Уолтер Тевис - The Steps of the Sun

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello. I’ve come for that drink.”

“Sure,” I said. “Come in.”

It was one of those tight traditional dresses with a slit down the side. The amount of leg she displayed coming in the door was alarming; a voice in me immediately said, Watch it .

“I’m in the middle of a game,” I said.

She nodded and seated herself on my lavender pouf. Her black hair shone and she wore scarlet lipstick; her face was dead white and Chinese-round with perfect Mongolian eye-folds. She looked like a poster ad for a twentieth-century movie. The Dragon Lady. She watched me silently. I returned to the sofa and lit a cigar. I was in my prison dungarees—comfortably faded now since I washed them at nights and hung them on deck to dry. If they got rained on I wore my red silk stratosphere pants and went barechested, like an Italian trapeze artist. She was looking me over the way Fu Manchu might look over a captive American spy. We have ways of making you talk, Mr. Belson. “I like big men,” she said.

“You’re a tall person yourself,” I said. “What will happen when we dock in China? To me, I mean.”

“You’ll be interrogated and given living quarters. Much depends on your cooperation.” She lit another cigarette from the butt of the first, and then ground the old one out in one of my jade ashtrays. There was silence for a while, except for the rumble of the ship’s engines. I turned back to my game.

I was going for a back-rank checkmate with my queen’s rook, but I couldn’t get the proper file cleared of pawns. I leaned forward and tried to concentrate. Just as I found the move I wanted, she spoke. “I’ve never had an American lover,” she said.

I brought a knight to bishop five and looked over the board at her. “I’m not American anymore.”

“Nonsense. You’re the most American person I’ve ever seen. Like Abraham Lincoln.”

“That’s good company,” I said, “and I thank you for putting me in it. Lincoln was a genius and a man of heart.”

She looked at me as though appraising a minor artwork. “A big American man with a big sad soul.” She crossed her legs with the sound tight silk makes. “Just like you.”

“I feel more affinity with Billy the Kid,” I said, nervously. “But thanks anyway. If that actor hadn’t plugged Lincoln at the play it would be a different world. What if Chairman Mao had been gunned down in the fifties?”

“Chairman Mao made many errors.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But Mao was what China needed. You were lucky to have him all those years.”

“If one didn’t spend one’s time being rehabilitated.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Where is this ship going to dock?”

“At the Port of Celestial Winds, District Four.”

“I never heard of it.”

“Newly built by the People.” She looked me over silently again. I turned back to Myra’s board and tried to concentrate. Abruptly she said, “I’d like sex.”

“Jane, honey,” I looked up again, “I’ve got other things to think about. My heart wouldn’t be in it.”

She ignored that and stood up languidly. Then she arched her arms behind her back and unfastened the neck of her dress. I have a great weakness for the upper arms of beautiful women and I could hardly not see how fine hers were. Firm and perfectly white. While I watched in reluctant fascination, she let the dress drop to her ankles and stepped out of it. She kicked off her sandals. She was wearing scarlet panties and a thin gold necklace. Her body was as white as snow and without a flaw. Tiny white breasts and tiny white feet. I was getting hard. “Come on, Jane,” I said. “I’m not in the mood for this kind of thing. I’m fifty-three years old and well past my prime and I’m in love with a Scottish actress.”

She walked over to the sofa and sat beside me. “Take off your pants.”

“Come on , Jane,” I said, panicking. The tops of her shoulders were the best I’d ever seen. I blinked with unease.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she said. And then, “Is your pubic hair blond too?”

“It’s got a lot of gray,” I said.

“You can lie back on the couch and I’ll undress you.”

“I tell you, Jane, you’re a splendid-looking woman. Enough to drive a man right out of his skull. But I wasn’t cut out for this… this gigolo thing. I have to pick my own times.”

She laughed at the word “gigolo.” “There’s nothing wrong with your servicing me. Chinese men enjoy the opportunity. Many of them are trained for it, in schools.”

At the word “servicing” I stiffened. I could run out onto the deck, or lock myself in the bathroom. Except that my perverse member was now so rigid there was no way I could stand up in those tight prison jeans.

“Mr. Kwoo,” Jane said, coolly, “you’ll need a good report from me when we arrive in China. If I say your thinking is confused it could cause you hardship.”

Jesus Christ! I thought. Am I going to have to do this like a whore? Can a man really do that and satisfy the lady in a state of panic? My member was answering this silent inquiry in the affirmative; it was undaunted. The eager son of a bitch. I felt betrayed by the same partner who had betrayed me the other way with Isabel.

I looked her over. She sure had a fine body, even though it looked as cold as ice. And I loved the red panties. What the hell , I thought. I used to sleep with a horse. “Okay, Jane,” I said. “But let’s go into the bedroom and do it right.”

“Here is adequate,” she said. She began to unzip my pants.

“Look,” I said, pushing her hands away, “I’ll do this myself.” I unzipped with care and freed myself. I slipped the pants off, and then my shorts. I was already barefoot. I started to get up.

She had already stood. Now she pushed on my chest, with alarming strength from a smallish person, and I sat back. “Just lie back, Mr. Kwoo,” she said. “I think your pubic hair is charming, with all those curls.”

“Jesus Christ, Jane, I’m no courtesan . I can’t just…”

“Yes you can. Clearly. Just lie back and relax.”

I think I was blushing. She was aroused to where she looked dangerous. Her nipples stood out like little Marines. “Okay,” I said, defeated. “Okay.” I lay back awkwardly, bending my knees to fit my frame to the couch.

She had peeled off her panties by the time I got there, and then she mounted me in a gung-ho way, as though she were a sailor and I a B-girl. I didn’t like it at all, but my sexuality was in another world, doing its business in the dark like an Old Testament fanatic. I wriggled despite myself and ground up into her with a twist. “That’s it!” she whispered and began pumping in earnest. I pumped back. She began kissing me open-mouthed, smelling of booze. Her nipples pushed into my chest. I began to feel smothered. She pulled back just in time and I could see her face twisted in some kind of unearthly concentration, her eyes upward and sweat on her porcelain forehead, with the bangs now sticking to it. I froze at the sight.

“ Don’t stop now ,” she said.

I started pumping again. From the waist down I was a satyr. But my better part was watching in alarmed detachment.

“ Yes! ” Jane hissed—not to me but to the ceiling. She grabbed my shoulders and I winced when her nails dug in. Then she went slack and fell across my chest.

I don’t know why that orgasm of hers didn’t provoke one on my part, but it didn’t. Suddenly I felt a physical need that was as potent as the need for air when you find it cut off. I started pumping against her limp body.

Abruptly she grew rigid, and then pushed off of me. “What the hell…?” I said, throbbing.