Girl of my Dreams

For years I wandered the streets, cold and alone and hungry. I was hungry like a wolf in the winter, so hungry my bones ached, my head throbbed, and it pained me just to open my eyes in the morning. In the burning days my mouth was parched with thirst and scabs formed upon my lips. I shivered through freezing nights. My feet were as numb as icicles inside my damp socks. Sores grew like weeds on my body, pus oozed through the rags I wore. I held out twisted hands to passersby and begged of them, “Please, please, give me something to eat. Please.” But when they saw me they recoiled, averted their eyes, and hurried on. Sometimes one generous soul or another dropped a crust of bread or a joint of dry sausage on the ground in front of me, as though I were a dog. I never got enough to satisfy my hunger; only ever enough to keep me starving through another night, tossing and turning in abysmal dreams, despairing and lonely. Sometimes I asked myself if it would not be better just to die.

Then I met her. She was the girl of my dreams, the queen of all queens. She was beautiful and voluptuous, and she dazzled. For some reason her gaze fell upon my face – the face of a beggar – and she did not flinch or draw back. She took pity on me, and raised me up from where I lay starving. She – a queen of all the world! And me – a vagrant in rags.

She led me away to her pleasure palace. She undressed me and bathed me in a tub of bronze, with soap made from olive oil and honey. She dried my body with a towel of Egyptian cotton and dressed the wounds on my arms, hands and back. She trimmed my hair with golden scissors and anointed it with perfume. She clothed me in a robe of cashmere and clasped a jade bracelet on my wrist. She took me by my hand and led me down a marble staircase, each of its bannisters adorned with the form of a different goddess, along a tiled hallway into a dining room, where the table was laid with caviar and oysters, lobsters poached in butter, cuts of marbled meat dripping in their own juices, a risotto of forest mushrooms, artichoke soup with black truffle, the sweetbread of veal, stuffed hen, shellfish and black cod, cured meat and cheese served on walnut crisps, and ripe fruits with honey and cream. We lay on velvet couches and drank wine from cups of Venetian glass. At the end of the meal a team of servants came to bear our plates away. A night-time breeze drifted through the window, lifting the lace curtains and dropping them slowly again, like a sigh, carrying the smell of frangipanis. My queen and I reclined on silk cushions, listening to the music of the harp. She ran her fingers through my hair and stroked a lock of it behind my ear. When the moon rose she took me by my hand and led me to her room. Our bare feet barely made any sound at all on the marble. With tender hands she undressed me, and took her own clothes off, too. Her skin was as smooth and sweet as milk, and golden like caramel; her dark hair fell in loose curls around her shoulders, her eyes were warm and rich, the colour of hot coffee on a cold day; her eyebrows softly arching, her breasts full and round, her nipples firming in the breeze and facing slightly up; a smooth belly, curving hips, her body soft and warm, her full lips slightly parted to show teeth as neat and white as a string of pearls. I lay back on the bed. The mattress was goose down, the sheets satin, the duvet cashmere. My queen followed me, straddled me, and lowered herself forward. She took my manhood in her hand, hard and throbbing, and guided me into her, where it was warm and moist, then tilted her hips and took me all the way inside. Her head dropped back, her mouth fell open, a soft look spread across her face like sugar melting in a pan. She gasped a little as she breathed out. Then she leant forward until her breasts touched my chest, and with rich lips she kissed me.

In the morning when I woke she was lying beside me, as real as the morning sky. The air in the room was clear and bright as a glass of lemonade. Sunlight poured in through the windows and reached playful fingers over the bed, making shadows among the folds of the sheets and caressing the body of my queen. Her face was sweet and silent – she slept like an angel, on her side, one hand tucked beneath her cheek and a sheet draped over her waist, her chest uncovered, her breasts rising and falling with her breath. I rolled onto my side and wrapped my arms around her body, pressing against her back with my belly and chest. She adjusted her position in my arms, murmured soundlessly with her lips, rolled, settled, and slept on peacefully with her face against my chest. Soon I feel asleep again, also.

We rose late in the morning to a breakfast of fresh fruit, dried figs and dates, Turkish yoghurt with honey, fresh-baked scones with butter, cream and jam, olives, bread and cheese, and cups of chocolate and coffee. Then we lay together again. In the afternoon we swam naked in a lake on the grounds. The water was deep and still, so clear you could see sunlight sparkling off the pebbles on the bed. In the cool water our bodies flushed warm and golden. We walked out and lay naked in the sun. It felt to me as though my whole being were glowing, and peace hummed in all my cells, slightly tingling. I was lit up from within by a light I had never known myself to contain. I was happy.

In the evening we ate again, and again we made love. The next day was the same, and the day after that, too. I remained in the palace indefinitely, a guest of the queen – her lover, no less – and no luxury in all the world was spared me.

