The Woman Who Sparked the Greatest Sex Scandal of All Time
Eli Yaakunah
(Excerpt from the first few chapters of the novel)
(Excerpt from the first few chapters of the novel)
NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER
Love is
transformation. I found a man who turned lead into gold, but he disappeared. I looked for him violating all rules, until I discovered that
I myself was the key. Everything depended on whether and how I carried out a
terrible assignment. Love, world peace,
and my own conscience were at stake.
My
little Erato, I beg you, help me!
THE SEXIEST OF ALL
POSSIBLE WORLDS
WEDNESDAY 7
Naked in the mirror. Your body is fine, small size, moderate breasts,
dark hair on the head and on the pubis. You like to caress yourself from the bosoms
down to the clit. But you did not undress to your rawest reality just to enjoy
this insignificant pleasure, rather because from there you will better notice
the leap.
How are you going to do it this
time? You know you can take off even with your eyes open: your imagination is
powerful enough to deliver you instantly to a tribe of cooks with their
gadgets, eager to experience new recipes with you. If you close your eyes, you
can turn into a goddess with big bosoms full of sweet milk, even without giving
birth, nursing a thirsty Priapus and drinking from his extraordinary phallus,
before sucking it with your vagina and swallowing into your womb his entire
body. Or you can piss soda or Girl Cola and offer it to the naughty son of the
neighbors, as when you were a kid, or be yourself a shaggy man and raise your penis
to penetrate the lips and labia of a curvy, groaning nymph.
But
today, instead of closing your eyes, you look into them and let them gaze at
themselves. You dive into your brown iris and go down through a blue and green
and black ocean. You have just fallen on the retina, you kiss it and climb up
the optic nerve to discover a velvety tunnel leading to the ear, which you lick
and nibble from inside. The tip of your tongue exits through the eardrum to reach
the earlobe, but it can’t stay there since its root gets twisted with your
other tongue and is drawn into its mouth, to let you savor its honey while its taste
buds sample your entire salivated body. You cling to the uvula with your arms and
swing, letting your legs hang down, but you slip and fall. If you keep going
down, you will reach the lungs or the stomach. It might be good to eat, digest,
assimilate yourself, but the bubbling of the acids down there suggests you should
move to the larynx instead. You land on the vocal cords, where a musical note
wraps you up. With the next inhalation you are aspirated into the lung. A
chilling breeze on your neck makes you lose control of your movements. You end
up crossing a stroking membrane and fall into a white lake: you are in your own
breast, caressing it from inside and bathing in your milk. Both your host and
guest bodies start to tremble, but you have to obey the call of the unexplored
world down there. You resume your journey and reach the belly, where you relax
your back against the large rectus muscle, feeling on your front the caress of the
elastic epidermis that emanates a soft pink light. The mattress is firm, even if
you never worked hard to train it, as evidenced by the soft pillow of grease
that gently tickles your neck so you do not lose the excitement. Once you retrieve
your breath, you wrap your arms and legs around the navel and go down as a firefighter
sliding down the pole till you land on an ovary, causing hormones to boil and an
egg to mature. You enter it and descend through a Fallopian tube to the womb,
where you install yourself as your own beloved daughter. Now you are truly pregnant,
and as a mother you feel the explosive inflation of your breasts, while as a
daughter you thrash about in the amniotic fluid, suck your thumb, blink your
eye, and take advantage of the contractions of the womb to go down through the
vagina, stimulating the G-spot and discovering new points from H to Z. Next
time you will pay a visit to your buttocks, legs, and feet, but now the
placenta is broken and there is no way back. As a mother you are already
shaking and shouting, moaning and groaning, panting and gasping; as a daughter you
head out, pull your shoulders and arms, climb up the front of yourself, not
without giving a lick to your maternal clitoris. With a final scream of painful
pleasure your hips emerge, followed by the legs that come together like a
mermaid’s and only separate when the feet lastly escape. And there you are, mother and daughter, both
wet from hair to nails, pressing lips to lips, breast to breast, navel birth-cord
navel.
Then
you separate from the mirror and cry like a newborn.
FRIDAY 9
I
The building was a
black pyramid straight out of a manual of Ecofunctionalism. On a cloudy day and
without GPS, nobody could distinguish the two photothermovoltaic southeast and southwest
sides from the third, but for a hole that occasionally opened and closed at the
north base to swallow a black egg advancing on two wheels. From the high class
of the motor vehicles and the fact that we started at ten o’clock, two hours
after ordinary mortals, a possible observer of the parade could have inferred
that we were privileged people. And it was true, even though we tried to hide
it. I, just twenty-eight, was enjoying the employment I had always desired. As
for the kind of job it was, no hint appeared on the building’s facade.
