2 – Katherine Sophie – Misty shallows

Claude C. Varieras - Flying over the Alps.

©katherine-sophie – Flying over the Alps.

Sarah says:

It was a smooth flight to Marco Polo airport. The sun was low and gilded the city off on the still waters. The Taxi boat sailed along lines of yellow lights against the darkening blue grey mist. We entered the city through the Cannareggio Canale, slowing down to allowed speed, and the Canale Grande unrolled its incomparable scenery while I held Katherine standing up above the roof of the sleek white boat. Hugo was sprawling on the leather bench inside, with radiant Camille in grège silk, watching us kiss.

©CCVarieras - Lion of Saint Mark

©katherine-sophie – Lion of Saint Mark on silk velvet

 

Camille says:

The Sanvios’ house is close by the Salute, spacious and quiet. We found large deep beds and all the beddings of fine percale.

Girls fooling in perfumed fabrics of sensual colours followed by splashes in the bath and the bells of Venice warbling their forgotten prayers. I joined these two baroque angels of an undetermined kind; breath became short but we could not perceive when Katherine started to sob in Sarah’s neck and finally burst in heavy tears. Water was running on the two worshipped heads and curls moved on on the back of the distraught child.

We moved as little as we could, I massage her feet slowly as I knew how. Now she had to fall asleep, we led her to the bed after we softly wiped and combed her hair; she toppled over in Sarah’s arms while I closed the shutters. I left them in silence and went to tell Hugo we wouldn’t go out. He called some number to have meals delivered home. I sat next to Him in a high-back settee waiting for the bell to ring, he held my hands and I saw him cry too.

A young man in a dark livery came at the door with a large basket covered in linen, I showed him the kitchen and said to leave it there, paid, tipped and went back to Hugo. Familiarly he pulled off my robe and rolled his head against my womb, elated in the perfume he had composed for me. I undid a few lines of buttons and gave my mouth in time for a long volley he had mulled over ogling the season’s elected sprites.

The old city rounded itself in silence and darkness, faint voices came to us as the two lovers resumed their long-winded conversation. We went to the kitchen and Hugo opened a bottle of wine, unpacked a gracious ensemble of antipasti on the marble table and enfolded me with ever gracious manners, in a way to still include me in the ring of his lust, after using me the cavalier way. I have faith in the bawdy Lord, and I also want to frolic around with the glamour birds also in the open air, as he means.

It was almost midnight when two beauties in open white gowns joined us with gusto. Katherine hair was wavy and shiny over her reddened eyes, she breathed lightly, Sarah’s bright blue eyes could not hide behind her short black locks, they stood shoulder to shoulder, like foals. They had reached the peace.

Then we all pecked at delicious things we did not really know, the girls drank water.

©CCVarieras - Rio under the moon

©katherine-sophie – Rio under the moon

 

Sarah says:

The water and the absence of cars soften the course of the day, and although the shops are mainly filled with junk made in China, there is still treasure to be found for a girl’s eye.


Last night we were having dinner at a terrace near the Fenice, it was warm and we did not wear much, Katherine seemed at ease in a few layers of linon, Hugo played with her hand, then he asked for her panties and she slowly slid them,  and gave them. He swiftly nosed the silk and stuffed it in his breast pocket. She smiled and started pushing a bare foot between my legs, asking for my undies too. Pretending to stretch out I pulled the little thing to her toes and she grabbed it like a monkey. Still stealthily, as if it was a game, I whispered in Camille’s small ear that I wanted her pants; watching the moon to make sure no one had noticed, she fetched a few grams of lace and rubbed them on my nose. Hugo fought gently to collect all the loot. Camille dared a wet kiss on my mouth, her hand up my thighs. A waiter had seen the discreet charivari, he wore a demi-smile when he offered some grappa we softly refused, so he came back with a plate of arlecchini cookies spangled with candied fruit, unable to look elsewhere than our laps, like an old teacher.

My Princess fairy is a lewd lass at heart, expelled from the roaring hell at the cost of her cherished sibling , her mirror soul. Tonight the heavy laguna wafts tousle her curls up around her sheer oval visage and I selfishly thank fate she fell on me. As much of an easy playgirl I be, I want her soul, I want to stand in for her loss, or do I?

Hugo guided us through deserted little streets, we stopped when a jasmine or a petunia waving down a balcony filled the air with lust, and he would pull up all of Katherine’s veils, seeing what Camille would open my thin blue dress and bite my baby nipples. We wandered lightly back to the apartment, we showed our butts to some youth on the Accademia bridge, harvesting bird names we did not understand. Hugo was in love with Katherine and Camille played me skilfully, the moon was glorious. In the wide opened house, we lit up some beeswax candles and gnat-repellent spirals on the window ledges. Somewhere afar, a clear mind juggled with muffled loops of wind-like melodies. On the night-sunken couches, faint swishes and moist shivers inspired rolling galaxies of twinkling phosphenes on my tripping soul in the secure cuddle of Camille. Listening to Kate being all shagged made me yield over and gleefully climax with a high sigh at Camille’s will.

This morning I woke up with puppies biting my toes on a bright beach, then I realised Katherine had joined us on the bed and was offering her behind while chewing my precious little dwarfs. All drowsy in the golden dawn, without a word, we held each other long and tight as I felt her mind blooming free. It took the smells of breakfast to chase us from under the sheets.

Camille says:

Our stylish band embarked on the sunlight splattered numero boat uno to reach the Giardini with a frill of fresh air. Katherine wore large sunglasses, she sat on the bow seats, that have stupidly disappeared on the new boats, along with Hugo who held her hands when he spoke in her ear. He wore a Montechristi hat and ivory linen, her grège jersey pleats let her breasts giggle like a pair of cousins. The boat rolled, I softly pushed Sarah to one of the two corners of the platform and let the rolling be our dance together. I noticed a Japanese man taking photographs of us, I smiled and kissed her mouth frankly to the small sound of the camera shutter. She opened wide eyes, followed mine and noticed the photographer, then gave me back another kiss before turning her nose to the wind. The vaporetto docked near the jasmine hedges of the Giardini, the Japanese bowed briefly when we left, then he swiftly aimed at Katherine with professional precision.

Hugo was at the gates, redeeming his invitations, when Sarah took Katherine’s hand, noticing a new ring with a white opal cabochon in a berth of pale blue stones, she caressed her cheek without a word and entwined her waist as she chased a pebble from her sandal. I took his arm and murmured to his ear that the ring was closing as he wished and the four of us made a jolly band of rakes all to my taste.

The two artists already strolled towards the international Pavilion, this time heralded “Cartografie Mentale” as the main theme of the Biennale. From the start, the festival show  felt intriguingly different from what it had been the last twenty-five years. It showcased individual creation, individual thinking, individual production instead of massive fabrication of socialite’s whims erected as labels or image markers. The curators had scouted around for outstanding extraneous attainments of glorious souls.

Unconscionable endeavours against the world’s vileness, ineffable baroque pearls extirpated from the paltry mire of forlorn destinies, victories on death, destitution, affliction, seclusion, solitude, proud conquests over the mental subservience to the powers that be, the methodical pandemonium of wild, untamed figments of all genres and medias, the accomplishment of the team responsible for the show was tremendous.

