They were walking back along the boulevard lined with giant trees and climbing jasmine that dropped back down like window curtains or bed sheets hung out for drying. The little white flowers which blossomed in clusters, dotted the curtains of vines and gave off their exotic scent. Together with the full moon above and their pale soft light, it was a night of romance and love making. They were walking arm in hands and between boobs. It was a rather chilly night and each was in the embrace of their warmth and their coats. They walked tightly together as if they were bounded up by invisible ropes.
They just had dinner at the Old Taff. The eatery was run by an old man whose father came from the coast and brought the taste of the coast with him to Rock Bottom. Finkler liked the beef stew here. It was almost the same as the ones he had when he was young. And the bread was tough and chewy, just the way he liked it. Finkler knew the father, the original Old Taff who had died quite some time ago. Being human, he did not last as long as the other beings. Old man Tafford came to Rock Bottom to escape the law, which he said prejudiced against him. All he did was killed another man in a fair fight and the law had to say that he was guilty. So, he bribed the law and came here, opened up the eating house, married a beastwoman and sixty years later, here was old man Tafford, the second. The third version of old man Taff was coming along just nicely.
The night was silent and they were not speaking. This was how he liked it, chill and silent night, a good night for reminiscing. He would sit down later in his favourite arm chair by the window overlooking the Arwen River and had either a glass of strong liquor or a cup of soothing steaming tea. She knew that he would prefer tea tonight and she would prepare for him the expensive rai tea that she had specially imported from the Land-Beyond-The-Sea.
He would then sit down on the dark brown leather chair, cracked and lacked lustre, sipping his favourite tea and looking at the gentle Arwen while it reflected the soft moonlight, glistening in the current, taking him away further and further from his armchair. His past would arrive randomly one by one, fleeting or lingering, depending on his will. The people who resided in his memory re-enacted the event in front of him while he scrutinized every minute detail. This would not be a normal remembrance but a Playback, a technique he learnt from the Dark North that allowed him to penetrate into the recess of his memory and to read his memory like a book. Sometimes, he would meet with blockades and he had to dismantle them, only to find more blockades behind the blockades. Someone had confined his memory and he was fighting to get it back.
She would leave him in his battle and prepare the bed for the night. She had started sleeping with him since she had grown up though she did not know exactly how old she was. They had some wild fun in that bed. Sometimes, to spice it up, she would ask the servant girls to join in. Next, she would prepare the tub and asked the girls to boil some water. The girls would have bought the flowers in the morning from the village market. Finkler liked those flowers with exotic scent and she would place them in the tub of hot water and bath him. But before that, the servant girls would have bathed her. Just like she liked to do everything for him herself rather than asking the servant girls, she did not like to do things for herself herself, rather she would ask the servant girls to do them for her.
After about an hour or two, she would wake Finkler from his reveries. She had learnt to watch the sign. Was it exhausting? Was there a little smile on his face or that his thin lips were pressed to a fine line? Was he lost or distraught? Were his eyebrows furrowed, tensed? She could tell whether the battle was going along smoothly and he was winning or that the battle was fierce, protracted, beleaguered and he was losing. It pained her to watch him but she had to. If things were going badly, she would tap on his right shoulder tenderly and he would wake up, sometimes in horror, sometimes in bewilderment and sometimes in total emptiness.
******
Tonight was a good night. His mental adventure was smooth, no mishap. He did not meet with any blockades, but he did not find anything new either and that bothered him. He had been in these memory searching mental-battle-trance states for thousands of times. The primary reason that he never left Rock Bottom was the reclusive life that enabled his mental adventure. But lately, he found that the progress was slow. The rate of discovery of new memories dropped to all time low. The low hanging easy picking fruits were up. He really had to dig now, dig and dig into the caves of his mind like the dwarves digging into the womb of the earth in search of their precious metals.
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He suspected that there was a hidden door in his mind, a keep, deep in his mind that he could not find. Behind this keep, there laid stretches of his memory that was absence. He knew that for sure, because he had found the discontinuities; the story of his life was dotted with missing parts or that some paragraphs were redacted so heavily that he could not understand anything.