II
I, too, advanced
in my motoregg to the entrance, lowered the window, and looked into the iris
scanner.
“Welcome
to work, divine Ishtar. Your pretty eyes shine more than ever. Have a nice day.”
I opened
my mouth wider than the hole that was waiting for my entry: the programmers had
changed the greeting! I was used to the formula that had received me until then,
“Welcome to work, pretty eyes of Ishtar.” The first time, the compliment made
me smile, but a year later I knew that my colleagues were all greeted with the
same words of admiration. I was glad that arrival was the only repetitive part
of my workday, though sometimes I wondered why the message did not vary. Any of
us could have invented an endless sequence of charming welcomes; we could share
the duty of choosing the next day’s phrase for each other and always have a
surprise. Now I got one, but the new formula also lacked imagination. For a
moment, I thought someone was making fun of the new emotions that were shining
in my eyes. Or maybe the scanner had been dazzled by the image of Utu’s eyes, still
reflected in my iris since our previous day’s erotic coffee.
Once
in the parking lot, I left my motoregg on the automatic platform that would deliver
it to its space and entered the one-person elevator. The half-minute trip was
dedicated to developing a strategy: if I didn’t see Utu during the coffee
break, I would knock on his office door, just to say hello. Like a teenager experiencing
her first love, I had counted the hours since we’d met in Liberty Park.
Fifteen. Some seventy thousand beats of my racing heart. And I couldn’t even
console myself by reading his latest news report that morning. If he had
prepared one, for some reason Nergal had not published it.
While I
was wondering how anyone could reject one of Utu’s articles, the elevator
opened at the floor corresponding to my iris. To my surprise, I found myself in
a new world.
III
The hallway was
similar to the one I was used to seeing. On the left, the break room was followed
by a row of offices; today, however, they were less numerous and at greater
distances from each other than yesterday. On the right wall I could see four
large glass doors, and in front of me stood two strangers.
The
column on the left, a graceful, tall man in his fifties, black hair and silver
temples, looked at me with two gray storms. Despite his gentle smile, I couldn’t
help imagining him transformed into a waterspout: whipping me with hurricane
winds, soaking my clothes until dissolving them, twisting all my skin from the
navel outward.
The
right column was an attractive woman in her forties, long, straight black hair,
dressed like her colleague and me in a blue shirt under gray jacket and pants,
but with a wide arc glowing in her mouth from east to west and north to south,
reflected in the huge silver necktie that sliced through the center of her breast.
I imagined that while making love she would become a beautiful elephant and introduce
her proboscis into my vagina, giving me pleasure with her rough skin. Then she
would blow strongly to inflate me from the womb, until I exploded or started to
fly.
“Welcome!”
they said in unison, opening their arms wide.
I shielded
myself with “Must be a mistake.”
“No
mistake, Ishtar Benten. Congratulations on your promotion.”
What did
they mean? I hadn’t asked for a change, nor did I think there was any
opportunity for promotion, other than becoming one day the director of the
Department of Written Chronicles, replacing Nergal or one of his successors,
possibly Utu himself, who was senior to me, as most colleagues were. But now I
was on another floor, with these strangers waiting for a hug. I remembered that
Nergal had welcomed me in a similar way one year before, on my first day at the
Agency. As I had done then, I finally opened my arms and delivered myself to my
future.
“My
name is Shiva Anu,” said the woman. She pressed her chest against mine, leaning
forward to compensate for her higher stature. For a moment I felt her nipples
squeezing mine. It was no time to ask if the promotion meant I would not have
to deal with Sexual Undertones anymore; I waited in confusion to be released,
which she did at last after giving me two kisses on the cheek and one in the
air, brushing my lips with hers.
“I’m
Zurvan Enlil,” said the man. He pulled me to his chest to repeat the same
ceremony, which ended with a kiss on the top of my forehead.
“Zurvan
represents the creative force, constructive and pro-positive,” explained the
woman.
The
man nodded with a slight smile. “And Shiva is the great destructor, the critical,
pro-negative force,” he said, emphasizing each word as if it were the
compliment of a lover. “Thanks to her, we can attain perfection.”
Such
strange presentations only succeeded in increasing my confusion. I didn’t know
where I was, or why I had been chosen for this promotion. I was flattered to
think that someone had appreciated my chronicles of Sexual Undertones so much,
but I thought I couldn’t do anything else.