Otherwise, in different rooms, the displayed objects appeared to reflect a serene fate for their authors, a quiet withdrawal from the common trade of shallow values, dowsing for the rare gems of native poetry.

Of course, any doodle or scribble from a despaired or disparaged person is not more than anyone’s erratic quirks, I speak of an art language elaborated in time as a single successful vocabulary which builds the necessary frame for a reading and a glimpse in our own soul, I could not find a better word.

This man sculpts in clay an unseen bestiary, this one draws an undecipherable land with endless captivating details, a woman diverts the crafts of her mother into transfigured costumes or an obsessive lace over newspaper sheets; untrained outsiders develop captivating idiosyncrasies to show the world a unifying love, albeit the noise and the fury?

I felt it fitted exactly right in the views of Hugo, who stayed close to the girls, holding my arm most of the time, letting the best of his imagination embody a personality for each artist shown, in a low tone of voice, scribbling notes. During their Beaux-Arts years, the girls had been engrossed with a radically different realm of creativity, the one Hugo was now defacing with words, but they calmly fell under the charm of the gathering of intensely poetic propositions quietly spreading a mental web of enlightenment that could very well be Art in its own reason.

After years of arid summons to shallow philosophic forgeries and advertising swindles knitted together by intellectual mercenaries in a blind complacency to the heavy speculators, at work there with the very same tools they mobilise upon the oil, gold or meat markets, the ultimate secret half-shared in the back rooms of an opaque trade would reach a final shore of inanity, or meet the ultimate shame down the drains of moral decency.

No more airport decoration, cultural token for the architectures of power, nothing exposed in the “Cartografie” could adorn the surfaces of any money-mill in Frankfurt or London. No business was intended, no production line, no future. Was a time when Arts Décoratifs was a grand genre in its own right, when the Palais de Tokyo, the Musée Des Colonies or the Rockefeller Center adorned their facades with elegant but shallow minded allegories as craftily executed as uppermost quality jewellery, and the ruling class could rollick into the stunning displays of the Normandie.

Today the global anomy allows pretenders to denominate art any school prank as soon as it has been repeated ten times, thus churning out a colossal return on such stupid pieces as a four meters steel heart shape or an array of hundreds of fake bicycles where only a burp of thinking has been invested. And the institutional venues for art have been plagued in return with inane fabrications better suited for disposable shopping malls.

But the most insulting dishonesty currently shoved upon the public mind is the unfettered reference to Marcel Duchamp, as if his penchant for chess and mind games had been the core of his oeuvre, whereas his most paranoid conundrums, “La Mariée Mise A Nu Par Ses Célibataires, Mêmes” and “Etant Donnés 1- Le Gaz D’Éclairage, 2- La Chute D’Eau” took him fifteen years each of highly focused work outside of any commercial network, in pure blissful levitation. He showed zilch but contempt to the burgeoning pacotille trade of pop art and contaminated avant-garde, he fathered none of today’s official culture and communication.

©katherine-sophie - Vos lèvres aux miennes

(…) Vos lèvres aux miennes – ©katherine-sophie

 

Sarah says:

In the mood we were since morning, we simply let Hugo guide us in the congenial set of a well-breathing show, like good girls. After the rolling of the boat in Camille’s loving perfume of incense, rose and cinnamon, I could not have enough of Katherine who would not flee. Close together, we read the labels, which we wouldn’t have done as students, and discovered unusual, strange, even extravagant lives to figure around possibly fascinating pieces.

Extremely diverse persons had centered their whole psychological balance in the pursuit of that inner necessity, as if they had had no other choice, without any guideline in aesthetics, fashion or taste, alone under the sky. Some artists shown were just plain compulsive, giving no key to comprehend the flow of their production, others insisted on a rigorous mental protocol, others only expressed the extreme dedication in an otherwise mundane goal. the best few conveyed the mental shifts inside which the viewer reaps traces of the impalpable dew to quench his own oblivious intimate sores, hence the inner wind of freshness.

 

Camille says:

The two wading birds literally clutched hands, like they had been sometimes in their school years, it felt sweet, they were concentrated and humble as if they had never seen art work of essential quality although Hugo’s apartment was filled with such mirabilia. Some sexually explicit pieces made them pull a clever child pout of perfectly staged innocence, I was the one to laugh and paw Sarah’s almost bare ass.

In a room were the plaster models of half-size little girls, fully dressed as if they were in a shop window, discovered carefully stored in Morton Bartlett’s garage. The models were anatomically perfect and detailed, their expressions were peaceful and lively, their maker had lived an unremarkable commercial photographer’s life. Although no pictures with the dummies are known, they must have been used when no live model was available, in possibly evocative angles, their size wouldn’t matter. There was an awkward idea of indecency watching them.

Suddenly there was a muttered exclamation as our maidens met a handsome young man with rich Tiziano gold hair they recognized as Gauthier, an old schoolmate. There was a warm effusion as they walked together towards a small garden on the side of the building. Hugo half-raised an eyebrow in a funny way, and held my arm as if to say to let them be.

 

Sarah says:

Amongst the many boys we suffered at the Beaux-Arts school, one stood out of the herd and was sweet, Gauthier. Now we found him again in the middle of the most distinctive collection of things we shunned as art students. As a grown man, he is beautiful, with thick golden hair and pale complexion, dark brown eyes and long hands he slowly moves when speaking. We swiftly went to a small sculpture garden where our fast whispers mingled with those of running water. He was staring alternatively at our eyes with avidity. We told him the most gracious ellipse we could risk without contradicting each other about our present life, he told us he was part-time art director of a cultural centre in Valparaiso and an art critic in Spanish-speaking magazines. Tentatively, the three of us considered what we were in the middle of, remembering some of the clichés we would have spit on such an array of visions a few years back, but smiles glowing lighter, we found ourselves on the same chord, probably because we all wanted to spend more time together. Hugo and Camille had joined us, we introduced everyone and Hugo decided we should find some café nearby.

 

Hugo says:

It looks like a boy could join in the round, the jasmine and the clematis swirl around the honeysuckle in a soft lash of graces, as I wish it continues, I invite the young master to dinner and he accepts with a smile. He has a deep look, under a wave of coppery bright blond hair. We all engage in a conversation about the underrated value of solitary creation, of private achievement, of a genuine individual quest. I feel a small pressure on Katherine’s breath when we evoke the realm of Art Brut but I do not reach for her hand in front of newcomer Gauthier, so I playfully suggest we should go to the Biennale bookstore, get postcards and send them. Katherine is up first and reaches for my eyes, she takes my hand lightly, then quietly lengthens her steps on the grass, her feet like a pair of baby dolphins. In the library we find the cards, catalogues, and fancy art supplies with the Biennale logo on them, kid stuff I support playfully as a reminder of a greater design of ours. But now the Biennale bags are heavy on the girls’ shoulders.

 

Camille says:

The miscellany in the “Cartografie Mentale” falls right in place in our Katherine recovery tale, and a charming encounter does for the resettlement of reality. Gauthier is handsome and soft, but the sweetest thing is to feel the hum in the girls’ heads about him. How long will it take before he carries the heavy loads they fetched from the bookstore? Hugo is obviously thrilled with the new cast, he will push the fires and watch.

