The bed chamber was dark, dank and moist. A solitary fan whirred from the ceiling but it did nothing but spread the heat everywhere. In between the fan blades you could hear the patter of the street and the honk of the cars. The two creatures lay sprawled naked on the bed-sheets; from a distance they looked like a single mass of folds and ripples; a sort of grotesque artwork of skin and hair grafts. The lamp sat in the corner strumming weakly, humming away, not daring to encroach on the night. Rani was fast asleep; her naked breasts rising and falling with each breath. But Superfly was wide-awake and buried in thought. They had had sex and this moment of respite, when feelings were at their most raw, was a time to gather one's thoughts and clarify things. The inside of his mouth was filmy and he still had the taste of her cunt on his tongue. His head was swarming with thoughts like flies trapped in a bell jar. There was no question about it – she had been very good. He lay back on the pillow and enjoyed the pleasures of memory: he had followed her, her conniving hips guiding him, slowly but carefully into her chamber. As they had walked along the dark corridor, doors would creak furtively ajar; and a weak slab of light from inside the rooms, would light the way along. The side rooms were occupied by lone females. Superfly felt the weight of their eyes as they rapaciously sized him up, their fingers clawing on the door frames, their breathing heavy like the sultry air.
The room they entered was grubby and austere. It was cheaply decorated and smelt of mould and unwashed bed-sheets. The walls were flaking on one side and on the other; the part that was exposed to the outside, they had the texture and colour of dough. The ceiling was charred black from some calamity that had befallen it in the past. There was a silver piss-pot in the corner. The room faced the street through a single window set in the wall to the far right. A picture frame of a chubby cherubic tot (those cheap baby prints you find everywhere) was pinned to the space above the bed rest at an angle. Bad taste he had thought.
The squalor of the room and the infected bed-sheets and the cheapness added to the feeling of debauchery. Paying for sex was considered a dirty business on earth, and it showed in the conditions in which it took place. 'Legitimate' sex between married couples would never have happened in a room like this - unless the couple were poor. But it wasn’t always so. In the days of the Moguls, Superfly had read, the art of the sex girls or ‘nautch’ girls as they were known, was a high art-form and an esteemed one at that. Professional nautch girls were highly prized and highly skilled too in delivering pleasure and ensuring it lasted – for as long as possible. The key was not the moment of elation itself but the build up.
'Master the play of the pleasure game ladies, and you shall him in your pockets' the most famous nautch girl of all had once told her students
The most popular girls were booked way in advance, and their reputations travelled far and wide on the backs of their legendary escapades in Mogul Courts and in the richly decorated bedrooms of seedy dissolute Princes. And there was nothing they wouldn't do: sodomy, swinging, swapping, dogging - it was all on the menu. And the more amoral the act the greater the price. But how the mighty art has fallen! To this! Guilty sex in some claptrap dinghy hovel! The squalor of the room seemed to stoke Superfly’s desires. The mould and the damp seemed to consume him and his mind reeled like a ship foundering upon a tempest. Here was this beautiful creature before him, in this dinghy-dirty room, and the scene was complete. It called for an action. He leapt to grab Rani at the waist but she was quick and managed to allude him; skipping away playfully.
‘Not yet. You sit, I will dance’ she had said seating him on the bed
She had an attractive figure. Slender, well-spaced hips, a nice arse, narrow waist that tapered to a pair of perfectly moulded breasts that were packed tightly inside a tight-fitting chemise. Packed tightly like Andromedan Ripe-Fruit he had thought. Her neck was slender and the skin olive-brown and the whole package was finished off with a head of sensual lips, and dark-dark eyes – deeper then anything he had seen and gate-keepers to who knows what delights. Layers and layers of mystery were waiting to be uncovered…