He managed to break through some of the blockades and he found glimpses of the missing part but they were neither definitive nor informative. These breakthrough visuals were obscured – a part of the visual memories was selectively obscured to hide the identity of someone, whom Finkler thought that it might possibly be a person. He saw this same person in many of his reclaimed memories, but he was always blurred out, so out of focus that he could not see anything distinctive. He examined them many times over but he could not find a single clue. Just as he was about to go mad, he found one particular glimpse, in which he saw a reflection from a mirror at one corner of a room (they were in a room), that the figure was wearing a dress, but, alas, the head was out of the mirror frame because he was leaning forward, towards Finkler. And as he observed more and more the glimpse, he came to conclude that the dress might also be a robe. The uncertainty drove him insane.
What kind of mind magic is this?, he often thought. Hiding my memory in my memory and so completely. Finkler was not some mediocre. If he did not know of such magic, then the magic was certainly a highly obscure one.
“How is it, dear?” Nury said.
Finkler was silent. He was recollecting and after a while, he replied, “Nothing significant. Just some scraps.”
“Come, let’s take a bath. It’ll do you good.” She took his hand and dragged him out of the chair, from which he was quite reluctant to get up. But he always relented. Nury had a certain hold on him. She took him to the dressing room adjoining the bedroom and the bathroom and began to undress him while the girls in the bathroom were mixing the hot water with the cold. The temperature must be perfect. They would have to be there to add hot water continuously throughout to keep it nice and hot.
“Miss, the water is ready,” one of the girls, named Nia, came in and said timidly. She put her head down rather embarrassed. She was already naked. They had told her the rule: no one should be wearing anything in the bathroom. But this was her first time seeing her master and her mistress naked.
“She’s the new girl?” asked Finkler.
“Yes, they brought her a few days ago and you were too busy. They said she just came to the village, one of the Vilau clan, and she was desperate for a job.” Nury walked over to her in her pussy cat walk with one hand holding on to Finkler’s and with the other, held up her chin. “She’s a pretty one.” Finkler could only smile. “Let’s fuck her tonight. You know the deal, right?” She could be really awkwardly straightforward when it came to the things she wanted.
Her face turned red. “Yes, miss.”
“You’re not a virgin or something, are you?”
“No, miss.”
“Good,” she said, and she squeezed her breast. She backed away but only a little. She was embarrassed. It was like she was being intruded but she immediately realized that she belonged to them now.
“You’re not forcing yourself, are you?”
“No, miss.”
“Good.” She pinched her nipple hard. She almost yelled.
In the bathroom, the other two girls were standing behind the tub waiting. The tub was in fact a small pool, oval in shape and installed into the floor. It could hold five people comfortably, but a dozen would be a crowd. These two girls had been with them for many years. The oldest one, called Amalia, was already in Finkler’s house before Nury arrived and she had looked after Nury like a sister when she was growing up. Coleta came much later, after Nury’s ascendency to her mistress-ship. Although there was a difference in status, Nury never bossed them around or put on a condescending mistress-look. They were more like peers. They all still looked young, except for Amalia who looked more mature, and they got along like friends, so much so that they were on first name terms. But then, the servant girls knew that there was an invisible boundary that they must not cross. After all, Nury was the mistress and they were the servants.
“Let’s party tonight,” announced Nury jiggling her butts and boobs like she was dancing to some intoxicating music. “We definitely need a band here.” With a slight jump, she entered the pool and created a big splash. It was quite deep at the centre, and shallower towards the edge.
The girls helped Finkler into the tub and took away his glasses. He sat on the bench-like step under the water, leaned back and closed his eyes, relaxing himself. A towel was placed behind his head. The hot water was indeed refreshing. He felt Nury’s hand caressing his body which was getting soft with fat deposits. His belly was growing too and that had perfectly swallowed up his entire eight pack abs. Amalia slowly poured water down his head and face. There were more hands on his body now. They brushed his thinning short hair and massaged his face, flabby and lined with creases. Slowly, they all crowded upon him in the small pool and later on the big bed which would feel rather small by then. And only then, Nia would find out the real deal.