Zurvan
burst into a bass laughter. “Want to know where you are? This is the Department
of Scriptwriting.”
I didn’t
know there was such a sector in the News Agency. Did that mean I was going to
deal with explicit fiction? The two columns each caught one side of me, and arm
in arm we entered the temple. First stage: the break room. I was relieved to
see that the atmosphere was similar to that of the analogous room in the floor of
Written Chronicles, with the same daylight diffused by a fake white window.
Only the space was larger, with many chairs and a round table in the middle. I
sat on the couch and accepted the steaming cup that was waiting for me. As soon
as the coffee touched my lips, I knew it had been sweetened with a spoonful of
honey, just as I liked it.
“We
are the gods,” Shiva said.
I
could not help smiling to myself, remembering that Nergal had said the same a
year earlier.
“We are
the true gods. We create the real world,” insisted Zurvan. “We’ve chosen you because
of what you’ve shown this year, and above all because yesterday you
demonstrated a special talent for teamwork.”
“This
might be a case of mistaken identity: I’ve created all the news alone so far,
from the idea to the final version. That’s the norm in Written Chronicles.”
“Yesterday,
in the break room,” Zurvan said simply.
No!
That was too much. Either Utu had betrayed me by revealing our conversation, or
we had been spied upon. Just as there were cameras watching the streets, there could
be some inside the Agency, although we had not been informed of this. The two
hypotheses horrified me, but of course I preferred the second and decided Utu had
kept our secret. Then I remembered that the data protection law prohibited any
nonconsensual recording. Only the police were allowed to break it, and could
monitor every citizen in public places, such as the Internet or the streets, for
the sake of general safety. It was true that the directors of a company like
ours had the right to control the employees, to the extent needed to maximize labor
efficiency. Was that enough to justify the recording of a private conversation?
“You’ll
have a very significant raise in pay, and your work day will start an hour later
and finish an hour earlier,” said Zurvan. “In fact, today we’ve got about fifty
minutes before the arrival of your new colleagues and the beginning of your
workday.”
This
development surprised me as well. I could not even imagine a salary much higher
than the extraordinary pay I had earned till then. This promise had the
immediate effect of placating my spirit and dispelling any doubts.
“Can I
go and say goodbye to my former teammates?” I asked.
Zurvan
and Shiva exchanged a quick glance.
“To
tell you the truth, we don’t know which floor they are on,” she said.
“No
way to reach them by the elevator: now your eyes will take you here,” he
explained.
“And
the stuff from my old office?”
“It’s already
in the new one,” Shiva replied.
“It
was brought before we arrived,” pointed out Zurvan.
Should
I be angry? Someone had moved my stuff without asking, assuming that the change
would be accepted without protest. But my cowardice was purchased with gold and
incense, so I forgot about the myrrh. I tried to remember if I had left
something to be ashamed of in the old office—my little Erato! I had the urge to
get up and run for her, but I could not show such mistrust. So I postponed the search,
while my right brain prayed for two incompatible desires: that my muse was
alive and safe in the new office, and that she had not been touched at all. At
the same time, the left hemisphere was looking for a way to visit my former colleagues—Why
fool myself? The one I wanted to see was Utu. For a moment, I thought about how
to announce my promotion to him.
“Of
course, you can’t tell anyone outside this department about your new job,”
Shiva said. “As in Written Chronicles, we are under a secrecy contract. And your
new salary will also remain confidential.”
I
thought there was a contradiction in her statement. It was true that Chroniclers
were not allowed to talk about their work outside of their department. But Scriptwriters
knew many things about them: Shiva and Zurvan, at least, demonstrated detailed knowledge
about my previous activity. In fact, it was evident they had accessed the
recording of my erotic coffee with Utu. I blushed, thinking of people who could
have viewed the scene. We had been treated like guinea pigs, and I had passed
the test. What would Utu say if he knew that? He could not console himself with
a promotion. Would he share my sense of having been abused? Would he be happy about
my promotion?
IV
I looked into the iris
scanner of my new office, which had already been programmed to recognize me,
and the door opened. In principle, henceforth it would obey only my eyes.
However, just yesterday my previous office had betrayed me. Who could assure me
this wouldn’t happen again? I remembered when Nergal guaranteed that nobody
could violate my space, the room featuring a nightly self-flushing system so
that I only had to keep order as much as I liked. Now I wanted to think that
inviolability was interrupted only during the few hours that I had ceased to
belong to the Department of Written Chronicles. And I silenced the doubts,
because my new world tenderly caressed me and this office was wider than the
old one, with a large bouquet of flowers of all colors welcoming me in the
daylight coming from the false window. The ergonomic chair was more comfortable
and allowed me to choose from a hundred different types of massage. But above
all, there she was, upright on the table. My little Erato. How did they dare to
touch you, my dear? They tried to put you in the same position as in my old office,
but they couldn’t resist and have dropped your tunic to reveal your little nipples,
here behind the harp. How could they expect that I would not notice it?