 

Sarah says:

Sitting at a terrace, we spread our goods and start thinking whom we might want to alert of our expedition and it became uneasy. Most of names in the book didn’t fit any more. Katherine tied up a small riddle to her mother and a line to Dr Schubert, a polite little poem to Wolfgang. I had more wishes to tell and so did Hugo. Gauthier readily solved the  matter of stamps as he knew where to find some.

In the park, the American Pavilion appeared a bit defaced by a wild bunch of rampaging rascals, but closer it settled its chaos to a quiet and friendly spiraling extravaganza made of tiny scraps, beads, crumbles threads and wires at the hands of an industrious elf arranging the layers of its nest in concentric spheres, like a gardener bird in the seducing design of an immemorial urge. We all fell for it and it was delightful to watch Katherine being fascinated as she slowly danced around the four exploding installations. No doubt it was attuned with the “mentale” territories, like the inner child’s orderly quest of the key to the universe; I have done so, when left alone on the cozy northern beaches over there,  leaving displays in the sand I had spent the day to collect, Mor checking I still wore my shirt.

 

Katherine thinks:

All of a sudden, I feel a black hole in my chest where falls every bit of emotion darted at me through the art I met on such a sustained rhythm. It hurts at first delightfully with a grin of déjà vu backwards, it slips into place a multicoloured rubble to wash my mind in a glittering mosaic. I was a crying baby in the warm stuff Dr Schubert had let me roll in, I saw the room through my hair undone, water ran down all over my face like a shower on hot pebbles, washing away some invisible dust and the taste of blood. Sweet soft cloth wiped my eyes and my nose and mouth repeatedly while this song whirled in the dunes around the couch I am huddled on. I could hear Achim’s piano from an open window in the dazzle, he is missing, like in cancelled, nullified. The air I breathe twirls like feathers in my throat…

 

Hugo says:

Now I stand like the puppet master under the black veil, very mindful not to see the troops scatter and scramble their threads. The swan has ruffled her feathers around the flaming knight and now she stares unbalanced on a threshold inside her own maze. I slide my hand under her arm while Sarah dives into the dark warm eyes of Gauthier in an essay of art criticism on a German deviant artist whose idiom is boldly sexual on a high-keyed colourful naïveté, a circus parade of lust she proffers quite blatantly herself.

Katherine mutters a small moan I know by heart, to which I respond in the low, low whisper I keep for her gentle ears. I tell her anything she wants to hear, every promise, every tale her beautiful head will roll on, with a graceful flexion of her dainty neck. I am soon elated in her perfume, a blue mist on pale waters with a warm glow of her own ineffable sweat through the flowery interlace. Her pulse has settled while mine is racing slightly but we find conversation on four evocative drawings by Domenico Gnoli, inner views in a grainy brownish black line texture of comfy but “unheimlich” interiors where the weird is nesting at ease like a flying flatfish, a dodo with a rhino head in an elevator, the turkey-cat inside the wardrobe; her clock ticks back again on a list of sassy chimere in hotel rooms like a pandemonium brothel on acid.

 

Camille says:

Sarah is radiant when she whispers at Gauthier her impressions of whatever enlivens her dear head, she would soon be almost on tiptoes, her slender arms gently agitated. He responds with an all Greek swaying, caressing the lobe of an ear and searching her gaze with amusement.

They do not see the Fairy Maedchen when she almost faints over until Hugo rescues her and mumbles in her hair while holding her arm so gently; It lasts one minute and then she shows a smile while they move to the next room. Still holding Sarah’s hand, Gauthier inquires silently about the semblant event, in fear he lacked gallantry towards Katherine who clears the looming malaise by pecking at her intrigued pal’s lips. In a look, Hugo cuts the worrying; they break the circle and Gauthier laughs to their jokes with a smart shush none of the other visitors notice.

In a sly manoeuvre, Sarah drives Katherine at Gauthier’s side and comes by requesting my eyes when we all give our attention to a large wall on which are displayed Wols’ watercolours. It is one of the solid reasons why Hugo brought us here, because he owns a few of the artist’s frail visions himself from his father’s heritage.

Our best misses go mute and the alarm shrills ugly as they peek too close to the eerie little scapes, drawn with bare nerves on weather-beaten traces of forgotten sunsets; back standing at attention, gathering over the limited frames, Katherine gets even with Gauthier’s arm not knowing where Sarah’s hand is. Nonetheless, they all open candid mouths as they carefully scan the savage poetry infused in the small scenery. Class is beautifully focused, moreover scrawling notes and nodding out of respect, while Hugo with gold spectacles stands deep in thought at my side.

With no time to collect our spirits back from Wols’ heartrending entrapments, we passed nonetheless with no stress into the next hall where another sublime vagabond displayed large lost-and-found assemblies of scrapped materials and windfall things in some evocative manner of heraldry, the paltry treasure-trove of a stargazing spin wizard transfigured into mirrors for the sentient soul suddenly solicited. Louis Pons is a glorious vagrant reigning on a cloud of selected spiritual garbage waiting for a poetic epiphany of sorts. Confronted earlier in life with some eyesight impairment, after a profuse career as a draughtsman, he bravely reset his talent necessities in the desert countryside, hunting for fool’s gold and stars left behind.

Now everyone’s loin was aching because of the still trampling, we ran to a coffee stand where Katherine found some plinth to lay flat on while I worked on Sarah’s muscles, leaving the only low chair to Hugo. The three of us girls did the egg, the lowering sun shined on our casual crotches.

After dinner in a garden roofed with jasmine we walked to the house through the silent shadows of the calle and campi, meeting no one. It was rather early and Hugo offered a drink. The house had been tidied and a gardenia bush reigned on the coffee table. He found bottles of Asti wine and tall glasses, but took una bottiglia e due bicchieri in one and, grabbed my hand and pushed me to a little door in the lobby behind which a small stairway led to the roof. His face was against my butt when we climbed to the altane under the starry night. He simply said we should let the kids play and started to undress me tenderly, pushing his tongue in as many folds as he could open. In the warm summer night I was so ready for that.

For years he has always been eager to please me however I feel he owns me, the forlorn little tramp they sent for lust and he nurtured as an enchanted doll because we could. The learning and the debauchery grew together like roses in a yew tree, and we could be couple with more than us two, couldn’t we?

He played with all parts of my body as I laid on a lounger like a fascinated slave. He kissed my mouth with a delighted energy and finally was in me strong and deep and I let go of me and fled, giving away my hips to his assault, rushing my pleasure to his will. When we moved no more, he reached again for my mouth and licked my face, then he wiped my body with his shirt and laid along me watching the rising moon. We heard unmistakable sounds from downstairs.

Unheimliche watchman ©katherine-sophie

Unheimliche watchman ©katherine-sophie

 

Gauthier says:

I know coffee machines, I will make this one work, I am the only one alive and it is not so early. I can’t remember when I collapsed in a cloud of oblivion, between in the midst of the most recherché scents mingled in girls’own intimate musk, feeling I had wasted five years of my life before last night. These two are like hungry trouts in a mountain stream, fins and bites all over my skin, and how did they pull my hair! I checked in the mirror but my face is smooth. To be part of what they feverishly do with each other is a trip through layers of sound and colour in a endless plain of blue fur, with sugary fireflies into my eyes and brains… that’s what I would elaborate, leaning on the window sill.

