Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

“Oh, no, no, please, NO!” The last word was screamed, shrilly. The girl sat straight up in bed, her teary eyes wide open, the look in them compounded of infinite horror, her small hands clenched so tightly at her sides that red blood was welling up over the nails.

Before Milo could move, the door burst open and a nude woman stormed in, her red hair wildly disheveled, her step firm as her jouncing breasts, and blood in her eye. “You pig,” she snarled, “what are you doing to her? What …”

Her voice trailed off as she noticed the widely separated sleeping arrangements.

“I didn’t touch her, Angelique,” said Milo, concern patent in his voice. “I haven’t laid one hand on her all night. I was asleep long before she was, over here. I told her she could have the bunk.” “Then what … ?” Angelique began. Milo shook his head. “A nightmare, I’d presume. She woke me up moaning and whimpering and pleading with someone in French and in German. She was begging some man not to hurt some other man was all that I could understand.”

Jethro, just as unabashedly nude as Angelique, came in then, saying, “I think you might have chosen better than you did at the sum I’m paying you, my dear. Why did you choose to bring this strange creature?”

The red-haired woman sighed and sank into the now-cushionless chair. “I brought her because she needs the money, needs it desperately. Except for the … the things that were done upon her by the Boches, in prison, where I first met her, she is an utter innocent. She was born to a class in which no trades ever are taught, so how else but this way could she support her father, who is now all the family she has left and is blind and crippled from being severely tortured by the Gestapo who suspected him of activities connected with the Resistance?

“They did the worst things to him in front of her, forced her to watch … and to listen, the beasts. That was most probably her nightmare, living once again that night of hell, the poor child.”

While they had been speaking, Nicole had slowly sunk back down onto the bunk and was once more breathing rhythmically, clearly sound asleep.

In the outer room, all three of them wrapped in OD field shirts until the hard coal that Jethro had dumped into the space heater had time to get started, Milo, Jethro and Angelique sipped at a mixture of cognac and champagne and nibbled at cold Spam and C-ration crackers.

When he had gotten his pipe going, Jethro said, “Milo, I’m sorry about all of this. I only was trying to help you get your ashes hauled tonight, since I doubted you’d been laid since you left England last June; and going without that long at a stretch can lead to recurrent bouts of stiffness in the neck … among other places.”

Milo shook his head. “In a way, I’m just as glad it all worked out this way, Jethro, because I’d have felt like some kind of animal if I’d found out about all this after I’d screwed that kid in there.”

Switching effortlessly to French in order to be certain that she understood, he said, “Angelique, the general will pay you two the full amount. As I told Nicole earlier, I reelaly need sleep far worse than I need sex, just now. I’ll just go back to that spot of nice, soft carpet and get back to it; if you’re worried about my sincerity, leave the door open and the light lit so you can see the bunk and her.”

Turning back to Stiles, he said, “And that girl has more than enough problems, it sounds like, without having to try to whore to take care of her father. Do you recall those stocks that my late friend in Chicago bought with the money I left him? I told you of them and you had me place them in your safe at the farm.”

At Stiles’ nod, he went on, “Well, what would you say they’re worth now? That is, how much would you be willing or able to pay me for them, if you knew the money was to go to Nicole and her father?”

“I am not at all conversant with the current market, Milo,” said Stiles dryly. “But when last I had the time and the opportunity, I think they were worth in the neighborhood of two thousand or two thousand five. Yes, I’ll buy them from you, if that’s what you wish.”

To Angelique, Stiles said, “Do you understand, m’petite? The captain has just sold to me certain personal possessions and has ordered that the monies be paid to Nicole, that she no more will lack of the means to care properly for her father. It will come to some sixty ounces of gold, or the equivalent in francs, pounds sterling or American dollars. Do you still think the captain to be a callous, unfeeling brute, Angelique?”

Despite Milo’s protests that he would be comfortable with just his carpet bed, Stiles opened a storage room, brought out one of several rolled-up mattresses and another blanket and a pillow, then helped to spread them in the place chosen by his friend.

“I always keep spares on hand, Milo. Sometimes my guests get so drunk they’d fall out of their jeeps on the way back to their own quarters, were I to let them leave here. And we simply can’t have our field- and general-grade officers lying drunk around the cantonment area, you know.” He chuckled.

„ Milo was almost asleep again when a slight noise from the direction of the door brought his eyes open. As he watched, Angelique eased the door shut and moved soundlessly over the carpet past the bunk to where he lay. Shedding the field shirt, she knelt, lifted his blankets and slid in beside him.

“What in … !” he began, only to have her clamp a hand over his mouth, whispering into his ear on a rush of warm, cognac-scented breath.

“Hush, mon capitaine , do not to waken Nicole. You are a good, a truly good, man, m’sieu. You are, in fact, too good to be a man—which species I know all too well. I think that the saints must have been like you in their goodness. You give everything and ask for nothing in return, and … and I cannot allow it, you must not go back across the Rhine with no reward for your generosity. Le general agrees with this.”

Even while she had been speaking, her cool hand had gone seeking along his body, had found that which it sought and had grasped it, gently but firmly. When she had said that which she felt that she must say, she slid about fully beneath the blankets so that her tongue and lips might caress that which her hand held.

Milo’s body instinctively responded. He felt as if he were being bathed in liquid fire, and after so long a period of celibacy, he discovered that his power of restraint had gone. His first ejaculation was long-drawn-out agony, and he groaned in ecstasy. But the talented fellatrice was not done; she lingered, first draining him utterly, then, with tongue and lips and kneading, maddening fingers, rearousing him once more to full tumescence. Much, much later, Angelique left him to return to the outer room and Jethro, but Milo did not hear her go or even know that she had gone.

When next he awakened, bright sunlight was creeping around the blackout curtains, the lanterns were extinguished, and the bunks were empty of occupants. When he entered the bathroom, it was to find a handwritten note tucked into a corner of the mirror above the wash-stand.

“Milo,

“All play and no work makes generals into colonels or majors. Whenever you wake up and get yourself together, our good Sergeant Webber will be waiting outside for your orders or whatever. There will be no ladies tonight; they will be on their way back to Paris by then. We will have dinner and a talk and a bottle or three. Tomorrow morning, I have to leave on a trip for division and you’ll have to go back to the front. Enjoy today, old buddy.

The dinner brought in by Sergeant Webber and two privates was a masterpiece by any standards. Milo could not imagine where or how in a war zone Jethro had managed to get such foods and have them prepared so exquisitely—green turtle soup with sherry and herbs, poached sole in aspic, squabs roasted whole and stuffed with butter-soaked breadcrumbs, tiny mushroom caps and truffles, a dish of carrots and parsnips in a sauce flavored with ginger and nutmeg, tiny new potatoes boiled then sauteed with pearl onions in herbed butter, fresh and crusty long loaves of white bread, a selection of nutmeats roasted with garlic, an assortment of cheeses and cherry pastries soaked in rum and brandy. Jethro apologized for the lack of variety in wines, having only champagne to accompany the meal and his fine cognac or Scotch whisky to accompany the coffee.