V
At eleven o’clock Shiva
and Zurvan called me to the room facing my office. They opened the large glass
door with “Welcome to the conflict place!”
I
looked around. The daylight of the usual false window, a table with four
chairs, screens on the walls, plenty of space to move. And an enormous redheaded
man in his mid-thirties, politely smiling at me from near the ceiling, above a
sharp chin that resembled a bird’s beak. I had never seen anyone as tall and
wide, and thought he could not even exist: a basketball player would look like
a dwarf next to him. I imagined him with a raven’s head and wearing metal armor,
stretching a bow loaded with a long, hard penis pointing like an arrow to my pubis.
“Ishtar,
this is Ashur Morrigan, your partner of war,” Zurvan said.
“Ishtar
Benten,” I introduced myself, extending my hand up to him.
Ashur overlooked
it and embraced me the Agency way, stooping down to my height. I smiled in
apology while our cheeks crossed, although in that moment he couldn’t see me,
and when we came face to face I kissed his lips instead of the air, trying to remedy
my novice clumsiness with excess. His lips tasted like lemon.
“Today
is a notable day,” Shiva said. “We are going to launch a new program.”
“And a
new team,” Ashur added in a sweet voice, looking at me with the same warm smile
as before.
“You
will sing, divine Ishtar and Ashur, the wrath, war, and loves of the selected
heroes and heroines who will cross the sea to seek glory,” explained Zurvan. “We
have the island. It’s a small rocky place in the Caribbean Sea with two abandoned
villages on opposite sides of the central mountain. Their names will be your
choice. And it will be your responsibility to create encounters and clashes
between the two communities, which will soon result in a bloody conflict.”
“You
have to invent imaginative situations in a simplified context,” added Shiva. “There
has to be a villain, a dictator, causing the provocation that triggers the war.”
“Although
there may be righteous heroes fighting for the wrong side, due to their high
sense of honor or patriotic loyalty,” Zurvan continued.
“Above
all, the conflict has to seem inevitable, to make the story plausible,” Shiva returned.
I kept
following the explanations of the two directors, moving my head like in a tennis
match. Now it was Zurvan speaking again, “Of course, all areas of the island
will be covered by cameras, and viewers will be able to choose which scenes to watch.”
“You’ll
know their votes, who are they willing to sacrifice in the battle of the day,
who they want to fall in love with whom. But the destiny won’t change however
much they pray and vote, nor will they be able to foresee the future.”
“You’ll
decide everything,” Zurvan emphasized, becoming more and more excited. “So you’ll
dominate the public in pleasure and in pain, hooking them to the expectation of
what might happen.”
“But…will
there be characters of flesh and blood?” I asked.
“Of
course,” said Zurvan. “Everything is real. Our ideas would remain in the cave
if the filmmakers, actors, hosts, and media did not bring them to life in the
world.”
“The chosen
ones will obtain the fame,” Shiva continued. “But they will be allowed to
improvise only in minor matters, taking care not to contradict your script or
draw too much attention to their own initiatives. In fact, only we, the gods,
can achieve perfection, since we see the world from above and know everything.”
I
began to understand what they expected of me. And to think that I had always
despised reality shows! In the belief that they would have offended my imagination,
I hadn’t seen one in my life. Now I discovered I was wrong: behind a semblance
of truth, every reality show followed a detailed script, and I myself would be
in charge of creating new ones.
All of
a sudden, a distressing thought assaulted me. “And…the deaths?”
Zurvan
laughed. “The deaths will be represented by mortal wounds, but they’ll be fictitious,
though the audience will come to believe in their reality. The result will be
the elimination of the character from the island, after a funeral at which
friends and family truly cry—because what one misses is the presence, more than
life, and especially because you’ll ask them for rivers of tears to thrill viewers.”
“I
love the idea!” Ashur said, winking at me from on high.
I did
not share his enthusiasm, not yet. But the work didn’t seem to be unpleasant.
Basically, it remained healthy fiction, and it was a new challenge for my imagination.
“I’d
like the heroines to be just as strong and brave as the men,” I said, “and love
to be given as much importance as war.”
When
speaking, I gazed directly at the two directors, to make it clear to Ashur that
our future collaboration would be professional and egalitarian.
