Funeral Rites (17 page)

“No crap about it, we're done for. If we don't get the works tomorrow, we'll get it the next day.”

Twenty seconds later, Erik, who was too uncomfortable in his chair, silently lay down beside Riton. Erik was dropping with sleep. As he bent down to he at the right of the kid, over whose body he had just stepped, the leather of his new belt creaked slightly.

“Pretty supple,” thought Riton, not knowing whether he was thinking the word about the leather or the athlete's torso. The creaking, which evoked muscular strength, the power of lithe and sturdy haunches, the perfect play of the joints, both reassured and disturbed him. Erik stretched out and turned slightly onto his right side because his pistol was in the holster on the left and would have been in the way, but he kept his legs straight and parallel. He was in his stocking feet. His right arm was pinned down, was being crushed on the floor by his body, and his left hand became aware, in his half-sleep, of its strength as it stroked his terrifying neck, which it circled, as if to polish it, though it was careful to be aware
of what it was doing and remained conscious of that muscular neck beneath its palm and took pleasure in the back of it. It stroked his hardened face, which was softened by his blond beard. Then it returned and laid itself on his chest, where it remained, spread flat, with a few fingertips in the opening of the jacket and shirt touching his skin and golden hairs. Two fingers inspected the quality of the granite of that cellar flagstone. Erik, soothed by the slight contact with this body, fell into a deep sleep. He could die the next day since he had acknowledged his beauty that evening. He hardly realized that he had turned to Riton, and it was in the position which I have just described that he fell asleep almost immediately. In the darkness, some blond hairs on the top of his raised toes caused the black waves of sleep and silence to break over the dead soldier. The bodies of the two boys were touching. Riton, lying on his back, was on Erik's shore. If he had a dizzy spell, he would fall into him and drown in the deep eddies that he sensed were rolling from the chest to the thighs, which were the more mysterious for being alive beneath that funereal cloth which also concealed a paraphernalia (such as is no doubt hidden behind a black curtain in special houses) of straps, belts, steel buckles, teamster's whips, boots, which the sound of the leather had conjured up, thighs whose strength derived from a fascination with death. He lay still on his back, looking straight ahead at the far end of the room whose darkness his eyes were getting used to. He was seized with fright, for he was unable to see anything of Erik, though his whole body registered the other's presence. He stiffened with anxiety. Had he been lying on his right side, that is, with his back to the soldier and not grazed by him, it would not have been the same (his curled-up position would have made it
possible for him to keep his usual Erik within himself). Had he lain on his back, he would have seen him in detail and been able at the same time to remain deep within himself, but apart from the fact that the power of that presence was too great for him not to be excited by it, his position left him exposed, defenseless, before the driving waves that rolled up to him from Erik's body and thrilled him to the point of dizziness. He got a hard-on. Not with a sudden swiftness, but slowly. It started the moment when he was most deeply conscious of his anxiety, that is, when Erik, whose clothes touched his, lay quite still. Then when the first thrill, the first thrust of extreme violence shook him, he became aware of his desire. A half-hour went by before Riton came to a decision or began the first movement, though his face had turned to Erik's. Suddenly the true meaning of his treason became apparent to him. If French rifles had been aiming at him for days, it was in order to prevent him from isolating himself at the top of the rock which all eyes had seen him climb to with that extraordinary mountaineer.

“So what?”

He was in love with a man. He quivered with pleasure at the thought of being so near the goal.

“I love him mad. . . .”

Even in thought he did not complete the word “madly.” The passion, born in the words “I love him,” continued, increasing with wild speed and leaving him breathless halfway through that dizzying word which ended with the very shudder that quickened the beginning of it, shaking Riton's whole body as he mused, for the first time, but then greedily, with a kind of despair, on Erik's organ. He was too excited to imagine it precisely. The swollen crotch of the dark trousers was all he saw. Then he suddenly feared that Erik might know
what he was thinking and be revolted at such a thought, but almost immediately his pride in his beauty restored his confidence.

“Since there're no girls around, maybe I'll be doing him a favor. He could find worse-looking guys than me.”

