stone archway into a fresh wing of the chateau. The passage here was broader, vaulted, darker, unmodernized like the part they had just passed through.
"Looks untouched, doesn't it," Juanita said. "But the inside of this inner wall is also padded. The wall is about a foot thick in the first place."
Her voice echoed gloomily along the passage, seeming to linger in the dark shadows unbroken by the thin light from the arrow embrasures.
"I would never have guessed, even now, what sort of thing was going on here," Avelino whispered.
At one point the corridor widened into a deep alcove where a massive oak door opened towards the interior of the castle. Juanita felt along the wall in the hall darkness and pushed the almost unnoticeable bell. No sound trilled back from beyond.
They waited for a couple of minutes before a little section of the door snapped open at eye level. Nobody appeared to look out at them, but suddenly a dazzling light blinded them as a powerful torch was directed from inside.
After a few seconds the torch snapped off leaving them staring into a dim ghost of yellow light. The door swung quietly open before they were able to see again, and gentle hands guided them courteously into the room beyond.
By the time he was able to see properly, Avelino had been directed, with Juanita to a large armchair of olive-coloured velvet. There was a soft murmur of conversation around him and as his eyes grew reaccustomed to the shapes and sizes of things around him he was able to see that the hall was large and rug-covered except for a square section in the centre where the floor appeared to be made of a cloth-covered springy substance which was probably rubber. Anyone crossing the room almost bounced from the surface.
Around the walls arm-chairs like his were placed in a single rank facing inwards. Most of them were occupied and the sun which came through the thick glass of the domed skylight shone on the faces of some twenty men and about half that number of women.
The men were mostly paunchy with big loose-fleshed faces and the hard look of men who were used to dominating all around them. The women were mainly well-dressed, well-preserved aristocrats of about forty-five or fifty. There were also some youngish and very presentable girls among them. It seemed that young men hadn't enough money to join, or preferred their sex in stricter privacy.
"I believe this is only a small portion of the number which frequently comes," Juanita whispered to Avelino.
"Who are they?" he whispered back.
"Most of them are people who have a large capital which brings them in a large income. Others are very rich businessmen. I'm told that there are even some rich army officers, but I know few of them. I told you I only came once before."
Avelino wondered if she was telling him the truth about her own part in the activities at the chateau. Nonetheless he asked no further questions but contented himself with taking fresh stock of the room.
The women, he noticed, were fast to let him know how happy they would be to get him alone-or perhaps all together. Several of them stared at him fixedly and smiled whenever his eyes passed over them.
"They're all looking for a gigolo who's a sex magician," Juanita whispered contemptuously.
"What will happen?" Avelino asked. At the moment the whole thing was like a cocktail party minus the cocktails.
"The virgin will be raped there on the centre-piece of the floor. After that some of these people will do all sorts of things to her-perhaps here, perhaps in a private room, according to the individual taste."
"But what about those young women?" Avelino asked.
"They get terrific sexual excitement out of watching. Afterwards they'll go off with some of the men, or to find some boys. Perhaps some of them are Lesbians."
"Aren't they afraid of the whole thing getting around? How did I get in so easily, for instance?"
"Because you're a friend of mine, and I'm a friend of the Count and Janice. It's a great snowball of trust. Everybody vouches for everybody else."
Before Avelino could ask any further questions a soft flamenco rhythm began to flood into the room. It was a fierce switchback of sound rising and falling with the constant clacking of the castanets; a music which made the blood rise and sent surges of power through the body.
And, as hands clenched into fists and the men began to fix the women with lustful eyes, a girl was led, swaying drunkenly into the middle of the room from a side door.
She was struggling weakly, overcome more by her own drunkenness than the big hands of the man who held her. She was dressed in a silk house coat, which was loosely tied with a sash in the front. It was half off her already and under it the ripe contours of her body stood out in a bursting beauty. Her hair was long and dark like Juanita's and her face and body as brown as the peasant earth from which she'd been torn to become a plaything. Her oval face with its full lips and fine dark eyes looked dull and vacant now and she stumbled and almost fell as she was pushed roughly onto the springy stretch of floor.
"She's probably been given marijuana as well as being fed on whisky," Juanita said softly.
Her guardian was dressed only in a little pair of white pants from which his body bulged fleshily. He was a big man with a big-boned body which was running to fat. The bones of his face were big too, and his eyes as hard as any man's present.
All around the room the spectators were sitting forward on the edge of their seats, eyes gulping in the half uncovered beauty of the girl or the pants-covered bulge of the genitals of the man. The music continued in a low key.
As the girl had sprawled onto the rubbery floor her legs had fallen apart and the housecoat flapped back from her thighs revealing the coveted lips between her legs, the mass of dark hair covering the jut of her genitals. Men's hands clenched into fists as they stared at the slim lengths of her naked thighs and calves, tongues slipped over quivering lips.
With a lost, drunken cry, the girl tried to get to her feet. But the springiness of the floor, like a trapeze artiste's net threw her forward on her face and revealed the pear-shaped bulbs of her brown buttocks to the company.
Standing over her, the man pulled off his pants and the women gave long sighs of passion as his great penis swung rigidly into view, like the swinging boom of a yacht. His testicles dangled loosely in a great profusion of black, wiry hair, which ran from the base of his penis up to his chest.
He stood right over the girl, looking down on her soft-textured behind, flexing his thighs so that his penis soared out in a tight, blood-filled desire over her.
And then he reached down and with a vicious flick pulled the flimsy housecoat right off her body. Her tight, lightly muscled virgin flesh was now completely revealed and, as she twisted over, her large peasant, sun-ripened breasts, hung slightly with their fullness.
Her eyes swept dazedly over the enormous genitals just above her, and as if in some sort of nightmare she understood what was about to happen, she struggled to her feet and stood unsteadily on the uneven surface facing her guardian with an air of pleading.
As he caught her roughly and swallowed her mouth in his, a gasp of ecstasy rippled through the room. Avelino, himself, felt his penis bulging against his trousers in spite of his reason for coming to the chateau.
The girl began to fight, weakly, her will dissipated by the drugs she'd taken. Her hands pushed vainly at the big fleshy body pressed possessively against hers.
Big, red hands, roamed over the glorious hills of her breasts, crushing them, crushing the large virgin nipples. The hands swept in increasing urgency over her shoulders, her back and down to the voluptuous fruit of buttocks which tried to escape.
The girl uttered little cries which were no more than lost whimpers. She felt her helplessness to prevent the pain and defloration that was to come. Raised in the blind, Catholic faith of the peasants, she felt, in spite of the stupefying effect of the marihuana and the whisky that she was about to be sinned against and to lose herself in sin in the most terrible fashion imaginable ...
The crowd around the edge of the room was breathing heavily. The women sat as in a trance, eyes devouring the pulsating organ of the man, reveling in the potential rape of one of their sex.
With a brutal heave, the man threw the girl once more to the ground and, as she lay there, legs apart, crying slightly now, he plunged down onto her, pressing hard onto the complementary curves of her flesh.
The girl uttered a low scream and tried once more weakly to push him off her. His hands trembled over the buttery softness of her thighs, kneading the flesh, grasping it in ripples between his irreverent fingers.
His mouth devoured the breasts, biting them so that the tooth marks were left in the olive skin, sucking the nipples so that groans of helpless horror were torn from the girl beneath him.
He moved up her, devouring her full red lips with his once again. He pulled back her thighs against her efforts to flatten them to the floor and close them under him. The lips leading to the soft untouched channel which was to give him a brutal delight, were there, unguarded, for all the room to see.
His hand went down to his penis between her thighs, brushing the skin of her crotch on its way and ranged his rod with its great, bared head-almost purple with blood-against the soft, pink lips of her vagina.
The girl lay there, arms outstretched as if in supplication, head thrown back as if she could do no more- and with a furious flexing of his hips he had plunged his great staff of flesh into her body.
It seemed to enter with a tearing movement which eventually pulled him up, unable to penetrate farther. The girl's hips jerked frantically at the pain and a long, chilling scream grated from her lips as blood gushed onto the floor.
With the heat of the blood around his penis and the delicious tightness of virginity, the man began to seesaw into her without mercy, while her body writhed this way and that and she moaned continuously.
The girl still tried weakly to push him from her, but eventually gave up and lay with her whole body twitching under the pain of the drubbing her body was undergoing in a blaze of fire between her legs.
Men and women were panting all around the room. Some had risen from their seats, eyes glazed at the spectacle. Trousers gave evidence of splitting from the genital pressure beneath and women slithered their bottoms in excitement on their chairs.
Under the heavy weight of the man, the girl's breasts rose sharply in suffocated heavings; her rump slithered from side to side in an effort to relieve the pain of his relentless thrust and withdrawal. Her face was wet with tears and every so often her moaning would be broken with a sharp cry of pain.
The initiating penis slipped in and in with greater and greater ease until it was imbedded in the girl's body as far as it would go between her wide-flung legs.
The man's big hands began to move over her body, clutching it all over in his passion. He caught her shoulders, her neck, clasped her face and pushed his fingers under her buttocks so that he cupped one in each hand. He fell forward between her legs so that he could brush his own hot length of flesh bursting into her.
