CHAPTER FIVE: AWAKENINGS For characters in Story: check Biographies

#1


Eva led the way.

I watched her take the path as if was second nature. I couldn't help but think of her spinning above me like a helicopter. Like a tantric design spinning inside and out.

Goethe had said something about the view. He thought I might learn something. We had taken a rough little Renault, that was used to carry fertilisers to the vineyard, and white powder covered the seats, and now covered her as we climbed. She was wearing tight jeans. But the view..........Goethe said I should see the view!

The road had wound up the hill past a small village town where we had a light lunch and perhaps too much wine. I had to stop. The sun cut down, beating the heat into my skin. I took off the black t-shirt. It felt good to have the mountain air teasing with my chest. Eva turned.

"That's more like it!"

She turned, handed over a bottle of Evian.

"Want some?"

My mouth was dry after the wine. And as I swirled the water back, I looked up, and saw the chateau that Goethe felt should be my baptism. Queribus. I almost tripped back as an old couple walking stick in hand, strode by, athletic and bronze in their old age. What a long cry from the rough and ready of beer swilled bars where I had played two weeks before.

Her lips played with mine.

"We go on!"

Below the parking lot on the brow of the hill sipped at the landscape that fell back into the distance. On a hill distant another castle put its fingers up into the clouds. White haughty wool, pushed by a rough wind that tore into my face, my skin.

The path turned up to the left, and the valley dug deep with the faint blue of a sea glittering on the horizon.

A flutter of wings. Another helicopter. Breaking its wings up and down, scratching its claws its beak into the bones of the mountain. A hawk perhaps. A bird biting into this climb. This climb that was take me up.

Under the arches of the roof, low beneath the single pillar rising in the castle hall, Eva started to sing. It was soft, but high. Words came out. Slow like a lover whispering in one's ear. The words short. With a gutteral kick. Latin I thought. Her hands grabbed my shoulders and she pressed her lips to mine, and in her tongue she passed a pill, and dropping her head, to bite my neck, I swallowed.

The singing continued, and the light splintered, the sun breaking its last moments through the wide window.

"Love me!"

And the ceiling fell. Then I.

Goethe came out of the shadows.

" Hold him down on the earth. Let the drug take him on his path"

"Love me!"

The voice was pulsating through a pattern within a pattern. Throbbing. Light bounced, swung, banged, strobed the sides of the steep high hall, the pillar cutting through the arches into the sky.

"Love me!"

The voice swelled in the intricate explosions. The sun and moon disappeared into each other, and liquid hot white slithered through my body. My tongue, twisting and turning, a snake breaking into the space.

"Hold him"

Goethe tied John's hands securing them to the rocks with a nail gun.

It was Eva's time now. To prove that she was right. That John was the right choice. All the work she had put in. All that time with her uncle reading deep into the night, translating the old documents found in the room.

She was enjoying tying him down. This rock musician who had years' back given her a lust for life through his work, his songs.



I woke in a sweat.

The sun was breaking over the valley. A figure squeezed out of the wall, the cold damp of the walls, the wildness of the eyes gave me a shudder. It was Goethe. He spoke.

" He's awake. "

Eva untied the ropes.

"You were wonderful"






#2


As Marine and Jean entered the courtyard of the mansion, they were surprised to see 16 young men in army fatigues piling into an open truck. For Jean it brought back memories - and he was pleased that the draft had changed in France.

Joe was striding back and forth. She was giving orders. Pointing at this, pointing at that. She was haughty. She loved the experience. Of pushing people around. Of getting her way.

An old citroen limousine, squeezed past Marine and Jean, the door swang open on both sides, and Candy with his singing partner Zee, looked up, dressed to the nines.

As the last fatigue jumped into the truck, Joe saw Marine and Jean. Saw the look on their faces. Saw the rolled up magazines. The photos.

"You are famous. You need it now. Make the most of it"

Jean and Marine smiled to each other. They had drunk deep that day, and were enjoying it. They wanted adventure and change in their lives. The money was good. The sex was great. And Joe, well - she made it happen. They would do anything for her.

" Ready! Joe!"

Clive came out of the house, dressed rather like a colonial colonel, even down to sweating profusely. He was a little put out to be driving the large truck, but glad in a way as it brought back days of the rough and tumble of mispent youth.

Joe turned to Marine and Jean.

" Your clothes are packed. Get in the limo."

