13. HE SEES YOU!

The doorbell rang. Have they all returned from the race already? For a moment the children panicked. Victor quickly pulled on his pants and scampered around, awkward and confused, all his bravery and gusto evaporating. Suddenly he grabbed Robby’s arm and stuttered, “You won’t tell anybody, will you?”

“Of course not,” Robby said, a wave of guilt sending a deep blush to his cheeks.

“Because if you do,” Victor tried to transfer his own fear into Robby, “they’ll beat you up. They’ll kill you.”

“No one will touch me,” Robby said proudly. “My father never lays a hand on me. But your father and big brother will beat you to death!” He found satisfaction and a sense of supremacy in the thought. It was his small revenge for all those childhood myths violently shattered by Victor’s hot breath. He was still shaken by the vision of his father and mother, naked in bed, in coitus, doing just as he and Victor had done. He ran to open the door, ready to confess everything he’d done, ready to bear the punishment, whatever it may be.

“What are you doing here?”

At the door was Claude Cohen, chubby and bespectacled, grinning broadly.

“What are you doing here?” Robby repeated.

“What am I doing here? You invited me. Me and Isaac and Maxie Ephraim.”

“Isaac and Maxie?”

“You said we’d play with marbles. In your hall, on the rug.”

“Here, in the hall, on the rug?”

Victor came out and glanced at the guest with a curious smile. Claude was wearing a white suit with a red tie. His shorn hair was covered with a small, red newsboy cap with the initials “C.C.” embroidered in gold. A pampered little boy. Victor’s bouncy eyes could already see the suit folded carefully on the chair, and Claude lying on the rug, his round, white behind served up as if on a platter. Victor trembled with expectation and said in a hoarse voice, “Do you want … want to play with us, Claude?”

“Yes,” said Claude. “What are you playing?”

“A very nice game,” said Victor. “Right, Robby?”

“Ye…es,” Robby stuttered.

“You want us to show you how to play so you can join us?”

“Is it a new game?” Claude asked naively, his smiling eyes shifting from one boy to the next.

“A new game,” Victor laughed. “Robby wants to show you.”

“No,” Robby called out with alarm.

“Why not?” asked Victor.

“Why not,” asked Claude, “is it dangerous?”

Robby could imagine himself playing all these forbidden, even dirty games, as they’d been categorized in his puritanical mind, with Victor. He could file away and push aside all these acts in a secret drawer, never to be discussed. But he could never imagine this good little boy—his parents were an elderly couple blessed in their old age with little Claude and they treated him with kid gloves—agreeing to bare his dainty behind and receive Victor’s iron rod. He would probably escape, disgusted, and that would be the end of their friendship. Robby knew that Victor was trying to push him away from his other friends, jealous and wanting full control of him. Claude mustn’t know that he’d been seduced by Victor, mustn’t even suspect it. But while he busied himself with these thoughts, Victor was already standing before them, naked as the day he was born, wagging his reddish penis.

Claude was confused. “What’s going on? Does he need to pee?”

Victor twisted on the rug again in a wild dance of laughter. Finally he said, “I want … I want to show you the game we’ve been playing.”

“What, you play this game naked?” Claude asked incredulously. His English nanny, Miss Pleasance, would probably advise against such games, but … to hell with his nanny! Claude looked at Robby expectantly, hoping for confirmation. Robby shrugged. Whatever happens, happens! He sat down on the armchair and watched Victor, who didn’t hesitate and whispered something in Claude’s ear. Claude blushed, and immediately smiled. The more the devil whispered in his ear, the more his smile grew. It seemed that this delicate mama’s boy was not disgusted by Victor’s indecent offers in the least.

“Each of us will lie down in turn, and the others will stick it to him,” Victor set the rules of the game. To prevent any potential objections, he volunteered to lie down first, and raised his thin, pointy, dirty behind. Claude quickly removed his clothes, not even taking time to arrange them carefully, as was his habit. He put all his weight on Victor and tried to push his tiny member into him, giggling with pleasure. He breathed hard, going up and down, and never stopped making sounds of liberated joy, a kind that Robby had never heard him make before, not even when they played with marbles.

“Enough!” Victor said. “Now it’s Robby’s turn.”

“Already?” Claude grumbled, but he respected authority. Victor had taken on the role of Miss Pleasance, and he had to be obeyed. He stood up with a heavy breath, his penis, blushed with friction, hiding beneath his small white paunch, resembling the whitewashed dome of a mosque.

“Come on, Robby,” said Victor.

Claude urged him on. “Don’t you want to? You should, it’s good.”

“I know it’s good, I knew it before you!” Robby announced. This little spoiled brat was going to tell him it was good? As if he wasn’t already the more experienced one. He quickly undressed and pounced at Victor, who sounded a loud “Ayyy,” Robby’s weight almost breaking his bones, but then immediately closed his eyes and gave himself into that vibrating, caressing pleasure. What a difference between Robby’s light agility and Claude’s bear-like clumsiness. But it would all be worth it once it was his turn to ride Claude. A plump, soft behind held pleasures that surpassed even his wildest imagination.

“Now it’s Claude’s turn to lie down,” Victor announced, barely stopping himself from jumping for joy. Claude obeyed at once, lying down on the rug and trying to mimic Victor’s posture. It was hard for him to disguise the discomfort of lying on his stomach atop the coarse rug. His penis was pricked by the hard bristles, but he didn’t say a word. Victor sensed his discomfort and suggested moving to the back room at the end of the hall, where there was a soft sofa. Robby objected vehemently. Victor argued that in the back room they’d be better protected from unpleasant surprises, because if anyone suddenly entered the room, they would have to cross the entire hallway, giving the kids time to get dressed and pretend to have been doing something else. “Besides,” Victor added with an ingratiating smile, “this rug is too rough for Clau-Clau’s fine skin.”

Claude nodded happily, not protesting the nickname. Robby remembered that he himself tried to call him that once, and Claude got mad and forbade him from ever using the name again.

Robby stood his ground and refused to reveal the reason behind his objections: on the wall of the back room was a picture of a man in his thirties, dressed in fashion predating the Second World War, his hair slicked back carefully, his face grave, almost gloomy, unsmiling, his eyes penetrating and all-seeing, until you couldn’t help but look away from his accusatory gaze. Accusatory? What did I do to deserve this look? Could he have … no! He couldn’t have known … that picture was taken before I was born. Then why is he looking at me that way?

It was a photograph of his father.

Once, when he committed some prank in that room, one of his brothers came up to him and said, “Stop, he can see you!” Robby stopped immediately, and then his brother mocked him for it. Nevertheless, Robby couldn’t imagine him and his friends humping one another in front of his father’s stern, open stare. Of course he wouldn’t tell them his reasoning, knowing they would mock him the way his brother had, and try to persuade him.

Seeing that this was a lost cause, Victor suggested going to his own parents’ bedroom, emphasizing the proposition with a gallant gesture, to signal how much more generous than Robby he was. Claude ran ahead with excitement toward those soft pillows, and Robby could hear the springs of the mattress protesting as he landed.

When the brothers, Isaac and Maxie Ephraim, showed up, the three boys didn’t even bother to get dressed and pretend to play marbles. The two new arrivals undressed with haste and joined in the fun, as though this had always been their favorite game.