When they had first searched for a secluded place for their amorous activities, Major Kelly and Lily Kain had chosen the slopes of the ravine beneath the bridge. It seemed certain to be the most private place available. No one ever went near the bridge, because no one could ever be sure when the krauts would bomb it again. Once the bridge had been rebuilt, it was taboo. And, though making love under the bridge meant that they courted instant death from a Stuka attack, they went back again and again. What was instant death, after all, compared to a brief moment of orgasmic pleasure?
Besides, they only went under the bridge at night, when the Stukas never attacked, when they could forget their fear and indulge their senses. Sex, Kelly had long ago concluded, was essential if a man were to hang on. If a man couldn't fuck now and then, he'd start taking chances, lose his grip. You can't hang on if your grip is gone.
Sex was as important to survival as was cowardice.
That night, two days after the Panzers, Major Kelly and Lily Kain went down the green slopes — which were actually mostly brown and burnt and all muddied by the tracks of dozers and other equipment, but which appeared nonetheless Elysian to them in their rutting heat — went under the bridge to a patch of generally undisturbed grass by the edge of the oiled, burbling, light-flecked river. There, with little time for the niceties of civilized romance, the major undressed her and lowered her to the grass, preparatory to putting it to her.
Overhead, on the bridge floor, there were sounds like autumn leaves rustled by the wind — or like a gentle rain pattering out of the open heavens. It was good background music for their performance.
Now and then during the day when the major caught a glimpse of Lily Kain in her dancer's costume as she was on her way to or from the mess hall, he would comment to Lieutenant Beame, his right-hand man, on the fine structure of the woman. He would say, under his breath because he actually was breathless, “She has one of the finest bodies I've ever seen!”
Beame was a virgin, though he thought no one knew he was. He believed that his best defense against discovery and ridicule was cool indifference, since he thought the world's greatest lovers were really rather coolly indifferent except when they were in bed. Beame would say, “Oh, well, a body is a body.”
“Tits,” Major Kelly would say. “She has the finest pair of tits I've ever seen, big and round and pointing right at the sky.”
“Tits are tits,” Beame would say.
“And those legs! Sleek, trim — longest legs I've ever seen!”
And Beame would say, “Legs are legs.”
One day when he felt like teasing Beame, Kelly had gone his usual horny litany, then added, “She has the sexiest thumbs I've ever seen!”
And Beame had said, “Thumbs are thumbs.” Then he had realized what he'd said. He blushed. “Yeah,” he had added, “she does have nice thumbs.”
And she had a nice body, too. It was all breasts and hips and firm buttocks and legs. Very little waist. Right now, Major Kelly didn't care about her mind or her personality, her religion, politics, or even about her moderately bad breath. He only cared about her wonderful body. He lay beside her, kissing her forehead, her eyes, her pert nose, then her lips, sucking on her tongue until he thought he might swallow it. He took handfuls of her jugs which she offered him with a graceful arching of her back, and he pondered the engineering miracle of those breasts. They were engineering miracles. He should know: he was an engineer. He tested those jugs for solidity and texture, squeezing and releasing them, massaging them with his fingertips and palms. He swept his hands up their undersides to gauge their thrust, took the big hard nipples between thumb and forefinger and gently turned them this way and that, making them even larger. A miracle. Two miracles, perfectly matched. He caressed and bounced and licked those miracles until he felt he was ready to explode with an infusion of divine power.
Overhead, the pattering sound ceased and was replaced by the soughing of the wind.
Major Kelly let the wind help build the atmosphere of sweet sensuality, and when he felt that it had been built high enough, he took off his own fatigues. He seemed to be moving through syrup, undressing so slowly that he would never finally be unfettered and able to achieve penetration. A man on a slow-motion film, he peeled off his shirt and, an eternity later, pulled off his shoes and then his trousers. It was, he thought, like that old mathematical riddle: if a chair is ten feet from the wall, and if you keep moving it half the distance to the wall, how many moves will it take until the chair is touching the wall? The answer, of course, is that the chair will never be touching the wall. It will get closer and closer through an infinite number of moves but can never, theoretically, be finally there. Right now, as he pulled off his shorts, Kelly thought that he was the chair while Lily was the wall. They were never going to get together.
And then he was nude and between her legs. He lifted her buttocks, another pair of engineering miracles, and guided himself into her, all the way, moaning in the back of his throat as she moaned in the back of hers.
The gentle breezes above were punctuated by hard, regular gulping sounds, like something thick and wet being dropped down a pipe, sounds that did not belong here in the midst of romance. As these gulping noises increased, grew louder and more frequent and finally dominated the night, Major Kelly broke his embrace of Lily Kain with a wet, mournful sucking noise of rudely disengaged organs. He got to his feet and, utterly unashamed of his own nakedness, walked out of the shadow of the bridge floor, and looked up at the twenty or thirty men who were lying on the bridge and hanging over the edge watching the action.
“We can forget the patter of feet,” Kelly said, “and pretend it's only leaves rustling.”
None of the men replied. They just hung up there, wide-eyed, looking down at him and stealing quick glances at Lily Kain.
“And we have agreed to imagine that the breathing is the sigh of the wind.” He spread his arms imploringly. “But I can't deal with that sound. Is someone up there eating peanuts?”
Lieutenant Beame was eating peanuts. He grinned sheepishly.
Half a dozen of the other men, without saying a word, picked him up, took him to the end of the bridge, and beat the shit out of him. When they came back and stretched out again, the major returned to Lily Kain.
“Idiots,” she said.
“It was only the leaves,” he said.
“Morons.”
“Gentle breezes.”
“I suppose,” she said.
Lily had been sitting up, waiting for him to come back. Now, she lay down again, parted her thighs which were another pair of engineering miracles.
That was all Kelly needed to put him back in the mood. He walked forward on his knees, slipped his hands under her, lifted her, and got into her again as smoothly as a greased piston into a firing chamber. He thrust several times as she moved up against him, and when they were firmly joined, he rolled her over, holding her against him, until he was lying on his back and she had the dominant position.
Above them, many breezes worked across the bridge floor.
Lily began to bounce up and down on him. It was the most miraculous thing Kelly had ever seen. Her two big jugs worked round and round, slapped together, rose and fell, jiggled, quivered, swung, bounced. In the wash of yellow moonlight, those gyrating globes became more than twin miracles. They transcended the mere miraculous. They were a divine experience, a fundamental spiritual vision that stunned him and left him gasping.