His mouth opened; he covered her wet face with hot kisses; grunts came from the depths of his throat; his tensing and untensing buttocks slowed to strong, slow pushes, he slithered his knees closer against her upturned buttocks as if he wanted to enter farther than was possible; he pushed her thighs wider so that she looked almost unreal in her contorted position; he slowed, slowed, ground ... and then a long, aching flood of breath hurtled from the very depths of his throat and coughed out into the room as his fast-shooting river of sperm swept up into the girl's passage and up into her body.
His gasps were accompanied by similar gasps and frenzied expressions around the room and as he sank onto the girl, his compatriots rose from their seats, hot and flushed, their bodies helpless victims of desire.
Slowly, her ravisher climbed up off the girl, leaving her sprawled and crying on the floor. Her raped body was beautiful and the mess of blood was drying on the floor.
The man, his penis red from the blood of his victim, stared down at her for a moment and then picked up his pants and walked out of the room.
"He's going to take a shower. Did you enjoy the spectacle?" Juanita turned an expressionless face to Avelino.
Avelino did not answer. He was overcome at the brutality shown to the girl, at the entire unbelievable fact of a girl being stolen from her town, village or maybe simply hovel and being brought to Barcelona to serve the lusts of these people. He had been told that in the south people still lived in caves and were thin from lack of food. Could it be that they were so concerned with their fight to stay alive that one of their number could disappear without exciting activity? But then these people were powerful. They had more money and influence than anyone else in Spain. What could one do?
But the spectacle was far from finished. Exacted beyond the point where they could control themselves, men were stripping off their clothes and hurling themselves onto the girl on the floor.
Avelino watched, unable to believe his eyes, while she was raped eight times in succession so that fresh blood flowed to the floor and her body had reached such a state of exhaustion that it seemed like a lump of beautifully carved putty.
And then to a fresh outburst of screams and weeping at a new pain, she was buggered by two men who had waited until the others had finished so that they might submit her to a further degradation of violence in the same day. She was forced onto her knees, her buttocks stretched apart, their smooth, supple skin rippling aside to uncover the tight, unsullied ring of her anus. One after the other the men forced themselves, with considerable difficulty into the back channel of her body which was no longer innocent.
Her mouth, too, was eventually used by a fat, vicious little man, who twisted her arm to force her to suck and lick the head of his penis until it flamed red in startling contrast to the white, veined stem.
All this Avelino witnessed with growing disgust- not because of the actions themselves but because of the whole background of violence. And Juanita remained with him, watching too, gauging what effect this would have on his relationship with Janice.
The girl appeared to be half dead as a final tormentor forced himself into her aching vagina and when he had filled her with his load, as if he had been dissatisfied with her lifelessness, he went back to where he had left his clothes and picked up a long leather belt from amongst them.
He was a stocky man with broad shoulders and a face like a bulldog's. His eyes were those of a sadist as he pushed the girl onto her belly with a sharp kick. She rolled over and lay still. Her slim body beneath the swell of her breasts, giving the only slight, panting indication that she was alive.
With a furious swish, the man lashed the belt down across her unsuspecting buttocks. It cut cruelly onto the beautiful rise of their flesh and the girl came to life, uttering a piercing scream and squirming over onto her back.
To the passionate encouragement of both men and women in the band of spectators, he raised the belt again and slashed with all his strength across the girl's breasts. She screamed in agony and writhed involuntarily onto her belly to receive the whipping.
Another weal appeared across the in-curved junction of her buttocks and thighs and women in the room were moving closer to the twitching, screaming prostrate form to get a better view of her thrashing; their eyes were wild with excitement, their breasts heaved against their clothing and some were mumbling for him to show the girl no mercy, to lash her all over until her colour had changed from brown to a dark red.
Avelino stared in horror, gripping the arms of his chair until his knuckles were white and his strong fingers almost pinched through the fabric.
Juanita sat staring alternately at Avelino and the jerking body on the floor.
"You have been living on the money from this," she whispered. "This is Janice's money; this happens over and over again."
Avelino's head went tight, his head throbbed and his forehead was suddenly wet with sweat. The room around him faded away and he could see only the vile, stocky little man wielding his whip like a maniac and slashing it again and again across the beautiful, helpless, naked body at his feet.
Another scream echoed through the sound-proof vacuum of the room as the belt flicked sharply over the bloody vagina and Avelino's muscles tautened. He was hardly aware of Juanita's urgent little cry before he had shot from the chair, crashed his way through the spectators who were moving in like a crowd at a road accident and caught the wrist of the torturer as the belt was raised aloft once more.
The man wheeled around, eyes astonished and then furious. A hush filled the room and then the little man's fist thudded against the side of Avelino's face.
Avelino could see now the vicious, sadistic eyes of the man close against his; his face smarted under the blow and as the girl on the floor groaned and tried to slither away a rage consumed him.
With a furious twist of the wrist he was holding he bent the little man backwards off his guard. His other fist shot up from waist level and smashed against the man's nose. The second blow knocked his jaw sideways and the man collapsed, writhing on the floor beside the girl.
Avelino's eyes blazed, his lips were contorted in hatred as he pulled back his foot and kicked the man in the belly. He heard screams around him as he kicked again. There were male cries of "Get him," "stop the lunatic"-and then hard hands were grabbing him from all sides.
Overcome with nausea against every warped, vicious person in the room, Avelino broke free and launched himself at the nearest of the crowd of men around him. His fist crashed against flesh and the man screamed. Then the hands had seized him again, arms were wrapping around him. He lashed out with his feet and felt the crushing force of his shoes against several shins. One hand broke away and he hit somebody in the Adam's apple. Then he was on the floor; somebody had pulled his legs from under him. He grabbed a foot as it sped towards his face and threw someone off his balance. He heard women screaming. He got on his knees trying to get up and then a boot smacked into his back and he fell forward. Another blow caught him on the chest and he covered his head with his arms ...
It seemed only a few minutes later, but it might have been hours, that he came to. He was lying on a bed and Juanita was bathing his face and chest from a bowl on the bedside table.
Behind Juanita he became aware of the dapper little man he'd first seen when he arrived. The little man's eyes gleamed as brightly as his patent leather toecaps and they were full of dislike.
At the door of the small room they were in stood two men of peasant aspect-guards of some sort.
Avelino moved up onto his elbows. He ached all over. In the bowl the water was a dirty red. His blood.
"Take it easy. Lie back again."
He ignored Juanita's words and gazed down at his chest. In places big dark patches of bruised flesh ached, in others the skin had been torn away leaving a mass of raw, stinging flesh.
He swung his feet off the bed and winced at the pain in his back.
"I'm getting out of here," he rasped.
"Not until I've finished," Juanita replied firmly. She began to twine a bandage around his body.
The little man spoke for the first time. His lips curled in loathing.
"I suppose you realize you're lucky to be alive, my young friend," he sneered. "But if another word is heard of this matter you needn't expect such lenient treatment."
Avelino was about to snap back when Juanita interrupted him, holding his eyes with hers in a look of meaningful desperation.
"Don't worry," she said, speaking to the man behind her without taking her eyes from Avelino's, "he wants to go on living. He's just a little sensitive. I should never have brought him."
"I think you, too, had better stay away," the little man continued smoothly. "We can't trust you not to bring this sort of creature again. If it weren't for his connections with the Count we might have found a place for him in the dungeons."
Avelino checked the furious words which rose to his lips. He forced himself to watch Juanita's busy fingers expressionlessly. He had noticed that both guards wore bulging pistol holsters.
"When you've finished you can go," the little man said with an air of finality. "You'll be conducted back onto the road and I don't want to see or hear from either of you again. Is that understood?"
"You don't have to worry about that," Juanita said quietly.
Avelino nodded.
The little man withdrew with a last scowling glance at Avelino.
Juanita deftly slit the end of the bandage and tied it. Neither of them said a word and the guards watched them in a rival silence.
"All right. That's finished. Can you stand?" Juanita straightened up and looked at Avelino anxiously.
He lowered his feet to the ground and stood. His body felt hot and tired as if he had influenza, but his legs and face were not hurt.
"Let's go," he said.
They left the room followed by the two guards. At the foot of the stairs two more watched them suspiciously, hands on their holsters. In the courtyard three more men lounged around Juanita's car. One courteously opened the door for her. The others never took their eyes from Avelino.
Juanita climbed into the driver's seat and Avelino got in beside her half expecting a bullet in his back all the time. He'd never before felt himself to be in such a sinister situation. He began to realize he was lucky to be alive.
The car shot forward over the drawbridge, down the sandy track and onto the mountain road. Juanita kept it racing round the dangerous bends at a crazy speed.
"The sooner we get right away from here, the better," she declared. "I shan't feel safe until we're back in the city surrounded by lights and policemen-and then I shan't feel very safe."
"They surely wouldn't try to do anything to us now?"
"I wouldn't be too sure. They might have let us go just to put us off our guard until the circumstances were right to have some sort of "accident" happen to us. But I think they'll overlook it. They don't want trouble within the clients' circles."
"Well they're going to get it," Avelino said resolutely.
"Don't be a fool. What do you mean?" Juanita's eyes were frightened.
"I'm going to tell all I know and have seen to the police."
Juanita's hands trembled on the wheel.
"You can't be so crazy. Don't you realize half the police may be in with them already? Don't you know the power these people wield? Do you want to be killed?"
"I don't believe it. I don't believe the police are as corrupt as that. I'll see that Franco himself hears about it if necessary."
