"I am rich. I have become wealthy. I don't need anything.”
Yet you do not realize that you are miserable, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.
Revelation, II I - 17
 
 
Walter stumbled into a different world—an unknown, insane Dionysian world of ritual madness and ecstasy. Men floated through the bar room like liquid ghosts…clustered in the center of the room, apparently at random, but in truth, bonded in constellations established before Walter showed up. Dancers writhed with intoxicating energy.
 
Visceral images…bodies in maddening contortions—bent over and wriggling…with musical slithering around a pole under the hungry looks of the depraved.
 
The music attacked Walter’s ears—and became more vigorous and wild. He watched—in equal parts annoyed and mesmerized.
 
As the terminal heir of his noble family, it was given that he should behave in a suitable manner. A dignified manner.
 
Only an isolated, disturbed and sad life could explain his behavior.
 
Men, like a mindless herd, moved with anticipation toward the stage—closer to the gyrating, stimulating bodies. The dancers writhed as if possessed by lurid, irresistible forces.
 
That’s when Walter noticed her…dancing with her kindred spirits—with red cheeks and quickened breath. Her thick black hair fell to her shoulders like rivers of night. She was as skinny and limber as a willow sapling. When her dark stare locked on Walter, he became the refreshing sip that satisfied her thirst.
 
He needed to escape the walls surrounding his truth…the facts of his righteous upbringing. His memories were filled with flitting images; pictures filled with pious sadness—cold, austere mental photographs. Madeline’s dancing and sweating released him. She was the master of the unspoken language of love. She wedged herself into his needy life… after each show…wrapping around his dry, pallid body in the dark alleys around the bar.
 
After every release, late in the night after he closed his eyes, the fragrance of her warm body drifted through his senses. It was as if the country was bathed in smoke; her decadence was like a fruit, sweet and tender—scented by tamarind filling his nostrils…mingling with the gusty cheers of the men for whom she performed every night.
 
The ghosts in her eyes should have warned him of what was to come.
 
The more he desired her warm, pliable body under him, the more she haunted him. Her voice echoed through the disintegrated and decomposed hollows of his spirit . She bled his senses dry.
 
His family never talked about the indiscretions of the common man. Madeleine made him feel important and desired. He was permitted to lose his identity—that heavy anchor dragging his soul into the deep.
 
One day he took her hand, her hot and rough hand, looked her in the eyes, and begged.
 
“Madeleine. Let me stay with you forever.”
 
Wearing a distracted smile, she peered into his lonely gray spirit. Her wild vulgar heart would never belong to anyone—she felt immense satisfaction in that knowledge.