The result was a lukewarm but meat-rich soup. There was enough for both of us and enough for another meal left over. He unlocked my hands from behind me, locked them again before me, and had me carry the armor-bowl with its soup contents. I had to give him credit for some ingenuity.
17
That evening, after tying me even more tightly, Enver ate most of the soup and then slept for several hours. When he awoke, he looked up at the mists and the distorted moon behind them. He crawled over to me and said, in English, “I am cold. And I am also hot, my lord. Hot with passion.”
This was the sort of monologue that my biographer might have put in his romances but which more discriminating readers would reject as absurd. They forget that books are often imitated by people.
I said nothing. Noli put his arms around me, and, shivering, clung to me for a while. Then he startled me by running his tongue up and down my spine from the nape of my neck to the base. He then lowered his hand and put it around in front of me and began playing with my penis. He moved the foreskin back and forth very softly and slowly. The heat of his breath on my back and the heat of his hand on my penis, and the lesser heat of his clothed body on my back felt pleasant.
I had not been so handled by a male since I was a youth and living with The Folk. Sexual experimentation among The Folk is permitted by the young from the time they feel like doing it until they pick a mate. The males of my age, from the time we could get a hard-on, stuck our penises in each other’s anuses, and sucked on penises long before we could ejaculate. The females were right there with us, playing with each other and with the males. The hairy playmates of my childhood, however, had small penises. When they attained adulthood, and stood six feet and weighed three hundred pounds, they still had penises only about two inches long when erect.
Before the hair grew on my pubes, my kq, as it is called in their speech, was the marvel of the tribe.
When I became a man, it was the desire of the females and the envy of the males and caused me much trouble from both.
When I became able to ejaculate, I still played sexually with the male and female young, buggered and was buggered, sucked and was sucked. This was not continuous, of course. Most of our play was the sort found among all young primates (man included), racing, wrestling, playing the jungle version of kingof-the-hill, harassing the very old, hunting for rodents, insects, and bird eggs, and playing leopard-andvictim.
And so on. But we also spent at least half an hour a day in exciting each other sexually. We did much of this in full view of the elders and with their permission.
Only when pubescence began did the elders repress the juveniles, sometimes quite savagely.
The result is that I grew up with almost no sexual inhibitions. I was inhibited about using violence to gain a sexual end, since this was the one thing the elders stopped at once if they saw it. And they punished us severely.
When I came of sexual age, I had already lost any desire for the males. Not that, under the proper, or perhaps I should say improper, circumstances, I might not have resorted to homosexuality. But I was not a compulsive homosexual, nor did I know any among The Folk. Compulsive, that is, neurotic, homosexuality seems to be the characteristic of civilization, although there is some among the so-called savages. Compulsive behavior of any kind is neurotic. Which is why I was so disturbed about my orgasmic reactions to my killings.
Noli played skillfully with me. His hand was big, but it was almost as gentle and knowledgeable as my wife’s. He must have had much practice.
I failed to respond in the slightest.
If my aberration had been absent, I might have had an erection and an orgasm eventually. Friction alone can do much, and I was not frightened of him. I was angry, but I doubt that this would have inhibited an erection.
After a while, he quit with an exclamation of disgust. He began to move his hard penis against my anus. He breathed harder, and then his hands clamped my buttocks and he spread them open. The huge glans was, however, denied entrance. I have a very powerful sphincter, which I closed as far as I could. He shoved for a long time. Then he said, “Let me in, or I knock you out.”
I didn’t want another headache and possible brain damage, so I said, “Very well.”
He spit on the end of his penis, I supposed, and, slowly but insistently, pushed the head in. The shaft slid through immediately thereafter.
I hurt, and I also felt as if I had to get rid of a huge turd. He began to slide the penis back and forth, and the pain increased. He grunted with each lunge, and I could feel the thick stiff hairs against the bare skin of my buttocks. His hands were around me again, one on my penis and one cupping my testicles. He began squeezing on these. I clamped my teeth and endured the pain. Stoic as a wild beast, as my biographer would have said, if he had known about this, although he would have shut such a scene out of his mind, because it would have destroyed his image of me. I could be tortured in his romances, but I could not, of course, be buggered.
Noli was falsely sentimental as most of his kind, that is, homo sapiens. After groaning loudly and jabbing rapidly in his orgasm, he lay quiet awhile except for his heavy breathing. Then he murmured something which sounded endearing, in Albanian, I suppose. He caressed my face with his hands (I resisted the temptation to bite off a finger) and kissed the back of my neck several times. I suppose he would have acted the same way with a prostitute, male or female. He did not care for me any more than he would have for a whore, but he had to carry out the ritual of love.
In about fifteen minutes, he repeated his assault. I endured it. He kissed me on the neck and then got around before me and kissed my penis and ran his fingers gently between my testicles and the hollows of my thighs. I did not respond except to spit at him. He struck me hard on the face, got up, made sure I was tied securely, and then lay down to snore. No doubt, he dreamed of former loves.
18
That day, we put the water-rich green mountains behind us. We were in ranges as dry as a camel fossil.
These mountains are subject to a local freak of climate, which diverts the rains to the mountains on the north and south. It is in this area that the valley which once held the gold was located.
We went down one mountainside and up another and the following day started down the other side.
We were hungry because we had eaten nothing but a hare which Noli had killed with a shot that destroyed half of it. He put the carcass on top of a flat stone, tied me up, and then went to look for firewood.
I reached out a foot and closed my toes around the hare’s ear and pulled the body to me. After shoving it against a bush to hold it, I got on my side and put my face against it and began eating on the part left open by the outgoing bullet.
When Noli returned, I had devoured everything but the skin, the entrails, and a goodly amount of meat barred from me by the bones. There was enough left for a meal for him, but he was furious. I think he had intended to let me have a leg and to keep the rest for himself. He called me a dirty bloody animal and beat me with the stock of his rifle. He did, however, pull his punches. Even in his rage he kept enough control to remember that I was the guide to wealth and immortality. The blows hurt, especially the ones over the kidneys. But I kept silent and did not move my face muscles.