"You're mad, you're mad!" Juanita practically sobbed the words. "They have hordes of hired killers and toughs. You couldn't do it"
"I'm going to-that's all."
Juanita didn't reply. She didn't say another word all the way to Barcelona. Her face had gone a sepulchral white and a tear coursed slowly down her cheek.
Back at her flat on Tibidabo they had a meal. Juanita entreated him again not to mix with organizers of Barcelona's vice, but Avelino was adamant. He had been too moved and revolted by what he'd seen.
Later that night he left her apartment and walked to Janice's place on the broad avenue which bore Franco's name. He was going over the events of the afternoon, the information he'd gleaned from his whore on the fate of prostitutes-and his blood was boiling.
Janice was alone in the salon mixing herself a cocktail when Avelino let himself into the apartment. She looked up, startled, when he walked in, but relaxed immediately and greeted him with a smile.
"I didn't expect you back so soon," she said. "I thought you must have gone to India at least."
"No, I went somewhere much closer than that."
Janice looked at him curiously. His tone had been ominously grim.
"Wouldn't it be better to ask yourself that question?"
"What's the matter, darling? Is anything wrong?" Avelino felt anger rising inside him like a swarm of bees.
"I have just come back from the charming little establishment you run on the plateau. And last night I learnt exactly how the whores you run in this city are treated by you. I think there are a few things the police would like to know and I'm going to tell them."
Janice went slowly white. She stared at Avelino as if he were a madman.
"What are you talking about?" The words were soft and there was a half hidden consternation behind them.
"You know perfectly well. I've just seen a young girl raped a dozen times and then beaten up by those wild beasts you call your clients. I think the police would find a lot of things to interest them if they paid a visit to your chateau."
Janice stared at him for a long moment and then, as if she had surrendered, turned away from him and sipped her cocktail.
"Darling you don't know the history of how all this started or perhaps you'd forgive me. And now you don't realize the power of the people behind it. You'd really better forget it. If you find yourself up against Count Alvarez and the other influential people who are in this your life won't be worth a peseta."
"What I've seen is the sort of thing I can't forget. I'm only sorry you're mixed up in it. I'm going to the police in the morning and if you really want to get away that'll give you time."
"And what are you going to do when you've ruined your source of income?" Janice asked.
"I haven't given it a thought. I'm only concerned about stopping this disgusting business and having the organization behind it broken. Maybe then the starving prostitutes in Barcelona will be able to live a little."
Janice put down her cocktail and her tone was hard, as hard a tone as he'd ever heard a woman use, and yet her eyes were strangely soft as if she were trying to negate what she was saying, as if she were appealing to him in some way.
"You're being absolutely crazy," she told him, "and you'll regret it, believe me you'll regret it-and I'll help to see that you do."
Avelino met her eyes with disgust.
"We'll see who regrets most," he snapped and, turning on his heel, he walked quickly from the apartment, slamming the door behind him.
As soon as the echo of the slam had died, a bedroom door opened and Count Alvarez stepped quietly into the salon.
"Well well," he said, and his eyes were as dangerous as open razors. "So our little torn cat is trying to mess with the tigers."
"He'll ruin us if we're not quick," Janice barked. "You'd better get moving. It was lucky you were here."
"I'm surprised you don't have more feeling for your little protege." The Count grinned at her maliciously.
"My God I've never known such a dolt. I must have been crazy to have brought him back here."
"Indeed, I really think you were."
The Count stepped over to Janice and kissed her hard on the lips. His hand grasped and fondled her left breast as he did so. When he let her go he stepped over to the telephone and dialed a number.
Janice drained her glass. Her hand was trembling.
The Count spoke for a few seconds into the receiver and then dialed a fresh number.
"He went to the chateau with Juanita this afternoon," he said. "It's almost a sure bet he'll be going back there."
There was a murmur from the telephone and the Count barked some directions into it. He replaced the receiver slowly with a satisfied smile.
"They'll find him even if he's not where I think he is," he said. "The poor young torn cat."
He walked over to Janice again and pulled her to him, rubbing his palms over her behind as he strained her against him.
"That'll be one rival fewer for me," he chuckled. "I must go now much as I'd like to stretch you out on that bed again. I have things to attend to."
"I'm sorry you have to go," Janice said, kissing his ear.
"I'll come over tomorrow. We'll know just where he was found by then."
"All right. Until tomorrow..."
The Count let himself out and Janice listened until she heard the lift purring downwards. She went to the window, drew aside the lace curtain slightly and watched while the Count hailed a taxi.
Her face was very pale as she left the window and went into the bedroom. Her hands were still trembling as she took a small key from a vase and opened a drawer of her dressing table with it. She slid her hand under a layer of silk underwear and pulled out a little black automatic. She walked back into the salon, put the gun in her bag and left the apartment.
Her car overtook Avelino as he was striding along one of the narrow streets sloping up between the large blocks of flats on Tibidabo. She wasted no time on argument or explanation. She took a look in the driving mirror at the empty, dusk-filling road behind and nosed the car up to the next comer.
Avelino engrossed in his thoughts and decision didn't see her at all until she poked the automatic in his side and told him to get into the car.
He glared at her furiously.
"What's the idea? Are you supposed to be dealing with me?" he rasped. "Get in."
Avelino got into the car and Janice handed him the automatic as she put the vehicle in gear and pulled away down a side street.
He stared at the gun in his hand as if it had jumped there of its own accord. He was too astonished to say anything as Janice drove speedily back towards the poor area.
"I didn't have time to do it any other way," Janice said, her voice weak from nervousness. "There was so little time."
Avelino looked up from the shiny automatic in his hand.
"So little time for what?"
"So little time to keep you alive. The Count was in the bedroom. He telephoned for some of his killers immediately you'd gone. We've missed them by the skin of our teeth."
"Are you serious? He was sending someone to kill me?"
"Good God do you think I'm joking. You would have been shot, your body would have been flung in a cave in the country and nothing more would have been heard about you. Once you get in with this gang there's no double-crossing them."
"You're part of it," Avelino said bitterly. "And you nearly made me part of it."
"We'll both be its quarry when they find out what's happened-and that won't take them long."
"We can go to the police straight away."
"By now every police station in Barcelona is being watched by a couple of thugs who have your exact description, will shoot on sight and take their chance for a big price. You've got to lie low or you haven't a chance."
"How do I know you're not kidding me?"
"You don't, but I'm not." Her tone was definite, her agitation unmistakable. Avelino put the automatic in his pocket. He'd never shot anything more lethal than a funfair air rifle before, but it made him feel safer to have the little gun in his pocket.
"You must just trust me-you must," Janice pleaded. She sounded near hysteria, but controlled herself with an effort.
"Tonight," she continued, "you must stay in a little hotel in the Barrio Chino. It belongs to an old cook of mine and she won't bother about booking you in if I have a word with her. If you want anything you must let her get it for you. For heaven's sake don't go out."
She paused as if what she had said so far had exhausted her. The car sped at a dangerously fast speed along the narrow, urchin-crowded streets near the port.
"In the meantime, I'll collect what money I have and such things as we might need-and tomorrow we'll drive south, we'll get to hell out of here. Then if you want to telephone the police from Tangiers you can go ahead and do it."
"Why are you doing this; why don't you help them kill me?"
"Because you're so much better than they are; you're purer, nobler and you would have been happier if you'd never met me. And I would have been happier if I'd never met them with their cynicism, their self-sufficiency, their cruelty, their intelligence-wrong. But I can't seem to get away from them, any of them; there's a conflict inside me which tells me half the time that I'm one of them, completely one of them."
"So why are you coming south?"
"Because I'm going to have a last try."
The streets seemed to have got narrower and narrower. The buildings were dilapidated; washing and old women hung from their crumbling windows. Children playing with stones and garbage cans jumped out of the car and ran alongside for a while. Fruit and meat on the stalls which stretched to the kerb in extension for the shops were covered in flies.
Janice turned the car into a little square with a ragged, litter-covered green in the centre and cracked hotel signs hanging from the doors of surrounding buildings.
They got out of the car and ducked into the hall of the "Hotel del Mundo." An old woman waddled from the rundown office and gave a cackle of pleasure at the sight of Janice. Janice kissed her on both cheeks and explained their business.
Certainly she had a free room, the woman said. It was on the first floor at the back and nobody need know that the gentleman was there. She would prepare him a meal immediately and he could have breakfast at whatever time he liked in the morning.
Janice took the number of the room and left, saying she would be back some time early in the morning. Avelino watched her go apprehensively. A large group of children stood in admiration around the big car.
The room was very small. It had a tiny balcony with an iron railing overlooking a yard which opened off into a sidestreet. The yard was littered with dustbins and a mangy grey cat was strewing the contents of one across the clay surface. Its eyes gleamed in the light from a streetlamp.
There was one very uncomfortable, wooden chair in the room and Avelino sat on the small bed and waited. He didn't put on the light.
After a while there was a soft tap on the door.
Avelino's heart turned over. He tried to control the chill creeping up his spine. He told himself not to be ridiculous.
"Who's there?" He drew the automatic from his pocket.
It was the woman with his meal and he let her in thankfully.
"There you are sir. I'll draw the curtains and then you can put the light on."