Jean was pissed, but let it go. Marine saw the look in Jean's eyes, kissed him on the neck, and pulled him into the car.

Joe was in top form. A great night with a man who knows how to please a woman. Yes he was good. Is good. And here he was, part of the team. Business always seperate from pleasure. She liked the brutality of it. Here they would not talk, - any sign of the night's extremes, would finish it. Finish them. If there was a moment they wouldn't hesitate but let go and lust would follow. But only then - when could she make time? When would she make time? Arrange for them to be together alone? Get the others out of the way?

She dropped down into the front seat of the limo, giving the O.K to her manager Clive, seated high in the truck behind the wheel. Time to get her action to the shoot.

Candy looked over to Joe. Looking at her spunky body, her fire. How she always was on his mind. Now more than ever.

Jean looked over at Joe's freshly bleached hair, some silver balls hanging from a leather strap around her neck. Her red lace bustière, her leather shorts, and her red rubber texas style boots. The photos from the first time came to his mind. The placing of her wirey body, the implications of what had been said. They stewed. Sizzled. And here was Marine, purring, waiting for him. Heaven. Hell. Heaven.

"Want some?"

Marine tweaked a bottle of 7-up in his direction. She wanted to see his lips purse over the bottle, see the liquid skirt his neck. She squeezed her hand on his thigh.

"Not now"

Jean gave her a spike of fire. Why? A long day, Marine thought. He will entertain me tonight. I know how to make us happen. She turned to see, Clive, Joe's manager, driving the truck behind them, getting hot and swearing, as the convoy swirled through Montpellier's streets. The young men in the back, arms holding onto the rails, short haired, looking bronze and eager, as they sat, ready for the day's shoot.

Joe closed her eyes. She was pleased, Clive had pulled off the impossible, and the rest of the crew would be ready when they arrived. They would catch the last clear light of the day, do a long night shoot, and then use the early sun-up hours for the wild stuff - the stuff that would come to her - as they always did - that made her a name. The fashion news that was talked about. The images that the mags and tabloids died for.



#3


Her lips were cold as she let her tongue slip into mine. Her face, her cheeks. Her eyes had a steely blue incandescent look to them.

I started to shake out of control. I was dancing in lightning. My head was breaking open.

Eva grabbed my head once more, pressing herself against my lips. Goethe held me rigid, as she entered my mouth, another pill passed into me, and the lake of lakes opened out and I was at peace.

She withdrew.

"Better?"

Not since hitting back a bottle of absinthe at a nightclub in Oslo, had I felt so rigid, so frozen, in thoughts and physicality. It was like inhabiting another body. And Eva was talking to it. This body. My body. What were they doing to me?

"You opened doors"

Eva smiled. I looked down at her breasts, where was her crucifix now? Only a rough piece of wood with an odd arrangement of marks hung tight to her neck.

"Lay down"

It was Goethe's turn. He put a sheepskin around me. I fell onto a rough bed of leaves and grass.

Hot tea came to my lips with whispers from Eva.

"It's hot. Take it slow"

The sweetness, gave my mind food. Her legs walked across the hall, with the strong solo pillar at Queribus. On the floor there were markings scratchings. There were signs of blood.

"We go soon - the tourists will start to arrive"

Goethe was taking a branch, brushing away the markings on the floor. The blood became dust.

As we came out of the entrance, the attendant was setting up the stall, getting the tickets in line. A large coach was edging its way up to the carpark, full of couples in their 60's, gaggling with talk and energy.

I still had trouble standing. My legs kept running away and clouds of sleep walked across me. Once I found myself looking up at the sky and Eva saying it will pass.

Back at the Chateau, coffee dripping through my veins, Goethe and Eva sat me down, and with much movement of hands, and too much working of facial muscles began to explain the night

"We couldn't stop"

"I can't stop when I am around you!"

"Each time with the drug"

"You lose it. You talk it. "

"The old ones knew"

"Like you break through the sex thing. You're wild. Like you suck us into it."

"You become the making, the sex power that moves makes, you go to the limit"

They were both dancing. Throwing words up in the air. Cords of spaghetti ideas entwined and pulsating.

Then Goethe

"Then you break through it"

"You are the energy that drives sex - that pushes it, that controls it, that is, You are part of the group. Each time you take the pill, you break through those barriers. You go past that limit of who you are"

I had no recollection. I wanted to get out. Put on my guitar, and bring the walls down. The words in my head had spike to them. No one was going to stop this. I slammed the doors out of the house, plugged in my imaginary guitar. And that was how that song "Trouble" came to be.





