The Brothel Creeper: Stories of Sexual and Spiritual Tension by Rhys Hughes Read Free Book Online Page A

alcohol really had seared off our lips and tongues, and my fingers felt lost on her skin and within her softness. The events of the day had damaged us, shattered our illusions but had not split us apart. Not yet.
    In the morning the changes were already in place. Groups of more than four were not permitted on the streets and a policeman stood on every corner. Curiously I saw the owners of the bicycle shop being led away, arrested for some imaginary act of resistance, and I wondered at the fate of the spare parts stacked inside. I was on my daily walk to the newspaper kiosk. Moona had left for the university an hour before and my anxiety at being without her became an almost pleasurable tension as I turned down alleys to avoid the police. On my own my existence was less offensive to the government. Elsewhere people who had forgotten the new rules on crowds were sent scattering by blows from the nearest truncheon on duty, scalps bleeding, ears ringing.
    “Break it up! Break it up immediately!”
    At the kiosk I paid for my newspaper but did not engage the seller in conversation. Other customers might gather behind me, causing trouble for us all. There was very little news: the official censors had done a thorough job during the night, arresting more than half the journalists. One bold headline declared how the police were going to use motorcycles instead of horses. I bought a bag of bagels and returned home. When Moona came back she was trembling but her eyes were bright and her voice had acquired a resonance that was too rich for our little room.
    “I’ve joined an underground movement,” she said.
    I held her in silence, refusing to criticise or even to beg her to be careful, already feeling I was losing her to the outside, to ideals and history. My love was no longer a comfortable cocoon for her and I understood that the direction of her life was now leading her away from simplicity, away from my desires and identity, and I knew she was right but I was unwilling to follow, too mistrustful of my own abilities. After an hour of stagnant contact I rose to make a pot of coffee, mumbling as I did so that the situation was bound to worsen. She winced as if jabbed with a needle.
    “Yes, this is the most paranoid regime we’ve ever had.”
    Her words awakened something in me, not exactly anger or despair but a realisation of my own impotence. To avoid taking my bitterness out on her I lingered longer than necessary in the kitchen, turning down the flame on the stove and boiling the kettle painfully slowly. It was the first night when external events, the sickness of those who controlled society, came between us, an invisible block separating our bodies as well as our minds. We slept without touching and I was acutely aware of the edge of the bed, the chasm between it and the cold wall. As the days passed we moved unconsciously beyond the point of reconciliation. But we never argued.
    I stood on the balcony and leaned into the darkness, poised above the curfew with my weakness. Moona began taking greater risks, returning later and later from the university, sometimes joining me after midnight. The underground resistance was growing in size and ambition. The roar of motorcycles was constant and once we watched a wedge of machines rumbling down our street as if rehearsing for some acrobatic display. This was actually a farewell jaunt, a final fling, for the motorcycles were due to be replaced with armoured cars. We learned this from the radio the following day. Colonel Bones had decided to tighten the rules. Now people were not allowed to gather in public in groups of more than three. Friendships were being cut into smaller portions.
    I went back to the bicycle shop, partly because I had little else to do, but it was empty and left me feeling even more dissatisfied with myself. Statues of our leaders were being erected in the park, heroic and angular but faceless and nameless to confuse assassins. Moona had warned me that paranoia