The meal was quite good for such a place, but Avelino left half of it. He was beginning to realize just how grim his situation was. That meant that the whole of Barcelona could be cut into sections and each searched thoroughly by a team of toughs. The Count would be desperate to find him now. The trouble he would be in would be too great if Avelino were not put out of the way in a few hour's time.
Suddenly Avelino had a spasm of doubt about Janice. Supposing she were really on their side. Supposing she had brought him here to this dingy, little hotel just to facilitate the nasty job of bumping him off. He thought of Janice and he couldn't believe it. But then he'd found it difficult to believe she was one of the chiefs of this racket in the first place. She, too, had a lot to lose.
He sat for some time staring at the wall and he couldn't really believe that Janice could do that to him.
He looked around him at the thin walls with their dull, flowery pattern and he felt that he needed a bigger view of what was going on. Someone might be right next to him-just outside the door. He listened hard for breathing. And then he laughed at himself again. How could they find him here? But then he remembered the crowd of children around the car, the children, too, that had run alongside on the way, the old crones leaning from their windows. Such a car was a fairly rare sight in these tiny, unsuitable streets.
Quietly he stood up and went to the door. He held the gun loosely by his side and jerked the door open. He walked into the empty dimness of the corridor.
There was a button for the light but he didn't press it.
Rooms opened off on either side of the corridor, but at the far end was a deep alcove with a window looking out onto the square in the front. Light from street lamps blurred vaguely through it.
Avelino tip-toed along the corridor and gazed out of the window, keeping into the jut of the wall towards the panes. The square was quiet, still. Several dirty, ragged children were sitting on the green and a dog was slinking round them.
For some time Avelino stood watching the entrance to the square. No sound came from the rest of the hotel. He began to think he was the only person in it.
Some time later the lights snapped on and a bent, old man who had tapped his way across the square in Avelino's view began slowly and painfully to climb the stairs.
Avelino slipped back into his room, bolted the door and listened with his head against it. He heard the old man, muttering to himself, start to move up the next flight to the floor above and soon his footsteps had faded and the former serenity had fallen again.
For a little while Avelino sat on the bed, clutching the automatic. He was aware that he was letting his nerves get the better of him, but he couldn't do much about it. It wouldn't have been so bad had there been a little noise in the hotel, something to make the surroundings seem a little more human. But there was complete silence as if the whole hotel were waiting.
Eventually he got up, turned out the light and gazed onto the back yard. The yard was enclosed by a high fence with a bolted door giving access to the sidestreet, on one side and by the walls of buildings, with dark windows of unlit rooms, on the other two.
For some time he stared out at the dustbins and the blank walls, and the fence and the street lamp which shone from the street. He tried to calm himself. It was so unlikely anyone would find him here.
After some minutes he went to the door again and listened. Then he let himself out into the passage and crept along to the alcove.
He stood there, leaning against the wall for a long time, perhaps an hour. During that time nobody had come upstairs although he had heard vague noises from the quarters below. He had begun to feel that he should go and lie down, that he was really quite secure in this out-of-the-way area when the two men came into the square.
They were of medium height with powerful shoulders. Their gaberdine suits were well cut. They looked respectable enough. But what filled Avelino with more than a wariness, what sent a chill of horror creeping up his back was the little band of children running alongside and pointing to his hotel.
Avelino flattened himself against the side wall and drew back into the alcove so that he could watch from deeper shadow. He saw the two men stop and exchange a few words with the little group of urchins sitting on the green. They all pointed at his hotel and one of them stretched his arms wide. That would describe the car. The child pointed back along the road. That was the way the car had left. And then his arm swept back to the hotel again as he jabbered interminably.
One of the men threw a handful of money amongst the children and then both turned and surveyed the hotel.
Avelino drew back further into the shadow. He could see their faces, now; long, cruel faces with unwavering eyes. They began to come towards the hotel and Avelino knew they would take no denial from the woman now that the children had put them on the track. They passed out of sight below him and he stood uncertain, his heart thumping, his body a jitter of nerves.
He went to the top of the stairs in the darkness and heard them talking in low voices to the woman. He could hardly hear them but he caught her saying "No" several times.
Avelino knew they were coming up: that was certain His way down was barred. He glanced at the stairs leading up-and then he thought of the balcony.
He crept back along the corridor, bolted his door behind him and listened intently. In a few seconds he heard the footsteps on the stairs and the voice of the woman still protesting. He lost no more time.
As quietly as possible he moved the small bed across the door and then opened the French windows onto the balcony. The yard was only a dozen feet below. He slung a leg over the railing and then the other. He relaxed his knees, glanced down once, and dropped.
He fell forward onto his elbows in the dust, leapt to his feet and ran to the door in the fence. On the ground floor, as he struggled with the strongly wedged bolt, the lights were on in the proprietress' quarters. He couldn't see anyone in the lighted rooms.
Before he shut the gate gently after him, he glanced up at his window. There was no light and, so far, no noise.
Once in the narrow, cobbled street Avelino began walking at a brisk pace away from the hotel in the opposite direction form the square. He kept his hand on the gun in his pocket and hired a taxi as soon as one passed him on a broader street. He drove to a big restaurant on the Plaza de Cataluna and walked right through to use their telephone. It had occurred to him that they would be least likely to expect him to hide in such an obvious spot.
His fingers were trembling as he dialed Janice's number. He simmered with impatience at the "purr-purr"-and then Janice's voice floated over the distance.
"This is Juanita's friend," Avelino said. "Are you alone?"
She recognized his voice immediately as intended and he heard her catch her breath in surprise.
"Yes I'm alone," she said in a low voice. "What are you doing? Why aren't you at the hotel?"
"They came there." He heard her gasp and he went on rapidly and tersely.
"Children brought them there and they have a description of your car. We can't wait for the morning. We'll have to get out now."
"Where are you?"
He could picture the apartment around her; roomy, comfortable, and she was in it for, perhaps, the last time.
He told her and there was a second's silence while she considered.
"I'll pick you up in about ten minutes-just as soon as I can gather up what I need. For heaven's sake don't take any risks."
He listened to the click as she hung up and replaced the instrument slowly. When he put his hand to his forehead it was sticky with sweat again. There was sweat on his upper lip and under his eyes as well.
For a few moments he leaned against the door of the booth and then he went into the toilet and splashed some water onto his face. He would have given years of his life to be able to walk into the dining room and order a huge meal, openly and unafraid.
He walked through the restaurant, paused at the doorway from which the coffee table ran out onto the street and then crossed the road, dodging through the traffic.
On the raised square, he leaned in the shade of a statute, amongst a cluster of pigeons and looked back at the restaurant. The night air was full of glitter. Black and yellow taxis and gleaming cars streaming around the statuesque glory of the square; neons flashing, running up and down the tops of seven, eight, ten story buildings; behind him a fountain was spraying a silver jet high above the heads of strolling and admiring people; at the terraces of the cafes with their sunshades of pink and yellow, blue and yellow, the richer tourists took their ease. Killing, violence, had no part in this. There was boredom, aimlessness, perhaps some misery, nothing that an attitude of mind couldn't change. But he could do nothing to change his enjoyment of life. He was faced with the simple, external agency of death.
He stared at the passers-by, trying to keep his face in the shadow. Any one of them might be looking for him.
Janice's car swept round the square in a flood of traffic and he watched it coming. It needed only a telephone call from one of the two who had come to the "Hotel del Mundo" and they would be looking for Janice as well with her great, big self-advertisement of a car.
Avelino didn't move while the car pulled up outside the restaurant and Janice got out, leaving the engine running. He watched the cars which had followed her around the square. He waited for several seconds until they had all swept on. He glanced around the square, at the occasional parked cars, but he saw nothing which aroused his suspicion that she'd been followed.
He darted across the road and into the restaurant. Janice saw him and without a word ran back to the car and took the wheel. Avelino got into the back and sat back in the deep upholstery.
They shot around the square, almost nudging other cars from their path and swept off in the direction of the road to the south.
"This is going to be a very close shave," Janice said quietly, but with a tremor in her voice. "As soon as they find I'm helping you, they'll be on the trail of this car. I had no time to change it for someone else's."
"Wouldn't it be safer to drop into a police station," Avelino said, desperately.
"Not a chance. They'll be desperate now. You don't know the extents to which they'll go. They'd shoot us down in the middle of the Ramblas. We've got to get right away first."
They screeched and weaved through the dusty, ramshackle suburbs of Barcelona, the suburbs which seemed as if they couldn't be a part of the same city and in a short time they were on the coast road, racing south.
"It looks as if we've made it." Janice leaned back from the wheel in relief. "Will you light me a cigarette."
Avelino passed over the cigarette and stared from the back window for some minutes. There was no sign of their being followed. He began to feel the whole story of "hordes of toughs" had been exaggerated.
As they drove on through the night, with the sea gleaming on their left under a moon which peered, at last, from the clouds, Avelino explained exactly what had happened since Janice left him at the hotel.
"If only we can have another chance," Janice breathed after a silence. "I just want another chance to get away from all this, but it's so difficult. When you live a certain way and in a certain environment for any length of time you become a part of them-and it's very difficult to kill a part of yourself."
"I would like to go back to my simple life." Avelino's words seemed like an echo of hers. "I was happier then."
The car sped on through village after village of narrow roads and whitewashed houses. As Barcelona dropped farther and farther into the distance, Avelino took out a map from a side-pocket of the vehicle and began to study their position while still keeping one eye open for any danger on the road behind them.