We fell in love, the queen and I. We were always together, swimming in the lake or lying in the sun, strolling barefoot and hand-in-hard through the gardens, down paths shaded by cypresses and red maples, across cool lawns, among garden beds full and overflowing with poppies, nasturtiums, bluebells, hyacinths, narcissi, daffodils, primroses and roses; through fruit orchards, along the banks of ponds covered by white water lilies with smiling yellow teeth. The queen and I grew so close that soon there was nothing to tell us apart; we were very deeply in love. We fell backwards into love, and love caught us on velvet cushions, satin sheets and cashmere blankets, and although we could feel in our forearms and our guts that we were falling, the sensation was not unpleasant, for it came without fear.

With time I ceased to be a visitor in the palace and became a resident there. As the lover of the queen it was natural I be treated as a king. I gave orders to the staff and made requests for my meals; I was dressed by servants in the morning and undressed by different servants at night. I was shaved and pampered and anointed with lotions. In the evenings beautiful young women bathed me in rosewater. I took no notice of it, for I had grown accustomed to finery. Food was brought me at the table – all I had to do was put it in my mouth. I grew fat and lazy, and so did my queen. Her body plumped, then sank. Her curves, once as smooth as milk, clotted like cottage cheese. Her breasts sagged and her shoulders hunched to hold their weight. Lines cut into her face, her eyes were ringed with darkness. She did not sleep peacefully. She got old and tired. Her hair was ratty and streaked with grey. Her eyes lost their lustre. As the queen turned haggard, so did her palace. Dust settled on the mantles, so thick you could write your name with a finger. The curtains got mouldy in the rains and no one bothered to launder them when the rains had gone. The stitching on the cushions frayed. The bedsheets absorbed the grease from our fat, sticky bodies and turned a sickly shade of yellow. The staff were lax, the halls unswept, the gardens untended. Algae covered the surface of the lake. Rot and decay made their home among the furniture. The dinners, once so rich, grew meaner and meaner, until one night my queen and I sat down to a board adorned with nothing but dry bread and a sour sauce made of vinegar and overripe tomatoes. At that point I could stand it no more.

“My darling,” I said, though the word meant little to me now. “I want more.”
She was startled. She had grown vague as she grew ugly; my words snatched her out of a dream. “You want more?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “You must give me more.”
She looked at me for a moment, then her lips peeled back like a demon’s, and she laughed a laugh as sour and rotten as old grapes. And she said, “What kind of mean joke is this?”
I said to her, “What do you mean?”
“A regal jest it is indeed,” she said, “for you, a king, to ask me, a beggar, for more!”
Suddenly the palace disappeared. The halls and chambers and the plasterwork on the ceilings, the paintings, the tapestries, the brass fireplace, the pinewood log burning slowly, the agate, the lapis lazuli, the lace curtains and marble floors, the servants, the cooks, the chandeliers, the breeze, the china, the golden cutlery: in an instant it all disappeared into the night, as though it had never been. And for the first time I saw my queen as she truly was: for the first time she revealed her real face to me, and I saw that all along I had been her fool. For before me stood not a queen, gracious and beautiful and dressed in fine raiment, but a mean and filthy wench, hunched up and ugly, with stringy, greasy hair and barely a tooth left in her black mouth, dressed in rags and covered in grot, stinking, pale, diseased and foul: a starving beggar, just as I had once been.

She laughed a horrid laugh, and hissed at me, “You coward! You fraud!”
I shouted back, “You temptress! You witch!”

Then we fought. We hid away in a cold alleyway at night, and fought each other there. She clawed at my face with her nails; I smote her away with an open hand and sent her stumbling back. She hit the wall and it smacked the breath clean out of her. She slumped down on the ground, and scowled at me, breathless with rage. Then she leapt up and gouged with her fingers at my eyes. I swiped her away with my arm, but she caught hold of my forearm and bit into it with her broken teeth.

How regal we must have looked then! Ha! We were just two beggars flailing at each other in an alleyway, alone save the rats and the rubbish, and not a soul took notice of us, not a soul cared.

For weeks we fought like that. We tormented and taunted each other, ripped at each other with our nails. Each of us sought to punish the other for not being what they had never been. During the time of our love we had shown each other the secret ways to our hearts, and now we snuck along those private passageways, crept in through the hidden gates, and with poisoned daggers we stabbed each other where it hurt the most. We stayed together only out of habit, because we were afraid to give up the memory of the hope we had once shared, and, above all, because we dreaded being alone. But in the end we saw how hopeless it was, and the filth grew too thick to bear. We parted in the dark and went our separate ways. We never saw each other again. We moved on with our lives, trying to forget, pretending to ourselves that what had been never was.

Again we wandered the lonely streets, angry, hateful, desperate and mean, hungry, so hungry it hurt, begging crusts from strangers and passers-by who despised us and whom we loathed in our turn: begging them to give us just enough so that we could scrap our way through another desperate and mean day, another shameful day, while we waited for some angel to come from heaven and make us perfect, the way we deserved to be.