Rituals by Cees Nooteboom Page B

tongue rather than give a squeal in front of you and that Kriemhilde.
    Wide-legged, he staggered about the room, a drunken old man. His whole body had become a mere enclosure around this one defect.
    "Ze Arabs never make so much fuss."
    They had hoisted him into his trousers, and he had grown dizzy with pain in the process.
    In his friend's room, a dark den full of snakes and toads in terrariums, he had waited, with an ever grubbier, ever more sordid penis sheath until he had healed. And now she was looking at it, as seriously as she had listened to his story.
    "I think it looks nice," she said.
    Slowly she bent over and took him in her mouth. He felt her breasts each time they touched the inside of his calves. Each time her head came up, he saw part of her forehead, the slant of her obliquely set eyebrows. She had closed her eyes, she was working, and there was something devout and pure about it. He was sitting very still, but grimly clutched the sheet with both hands as if the moment, when it came, might blow him away. When it did come, he felt himself draining away, but she remained half thrown forward, her full, beautiful shoulders resting on his knees. Only after some while did she raise herself, her mouth closed. The slanting green eyes laughed, and again, as earlier in the afternoon, she briefly stuck out her tongue with that white, shiny, drifting cloudlet on it, swallowed, and said mockingly, "Three?"
    They sat still for a while. He put his hands under her, soft, wet, and delicious. They rocked, shifted, and swayed, muttering soft words, kissing, and whispering spells until the white daylight stood in the room and she laid him down, stroked him, and left. A great addiction had begun. Her fiancé would return from Korea, and Inni would never kiss her or touch her again. They would vanish from each other's lives and die separately. The great black void would eat them and absorb them in separate places, but they would never (never?) forget each other, and his whole life would revolve around women. He would seek this again and again among passersby, friends, whores, and strangers. Women were the rulers of the world, simply because they held him under their command. He would never feel again that he "took" or "conquered" one of them, or whatever other stupid terminology had been invented to conceal the truth: that man, that he, delivered himself up to women with an absolute surrender which invariably caused misunderstanding. If the world was a mystery, then women were the force that maintained this pulsating mystery. They, and only they, had access to it. If anything in this world could be understood, it would have to be understood by means of women. Friendship with men could go a long way, but it only touched the rational side of things, which some women possessed in addition, as an extra. Women were more honest, more direct, than words. They were media. He often had the feeling that women allowed him as far as possible to be a woman, and that without this he would be unable to survive. Not that he had ever wanted to be a woman physically, but in this way, with the woman in his male body, he experienced a mysterious sensation of duplicity. He was what people called a woman's man, but in the sense that in mythology someone can be a birdman. He hated the attitude of most men toward women, for although he did the same things as they, his motivation was different. He knew what he sought. Sex was never really what mattered most, sex was merely the delicious vehicle. Women, all women, were a means to come close to, to come within the orbit of, the secret of which they and not the men were the guardians. Through men, but this he would not be able to formulate until much later, you learn how the world is. Through women you learn what it is. And this night, on which a thousand other nights, rooms, and bodies would be superimposed, was the most unforgettable of all.
    He woke up from a tap on the door and her voice.
    "Your aunt