Fifty Shelves of Grey Page 8

  ‘Indeed,’ said Elizabeth, once her breath was entirely restored to her control.

  Thus the next time a ball was held at Netheregions, Elizabeth was accompanied by a sweet young lady’s maid, newly appointed, and felt quite immune to Mr Darcy’s disdain.

  41

  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

  by

  ROBERT PIRSIG

  Zooming along at well over the speed limit, in order to express our individual approaches to time and traffic regulations, I took in the green countryside as we tore past it. The farmhouses were crisp and fresh, and I enjoyed their openness to life in general through the haze of my exhaust fumes. On the horizon I noticed a cold front approaching from the south-west. Most people wouldn’t know what that meant, but given my knowledge of horsepower, road traction and the religious practices of the Cup’ik tribe of Alaska, I knew it was time to pull over at the next rest stop.

  I indicated to Matthew and Ann Northwood, my riding companions, that it was time to explore our parallel life paths and we veered into the parking lot of a greasy diner. Ordering some food at the counter, I noticed how Matthew and Ann chose spontaneously from the menu, while I used my wealth of life experience to narrow down the options to a corndog.

  Outside, we squatted in the dust by our bikes, eating and tinkering with valves while the storm drew nearer, symbolizing our mounting indigestion. Perhaps excited by the expertise with which I was adjusting my tappets, Ann suddenly threw down her chicken wing and placed a leathery hand on the backside of my chaps. It was interesting how very in the moment she was as she began to lightly spank me with a tyre lever. Although she was clearly enjoying herself, I felt the application was somewhat generalized and I reminded her that with a mainjet as oversized as mine, you’ve got to have clean plugs because, at high speeds, there’s going to be a lot of richness. Ann was going to have to work hard and fast to avoid loping my idle.

  Tearing off her leathers, she got down to the job. It was an enthusiastic if workaday effort. I would have done it with more skill, but I was determined to give her the enormous force of heat and explosive pressure inside my engine, so she could feel she’d achieved something that day. It was my gift to her. When you have many gifts, you should share them. But I was abruptly halted in my generosity as I suddenly felt a connecting rod up my crankshaft. Matthew was behind me, pounding me flat. He didn’t have a perfectly shaped part compared with my own, but his instrument was adequate.

  As they happily worked me over, I pondered the importance of the a priori presumption of the continuity of motorcycles and the teachings of Aristotle. Matthew and Ann had no idea I was functioning at such an elevated level, but they were clearly having fun, which is a huge boon to a life as prosaic as theirs. Pretty soon however, utilizing my keen sense of smell and instinctive talent for interpreting the gestures of dung beetles, I detected the approach of a tornado. Efficiently removing my sensor unit from Ann’s sparkplug socket, I levered myself off Matthew who was spinning somewhat out of control in third gear.

  Giving them a swift, definitive nod, which is the international motorcycle sign for ‘follow me’ as well ‘yes’, ‘hello’ and ‘I have a crowbar up my sleeve, now give me my fucking beer you punk’, I leapt onto my bike, mounting it like a virile panther. The engine vibrated to life and I melted into the leather groove of my saddle. Nobody gives me a ride like my 1964 Honda SuperHawk and I was going to take the scenic route to Minnesota. Because Socrates would have.

  42

  In Search of Lost Time

  by

  MARCEL PROUST

  Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray had any existence for me, when one day in winter, on my return home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called ‘petites madeleines’, a perfect scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me.

  An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having on me the effect which looking at Celeste’s breasts often has of filling me with a precious essence. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful feeling? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but as I felt the depths of my member palpitate (most inconvenient in front of Mother) I knew that it infinitely transcended those savours.

  I cleared an empty space in front of my mind’s eye and attempted to recall the distant memory to the surface of my consciousness. Several times over I had to try the task whilst carefully balancing my plate over my lap so as to hide my tumescent penis from Mother. That time with the groundsman in Normandy? But no, it was coffee from his little stove we drank there, with croissants I had bought, and the sensation was completely different. Or with the Marquis de Vaugoubert in Verona? But no, I distinctly remember that we were drunk on dessert wine into which we dipped little Italian biscotti and as a result I hadn’t been able to perform to the best of my abilities. Or with Cousin Claudette in Aix? No again, during that hot summer nothing but grenadine had accompanied our tarte aux fraises and just the sight of strawberry jam still brings a flush to my cheek.

  Then suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my Aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. Ah, Aunt Léonie! How I enjoyed those Sunday mornings and what a pleasant change they were from the incessant self-pleasuring that I indulged during those years and that so worried my parents. I look over at my dear mother now, with this memory newly present in my mind, and recalling her lack of censure when I was late for mass, it occurs to me that she may even have had a quiet word with Aunt Léonie. As I finish my madeleine, berthed by the warm recollection of those Sundays, I am struck once again by the complexity of memory, and how events can seem completely different when viewed backwards through the prism of time.