By that thought alone he was bestowing his body on the soldier. He realized it, and, sweetly, naively too, he was willing to assume any posture to please him. Suddenly, he thought of the danger of such an adventure: he was afraid that all the soldiers might want to go down on him. They were German, squareheads, rough-hewn, and he, the youngest and weakest, alone and French.

He tried to conjure up Erik's prick more precisely. He imagined it huge and heavy in his closed hand. He made a slight movement to extend his arm, but he left his hand lying on his thigh. This venturing of a first gesture took his breath away. Behind the simple door that one opens perhaps there awakes a dragon whose body coils round itself several times. If you look a dog in the eye too intently, it may recite an astounding poem to you. You might have been mad for a long time and have realized it only at that moment. Is there perhaps a snake in the bag hanging from the coatrack? Beware. From the slightest patch of shadow, from a spot of darkness, there rise up prowlers armed to the teeth who tie you up and carry you off. Riton waited a bit in order to catch his breath. Erik's whole body from head to foot was lying against his. The fact that his love had been revealed to him at the moment of its greatest danger imparted such great strength that Riton felt he was brawny enough to crush dragons. The peril lay not in death but in love. He had the wit to feign sleep. He breathed noisily. The thought of Erik's prick became obsessive, and, with tears at the rims of his eyes, he wanted to extend his left hand,
but, before making the movement, he realized, while executing it mentally, that it would be difficult for him to open the fly. He turned a bit on his left side.

“The fly, that's all I needed!”

So what! What did reproval of that love matter to Riton since he would be dead the following day, and what did life matter since he loved Erik! Very skillfully he pretended to be shifting in his sleep and put his right foot, on which was a soft, gray sock, across Erik's foot. He made the gesture very naturally, without any fear, but he felt it was the first phase of an embrace that could tighten to closest intimacy, when, with bated breath, he stretched out his right hand and laid it, hardly touching, on Erik's thigh.

“If he realizes, there'll be hell to pay!”

So what? We'll be killed tomorrow! A day of torture would be nothing. He pressed down with his hand gently, then a little harder. Unable to see the spot, he tried to figure out where it was. On the basis of the folds of the cloth and his own position he thought it was the middle of the thigh. If Erik woke up at that moment, he might think that sleep alone was responsible. Mad with fear and boldness, he moved lightly over the cloth, or rather he flew over the area. Erik slept on.

“You don't get a hard-on when you're asleep.”

The hand moved upward with the same delicacy. It reached the fly and recognized it. Riton had difficulty breathing. The treasure was found. His light, fearful hand remained as if suspended for a moment. Not a sound in the room. He heard another shot, far away.

“It's fighting on the Rue de Buenos Aires,” he thought. “It's a hell of a way off.” His hand assumed greater authority and it was blessing or was on the lookout for the nest below. The hearts of the seven German soldiers
must have been beating. Riton would surely be killed the next day, but before that he would bump off quite a lot of Frenchmen. He was in love.

“Those damn jerks. What the hell are they to me, they're just a bunch of idiots. I'm going to bump a few of them off. . . .”

With, as it happens, that same right hand. He made the movement, despite himself, of pulling a trigger with his forefinger. His pinky struck the cloth—to have done so was to knock at the door of darkness and see that darkness open onto death, and it was with a closed fist that he remained there, first making its pressure light and then gradually letting it sink by its own weight into the moss.

The building was doomed. A face, a destiny, a boy, are said to be doomed. A sign of misfortune must have been inscribed somewhere, an invisible sign, for perhaps it was at the bottom of a door in the left corner, or on a window pane, or in the twitching of a tenant. Perhaps it was an object that at first sight was harmless—that a second look does not enable you to detect—it was a spider's web on the chandelier (there was a chandelier in the living room) or the chandelier itself. The house smelled of death. It was drifting toward an abyss. If that's what death is, it's sweet. Riton no longer belonged to anyone, not even to Erik. The fingers of his hand spread like the folioles of a sensitive plant in the sun. His hand was resting. He had placed his head under his left arm, and the graciousness of that posture was entering his soul. He had not killed enough Frenchmen, that is, not paid dearly enough for that moment. If the house blows up, that means it is thoroughly mined. If it burns, love is what fires it. With infinite delicacy Riton took his handkerchief from his pocket, wet it silently with saliva, and slipped it through his fly and between his legs, which were
slightly drawn up so that he could clean his “bronze eye” properly.

