She escorted me to the apartment door. Lena answered the ring. Her face brightened when she saw me The ‘panye’ explained I had been brought in a troika. My professor asked that I be specially cared for. Lena led me into her feminine nest, assuring the concierge everything would be done. I was still, of course, on top of the world. We entered the main room. ‘Are you on the run?’ She was excited. I flung an arm round her shoulders and embraced her. ‘It has been the best day of my life.’ I realised she was mine. I could now celebrate. I kissed her gently upon the lips. She whispered that Marya was not yet home. She drew away from me, but I held her little wrist. I told her that I loved her. It was true. I loved everyone at that moment. I had astounded the school with my brilliance. I had come home in the senior professor’s own troika. The entire Polytechnic had been in an uproar. She asked if I had done anything ‘politically dangerous’. I laughed. ‘It depends what you mean, Lenushka. I showed them the Future. I showed them the Age of Science. I showed them all the possibilities for change in this old world of ours.’
‘And you convinced them?’
‘They applauded me.’
‘Everyone?’
‘Everyone.’
She could not quite understand. I embraced her again. I kissed her with more passion. I needed this culmination. This reward. Little Lena was ideal. A virgin. Her breasts began to rise and fall, her hands touched my back in an embrace. Then she had pulled away, blushing. She would make me some tea. I flung myself on the couch. It was covered with a peasant quilt of most intricate patterns. It was faintly, deliciously perfumed. I watched her body in its rustling frock as she moved about the apartment. At length she brought me a glass of tea. I accepted it, gesturing for her to sit beside me. Again that sweet, uncertain movement. Then she was with me, cradled in my arms. We sipped the tea together. I began to make love to her very slowly. I stroked her arms, her face, her thighs. A little later, I picked her up and carried her, weeping, into the bedroom. She made to resist, but no woman could have resisted me that day. My hands moved under her clothes and found flesh, then her sex, and she gasped. But, for all her feeble, birdlike flutterings, she was mine. I undressed her. Then I undressed myself. Her face was at peace, her eyes were like the eyes of a gazelle which has fallen in love with a leopard. She would willingly die for one touch of my paw, one movement of my mouth on her flesh. My body sang with the controlled agony of delicious passions and heightened senses. Then I was upon her. I took her fiercely. She wept and groaned and shrieked. I clawed her so that blood came. I bit her. I plunged into her and more blood came. And still I was not sated. I rolled away from her. Her eyes had turned to burning copper and her hair was a halo of flame, her body a lattice of scratches, of little bites and voluptuous, spreading bruises. Now she wept deeply, for the pleasure, for the release of her weeping, and I took her again.
As I rolled back, Marya entered the room. ‘Lena! Dimitri?’ She was horrified. She shivered in her little fur cap, with her muff still on her hand. She was gasping. I smiled. I gestured to her to join us. I could easily have satisfied them both. She closed the door and had gone before I could suggest it. I laughed. Lena lay there staring vacantly at the closed door. I took her for the third time. My sperm filled her anus like liquid steel. She was once more overcome by her passion. Marya was unimportant. Let her disapprove. Lena agreed. She had become wild; a wonderful animal. We kissed and nibbled and stroked one another’s warmth and youth. We were about to make love for the fourth time, when Marya again opened the door. There was gas-light now behind her. It had become quite dark. She had removed her street-clothes. She was in distress, ‘I thought you loved me,’ she said.
‘I love you both. Come.’ I offered myself.
‘This is wrong. Can’t you see?’
‘There is nothing wrong in being alive.’
‘We’ll be out soon,’ Lena told her. ‘We’ll explain.’
‘Your body! What has he done to you?’
Lena had not been aware of the love-marks. Now she looked at her breasts and her thighs and first she smiled, touching them, then she lost some of her elation. Foolish Marya had entered Eden. She had done what Lucifer did to Adam and Eve. She had made us suddenly self-conscious. The little idiot was the snake bringing sin to the Garden. I was furious. I leapt up. I jumped for her. I caught her by the hair. ‘Free yourself from all these preconceptions!’
‘This isn’t freedom - it’s - ‘ She burst into tears. She tried to struggle away from me. But I held her. ‘Join us, you bitch! Be a woman!’
