Oh help, saints preserve us. You don't mean to say the dinner is going to progress from private to intimate?
I do. That's precisely what I mean.
Then here's another quick shot of champagne for both of us. You may not need it but I do. And don't stop. Keep this amazing news churning.
Well, in short, we find the evening taking a vivid course. Dishes are tasted, corks pop, there are pleasantries and laughter. Sophia happens to recall several off-color anecdotes, having to do with itinerant Armenian rug dealers, that have been passed down from mother to daughter in her family for a couple of centuries. Munk, for his part, is able to repeat a number of naughty insinuations currently making the rounds in Constantinople's demimonde. And all the while Sophia is well aware that in return for the attentive favors of this handsome young lieutenant colonel of dragoons, information useful to him is expected. Political and economic information concerning the Balkans.
No, shouted Joe, jumping up and sitting down again. Not another bloody word about the Balkans.
Quickly back to the candlelight dinner and tell me what happened next I know what you're going to say.
What happened next?
They made love, said Cairo quietly.
Joe banged the table. He shrieked.
Ha. I knew it. I just knew you were going to say that. All that cozy candlelight beside the Bosporus, it'll get you every time. But my God, is this true? Did Munk really do that?
Yes, a thoroughly friendly matter. Even so, it took some time to bring off.
What?
Well when a woman gets into her late sixties, you see.
No. Hold it right there, Cairo. I don't see and that's not information I need at the moment, it's not a problem I'm facing. When the time comes, forty years from now if it does, I'll write you a letter and you can fill me in. But will you just imagine Munk up to something like that? And you too when you were back in Egypt, you shameless dragoman-ex. Where's it come from anyway, this scandalous behavior?
Did you both inherit something from this Luigi fellow?
Cairo smiled. Joe was chain-smoking and puffing furiously.
Now just let me calm myself, he said, blowing smoke everywhere. And before we get mixed up with this Luigi fellow again, give me a hint of how the evening in the villa ended. How did it end?
Not until the following morning. The night was a busy one and no one got any sleep. Fortunately the servants weren't due back until noon the next day.
And?
And after some final activities that accompanied the sunrise, Munk fell asleep in his bed. He woke up toward the middle of the morning, hearing water running.
Water?
Sophia was drawing a bath for him.
Ah and ah. What else?
Delicious smells were coming from the kitchen. Munk noticed that his uniform, newly pressed, had been laid out over a chair. His boots, newly polished, stood beside the chair. There was also a bouquet of flowers, freshly picked from the garden, on the night table. Sophia had evidently been bustling about while Munk caught his few hours of sleep. When he finished his bath Sophia appeared with a tray and served him breakfast in bed.
What?
As I recall, freshly squeezed orange juice, eggs and a steak, a pot of strong coffee laced with cognac, and a mountain of hot rolls straight from the oven. Extremely light, he said. Mere fluffs of ambrosia.
Fluffs, yes. Ambrosia. Then?
Then the tiny old woman smiled in the doorway, threw him a wink and was gone. Altogether a singular performance, said Munk. A singular evening, a singular night, a singular morning after. It was his opinion that a woman fifty years younger couldn't have possibly equaled it. There was only one problem.
There was? What?
His back. His back was absolutely covered with long deep scratches. Fingernails, you see.
Uncontrollable passion.
I see.
But of course he was more than ready to suffer that because of what had gone with it.
Of course.
And he also had great difficulty walking. His legs, he said, were like jelly.
Jelly, yes.
And he couldn't really straighten up, and he'd never been so sore. Every muscle in his body ached from the experience, although naturally that was fine too.
Joe sagged in his chair.
I'm limp, he said, I can't move. That's all, I hope.
Not quite. Apparently the heavy scent of Sophia's cheroots lingered in the bedroom for days. Munk said he used to go in there and find himself immediately lost in a reverie. He said it was several weeks before he could pull himself together and get back to working in a proper manner.
Proper? cried Joe. What's proper about any of these goings-on? It's all outrageous, that's what, and should never have been repeated to a sober Christian like myself. Mere fluffs of ambrosia indeed. A scandal.
Cairo laughed.
Now in the course of that very long night Sophia talked about a number of things, including the man she'd loved all her life, the last of the Skanderbeg Wallensteins. Her mother had been a servant in the Wallenstein castle in 1802, when that young and friendly Wallenstein wife had taken a Swiss stranger to her bed, and had been so excited by it she had to tell some of her female servants about it the next day, after the stranger had gone on his way. Thus Sophia was able to describe the Swiss stranger who'd been the father of her beloved Skanderbeg, the young Swiss student with a passion for details who'd been on a walking tour to the Levant that year. I mean she described his appearance exactly, down to a quite specific and intimate fact.
What fact? asked Joe.
Cairo cleared his throat.
It seems the Hungarian Szondi men all inherited a certain peculiarity from Johann Luigi.
What peculiarity?
A physical one that proved exceptionally pleasurable to the Szondi women.
Move on, Cairo, what specific fact?
It has to do with size, with dimension.
Oh.
And with a change in direction.
Oh?
Highly unusual. About halfway along, it seems, matters take an abrupt turn. Thus movement is going on in many directions at once, so that the love the Szondi man is expressing is being expressed in a whole host of different manners at one and the same time. Apparently you can't speak of thrust in such a case. And in and out is simply out of the question. Apparently there's only one word for the sensation the woman feels inside her in such a case.
Which is?
An explosion. A vast explosion of continuing duration as long as he's inside her. That change of direction, you see, simply strikes everywhere. Apparently it feels as if something about the size of a baby's head is in there, humming and singing and shouting for joy.
Explosions, muttered Joe. These revelations are exhausting me. Back to Munk and Sophia at once.
Yes. Well when Sophia described the young Swiss student who had impregnated the young and friendly Wallenstein wife in 1802, Munk recognized at once that this student was none other than his own great-grandfather, the tireless Johann Luigi Szondi.
Tireless Luigi, said Joe. That's him all right. But hold on there. What about this male Szondi peculiarity you were speaking of?
What about it?
Well Sophia had just spent the night with Munk.
Yes.
And so?
Oh you mean didn't she recognize the similarity, the connection, between Munk and that Swiss student of the early nineteenth century? Of course she did. No woman could mistake that explosion. In fact Munk speculates that was the real reason, once they'd got into bed, that Sophia was so taken with him. He's modest about it and doesn't put it down to his charm. No, he thinks Sophia must have found the idea of it immensely appealing. Erotic to the outer limits, in other words, making love with the great-grandson of the man who'd fathered her beloved Skanderbeg.