“You think he'll stick it up me? Oh well, you never know.” He wanted less to be ready for the act than to be ready for love. He rubbed a little, then took out the handkerchief so as to wet it again, happy to smell beneath his nostrils and on his lips the odor of sweat and shit. This discreet and careful grooming enchanted him.

Around the building and in the building itself, which was being undermined by mysterious insects, the nation was busying itself, as he would have desired. Multicolored paper garlands were being nailed to windows, flowers were being hooked on to electric wires, streamers and lanterns were strung from window to window, cloth was being dyed in the darkness, women were sewing flags, children were preparing powder and bullets for the salvos. People were building up around the apartment a catafalque that was caught in the childish combinations of tricolored ribbons with more complicated intertwining than the arabesques of bindings which are called “fanfares.” In the darkness, half of Paris was silently constructing the new funeral pyre of the seven males and the kid. The other half was on the lookout.

His hand opened. A harder fold made Riton think he was touching the prick. His chest collapsed. “If he's got a hard-on, it means he's not sleeping. In that case, I'm in the shit.”

He decided to let his hand play dead. Its being there was no small joy, but the fingers had a life of their own and kept seeking, despite the rough cloth and the stiff edge of the fly where the buttons were. Finally they felt a warm, soft mass. Riton parted his lips. He stayed that way for a few seconds, straining his mind so as to be fully aware of his joy.

“He's got an octopus there between his legs.”

“I'll just stay this way.”

But the fingers wanted full particulars. They very delicately tried to distinguish the various parts of that mass whose abandon in his hands gratified him. All of Erik's power was contained in that little heap, which, though quiet and trusting, radiated despite its death. And all the might of Germany was contained in those sacred and peaceful though heavy and sleeping repositories which were capable of the most dangerous awakenings. They were watchful repositories which millions of soldiers carried preciously in freezing and scorching regions in order to impose themselves by rape. With the skill of a lacemaker, the hand above the dark cloth was able to sort out the confusion of the treasure which lay there all jumbled up. I prejudged its splendor in action and imprisoned it, sleeping little girl that it was, in my big ogre's paw. I was protecting her. I weighed her in my hand and thought, “There's hidden treasure in there.” My cock stiffened out of pure friendliness. I was worthy of her. My fingers squeezed her a little more, with greater tenderness. They stroked her again. A slight movement of Erik's leg disturbed his immobility. I was filled with terrible fear, then immediately with nope, but first with fear. A mass of cries of fear rising from my belly tried to force open my throat and mouth, where my strong, clenched teeth were on the alert. Finding no outlets, those cries punctured my neck, which suddenly let flow the twenty white streams of my fear through twenty purple ulcers in the shape of roses and carnations. I kept the prick in my hand. If Erik awoke, I would take my chance. I even hoped he would. I squeezed a bit harder, and as soon as I did, I was astounded to feel the Fritz's cock swell between my fingers, harden, and quickly fill my hand. I stopped moving, but I left my hand there dead and
dancing. Since my stroking had just given Erik such a violent hard-on, he was awake, and he did not rebel. I waited wonderful seconds, and it's amazing that there was not born of that waiting, from the moment that begins with the prick's awakening to happiness, the most fabulous of heroes, as Chrysaor sprang from the blood of Medusa, or new rivers, valleys, chimeras, in a leap on a bed of violets, hope itself in a white silk doublet with a feathered cap, a royal breast, a necklace of golden thorns, or tongues of flame, a new gospel, an aurora borealis over London or Frisco, a perfect sonata, or amazing that death itself did not make a fulgurant appearance between the two lovers. My hand squeezed the cock a second time; it seemed monstrously big.

“If he sticks the whole caboodle up my cornhole he'll wreck the works.”