When the ceremony was completed he opened a drawer slowly and fished out a slim package which he handed to me: “that is the manuscript”, he asserted.
Stifling the beginning of a hysterical laugh, I took the so-called manuscript and sprang out of the room and into the healthy youthful street, peopled with vigorous cats and dogs. The manuscript was made up of a few sheafs of typed pages, yellowed by time; they were drafts of articles written by Harris for various bygone periodicals. He had no doubt put them aside to be incorporated into that projected fifth volume, but had never gone any further into the matter.
Never mind, I reasoned, I knew it all the time; and took a cab to Rue de Sabot to talk things over with Alex Trocchi. We decided that that fifth volume of Monsieur Frank Harris's world-famous memoirs should be made into a really sumptuous work of art, to make Monsieur Harris's name even more illustrious. Alex was madly excited by the very idea of it. We rehearsed a few harris idiosyncrasies: Never to write: she said in a dialogue, but always: she cried, etc.
When the brand new fifth volume was delivered about ten sleepless days and nights later, tingling with sex and fun, I felt that Frank Harris himself would have been proud of it. I have always held that versatility is one essential ingredient of literary genius, and Alex had administered the proof, in lightning fashion, that he was able to do just anything with perfect grace and power. Even the odd twenty per cent of real Harris derived from Monsieur Adolph's time-stained papers appear rejuvenated and revitalized in that new context.
Since those happy days, the first four volumes have come out in the clear. after nearly forty years of Continental clandestinity, they were brought out first in New York, and then in London, in line with the habitual procedure. Their publication was presented to the public with austere guarantees, in an atmosphere of professorial dignity presumably meant to accredit the notion that My Life and Loves is one of the greatest works of literature in modern times to have been saved from the barbarian censors. I think not: Harris was a self-confessed fraud and nobody of sane mind has ever taken those memoirs of his seriously, apart from a few English schoolboys who may have been inspired in their daydreaming by the erotic resources they offered.
But the book itself has a charm which is attached to the period and people described; and Harris himself, a Renaissance hero wearing Queen Victoria's corsets, has created a wonderfully bombastic image of his own person which is certainly worth preserving. And that's where Trocchi's exercise achieves greatness, as comedy and character impersonation: he gives Frank Harris the dimension of a myth.
I dare the most sombre reader to resist total hilarity while going through this Fifth Volume, and not to expostulate after only a few pages, with the accents of one of Harris's lovely victims: “Oh! I can't stand it. Oh! Stop please or I shall go mad. Oh! Oh! Oh!”
CHAPTER I
Early in this century when I was about 45, I made up my mind to go around the world again as I had done twenty-odd years before and study those parts of itIndia, China and Japanwhich I had missed before. By this time in my life I realized distinctly that I liked young girls more than I ought to like them. The girlish form before the characteristics of sex become mature attracts me intensely.
One evening in London, a friend advised me to visit India, assuring me that my peculiarity was dominant there. I started for India determined to see all there was to be seen and, if my friend was indeed correct, to indulge myself whenever the temptation became overpowering.
Going through the Red Sea in September, the heat was terrific; the women passengers for the most part chose to sleep on deck in armchairs and, as the temperature rose, their clothing grew slighter and slighter. I had got to know a Mrs. Wilson and her daughter of eighteen going out to join the husband and father, a civil servant in Bombay. Mrs. Wilson was pretty, well-read and enthusiastic about my writings, with which she was familiar. The girl, Winnie, was far prettier with an adolescent figure on the verge of womanhood and the loveliest dark brown eyes. I thought her almost a perfect beauty, with her girlish outlines and entrancing face. How to win her! Naturally I began by paying attention to her and dispensing compliments of all sorts at every opportunity. I found she loved music, so I talked to her of Wagner and Liszt for an hour at a time. One day I stated the thesis that perfect beauty such as hers must be the outward and visible sign of a perfect soul. “You must live up to it,” I said, “and in ten years you will be famous. You will make all men adore you. We all long for perfection and never find itit is the passion of the soul.”
We soon became friends, till one day Mrs. Wilson took me to task: “You are turning Winnie's head,” she said, “and it really isn't fair of you.”
“I shall do her no harm, I promise you,” I said. “I only tell her she must make her spirit as perfect as her face.
“She is pretty, isn't she?” said the mother.
“A charming girl,” we both agreed. All the while I was thinking about how I could win her. More specifically, I was scheming how I could fuck her. There was nothing I wanted more than to plunge my throbbing cock into her tight little receptacleto feel her moving beneath me as I shuttled in and out until she screamed for me to stop. I could imagine how my swollen shaft would stretch her pussy lips and how the grasping walls of her sheath would feel as I penetrated inch by inch. I wanted to bury myself in her until my balls slapped her upturned buttocks with each ramming stroke. I determined I would make my fantasy real, for I could not long endure the demands of my painfully hardened pole.
Our cabins were on the same floor. Due to the thinness of the walls, I often heard Winnie's girlish voice raised in conversation with her master. Once I even heard Winnie complaining that she had to wait for her bath. A thought immediately flashed through my mind and I called the steward, gave him a liberal tip, and asked him to speed up the stewardess and get her to tell me when the bath was ready. In a quarter of an hour the stewardess, quite an attractive woman herself, told me that the young lady's bath was ready.” I gave her a good tip and begged her to keep hot towels for the girl when she emerged; she promised eagerly, showing that tips of gold coin were scarce. I went to the neighboring cabin, tapped at the door and told Winnie that her bath was ready, disguising my voice as I spoke. Then I fled back to my room.
In five minutes the stewardess came to me. “If you'd like to see her,” she said in a whisper, “I can show her to you.”
“Really?” I cried. “I'd like nothing better.” I followed her to the adjacent bathroom where through a knothole one had a complete view of the bath and the pretty bather.
“Go in,” I whispered to the stewardess after feasting my eyes for a while. “Go in and help her to dry herself and show me all her beauties, even the most secreteverything. I'll pay properly.”
The stewardess smiled, went in, and began to soap Winnie's back, keeping her front towards my knothole. She had delicious breasts, large, full, and free of the effects of gravity. Her nipples were large and covered the end of each delectable globe. These buds were now fully erect from the chill in the cabin. Then after putting a big towel about her shoulders, the stewardess made her put up one leg at a time to get her feet dried. As Winnie stood with a foot on the edge of the bath, I thought I had never seen anything lovelier. The blood burned in my cheeks. As curve after subtle curve was revealed, I grew wild with desire to touch and kiss. My cock stiffened from my almost uncontrollable desire to bury myself in her slit. The pretty stewardess played her part to perfection. While she dried the right leg, she drew it apart so that the whole of Winnie's cunt was exposed to my eyes. Just as I thought I could stand no more, she began patting those puffy pink lips very gently with the towel before helping Winnie out of the bath and beginning to dry the other leg.