"We'd better drive all night and as much of tomorrow as we can," Janice said. "I wish I'd taught you to drive."
They made rapid progress on almost empty roads until they were approaching the outskirts of Tortosa some hundred miles south of Barcelona.
It was as they swept past the dark pull-in of a roadside restaurant that a car, unnoticed at first in the bush shaded parking area, shone its headlights on them as they raced by.
"What was that?" Janice asked.
Avelino watched closely from the back window.
"It may have been just a car starting up."
"The roadhouse was closed."
"Maybe it was a couple with no bed to go to."
"Are they coming?"
Avelino strained his eyes into the distance behind them. He saw the headlights nose out onto the road. "Yes. They're coming."
Janice put her foot right down and they shot through the almost deserted streets of Tortosa. The headlights of the car behind maintained the distance between them.
"They seem to be hanging on for a long time." Janice's voice as they hurtled along the open coast road again contained the first traces of doubt and fear. She twisted round in the driver's seat and stared briefly back along the narrow ribbon of road.
"They may be simply driving south the same as us," Avelino suggested.
As if his words had passed over an inter-car radio and it had been decided to leave them in doubt no longer, there was the bark of a revolver followed by a sharp clang of metal.
"They're shooting at us," Avelino gasped, "That was the back mudgard."
Janice uttered a little cry.
"They must have been posted to lie in wait for us earlier in the day. Somebody must have telephoned a description of the car to the roadhouse later."
Avelino pulled his automatic from his pocket.
"It's useless at this distance," Janice said breathlessly. "These little things are meant for a few yards range."
"They don't seem able to gain on us. It's just a question of how long we can keep going."
"No. This road is deserted. They're going to get one of our tires and then we're lost."
There was another report and this time Avelino saw the little spark of flame from the car behind.
The coast road was dead. On their left the great expanse of sea glinted into the distance from an empty fringe of silver sand. On the right parched fields of poor crops stretched away to the distant hills of the plateau. They seemed alone in an unreal world.
"Maybe we should stop and shoot it out," Avelino suggested wildly.
Janice mouthed an oath.
"They're a million times better at this sort of thing than we are. It's their life's work. We wouldn't stand a chance."
They roared on in silence. With one hand Janice pulled another automatic from her bag and tossed it to Avelino.
"If they get closer we can shoot back-but I'm not going slower for that."
Avelino felt a gripping panic which he tried to fight down. He could hardly believe that he, the singer from a small town, was now careening along the coast road in a car driven by a rich society woman being chased by a carload of thugs whose aim was to kill them both.
The car behind didn't seem to gain at all. Neither did it fall back. The two vehicles continued to race through the night equidistant from each other. Occasionally they both swept past another car traveling slowly in the same direction-slowly in comparison- and at other times the headlights of an oncoming lorry would blind them for a moment and pass.
"I don't know how long we can keep this up," Janice said after a long silence. "Somewhere there's going to be a barrier-a traffic jam in a town, or something-or else they're going to get one of our tires. Then we'll have had it."
Avelino glanced at the speedometer hovering from 160 to 170 kilometres.
"If we let them get nearer, we might give them a flat tire," he said.
"But we'd certainly get one as well. No. I have the only-possible plan. Some distance further south-I'm not quite sure how far, but we must be getting near- there's a road which branches off to the mountains. If we can get to the mountains, I know the area pretty well-there's some good fresh water fishing there-and there are a few old tracks which twist, turn and confuse one another. We might be able to shake them off. If not we'd have more chance of abandoning the car and hiding out. If we tried that anywhere else we'd be shot down immediately." "What are these tracks?"
"They're the roughest things imaginable-precipitous, pot-holed, narrow, dangerous. It's our only hope. Nobody lives in the region except a band of gypsies. They live in almost the same conditions as they did in the civil war."
"All right. If that's the best thing we can do."
"I'm sure it is. Now let's watch out for the road. I believe there's a white signpost."
They both stared ahead, following the path of the headlights. The lights of the car behind barely reached them. The shots had stopped. Presumably they were considered as sure prey in any case.
They had several false alarms as the car hurtled on at breakneck speed. But at last the glimmering edge of the headlights picked out a single white sign pointing inland towards the mountains.
"That's it. Hold tight."
Janice decreased speed only slightly until it seemed to Avelino she would have no time to slow down and turn.
"Careful," he said, involuntarily.
At a dangerously short distance from the turning, Janice pumped on the brake, pulled right over on the crown of the road and swerved into the little road so sharply that Avelino felt it was touch and go as to whether the car turned over.
Janice's lips were tight, her face pale and perspiration trickled down her forehead as the car tore towards the sligh hills.
"That was a near thing." Her lips quivered slightly as she said it.
Avelino looked back.
"It was a miracle," he said. "They overshot."
The following car, unaware of Janice's proposed turn until the very last seconds, had cut down the distance between them at a great rate and then shot straight on.
Janice twisted round to see what had happened.
"We need every second we can get," she said.
In a few seconds the pursuing headlights were beaming in their wake once again. But they had gained a lot of ground.
"Once we reach the mountains, they won't be able to see us so well," Janice said. "The roads are very winding. There are just a couple of danger spots I can think of early on where we have almost to double back within range of them."
Avelino sat grimly clutching the automatic staring at the oncoming lights behind. He still seemed to be in a nightmare. It was ridiculous to think that those little, yellow lights heralded death for him. It was just too much to believe. He felt like someone who had committed a murder in a lunatic moment and could feel no real responsibility for the crime.
As before, the cars stayed equidistant from each other although now, on this little backwater of a road, the shots came more frequently. But they were too far away and the light was too dim for them to be anything but wild.
"We're going to make the hills," Janice said with a note of hope in her voice.
Avelino looked out of the side window at the vague blur of the fields rushing by. He wished that he could just get out of the car and walk in them. He wished he could just wander through the olive terraces and feel completely free. He didn't want to be with Janice, Juanita, Theresa. He wanted to see nothing of any of them. He didn't even feel he wanted to do anything about the vice that was running rife in Barcelona. He wanted peace and tranquility. He wanted to close his eyes to everything and everyone and forget.
He glanced at the back of Janice's head, grimly straight behind the wheel and he was struck, suddenly by the injustice of his thoughts. Janice had got involved in this for him. She was risking her life to help him save his. But it had been coming to her. Sooner or later she would, perhaps, have done the same thing. Because she was fed up, too. She wanted peace and tranquility. But she wasn't wise enough, in spite of her learning, to get it. She wanted it for herself. It had been coming to her. It wasn't really for him.
A volley of shots cracked off behind them again and brought him back to the situation.
"That's the last try," Janice muttered, grimly.
The shots preceded by seconds the beginning of their tortuous climb into the mountains.
The rough stone track, loosely covered with sand, led into the mountains and then wound up and up to the valleys, passes and heights of the plateau.
Once the twisting climb had begun, they were soon cut off from the sight of their pursuers. Sometimes, on a longer stretch the following lights would flash into view for a moment, far off and far below. Then, for an instant, the stillness of the air would be shattered by a spatter of shots-and then silence again as the cars were cut off by a bend of solid rock.
The path was precipitous. As it climbed so the chasm on one side grew deeper and deeper, falling away into the scrub of the valley.
"We've nearly reached the top, Janice said quietly. "Then we start the switchback in earnest and we'll have to try to shake them off.
"Little chance of us being found up here if anything happens," Avelino murmured.
"There are only the gypsies-and sometimes the carabinieros send out a patrol."
Soon they had finished climbing. Now it was question of careening through passes, around precipitous bends, plunging into valleys within the range and racing upwards again.
"It's just as well we can't see the view," Janice said in a grim effort at humour. "It might make me drive more slowly."
"We're coming to the first danger spot," she added, after a pause. "We cross a bridge over a ravine and then the road turns back for a distance on the other side and runs parallel with the road on this side. At one point they'll be approaching the bridge on one side and we'll be leaving it on the other and only a couple of hundred feet will separate us. Fortunately they won't be able to turn their lights on us."
Avelino sat quietly. He no longer believed in their ability to get away. Neither did he believe he was going to die. It seemed that the chase would go on forever.
"Here we are."
Avelino peered past Janice's head to the ghostly scene thrown into relief by the headlights. The mountain track was narrow. On one side the red face of rock rose up, sloping away from the car and on the other the rocks slipped away in a steep slope into darkness. Ahead the road broadened into a point where a heavy bridge, whose girders glinted greyly in contrast to the rocks, launched itself across the darkness.
The car swerved onto the bridge and Avelino listened, fascinated, to the different noise of the wheels on the wood. There was no moon and he could see nothing of the ravine below.
They swept off the bridge and skidded along the path again, moving back parallel with the road they'd left on the other side.
"We have to make the bend a few hundred yards on before we're safe," Janice said. Her hands on the wheel were clammy.
Avelino lowered the window on the ravine side and held the automatic ready.
"Here they come." Janice's voice trembled.
Round a bend across the ravine first a glimmer of light flickered across the sand of the road, disembodied and innocuous. And then the car had swept into view opposite them and a little ahead. The darkness of the mountain was completely lit up by the strong lights.
Immediately the fusillade began. A shower of bullets bridged the ravine and spattered all around the car. Avelino shrank back and Janice bent low over the wheel as the cars raced for the point where they would be exactly opposite each other. Janice slammed her foot on the accelerator and the car careened at a mad speed towards the bend.
