By
Santa Montefiore
“I have a very special gift for you, mi amor,” he said. His rough hands made her skin bristle and the scent of his body, sweat mingled with the warm smell of horses, invaded her nostrils and turned her blood into honey. But it was his voice that had melted her modesty. It was deep and chalky with a heavy Argentine accent. The kind of accent an Englishwoman dreams of but later regrets. The kind of accent that gets her into all sorts of trouble. So it was with Lara. The flat land of the pampa had captivated her mind but Rafael had ensnared her senses.
Lara had arrived on the estancia La Magdalena a few months before when spring had covered the ground with violet petals from the jacaranda trees and the air was sweet with the fragrance of eucalyptus. The roar of hooves thundered in the distance as the men played polo in the sticky heat of late afternoon and a pack of skinny dogs roamed the park with their noses to the ground, following the smell of the barbeque being cooked slowly by the gauchos beneath the umbrella of a red ceibo tree. Lara was enchanted. Teaching English to a couple of Argentine children in a place such as this would be heavenly.
Isabelita Madrazo had welcomed her with enthusiasm. She had stretched out her long brown arms and pulled the eighteen year old into her heavily perfumed breast. “Mi amor, welcome.” Her voice was that of a younger woman as was her waist that narrowed into faded jeans, emphasising her bosom which burst out of her low cut T-shirt like froth on the top of a cappuccino. Lara wasn’t used to such an exaggerated display of friendliness and recoiled. If Isabelita had appeared glamorous from a distance, up close she resembled a decaying southern belle. The intense Argentine sun had not only bleached her hair but ravaged her skin, which had begun to melt like an ice cream in summer. As tough as an old leather saddle and ruthlessly tanned it shone with the polish of too many surgical lifts. With exuberance she introduced Lara to her two small children, Carlos and Pia. She hadn’t been prepared for a third child. “This is Rafael, my husband’s son,” Isabelita declared when he strode in all sweat and dust after a game of polo. The disappointment Lara had suffered on meeting his stepmother dissolved into something more primitive.
“Encantado,” he said casually, as if he was unaware of the sudden change in the air that now vibrated with the invisible force of desire. He kissed her, as was the custom, and she felt the stubble on his face and his breath on her skin and the easy relinquishing of her heart. When she could only stare at him in mute admiration his lips had curled into a small smile. The smile of a man used to the power of his charisma.
He had watched her. Taken in her pale English looks, her languid blue eyes and the ripeness of her youth. Then he had kissed her in the pool as the cool Argentine spring simmered into summer. He had waited until they were alone and then swum up behind her, placing his hands on her waist and spinning her around to face him. He had made love to her right there, as the humid pampa resounded gently with the snorting of ponies and the music of the gauchos as they sang a melancholic tango to the accompaniment of a guitar.
Now he was gazing at her with an intensity she hadn’t seen before. They were alone in his room. It was hot and the heady scent of jasmine rose up from the garden below. “I have a gift for you. A very special gift,” he said. Then he reached for the parcel beside the bed.
“You shouldn’t have,” she protested.
“Go on,” he insisted and smiled at her excitedly. She sat up and tore at the paper with impatient hands. Then she pulled out a shiny silk corset, lace panties and suspenders of the richest red, the colour of blood. She giggled nervously.
“Surely you don’t expect me to wear this,” she exclaimed, thinking it were surely some sort of joke. “It’s the kind of thing May West would have worn.” He looked offended.
