House of Doors

Buenos Aires resume el universo

Buenos Aires encapsulates the universe

Baldomero Fernandez Moreno

My feet were weary when I first met Diego Maldonado Hernandez at a shabby bar in the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires. It was a warm evening, the local porteños lounging at street corners. The faint sound of a milango drifted down the dusty lane of beaten, one-story homes.

I was far from my apartment on Belgrano Street, this was many years ago. I had been wandering the back streets of the city for several hours, my mind verging down morbid channels. It had been finally necessary for me to stop for a drink, and some food.

I took my beer, not cold enough in my hands, to a back room, dark and disreputable. There were three tables. Diego nodded to me from one. An older couple occupied the other, muttering with frowned mouths obliquely at each other.

I sipped from the bottle and ruminated. It would be late when I finally returned to my bed, and just as well that the day had exhausted itself. There would be another, tomorrow. And one after that.

Diego leaned over and casually asked me my thoughts on literature. I started, this was the last topic I expected to be broached here, in the back room of this dingy bar. Diego was perhaps forty, clean-shaven, with even, angular features and a sharp nose. His clothing was of better quality than the establishment warranted. I replied cautiously, curious to see where our words would take us.

He expressed respect for Joyce, Kafka, even Forster, although he voiced a violent distaste, to my surprise, for Márquez. "Fanciful beyond belief!" he spat. "Gets lost in his preposterous imagination and leads the reader astray!"

This was absurd, of course, and I felt compelled to rebut his assertion, more pedantically perhaps than necessary. *

Our voices rose and our hands gestured as we argued. But he was a quick-witted and well-informed opponent.

The discussion continued for some time, with growing respect for each other, about various of the literary arts. About whether zeugma could function as a legitimate rhetorical device in an inflected language. How the evidential modality tense of verbs altered the mind-set of speakers of Turkish or Hungarian, compared to those whose mother-tongues were English or Spanish. The validity of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. We considered the intrinsic value of Macedonio's writings.

We talked long enough that we drove the other couple away. The old man gave us a withering glance as he rose from their table and they departed. Our conversation he surely felt was smug, aristocratic, showy, and disagreeably cerebral.

"Intelectuales odiosos!" he hissed as a parting shot.

But how had Diego guessed that I would be receptive to debate of such matters? I still ponder over this question.

"Are you fond of women?" he asked, now that we were alone, his dark eyes glinting from beneath the brim of his fedora.

I stared back. What was this query supposed to signify?

"Of course," I said, ignoring the abruptness of the change of topic, "but the price of attraction remains excessive."

"Ah, your bank account is a limitation."

I shook my head. My civil-service position then was comfortable enough. "No. The emotional price."

He nodded in sympathy, perhaps.

We were silent.

He told a long tale, about a large dwelling-place to the west of the city inhabited by extraordinary women, each of whom capable of transporting an ardent male to the ends of the earth. He was explicit about the nature and dexterity of their arts.

"You are a man of the mind," he continued. "Of sophistication. Is there no better salve to an overactive intellect than a woman's flashing eyes? Soft lips? A slippery, fragrant, excited womb?"

I stared back at him.

He described having his penis sucked the week before.

"For almost an hour, this lovely wench had me in her mouth. A body of soft curves, velvet tawny skin, long dark hair. The whole session lasted maybe twice that long. She was extraordinary, beyond belief, as delighted to give me pleasure as I was to receive it.

"Her wet lips sliding up and down my member produced impossibly divine sensations. Just as I felt the semen begin to rise, she would alter her approach, divert my attention, without lessening my arousal, until I was ready for an implosion. My testicles still quiver with the memory."

He continued and I felt my own desire stir with his extended description.

"You are aware of the etymology of the word 'vagina'?" he asked.

I nodded. He smiled.

"Every sword needs a scabbard." His face grew solemn.

We were silent.

"I am leaving Buenos Aires next Wednesday." He confided this in a soft, almost wistful voice. "For good. The ship will take me to Spain. I would like to make you an offer."

I listened carefully in the darkness.

