The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children by Brendan Connell Page A

responsibility . . .”
    Allen looked on with raised eyebrows and an amused expression.
    “ You don’t expect me to work, do you?” he asked.
    “ I not only expect you to work, but to make something of yourself. It is obvious that business does not appeal to you at present. Fine. You’re young. Time will undoubtedly show you its value. But for now, choose some occupation, some honourable occupation, and follow it. . . . So . . . What do you want to do? Tell me.”
    “ Shop.”
    “ Excuse me?”
    “ Shop . . . I really do like clothes you know. I could spend a few years inspecting the various boutiques and——”
    “ Enough,” his father, Ralph Hutton, cried out. “Being a clothes horse is not an occupation. It is a moral failing. Now what are you going to do with yourself?”
    The younger man rolled his eyes back in his head, and stroked his moustache. The role of son bored him. The things he liked were not tasks but fantasies. There was pleasure, the absurd and the sensual; there was what could be paid for and what he did not care to touch; and other things he was willing to sample.
    V.
     
    Bipeds moved along the streets of the city, many bearing themselves with the ease of the financially secure; the smile of laziness adhered to faces; women’s puffed lips strangely decorous: we see opulence and laugh, hear the languages of the world warbled. And then the click of Italianate shoes, red heels gliding over the deeper shade of brick. Eccentric he was, walking as if those around him did not exist, were invisible, certainly not worth notice. But her, strangely his wife, honeymoon fresh, if not dripping sweet, bizarre.
    Before the glass panes of a jewellery establishment, whose reputation was not in the least exaggerated, Allen stopped, the woman following suit.
    “ What a gorgeous display,” he said.
    The Etruscan fibula shaped like a twisted pelican; the bracelet a golden serpent eating its own tail, eyes of sphene, body marked with red enamel; earrings, thin, sunny disks showing the river god Achelous; a necklace, each bead a golden, pregnant woman, each womb a semiprecious stone; and that tiara, simple, like a cluster of aspen leaves in fall.
    “ I want you to have them,” Allen said, an odd sparkle in his eyes. “The entire collection. . . . My wedding present. . . . To you.”
    “ I don’t think this is the kind of jewellery one actually wears ,” she commented.
    “ Of course it is. You’ll wear it,” he said, going through the door.
    *
    “ Undress,” he said.
    She blushed, guardedly satisfied, breasts stiffened, risen. The dress dropped from her shoulders, girdle unfastened, drawers, like a crumpled petal of orchid, lay at her feet. She stood, legs pressed together, a white, bare stroke of apparent virginity, a conflux of drooling stars.
    I am molten love , she knew . I am a sea anemone, a fluctuating bubble of blood. I am in need, of taking, entwining, wrapping my boneless limbs around, burping gorgeous obscenities—I am snow-coated coal—I am a moonlit well—I am naked, a woman, beauty of woman, in long of love. I am me. I am me.
    “ Put the jewels on now,” he said.
    “ Jewels?”
    “ The diamonds, the necklace, that lovely bracelet. And, oh yes—the tiara, the tiara.”
    His voice hoarse.
    “ You are a funny one,” she said.
    She felt them cold against her skin, grinning around her neck, licking her wrists, lashed to her head. She felt something spook around her, enter into her, as yet undefined, inscrutable . . .
    She walked toward him, feeling the carpet beneath her feet.
    “ No,” he said. “Just stay there. Let me look at you.”
    “ I am cold.”
    “ Stay there! The jewellery is so wonderful. It really is.”
    Pleasure unsought, untasted. Breasts of bread, thighs, joining in a bottomless pit that yet bears reflection; a bubbling slug. Perversion, the skinless dog of art, crawls, flesh bare, an exposed and living wound, salivating magenta, pools of slick filth.
    And, to