“Of course I do, mi amor. I want you to wear it always and never take it off.” His eyes burned with such zeal that she knew he meant it. He pulled the corset up to his face and ran his lips over the silk. “I don’t think you understand,” he continued, his voice now quiet, almost reverent. “Let me tell you the story of this silk. It is the finest in the world. Only one man produces it. He is a blind man with the long white hair of a disillusioned artist and the long fine fingers of a man who could once fashion anything out of clay. But he lost his sight and his ability to give life to stone. But he never lost the sensitivity of his touch.” Lara no longer laughed but listened as he translated into poetry the significance of the silk. “He has sacrificed everything to this obsession. You see, silk is all he can feel. Only he knows the secret of the magic worm. These little silkmakers cannot be found anywhere else, not even in China. Juan Pedro de Seda is the man I speak of and he lives in a little village outside Seville that you can only get to by mule. You know, it takes one thousand little worms five years to weave enough silk for this corset. Imagináte, one thousand little worms. Feel it.” He took her hand and placed it upon the fabric. “You see, have you ever felt anything as soft, as rich, as delicate? I have always longed to caress a woman’s body when it is wrapped in silk. A man can lose his power at the feel of silk against flesh, like Samson when Delilah cut off his hair.” And he ran his lips over it again, closing his eyes and breathing in the luxuriance of the fabric. “One thousand worms, imagine!” He then handed it to her. “Put it on.” As she stepped into the red lace panties, fastened the clip on the suspender belt and fitted the corset around her waist she could feel his gaze consuming her. If it hadn’t been for the beautiful manner in which he had presented it to her, she would have thought the gift a little peculiar. But when she turned and witnessed his face soften into submission and felt the power the silk gave her, she discarded her fears and abandoned herself to such a sensual talisman. She stood over him and allowed him to caress the bodice with trembling fingers. Suddenly this muscular Latin man was endowed with the vulnerability of a poet. He devoured the contours of her body, touching her skin where it joined the silk, as if worshipping a deity. He kissed the tops of her breasts that spilled over the lace and sighed in rapture, but she didn’t laugh as she otherwise might have done because she remembered Juan Pedro de Seda and his silkmakers and was humbled.
He asked her not to tell anyone and she couldn’t help but oblige him for no one knew of their affair, not even his stepmother. In the weeks that followed she was barely able to concentrate on Carlos and Pia. But she persisted because Isabelita praised her with such enthusiasm. She would sit on the fence and watch Rafael stick and ball with his naked torso glistening in the sun. He would canter up to her and snatch a secret kiss. “Are you wearing the silk?” he would ask and she would smile at him coquettishly and say that she was. “How does it feel?”
“Soft,” she would lie, for it was uncomfortable. But she remembered Juan Pedro de Seda and his little silkmakers and the pain was worthwhile. Rafael’s dark eyes would gleam with the same fever that fuelled their lovemaking and her heart would inflate like a bubble and carry her through the hours until they were alone again in his room at the top of the house.
As summer died into autumn and the day of her departure approached Lara became increasingly morose. The thought of leaving Rafael caused her so much distress that she was unable to sleep. She lay in his arms, suffocated with anguish. She wanted him to speak of a future together, but he never mentioned it. He avoided the subject by kissing her sad face and playing with the lace on her suspenders, the silk on her panties and the chords on the bodice. “Do you remember the story of Juan Pedro de Seda and his little silkmakers? To think it takes one thousand worms five years to produce such silk,” he would say and Lara was amazed that in spite of her misery that story still had the power to debilitate her.
Then the night before her departure she made an impulsive decision. She wouldn’t leave. She would ask Isabelita if she could stay. She knocked on the door of Isabelita’s room. It was evening. The humidity was now replaced by an icy chill as the winter winds swept over the plains. She shuddered and pulled her sweater around her. She felt the silk beneath her clothing and smiled. “Come in,” Isabelita shouted. Nothing could have prepared her for the sight of Rafael’s stepmother sitting at her dressing table. It wasn’t her bare face that so offended Lara, or her naked flesh that had the texture of crepe paper and seemed to cling to her limbs with great difficulty, but the bright red corset, the silk and lace panties and the suspenders, the colour of blood, that restrained her body. Isabelita noticed Lara’s cheeks turn as pale as death and she looked at her reflection in the glass and laughed.
“The finest silk,” she said, staring upon herself with awe. “My husband bought it for me when we married. I never take it off for it has a strange power that men find impossible to resist. Only one man produces it. He is a blind man with the long white hair of a disillusioned artist and the long fine fingers of a man who could once fashion anything out of clay. Only he knows the secret of the magic worm. These little silkmakers cannot be found anywhere else, not even in China. Juan Pedro de Seda is the man I speak of and he lives in a little village outside Seville that you can only get to by mule. You know, it takes one thousand little worms five years to weave enough silk for this corset. Five years, imagináte!”
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