Goddess

It was a very old sandstone building. I knocked on the door and Father Patrick opened it as if he had been standing on the other side, waiting for me to come. He made me sit on an old wooden chair facing the old style coal-burning heater that every winter would be responsible for giving a bad smell to the room and the entire neighbourhood.

I told him everything, including my newly found religious doubts. When I finished talking he took my hand an guided me to the church where we prayed for hours. When we stood up he said 'My son, you have been tempted by the dark forces of evil and you must pray for God to show you the way to your redemption and salvation'. I felt calmer.

I went home and did not have any dinner, only a shower and more prayers before going to bed. Sleep was very slow in coming. I tossed and turn for hours before exhaustion overtook me.

Camille is naked with me in my bed. She is teasing me, making me more and more aroused. Every time that I am about to penetrate her she moves away, slippery as an eel, offering me different parts of her body for my mouth and my hands to play with. Laughter in her eyes, a raging fire burning in her body and mine.

I woke up with a scream just as I ejaculated on the sheets. That night I drank in two hours my entire weekly supply of wine. I was completely drunk but sleep still eluded me.

I was late to work that Monday morning and I didn't drive there, still operating in slow motion through multiple layers of alcoholic clouds occupying the space normally reserved for my brain. 'Frank you better go and get a shave and pull yourself together before John sees you. What were you doing last night to be in such a state?' Maureen was the mother of us all. She had been with the paper for more years than anyone else, keeping everybody guessing about her age, although she was not all that older than myself. She was always there, always reliable, always ready to give others her support and her objective and well balanced views. I walked into the Gent's and looked at myself in the mirror. I was not a pretty sight. Deep dark circles surrounding my blood shot eyes and an unshaven face. I went back to Maureen. 'I'm not feeling well, and some other time I'll tell you what happened last night. For the time being please tell John that I'm sick and that I'm going back home'. She looked at me with sad eyes, pat me on my shoulder and said ' OK, just be sure that you take care of yourself.' I took a taxi back to my place, my head aching, but my thoughts clearer than ever before. It was simple, I was going to find Camille.

I showered, shaved and changed to look as respectable as possible. A triple strength coffee was helping push the effects of the alcohol away and multiple aspirins were beginning to make a dent in my headache. Half an hour later I was at Sydney University Library, sitting at a table with a pile of handbooks covering each of the metropolitan universities.

She is not going to slip away from me. No way!

I had done my share of investigative journalism and I knew that for every second of glamour there are many hours of hard slog, for every success many failures but I was ill prepared for the results of my search. Six hours of solid work and I had not been able to find the slightest trace of a Camille Sanspeur teaching in any of the Universities in Sydney. A search of the library catalogue failed to show any book or journal article listing her as the author.

Despondent, I decided to go for a walk and try to see Philip Archer, one of my contacts teaching in that campus. I was double lucky: He was in his room and he was sober. He offered me a drink from his filing cabinet. 'To what do I owe the honour of your visit? Is there a new scandal that I'm not aware of?' He prided himself of knowing everything that went on in what he called his patch. 'I'm trying to locate a woman that I believe is a senior tutor in Psychology in one of the Universities, maybe Sydney, may be Macquarie, or could be New South Wales, I'm not really sure. She's in her mid to perhaps late twenties and her name is Camille Sanspeur. Do you know her?' He looked at me in my eyes with a broad smile in his face 'I bet that she was both, good looking and…should I say elusive?'

I feel like punching you to erase the smile from your alcoholic face. What do you know of life? Isolated inside your ivory tower, thinking that reality is only what is proven by an inconsequential experiment within the confines of the campus.

'What makes you say that?' I asked. 'Do you speak French Franco?' 'No'. 'I gathered as much, Sans Peur in the august language of the equally august Emile Zola means Without Fear. I know that you would not accept a piece of free advice, but if I were you I would stay away from her. Fearless women tend to be both a health and a wealth hazard.' I turned around and stormed out of the room. As I half run, half walked down the corridor his laughing to himself, celebrating his wit and my desperation seemed to grow louder, repeating like a constant echo in my ears.

She is not going to slip away from me. No way!

*******************

John

I called Frank to my office because I wanted him to become a member of the team. I run a tight ship here and, really, those who are not one hundred per cent with me are against me. I have known Frank from our school days at St Joseph's so I thought of giving him a final chance. He's a strange character, always alone, not mixing with anyone at the paper, never quite belonging. For what I know he has no friends outside work either. He does a good job but that will not save his skin if he doesn't pull into line once and for all and starts treating me in accordance with my rank. Even though I don't particularly like him I made an effort not to come too hard on him from the beginning, so I tried to make some conversation on things that we have in common.

The first idea that came to my mind was his ex wife. She is a real bitch that left him so I thought of talking about my own experience of betrayal. My ex wife should have been committed to a psychiatric hospital when she left me. The truth of the matter is that the bastard that she is living with now managed to poison her mind against me, so she just dumped her obligations as a wife and left me. I did and still do my duty to ensure that she gets the punishment that anyone doing what she did deserves. I made sure that she got nothing from me so she wouldn't be able to enjoy it with that … 'thing', I only gave her enough money to stop her from taking me into a court battle, not one cent more. I even managed to get her sacked from her job but unfortunately she got another one. I worked hard at isolating her from friends and family but on the long run she established new friendships that I cannot influence. I am sure that Justice will finally come to her! She shall not be able to avoid forever the punishment that she has earned. I will make sure of that. She deserves it and it is my duty and God given right to make sure that she gets punished!