#4



The truck and the old citroen squeezed up against the mounds of grass and sand. Jean woke from his much needed nap time and Joe was swallowing another of her energy capsules - a mixture of herbs and caffeine. By the car door, he watched her march out, and maneuver her men. He pulled his camera bag out, and a man pulled a hose from a tanker that had suddenly appeared.

Clive was sweating, and was working on a second can of beer, which he let fizz over his colonial clothes.

Marine was up to her head with hairstylists, wardrobe, and makeup, twisting her like a play doll. Her hair pushed up, hard spikes breaking the air; her face softened then hardened, as if no one would stare in her face and live. Her legs were bronzed and bleached, with black lace with traces of shimmering glass, glinting and gesturing through horse riding jodhpurs that had been cut, sliced, to bring out her curve of thigh, of leg. Her jacket was a stiff shiny leather, brown, with tussles of wool bulging from within. Her breasts were squeezed, and reddened, so the color gleamed swelled in the sunlight. One of her young assistants was feeding her mouth and skin ice cubes that sent exhilarating shivers up her spine.

Two video cameramen were scouting the ground, like as if they were searching for mines, - they seemed to be dancing on the surface, gliding up and down as if on waves of air.

Jean had arranged for a boy to feed him from camera to camera in various setups. They tested the arrangements. Walking through the shoot, like tennis players, pumping a ball from hand to hand.

Joe had briefed them slightly in the car. Clive knew the whole setup. As it should be. The artists on the other hand were given freedom, to express surprise as the shoot evolved. Joe liked to work things on the go. The chance element could always be put to use. Bloopers were also scoopers in her frame of mind.

Candy put his hand to the amp, and the ground swelled to the beat. The boys in fatigues woke from their sunny sleep, and stood in a circle as told. Each one on his own with attention to the center.

Joe was on her bull horn, the sound distorting and breaking over the beat. She was sitting legs astride the tanker, changed into a khaki green string vest with pants to match. Her lips stinging red, and a cigar, whenever possible hanging, and dripping saliva.

Clive, sweating Rambo style, took his pistol, and proved the gun worked. And the evening work began.

The video men climbed and swung in and around the dunes, Jean lay under Joe, fed by the boy, changing cameras, like shells under fire. The shots were coming out easy, square, tight. Marine stood as she was told. Her tongue dry, eyes sticky from the sun hard beating on her.

The 16 soldiers, young men, began to undo their zips, their buttons, letting the breeze squeeze onto their skin. Their chests began to pop out of the jackets, sweat glistening.

Marine, riding crop in hand counted time, and the video circling tasted the beat, and Joe straddled over the tanker, kicking the cigar smoke from her lips. Jean moved away from under Joe, cameras passing like skittles between jugglers as he scanned the circle of men, now down to boxer shorts and black boots, and Marine, sex under uniform, power under constraint, stood, beating her hand with the crop.

The video cameramen were scuttling along the ground, kicking up dust, catching the bare legs and buttocks of the circle of soldiers, and through them the red- breasted Marine, sweat slithering down her neck. And Jean, punching his images bold and bright, slammed his eyes with one popper after another.

Joe now pulled the large hose with its two hand sized nozzle, away from the tanker, tugging, till she straddled it like a serpent. And Clive, pressed the button, and water thundered through it, so she shook with fiery pleasure, as the water pumped and splashed on the backsides, and stomachs of the naked soldiers, with their uniforms muddied by the sand.

All the time Jean swung in closer, till he caught Marine's eyes proud defiant, her body magnificent, her legs holding the ground, whilst all around her men were hiding themselves against Joe's water cannon.

Clive banged at the air, and put the pistol back in its holster. The video men, could finally relax, their backs burning from angles they never knew they could make. And Joe ran, slapping the backs of the men, and then stripped off her string vest and pants, and her and they and the crew all ran, over the dune, along the wide strip of sand into the blue waves.

As she beat her way past the boys, cutting through the water, like the shark she was, she began to think .....

" Mmmmmm ....... and now for the serious fun!"


END OF CHAPTER FIVE

Read CHAPTER SIX

© Giles Denmark/Giles Mitchell 1997. Worldwide Copyright.