Her gaze was still a million miles away, harking back to a time a thousand years ago, it seemed. Only her body was there dancing for them. Her mind was dead.
Slowly the music from the guitars and the mandolins took on a rising tempo. The tomtoms beat a heartbeat rhythm, enchanting the senses of the onlookers, hypnotizing their steady stares at the new gypsy dancer.
Gradually, the steady monotonous rhythm insinuated itself into their consciousness so that they forgot the time of the present and knew only that time had flowed by them and that Nirvana itself was encircling them.
Their eyes followed every movement of La Tarantula's body. Snakelike it swayed in front of them and entranced their senses. Like the flowing of fluescent waters, her body wove itself into a series of convulsions, an invitation sometimes suggesting itself in her body's grimaces, a repulsion always in the background. And as the movements of her body varied, so varied the masks on her face, changing when her body suggested unholy lust and then, in the next second, adjusting its features into a mask of utter virginal simplicity, as the body took on those attributes.
On and on she danced, her flowing arms and legs and muscles seemingly carrying her along on air currents. The music, once risen to a quick tempo, had subsided once more into the slow measures of its opening chords. The strings sobbed melancholy tears. The tomtoms beat out the rhythm of a dying heart. The castanets clacked dismal sounds. Slowly, slowly, her body subsided into a slow weaving of her torso, gradually sinking to the floor in spasms until, as the music died out into almost soundless notes, her poor tired body was inert on the floor.
For a full minute, all was quiet. Then the applause broke out in the audience. The Moors applauded wildly. The native guides who frequented the place when business was bad promised themselves that they would bring their next foreigners here for the gypsy dancer. In one corner of the room, his head almost completely immersed in the white burnouse of a native, a dark-skinned Berber was watching the proceedings. His beady eyes glittered at the sight of the gypsy body.
His tongue laved his dry lips. Clapping his hands together, he summoned the waiter, and gave him a curt order. Then he settled himself deeper into his chair and continued to stare at the gypsy girl.
His eyes closed until they were mere slits. The muscles in his chin worked like mad.
La Tarantula lay on the floor breathing heavily from exhaustion.
Tensely, her body awaited the opening strains of the next dance. This was to be the most sensational dance she had ever done. It was going to be danced with another gypsy dancer, La Niobe, a girl whom she had picked up in the Triana gypsy settlement and whom she had been teaching for the past year. It was only because of her interest in this young girl of seventeen that she had been able to keep herself alive.
All year they had been rehearsing this one dance. It was going to be the climax of her entire dancing career. Nobody had ever seen it before. Even the musicians had played their music without ever having seen the actual dance. Now, La Tarantula awaited the opening chords that would start them off. A tense air of excitement crept over the place. Word had gone around that La Tarantula was going to introduce a new and sensational dance. All eyes were glued to her figure on the floor. The lights were all turned off with the exception of one that spotlighted the recumbent figure on the stage.
The man in the white burnouse still stared out of his narrowed eye slits and laved his lips with his tongue.
The music began. First one instrument essayed a few hesitant notes, as though distantly, dimly. Gradually it became louder. Then the other instruments came chiming in, each adding a new colour to the music.
And the sum total of it all was a strangely barbaric chant that was not barbaric. Something of the barbaric masculine was missing from it. But in its place was the barbarism of women, the sweet effulgent love music that women love.
Through the veil of curtains floated the figure of La Niobe. A gasp went through the men when they saw that she was entirely nude. Her young girlish figure stood out like a piece of vivified alabaster. As she
stepped cautiously, softly into the light, her tiny breasts jiggled sensuously so that more than one old man in the audience sucked the breath through his teeth with the bitterness of impotency. Hesitantly she danced around the figure of La Tarantula on the floor, wondering why she was there. Then, as the music took on tempo, she became more sure of herself. Taking a drape of La Tarantula's in her hand, she lifted it away from the tired body. One breast of the dancer rolled free, its flesh quivering as it fell away from the confines of the cloth. Again the young girl lifted another drape away from La Tarantula's body. The other breast rolled free, shaking gelatinously with freedom. The girl allowed the two drapes to flutter softly to the floor.
Piece after piece the girl lifted away from La Tarantula until it became quite obvious to the spectators that the gypsy dancer was now as naked as her dancing partner. At this point the soft sad music took a turn. It became more animated. Life crept into it like the warmth of the morning sun into a cold room. A quiver went through her. Her arms moved slightly. Then her legs moved. And then her head. Soon, every part of her was moving, weaving and twisting as she sat seated on her haunches. And, around her, her young protegee danced gracefully, pleading with her as it were to enter into the spirit of the dance with her. Soon, La Tarantula had arisen from her sitting position and was dancing with La Niobe. But this was an entirely different dance than had ever been performed before. Now, instead of interpreting in her dance the sexual act with man, she was doing the same for woman.
Round and round her hips rolled as though she were inviting the hairy cunny part of the young girl, La Niobe, to come closer so that she could rub her own hot cunt into it. Hotter and hotter the music became. Their eyes rolled. Their fingers twitched Closer and closer their bodies approached each other, the naked flesh gleaming in the lone light. A mad, bad note took hold of the music. Strange, esoteric rites were suggested by it. The weeping wailing of disembowelled ghosts crept into it.
Soon, the pair of quivering naked bodies were almost together. Their bodies shook. Their shoulders shook. And as they shook the nipples of their breasts touched each other as they swung from side to side. The contact made them stand up stiffly. Closer and closer the breasts closed in with each other. And the bodies were soon touching. Soon, with all the fervour of a love bout, of a perfect manfuck, they were rubbing their cunts together with a series of moans and ahs and ohs that seemed to have found life in an overwhelming passion. Faster and faster they whirled their abdomens, rubbing each other's pubic sections so that it seemed that sparks were made by the friction. When it seemed that they could stand the contacts no longer, they suddenly seized hold of each other tightly around each other's waist and danced together, whirling their buttocks now, kissing each other on all parts of their bodies, moaning and weeping. The music wailed on. The dance continued. With one heart deep scream from La Tarantula, the pair fell to the ground still in each other's embrace. There they licked at each other's breasts and, when they could contain themselves no longer, reversed their positions so that La Tarantula's head was between the legs of La Niobe and vice versa. Then, timed to the beat of the music, they sent their heads and their tongues bobbing into the hot cuntboxes of each other's hotspots, wrapping the tips of their tongues around the stiffening clitorises of their cunnies.
The music rose to a higher pitch. Their bodies were soon in the throes of a double orgasm. Their heads still bobbed between their legs. The young girl La Niobe was the first to experience her orgasm. She let out a scream as though she were suffering the most severe tortures. Her thighs trembled. Her eyes popped. Her fingers clutched the hair of her partner. At the same moment, La Tarantula felt herself give way. And she, too, came, inundating the face of La Niobe with a sweet delicious flood of fluid. They quivered, they panted, they shook in passion. And, all the while, the sensuous music throbbed on, accentuating their movements so that they took on the grotesqueness of puppets.