  43

  The Pillars of the Earth

  by

  KEN FOLLETT

  A rustling from the woods behind woke Tom. He sat upright and peered into the shadows. At this time of year, with the ground hardened from frost, it was not only men who were starving. Wolves grew bold and ventured south from the highlands of the Pennines. Tom grasped his hammer in readiness. Suddenly, a pungent musk filled his nostrils. If it is a wolf, she be ready for cubbing, he thought. He heard a whistle, ‘Phwit phwooo.’ It was not the sound of the tawny owl, nor was it any bird call Tom knew, though his father had patiently taught him to identify many in the thickets behind their hamlet. Again it came, ‘Phwit phwooo,’ and the musky scent became overpowering.

  Suddenly, a young woman stepped softly out of the undergrowth. She wore a long, blanched wool cloak and her hair hung loose around her shoulders.

  ‘Phwit phoooo!’ she whistled. ‘You are hotter than stone-baked bread on a July morning! And what be your name, my honey?’

  ‘Tom. Tom Mason.’ They pronounced his name differently in other parts of the country: in Cumbria, he was Tom Stonecutter, in Winchester, where they spoke posh, they said, ‘Tom Cathedralbuilder’, but here in Ely, with their flat fenland vowels, they called him Tom Mason. ‘And what be your name?’

  ‘Ellen. I don’t have a patronymic, because I’m a proto-feminist, or witch, really. But if I were to have a name like your
s denoting my trade, I guess it would be Ellen Fuckswell.’

  With that she dropped her cloak to the leaves. She was naked underneath. She leapt on Tom, pushing him to the ground. She kissed him hard, pushing her tongue into his mouth. She fumbled in his tunic whispering, ‘My ex was a jongleur, so I know what I’m doing with balls.’ She moved down the transept of his spread-eagled body until her lips hovered over the narthex, more specifically his testicles. She blew on them softly and Tom’s already erect column swelled further. She nibbled and tickled then licked up his throbbing pillar and took it into the tunnel-vault of her mouth.

  Tom could be passive no longer. He was a master craftsman after all. He examined the bevelled mouldings of her breasts with his rough hands and she sighed in pleasure. Encouraged, he sought her undercroft with his fingers and, finding signs of damp, he pulled her on top of him and eased his chisel into her crypt. She moved her hips gently at first, then building steadily in pressure and speed. Her panted breath grew shallower until she threw back her head and howled. Tom felt her vault climax against his monument. Still inside her, he rolled her over and began to hammer her with his mallet until he came in her niche. Exhausted, they pulled her woollen cloak over them and fell asleep.

  The next day he got up and went to work at the Cathedral building-site. He examined the mouldings, checked out the undercroft for wet rot, chiselled out a crypt and then hammered the shit out of a niche with a mallet.

  44

  Freedom

  by

  JONATHAN FRANZEN

  She was hot and she knew it; sticking out her ample chest and surveying the scene with a coy little cock of the head. Walter increased the magnification on his binoculars. He froze; she was looking right at him. He was unable to breathe for a minute as they locked gazes across the thirty-feet cavern between them, although it could have been thirty inches, so intense was the connection. Then she turned and bent over to examine a leaf, showing off an impressively full behind. Walter could tell she was enjoying his eyes on her. For a second, she was bathed in dappled sunlight and her pneumatic little figure was outlined in a halo. Then she jerked upright suddenly, a worm in her beak.

  He was surprised by the erotically charged volt that seared through him. It reminded him of a party he’d been to, years ago when he was a student, at a friend’s vacation house. After getting wasted on a combination of pot and ageing vermouth, they’d all ended up outside, tearing off jeans and T-shirts and jumping butt-naked into the elegant, kidney-shaped pool. Watching from the sidelines on a sun-lounger as the party descended into an orgy, Walter became increasingly perplexed about the effects of overpopulation on global resources. As the scene before him became more sexually adventurous, boy on girl, girl on girl, boy on boy on girl, he wondered briefly, if the answer was indeed recycling. A pair of golden-skinned, beautiful blonde twins appeared and tried to straddle him, but Walter knew it wouldn’t be enough to help save the giant panda. He snuck back inside, temporarily despondent, but was finally able to find release over a poster of an owl.

  The bird was hopping towards him now. Walter wanted to take her glossy beak between his teeth and gently bite it. He wanted to run his hands through her feathers, finger the fuzzy tufts of her crown. No – no he didn’t. What he really wanted was to take her on a sunset drive through the mountains of southern West Virginia, and then maybe go for pizza and a late movie. Sex was just sex. Sharing your dreams and cheesesticks, that was love. Walter sighed. It was time to go back to the motel.

  45

  The Prince

  by

  NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI

  P.S.