"Shoot back!" she called to Avelino.
Avelino reached through the window and pulled the trigger of the automatic. He pulled it again and again.
And then the cars were level and past with Janice still crouching over the wheel driving wildly.
"We've made it, we've made it!" The thought was rushing crazily through Avelino's head.
And then the bullet shattered the back window and the car swerved towards the ravine, back at the mountain and back again towards the ravine as Janice slumped slowly away from the wheel.
"My god, my god!"
Avelino could only stare in horror at the blood trickling down the side of her head. And then the car was falling, bumping and falling and Avelino was somehow over in the front seat...
He was warm-comfortable and warm. That was the only thought for a long time. And then there was no thought. And again, much later there was the warmth and the comfort again.
Avelino opened his eyes and gazed at gloomy flickering rock above. The rock was nickering because near him there was a wood fire, fierce and warm. He was in a cave.
There was a movement somewhere near and an old woman's face was there looking at him, unsmiling but not unkind. They stared at each other for some seconds and then the woman called out; "Maria, bring the soup; he's come to."
Avelino understood nothing. He could see the entrance to the cave. It was slightly lighter than the inside. It must be night. He was lying on his back on some soft substance and he was covered with a blanket. When he tried to move a pain shot up his right leg and he was unable to move it.
The old woman knelt down beside him.
"Lie still," she said quietly. "You will feel better after the soup."
Avelino lay back, relaxed and looked at the woman again. He felt he should know her but he didn't. She was a big woman with a strong, lined face. Her clothes seemed to be a mixture of odds and ends. He was going to speak but then, somehow, the effort seemed too great and he didn't bother.
And then there was another woman beside the first, but much younger, a girl in fact. She was holding some sort of army mess tin with steam coming from it. She knelt down beside Avelino and her blue eyes were soft and a little shy as she looked at him. Avelino was aware that she was beautiful, but his mind wouldn't focus on the thought. He could think consistently only of the smell of the soup.
The old woman propped some logs and an old haversack behind him so that he could half sit up without moving his legs and the girl put the mess tin on his lap and raised a ladleful of the soup up to his mouth.
Avelino sipped the soup as she fed it to him and although he said nothing, his eyes told how wonderful it was. The girl smiled.
"Would you like some bread and cheese?" she asked. "It is not a proper meal; just something to restore your strength a little."
He nodded and his eyes followed her without any clarity of thought. She was wearing a loose, fawn-coloured skirt with a white, cotton blouse. Her body was compact and she had the look of health which a lot of time spent in the sun gives to a fair skin. To Avelino she seemed sweet and refreshing-and then he began to remember why she seemed refreshing.
He remembered the headlights chasing them, the spatter of shots, the hoping to reach the bend in time, the shattering of the back window, the blood trickling down Janice's head. He remembered but without any acute feeling. It seemed long ago and it seemed unreal. He hadn't been able to believe in it at the time and now all he felt was a certain curiosity and relief that it was over.
"What happened?" he asked, speaking, with effort, for the first time.
Nobody answered while the girl handed him a tin plate with bread and cheese on it. She retreated again into the shadows of the cave and the old woman looked down at Avelino. She had the strong face of a woman who had lived through and dominated herself through a great deal of unhappiness. She would sympathize in a practical way. She would be there to be relied on-but she wouldn't hide things in an effort to be kind.
"We found the car you were in at the bottom of a ravine," she said. "There was a woman in the car and she was dead. We brought you up here unconscious and you've been here for two days. You have a broken leg."
Avelino automatically tried to move his leg-am winced at the pain.
"The car is smashed up. It's incredible that you're alive. Was the woman your wife?" "No. She was just a friend."
The old woman gazed at him reflectively for some moments. She seemed about to ask another question, but changed her mind instead and said simply: "You'd better sleep again after you've eaten. Your leg will mend."
Avelino slipped his hand under the blanket to feel his leg. He touched cloth and wood around his leg. They had made a rough splint for his leg.
"You are being very kind," he said.
"Then you have been used to unkindness," she replied. "We are doing no more than human beings should do for one another."
Avelino slept again and occasionally drowsily reawakened and then slept once more. During his waking moments he was aware of several people in the cave against the background of the fire always flickering.
When he awoke fully again a stocky, bearded man with a rifle was coming from the bright patch of light which indicated day at the entrance of the cave.
The man flung down a bunch of four rabbits on the rocky floor and there was a general movement towards them.
"Best catch in a long time," the stocky man said, grinning in self-satisfaction. "And there may be some more in the traps."
As his grinning companions gathered round, Avelino was able to see that there was a third woman-youngish, but rough-looking from experience-and two other men, both wiry and apparently in their thirties. It was only now that he realized that this must be the band of gypsies Janice had spoken of.
The rabbits were gathered up by the women, taken to a roughly-constructed wooden table, which by craning his neck Avelino could see deeper in the cave, and the work of skinning was deftly begun.
The stocky little man surveyed Avelino, lowered his rifle against a wall of the cave and advanced towards him.
"Well, you've had enough sleep to last for a lifetime, my boy," he declared. His eyes were smiling and honest.
Avelino smiled back.
"Not long ago I expected to be put to sleep for a lifetime," he replied.
The man looked at him for a moment.
"Sure. You were having a bit of trouble," he said. "But you're all right now. You're among friends and if you're still in trouble then you can let us know about it in your own time. There's no hurry."
He called the other two men over.
"Rafael and Antonio," he said, indicating each in turn. "And I'm Emilio."
Avelino reached up an arm-noticing, for the first time, that he was in his underclothes and that his arm was covered with scratches and bruises-and shook hands, telling his name in true.
"How long do you think it will take for my leg to mend?" he asked, addressing Emilio who appeared to be the leader of the band.
"A couple of months should see it right."
Then seeing the look of consternation on Avelino's face, he added: "But we'll make you some crutches in a day or two so that you can hop about to your heart's content."
During the days that followed, Avelino slept and ate and talked with the gypsies; leaving out his peasant origin, he told them how he had become aware of the wide-scale vice in Barcelona and how he had been hounded for trying to expose it.
Emilio shook his head sadly when he had heard the story.
"Sure, whenever you get big masses of people together, trying to outdo one another you get trouble," he said philosophically.
"And don't you get trouble often enough in a little group living in the mountains?" That was the elderly woman, Eva, his wife.
Everyone laughed. It was obvious their troubles were seldom directed against one another.
"Oh, we have our squabbles-but it's only because you're such a tyrant." And everyone laughed again while Eva stood, arms akimbo in mock severity.
Soon Avelino was hobbling about on the crutches they made him. It was wonderful after so many days of confinement in semi-darkness to be able to move about in the sunlight. They were some distance from the point where the car had crashed over the ravine and he accepted the fact that he would have to remain with the gypsies until his leg had completely recovered. They had no transport and were more or less out of touch with the outside world. Their food consisted of the game they were able to kill, the wild fruit they picked, wine and an occasional liqueur which they brewed themselves from a sweet-smelling plant which grew in the mountains. Every so often they would make a trip into the nearest villages with their little carvings from wood and stone and gay trinkets. Then they would return with a few luxuries in the way of eatables and perhaps, some fresh clothes and shoes- although their garments gave evidence of lasting them forever.
They were a happy band who sang, sometimes danced with the instruments they made themselves and talked merrily all the time. To Avelino they seemed the happiest people he'd ever known. With them he began to feel at home. He learned to carve so that he could add his share to the supply of knick-knacks which went out into the world beyond, he gathered wood for the fires and did everything his handicap would allow.
As he hobbled, the girl Maria would often help him, catching hold of his arm or taking his hand to guide him. Although they had spoken very little, he became increasingly aware of her as a woman: the lithe swing of her buttocks and thighs beneath the skirt, the way her nipples jutted, slightly visible, on the summits of her impudent breasts.
She, too, would return the extra pressure of his hand and their eyes would meet in a smile.
All this did not pass unnoticed by Eva, who had summed Avelino up and decided she would give them every opportunity of getting to know each other.
When Avelino suggested one day that he should collect the rabbit traps-a long job as they were spread over the mountains, Eva demurred at first as he still had to walk with a stick, but then she thought better of it, telling Maria to go with him to show the way and help on the rough stretches.
On the way, it was Maria who slipped on some loose stones and fell against Avelino. He caught her in both arms and in the moment they were pressed together she looked up at him and he kissed her. It was a sweet, innocent kiss, behind which, when they drew apart, her eyes were laughing and happy.
"How often have you been kissed before?" Avelino asked with a grin.
"Oh often-when I was young, by my father." Her blue eyes twinkled.
"Emilio is not your father?" It was a rhetorical question. Avelino was sure he was not.
Her eyes clouded.
"No. My father was killed fighting with the Republicans in the war-and my mother also. We have all been here, in the mountains, since the last days of the war. We are happy here and nobody bothers us."
"What happened to you when your parents were killed?"
For some time she looked at him and he thought she was not going to answer.
"Some soldiers-fascist soldiers took me away... I have been kissed before. There were three of them and they fought over me in a field near the town They tore my clothes off and were going to rape me...but then they started fighting..."