 

Hugo says:

The smell of fresh coffee has drawn me to the kitchen to discover the cute ass in a night blue robe of a slender golden headed Gauthier watching outside. I grab one cheek to annoy him and test. He’s not very fast to react, he must still be under some spell I suppose. I make some noise, thank him for the coffee and find some cookies in the cupboard. We sit across the table, he really looks like the satisfied gentleman with a little ember in the depths of his dark eyes. I do my best to tune my body language as to alleviate any fear or interrogation about the night as it was.He sends me an affectionate look and says he must go back to his hotel to get ready for the day, I ask him to show up at the Arsenale at lunchtime, otherwise my girls would be devastated. Voices and watery sounds come from a bathroom, he goes to dress and leaves with a radiant smile under his explosive hairdo. I like the boy, he fits in Katherine’s game gently and the more partners the safer she will be. Languid Camille shows up in grey silk, her hair hastily bound in a luscious bun from which wild blond curls jump in every direction; I open my arms and lean back to make her sit on my lap and we kiss. She smells of dry hay, incense, amber, little girl’s sweat and the sun in the morning air. She stands up when the two turbaned odalisques push one another in the room and cajole her with bits of songs and small talk. She searches the moist freshness in their necks and gives tiny cat kisses.

 

Sarah says:

I shared her with the golden child!  Barely done with a meticulous toilet where he found the door opened, befell a charivari of lips, tongues and bites at lecherous random to the tremulous brood! He has the pale skin of a girl and the hair of a bonfire, he smells of lavender, orange, tobacco, musk and a grain of boxwood in a French garden. While she was devouring his mouth I licked and nipped and tongued every carnal hideaway I met on the spendable lopsided bodies. I forced my pointed tongue between his butt cheeks like a frantic slut and he opened wide so I could execute an utterly whorish pepper leaf while he moaned faintly.

He suckled her little breasts, meanwhile she spread ballerina style and I cobbled with both of them so avidly into one another. He was in her but my mouth carefully gobbled his balls , I felt her four fingers entering my vagina like she knew how. I had to free the cavalier who started to ride high on her, splashing her thighs. I crawled to her ecstatic face and drank her cries from her infuriated lips, feeling the strong pulse firing her glorious head in a wild song and then hoarse moans as she gave out and cuddled into my neck.

He collapsed on us but he wasn’t finished, wanting my willing mouth. While she kneaded more in me, he made me restore his young posture, his pale pintle again fierce playing in my throat then from behind in me after her diligent tongue, he fucked me as a boy with determination, drenching the busy lout inside my dripping vagina. She helped me take off and fly finely while he pushed deeper and deeper and gushed lavishly inside my submitted ass . He stood there clutched to my panting body, our breaths soothing back to normal in front of her lusty eyes. We gently mopped ourselves and went in another mild shower, lapping at each other’s face.

 

Katherine says: 

As soon as we reacquaint with the boy, we overindulge like slags in full bloom and he wins as the irresistible ruffian with the stretched sugarcane. He fits brilliantly the wanton side of Sarah’s just as he whelms mine and yet he remains as gentle as a dawn jonquil.

She has not yet shown all of her slutty gifts, she dares me to whore better than her tight apple of an ass and it feels like gold on my soul, a fucking redemption of my sloppy rovings in the filthy culverts, why didn’t you hit on me stronger before, Sarah? Yeah, booze was all the evil, and you tried. Now I want you to drink my tears.

Claude C Varieras - Moonlight over San Giorgio.

©katherine-sophie – Moonlight over San Giorgio.

 

Camille says:

Different shades of white, linon, cambric, batiste floated around the three of us, covered as little as Canovas as we headed to the boat stop under the Salute. We soon had to dive into a thick summer crowd, Hugo holding me close as he pushed his way backwards. He wore an impalpable ivory wool veil and I let his body feel mine. He reached his pocket while smiling, then fought to get my wrist where he acrobatically clasped an elegant bracelet of art deco, gold and blue enamel with diamonds, flat and supple as a caress. I could not help crying like a little girl and hid my face in his neck.  He played with my ear lobe for the rest of the trip to the Arsenale stop.

Katherine and Sarah held hands in the sun on the way to the Corderie, I took my telephone and shot pictures of their graces babbling, wishing I had a finer camera. The lighter one wore her hair free in waves of the fawn shades and her look dived into the blue porcelain buttons under the dark curls of her accessory. they both showed moving touches of lust under their eyes, I wondered where the culprit was.

I thought I would never wish a deeper rapture and breathed deeply, almost again to tears. Hugo pressed my arm and said he would like a book to end this way, right there, waved his hand and turned to me like he would smell a flower. I offered him my neck. My telephone in hand, I hailed the girls so I could photograph their smiles. The small sandals performed a disorderly dance and Katherine’s bag’s strap wrapped Sarah’s slender waist for an immortal second.

Canaletto. Entrance of the Arsenale basin.

Canaletto. Entrance of the Arsenale basin.

 

Sarah says:

The Old Corderie is an endless corridor in the middle of which still run the rails of the twisting carriage for the spinning of ropes. It houses all that can’t fit into the Giardini under its renaissance industrial architecture. Today the exhibition starts with the complete marionette theatre of Prudence Sheridan, some fifty almost life-size figures in exquisitely crafted phantasmagorical accoutrements, an outlandish fauna of unbeknown monsters and eerie monuments of decor made of driftwood and tatters of riggings all blackened and surmounted by sheep and poultry skulls. Prudence has always lived in a Swiss institution and is not capable of confronting the normal world, she would be found confused, raped, starveling and stricken each time they tried so her family maintained her inside the domain of Plaincourt in Rougemont. As a highschool student I had visited the famous hospital and seen a short play with the bewitching puppets manipulated by other patients in black overalls and masks, the feet being tied to their own; the words had been incantation formulaic fragments projected with brash energy, I still remember feeling personally concerned in a weird conjuration.

So I instituted myself speaker and imitated what I had attended, the gestures and obscure litany when the attendants began to move and I reckoned I wasn’t a success. Katherine pawed my waist and wanted more of the mumbo-jumbo while she gazed at the poor intern until he blushed. Nonetheless I knew many details the catalogue didn’t tell, like how she found driftwood in the Swiss mountains and skulls and all sorts of wrecks and rags; I had been told how some fellow inpatients had participated in assembling, sewing or all kinds of efforts on the magic herd of Plaincourt. It had been studied in our own collective conception for the year-end opera at Saint Loup and I was almost stricken again by emotion in Katherine’s arms.

The puppets are hung onto metal fixtures in the pose Prudence had indicated. The heads suggest mostly fear,  angst and rage, with white pebbles painted as eyes, often more than a pair; under large dark nostrils wide articulated mouths show white pointed teeth. The material looks like sculpted wood but I know it is rubble and waste mounted with resin then glazed in numerous coats of acrylic paint. She has seasons, at random, for her crafts, and will make eyes for sometime, then heads, hands, costumes, whatever saves her from suffering.

