Robert Irwin - Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh

‘Well, smile then — and you will have to learn to talk properly and not just shake your head. I think I will have to teach you how you must speak to a concubine. You are so innocent — just a boy really. But there is no need to be frightened of me. All you have to do is tell me that I am pretty and which parts of me are especially pretty.’

‘You are the most beautiful women I have ever seen’. This was no great concession on Orkhan’s part. As he contemplated her, he was struck by the delicate colouring of her face and the soft vulnerability of her arms. If only the catechism could be over, then he might be in full possession of this softly, enchanting curvy creature. Although she was telling him not to be frightened, he still sensed something frightening in the supernatural quality of Anadil’s beauty, which was like the beginning of terror. She seemed to him to be a visitant from another world.

‘Well, that will do to begin with. Now, if you take your hands off me, I will undress myself for you.’

Stepping away from the bed, she stood to let cascades of gold, silver and brass drop to the marble platform, followed by her yellow robe. In a few moments she stood naked before him. Then she turned away, and looking over her shoulder, she said,

‘In the Harem, we girls like to read before we go to bed.’

She went over to the lectern and came back to the bed bearing the book. She sat close beside Orkhan and spread the book between her thighs.

‘It is called ‘ The Perfumed Battlefield: or Questions Posed by the White Sultan to the Dark Girl ,’ she said, spelling out the words with difficulty.

She turned the pages. The book was illustrated. Together they contemplated exquisite little pictures of women surrounded by ditches and ramparts, men advancing with battering rams and long, hooked implements, and brightly coloured smokes drifting across fields strewn with flowers and corpses. In flimsy looking castles men and women encountered one another in hand-to-hand combat. There were also abstract diagrams painted in gold and black with arrows of direction and schematic flags. On the last page was the image of a man, painted all gold. A woman knelt in front of him, her face pressed to his groin, and another stood behind him, peeping over his shoulder, and he was grinning madly — a silvery gleam in a golden face. Having reached this image, Anadil hastily riffled backwards through the pages.

‘Here,’ said Anadil, leaning heavily against Orkhan, is “The Chapter on the Need for Good Intelligence” and this is “The Section on the Naming of Parts”.

One hand moved across the page, marking her place as she read. She was stroking her breasts with her other hand.

‘What are these called?’

‘They are called breasts,’ replied Orkhan, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice.

To his astonishment, she slapped him lightly on the face.

‘Only the vulgar call them that. These are my moons. It is the language of love and poetry. Look here, it says so in the book. You have to practise. Say to me, I love your full moons.’

And she offered them up to be kissed.

Now, since she was now sliding a hand underneath his robe and fumbling between his legs, there was no power in Orkhan to refuse. Even if he thought that her games were silly, she could be indulged for a few moments more. He was prepared to crawl over the ice, bark like a dog and sit up to beg if only she would grant him what he desired. Her breasts were soft and came to delicate points.

‘I love your full moons,’ he repeated obediently and kissed them.

‘And what is this between your legs?’

‘It is my cock.’

She brought her hand up from between his legs to slap him again.

‘That is very vulgar. I would be ashamed to call it that. In the Harem we call it the pigeon, or, sometimes, the one-eyed man, or sometimes the cherry-blossom branch, or again the weeping one. It has many names. Here they are in the book.’

Then she let the book drop to the floor and, leaning over him, she delicately forced her tongue between his lips. At the end of the kiss, she drew back a little and sticking out her tongue again, she pointed to it.

‘What do we call this?’

‘I do not know and I do not care.’

‘We call this the coral branch, or the viper, or the honey-spoon. But I can see that you are impatient to begin. So just one last lesson, just one more word to memorise.’ She threw herself back on the bed and pointed between her legs. ‘Would you like to know what this is called?’

‘People who are not poets call it the cunt,’ said Orkhan.

‘Oh, we have a prettier name for it than that. It is the Tavern of the Perfume-Makers. Come close to examine it carefully please.’

Surely this lesson, this inspection, was absurd. But Orkhan thought that there would be no real harm in indulging the girl’s whims for now. Even if her chatter was tiresome, her body was certainly desirable. Her face was like a glorious promise of nobility and intelligence, yet her prattle was sheer childishness. How was it possible for anyone to be simultaneously so beautiful and so silly? Well, he would indulge her for now. But then, to ensure that no one else in the Harem should hear of the humiliations she had put him through, he would have her executed on the following morning. As he lowered his face between her thighs, he pictured himself watching her execution on the morrow. He would give the mutes instructions for her slow impalement. Unaware of the madness in his head, Anadil sighed and spread her legs a little further.

‘Does the sight please you?’ she enquired coyly.

‘It pleases me very much,’ and he might have said more, but she pulled his face closer yet and Orkhan found himself tasting her. The flavour was unfamiliar, bitter, strangely seductive.

‘Now we are ready,’ she sighed and she was indeed moist between the legs.

But no sooner had Orkhan thrown off his robe than she sprang away.

‘Yes, yes, we are ready. But not here. Down there,’ she said pointing to the surface of the ice pit.

Anadil stepped down from the marble platform and, wincing slightly, lay back upon the ice.

‘Come back, Anadil. Not on the ice. What is wrong with the bed? Come back here!’

‘It is better on the ice. That is why we are here. The coldness delays the climax and increases the pleasure.’ She wriggled seductively. ‘Come on lover.’

‘This is madness!’

Anadil looked up at him sulky and disappointed.

‘We Harem girls heard that all you princes in the Cage were men of stone, ready for anything and invulnerable to cold, hunger or pain. But now a little girl like me can lie on the ice and you dare not.’

‘It is madness,’ Orkhan repeated stupidly.

‘Come on, don’t be boring. It is more fun on the ice. Besides I will be beneath you as your prayer-cushion or above you as your blanket. But don’t let me get cold here alone.’ She reached up her arms to him in supplication.

Orkhan could feel a fire melting his insides. He had to have her. He descended to the ice and she fingered his torso appreciatively before wrapping herself around him. Then she reached down for his branch of plum blossom, or whatever it was she had called it, and guided it between her legs. Although, even before entering Anadil, Orkhan had thought that he was on the very edge of exploding from desire, it was as she had predicted; the ice delayed the climax as their bodies could get no purchase on its surface and she slithered about under him. Droplets of water covered both their bodies. As he kept moving inside her, he thought he glimpsed something dark and motionless in the depths of the ice below. A big fish, or just a shadow in the mind. It was a strange kind of race, he thought, between the heat of his desire and the freezing chill of their strange bed. The fun and mischief had now gone out of Anadil’s face. Her legs were now locked round his back and she was crying in frustration as he thrust within her. He, for his part, felt himself so desperate to come to a climax within this strange creature, that he was by now ready to offer up himself for slow impalement on the morrow, if only he could have what he wanted now. Nothing else mattered. Now. Finally he came in a hot thick torrent.