XXVIII Trio Lascivo

The dé cor of the Drei Annen Gasthof, which Sabine had chosen for supper, was in an Alpine motif. A shelf above the bar held ice picks, spikes, hammers, and a variety of boot crampons. The oak walls were hung with poster-size black-and-white photos of mountain climbers in the early part of the century. Posing in simple wool trousers tucked into leather boots and with cotton ropes looped around their shoulders, they all looked pitifully underequipped for scaling anything more than the modest peaks of the Harz Mountains.

In the dearth of other available social life, Katherina had finally agreed to join Gustav and Sabine there for a post-rehearsal supper.

Throughout the meal, inconspicuously, she hoped, Katherina had been studying Gustav’s face. Something about it was not quite right. Or rather, something was just too right, as if someone had designed him. It was not merely that his eyebrows were partially plucked and then drawn in again in a V shape, which rendered him deliberately diabolical. There was something else. Then it came to her. It was his lips.

They were too full and curly, an artist’s rendition of sensuous lips that in fact rarely, if ever, occurred naturally. She had seen lips like that only once before, in photos of a famous movie made from an even more famous play.

“Grü ndgens, ” she said suddenly.

“Excuse me? Grü ndgens what? ” Sabine asked, her fork raised halfway to her mouth.

“He knows what I mean. ” Katherina still stared at Gustav. “Don’t you? How did you do it? Not the eyebrows. Those are easy to change, but how did you get the lips so perfect? You took his name too, didn’t you? ”

“What are you talking about? ” Sabine apparently did not like to have anything in the conversation that she was not getting.

Gustav smiled with sexually explicit lips. “You have a good eye, Katherina. I’m impressed. It’s just a few injections. Approved, oh, maybe a year ago for use. It’s good, isn’t it? ” He sipped at a tiny glass of schnapps, then licked his lips as if to display them in motion.

“More than good. The resemblance is nearly perfect, as much as I can recall from pictures. Gustav Grü ndgens died in the sixties, I think. Why did you do it? ”

“I wanted this role. It suits my voice exactly, not to mention my career. All I needed was the look. With the face of the greatest Mephisto to have ever walked the German stage, how could I miss? And for the chance to perform on television, I’d have done a lot more. Injected anything, slept with anyone, knifed anyone in the back. ” He raised one of his already-well-tilted eyebrows. “As it turned out, at least the knifing part was not necessary. ”

Sabine reentered the conversation. “You think sleeping with me got you the role? ”

“No, that I’m doing just for fun, ” Gustav said, leaving the more risqué question unanswered.

Katherina moved the conversation as quickly as possible away from sex. “It’s an opera, not a movie, after all. You probably would have gotten the role anyhow on the basis of your voice. ”

“Maybe so. But I don’t think the audition counted all that much. It’s really a soprano’s opera. The high points are all yours, though when you do your final aria, I’m right there and the camera will be on both of us. ” He signaled the waiter to bring him another schnapps.

“I have the feeling it’s mostly going to be on me. Remember, I’ll be half nude. Obviously the decision-makers are going for the sensational. I don’t like it, and I plan to protest, when I work up the nerve. ”

“There’s nothing wrong with the sensational. ” Sabine shrugged. “I say the wilder the better. Why does opera have to be fat ladies standing in place and singing tunes that everyone already knows by heart? ”

Katherina shook her head. “I’m not making a case for stand-and-sing opera. But the idea of stirring the audience to a frenzy frightens me a little. It’s potentially explosive. We don’t even know how they’ll get an audience up here. It’s a military zone, and I don’t see them inviting hundreds of white-haired German opera lovers inside for an evening. Don’t you have any misgivings about the whole thing? ”

“Not at all. ” Gustav pursed his Grü ndgens lips. “Aside from the fact that they’re paying us like kings, I trust Radu, and Friedrich and Gregory. They have a revolutionary vision, and I’m perfectly willing to get down in the mud, or rather snow, and pour my guts out for them. As Sabine said, ‘the wilder the better, ’ and with her, that’s pretty wild. ” He glanced sideways in a way that went past suggestive into the lewd. Noting that Gustav had referred to their patron by his first name, Katherina tried to keep the subject on the opera.

“You don’t think they’re playing with fire? ”

Gustav laughed. “Are you joking? The fire’s the best part. That big crackling bonfire that’ll be blazing along the whole time just inches away from us. It’s ingenious, absolutely primordial. All that’s missing is a human sacrifice, but I don’t suppose they’ve auditioned anyone for that. ” He laughed again and Sabine laughed with him as he downed his third glass of schnapps.

“And all that talk at the end about being rough with me, ” Katherina continued. “Just how rough do you plan to be? ”

The lewd expression returned. “It’s so delicious that you’re the innocent one. That practically gives me a hard-on, getting you to surrender that way. Don’t worry. I’ll only be as rough as you like me to be. But rough can be good. Have you ever tried it rough? ” The ridges where his eyebrows would have been rose in two arcs.

Katherina winced at the question. “You’re really getting into this demon thing, aren’t you? Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I’m a little more nervous than you because the two of you, for that matter, the whole rest of the cast, are playing sins, witches, and demons. I’m the only one who ends up being dragged off to hell against my will. ”

“That’s a small price to pay for having the most glorious aria in the opera. I’d give a testicle to have a solo like that. ”

“I admit the aria is fairly exciting. But it’s just Gretchen’s last words in Goethe’s Faust. They don’t even make much sense. ”

“Oh, but they’re a wonderful admission that innocence is crap. We’re all going to hell so let’s wallow in it. The idea of surrender is such a turn-on. I’m sure it’ll be a turn-on for the audience too! You’ll be singing your heart out as humankind gives up its soul. ” Gustav squinted through red eyes.

“That’s the problem, though. I don’t like being the spokesperson for the human race in damnation. I mean, I prefer to think the human race shouldn’t surrender. ”

“That’s what I like about you, my dear. ” Sabine laid her other hand on Katherina’s wrist. “You are such a good, sweet person, just begging to be sullied. That is sooo attractive. ” She paused for a moment, then seemed to take a cue from her companion. “Listen, Gustav and I have been talking. We both think you are very…appealing. Why don’t you join us in our hotel and have another drink. The three of us can get to know each other better. I mean, you and I kind of know each other already, but there is so much more we can learn. You know that I can make you happy, and Gustav is dying to amuse you in his own special way. Just think of how much fun the three of us can have together. ”

Katherina slid her hand out from under Sabine’s and stood up. “Thank you for the invitation. It’s flattering, in a sticky kind of way. Why don’t you ask Radu Gavril to join you? I’m sure he’d be pleased. ” The look that Gustav and Sabine exchanged suggested that they were already considering the stage director.

“In any case, I think I’ll hang on a bit longer to what’s left of my innocence, or prudery, or whatever you want to call it. I’ve got a long day tomorrow, we all do, so I’ll say good night now. ”

She dropped thirty marks on the table to pay for her dinner and turned away. By the time she was at the door, coat in hand, she realized this was the second time she had gotten up from a table to flee Sabine’s lasciviousness. It had done her little good the first time, though, since she had fallen prey anyhow. The thought sent a wave of excitement up from her groin to her chest, and then to her cheeks. But no, she told herself, she would not become someone’s conquest again.

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