Prudence maintains a deep relation with her brother Leo, who lives in California but he visits almost monthly, and he is the discrete purveyor of all materials his sister asks. Skimming the internet, he hunts and conveys loads of rags and discarded clothes he washes and stacks into crates, he is so well known at the Goodwill stores in San Francisco that they keep a special stash for him. She told us, in her peculiar feeble voice, that he could find sixty kilos of old buttons once, and all the comrades at Plaincourt suddenly felt rich and wore buttons on their hats and jackets; only one insisted on swallowing them.

She builds the puppets on a skeleton of branches she finds behind the garden fence, she handles tools safely and watches on them. She sews bags over the wood and stuffs them into the shapes she sees, no one is symmetrical, it’s a lame crowd of trolls richly adorned. The monstrosity of the bodies is refuted by the meticulousness of the trimmings on the many lapels, tails and folds. One thinks of a troupe of Elizabethan jesters on drugs, a party of obstreperous mongrels in a fit of sugar rush in the theatre wardrobe.

Moreover there is an obvious reason why these manikins are seldom to be seen, and it is their sexual crudeness. the formidableness of the represented genitalia. In coral and pink and lilac and mauve supple chiffon, the vulva with convoluted labia majora, minora et furibunda outface the timorous viewer, so do the scarlet velvet dongs prancing on their ripe mangoes.

During our visit to Rougemont, Prudence had a crush on our young crew and she maliciously led our hands inside the soft satin pouch vaginas where we could find treasures like gimcrackery, religious fetishes, medals and coins, seashells and marbles. She gave me a lizard brooch that must still sleep at the bottom of one of my bags. Does the Biennale staff know these provocative slits are full of wonders?

Since Prudence acquired the savvy of the sewing machine at the supplication of her brother to the management, her designs have sleeked up in details thus rendering sensuous volumes like wealthy plumages next to button-clad fenders of carapaces.

During  the healthy trekking in the Swiss mountains she combs the streams for white, clear or unusual pebbles with which are made the eyes and all sorts of barbaric jewels she inlays or hangs around the costumes, strings into the opulent wigs like unknown crustaceans in strands of dulse.

Hugo is transfixed and squeezes Camille’s waist but yet Katherine remains unquiet and so I soothe my explanatory zeal and I knead her shoulders to help her breathe, then wraps her chest and heave a little sigh behind her ear, to what she turns and kisses with a long shiver.

 

Katherine says:

Sarah holds my heart in her dainty slight hands, she whispers to it, she cuddles the shaky animal. She is my life in a luminous pact that I already broke once but each time I catch her eyes to tell her, she kisses me silent… She makes sure my lamp is burning over the calls of friendly souls in the works presented in this beautifully huge space. My body still humming from the night spending, my soul is fortified by the comprehension of so many successful expressions, be it from the prison of self or society. We feel committed to their testimony, the urge of a singular vision against the harrowing dominant media beasts. I slip my own mild despair in a secret hollow within the soul of these unacknowledged authors and poets, I blow a feather of my chest in their inextinguishable breath. Overwhelmed, I pull Sarah in a video booth and devour her mouth in the obscurity.

 

Hugo says:

Now we have a decent cafeteria in the middle of the Arsenale rooms. We lost the splendenti ragazze two or three times in the dark rooms, then they would hold hands like little sisters or behave in front of dull types. Finally Gauthier shows up in an ample deep blue silk shirt that causes hums around the the table when he kisses everyone. Even in the broad daylight he sports a faultless natural smile we all stare at with a tad of envy. The table is round, he sits between the two fairies where the trap is set. Over a rich display of antipasti, we share any informations about the collection we went through, he is remarkably knowledgeable, Katherine swiftly grabs his hand when asking questions, I can see what key was the music last night and I smile. As he has felt some electricity leaks around the adorable kid with grey eyes, he prudently asks, because he remembers the chaotic nonchalance of their school state of minds, if they enjoy the displays of intimate alchemies. With a smaller voice she explains that it is where she would stand now, that the easy one-liners and the shallow philosophy of pop fabrication have pushed her once to the brink of naught and that she moves back to an intuitive craft of introspect, something like the surrealist quest only she still can’t eschew her own bent for prettiness. She says nothing more about Berlin, she leans on Sarah in a tender move. She smiles to me. Gauthier holds her arm on his thigh.

 

Gauthier says:

I joined the merry troupe at the Arsenale restaurant. They looked happy to see me and the gazelles had already framed me. Lunch was delightfully light and I did my best to learn a tad more about Katherine’s volatility but it was off my reach, something had happened between graduation and recently they did not wish to share, it was a cloud in her Baltic eyes just before that generous smile of hers. She did not notice three fellow students of ours staring at our group from a few tables away, With my eyes, I asked her and she promptly composed a face of glassy disdain. I turned to Sarah who smiled swiftly throwing a look to the other group. After coffee we explored some of the shows, some rather quickly, seated for more coffee under the Armstrong-Mitchell crane and we sailed across the basin for more Chinese artists. I told Hugo about the avoided meeting, he told me I should be happy I am the exception, he grabbed my wrist and looked at me in the eye.

I begged them not to miss many more things in the Arsenale, but I was afraid it would mean another day on tracks, I was thrilled with Sarah’s young days encounter but I was engrossed with her booty purse when she spoke and I was a little afraid to raise concern with Hugo. When I told them about the voodoo ceremonial costumes, the eight Towers Of Consequence by Adonon Truvent of Belgium, six meters high of beaten scrapped metal richly painted originally protecting his modest cottage from a swarm of ghouls who wanted his unique blood and semen, the three hundred nude photos of the same unknown woman, found in a London  attic at an escheat house, the hundred obscene ex-voto painted by a retired policeman in Urugay, and eventually more, notwithstanding the papal rooms of the Holy See.

 

Sarah says: 

Rudika Sainz Is a lonely old Princess who lives in a flimsy antique house overlooking Trieste, attended by a few old unswerving gnomes. She unrelievedly tweaks together bleached branches, trifles and treasures inside scavenged window frames. There is no overall pattern to her finicky arrays which spread flat like an enchanted foreshore. Lace and antique long gloves appear to swim amongst the structures, ribbons of passed colours and distressed jewellery, strips of lovingly painted and illuminated scriptures run over the forest of intricate desires like cries on a battlefield. Rudika Sainz is said to have fed her whole life on bread, olive oil and goat cheese from the farms she owns and for which they constitute the only rent; no one knows her age, she does not allow photographies except one of a blond adolescent girl in white in the midst of an olive grove, flaunting a radiant smile.

 

Katherine says:

When Bertille von Schaavingen died in a backyard house in Lüneburg, she wasn’t found before two years, her body had mummified under a garnet brocade she had pulled over her head before swallowing the poison that killed her. The first summer had been horribly hot, so she dried entirely. She had asked the post office to withhold her mail.

In her crooked but tidy home, the walls were upholstered with her drawings on different kinds of papers, mostly ancient wrapping material and discarded maps from a nearby repository that the war had destroyed since. With pointed pencils of which she had stocks, she drew an infinite lace over the whole surface of the sheets, and sewed them together to continue on the next, some of the surfaces were room-size. As it happens, no one had known about her life, every month she cashed a discrete alimony and survived on bread from the backdoor of a neighbourhood bakery.

