‘I hope you’re not waiting for her. Because Blake is never letting her go. You’ll never have her,’ I cry vindictively.
His face pales in the gloom. ‘I am not waiting for her. I’m leaving tomorrow.’
‘What? You arrived today and you’re leaving tomorrow?’
‘Yes, I am needed in Africa. I am not here.’
‘You are needed here. I need you.’
‘I am here to keep a promise to dance at Lana’s wedding,’ he says, and depressing the door handle, quietly leaves.
‘Oh, you, you…’ At that moment I cannot think of a word that is bad enough. My hands are clenched tight and my breath comes in hard bursts. ‘Fool!’ I holler at the closed door.
There’s a chair nearby and I sink into it. The reaction to my wild outburst has made my knees weak. I feel so bewildered. He did not want me. Was it all for nothing then? I no longer feel furious, just a strange, cold emptiness. I place the palms of my hands against my humiliated cheeks. Oh! The vile things I had said to him. He must hate me. Forever, I will be haunted by that stricken look on his face when I flung at him that he would never have Lana. How I regret those unkind words that I can never take back.
My eyes fall upon a painting of a seated crone in a thick white shawl, her deeply lined face enclosed in a full and heavily ribboned white cap. I look at her puckered mouth and for some insane reason it makes me want to scream.
‘Damn it to hell, I’ve ruined it. I’ve lost him,’ I wail, and, burying my face in my hands, mourn.
‘Nothing drives a man away faster than desperation,’ says a deep male voice from the depths of the gloomy room.
I spring up in startled confusion and whirl around in the direction of the voice.
Fourteen
The best man is hanging his head out from the side of a huge sofa. He has very white teeth, which gleam in the darkness. Shame runs up my throat and flames into my face. Can it get worse? Now Grandview has witnessed my total humiliation too.
‘You were listening to a private conversation. You should have made your presence known,’ I accuse angrily.
‘I would have, but the conversation took a turn for the worse before I could announce my presence.’ He says it reasonably enough, but his eyes are laughing at me.
‘Oh! How dare you mock me?’
‘I’m not mocking you. It just seems to me that you are going about your process of seduction the wrong way.’
For a moment I consider turning around and sailing out of the room, my head held high. But…in spite of myself I am intrigued. I march up to him.
‘What do you mean?’ I demand haughtily, looking down at him as disdainfully as you can to someone who has witnessed you make a complete fool of yourself in the most cringe-worthy way possible.
He gestures towards the high-backed chair opposite him, and I perch on him. I don’t plan to stay long. Up close he has very strong features. He looks like one of those Australian surfer boys. It must be his light hair. Good-looking, I suppose, but nowhere near as fine as Jack. My Jack is so beautiful it sometimes hurts me just to look at him.
Fine wisps have escaped his ponytail, and hang about his face. He sits up and pushes them back. He places his fist on the armrest—it is full of golden hairs, and I am struck by its resemblance to a lion’s paw. Not in the sense of shape but in sensation alone. It looks so cuddly, ineffective and harmless, and yet one swipe could rip out the contents of a man’s belly. He has been lying stretched out on the sofa and has taken his shoes off.
‘You have a hole in one of your socks,’ I say.
He grins shamelessly. ‘I left my knitting needles in Paris.’
A hippie and a smart Alec. Whatever. ‘What did you mean just now when you said I was going about it the wrong way?’
‘When outnumbered by the enemy, a stubborn or simple-minded man will fight face to face in the open until he is killed. A smart man will react differently. He will strategize, find the weakness of his opponent and exploit it. As in war so in love. The sexual encounter, they say, is a flowery battle between a man and a woman.’
‘A flowery battle?’
He nods. ‘Every night the last Emperor of the Manchu dynasty turned over an ornate jade name plaque next to his bedchamber and a new concubine from his stock of three thousand girls would be brought to his bed. In 1856 the Celestial Prince picked a plaque that carried the name Yehonala.’
Yehonala—a concubine called Yehonala. The idea is intriguing.
‘As was the custom, the odalisque was carried on the back of a eunuch, covered only by a red silk sheet. He laid the twenty-one-year-old virgin at the foot of the bed, and to symbolize her complete subjection to the will of the Lord of Ten Thousand Years, she had to crawl on all fours towards him. All the naked girl had to become the mistress of her own fate was that one night.’
Grandview pauses. I lean forward. When he speaks again his voice is soft.
‘One night with which to bewitch a dissipated god-king whose tastes were varied and, according to some, perverted. Beauty was of no use as every girl in the harem had been chosen for her good looks. Intelligence: he could find a hundred other scholars to discuss worldly affairs with. Humor: he had the Court’s professional comedians.’
In spite of myself I am utterly fascinated. I strain to catch his words, to enter the foreign world he was weaving.
‘No one knows what she did that first night, but whatever occurred was what the ambitious girl had learned during the five years that she had been languishing within the vermillion walls, virtually a prisoner, not a functioning man in sight, and while the Emperor was not even aware of her existence. She had tirelessly learned everything she could of the arts of love. Every closely guarded technique and all the secrets and practices of feminine allure became hers. That knowledge and sexual prowess made her irresistible to the pleasure-sated Emperor, and from that night on no one could usurp her place as the Imperial bed-partner. She let the Chinese poet Chang Heng speak again after two thousand years: “No joy shall be equal to the delights of this first night, these shall never be forgotten, however old we may grow.”
‘The Emperor became utterly besotted with her and remained so until his death. In that one night her skills set in motion the events that ultimately led to the collapse of the centuries-long Manchu reign and the rise of a woman to power. Yehonala claimed the throne and became China’s last and most famous Empress. She became known as the She Dragon of China.’
Vann stops speaking and looks at me. My eyes travel down to his hands. They too are sprinkled with golden hairs. Big. Squarish. Well shaped. Masculine. Nice. Very nice. My mind goes blank. What the hell am I doing? I sit back, turn my voice disbelieving. ‘How could a virgin with no previous sexual contact with a man do that?’
He smiles. ‘Perhaps sex is not what you think it is?’
I frown. I am sixteen again, sore, the ejaculation leaking out of me. I remember he had gone out of the room and told his friends, ‘Like fucking a pillow, man.’ They had laughed. I had wiped myself and gone out, and pretended that I was not dying inside. The memory brings acute pain. I bow my head. ‘Well, what is it then?’
‘Sex is in the head.’
I frown.
‘Here, let me demonstrate. Close your eyes and do not open them until I tell you to do so.’
I look at him carefully. He appears relaxed. He has not moved a fraction of an inch from his position on the sofa and does not appear inclined to do so. What harm can come from a little demonstration? I close my eyes.
‘Imagine a white lotus bud. Do you know what a lotus looks like?’