It was clear to me that Frank didn't want to hear what I had to say. He looked as if his mind was moving through a completely different landscape. For all I know he could have even been working out his shopping list instead of listening to me. At one stage he even dared to tell me that what I was saying was ancient history!

The bastard! He's not interested in what is right, he is a wimp who doesn't care about the bitch of his wife kicking him out or mine leaving me to go to bed with that other bloody … 'thing'! He doesn't want to do what a righteous man would see as his duty in a case like his: The punishment that God and morals demand, and then keep punishing her until she goes back to serve him, as a wife should. Franco doesn't even show any respect for those above him. He thinks that he is the one in the high moral ground but I have the perfect vehicle to put him in his place: I will assign him to cover the socialite's special on Sunday. I know that he hates those jobs and on top of that he is always telling everyone that he likes to spend the weekend with his kids. This is a good day: God is smiling at me and approving of Franco being punished twice!

*******************

Father Patrick

I was studying the Bible when Frank rang me. I have known him for many years, I helped him through his divorce and that was bad enough, being asked to leave his home because his wife could not see his virtues and dedication to our faith. She could only see the desires of her flesh rather than the dictates of our church. I often think of the mortal danger to the spiritual development of their kids, growing up without the constraint of religion, at the mercy of desires specially Frank's daughter, so unprotected, too free I would say. But one thing is for certain, not even at the peak of that ordeal I had heard him sounding so distraught. He didn't say much on the phone, just 'Father Patrick this is Franco Sand. I have to talk to you' but he sounded like a madman.

When he told me what had happened I saw the devil's work as if it was painted in a canvas the size of the entire sky. What other explanation can be put forward? Who would be the woman who would soil her body like that? What did she do it for? No, she was not of this world, she was doing the devil's bidding!

I listened to Frank in amazement and with horror. A man who had dedicated his life to God's work was now thinking that Our Lord was a sadist! Forty years of Christian education dragged through the mud of copulation because of a 'mystery woman'! Where had his values gone? Why didn't he think of the poor example he was giving to his son and his daughter? It could be nothing else but the devil's work!

Frank must redeem himself before he drags his own children into damnation with the unthinking cooperation of their mother. No, I cannot allow that to happen. I will dedicate all my energy to ensure that redemption does not elude him!

*******************

Maureen

I saw Frank coming in this morning and he looked awful. I had to tell him to spruce himself up before John saw him. John is a control freak that demands subservience and dependence on him from everyone. So much so that he thinks that Frank is too independent. My God! Frank is really only a poor man living in a world that has nothing to do with what his ideology says it should be. He's virtually paralised by religious demands and has isolated himself more and more. I accidentally met his wife Pat just before she asked him to leave and I suppose that because I'm a good listener she told me with a great deal of detail what her life had become. She talked about the boredom, the frustrations, the building up of desires that she knew would go unfulfilled. She told me that she was sick and tired of masturbating because he would not even touch her and that what she wanted was a real man by her side or, better still, a whole troop of men rather than a single 'unexciting wimp like Frank'. Strong words! However those of us who know Frank would be very much inclined to agree. I don't think that anyone in his right mind can blame Pat.

Frank is a lovely character incapable of hurting the proverbial fly and he is by no means unattractive. He is probably too ethical for an environment like this where the impudence of incompetence reign supreme. But it doesn't matter how many qualities one can find in him, he always remains Boring with a capital 'B'!

I wandered what happened to him during the weekend to make him act so much out of character. Perhaps he got lucky and finally found a woman prepared to rape him! I think that would be the only hope that he would have to go to bed with a woman. In fact I think that if he was trying to seduce somebody and he had to make the choice between reading her the Kama Sutra or The Life of the Saints he would always select the latter.

Poor Frank!

*******************

Philip

How can I describe Frank? People could really take their pick, like a multiple choice question in an examination. It would go something like

What of the following statements best describe Franco Sand?

    (a) Sanctimonious bastard
    (b) Boring beyond belief
    (c) Sexually incompetent
    (d) Well read
    (e) All of the above

My answer for a perfect score would be (e). He follows the dictates of the Catholic Church to the letter, which is a perfect recipe for becoming boring beyond belief. Being so boring he would not be able to convince any woman to join him in bed, hence he would be sexually incompetent because of his lack of practice. Finally, without having a sex life he has lots of time up his sleeve to dedicate to reading, therefore he is well read. Definitely (e)

When he came asking for Camille Sanspeur I though it was a joke, but Frank has never been known for having a good sense of humour, so I came to the conclusion that somebody had played a joke on him but he wasn't laughing. In fact he looked very serious indeed. It was blatantly obvious to me that he had had sex with this woman, otherwise he would not have been making the effort to find her again, choosing the continuation of his solitary existence instead. What intrigued me most was who would be prepared to go to bed with him?