Behind a tall glazing in a moderately lit hall, from the mental webwork on the uneven surfaces randomly tied together emanates a power to swathe up the mind as if physically, the eyes lose the measure of proportions and the picture plane dissolves, if you will. I read and scan an attitude of lovelorn longing woven in an overflowing veil as a cosmic mother, a relentless prayer of grief spinned as wide as her distress. My solar plexus is drawn into the flow as I breathe through her meshes and stitches, then I feel a consoling hand on my neck and a word in my ear.

 

Camille says:

Not only Ai Wei Wei is all over Venice with bland political installations, but painters, sculptors, draughtsmen have been brought by planeloads with the demented diversity produced by a boiling continent. Like a symbolic Catay of the arts, the new revamped spaces on the north shore of the Arsenale basin offer hectares of fashionably trashed industrial background for an “everything goes” of Chinese creation. Some boring mimicry of western contemporary paraphernalia, some genuine visual quests bringing the Chinese touch to a new unheard tune. We were beginning to hurry through the halls because of saturation, but Gauthier took Katherine’s arm and pulled her to hot spots he apparently knew already, behaving like a Chevalier Servant for both his beloved amatoriale. When our minds refused to consider anymore stimulation, Hugo showed us to the back entrance where we waited for a boat. He said we were going to the Lido and dinner at the Hotel Dei Sogni.

Sarah says: there was this pontoon in the middle of nowhere at the back shore of the Arsenale. Afar were the cemetery like a forest of cypresses and Murano on the left, the long garden of Vignole on the right. The sun cast long blue shadows and a honey shade on Katherine’s skin I reached through slits I knew in her dress. She whispered in my ear that Camille had a new bracelet on her wrist, so we gently giggled and Gauthier blushed, I pulled him by a button of his shirt and we both played a little naughty with one of his boyish ears to share the news. He said he had seen that but did not know it was new. Camille, a few steps away, understood and laughed, bending on Hugo’s ear causing a fine smile.

One of those quaint little black boats docked and we climbed aboard, sneaking into slots on the stairs to keep our heads outside, which made us hug each other tighter, encouraging a cool petting facilitated by the leaps of the boat on the waves. Hidden by Gauthier, who breathed in Katherine’s neck, I easily slid my hand into her panties and she helped. She gave me a quick kiss on the lips and one of her bewildered gazes I welcomed with all my soul while I diligently played her warm cunt. Then she had enough, turned around laughing to our faces, pressed my hand and kissed Gauthier’s mouth vigorously. The boat was on her way to the Lido now, the waves were a little steeper and we needed both hands to stand up. I would have wanted to fall down to her feet and clutch her beloved legs like a mere pet, but I did not do it.

The Lido station is a harsh reminder that the automobile-ridden world never stopped while you dreamt in Venezia, and that buses do not dance like boats.Fortunately, the walk is not too long to the sea and the Hotel. We walked through the old fashioned Liberty  salons and corridors, but Katherine wanted to go to the sea first, so we climbed down the stairs to the beach that was being tidied up for another night. After a few days in the middle of the Laguna, the Adriatic seemed roaring at us and smelled of maritime life. I stupidly watched her footprints being washed away, then we all held hands like children. She took some strange black stone with holes through it and put it in her bag, many shells were also black, we gathered a small collection of them. When the light greyed we came back to the restaurant for a misto di pesce with many sorts of verdure and some Veronese white wine.

Claude Varieras. Hotel des Bains beach, Venice Lido

Hotel Dei Sogni beach, Venice Lido ©katherine-sophie

 

Hugo says:

This legendary hotel will soon die as a social mill and become a beach resort for the retired. I will keep the picture of my little crew graces in their relaxed attitudes and sweet tomfoolery under the rich tablecloth, their young voices climbing the lascivious double entendres with the irresistible flavour of a pinch of German accent. Now they are playing on a pad with Gauthier showing them something funny. I turn my face to Camille’s bushy blond hair and breathed her perfume as a reminder of last night. Her hand finds mine as she softly leans on me.

 

Sarah says:

Her intuition was right, Gauthier is an harmonious companion and I always feel like biting his ears. He has sweet adventurous hands while his black pupils ask mercy from you. He has a fast clear laugh and bring these shiny smiles to her wonder eyes. Would I lose her to him? She’s like the new prairie in spring, covered in flowers but still unsafe with water if you can’t fly!

An Hotel boat sails us back to the main island under the moonlight. Camille and Hugo embraced on the inside seat, the three of us outside playing a shady hunt on each other’s bodies, as the pilot pretends he doesn’t see. We cross the Mole in a steady low hum under the Angelo of San Giorgio to our apartment.

Everything is tidy, gardenias smell their lusty dream in the dark. She pulls the boy on her over the sofa’s armrest while Hugo and Camille get some wine and glasses. We watch them undress each other piece by piece slowly, I join them when she is naked, to sing a second harmony, then I draw them to the shower and the song gets soapy.

Later, when we have licked every nook and recess with swollen lips, when the copper swan has sunk into a lake of slumbers, I caress her darling head and feel her silent tears. I break down and slid along her side, drinking all the Baltic sea from her eyes between my hands, whispering infinite forgiveness to her trembling mouth. She finally falls quiet, exhausted on my breast, and I feel my plexus exulting colours on her resting life, a high strung vibration of my self abandon, I see the starry sky.

 

Camille says:

I heard low voices from the living room, Hugo had left the bed, he was speaking in Spanish with Gauthier as I saw them on the couch, his hand under the dark silk of the robe. He raised his eyes on me when I stood at the door but he did not move, Gauthier was in his thoughts. I swiftly reached the coffee machine behind the couched and looked for breakfast. I saw myself in the dark glass door of a cabinet, my thick hair deployed around my bizarrely smiling morning face. I went back and gently sat on the couch’s back drinking my coffee. I do not speak Spanish, but I liked to watch. I lightly passed my hand in Hugo’s white hair.

Sarah seemed heedless, she half-sung an old song. With her cup on her cheek she came to lean on my back, letting the fine fabric faintly sigh, I gave her a caress of my neck, she moaned something in Spanish and they all laugh, Hugo tightening his grasp on the boy who threw his head back, reaping a deep kiss of Sarah.

Claude Varieras - Silk gown by Frette.

©katherine-sophie – Silk gown by Frette.

 

Sarah says:

Last day in Venice, Hugo is having a gentle crush on the golden child who does not shy away. With Camille we decide it’s shopping time, even if it’s out of season, there are some magic dens on the other side of the Canale Grande. The tall daisy appears with much hesitation, I jump on her and greet her precious mouth, I release her hair and read her sleepy face, she laughs childishly. She lowers her eyes down as if to keep her night dream alive, my hands are all over her in ample circles, I bite an ear lobe.

My phone is full of messages from my Far who is bored in a meeting, alone in a restaurant, waiting for a plane. He has seen I am in Venice and wants a report. I write bits and raves to make him feel good, I tell him I’m happy and safe, once more he swears we’ll meet soon, I write a garland of kisses. Katherine has read over my shoulder, it saddens her eyes and she grips my belt.

Gauthier gives her a dancing hug and a fervent kiss, breathes in her neck, then he says he has to leave for an appointment in Frankfurt tomorrow, that he will be in Paris in a few days. Katherine feels with her hand there is some sincerity in his will to meet again, she fights his face with the tip of her nose. He flees the hands that want to grab him, flashes a big smile and he’s off.

