Chapter 25 #4
There were a few messages from my parents and one from Halimi.
My father sent a message that I was unable to open, probably a video of Lily.
He seemed unable to grasp that I no longer had a smartphone.
There were several messages from my mother, with laconic reports on Lily’s mood, eating, and state of cleanliness (“We ate pea soup and Lily took a long bath. Now she’s asleep.
Asked for something that I didn’t understand and eventually found her blankie herself. ”). Halimi sent me three hearts.
I sighed with satisfaction. I had disappeared from my world for two days, and it continued to function as usual, without any drama. I turned back to Jean. In his colorful silk robes in the spreading gloom, he appeared like some precious gem.
“What do you say to my suggestion, my lord?” I asked, ready for any response. Jean smiled all over and stood up straight.
“After dragging you into the depths of my life, my lady, it seems only fair to follow you into yours,” he said. “I will not deny a mix of intense curiosity and petrifying fear. I shall come with you.” I picked up my cloth bag, and we began to walk to my car.
Jean was not as physically shaken as he had been the previous time that he passed through the spring.
Indeed, he looked in every direction and held my hand very tightly, but his steps were certain.
When we got to the car, he stopped and stared at me opening the door, jumped at the light that turned on automatically, and then peered inside through the driver’s seat.
“This is the beastless carriage?” he asked, his eyes scanning the rather worn and tattered interior of the car hungrily. “This is so similar to the dream I had just last night, only the carriage was green on the outside.”
“Exactly,” I said. “You get in on the other side.”
“I fear that I do not know how,” said Jean, mortified at being so helpless.
I led him to the door on the passenger side and showed him how to open it with the handle.
Jean wanted to try it himself, so we spent a few satisfying minutes opening the door and slamming it.
Finally, he got in and sat down. He closed the door from the inside and was charmed by the strength of the slam.
I buckled my seatbelt and, so as not to waste time, I buckled his too.
This was very erotic, of course, to stretch across him to pull the strap, but I continued matter-of-factly and started the car.
Now that we’ve come this far, I said to myself, we might as well get into a soft bed instead of making out like teenagers over the hand brake.
Hearing the rumble of the engine, Jean grabbed my thigh forcefully.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll get going at once, everything is all right.
” He nodded. I turned on the headlights, and he whistled with appreciation.
When I went in reverse, he blanched. He made it through the short, five-minute drive with gritted teeth, looking out the window with one hand placed over his heart. I was afraid he would throw up.
I stopped the car beside the house and very much hoped that none of my neighbors would pass by and ask nosy questions, but luck was on our side.
When I had turned the key in the engine, I recalled again the feeling that I had when I went off on that mushroom trip with Halimi a little more than a month earlier.
This time, I felt that I had finally returned, for real.
I had never felt such great relief in my life to return home—like someone swept out to the depths of sea on a rotting log for days with no hope of rescue until suddenly, land appeared on the horizon.
The feeling of relief was so great that I had to run and pee.
I told Jean to go inside and make himself at home while I slipped into the bathroom.
The last time I had peed was in a pot in a tiny cabin in the ship of the master of the Knights Templar.
It’s amazing that I did not wet myself after the shocking experience with the statue at the church.
It already seemed hard to believe that all this had really happened.
I quickly flushed the toilet and went out to Jean.
The house was quiet, and my heart began to pound.
Jean was walking between the rooms, staring wide-eyed at pictures, and when we went into the kitchen, he carefully picked up one item after another, examining each one.
I opened the fridge, and he marveled. I heated a few pieces of bread in the toaster, and he was ecstatic.
I boiled water in the electric kettle, and he almost lost his mind.
I tried the best I could to explain how electricity works, but failing after a stuttering attempt, I simply looked up the entry for electricity on Wikipedia on my tablet. While he held the device reverently, I made tea and a few slices of bread with butter, sausage, yellow cheese, and tomato.