A tear welled out of an eye and rolled slowly down her cheek and Avelino drew her to him, kissing her hair "Then Emilio came. He had known my father in the town. And he shot them all and brought me into the mountains with Eva and the rest. He was wonderfully kind. I shall never forget..."
Her voice broke off and she cried quietly against his chest Avelino felt a slow, strong rage simmering up inside him against the fascists beasts who were going to rape Maria. He was astonished. He who had killed jealousy -to feel this passion boiling inside him again.
He kissed her forehead, her eyes, her wet cheeks and at last her lips again.
"I love you," he whispered.
She clung to him, tightly, pressing her face against his chest, and then she looked up slowly and her eyes, glistening with tears, had a radiance. She pulled his head down and killed him hard on the lips and then buried her face again in his chest.
When they returned to the cave, later, hand in hand, the bag of rabbits flung over Avelino's shoulder, Eva stood in the entrance watching their approach.
"Look as if you made a good catch today," she said, without looking at the rabbits. There was a deep smile in her eyes.
Time seemed to race by on the old calendar on which Emilio scratched off every day with a piece of charcoal as it passed. Eventually Avelino was able to walk without the stick, but he stayed on "convalescing" and nobody mentioned his departure.
During this time Avelino and Maria seldom had any time alone. Their lovemaking took the form of looks, small gestures and a kiss during their short walks. Eva was aware of the relationship growing between them, but nobody else appeared to notice.
Avelino would watch Maria moving about the cave and the stifling of the desire that was in him-even to kiss her or put his arm around her grew steadily. Her slim back and waist as she bent over the cooking; the tightening of her skirt around her compact buttocks as she reached for something and the thrust of her breasts through the blouse-everything charged him with a great longing. Often, too, her eyes when they looked at him would change slowly from a laugh to a strong, almost glittering gaze and then would smile again slowly.
One day at supper Emilio announced that tomorrow they should take their wares and sell them in the markets of the villages. They needed to buy more ammunition and a new frying pan would be a good idea.
After some discussion it was agreed that everyone should go except Eve and Maria to look after the cave and Avelino to collect traps and provide a masculine element in case of any unforeseen emergency.
At the first twilight of dawn the little group started off with its bags and baskets on the long track from the mountains.
Avelino was glad he had not gone with them. He was quite content with the mountains. He could not gauge what his reaction would be to get back to the verge of civilization again. When he thought of Count Alvarez and the others he was not even sure what was meant by civilization. And above all he was happy to stay with Maria in the greater intimacy which was left.
During the morning Avelino collected the traps while the two women gathered wood for the fire and washed some clothes in a stream not far from the cave.
After lunch, Eva, her face unemotional as nearly always, regarded Avelino and Maria for a few seconds.
"Avelino why don't you take Emilio's line and try to catch us some fish for supper? There's a still part of the stream a couple of miles from here where he fishes."
Avelino hesitated. He had hoped to spend more time with Maria.
"Of course, Maria will have to go with you to show you the way," Eva added. "Perhaps she might not want to do that."
There was a slight smile on her face as they both raised their eyes to her uncertainly.
"Off you go," she laughed, "and be sure to bring back some good fish."
They left a little later, Avelino shouldering Emilio's strong, home-made rod.
"Which way do we go to the fishing ground?" he asked.
"I don't know," Maria said with a laugh. "I've never been there before."
Avelino stared at her for some moments, uncomprehending. Then he chuckled.
"Well, well," he said. "She really is on our side."
"She's the sweetest person in spite of her austere appearance," Maria said.
They walked for a mile or two, arms linked, into the mountains. Avelino had very little trouble with his leg now except for an automatic limp-a habit which would gradually die.
"Let's climb down to the stream and find somewhere to fish, now," Maria suggested after a while. "Will your leg stand it?"
"My leg will stand anything today," Avelino replied.
She glanced up at him quickly with a look that was both shy and knowledgeable. She took his hand and they began to clamber and grope their way down the steep side of the ravine to the slim stream which frothed over the rocks below. On either side of the stream was a little border of red sand strewn with boulders and it was along one of these that they walked, Indian file.
They followed the stream for about another mile, searching all the time for a pool. The sun clashed down from a cloudless sky, cut off only occasionally by a jutting crag above. Maria walked ahead and the slim, brown length of her calves seemed to gleam in the sunlight.
They found a pool at last, a broadening of the stream, an overflowing onto the sandy borders caused by a partial damming with boulders. A few weeds grew here and the water in places was deep and opaque. The rock side of the ravine was also scooped away forming a shadowed hollow overlooking the pool. A few shrubs and small trees even grew from the sand.
"How wonderful!" Maria exclaimed, looking around her and then up to the sun in delight. "I've never been here before. It's a perfect spot."
Avelino swung his small shoulder-bag down to the sand and began to assemble Emilio's rod.
"I hope there are fish here," he said. "It looks a likely place."
Maria stretched herself out happily on the sand and watched Avelino throw out the line and then wedge the rod firmly between two rocks.
"Now we'll see what happens," he said coming back to where she was and lying down beside her.
"I'm sure you should take much more interest in the line," she smiled as he turned to look at her.
"There's much more future in looking at you," he said.
Her slim fingers caressed his cheek. Her eyes were shining.
"I've never felt so happy, " she said softly. "I would like this little fishing trip to go on forever."
"Why shouldn't it go on forever?"
Her eyes clouded for a moment.
"Don't tease me, please. I had managed to forget for the moment. I know you will have to go away soon."
Avelino pressed his cheek against hers. Her cheek was smooth and warm. He could feel the firm bones beneath the skin.
"I want you to marry me Maria."
For several seconds her breathing seemed to have stopped. Avelino caught her face in his hands and held it away from him. Tears were slipping down her cheeks. He pulled her body against his on the sand and held her close against him.
"What's the matter?" he asked. A horde of questions whirled in his mind. Questions that preceded a vision of happiness slipping away.
But her voice when it came up, small and muffled, from his chest was warm and doubt-dispelling.
"It's only because I'm so happy," she whispered.
For a long time they lay together on the hot sand, the drifting line forgotten. Her body lay along Avelino's, clamped against him. Her head was buried in his neck, feeling secure there, not wanting to move away from the little aura of happiness which seemed to have surrounded them. As he ran his fingers gently over her hair Avelino felt a purpose for living which seemed all at once better and simpler than his confused existence in Barcelona with its complications and lack of order.
Her hair was like sand running through his fingers, her body both that of a child happy in its protection and of a woman wanting to be a woman. And the happiness in him grew in the passing minutes as she moved slightly against him to a desire for the physical peak of the happiness, a desire that flushed his whole body with passion and tenderness at the same time.
He pressed hard against her and her breasts heaved against him with her rapid breathing. He ran his hands over her shoulders, down her back and strained the compact buttocks against him, feeling their firmness under the skirt.
Her face looked up to him, the eyes intense, lips parted and he kissed her on a mouth which crushed his and then opened in yielding.
"Can you forget the Fascists-or does this remind you?" he whispered, drawing his lips a centimetre from hers.
"I can forget," she whispered back. "But it would not be rape because I love you."
A thrill twirled in Avelino's stomach and a tenderness pervaded him like a blush at her words. She wanted him to make love to her.
He kissed her again and an intuitional fire drove her body hard against his, wrapping one of her legs around his. She was completely ready.
Kissing her, running his lips over her face while her hands traced the countours of his head. Avelino moved a quivering hand up to her breasts. Then one of them was under his hand. His first really intimate touch of her body. He caressed it gently, a butterfly touch.
It was firm and bulbous under his fingers. She wore no brassiere; she needed none and the sharp outline of her nipple hardened under his searching fingers.
His hand sought the buttons of the blouse, eased them gently undone and her hands squeezed his back tightly as he did so. She was half afraid now. But then his hand was tenderly fondling her bare breasts and she relaxed again, only her breathing betraying her anxious yearning.
The skin of her breasts was taut, like stretched tissue. Only around the nipples did it pucker into a little roughness of pattern.
She lay back now on the sand, under the hot sun, with Avelino leaning over her, his lips running down her neck, her neck stretched in longing, mouth slightly open. Her blouse flapped out on either side leaving her breasts exposed to the sun and Avelino's eyes.
He moved his mouth voraciously down her shoulders, sucking in the hollows until the flesh reddened and then his lips were on the hills of her breasts, drawing the nipples into his mouth, sucking them in like a whirlpool so that she whimpered slightly in her passion.
Her hands clasped his head crushing him into the yielding mounds of flesh. Her legs moved together as he sucked and then relaxed again in rhythm.
The smooth texture of her breasts-a magnet with his lips-created a sensual trembling in Avelino. His penis had jerked up into a violent rampancy of which he was hardly aware until her stirring thigh brushed against it so that he could feel the warmth of her leg through the skirt.
Avelino placed one of his hands on her abdomen, rubbing it gently savouring the springy firmness of the flesh beneath. His fingers roamed over her hips, exploring the well-covered bones on which he would soon be lying.
Maria lay half beneath him, breathing heavily, but mainly passive, waiting to be led.
He slid his hand away down her skirt-covered thighs, aware of their roundness. Down to her knees, a little below and then his fingers had met the flesh of her calf and were moving up again, this time under the skirt. He lingered around the knees, stroking the backs of them and then he was advancing up her thigh, up the light suppleness of the outside muscle.
Waiting, Maria was tensed, each breath seemed to fall over the other from her parted lips.
