‘A whole army gone, like that,’ P.J. says. ‘Imagine if archaeologists ever found them, mummified in the sand. . My father says it was something like fifty thousand men.’
Are you worried?
‘A little: what if he gets lost? It’s so incredibly huge and empty, I mean, if a whole army can disappear. .?’
She looks at the books lying on the floor, precisely as she left them yesterday, and says: ‘Maybe I should get reading again, I still have a ways to go.’
A little later she’s lying with a pillow under her stomach, reading my History while I leaf through those of Herodotus. I think about that vanished army, overtaken by a violent southerly wind, huge waves of sand. . Joe is out there somewhere, maybe he’s already crossed the Egyptian border on his way to the oasis at Siwa. He’s been gone for three weeks and is already halfway through the rally, his equipment is still intact, on good days he keeps up with the truck class. In my eyes he’s performing a miracle, but I can’t shake the thought that he’s being followed by a shadow that goes by the name of Achiel Stephaan.
‘Hey, I didn’t know you had a crush on me,’ P.J. says from the floor.
She sounds surprised, teasing. It embarrasses me less than I’d expected, maybe because she’s seen me come, you could say we belong together now, somehow. The look she gives me, it’s the look that says something’s on its way, I know it well by now. She gets up and takes her beer from the table.
‘But you exaggerate,’ she says. ‘You guys here just aren’t used to much. Durban wasn’t really so special. And whether I am or not. .’
Special enough to write a novel about.
‘Your diaries, you mean?’
Metz.
She’s startled; I don’t know why I’m doing this, maybe I’m pissed off at her for being so late, maybe I don’t want to be anything but helpless.
‘Did you read that?’
A coolness has entered her voice, she’s on her guard. I nod.
‘What did you think of it?’
The man can write.
‘That’s not what I mean,’ she says sharply. ‘What he wrote about me, do you believe him?’
Belief is an act of love.
‘What do you mean?’
So I believe you.
P.J. can’t help laughing.
‘You’re a sophist, Frankie Hermans.’
My diary, his novel — who are you?
She looks, and thinks.
‘This, Frankie, this, here, right now, that’s all I can say about it. It’s not all that mysterious, that’s only what Arthur makes of it.’
At the end of the day, we’re all named Achiel?
‘Yeah, maybe you could say that. Achiel, yeah.’
It’s the first time that name’s been spoken out loud, and we laugh. She comes over and stands beside me.
‘Have I ever told you how attracted I am to intelligent men?’
And so the mood has shifted to the kind of steaminess familiar to me from the time she jerked me off. She kneels down beside me and puts her hands on my thighs.
‘Intelligence is irresistible.’
My head starts to glow, this is what I’d been hoping for, no, what I’d been praying for. She unzips my trousers but I point in alarm at the curtains; my parents can see us like this. P.J. gets up, closes off the darkness outside and bolts the door. As she walks past, she takes the dishcloth from its hook.
‘Where were we? Oh, yes.’
I’m as hard as glass, she asks, ‘Are you clean?’ and I nod. Then she takes me in her mouth. I caress her hair, the inside of her mouth is wet and warm, her head moves up and down. I see her face from the side and my dick sliding in and out of her mouth, she smiles up at me, it’s too much. The sperm squirts powerfully in her face. Sorry, sorry. Only when I’m completely drained does she let go and wipe off the cum with the dishcloth. Her hands, so unbelievably much warmer than the official thirty-seven degrees centigrade, slide under my sweater. My skin responds with uncontrollable shivers. She pulls my sweater up over my head and worms the sparrow claw out of its sleeve so that I’m sitting half naked in front of her. The light above the table shines bright on my white, asymmetrically curved torso, I rise to my feet and click it off. Paradise by the desk lamp on the floor.
‘Come.’
P.J. helps me up and we move to the bed. I let myself fall onto it, she unlaces my clodhoppers. She pulls off my shoes and my trousers, I’m lying helpless before her. Under her sweater she’s wearing a white bra. There are pale marks on her stomach, my hand asks for her. She puts her hands behind her back and unsnaps her bra, her arms slide through the shoulder straps and I see her breasts. I’m sweet on her.
She squeezes my dick, her jeans and panties fall to the floor. I see the shadow between her legs, there where I’ve never been. P.J. climbs up and straddles me, feeling around under her. ‘Have you ever done this. .?’ I shake my head. Then she sinks down halfway on my cock, sighs deeply and shiveringly and impales herself on me. Her eyes are closed, mine are wide open. She leans forward and puts her hands on my chest while her lower body moves up and down, independent of the rest. Nothing more than this is needed, this is all I ask for.
Her head is bowed and a waterfall of curls is hanging before her face, behind it her loud breathing and sometimes a whining sound as though she’s suffering a pain too great for words. Her pelvis slides powerfully up and down, our pubic hair grinds together, my hand slides over her buttocks, across her lower back to her stomach and her shaking breasts, ‘Yeah, yeah, grab them,’ she pants. The nipples are hard, my attention is divided and I no longer feel my dick that’s melted away inside her. When P.J. moans that she’s coming I grab her by the back of the neck, spread my fingers across her scalp and feel the strong waves rolling through her body. She collapses on top of me, her breathing is a storm in my ear. She lies there like that for a long time. I remain motionless, slowly the feeling returns to my cock sticking in her down there. P.J. sits upright and slides off me.
‘Jesus, that was great.’
She climbs down the front of my body.
‘You’re still hard.’
She starts jerking me off, my dick is shiny with her wetness.
‘I want you to come, Frankie.’
She leans down over me and flutters her tongue across the head of my dick.
‘Come now.’
Her hand slides up and down without pause, I wail and explode in her mouth.
At three in the morning I wake up, the stove is hissing and I pull a blanket over us. P.J. flutters her eyelids, smiles and sleeps on. I don’t want to sleep, just look, but sink away again anyway. I wake up when I feel her body pulling away from mine and sliding out of bed. It’s still dark, she’s getting dressed.
‘I have to go,’ she whispers, as though there were someone else in the room.
She moves her hand lightly over my forehead, then she’s gone. A wave of cold air from outside rolls through the room, I fall asleep again.
A couple of hours later Joe drives out of the camp at Siwa for a ride around the oasis. He goes thundering into the nearby sand dunes, the scoop sticking out high above the cab; a horned beast disappearing into the desert.