Part 12 (2/2)

'Would you like me to give you details?'

256 Maria nodded.

'You're obviously too young to understand these things, but that's precisely why I would like to share a little of my life with you, so that you don't make the same mistakes I did.

'But why is it that my husband never noticed my c.l.i.toris? He a.s.sumed that the o.r.g.a.s.m happened in the v.a.g.i.n.a, and I found it really, really difficult to pretend something that he imagined I must be feeling. Of course, I did experience pleasure, but a different kind of pleasure. It was only when the friction was on the upper part ... do you know what I mean?'

'I know.'

'And now I know why. It's in there,' she pointed to a book on her desk, whose t.i.tle Maria couldn't see. 'There are lots of nerve endings that connect the c.l.i.toris and the Gspot and which are crucial to o.r.g.a.s.m. But men think that penetration is all. Do you know what the G-spot is?'

'Yes, we talked about it the other day,' said Maria, slipping into the role of Innocent Girl.

'As you go in, on the first floor, the back window.'

'That's right!' And the librarian's eyes lit up. 'Just you ask how many of your male friends have heard of it. None of them! It's absurd. But just as an Italian discovered thec.l.i.toris, the G-spot is a twentieth-century discovery! Soon it will be in all the headlines, and then no one will be able to ignore it any longer! Have you any idea what revolutionary times we're living in?'

Maria glanced at her watch, and Heidi realised that she'd have to talk fast, in order to teach this pretty young 257 woman that all women have the right to be happy and fulfilled, in order that the next generation should benefit from all these extraordinary scientific discoveries.

'Dr Freud didn't agree because he wasn't a woman and, since he experienced his o.r.g.a.s.m through his p.e.n.i.s, he felt that women must, therefore, experience pleasure in their v.a.g.i.n.a. We've got to go back to basics, to what has always given us pleasure: the c.l.i.toris and the G-spot! Very few women enjoy a satisfactory s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p, so if you have difficulty in getting the pleasure you deserve, let me suggest something: change position. Make your lover lie down and you stay on top; your c.l.i.toris will strike his body harder and you - not he - will be getting the stimulus you need. Or, rather, the stimulus you deserve!'

Maria, meanwhile, was only pretending that she wasn't listening to the conversation. So she wasn't the only one!

She didn't have a s.e.xual problem, it was all just a question of anatomy! She felt like kissing the librarian, as if a gigantic weight had been lifted off her heart. How good to have discovered this while she was still young! What a marvellous day she was having! Heidi gave a conspiratorial smile.

'They may not know it, but we have an erection too. The c.l.i.toris becomes erect!'

'They' presumably meant men. Since this was such an intimate conversation, Maria decided to risk a question: 'Have you ever had an affair?'

The librarian looked shocked. Her eyes gave off a km of sacred fire, she blushed scarlet, though whether out of rage or shame it was impossible to tell. After a 258 while though, the battle between telling the truth or pretending ended. She simply changed the subject.

'Getting back to our erection, to our c.l.i.toris, did you know that it became rigid?''Yes, I've known that ever since I was a child.'

Heidi seemed disappointed. Perhaps she had just never noticed. Nevertheless, she resolved to go on: 'Anyway, apparently, if you rub your ringer round it, without touching the actual tip, you can experience even more intense pleasure. So take note!

Men who do respect a woman's body immediately touch the tip, not knowing that this can sometimes be quite painful, don't you agree? So, after your first or second encounter, take control of the situation: get on top, decide how and when pressure should be applied, and increase and decrease the rhythm as you see fit. According to the book I'm reading, a frank conversation about it might also be a good idea.'

'Did you ever have a frank conversation with your husband?'

Again, Heidi avoided this direct question, saying that things were different then. Now she was more interested in sharing her intellectual experiences.

'Try to think of your c.l.i.toris as the hands of a clock and ask your partner to move it back and forth between eleven and one, do you understand?'

Yes, she knew what the woman was talking about and didn't entirely agree, although the book wasn't far from the truth.

As soon as she mentioned the word 'clock', though, M Maria glanced at her watch, and explained that she had 259 really come to say goodbye, her job placement had come to an end. The woman seemed not to hear her.

'Would you like to borrow this book about the c.l.i.toris?'

'No, thanks. I've got other things to think about at the moment.'

'And you don't want to borrow anything else?' 'No. I'm going back to my own country, but I just wanted to thank you for always having treated me with such respect and understanding. Perhaps we'll meet again some time.'

They shook hands and wished each other much happiness.

260 Heidi waited until the girl had left, then thumped the desk. Why hadn't she seized the opportunity to share something which, the way things were going, would probably go to the grave with her? Since the girl had had the courage toask if she had ever betrayed her husband, why had she not answered, now that she was discovering a new world in which women were finally acknowledging how difficult it was to achieve a v.a.g.i.n.al o.r.g.a.s.m?