The thigh was smooth, glassily smooth until suddenly the fingers had reached the glossy silk of her briefs -the last covering of that desired area of her body.
She tensed a little more as the fingers probed under the leg of the briefs and the hand followed to hold, flesh to flesh, her buttock.
Avelino felt that the buttons of his trousers would fly off. His belly was jerking furiously from his shortness of breath. The buttock was as smooth as the thigh: a lovely rounded, firm lobe of flesh which relaxed at last into his hand as he squeezed it gently and stroked it. His hand moved on relentlessly, curving in with the incurving of the buttock, gently rubbing that provocative canyon and then bridging it to fondle both buttocks together as Maria rolled slight towards him.
Every breath Maria uttered now seemed to be a whispered exclamation, a whispered oooooh!
Avelino caressed her bottom for a long time, reveling in its texture. He felt in no hurry. The end was sure. He did not want to rush her. Did not want to rush himself.
At last he slid his hand round from her behind, under the briefs until his fingers were tickling her groin. He slipped his hand down, brushing the inside of her thigh until she was wriggling under him. And then he advanced upward again, under the tiny slit of material which covered her vagina, until he was at the lips and could feel the moisture of her passion at his finger-tips.
Maria snapped her thighs together-a sheer involuntary action-at the sensation of his fingers there at the place nobody had ever touched her on before.
Avelino relaxed. He just tickled her thighs gently at their very summits until slowly she opened her legs again.
"Be gentle, Avelino," she said softly.
He lowered his head and kissed her lips in answer and then his finger had entered the long, moist groove of flesh and was searching for the deep well hidden there, while Maria gasped against the pressure of his mouth.
She made no further effort to close her legs against him. Her arms went around his neck and clung there. Her legs were apart. From this point she was giving without question.
She gasped again and gave a jerk as Avelino's probing fingers found the tight cavity and pushed in. The flesh was warm against his middle finger. After a while he felt the channel expanding and contracting around his finger as she waggled her hips in agitation, breathing his name as if she were going to repeat it forever.
Avelino withdrew his finger gently from the passage and found the firm, little clitoris. Maria jumped and gasped as he rubbed it, catching it between his thumb and index finger. He played with it for a long time, kissing her mouth, neck and breasts all the time.
As her breathing began to grow thick, he thrust two fingers up into her belly, pushing against the confining pressure so that she uttered a little scream.
"Am I hurting you?" he breathed.
She shook her head from side to side in answer. Her face was screwed up in passion.
Avelino worked with his fingers widening the passage, accustoming it to what was to follow. His penis seemed to be bursting; he was afraid he would have an orgasm without entering her and at last, as her gasps changed to a gentle moaning, he slipped his hand from her vagina and pulled her briefs down her hips.
Maria lay there, quivering all over while he took off her skirt. Her hips were rounded, compact like her buttocks; the hair was golden.
Avelino bent and kissed her belly and she pressed his face at her navel. He moved his head up to her breasts again while his fingers plucked at the buttons of his trousers. He could stand it no longer. He must have her now.
He kicked off his trousers and pants and his penis was hot, so hot and rigid along her thigh. The sun burned his buttocks and his legs felt mobile and free, licentious.
He slipped his fingers back to her vagina and she began to squirm again. The skin had drawn back on him and his knob seemed to have bloated like a drowned animal and become as moist. A little trail of seminal fluid made a snail's path across her thigh.
Maria's hands slipped under his shirt and stroked his chest, moving around his muscular back as she moaned her passion.
He took her hand at last and drew it down to the massive swelling of his rod. Veins were standing out on his penis, not violently, but visible-blue and some almost red.
Her hand felt cool as she touched him, cool enough to make him jump and grit his teeth with the sensation.
She ran her finger-tips tentatively over the top surface back to where the tube disappeared into his body as if she were measuring it. Then she drew them back on the underside.
Avelino's loins were flaming with heat as he pulled her hand now to his testicles so that she could stroke their hairy expanse. She stroked his genitals tenderly, lovingly, almost without embarrassment. She clasped his organ in her hand as if to feel how it would be inside her-and all the time her gasps were growing as Avelino flicked her clitoris and thrust his fingers into the soft wet channel.
She began to breathe his name again as if she were reading a poem with all her emotion and Avelino swung his body gently onto hers, his hips on her half-parted thighs.
"Oh darling!" she breathed.
She opened her eyes; her whole face proclaimed that she was his for as long as he wanted her, and she kept her eyes on him as she gently drew her thighs apart and he guided his penis to the spot.
His great, swollen, pulsating knob moved into her, hesitated at the brim of the cavity and then pushed gently but firmly into her, forcing through the ring of flesh, then tightly enclosed as if in a quicksand.
Maria had cried out as he drove into her and her eyes had screwed up, her thighs flattened to the hot sand.
Avelino felt a great, indescribable relief sweep over him, a gorgeous, sensual, blood-sucking relief as if here was home after a terrible day.
Maria twined her arms around his neck, burying her face in his, abandoning the rest of her body to the delirium of the union.
Avelino thrust in, drew out, thrust in, farther, farther in a deep burying of himself into her. Her passage clasped his penis in an embrace that became almost painful as he lost more and more of it between her legs. She writhed, brushing her buttocks in the sand as he rammed in. Her nipples were taut on his chest as he squirmed against her uplifted thighs, worming in with a grinding pressure which contorted his face and made a vein stand out in his neck.
Maria was there, naked beneath him, receiving his stiff pinion like a sword embedding itself in her vagina. She was sweet and virginal, but not ashamed of her passion, gasping and panting in the fury of moving to the climax.
"I love you," he whispered as his penis slid solidly inwards.
Avelino slipped his hands down her sides and dug through the sand to hold a smooth buttock in each.
He slipped his hands forward and drew her thighs up farther, feeling the moist staff of entry, wondering at this incredible sensation which took up his whole being and yet found its physical quality only down there in that dovetailing. His hands went back under her buttocks, straining them up to him with each deep insertion and her panting took on a fury, like the steady puffing of a train.
Avelino, his head swaying on his shoulders, eyes dilating as he looked at Maria's impassioned face felt the throbbing of his penis becoming a heavy drone of sensation, catching in his stomach as the excitement skewered there.
Maria's tortured eyes were open now as he bobbed on her and they looked into each other's anguished eyes as their breath became uncontrollable. Avelino felt the twisting and churning in his loins, the desperate excruciating moments before the deluge. Maria's legs were flailing wildly, her hips sliding in the sand. Her panting became a long groan and as Avelino felt restraint slipping away her eyes, too, dilated, she clutched him like a dying woman, the groan choked in her throat and her hips locked into his in a furious pressure. The flood of climax swept from her loins as Avelino felt himself lost ... lost ... and then the unbearable bursting into her, the shooting and shooting and shooting again of his hot cascades of sperm way up into her belly.
Few fish were caught that day, but that was not important. Maria and Avelino, both happy, she a little shy after the moment of passion, returned to the cave where Eva's knowing eyes would have, perhaps, embarrassed them if they had been able to think of anything but each other.
It was not until the return of the rest of the band the next day that Avelino announced that he and Maria were going to be married and then there was a general celebration with the wine and a couple of chickens that Emilio had brought back from the villages. Everyone got very merry in the nickering light of the camp fires, but as the hours passed Eva looked sadly at Avelino.
"We're very happy for you," she said softly. "But there are some things an old woman thinks of at these times other than that she had good times in her youth."
"What's the matter?" asked Avelino.
"I'm just thinking that you'll be taking Maria back to the city with you, or maybe to find some work in a town far from here and we'll see neither of you again."
"No. You're wrong Eva," Avelino replied quietly. "This life is too good, too happy. I've made my decision and Maria is happy. We're getting married in the nearest church, we're taking a tent and going to tour the mountain for a few days and then we're coming back here to you. This is the sort of simple life that needs no analyzing. You accept it. You work to no pointless, soul-destroying end, you grow or capture your food, you make your clothes, you fish, you sing, you walk in the mountains. Your relations are clear and simple and honest because there's nothing to make them otherwise, nothing to corrupt them. We're here amongst our few good, trustworthy friends for our lives. Don't worry."
Emilio leaned round the fire from where he had listened, as everyone else had listened.
"We'll drink to that Avelino. We'll drink to that."
Maria's hand covered Avelino's on the floor of the cave as the mugs were raised and Avelino felt a warm glow of love and friendship all around him. Everyone here a friend he could trust.
Later that night, lying on his bed, with the other humps around him which were Emiliop Rafael, Antonio, and, farther back in the cave, the women, Avelino thought of Barcelona. He thought of the vice going on there, he thought of the chateau. He thought of the luxury he'd had, of Juanita, Teresa, of everything. All he wanted, now was peace. Those who wanted anything else could have it. But he had found his peace and he was staying with it. He loved Maria. He had nothing to leave the mountains for.
He looked out at the stars through the lighter patch of darkness which was the cave entrance. He supposed idly that he could after a time go back to Barcelona if he really wanted to. Juanita would be happy to see him and willing to go anywhere. A little luxury would certainly seem fantastic after living in a cave. Yes, he could go back to Barcelona, to luxury.
The fire flickered still, throwing fluid patterns into the darkness. Somebody stirred in his sleep.
And Avelino, lying awake in the dim firelight wondered if he ever would.