"I have a key to this palace of pleasure, the house of doors. Very few others can say the same. It has never disappointed."

"How much are you asking?" I knew where this was going.

He named a large sum. It was not impossible but would deplete a good portion of my savings.

He saw me hesitate.

"I can give you a taste, once. If you decide against it, then there is no transaction between us and we each are free to go our own way. Yet I would like this key to go to a man worthy of the opportunity." He looked evenly at me. "I think you could be the one."

I could not know then why he wanted a stranger to be the recipient of his offer and not someone more familiar.

He wrote down a street number for the key on the back of his business card, which listed "Antiquarian Bookseller" as his occupation. His own address was in Palermo. "Stop by Tuesday night, after six," he said. "You can either return the key or pay me."

We parted with a handshake at the entrance to the bar. He pressed the key into my palm.

It was a long, archaic item, as if from some ancient hotel, of bronze or brass, large and well used. It felt oppressively heavy in my hand. In my pocket it intruded uncomfortably against my thigh, one would not be able to forget its presence.

"What if I decide not to return it after my trial?" I asked. "You would lose out on a fortune."

He looked at me evenly.

"You will arrive," he said.

The next afternoon I made my way to the address specified, almost to the edge of the city's borders, past small, neglected parks and fields and once prosperous homes. The route led me to the terminus of a long tree-lined street, with a gate at the end. A man in dark clothing from an earlier century stood there. I stopped in front of him.

"I have a key," I said, unsure of his role, what he might say, who he might be. He looked at me without interest and gestured to the lock on the gate.

"Try it," he said.

The key opened the gate, and he pushed it wide for me.

"Will I need the key to get out?" I asked.

"No. There are many exits, all easy, but this is the only way in." He waved me on.

The path took me through a short strand of tangled woods and then opened into a wide, grassy expanse surrounding a huge, stone-surfaced, circular edifice topped by a shallow dome. Six or seven stories high, windows evenly spaced around the outside. I remember trying to calculate how long it would take me to circumnavigate the perimeter. No human was visible.

I found a door, locked, but my key opened it. A short passage led to a long, wood-paneled, curvilinear hallway that ran to each side. Opposing red doors lined the hallway at regular intervals. I turned left, clockwise. My feet echoed as I walked. No one was present. Even during the late afternoon hours it was dark. I finally stopped at one entry and tried the door-knob, which did not turn. I knocked. There was no answer.

My key was sufficient, however. The door opened quietly into a narrow, well-ordered room, with one window at the end, overlooking the inner, circular court-yard.

A slender woman examined me from a table as I entered. I stopped abruptly, she reminded me of an early love interest of mine. I had barely been eighteen at the time.

Long, fine dark hair, intense eyes. A slow smile spread over her face.

Maria Verde once had been a troublesome threat to my sanity, inflaming every cell of my being. Her parents did not approve of me, an impoverished university student with no prospects, thwarting any future we might have had together.

I could not forget the two times we surreptitiously coupled however, how her arms held me close, how tightly her thighs gripped me, her scent, the softness of her hair. If her father had suspected the extent of our intimacies, I would have died with a knife in my back. She told me, and I believed her, that I was her first.

"Maria," I said. "It cannot be you." I knew it wasn't.

She stared back at me, those deep eyes enchanting. She shook her head.

"This is your first visit, no?" Her lips were full, ravishing. Her clothing was simple but elegant.

She served me tea. We talked. I found my thoughts returning to the years of my youth.

We retreated to her bed, a small, simple affair. My excitement removing her blouse, easing her skirt off, was more than nostalgic. Her feet smelled of the earth, the graze of her hands over my chest left me breathless.

We dallied for some time. Her breasts were long and supple, perhaps as Maria's would have become, twenty years after I knew her. The circles surrounding her nipples entranced me. I could not stop tracing their perimeter with my fingers, feeling their pimpled, dark texture.

When her lips first slipped over the head of my cock I closed my eyes and inhaled.

Later when my penis breached her entry it was like coming home. I sank into her warmth, her hands traced lines up and down my back. Her hair was fresh, soft when I pressed my face into its tangle.