“My understanding cannot comprehend these wonders,” he said after a few minutes. “And the language here is written in such a way that it is hard for me to make sense of its meaning.” He set the device aside.
“It isn’t so important,” I said, still embarrassed by the fact that I could not explain the workings of electricity in simple terms. “Electricity will only appear seven hundred years after your time.”
“Everything that you want to know, you ask this device?” he asked.
“You could say that,” I said, smiling.
“And how does the device know?”
“It isn’t the device that knows,” I laughed. “It’s simply a collection of everything that we have come to know.” I was not sure that he could understand what I meant, and I started to explain to him the general idea of preserving and disseminating information.
He shook his head slowly and stroked his beard. “No wonder so many people thought you were a fairy or a witch. You really do live in a world of wonders and magic.”
“Come eat,” I said.
He was amazed by the idea of putting a slice of food on a slice of bread, and he was curious about the tomato. When I told him that a few hundred years after his time, they would discover a huge continent full of delicacies that would change the whole world, he fell silent.
By the time we finished eating, he was exhausted with wonderment. He laid his head down on his hands, set on the table, which was somehow childish and poignant. I stroked his head and told him we would go to sleep soon.
“But there is one other thing that I have to show you,” I told him, and he looked up. “The splendor of human civilization and the thing for which it really is worth living in modern times: the home shower.”
When I showed him how it worked, his mouth gaped. He played with the hot and cold water in the tap, and I asked him if he preferred to dip in a basin of hot water or stand beneath a gushing cascade of water at the exact temperature that he wanted.
“You may think I am overly insatiable, my lady”—(“Never,” I squeezed in)—“but I would like to try both.”
“Not a problem,” I said and adjusted the water to the perfect temperature.
I showed him how to switch the tap from the bath nozzle to the showerhead, how to adjust the water so it would suit his exact needs, and I instructed him to undress.
He removed his boots, stripped off his red silk tunic and his golden silk pants, and remained in a long cotton tunic with cloth tights. Then, he stopped.
“You have to remove everything,” I said.
“In front of you?” he asked, agitated.
“Of course,” I said, holding back from laughing. “We are both adults, are we not?” He did not understand the connection between the two things and insisted that he could not remove all his clothes in my presence. “Did you never undress before your wife?” I asked in astonishment.
“Never,” he said resolutely. “Of course, I have been with her without the overlayers dozens of times, but to stand naked before a woman and her nakedness …” He even shuddered a little.
I left in peace. I preferred that he enjoy the experience instead of forcing intimacy on him.
While I waited for him to shower, I rolled a joint—more as a relaxing routine than out of any urgency to be stoned.
It was strange to see Jean so flustered, devoid of his usual confidence.
I started to wonder if I should pay him a surprise visit but decided to leave him be. I also debated for a moment if I should wait for him to smoke the joint. But maybe it was better he not smoke any, given the culture shock that I had imposed on him. I didn’t want him getting paranoid.
I lit the joint. I took a few deep tokes and closed my eyes. I felt a pressing need to digest everything I had done and seen in the past two days. I still had a hard time believing that I had left the house less than forty-eight hours earlier.
“Lady édith,” I heard Jean’s voice over the noise of the flowing water. I set down the joint in the ashtray and went into the bathroom.
“Yes?” I asked quietly through the curtain.
“I was pondering something,” he said, and his head poked out from behind the curtain, his dark hair wet and shiny.
“And I came to the conclusion that I must not respond to your generosity and patience with reservation and alienation.” He pulled the curtain aside and stood before me in all of his beautiful nakedness.
He was terribly embarrassed but was brave in the face of it.
The air left me at once, and I felt a wave of heat pass through my whole body, in a ripple that ran from my center to my limbs.
He laughed at my gaze fixed on him, and I threw off all of my clothes and joined him.
We embraced beneath the water and were soon kissing wetly and wildly.
I felt pain with the desire that he enter me.
“Let’s go to bed,” I managed to groan.
“After you,” he said hoarsely.