Galactic Dreams

Beatrice recoiled as the floor opened and the food dishes, table, chairs, dropped through the yawning gap. An instant before the floor closed again she heard the beginning of a terrible crash. Good God, he had thrown it all away, silverware, crystal, the lot. The orchestra and dancers were whisked from their podium and for a dreadful moment she was afraid they were bound for the incinerator as well.

“Do you like Rembrandt?” he asked, pointing to an immense painting that covered the rear wall. She turned to look. “`The Night Watch,’ one of my favorites.”

“I thought it was in Holland …” she began, then turned her head at a sound behind her and could not finish.

A long, oaken table with two matching refectory chairs had appeared and was laden with tier upon tier of food.

“Smorrebrod,” Ron said, “to be correct, since they are not really sandwiches. There are five hundred here, so I’m sure you will find your favorites. And beer, Tuborg F. F., of course. This is the only fine food that is to be eaten with beer, and akvavit, the sly Danish snaps, served frozen in a block of ice. There are rules, you know.”

She had not known, but she was learning. She served herself and ate, and her thoughts flickered like the candles before her. Before she was through eating she was stern and firm again, because she knew full well what was happening.

“You think you can buy me with your money,” she told him, as she spooned up the last mouthful of rode grod med flode. I am supposed to be impressed, grateful for all this, so grateful that I will let you do … what you want to do.”

“Not at all.”

He smiled, and his smile was sincerely charming. “I will not deny that there are girls that can be bought with trinkets and meals, but not you. All this, as you so charmingly put it, is here merely for our pleasure while I am determining what your excuse will be.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. In simpler cultures lovers clasp to one another in mutual agreement, no aggressor, no loser. We have lost this simplicity and substituted for it a ritualized game. It is called seduction. Women are seduced by men, therefore remain pure. When in reality they have both enjoyed the union of love, mankind’s greatest glory and pleasure, and the word seduction is just the excuse the women use to permit it. Every woman has some hidden excuse that she calls seduction, and the artifice of man is in finding that excuse.”

“Not I!”

“Yes, you. Yours is not one of the common ones. You will not seek the simple excuse of excessive drink, rough force, simple gratitude or anything so plebeian. But we shall find it; before dawn we will know.”

“I’ll hear no more,” she said, dropping her spoon and standing. “I wish to leave for the theater now.”

Once out of this place she knew she would be safe; she would not return.

“By all means, permit me,” he held out his arm and she took it. They walked toward the far wall, which lifted silently to reveal a theater within which there were just two seats. “I have hired the entire Yugoslavian company for the evening; they are waiting to begin.

Speechless she sat, and by the end of the performance her mind was still as unsettled as when she had come in. As they applauded she waited, tensely, for him to make his move, so tightly wound that she started visibly when he took her hand.

“You must not,” he said, “be afraid of me or of violence. That is not for you, my darling. For you, for us now there is a glass of simple cognac while we discuss the delightful Serbo-Croatian performance that we have just seen.”

They exited through the only door, which led now to a brocaded room where a Hungarian violinist played gypsy airs. As they seated themselves at the table a tailcoated waiter appeared carrying a bottle on a plush cushion. He placed it, with immense care, upon the center of the table.

“I trust no one but myself to open a bottle like this: the corks are fragile as dust,” Ron said, then added, “I imagine that you have never tasted Napoleon brandy before?”

“If it’s from California I have,” she told him, with all sincerity. He closed his eyes.

“No,” he said in a slightly choked voice, “it is not from the State of California, but comes from France, the land of the mother of wines. Distilled, bottled and laid gently down during the short but glorious reign of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte…”

“But that must be hundreds and hundreds of years ago?”

“Precisely. Each year this emperor of cognacs grows a little, grows more scarce as well. I have men working for me whose only occupation is to scour the world for more, to pay any price. I will not profane a conversation about beauty by mentioning what was paid for this one. You must judge for yourself if it was worth it.”

As he talked he had been working delicately and skillfully to remove the cork without damaging it. With a faint gasping sound it at last slid free and was placed reverently on a napkin. Into each round-bellied snifter he then poured but a golden half inch and gave one to her.