Zurvan
smiled, “This is precisely the reason you’re here, divine Ishtar! We’re happy
to see the ease with which you assumed your role. In your team, Ashur invokes
hatred, Thanatos, the death wish. You, Ishtar, will promote love, Eros, the
life instinct.”
“Although
both of you also carry inside the seed of your contrary,” Shiva said.
“This
conflict inside you will be the life force of your scripts,” Zurvan hit the
ball.
“You’ll
not neglect other sources of dramatic tension, however, so that your world can have
more dimensions, while remaining simple in each of its components.”
“For
example, a key element will be the struggle between Good and Evil.”
“But
what is the Good?”
Shiva’s
question caught me by surprise. I tried to guess the answer she expected, but I
felt confused, as if being examined on the only subject I had not studied.
Luckily, Zurvan came to my rescue before I was forced to improvise.
“According
to Zoroaster, the Good was the Truth,” he said. “The Ancient Greeks thought
that it lay in Beauty or Knowledge. Monotheistic religions, however, found it
in the submission to God or in Chastity…”
“Or in
Love,” I took the easy opportunity to break my passivity.
“Or in
Love,” smiled Zurvan. He seemed to take advantage of all occasions to make me
feel at ease.
Shiva
interrupted our idyll to return to the subject at hand. “Finally, in the past
century, they discovered that there is no truth.”
“So it’s
better to opt for fiction,” the pro-positive director continued. “As did Socrates
and the prophets, we, the gods, seek a truth inside ourselves. And as the
founders of the great religions, we offer our invention to humans to provide
security, to fulfill their lives.”
“So
what is the Good?” Shiva struck again.
“It
will be what Ishtar and I decide,” Ashur said. He might have seemed a bookworm trying
to impress the teachers, were it not that, rather than looking at them, he kept
gazing into my eyes from the top of the mountain of his body.
“Exactly!”
Zurvan congratulated him.
“However,
the public must believe that what they see is real,” said the pro-negative director.
“So the gods have to hide from humans. We don’t ask to be revered but through
our work.”
“And also
through human life itself,” pointed out Zurvan in turn. “In fact, at the end of
the day each viewer will inadvertently force himself—or herself—to follow a
script, imitating one of our characters.”
VI
One morning was
enough to complete my education as a Scriptwriter. When we stopped, I felt a
mixture of relief and giddiness, as after a lengthy examination. If the test
was to demonstrate my learning speed, I passed with flying colors. By lunchtime
I had digested the rules and earned the right to go to the lounge for a banquet
with my new colleagues. There, amid ritual hugs and kisses, I met the other Scriptwriters.
This
is Tapio Tammuz, a youthful man in his forties. His constitution is strong, but
on a small scale, probably about five feet, that is four or five inches shorter
than I. Golden hair, tanned skin, bright slanted eyes. I imagine him as a
hunter chasing me in an autumn forest with a penis rifle that shoots sperm balls.
He hits my face and I fall on a bed of dry leaves. He reaches me, ties my hands
and feet, impales me and lights the fire to roast me. And I am pleasured by
every bite as he checks the doneness of my ear, my nipples, my lips and labia…
“Tapio,
the great optimist, believes in solidarity and loves change,” said Zurvan. “He
aims toward a future of progress and prosperity.”
“However,
I do have ancient roots called Locke, Spinoza, and Keynes,” the new
acquaintance told me with a slight stammer, turning on his almond eyes.
This
is Artemis Lahar, a maternal chestnut, though somewhat masculine, slightly hunchbacked,
and in her fifties, I guess. I see her turned into a scarecrow with the angelic
face of a straw doll. She rages and whips me with a bundle of spikes, then ties
me to a woolen web and penetrates me with an ear of corn.
“Artemis,
the great pessimist, believes in selfishness,” Shiva explained. “Her objectives
are safety, the conservation of old values, the return to a past paradise.”
“My
tradition is as old as Machiavelli, Hobbes, Malthus and Smith,” said Artemis.
This
busty blonde with cheerful eyes and wavy medium-length hair, who welcomes me bouncing,
as if she were recovering her best friend after a long separation, is Enki
Neith. She must be entering her thirties, although her skin and spirit seem ten
years younger. I imagine her as a goat with a fish tail, breastfeeding me with
sour milk full of oxygen bubbles so that I can breathe while she drags me inside
the sea. There she drives her head into my naked pubis, transforms her lips into
a sucker, and engages my vulva like a tapeworm.
“Enki the
feminine represents control, group coordination, and planned order,” Zurvan
said.
