The excitement was over for the night. Ungilak arranged the carcasses so they were shielded against the storm and indicated that we should all get some sleep. The next morning he left us, promising to return with help as soon as possible.
In retrospect, the days following Ungilak's departure are a hellish blur. I'm not sure whether it was two days or three when our food ran out and we had to start on the dead flesh of the dogs. I wasn't sure that either Olga or I could bring ourselves to eat it, but hunger finally drove us to it – although even then we ate sparingly.
It was right after that first reluctant meal that the storm changed into a blizzard. The wind became a howling knife cutting through the shelter provided by the sled. The cold was unbelievable now. It penetrated right through the furs we used for covering and it was with us all the time, growing steadily worse. Once every hour I insisted that Olga get up and join me in some exercises to stave off frostbite and keep our circulation going. I didn't tell her, but I had my doubts about how long this might work. Indeed, I had my doubts about whether we could survive at all, and they grew worse as the blizzard grew stronger and the cold increased.
Finally there was nothing to do but bundle together and share the mutual warmth of the furs. The cold still came right through them, though, and the only real source of warmth was our own flesh. Olga protested, the prissy S.M.U.T. fanatic to the bitter end, but I insisted that we take maximum advantage of this source of warmth. I forced her to lie naked with me under the pile of furs, and I kept agreeing to her demands that I wouldn't let anything of a sexual nature occur.
However, due to a defect in my character, or perhaps in my biological make-up – or maybe just because it's instinctive to do just about anything to keep alive – the night came when my body refused to keep the promises I'd made to Olga. By then the cold had grown so intense that it was necessary not only to wrap our bodies around one another, but also to keep up a constant rubbing of flesh against flesh, a life-saving friction, as it were. It was while this was going on that I noticed that a certain intimate portion of my anatomy had grown quite stiff. Half-crazed with cold and hunger as I was, I couldn't tell whether the member was frozen or merely taut with passion. But there seemed to be little feeling in it, and this panicked me. I had a sort of hysterical vision of it suddenly breaking off from its own weight like an icicle.
From this awful possibility, my mind jumped to a consideration of Olga. I remembered the first time Crampdick had pointed her out to me back in the brothel in New York. Was it a million years ago? More? No matter. Now I recalled how her pixie face and petite body had made me think she might be a gypsy girl. Little had I guessed that she'd turn out to be just the opposite of the uninhibited gypsy – a girl who'd rather die than part with a virginity she didn't even possess. I remembered how sharp and pointy her breasts had looked under her dress that day, and I marveled that while I'd judged their shape correctly, they felt marvelously soft – even warm – as they pressed against my chest now. I recalled how she'd looked later when I pulled her out of the brothel bed, and my sense of touch now confirmed the promise my sense of sight had made back then. That same sense of touch told me she moved marvelously well, moved with a naturally sexy rhythm that would have been perfect if only -
If only we'd been having sex!
I don't know how long my hallucinating mind dwelt on it, building the obsession. All I know is that finally I reached the point where I just couldn't take all this frenetic motion without following it through to its natural conclusion. Reaching down, I touched myself, and it seemed to me that there was less and less feeling in my rigid manhood., There was only one way to thaw it out, and I decided that it must be done immediately.
Still, even in my hallucinatory state, I remembered not to be a hypocrite about it. I pulled away for a moment and looked straight into Olga's deep blue eyes.
Forthrightly, I told her my intentions. "I'm going to rape you," I said.
"No!" she protested.
"Yes!" I insisted.
"Why?" she interrogated.
"So it won't fall off!" I indicated.
"You mean it's likely to-"
"Yes!"
"But then suppose it happens while you're-"
"That's a chance we'll have to take."
"Surely you're exaggerating," Olga pleaded.
"I am not. Remember the brass monkey."
"What brass monkey?"
"The one that froze its whatzis off."
"I don't care about any brass monkey. I'm not going to let you. Why, if anybody found out, I might be drummed out of S.M.U.T."
"S.M.U.T. will understand." I tried to reassure her. "It's necessary to stay alive."
"I'd rather die!" She crossed her arms dramatically over her breasts.
"I wouldn't. And stop hogging the bearskins." I cuddled closer to her again. "It's no use your protesting," I told her. "I'm going to rape you."
Over us the blizzard raged. The wind screamed its arctic wrath endlessly. The biting cold crawled under the bearskins and beneath our own skins – icy, probing fingers tipped with death. And yet, in my arms, this voluptuous French girl was struggling furiously against accepting the sex which might well be the difference between life and death to us.
She fought me every frozen inch of the way. Her nails raked my cheeks and dug into my neck. Her teeth clamped down on my arm, and I had to slap her to make her let go. Her knee connected with my crotch, and I held her pinned for a moment while I recovered from the pain.
As I was getting over it, I thought to myself that perhaps I really was being too abrupt, not tender enough. I decided to woo her more gently. So I bent and kissed her on the lips. The savage clamp of her teeth almost ripped my tongue from its roots. Her hand, flailing out behind me, fastened on the flashlight, and she cracked it against the side of my skull. At the same moment her other hand tangled in the beard I'd grown and tugged mightily.
I retreated for another breather. "It's easy to see you don't know anything about rape," I gasped. "Don't you know the victim is presumed always to have encouraged the attacker?"
"Men!" She spat the word out as if it was the filthiest of curses. "I'll bet some man thought that one up. Men only want one thing from a girl. Even when we're about to freeze to death, the only thing on your mind is sex."
"If you know another way to stay alive, then tell me."
She merely snorted with contempt and fell silent.
The howl of the wind grew louder. The cold it brought with it renewed my determination. I grabbed Olga again.
We wrestled. I wedged my knee against her tight-clenched thighs and bore down hard, slowly prying them apart. No gentleman resting on his elbows was I. My weight was necessary to keep her pinned, and my chest crushed those soft, heaving, pointed breasts beneath me. She fought hard, but the fight itself was a kind of perverse love-making. The way she thrashed around and pounded her fists against, my body was exciting. Even the tears of frustration which sprang to her eyes with the realization that she wasn't strong enough to hold me off were an added goad to my passion.
She kept struggling even after the rape was technically a fait accompli. But now her angry writhings took on a certain sexual rhythm despite herself. She kept beating at my spine with the heels of her feet, but the way things were, the tattoo only merged into the act of making love. It was the same with her bouncing efforts to pull free of my stabbing blade of passion. Each movement found it slammed back to the hilt.
Finally she cried out and lost control altogether. Her body took over, and she wasn't fighting me then. Her eyes closed, and she gave herself up to one tremor of release after another. She was thrusting against me now, digging her nails into my buttocks to hold me fast, no longer trying to push me away. Realizing this, I gave myself up to the sensation, and together we soared to the heights of passion.