While the pleasure of any climax is welcome, the intensity that seized me when my penis finally exploded inside her that afternoon was of a magnitude I had rarely experienced.

It wasn't that I was just reliving my time with Maria, although that surely contributed. All my sensitivities were alive that afternoon -- the totality of her cunt gripping my cock, of her arms around my back, the smell of our sweat commingled, my mouth upon hers -- everything coalesced into a release that left me limp and lifeless on top of her.

I did not want to disengage, wanted to stay forever, but finally she eased me off.

I dressed quietly.

"Thank you," I whispered at her doorway. We kissed. "I will be back."

Her eyes grew wide. "I am afraid not," she said. "Our first and last."

She held my hand, then closed the door. Strangely upset, I knocked. She did not answer. I tried my key in the lock but it did not turn. I walked away, haunted.

On Tuesday Diego answered his door in a white shirt, damp at the armpits. He waved me in.

His lodging was in flux, the lid of a steamer trunk open on one side of his room, clothes and other possessions strewn about. We sat at a table.

"What did you think?" he asked.

His eyes sought mine.

"Celestial."

I slid an envelope towards him. It contained very many peso banknotes, of large denominations.

He inserted the envelope into a notebook on the table.

"Aren't you going to count the bills?" The amount was great enough that I had been anxious for their safety while carrying them on my person across the city.

He smiled and shook his head.

"I know it is all there."

Our talk was halting. I asked about his departure and learned nothing of substance for his plans in Spain.

Finally he stood up.

"I must finish my packing."

We shook hands at his doorstep. I hesitated.

"My liaison," I balked at this use of the term, unsure how to characterize my consort at the house. "She said something about 'first and last.' What did that mean?"

Diego smiled sadly. "Yes, one of the few drawbacks."

He waved me to the street. I left.

I returned to the house the next evening. The gatekeeper ushered me through, but my key did not work on the same exterior door to the house I had utilized earlier. I tried another, some fifty meters further to my right. This time the lock yielded.

The curving hallway looked the same. I tried to find "Maria's" place and only then realized that there were no distinguishing markings on any of the doors, all were identical. I knocked at one at random, with no answer, yet the key let me in, quietly and easily.

A tall woman from Mendoza, judging from her accent, greeted me. We drank maté. Her shoulders and hips were narrow, her nose long, her eyes piercing.

Within a short time, her thighs were gripping me like a vise. My semen was coaxed forth, a sweet timeless activity, violent only at the end.

As I left, we kissed. "I will see you again."

She looked into my eyes and shook her head.

As before, once the door closed, my key would no longer turn in the lock.

I wandered the hallway. The entryways were identical, uniformly spaced. I walked for half an hour. My key worked on no other door that visit.

The next afternoon, instead of picking the first door by chance, I walked the endless hallway and explored. It was highly disorienting, the curved corridor never provided a sense of location, you could be anywhere in the building. The light appeared to come from some hidden upper windows that diffused down the stairwells, so that one could not deduce cardinal coordinates by shadow or light position.

I walked for half an hour or so, not sure if I had come back to my starting place or not. The staircases occurred at regular intervals, and I ascended one to the next floor, which was identical to the ground floor, although with slightly more light.

I stopped at a door and knocked. Again no answer (I found after several visits that there never would be an answer) but my key opened into a room similar to the one from the previous nights except differently appointed. The window looked out over the city, it was a room on the outside perimeter of the house.

A small Indian, likely from the northern provinces, with black hair and bangs, greeted me and offered me maté. Her accent I judged to be Guaraní. Thick, dark armpit hair poked out from her short-sleeved blouse.

Her voice was soft, and after half an hour she had removed her peasant top. Her breasts barely rose off her chest, but hard brown nipples at their centers beckoned. I was taken.

In bed she played with my member for some time, rolling it in her hands, stroking it from top to bottom, until fluid began to ooze from the tip.

She sat on my face, and I reveled in her scent, how avidly she pushed her cunt into my mouth, thick hairs tickling my nose, her over-excited fluids seeping into my beard, while her ass-cheeks clenched and she curled her mons into my face. I coaxed one climax from her, her hands on the brass headboard railing of the bed and her hips grinding violently into me, then another.

