after all, was one of the great lessons she'd learned from Russian literatureâthe irretrievability of first love. I deserve more , she thought. It's seeping away too fast. It should last a year at least. But the longer she thought this, the more slender her happiness seemed, until, by the third week of April, she looked back upon that first exhilaration on the ice with the nostalgia she might have felt for an event ten years in her past.
It was then that for three or four days Archivir courted her with overwhelming charm. He was gallant, courteous, attentive, gentle with his embraces, generous with his time. He made love to her as if she were a duchess, was tender with her body, caressed her to ecstatic heights she had not known before. She began to forget her doubts, and decided it was true that a man who can give a woman satisfaction can have that woman forever in his debt. He satisfied her so splendidly that she wondered why none of the great authors had ever been able to describe such things in words. It even occurred to her to write a novel: "The Sexual Enslavement of a Russian Girl by a Violent Turk."
One evening, lying in Archivir's arms in the great four-poster with candles burning all over the room, listening to him sigh and whisper snatches of Arabic verse, she heard him mutter something about a book. She said that of course she'd be willing to look at any book he cared to show, and so he left the bed and walked to his library in the nave. Watching him walk away and then return, his body open to her without shame, she thought how remarkably her life had changed, how on that dreadful Christmas morning when she'd faced Vava's horrible prank, she could never have imagined that in a few short months she'd be watching a Turk with silky locks and delicate lashes approaching her naked in his bed.
Archivir nestled beside her, and by candlelight together they inspected the book. It was a portfolio of small engravings, beautifully made, of persons making love in esoteric ways. But the last few pages offered something new: these depicted combinations of persons numbering more than two, in the most imaginative positions.
"Have you ever tried this?" she asked.
He nodded. "Yes, and it'sâincredible!" He glanced at her with a lascivious grin.
Very soon he revealed a plan. Since neither of them believed in middle-class morals, and since they were lovers for whom no sensation held any danger or emotional threat, why shouldn't they experiment, too, with some of these sexual situations that were titillating their desire? She was tantalized by his proposal, but a moment later a problem arose in her mind.
"How shall we find partners?"
"A very difficult thing," he agreed.
"Yes," she said, "since first off we demand enormous physical charm."
"And then," he added, "there's the question of discretion. She, whoever she may be, must have as much to lose as ourselves."
"I hadn't thought about another girl."
"Well, I certainly wasn't thinking we'd do it with a man."
"But in the pictures..."
"Damn the pictures. You just want to be fucked from both ends."
"And you," she said, "you want to turn this place into a seraglio, with concubines all over you doing everything at once."
They both laughed, then Archivir turned serious. He did know some people, he said, who were experienced in this kind of thing. They were attractive and discreet and would know how to manage with grace and ease. He wanted to try it, slowly, perhaps the first time with only one person more. If she were willing, he would arrange it for the next night. But if she were too shyâthen, of course, he'd understand.
She knew at once she couldn't refuse. He'd be disappointed, and that would surely be the beginning of the end of their affair. But even as she agreed and noted how joyfully he smiled, she felt a premonition of something bad, of some unhappy trap most cleverly laid.
Walking to the mansion the following night, she felt upset. The rendezvous was
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