And
finally, this slim thirty-something with a goatee, premature gray hair, and
twisted eyes is Haddad Hoder. I note with surprise and concern that I could
imagine sex with him without the need of any transformation. But the gap doesn’t
last long, and finally the vision arrives: he becomes thunder and lightning and
falls upon me, giving me electric shocks that make my hair stand on end.
“The
male Haddad represents chaos, competitive individualism, and messy genius,” said
Shiva.
Haddad
dedicated a grin to me, “I’m the lord of thunder and lightning.” His hoarse voice
hit me like a thousand-volt shock: was it possible that he had read my fantasy?
Sitting
at the round table, which was ready for lunch—although it was clear that none
of us had lifted a finger to prepare it—I enjoyed a variety of gods-worthy
delicacies, enchanted with such witty and fun company. What a difference,
compared to the loneliness of Written Chronicles! There you worked alone; you ate
in your office and could only interact with another colleague in the twenty
minutes of the coffee break. Here, most of the working hours were shared. It
was clear that we formed teams of two that represented the poles of a conflict.
But what were the tasks of the other couples? I posed the question to Haddad,
the lord of thunder and lightning, who was sitting beside me.
“I cast
euphoria and excitement,” he replied.
I knew
that we were forbidden to talk about our work outside of our department, but I had
not been told that the secrecy law also applied internally. I thought maybe it just
wasn’t the right time, so I didn’t insist and went along with changing the subject.
Now the conversation was about going to a party.
“It’s
tomorrow night,” explained Zurvan from the other side of the table. “Marduk
invites all the Scriptwriters, along with the best in society.”
Haddad turned to
me, looking at my earlobe with one eye and my lips with the other. “I promise there will be thunder
and lightning.”
I remembered that in Written Chronicles we had only
had a couple of parties, all at Nergal’s home, without any guests outside our department—and,
of course, without the presence of Marduk, the great producer, owner of the Agency,
whom, to date, I had failed to meet personally. However, even if the parties
with my former colleagues had no thunder or lightning, I still found myself
desiring that they would find a way to invite me to the next.
“Where’s the party?” I asked.
“In the castle,” answered Ashur, whose tone meant “Of
course.”
“What castle?”
To my dismay, all my colleagues laughed.
“You don’t live in Olympus Hill, do you?” said Enki, her
voice excited as if she had just seen an alien. “We all live there. Why don’t
you move there, too?”
“To the castle?” I asked, surprised that they lived
together.
More laughs.
“No,” Enki said. “The castle is Marduk’s. It’s on top
of the hill.”
“We live close by,” explained Ashur, “each one in their
little castle.”
“Come on, honey!” insisted Enki. “Move to Olympus
Hill. Please!”
VII
My
motoregg runs home while the front transaxle of my mind is moving to the
castle of my new golden life and the rear wheel of my heart is stopping to wait
for Utu. She climbs the hill with the autopilot on, wondering if on the peak of
success I will find the station of happiness. She crosses the lush streets of
Valhalla, the village that has lodged a year of my silver solitude, and I go
back to the present and ask myself if it is true, if it is true that everything
has changed.
I enter via the little path in front,
contemplating my home as if I already had to say goodbye to her. She is a
building like those in the classic movies. Even the roof has the familiar look of the
old series, although I know that the tiles are photothermovoltaic. She is my
first house, after the tiny student apartments, since I left my family to go to
college when I was seventeen. The first home I have owned…Well, the first that
will be all mine, after extinguishing the
mortgage in a few years thanks to my good salary. I feel I love her,
despite having shared her rooms with only loneliness. I look into the iris
scanner with moist eyes, and the garage takes me into her womb, lenient as a
mother from the old movies receiving her
daughter who returns after running away.
VIII
Once
inside, I extracted the two purchase boxes from the front entrance and took
them to the kitchen. The contents of the cold storage box went straight into
the fridge, without me checking whether the distributor had fully satisfied my
order, but when I started to unpack the other container in the pantry, I had
the impression I heard a noise from upstairs.
Was there anyone inside? How could anybody be there without
having triggered the alarm? Just in case, I grabbed my cell phone, ready to
call the police, and kept waiting, concentrating all my blood into my ears. After
a couple of minutes with no new sign, I crept to the hall, glanced up from the
base of the stairs, and checked that the alarm was on in the control box next
to the front entrance. If there was a thief, he could only get out through a
window, or down the steps that I kept in view while my thumb was poised to
press the emergency call button on my phone. I remembered with relief that the
police would take just a few minutes to arrive, but then it occurred to me the
criminal might try to escape by taking me hostage. Now, however, technology
came to my aid. I inserted the code into the alarm system, put on the
multiscreen view, and rewound to see if anyone had approached the building in
the last few hours. Then the girl appeared at the top of the stairs with her
arms raised in surrender.
