Nicholson Baker - House of Holes

Cardell put on a black corduroy jacket and went to the laundromat at 18th Street and Grover Avenue. A woman was peering into the dryers. “Do you know which dryer leads to the House of Holes?” she asked, giving him an appraising look. She was pretty in an ethereally wavy flaxen-haired way.

“Well, I was told it was the fourth dryer from the end,” he said.

An old man spoke. “It is indeed the fourth dryer from the end,” he said. “But stay away from the House, both of you. Lila will suck you dry. You ever heard of King Nynus?”

Cardell shook his head. The ethereal girl nodded.

“That was me. I wasn’t a king, but I was rich. I had a harem with eighteen women, each lovely in a different way, and I spent my days eating watercress sandwiches. Now that’s all gone.”

“What happened?” asked the ethereal girl.

“Debts. I couldn’t get enough of the summertime Tit Swarm. That’s when they put a lot of women in a dark room and tell them, ‘Okay, tops off, girls, it’s a tit swarm!’ Then they let in one guy — me. The speaker says, ‘Man entering, repeat, man entering,’ and then the man gropes around, feeling everyone’s breasts. It’s so damn much fun.”

“What do you do now?” asked the flaxen girl.

“Now I sit here and tell people never to go to the House of Holes.”

“You’re kind of a naysayer, you know,” said the flaxen girl. Her curiosity piqued, she opened the door of the dryer and peered in.

“See anything?” said Cardell.

“Looks pretty ordinary to me,” she said.

“It’s not ordinary,” warned King Nynus.

The girl climbed in and pushed with her fingertips against the back. Cardell stared at the pockets of her jeans. “I think I found the way,” she called excitedly. Then suddenly she disappeared.

“Don’t let it close up, hold it open for me!” said Cardell. He climbed in after her, but when he pushed on the back it didn’t budge.

“It’ll be shut for a while now,” said King Nynus. “They never listen.”

“Damn,” Cardell whispered.

“Don’t worry, you’ll find a way in.” King Nynus pulled a small vial from his pocket. “Let me give you this.”

“Thanks, what is it?”

“It’s a powerful aphrodisiac. Lila sometimes sprinkles it in the water at the House of Holes. That’s one of her little secrets. It’s made from Prince Bohuslav’s beard. Give a gal a drop or two of that, and powee boom bang.”

“Fireworks?”

“Oh, heavens, yes. Do you know the story of Prince Bo-huslav’s beard? Surely you must.”

“No.”

“Then I’ll tell it to you.”

Bohuslav was a powerful prince in the country of Bohrania. When he was nineteen, he married a tall comely princess, with pale eyelashes and freckled shoulders, who bore him a son. She had an unusual habit during their lovemaking: At the point of her climax, she would bite hard on his luxuriant braided beard. As a result of this repeated act of passion, Prince Bohu’s beard began to develop a memory.

For the most part he ruled with fairness, and he loved his tall pale queen, but every few weeks her perfect beauty and her perfect goodness made him restless, and he became possessed with the need to plunge his purple cameroon into an ugly-but-lovely woman. He liked them plump and awkward and shy and full of jokes, with a gap between their two front teeth. He called them Uniques. When his queen visited the sick in the northern colonies every other Thursday, he would whisper to his court, “Find me a new and wonderful Unique for tonight,” and then he would begin washing and singing and braiding his enormous beard. When the candles were lit, he sat on his throne, wearing a tiny toga, and the Unique was brought in, holding a penis sandal made of heavy black ribbon. She had been bathed and scented and told strange stories about mountain zebras mating, and she had been closely instructed in the art of lacing the penis sandal.

The king would ask her to kneel before him and he would open his legs, and she would lace the ancestral sandal around his swelling penis, telling him the new jokes that were circulating in his kingdom. He would laugh loudly, and his penis would become as hard as applewood and knotted with veins, whereupon he and the Unique would begin kissing eagerly on his throne. Then he would say, “Untie the sandal,” and with one pull, as she had been trained to do, the girl untied it, so that it hung dangling for a moment from his royal turgidity.

“Stuff me full of your hot substance, oh mighty king, for I am Unique,” the girl would say, as she knelt over him on the throne, planting her hands on his enormous chest. And at the moment of their perfect union, King Bohuslav would seize his black braided beard and hold it to her mouth, whereupon she would clamp down on it to stifle her cries. Thus the memory of innumerable couplings entered his beard.

This went on for almost ten years. Bohu’s beard by now had a huge double braid and looked like a loaf of pumpernickel challah. It was said by some in the court that if you held your ear to his beard, you could hear the pleasure cries of a thousand women.

One night, though, a Unique of uncommon intelligence was lacing up the penis sandal. King Bohuslav groped for her breast and tried to kiss her, but suddenly she pulled out a large pair of shears and lopped off his beard with one powerful snip. King Bohuslav let out an agonized bellow and lost consciousness. The girl ran out the side door and hid carefully for a week in the hills with a friend.

Meanwhile the prince had sent guardsmen and black dogs out in search of his braided beard. “How can we hide it?” asked the girl of her friend. The friend knew the arts of pharmacy, and the two young women boiled the beard until it dissolved. Then they skimmed off the purple scum and buried it, and they purified and distilled the barbaric essence, mixing it with the liqueurs of fennel and saps of wild spinach, making of this mixture an uncommonly powerful aphrodisiac. The two women fled to Paris and grew wealthy selling Prince Bohu’s beardwater, under the name Gouttelettes de Bonheur, or Droplets of Happiness. Even much diluted, the liquid had a startling effect on anyone, male or female, who tasted it.

The prince, meanwhile, took the loss of his beard as a warning. He ended his dalliance with Uniques and built a large hospital so that his wife wouldn’t go away on Thursdays. Seventeen of his penis sandals are on view in the museum of the House of Holes.

Rhumpa emerged from her shower in a hotel bathrobe, with her hair in a towel turban. Daggett had arranged fourteen bras on the bed, sorted neatly by color. “These are all roughly your size, I believe,” he said primly.

She looked at them with a secret smile. “They’re all very nice,” she said.

“Does one in particular call out?”

She shook her head no.

“Well then,” he said, “there’s only one way to make the right selection.” Daggett drew from the bag a large piece of patterned silk. “This is the Silken Flesh Communicator,” he said. “If you allow me to place this over your naked breasts, it will help me determine which of these bras is ideal for you.” Gently holding Rhumpa’s shoulders, he had her stand facing away from him. “Open your robe,” he said. “Wait! Good. I just had to check that I couldn’t see you in any mirror. Now open your robe. Let it fall open.”

Rhumpa did as he asked.

“Thank you. Now I am going to gently unfurl the Silken Flesh Communicator and draw it back against your breasts so that it surrounds them and cools them and makes them feel exactly the way your breasts most want to feel. Are your breasts ready for the silken touch of the communicator?”