Nighttimes, after we had dined at the most expensive places we would always come home and make love again. We were already becoming slaves to each other’s bodies. Carl was a very strong man and could climax five times in two hours.
Time was floating deliciously by. No fights, no hassles, and I was sure this was ultimate happiness. I didn’t even look at another man. All I cared for was Carl, my lover, my life.
After leaving Durban, we spent a two-month vacation roaming footloose and fancy free all over the east part of Africa, and this glorious country must be among some of the most spectacular on the face of the earth.
We saw Kruger National Park, with it zebras, wildebeests, elephants, lions, beautiful deer, and I was almost molested by a rhinoceros.
The last stop on our photo safari was Mozambique, where the weather was so hot that even the swimming pool at the hotel was too warm to be refreshing. It was there that we parted company temporarily.
Carl set out for America, and I went back to South Africa to tie up loose ends and earn enough money to pay my fare to the U.S., with Carl, the American citizen, sponsoring my visa.
On the way back to the States, Carl made a detour through Amsterdam especially to meet my parents and officially ask for my hand in marriage. My father had already been smitten by a massive stroke that had left him paralyzed and without the power of speech, but my mother was very impressed by Carl’s gallant behavior and was so proud I had chosen such a fine man.
For the next six months we exchanged letters of such sizzling passion that I am surprised the pages didn’t ignite. And, two months before I was to leave for America, I returned to Holland to spend the last of my single days with my family.
I was to leave for America in August, but a week before departure I got a long-distance call from Carl in Jamaica asking me could I possibly delay my trip.
“Something has developed that necessitates my staying here,” he faltered. And even on the blurry transatlantic wire I suspected from his tone that the development was not exactly office business.
That night I sat down and wrote him a long letter telling him what I feared, and asking him to let me know if he had met another woman. “I’m not so narrow-minded I would expect a virile man like you to lead a monastic life, but don’t fall in love with someone else,” I implored.
Carl’s long, loving reply to that letter was reassuring.
“I promise you, Xaviera, you are the only woman I want in my life, and I am looking forward to being with you for the rest of our lives from next December to forever.”
4. DUTCH TREAT
New York’s bustling Kennedy Airport on that December, 1967, morning felt like the most uncharitable place on earth. Stampeding crowds jostled me, and Carl was nowhere in sight. Six A.M. was an uncivilized hour to arrive in the New World, but when you can afford only a cheap charter flight, you have no choice.
Despair was starting to consume me as the customs inspector chalked my last piece of luggage, when at last Carl’s familiar face came into view. I spotted him first, ran over, and threw my arms around his neck ready for a kiss, but he turned his face away.
Was kissing your fiancé in a public airport anything to be embarrassed about? What the hell was going on?
“I’ll get a skycap to carry your bags,” were his only words as he led me from the arrival hall toward his huge. American car.
“Welcome to the U.S.A.,” he said as we crossed to the parking area. Boy, some welcome! I had no gloves on, my coat was inadequate against the biting winds, and here the man who for the last eight months had sent me passionate letters, cards, and cables was behaving like a stranger.
Something, other than his conservative hair style and absent suntan, was different about him, and I had to know what it was. “Carl, is there something I should know about?” I asked. He switched on the car radio and answered with an awkward cough.
“Carl, I have given up everything I had to come here and be with you,” I said. “So, if something has happened between us, I believe I have a right to know.”
Somehow I sensed if he told. me anything it would be a lie, but I would settle for a half-truth. “Have you met another woman?”
He shifted uncomfortably on his side of the seat. “There was another woman,” he began clumsily, “a legal secretary I met at an economists’ conference in Jamaica earlier this year.” Her name was Rona, he said. The woman, according to Carl, was the mother of an eight-year-old son, in her mid-thirties, and crazy about him. However, he did not return her feelings and had slept with her maybe three times, no more, guaranteed.
“Okay, now I feel better,” I said, and changed the subject.
We arrived at Carl’s penthouse in the East Seventies to refresh and rest. The apartment was impressive, full of French provincial furniture and expensive antiques, but nothing interfered with the orderliness, not even one little flower with a note to say “Welcome home.” It looked as though the decorator had departed only five minutes before.
We dropped the bags inside and went up to a tavern in Germantown for a quick bite to eat and then back home to take a bath, unpack, and make love – and something certainly was different.
Carl’s strange attitude was contagious, and he did not turn me on at all, and his huge penis hurt me. We put on our bathrobes and turned on the television.
Around nine that night we felt more at ease with each other and started our lovemaking all over again. This time the old feelings were creeping back when the phone rang, and Carl pulled away from me abruptly and picked it up.
And I kid you not – that next twenty-minute conversation certainly sounded as though he would rather be making love with whoever was on the other end than with me.
I was too deflated to ask any questions, and just rolled over and tried to sleep.
The next day was Sunday, and I thought Carl would show me the city, but around lunchtime he told me: “Xaviera, I have to go see my mother and give her a hand with an art exhibition she is helping open today. So please forgive me for leaving you alone for a while. Watch TV or write your folks a letter, and when I come back around six, we’ll go out for a nice dinner.”
Alone in the apartment I was confused and miserable. After all those months, couldn’t he make himself available to take his fiancée somewhere on her first whole day in America?
The afternoon dragged by; six o’clock came and went, then seven, eight, nine, ten-and still no Carl. There was no food in the fridge, and I was very hungry and feeling sorry for myself, and by ten-fifteen when Carl returned I was lying on the bed in tears.
Next morning he left early for work, and again by ten that night he had not returned home. When the phone rang, I answered it on the chance that it might be him.
“Who is this?” a strangely accented woman’s voice demanded.
“My name is Xaviera, Carl Cordon’s fiancée,” I answered. “And who is this?”
There was a stunned silence, then her reply: “My name is Rona Wong – and Carl Cordon is my fiancé.”
The voice started relating a story, some of which I already knew, of how, where, and why they had met.
“Tell me,” I asked. “How come you’re in New York?”
“Carl asked me to come here from Kingston and marry him.” Rona told me of Carl’s urging, and under his sponsorship she had tossed up her job, left her son with friends, and come to New York five months before.