“Please don’t call the police,” she whined.
I was going to pull the trigger of my phone when the
intruder appeared to have a spasm, bent over double, and tumbled down the
stairs until she lay on the ground a few feet away from me. The surprise was
greater than the fear, and I remained paralyzed watching the girl, who was
writhing in violent convulsions, beating on the floor with hard strokes that I
felt hurt me more than her. Suddenly she stopped and lay on her back with terrified
eyes and foaming lips.
“Please don’t call the police,” she repeated.
“I’m calling a doctor,” I said.
Only then did she seem to realize that she was on the
floor, injured. “No! I have no insurance. It was just an epileptic fit.”
Even today, knowing the enormous consequences of my
encounter with the girl, I wonder why in that moment I felt moved, as perhaps I
had never been before. My eyes still get wet with tenderness, as when I watched
her, with that scattering of teenage pimples, lying on the floor and crying
like a kid. I left my phone on the table, crouched beside her, and began to
caress her to calm her down. Why did I do it? Why didn’t I think she could be
feigning her pain, that she could have an associate upstairs waiting for the right
moment to attack me? Did something inside me know she was going to change my
life? I felt she surrendered to my touch like a kitten rescued from long
neglect, and I gave myself as a kid would recover her pet after believing it to
be lost forever. And in that moment my imaginative power was gone: I could not visualize
any erotic transformation of my new acquaintance.
“Forgive me, Ishtar,” she said when she managed to
control her sobs.
How did she know my name? It was not written on the
front door. Perhaps she could have read it upstairs, in a document on my desk…
I looked into her eyes...and I was shocked!
IX
We
were sitting face to face on the floor of the hall. I had stopped caressing her
and felt stunned, looking at those irises that I found extraordinary, even
though they were common brown.
“Oh, of course. The eyes. It’s true…they’re yours.”
She put her forefinger on her right eyebrow and her thumb under the eye. Then
her other hand pinched the crystalline lens and withdrew a small colored
membrane. “This is how I got in.”
I took the contact lens in the palm of my hand. “It’s
my eyeprint? How did you get it?” I almost shouted. I remembered the reckless
video chats with strangers in my adolescence. Someone could have captured my
image, and found a way to print the lines of my iris in a lens. However, even
if this girl had obtained my eyeprint that way, how could she have discovered
my identity? How had she found my address? Bank and public administration
sites, in addition to eye identification, always required a security code. She
couldn’t know mine. And I was sure that, in the risky days of my virtual youth,
I had never used my true name or any other real data, but…What if she was a
cop? In that case she could have gotten my eyeprint, but why all this staging?
And why search my house?
“I’ve stolen it from the News Agency site,” she said, “along
with your name and address. I’m a pirate.”
That was a really good news story. How could a mere
mortal violate the secrets of the gods? This helpless girl, who didn’t seem
older than twenty, defeating the Agency’s state-of-the-art computer system...I
looked at her again, now staring at her actual eye, which was still common
brown, similar but not equal to mine. And I was convinced that her explanation,
incredible as it seemed, had to be the most reasonable. Perhaps the girl was
not so helpless. She could even be dangerous.
I got up and armed myself with the phone again. “What
did you want from me?”
“I just wanted to steal.”
I couldn’t help bursting into laughter. Just wanted to
steal.
“I also found your work timetable on the Agency site.
You were expected to be out later,” she added, as if to justify herself. It was
true: that day I had returned home an hour earlier than usual, after joining
the ranks of the Scriptwriters. She must have pirated my data before my
promotion had been made official.
“What did you find in my house?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
Of course, I didn’t believe her.
“Undress yourself,” I ordered.
“What?”
“Get naked!”
Her expression traveled from surprise to malice. She
was very mistaken. My plan was simply to search her clothes without frisking
her body. Even so, she seemed to have fun with the striptease and took off
her bra and panties with a little dance. Her body was rather small, firm and
slim, with narrow hips and an almost flat chest. She had less than me of
everything, but she didn’t lack charm. Once naked, she took a slow turn so that
I could see her from all sides. But I had already picked up her clothes and was
examining them. No phone, just a piece of plastic as small as a nail.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s mine!” she screamed, reaching out to take it
from me. I dodged and aimed my phone at her, motioning for her to take a step
back as I opened the piece and revealed a microchip.
