Kathleen Spivack - Unspeakable Things

“My dear Countess…” Rasputin smirked. He raised her small clawed hand to his lips and kissed it sardonically. His large hands were gentler this second night. They prayed together.

The same smell of sulfur, the same searing of large handprints on her thighs. But this time, Anna ignited also. A strong burning smell rose up from her flesh as her body met his. There was a green sizzle in the air. Rasputin poured his hot spurt into her again and again. His enormous organ throbbed. “My sword of Christ,” he called it, forcing it into her till she thought she would burst. His hands seared her body. He touched her everywhere. She swooned. But her body’s mouths cried More!

His hand grasped her hump, and he forced her over the bedpost and took her one last time from behind. “On your knees, Countess,” he hissed, “on your knees!” He rammed her again and again, reciting the liturgy as he did so. Blasphemies and exhortations. He recited it backward and forward. He took her both ways, too.

At dawn, Rasputin pulled out of her as quickly as before. But this time, Anna wanted to keep him in her, to know this man. She tried to hold him with her body, squeezing against him as he withdrew. He laughed ironically. “So, perhaps you are changing now, my fine little lady?” She opened her eyes just long enough to see him close his monk’s robe about him once more. A glimpse of something strange and hairy — was it a tail?

“Dress yourself, dear lady,” he said. Anna’s torn-open body lay meekly, still throbbing with desire. All of a sudden, she longed to put her arms around the monk, to kiss his large sensual lips with a passion she had never felt before. “You will come to like this, to crave this,” Rasputin murmured cruelly, as if reading her thoughts. “Already you are developing the appetite. You see, dear lady, even a countess is not so high-and-mighty.” He mocked her as he left the stone-flagged room, his rosary clicking, his robe swirling about his legs.

Anna managed once more to get herself to the entry and then into her waiting carriage. The monks’ chants rose mournfully from their stone crypt. By now, the Rat had become obsessed. All day she lay in her bed at home, not speaking to anyone. She thought without stop of the moment when she would rejoin Rasputin and her pact with the Devil.

The sulfurous handprints on her thighs throbbed with desire, seeking again their owner. They would not be still. Her body twitched and jerked, as if now it had become a phantom body desperate for completion — Rasputin’s hands on her thighs, his large entry into her, his blazing sword. Anna felt she had come into her real life. Everything before had been unreal, uninteresting. She burned only for her nights with Rasputin.

As the two weeks neared their end, Rasputin began to be tender toward Anna. He kissed her hair, moved her body toward his more gently. He still came as many times, sometimes even more. He would not let her move from him; he lay in her body, hardening again and again, coming without end. “Now I am truly lost,” he murmured. He caressed her private parts. “The source of joy…” He spoke aloud to the Holy Mother and then he came in Anna again.

She arched her body to receive him; she could not contain her cries of joy or the large tears that welled up in her beautiful eyes. Her body was not large enough to contain it, their passion. He saw her arousal. He played with her. He watched her again, her angelic eyes and mouth, her consumed expression. She bore down on his organ, and they lay together for hours and hours. A throb, a vibration, an answering one. “Pray, my little Countess,” he murmured to her as her ardor rose toward his. “Christ is risen.” Tears came into his furious eyes, and he let them fall, his large head heavy on Anna’s narrow chest. “Our two weeks are almost over,” he murmured. “Let us pray.” Anna stroked his bulging forehead; she had always known they would part.

Rasputin put his hands into his handprints, which lay like large silver leaves on Anna’s body. “You shall have something to remember me by, eh, my Countess?” he said. “You shall always remember thy Lord, thy true God.”

And then Rasputin took her again and again without stopping, as if he would slake a mad thirst by consuming her. Anna, crouched like a dog, endured his repeated entries. A mad lust rose from her body, a wild, bitter scent filled the room, and the flowers outside the window in the garden withered instantly. Anna’s body was an opened red poppy,

Rasputin kept Anna with him until after the first dawn’s light. The monks were already chanting their dirgelike sounds, but he did not seem to heed them. With half a mind, Anna worried about the hour. But this thought was pushed away by her body’s answering desire. This time, Rasputin did not come; he thrust and, quivering, thrust again. He held his rosary, watching her come almost to the brink of satisfaction, then withdrew pleasure again. Anna writhed, biting her lip. He watched her, brought her to the brink again, and then watched her body twist, pleading for more. His eyes were still abstractly focused. He made her kiss his crucifix. He made her kiss his penis. “Kneel,” he commanded. He entered her again. He held himself back. He watched her spasms, impaled upon his penis.

Finally, he threw her down disdainfully and pushed her away from him. “It’s over now,” he said. It was time to leave: the end of her two weeks’ pact. Anna lay in an exhausted heap. She thought she would expire from her own heat. Rasputin swung himself away from her. “Well, my Countess?” he said quizzically. But his face and voice were tender. He tied his robe once more around him. “Now you shall remember me.”

“No. I beg of you, my Little Father.” Anna held her arms to him, imploring.

Rasputin threw back his large head and began to laugh. “So,” he said. “So it has happened. Good, then. Now I return you to your husband, the Count, and your house and land. But money, house and land, and a poor figure of a Count for a husband, all that is nothing, my lady, nothing.” He hissed, his dark eyes glowing, putting his face close to hers. “We know that now, don’t we, little lady?”

Anna’s body burned. “I implore you,” she said softly.

“You made a bargain,” he reminded her. “And we have had the best of it, both of us.” He scrutinized her naked, unprotected body. “Something you’ll never forget, eh, Countess?” She looked at him. “But it’s over now. Over and done with. Never let it be said I broke my vows.” He threw back his head and laughed, a deep, rusty laugh that broke the pitcher beside the bed. “Pray for me,” he commanded. “If you dare.” Rasputin turned on his heel and, without another look at Anna, left her forever.

Anna pushed herself to her feet, a large, passionate, sorrowing cry rising, even as she stifled it. She tottered after him a few steps, but Rasputin was gone. Only the smell of brimstone lingered — a smell that was never to leave her flesh thereafter.

The weak Count was never returned to his grateful family, weeping and slobbering with the miracle of it all. But the house and lands and money were once again returned to him. “The Tsar pardoned us,” his old mother kept repeating over and over in dazed wonderment. And though no one ever spoke of unpaid gambling debts, the Rat was never to have peace of mind again.

Over and over, she replayed the two weeks with Rasputin in her mind. Her head burned; her ears rang. She could think of nothing else. Although sensible to the world around her, the Rat merely went through the motions of her life. Her children did not move her, and her husband, whom she realized she despised, seemed a little stuffed doll to her, propped up in the Crimea, which she imagined as a painted cardboard panorama: The Tsar’s Officers at Rest. Complete with tents, horses, cannons, binoculars, gaming tables, and outspread maps. Like hand-painted wallpaper.