The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro by Paul Theroux Read Free Book Online

them and holding her spongy nipples lightly in my teeth. I would be hovering next to her and fantasizing about pulling out my cock, grasping her head and parting her lips and pressing it on her face and, as it thickened, helping it into her mouth. But I did nothing; I watched her, I was polite—too polite for her. Once she let the paper slip, and when I grabbed at it I brushed her arm and she recoiled and said, “Please”—meaning, “Don't touch me!”
    She would sit with one finger in her mouth, looking cross, and although her sucking on this gloved finger was also erotic to me, it was just another way for her to express her impatience.
    â€œHe is a doctor! How can a doctor be sick?”
    Haroun remained in his room all this time. I was certain he was faking his stomach upset, but he was resolute in sticking to his story. I told the Gräfin that he was probably improving and that we would see him any day now.
    â€œHe doesn’t care about me,” she said.
    â€œHe does,” I said. “And I do too.”
    She frowned, looking insulted and intruded upon.
    â€œHow do you feel?”
    â€œNot well,” she said, still sounding insulted. As though it was none of my business. She was eating chocolate, kissing dabs of it from her lacy fingertips—and it all looked like fellating foreplay to my eager eyes.
    â€œMaybe I can help.”
    She raised her head and looked at me as if I had just dropped from the sky. She said, “What could you do?”
    Even though she was wearing sunglasses I could tell from the curl of her lips that she was scowling.
    â€œAnything you suggest.”
    She went a bit limp just then, indicating a pause with her whole body, and her silence roused me. I was standing next to her, my tense cock level with her face. Still she did not say anything. Could she smell my desire?
    She looked away and said in a little-girl voice, “Haroun brings me presents. You don't bring me presents. You don't care.”
    I was not insulted. I was fascinated: I fantasized that she was a small girl urging me to corrupt her. I was willing, the thought would not leave me, and I was now pretty sure that she knew what she was doing to me.
    The next day, dipping into the stash of money she had given me, I bought her a bunch of flowers from the flower seller—another pretty girl—at her stall on the Corso.
    â€œThey will die unless they are put into water,” the Gräfin said.
    But she was pleased, I could tell, the little girl’s satisfaction was as expressive as the little girl’s tyranny. In the following days I brought her a pot of honey, a lump of dense amber, a chunk of lapis lazuli, a length of lace (the black intricate sort that matched her gloves and panties), a small nervous bird in a wicker cage the shape of an onion. I used the money she had given me, for there was always a wad of lire left over, but so twisted from the way she crumpled and handled it, the notes had taken on the appearance of a leafy vegetable—wilted kale, dying lettuce.
    By now Haroun had emerged from his seclusion, frowning and clutching his stomach. “This is bad. When I have such an illness of the bowels it is like giving birth”—he made a face and grunted with pain—“to monsters.” Then he seemed to forget his ailment and he said, “You are succeeding?”
    â€œOf course.”
    The higher pitch in my voice was my inability to disguise my forcing a reply. Yet, even though I felt I was getting nowhere, it amused me to think that my efforts to woo this difficult woman were my bread and butter. Always I saw myself in a complex picture—these days it was like a full-page woodcut from a book of folktales.
    The next day the Gray Dwarf went to the Wanderer’s room and
beckoned to him, and conducted him to a stone tablet on which was inscribed the task that had to be performed if the palace was to be released from enchantment.
    I