'Oh well, it doesn't matter. The world isn't just about s.e.x.'

No, it wasn't the most important thing in the world, but it was still important. She looked around her; most of the thousands of books surrounding her were love stories. It was always the same: someone meets someone, falls in love, loses them and finds them again. There are souls speaking unto souls, there are distant places, adventures, sufferings, anxieties, but very rarely anyone saying: 'Excuse me, sir, but why don't you try acquiring a better understanding of the female body?' Why didn't books talk openly about that?

Perhaps people weren't really interested. Men would always go looking for novelty; they were still the troglodyte Unter, obeying the reproductive instinct of the human race.

261 And what about women? In her personal experience, the desire to have a good o.r.g.a.s.m with one's partner lasted only for the first few years; then the frequency of o.r.g.a.s.ms diminished, but no one talked about it, because every woman thought it was her problem alone. And so they lied, pretending that they found their husband's desire to make love every night oppressive. And by lying, they left other women feeling worried.

They turned their thoughts to other things: children, cooking, timetables, housework, bills to pay, their husband's affairs - which they tolerated - holidays abroad during which they were more concerned with their children than with themselves, their complicity, or even love, but no s.e.x.

She should have been more open with that young Brazilian woman, who seemed to her an innocent creature, old enough to be her daughter, and still incapable of understanding what the world was like. An immigrant, far from home, working hard at a boring job, waiting for a man she could marry, and with whom she could fake a few o.r.g.a.s.ms, find security, reproduce this mysterious human race, and then forget all about such things as o.r.g.a.s.ms, the c.l.i.toris or the G-spot (which was only discovered in the twentieth century!!). Being a good wife, a good mother, making sure there was nothing lacking in the home, masturbating occasionally in secret, thinking about some man who had pa.s.sed her in the street and looked at herlongingly, Keeping up appearances - why was the world so concerned with appearances?

262 That is why she had not replied to the question: 'Have you ever had an affair?'

These things go with you to the grave, she thought. Her husband had been the only man in her life, although s.e.x was now a thing of the remote past. He had been an excellent companion, honest, generous and good-humoured, and had struggled to bring up the family and to keep all those who worked with him happy. He was the ideal man that all women dream of, and that is precisely why she felt so bad when she thought of how she had one day desired and been with another man.

She remembered how they had met. She was coming back from the small mountain town of Davos, when all the train services were interrupted for some hours by an avalanche. She phoned home so that no one would be worried, bought a few magazines and prepared for a long wait at the station.

That was when she noticed the man sitting next to her, along with his rucksack and sleeping bag. He had greying hair and sunburned skin, and was the only person in the station who didn't seem concerned about the absence of any trains; on the contrary, he was smiling and looking around him for someone to talk to. Heidi opened one of the Magazines, but - ah, sweet mystery of life! - her eyes happened to catch his and she didn't manage to look away quickly enough to avoid him coming over to her.

Before she could - politely - say that she really needed to finish reading an important article, he began to talk. He told her that he was a writer and was returning from a 263 meeting in Davos and that the delay would mean him missing his flight home. When they got to Geneva, would she mind helping him find a hotel?

Heidi was watching him: how could anyone be so cheerful about missing a plane and having to wait in an uncomfortable train station until things were sorted out?

The man began talking to her as if they were old friends.

He told her about his travels, about the mystique of literary creation and, to her horror, about all the women he had known and loved in his lifetime. Heidi merely nodded and let him talk. Occasionally he would apologise for talking so much andask her to tell him something about herself, but all she could say was: 'Oh, I'm just an ordinary person, nothing very special.'

Suddenly, she found herself hoping that the train would never arrive; the conversation was so enthralling; she was discovering things that she had only encountered before in fiction. And since she would never see him again, she got up her nerve and (quite why she could never say) began asking him about subjects of particular interest to her. Her marriage was going through a rough patch, her husband was very demanding of her time, and Heidi wanted to know what she could do to make him happy.

The man offered her some interesting explanations, told her a story, but didn't seem very comfortable talking about her husband.

'You're a very interesting woman,' he said, something that no one had said to her for years.

Heidi didn't know how to react; he saw her embarra.s.sment and immediately started talking about deserts, 264 mountains, lost cities, women with veiled faces or bare midriffs, about warriors, pirates and wise men.

The train arrived. They sat down next to each other, and she was no longer a married woman who lived in a chalet looking out over the lake and had three children to bring up, she was an adventurer arriving in Geneva for the first time.

She looked at the mountains and the river and felt glad to be sitting beside a man who wanted to go to bed with her (because that's all men think about) and who was doing his best to impress her. She wondered how many other men had felt the same, but to whom she had never given the slightest encouragement; that morning, however, the world had changed, and she was suddenly a thirtyeight-year-old adolescent, dazzled by this man's attempts to seduce her; it was the best feeling in the world.

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