Читать книгу There are Victories - Charles Yale Harrison - Страница 18

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Edgar Kennedy’s first experience with sex occurred eight years before his marriage to Ruth. It was during his third year at high school; together with a group of youths he ventured, one Saturday night, into that section of the city which lies east of St. Lawrence Boulevard and immediately south of St. Catherine Street. Here, prowling through the dingy streets, past mysterious alleyways and cul-de-sacs, they came upon a house more imposing in its appearance than the neighboring establishments. From the transom over the door came the warm, inviting red glow which proclaimed the profession practiced behind the iron-latticed shutters. Now, in this as in all matters, there are varying degrees of excellence. On entering, the youths discovered that it was an “exclusive” place. In the halls and in the reception room the floors were covered with elaborately designed carpets (the color scheme ran largely toward red and its variants: scarlet, pink, maroon); the furnishings, divans, settees, and hangings were done in rich red plush. On the walls there were expansive portraits of nude women done in the flamboyant style which finds great favor with the owners of these establishments, the purpose of these paintings being comparable to the still lifes of food found in restaurants. The young men in quest of love were greeted in the foyer of the main floor by Miss Quinn herself; she was cordial but not profuse in her greetings, as befitted the madame of an exclusive house. His companions, who were older than Edgar, joked with their hostess (she resented the appellation of “madame” and preferred to be called just plain Miss Quinn; later, after several years of success, she became quite respectable, within limits, and married a young Jewish shoe merchant and set his tottering business upon a solid if somewhat soiled foundation), and asked to see “the girls.”

In accordance with the rigid procedure of such institutions the young men were shown into the parlor. Here there was more gilded furniture (the delicate legs of which curved outward in keeping with the moral and decorative scheme of the place), scarlet plush hangings, and several highly-polished brass cuspidors each standing on a little rubber mat. On one of the walls facing the chair on which Edgar sat there was a painting depicting a lush nude woman with large breasts and pinkish thighs reclining on a chaise longue. The girls arrived in due time, about a dozen of them dressed in evening gowns (this was no mere brothel where men came and went hurriedly) representing, between them, the entire range of feminine pulchritude. They were dark, tall, fair, short, svelte, and robust. The intellectual and spiritual qualities of the young ladies were not readily ascertainable nor, to tell the truth, were Edgar and his comrades particularly concerned with these aspects of Miss Quinn’s protégés. It sufficed that they were girls. “The best girls in Montreal,” Miss Quinn boasted with an artificial and quick smile. She inclined slightly to obesity (the young Jewish merchant, among other things, admired heft) and there was in her a steely quality which reminded one of stiff, whipcord riding-breeches, spurs, and riding crops. Her house, she said with becoming modesty, was the most moral one in the city. Here, she liked to say, there was no rowdyism, no narcotics, no picking of pockets such as went on in the more disreputable houses further east, or across the street for that matter. Her girls were not hardened prostitutes who had made the rounds of other houses, graduating first from the street; no, she herself recruited them fresh from the factories of the East End or picked them up of a Saturday night on St. Catherine Street: tired waitresses, discouraged housemaids, outright wantons. They were good girls, Miss Quinn said, not whores; nearly every one of them went to church on Sunday. Some of them were so young and naïve that it was almost touching. As the young men sat in the parlor Miss Quinn told the story of a young girl from Three Rivers whose innocence and naïveté was really laughable: she was in love with a ragged artist who lived in one of the wooden houses behind Laval University. He called upon her every Monday night; (“we are not busy then and I didn’t mind very much”) they were really in love and he used to bring her presents. Then a rich relative died and he decided to go to Paris to study. One Monday night he called all dressed up in new clothes (“he offered to pay like a gentleman now that he had money”) and asked to see his Yvette. She was very sad and wept a little. She understood, of course, that he would not be faithful to her while he was away but while she could not hope for fidelity she demanded that he exercise prudence. The girls in Paris, she had heard, were not—she hesitated to belittle her sisters in Paris—but they were not overclean. One would have to be extremely careful. Thereupon she took an ivory-bound missal from the drawer of her dresser and opening it gave him a scented package which had lain between its leaves. It was a package of rubber contraceptives. Her lover, also a devout Catholic, was outraged at this sacrilege and remonstrated with her. “I put them there,” the girl explained, “because now they are as good as blessed. Nothing will happen to them or to you. Always wear one and think of me.” The youths laughed but Edgar was visibly shocked. “I say,” he said, “that’s nothing to laugh about. I think it was—sinful.” One of his friends, a lanky, pimply youth, who rated high in scholastic philosophy, ceased laughing and replied to Edgar: “Oh, I don’t know, Kennedy. The girl, in her simple way, was as devout as she knew how. I think, like many good religious stories, it borders a little on the sacrilegious.”

The youths ordered wine and Miss Quinn started the automatic piano. After the wine was finished and the dancing ended, the inevitable question arose as to who was to have whom. There was much laughing and joking, for they had been instructed that among the upper classes love is a matter for jest and that only the lower orders and poets take love seriously. They joked particularly about Edgar. This was his first experience in lust and this, for some unaccountable reason, was a cause for great levity. Finally, however, the youths, each paired with a girl, went off to various parts of the house, financial arrangements being arranged beforehand with Miss Quinn.

Upstairs in the bedrooms the furnishings were not so gaudy, not so pornographically regal; the upper chambers were for purposes—to use a current expression—strictly business. Here there were no gilded settees and no tinsel, and Edgar’s girl’s scarlet gown was the only stab of color in the bare, whitewashed room. Near one of the green shuttered windows stood a double brass bed; close at hand there was a small table with an ash-tray upon it and in the corner of the room there was a frayed armchair. Up against the wall facing the bed was a dresser with a mirror into which was stuck a card upon which was printed the following information: “I have this day examined Jeanne Larue and have found her free from all communicable diseases. Signed, Albert Giroux, M.D.” The card was printed in French and English, Montreal being a bilingual city.

The sight of the card, the bareness of the room, the uncertainty as to what precisely was expected of him, filled Edgar with uneasiness. As the young lady went through the preliminaries of her ritual and as he felt her hands upon him this feeling of uneasiness began to approximate dread. He was seized with a desire to flee down the stairs, past the ornate reception room and out into the street. But Mlle. Larue, seeing his nervousness, sought to reassure him, and putting her arms about his neck, drew him down to the bed.

“This is the first time?”

“Yes, the first time.”

“With anyone?”

“Yes.”

She laughed and kissed him with her profusely rouged lips. “I am a lucky girl, no?”

Less than half an hour later, for time is of the essence in these matters, Edgar walked up the darkened street toward the lights of St. Catherine Street. As he came down the stairs from Jeanne’s room he saw some of his comrades in the reception room. They were waiting for him, but he asked the Negro maid to let him out. No, he did not wish to wait for his friends. He was ill. As he walked along the street he felt shaky and his head reeled. The experience had been worse than he expected. The physical aspect of the affair had been fairly tolerable, not nearly as thrilling as he had been led to believe, but when the girl concluded her ritual with her hygienic and precautionary ablutions before his very eyes (the prophylactic effects to which Dr. Giroux testified), the whole business suddenly filled him with nausea. As he approached St. Catherine Street, nature, fortunately entering into the matter, promptly relieved the suffering youth and he retched.

Two weeks later, having been thoroughly shamed by his companions for his squeamishness and made the butt of much masculine humor, Edgar returned to Miss Quinn’s establishment. This time there was no nausea.