“Is that a corset?” Zelda giggled.
“A ship’s master must stand stiff as a ramrod,” he told her stiffly. Click-click. “It’s a necessary part of my uniform.”
“ ‘Stiff as a ramrod,’ ” Zelda echoed. “Well, not exactly,” she observed. “But let’s see what we can do. . . .”
Click-click.
I ambled itchily—scratchily—back toward my cabin. At the top of the staircase above it, I heard strange sounds coming from one of the luxury suites. It took me a minute to decipher them.
Then I realized that it was a dog whining—or, rather, purring with pleasure. Up till then, I’d never known dogs could purr. But there’s really no other word for the sounds I heard.
A voice merged with the strange noises. “Ahh, Zwing Toy! . . . Yes-yes, my little furry darling! . . . Lick me there! . . . Oh, yes! . . . Let me feel your hot tongue, Zwing Toy! . . . Lick me! . .
Queen Nimmfetah was playing with her Pekingese!
Blaze Buxbocks and Mister Jewish . . . Captain Maldemerde and Zelda Poppins . . . Queen Nimmfetah and even Zwing Toy . . . Everybody, it seemed, was having fun but me. Feeling left out, I continued on down to my cabin and went to bed. I fell asleep scratching . . .
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tahiti!
The three full days that the S.S. Lascivia lay at anchor off the port city of Papeete passed in a sunsplashed haze of euphoria. Hundreds of thousands of words have been written to describe the Polynesian island. None succeed. As much as it is a place, Tahiti is an emotion. It frustrates semantics; description only blurs the feeling; Tahiti can’t be defined; it must be experienced.
The euphoria persisted even after we’d departed Tahiti. The weather remained perfect for the next week. There were no further incidents of sabotage. Only the sight of people constantly scratching intruded on the sense of well-being.
Even the Captain seemed in a better mood than usual. Word had reached him that the Queen William was only fourteen hours ahead of us, hardly an insurmountable lead. We’d picked up time on her during the hurricane, and Maldemerde was hoping to gain even more by shortening the ten days of sailing to our next stop, Bali.
A movie travelogue on Bali was scheduled to be shown a couple of nights before we were due to arrive there. The screening took place in the lavish theater lounge where the latest feature films were presented nightly for the cruise guests. About a hundred-fifty people attended the showing, myself among them.
The theater lounge was an ultra-modern setup designed with bold splashes of color. The ceiling was a blue tropic sky, trickily lit so that it changed subtly from daytime to twilight to star-studded evening as the theater was darkened. The seating consisted of overstuffed divans of various shapes and sizes, most of them ample for two people, a few curved larger ones capable of seating three or four comfortably. They weren’t arranged in rows, but rather staggered casually to create an “at-home” feeling. The draperies were maroon velvet, and the paintings on the mahogany walls ran the gamut from signed-in-the-stone prints by turn-of-the-century impressionists to modern abstract originals. Deep-pile carpeting, dark gold, completed the muted effect. In every way, the theater had been planned for luxurious comfort.
It was already filling up by the time I arrived. I found an empty seat beside Queen Nimmfetah on one of the smaller divans. She returned my greeting haughtily and moved a little away from me as I sat down. From the gauzy material covering her lap, Zwing Toy, her Pekingese, growled low in his throat and eyed me suspiciously. The young ex-Queen soothed him, but her dark eyes were no warmer than the dog’s as they looked out over the top of her face-veil. I lowered my own eyes to avoid her gaze and found them focusing on her small, plump bosom. It was playing an intriguing game of hide-and-seek with the semi-transparent material of her royal Arabian garb.
When Queen Nimmfetah caught me peeking and sneered, I turned away and saw Mister Jewish and Blaze Buxbocks on an adjacent divan. They were sitting very close together, deep in conversation. In front of them Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot, her maid Magda, and Ensign Mayday shared a larger couch. Looking around, I also spotted Captain Maldemerde with Zelda Poppins, Chief Engineer Gorilla and Binny Stanford, Sister Stella and Ogden Stanford, the four bridge Wives, Mario Brandino, and Dr. Quotabusta.
Just about everybody was busily scratching!
The trick ceiling did its thing and night fell. The audience subsided to a murmur and then became quiet. Only the sound of scratching could be heard. The wide screen lit up and the travelogue began:
“INDONESIAN PARADISE”
As the title dissolved from the screen to be replaced by various screen credits, a narrator’s voice was heard. It was one of those deep, rich voices calculated to make the listener feel like a raisin immersed in sugary custard. It rolled off his tongue like an expensive seduction.
“Bali . . . island in the Sun . . . happy, simple natives . . . exotic birds with bright plumage . . . azure lagoons . . . golden beaches . . . lush, vibrant foliage . . .” And so on.
On the screen appeared a series of visions of greenery and native huts and beaches and water sports and outdoor cafés and tribal rites and waterfalls and palm trees, et cetera. The voice droned on, rendering an exciting locale dull with the banal description typical of so many travelogues. Then, suddenly but smoothly, the images on the screen changed.
The narrator was describing how “sure-footed Balinese boys nimbly scale the tall coconut trees.” There was a close-up of bare, brown feet blurring with the speedy movements of the upward climb, and then clearing to present a sharp focus on a pair of large feet clad in high, black socks!
The camera pulled back to show a nude male figure with a domino mask covering the lower part of his face. Endowed like a Spanish bull in the mating season, he was sneaking up on a tall, blonde girl. She was standing with her back to him and pulling her dress off over her head.
“. . . Strange, indeed, to the civilized visitor, are the uninhibited traditions and quaint native customs . . .”
As the dress fell to the floor, the blonde was revealed nude except for black-net stockings, spiked high heels, and a mask similar to the man’s. Her platinum hair was cropped short in some style of yesteryear. Her breasts were large and pendulous.
Still with her back to the unseen intruder, she massaged their tips until the nipples were long and stiff. Eyes closed, her heavy hips moved rhythmically as she rubbed the fleshy thighs of her long legs together. As she strained, her derriere thrust out and rippled suggestively. Using it as a target, the masked man came up behind her and made his presence known.
“Must be some sort of native fertility rite,” a woman in the audience explained to her companion.
Other viewers watched without comment, but reacted in different ways. Beside me, Queen Nimmfetah had stopped scratching and was encouraging Zwing Toy to burrow in her lap. Mister Jewish had both hands inserted in the top of Blaze Buxbocks' low-cut evening gown. Binny Stanford was stroking Chief Engineer Gorilla’s thigh. Her ex-husband, Ogden, was concealed from the waist down by the folds of Sister Stella’s habit. Captain Maldemerde and Zelda Poppins were locked in an embrace with the Captain staring wide-eyed at the screen over her shoulder.
“. . . Here, fertile Nature has created an atmosphere of gentle serenity, of tranquility and peacefulness . . .”