Hugo is glad with the morning mood and tells Camille to “take care” of our hunts, to what she nods playfully. Everybody goes to dress, I take my girl to the shower and wash her with praise and sweet milk until she fights back and starts to describe my whole body with birds names. I headdress her in a crazy bun, line her cloudy eyes with a grey pencil, pinch her tits one last time and she’s running.

Claude Varieras - Chapeau blanc, Venise.

White flourishes, hatter unknown, Venice. ©katherine-sophie –

 

Camille says:

fresh and perfumed, we climb the Accademia bridge towards the labyrinth where delicious little shops await for our trade, many of which in the middle of the off season shuffle with boxes in the way. The two girls scan the hangers with their noses up and the most serious expression on their muzzles. There are pleasant trials when they pull blushing young salespersons in their girly games, some stealth touching even. In a grey and grège boutique the expensive sheer fabrics and chiffons are kept under watch in shady coves propitious for an intimate mood and loose moves, i sense an ongoing shenanigan behind a leather curtain and see stuffs falling on Katherine’s feet so I retreat with Sarah, letting the shop manager enjoy what the CCTV shows under the counter.

With a number of bags around us we sit at a tea house in the quiet calle, Katherine has brought a flaxen wavy haired clerk from that shop nearby and I know she gazes at the pale skin through an absinthe web of linon veils. Lichen green eyes and a small rosy mouth drawn by Leonardo, the girl must be in her twenties and is called Fanny, in the course of the animated vesture digression, she offers to show Katherine some of the new stock, and they go back behind the leather curtain, leaving us bemused.

Sarah and I talk about our pet pupil, her mood swings, her unabashed angelic style with the backlashes, her maddening charm. Sarah is a fierce believer in Hugo, I have no restraint on that, to spread his wing over Katherine who sank in a pool of sorrow, a grave of despair and absurdity. She agitates her fine hands with firm gestures and her dark blue eyes cast an inner shade on her selfless love, then smiles with a wise spark as she kisses her own hands.

Against the light, It’s obvious Katherine doesn’t wear undies in a whirl of a light chalk grey multi layered dress when she returns with blushing Fanny, to whom I pay the expense, she writes on a notebook page something she gives the young one, holding her hands for a while and telling her to come and see very soon. She then turns to Sarah’s blue gaze and opens wide her jade eyes as if to show she hides nothing from her. Fanny has to go back to the shop, she mumbles a few words, looks at Katherine behind curls coloured like winter reed, slaps her knees and runs. The two of us complain and inquire about that lustful booth, the peccant girl is dazed when she learns about the camera, but Sarah’s hand already eases up under her dress, she mutters the kid was delicious anyhow.

Gualti, Golden Pleats, Venice

Gualti, Golden Pleats, Venice ©katherine-sophie –

 

Hugo says:

As in most ports, the atmosphere is sometimes a tad noxious in Venice, with parenthesis of jasmine and roses, but there is some more subtle vapour uncurling along the fast-decaying walls and cornices, and it is lust. The ubiquitous murky waters, gradually stirred by the tide, contribute to a feeling of closeness to the life of others, an urge to breathe the soul of the loved ones. I did not foresee all of the baroque drapes in the carnal drifts we allowed ourselves along in these few dreamy days. My precious dears had needed an unworldly leap to give a chance to Katherine’s new hope, and they danced gracefully, with Sarah pouring all the magic she knows into the promise.

They come back in a small cloud of giggles and swishes, moves and poses in the new rags, in the bewildering smell of their youth and the transmuted fragrances. The game is set with with gusto, they dress and undress in and out of laces and knits as I lay on one of the couches admiring.  After the parade Sarah is at my side and I grab her handsome head, caressing the shape of her high forehead, her Sèvres blue eyes deeply set in the orbits, her low cheekbones. I am engrossed with that pale face for a long moment, after what I kiss her deeply as she lets her slender body sink into the leather cushion. I pull her skirt gently up to her belly, she wears no panties, I push her legs apart. My wise little girl Sarah looks smaller on my arm, her eyes fixing mine, my lips caress that quiet face of hers I will not leave.

Katherine has plugged her pod in the room’s system and starts a soft Julie London playlist, then seizes Camille for a languorous embrace and soon finds herself nude and spilled apart on the other couch, shivering under a storm of unleashed blond locks on her toy breasts, her pure delicate twirl, her mad honey thighs…

I lick Sarah’s neck and chin and ears, her skin smells that scent of animal ravage with elderberry on a rainy morning. Her boyish features are now rested and her eyes travel afar. My tongue fiddles along her lips illuminated with a feverish madder glaze. She lies still at my will, throws her hands behind her head. I rip my clothes off and slide along her backside, holding her nape and playfully fighting her vivacious tongue, while on the other couch I watch my mad angel convulse in a cloud of petals around the voracity of Camille whose round derriere shows its glorious plenitude. The great survivor moans gracefully with bits of some languages in a foolish mumble that moves Sarah to tears I swallow, and then I feel I can push myself into her, letting her skilfully drive the dancing, fondling her maiden breasts.

In turn, the dievushka is taking over the shiny blond bush and biting the tiny soldier as if the world was ending. Camille intertwine her fingers through the waves of tan silky hair, caressing her cheeks and earlobes, exults with a high note, losing her breath under the assassin’s rage, recovering with vengeance in mind, overturning that sleazy vermin she just used, gobbles the baby bald rill, athirst of shivering tremors and bittersweet dew, assaulting the tummy and womb with the hard pointed tongue through the skin, ultimately mangles the hunkered rosy pearl for victory and laps up her premium on her fingers.

We gather the utmost bliss of cumming together, measure for measure a long unravelling shudder I had not been expecting while I pour all my colours into the song. Back from the mingled bathroom, the couches smell like a brothel on a farther shore after the pirates have spilled the loot

 

Camille says:  

Are we not spent and hungry on that planet? The icebox has been thoughtfully purveyed by the invisible djinn, mosaic printed boxes align, bottles of Ferrarelle and Conegliano extra-dry prosecco wine, so as to let three nude graces dress a festive buffet around the camelia bush. Now the air smells of all the troubles in paradise, but I still want to lap up Sarah’s armpit like in a dizzy spell of seaweed; she doesn’t pluck off these little fluffs for my ravishment.

Hugo drags pageboy away from me and rollicks sweetly around her freshened face while he shows a tiny pouch of red leather and asks her to open it. In the cosy penumbra we all see swift sparkles of devilish stones as she unrolls a brooklet of dark rubies lined with diamonds in white gold and I can’t help whistle and grab her buttocks. The jewel is so thin on her lean wrist that it calls for swift lechery and that is about what we all do at once, then we fetch our own gifts and pilfer sandwiches and cherry-tomatoes. With one glass bubbling in hand, Hugo is more avid of the bottoms and bellies the herd shows around the altar

At coffee with unearthly nibbles encaged in caramel filigree, we cheer Hugo about his Venetian idea and we recount all the precious encounters, all the finest jokes for Gauthier’s round and promise to come again. Katherine plays casually with my new bracelet without thinking it’s new, but Sarah wants her now and sits behind her, sliding her hands on the child breasts. Anticipating our return, we recapitulate the wishes we collected all around the laguna, each with the back thought of that tall fragile prey of sorrow we’re so in love with.

