Chapter Forty-Five
As Gangakanta passed by Madame Tautphoeus’s room, the door suddenly opened and out popped her head.
“Forgive me, monsieur, but may I see you for a moment?”
He stopped, looked at the old lady, and sighed.
“I’m rather busy at the moment, madame. You must pardon me.” In truth, he was intending to return to his room and cry.
“It’s vitally important to your investigation, or else I wouldn’t have bothered you,” she insisted.
“Investigation?” He looked at her—thought that in a few more days, she would cease to exist, crumbling into less than atoms, then nothingness—and pitied her.
“The murder investigation. Are you and Miss Trojczakowski not still investigating the series of murders that have taken place here?”
He could not, as a gentleman, deny this to her face, so followed her into her room.
“Sit down,” she instructed him, as they entered her sitting room, “and remove your trousers.”
He sat and proceeded to do so, when, upon reaching the last button, he considered what he was doing. “Wait a moment,” he begged. “Say that again, please, madame?”
“I want you to remove your trousers.” She knelt down in front of him, and stared appealingly into his eyes. “I am a lonely old woman, monsieur. I have never known love. It is only that bastard, ersatz son of love, which we call ‘sexual intercourse’, with which I can salve my untouched heart.”
“That’s all very tragic, madame, but I still don’t see—”
She spoke as she would to one whose command of the language was slack, or who was hard of hearing, or simply stupid: “I want you to put your manhood in my mouth and let me render you satisfaction.”
He crawled up on the chair, stood, and leapt over her kneeling form.
“Pardon me, madame, but I am not the man you need!” He stumbled to the door and away. He would return to his room, cry sharp tears of self-reproach, and condemn both himself and the world for the way each was made.
Vanessa Tautphoeus, meanwhile, felt a new spice of shame mixed in with the roiling groundwater which lapped up desperately against the underside of her skin, seeking an opportunity to geyser forth. She disgusted him; she disgusted everyone. And why? Because she was old, and shameless. She hated herself for being old, and she hated the world for holding it against her. She felt compelled to satisfy herself, but could never get past her early girlhood lessons in church that such things were despicable. When her urges to be violated by men swelled up, like this, with no outlet—she felt she was capable of doing anything.