“It’s a memory card,” she confessed.
“I see that.”
“Please give it to me.”
“I want to explore it first.”
“OK, I confess. I copied data of yours from upstairs.
But I left the original where it was.”
How could I not get angry? Copying my memory was much
worse than raping me; it was kidnapping my past, my ideas, my whole life…and my
data, of course. What was she going to do with it all?
“And I should have let you take it?” I threatened her
with my telephonic weapon. “Tell me the truth at once. Who are you? What did
you want from me? To destroy me?”
“No, no. I didn’t want to damage you. You were not supposed
to discover the theft, and I’d never have used your memory against you, nor
would I have communicated its contents to anybody.”
“Then why did you want it?”
“I just wanted to know you.”
“Enough! No more lies!” I shouted, determined to fire
a call to the police.
She knelt down, joining her hands in theatrical
prayer. “Wait! I’ll tell you everything, I’ll do whatever you want, but please,
wait a moment before calling the police. If you want to be sure I won’t escape,
tie me up. You can interrogate me better that way. Torture me if you want. I
only ask that you listen, before you report me. Tie me up with the belt of my
pants, or with the cord of that curtain, or with whatever you want, but please,
tie me up.”
Then she lay face down on the floor, joining her
wrists behind her back. I did what she asked.
“Tighter, so I can’t free myself,” she said.
I pulled her belt a bit more tightly, ending with a
triple knot.
“The feet—tie my feet, too, so I can’t move.”
I obeyed. Again she asked me to tighten the knot, though
I could already see welts forming on her ankles.
“Thanks,” she said. She managed to turn around and sit
with her back against the wall, the soles of her feet together on the floor.
Then she separated her knees, giving me a full frontal view of her nudity. Her
shaved vulva looked at me shamelessly, her purple labia majora standing out in
contrast with her pale belly.
“Who are you?” I asked again.
“My name’s Arianne. I’m a memory thief.”
X
“What
do you want?” I asked.
“I look for the truth and don’t find it anywhere.”
I laughed in annoyance. “That’s
why you’ve been lying so much, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes you have to lie for the sake of truth.”
Her answer surprised me. The girl was not at all
helpless, and no doubt she was still hiding her true motive.
“Don’t you ever lie?” Arianne asked.
“I’m not pirating data, raiding homes, or stealing
eyeprints.”
“Have you ever stolen the truth?”
“No!”
“In your news, you always tell the truth?”
Another surprise. Was it possible that she knew the
secret of the Agency? I was sure she couldn’t find any evidence on the Internet
that Written Chronicles stories were invented. And I was not going to betray my
former colleagues now, certainly not with this little hotshot smelling like a
spy. At any rate, there could be nothing wrong with giving the readers a nice
story. Lying would be telling a fact by changing it deliberately, if only to
make it more attractive. That was the old journalism. It was precisely to avoid
lying or harming anyone that Written Chronicles had already left the boring
field of reality to create a fictional world that was also the sexiest of all
possible worlds. The criteria of plausibility we obeyed ensured that our
stories were even more real than reality. Besides, she didn’t know I was no
longer working in Written Chronicles. The scripts that I would create with
Ashur would materialize in the physical world, played by flesh-and-blood
actors.
“Of course we tell the truth,” I said, with all my
good faith. I looked into her eyes and noticed that the left was still mine.
“Explain what you do with the memory you steal.”
“I search for a personal diary, or any sincere note
that people can’t confess to anybody other than themselves.”
“How did you expect to get away with it? What were you
going to do about the security cameras?”
“If you’d come home at the scheduled time, you
wouldn’t have noticed anything out of place and wouldn’t have any reason to watch
the recording of an entire day in an empty house. And without a complaint, the
police wouldn’t have wasted their time chasing me on street cameras.”
“Tell me a reason not to report you.”
“You still have my data, pictures of me breaking into
your home on the cameras. I’m in your power. If you forgive me, I’ll be your
slave, knowing that you can report me if I don’t obey you. If you want, I’ll
give you a thousand caresses and I’ll purr under yours. I’ll steal for you, if
you ask me.”
There was one thing she could do for me.
END OF THE FREE EXCERPT
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Kirkus Reviews published a rave review of the book and gave it the "Kirkus Star," which is "Awarded to Books of Exceptional Merit." It also listed the book among "The Best Indie Books of 2013."
Copyright © 2012 Eli Yaakunah. All rights reserved. ISBN: 9781481031776 (print edition); 9781623472061 (Kindle edition - Mobi format)
The cover is based on the painting Scandal by the artist Karina Vagradova.