 

Sarah says: 

Only Hugo saw I cried, and he drank my childish drops of emotion to that perfect  narrow slit on my veins. Katherine was teasing my proud raspberry pair while Camille my mistress knew how to wank me off my hinges. Afterwards we feasted on the most aristocratic delights one can eat, but Hugo was more interested in my crupper’s ravine he had gaily defiled not long ago. It still felt ticklish and he played like a seasoned soloist, I pointedly bent over the buffet to let him play a while.

He explained why we should come back off-season for the worship of the city itself, when the terrible crowds would migrate elsewhere; he promised we would roam the palaces and immerse the canals with the juices of our depravity up to the golds of San Marco, scour the windows and workshops for jewels and unexpected luxuries.

Claude Varieras - L'Eglise du Redempteur à la nuit.

©katherine-sophie – L’Église du Redentore à la nuit.

 

Sarah says:

Airports are secretive spaces where an unconscious split of the mind is set loose. You’ve been checked, registered, scanned and found acceptable to move further. Katherine even had the honour of being palpated over her jeans where she had left her telephone. All of us seated in those universal Eames seats where Camille brought us coffee and donuts. Our flight was later in the evening, the light cast long shadows on the runway and the air hinted of that bitter-sweet kerosene smell I liked since I was a kid.

Katherine and me sat shoulder to shoulder while Hugo held Camille’s fingers, questioning fortuitous Klimt matters. Kate wore a tan silk jersey shirt on her free maiden breasts, her face had picked some lively colours from the bouquet of our merrymaking, the sight of her mouth made my tits hard and she knew it. In the open crowd I restrained myself to gazing at the misty shore of her eyes. There were three children playing all over the vast room as if they were alone in a park. Two girls and a boy from some northern lands as their blond locks would tell. She seemed evasive making sweet comments on one of the girls who was beautiful and moved graciously.

She said as kids they did not travel with her parents, her father has been a distant figure in a grey suit caring only for Simon when he landed home. Once a year, though, he drove the whole of them in his grey Mercedes aboard the Hindenburg train to the North Sea Westland island of Sylt, in the big family holiday house in Kampen. There they would meet a variable number of aunts, uncles and cousins in the mostly windy dunes, and fed themselves smoked fish she hated.

One of the lot she loved, with long hair and tortoise-shell glasses, Achim, who called her Fee, Feenhafte, Fairy, and played exuberant improvisations on the grand family piano. When they walked in the sand and the sky was grey, he would sing and she would watch him as in a rainbow. One day, the weather was still, a mild fog under a little brush stroke of blue and they sat in a decline of the dune looking at the low tide, he was describing a ballet he had seen, singing the music and showing the dancers with his long hands. She was dazzled, dizzy, distraught, holding her breath and nesting as close as she could against his tall frame, easing her body in the sand. The music came to a finale, the theatre burst in a warm ovation, Achim caressed her long hair, held her shoulder as if she had wings, then took her by her arms and restrained her a little away, cooing with a half smile that she had brought him to a dangerous state, didn’t she know, and that she should keep safe from adults so ostensibly happy to see her. He clasped her arms along her chest, he kissed her very briefly on the lips and lifted her to make her fly while his erection would melt down.

After that intimate sparkle, they had been openly passionate friends, arousing jealousy and perplexity, but winning their peace with enlightened laughs. At the end of the year, in the bland emotional desert that follows Christmas, her devastated mother told them Achim had killed himself in a car accident on the highway.

She wanted to die for months, on top of what came her periods, she lost appetite, worried everyone at school. When they returned to the sea, henceforth without her Dad, she did not leave her room for days, listening to Mozart’s twenty-third piano concerto over and over on her scratchy system, crying out loud on the adagio. Only her mother played her grief on the downstairs piano that season.

Simon worried to see her pale off day after day. He started to sit silent at a distance, until he tamed his scrawny big sister and brought her back to the dunes and even the FKK beaches where they had been playing nude since they were babies. He sneaked under the quilt and played with her feet, pretending he was a cat.

She looked at the young girl who was now staring at her tears, whispering comments to her sister; she sent her a blurred smile and took me by the hand to the rest rooms where I hugged her and cleaned her eyes. She had that childish absent gaze through which I stole a long deep kiss to the amusement of a passing Italian lady who said something I missed. She maundered she felt wasted about Simon, the shivering sketchy images before the white blow to her face. Touching up her eyelashes I told her she might have hit some nerve and summed up where we were at, roughly, like you do to an anxious child. She blew her nose, nodded, meddled with in a slight grimace, stared at me and asked  for my help. I held her hands in her back and moaned softly into her neck.

After a stroll in the shopping alley, we went back to our seats with a box of macarons, of which she offered to the blond heads who gave us a polish dzieki and flew to show their loot to the parents. I told her I had met no one like Achim in my vagrant childhood across the many places I went. My father was a diplomat and he loved me as his darling Princess, but they had a busy social life and left me under the guard of nannies and embassy personnel.

Some nights I did not feel like sleep and tried to amuse the poor sentinel who watched TV in the living room. I was alone once, my brother would have been away, there was a Harald, on whom I gave my best vamp routine, my twelve years old body under a blue nightshirt and my bare feet on the marble floor…. ( there Katherine sneaked a hand to my knees )… He was laying back on the couch and I held him under a rolling fire of questions while I went giddy in his Old Spice scent. He was freshly shaved and his brown hair was cut very short military style, he carried a heavy black gun under his left shoulder. Laughing and fidgeting, I almost climbed on him when I felt his robust hand clutching my thigh, to what I responded by loosening my legs at his will, looking up in his eye. I said no more, his hand moved to my bare crotch and his fingers slowly visited each nook in my tiny garden, lightly brushing over my first down. Still reading my eyes, he lifted my shirt up to my shoulders and I dived to free my head and show myself nude along his side, approaching insensibly my mouth towards his face until he kissed me, and again, feverishly, and my neck, my baby breasts and all of my body while he was opening his pants and holding a frightening penis I had certainly not foreseen. He opened my legs wide and pointed his tongue all around my capucine and its bud while he was vigorously shaking his peter boy with his hand.  I was having a devilish pleasure I already had known with girls and some women but stunningly stronger with the deadly fear the huge shard would kill me. Then he roared on my womb to smother the noise and came back to my mouth in a lavish kiss.

Then he shut his look, drawing back his trousers, watching me with dread, naked with my tousled hair. Catching some breath, he whispered he would die in jail if people knew what he had just done, he told me I was beautiful, desirable, and I should never again do what I had done that night. I jumped on him, hugged him and said to his chest that nobody would ever know what had happened, that he had been kind to me, delicate and caring and that he had given me pleasure and I would never tell. He fetched my shirt, passed it over my head, my arms, carefully covered my body and stood there, staring at my eyes. I fled to my room, hid myself into the quilt and slept. I never heard of Harald ever again.

On the flight, we slept holding each other, it must have been a tender sight to watch us, we had shared beads of our souls in the nowhere land of perpetual forgiveness.

Claude Varieras Sunset Clouds over Italy

Sunset Clouds Over Italy ©katherine-sophie

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.