  Hi Lorenzo

  RE: The Prince in his Bedchamber

  Your Magnificence may recall that at the beginning of this little book, I said that all dominions under whose authority men have lived in the past and live now have been and are either republics or principalities. That is not strictly true. There is also a guild of highly trained, very discreet, quite hygienic professionals in Florence who, for a very reasonable fee, will subjugate one to their government and wield excessive authority for as long as Your Magnificence requires. It works out at about forty florins an hour, which is not bad and in the long run is a more economic option than keeping a capricious, wily mistress. And, as I have often noted, the populace are nothing if not fickle, wretched and generally shit. I just think, Your Magnificence, it is easier to go professional sometimes. Throw money at the problem.

  The one place a Prince may truly let his guard and hair down is in his bedroom (and may I say how fabulous your hair looks in Sanzio’s portrait. I like it short!). A Prince must pass his days acquiring principalities, putting down internal subversion and retaliating against external aggression, all the while avoiding contempt and hatred. Therefore it is most relaxing and restorative to descend from the lofty peak of governance to the lowlands of servitude in the privacy of one’s closet.

  Now a Prince is not constrained by normal morality, but I would advise Your Magnificence to take precautions to safeguard Your Person. Yes, condoms, but also, although it is delicious to feel the wheal of a well-handled whip, delivered in punishment for one’s transgressions, nevertheless as a strategic counter-measure it is well to agree a word in advance that will stay the fury of your sweet Nemesis. I like ‘doily’, but you can come up with your own. Be playful.

  Allow Your Magnificence to submit fully to the rule of your Mistress. Let her vanquish you. As I have said, there is no surer way of keeping possession than by devastation and nothing is more devastatingly sweet than having to sit out a seven-hour cabinet meeting with a butt plug inserted on her orders. She will devise all manner of laws and taxes. And then how sublime it is to tease her wrath with disobedience. She may condemn you with foul language, and chain you like a dog while the tribute she exacts with clamps and suture will provoke such uprisings in your loins!

  Should you please her with your subservience she may confer favours upon you and give permission for you to lay siege to her valleys and her highlands. I can assure you, it is so titillating for a man used to taking command to be instead unsure of himself and launch a cautious assault. The consequent aggrandizement of one’s Pisa Tower is enough though to urge the invasion and plunder of her Netherlands. But even seemingly broken in battle and utterly conquered, she may yet counter-attack and devastate your arsenal with foreign bodies.

  If you remain in any doubt of the refreshing, oxymoronic freedom consequent upon enslavement to a Mistress of the Guild, just remember what Catullus said to the consul Aurelius in the forum back in ’56: pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo (in the vernacular, Your Magnificence, ‘I will sodomize and face-fuck you’). Aurelius loved it.

  I posed the question previously whether is better to be loved or feared. I would argue there is nothing more arousing than the commingling of the two.

  P.P.S.

  Are there any vacancies going in your Court at the moment or soon?

  NM

  46

  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  by

  OSCAR WILDE

  It was as if his soul sank with each ascending stair. As he fumbled with the lock, his hand shook, so that it was a full minute before he was able to turn the key and enter. Dorian cast back twenty years ago to those early days of courtship when he would tear up the staircase, fling open the door, unable to wait one second more to feast his eyes on his one true love: himself. Swaying seductively, Dorian would sashay about the room, undoing a button here, removing a sock there, loosening his satin cravat, shimmying out of his cerise smoking jacket, tossing away his taffeta trousers with a flick of his elegant toes, until he was standing naked and proud in front of his devastatingly handsome self-portrait.

  Their lovemaking would take up afternoons, days, weeks. They’d begin by lying next to each other just looking, drinking in each other’s beauty, mirror images of unimpeachable perfection. Soon, however, Dorian would be unable to resist himself, kissing and licking the portrait all over, the
sour taste of turpentine thrilling his tongue, his inquisitive fingers tracing the outline where the oil had coagulated before it dried, reminding him of his own capricious jism, until he reached such a peak of excitement, he could no longer hold back and would explode into a salty fountain of self-adoration over his own likeness. The sexual magnetism he emanated towards himself was so intense that sometimes he’d have to tear away from a night at the opera, a drink at the club, or a morning of organizing his hair oils just to come to this secret room and fondle the frame.

  But now, in the flickering light of the half-burned candle, the room seemed to him to be less like a stage waiting for its star, and more the drear surrounds of a funeral home. Dorian approached the purple velvet curtain that shrouded the corpse of his youth and tore it aside.

  Dear God! Would it kill it to make more of an effort? He couldn’t have desired himself less. The crows’ feet, the double chin, the terrible toupee – what was it made out of, horse? – and, the most recent addition, a pendulous gut. What on earth had his portrait been doing behind that purple curtain? Not enough exercise for one thing.

  Perfunctorily tugging off his shoes and breeches, Dorian decided to keep his socks on in hope of a swift exit. Trying to avert his eyes, he imagined himself in the parry and thrust of fencing or the sensual manipulations of clay potting, but it was impossible to overcome his disgust. That revolting face was staring at him in stupid adoration – and, wait a minute, was that hair coming out of its ears? At that moment Dorian Gray realized he was going to have to get out of this relationship once and for all. He cleared his throat and began. ‘It’s not you, it’s me . . .’