The Republic of Wine

the roomy, well-appointed quarters the woman lived in and the grinding job she performed perplexed him. I nearly lost my tongue over a little kiss. What if I … who could guarantee the safety of the family jewels? Suppressing his ‘bourgeois promiscuous inclinations’ and rekindling his ‘awesome proletarian righteousness,’ he sat there, solid as Mount Tai, facing a bare-assed woman and the black muzzle of a pistol, so decorous and composed, a look of utter serenity on his face, that he could surely lay claim to the mantle of tragic hero the likes of which the world has seldom seen. Calmly he watched the scene change.
    The lady trucker’s face reddened, her excited nipples quivered, like the voracious mouths of tiny animals. The investigator could hardly keep from throwing himself on her and biting them. The sharp pain in his tongue kept him in his seat.
    She sighed softly. ‘I surrender,’ she said.
    She tossed the pistol down onto the table and raised her hands ostentatiously. ‘I surrender,’ she said again, ‘you win …’ With her arms in the air and her legs spread wide, all the points of entry were wide open.
    ‘How can you be so blase?’ she asked the investigator in exasperation. ‘Am I too ugly for you?’
    ‘No, you’re quite good looking,’ he replied languidly.
    ‘Then why?’ She turned mocking. ‘Not castrated, are you?’
    ‘I’m afraid you’ll bite it off.’
    ‘Male praying mantises die when they mount the females, but that doesn’t keep them from climbing on.’
    ‘Don’t give me that. I’m no praying mantis.’
    ‘You goddamned coward!’ the lady trucker cursed and turned her back on him. ‘Get the hell out of here. I’m going to masturbate!’
    The investigator flew off the sofa and grabbed her from behind, taking one of her breasts in his hand. She lay back in his arms, cocked her head, and grinned up at him. In spite of himself, he put his mouth next to hers, but his lips no sooner brushed up against her burning lips than stabbing pains re-attacked his tongue. ‘Ouch!’ he shouted, jerking his mouth out of harm’s way.
    ‘I won’t bite you …’ She turned and began to undress him.
    Piece by piece, the investigator’s clothes were peeled away. He pitched in to help, like a lone traveler confronted by a highwayman. First she removed his bathrobe and flicked it into the corner, then she relieved him of his shorts and undershirt, tossing them over an arm of the chandelier. He gazed up at them, suddenly wishing he could have them back. The desire to retrieve them was very strong. Wanting to ‘pick the onions without delay,’ he jumped a good thirty centimeters off the floor. He touched them with the tip of one finger of his right hand, but his feet were quickly back on the carpet. The next jump was forestalled by a leg sweep from the lady trucker, which put him flat on his back.
    Before the investigator could come to his senses, the lady trucker had straddled him. Grabbing hold of his ears, she began bouncing up and down, raising a tattoo of sonorous slaps on Ding Gou’er’s belly. His insides felt as if they were being crushed, and he shouted bloody murder. So the lady trucker reached out, picked up a smelly sock, and crammed it into his mouth. Her actions were violent and savage, not gentle or feminine. A foul, disgusting taste filled Ding Gou’er’s mouth; he wanted to cry out. Is this supposed to be making love? It’s more like hog-butchering. Just as his consciousness sent a command to his hands to shove this lady butcher off, she pinned his wrists to the floor, as if guessing what he had in mind. Ding Gou’er’s emotions were a welter of confusion. He wanted to struggle, and he didn’t want to. We’ve already seen why he wanted to struggle. And to find out why he didn’t want to, we need look no further than down between his legs, where he was undergoing a test of blood and fire. So he closed his eyes and put his fate in God’s hands.
    And here is what happened: While the lady trucker, all hot and sweaty, was squirming and bouncing around on his belly, like a lovesick loach, snide laughter erupted high above him. Ding Gou’er opened his eyes, and was nearly blinded by a flurry of flash-bulb explosions, followed immediately by a series of shutter snaps, and finally the whirr of film rewinding inside an automatic camera. He sprang into a sitting position and swung at the passion-filled face of the lady trucker. His aim was perfect; with a