Then a long, languorous coupling on top, my penis delighting in the tight smoothness and well-lubricated texture of her channel. She seemed to sense when I was close and would disengage to play with other parts of my body, nibbling shoulders, flanks, nipples, testicles, until I was fierce to enter her again.

My climax was a lovely rolling affair, my semen build-up extensive and explosive with my final frantic thrusts.

She kissed me softly on the lips as I left, a gentle hand giving a caress to my crotch before the door closed. I wandered out of the building in a sweaty daze. Outside I exited the grounds though an unfamiliar gate which swung easily open but latched unyieldingly shut. I managed to find my way back to familiar streets and the way home.

For the next week I visited every day. I was never able to enter the house by the door I had used on the previous visit, I had to choose another. Yet my key would always open the first interior door that I tried, never a second. I discovered later that if I exited the building, I could re-enter, although not through the door I had just emerged from. My key would always work again, on another hallway door. Or was it a different door? At least the occupant was never the same.

One afternoon I entered and exited four consecutive times. My huevos were in an impossible condition when I finally made my way home, my penis chafing against my thighs, trousers, my sperm reserves exhausted. I was so spent it was three days before I returned.

For the first year it could not have been more sublime. There was no visit that was not at minimum immensely satisfying. On departure my penis was limp. A warm glow radiated from inside my body. My feet were light, my mood elevated. Even riding a collectivo home was not a burden. Food tasted excellent, my sleep was sound.

I tried to bring a friend once. I did not dare reveal the details of the house, he knew only that a handsome woman would attend to him. The gatekeeper asked for his key, which of course he did not have.

"Cannot he enter with me?" I asked. The look back was stern, more menacing than any I had received before from the man.

He shook his head. My friend was forced to return home unaccompanied. I had a devil of a time explaining away the event when we next spoke. I did not try again.

For the first two years the key operated with an ethereal consistency. I often entered a room, not knowing whom I would meet, only to find exactly who I sought.

One time I had a soft, heavy mulatto, possessed of an enormous ass, whom I took fiercely from behind, glorying in the sight of her dark, wide, smooth bum beneath me while my prick plunged in and out of her cunt. I had not known how much I craved a hefty bottom before I entered the house that night. It was exquisite.

Other visits could mean a willowy rubia with a silk-smooth channel or a wide-mouthed Gypsy with unruly hair who would suction my sperm with her wet, undulating lips.

Once -- this was the only time this particular event occurred -- I was met at the door by a tall, unclothed woman with swaying breasts. Her breathing was elevated, the heat emanating from her body was palpable, her sweat and cunt-smell strong.

Only then I noted the naked young male still on her bed, looking up at me, perhaps twenty years of age. His erection was pronounced, glistening wet. I had interrupted their coupling.

I apologized but the woman just smiled and waved me to a chair.

"Let us finish," she said, "and then I will be yours."

I watched them resume. My excitement grew to an unbearable level. He had a thick member, she took him briefly in her mouth, then he plunged back into her cunt. They went at each other with a vengeance, it was half an hour of spirited fucking before they were done.

Many breaks they took, he would pull out from her, and then they would gaze at each other and tease various parts of their bodies until they could no longer withstand the restraint and were joined again in frantic coitus.

He came hard, on top of her, I watched his ass-cheeks indent as he forcibly drove his member home. She clutched him by the ass and back, and the noises that came from her throat were animalistic, from another time and place.

My own penis had grown impossibly hard. I had had to loosen my belt, and pull down my drawers enough to give my penis space to breathe, wave in the air.

Upon his finish, he lay still upon her. She looked over at my erection with a gleam in her eyes.

She eased him off, spread her legs wide.

I was on her in an instant, her cunt soppy and soft, but still she gripped me with astonishing abandon.

Although worked up to a high level, my coupling lasted some time. She came twice while I was in her, I could feel each time her cunt clipped my cock, rippling along my desperate shaft and head.